If one of their number could be appointed governor, if another could be appointed to a confidential position in the Treasury Department, there was nobody on the long list of blood who might not look for preferment.

Rebels found themselves in places of trust, while true-hearted Unionists, who had watched the coming of our flag and should have enjoyed its protecting power, were driven into hiding-places.

White and black, whose only offence was that they had been true to country, were insulted, abused, murdered.

There was no safety for the loyal man except within the flash of our bayonets.

Acts were done to “make a holiday in Hell.” At New Orleans was a fearful massacre, worse, considering the age and place, than that of St.

Bartholomew, which darkens a century of France, or that of Glencoe, which has printed an ineffaceable stain upon one of the greatest reigns of English history.

Millions of property were turned over without consideration to railroad companies, whose special recommendation was participation in the Rebellion.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, that sacred charity of the Republic, was despoiled of its possessions for the sake of Rebels, to whom their forfeited estates were given back after they had been vested by law in the United States.

The proceeds of captured and abandoned property, lodged under law in the National Treasury, were ravished from their place of deposit and sacrificed.

The pardoning power was prostituted, and pardons were issued in lots to suit Rebels, thus grossly abusing that trust whose discreet exercise is so essential to the administration of justice.

The veto power, conferred by the National Constitution as a remedy for ill-considered legislation, was turned by him into a weapon of offence against Congress, and into an instrument to beat down the just opposition which his usurpation…

The power of removal, so sparingly exercised by patriot Presidents, was seized as an engine of tyranny, and openly employed to maintain his wicked purposes, by the sacrifice of good citizens who would not be his tools.

There is, first, the general prostration of their region, which they would see improved; but this can be only by the establishment of peace undisturbed, so that all men, white and black, may live in security.

Violence breeds a kindred crop; nor can distrust exist without detriment to all.

Even this revolting transgression has additional aggravation, when it is considered, that, through these utterances, the cause of justice was imperilled, and the accursed demon of civil feud lashed again into vengeful fury.

For all these, or any one of them, Andrew Johnson should have been impeached and expelled from office.

The Grand Inquest of the nation, after sleeping on so many enormities, was awakened by this open defiance.

The President, who had already claimed everything for the Executive with impunity, now rushed into conflict with Congress on the very ground selected in advance by the latter.

Andrew Johnson must be impeached, or the Tenure-of-Office Act would become a dead letter, while his tyranny would receive a letter of license, and impeachment as a remedy for wrong-doing would be blotted from the Constitution.

Accordingly it was resolved that the offender, whose crimes had so long escaped judgment, should be impeached.

The Articles themselves are narrow, if not technical; but they are filled and broadened by the transgressions of the past, all of which enter into the present offences.

As well separate the Siamese twins as separate the offences charged from that succession of antecedent crimes with which they are linked, any one of which is enough for judgment.

The present springs from the past, and can be truly seen only in its light, which, in this case, is nothing less than “darkness visible.

In entering upon the discussion of the Articles of Impeachment, I confess my regret that so great a cause, on which so much depends, should be presented on such narrow ground, although I cannot doubt that the whole past must be taken into…

But the former has been made the pivot of the impeachment,--so much so that the whole case seems to revolve on this transaction.