The advocates of Impeachment were denounced as rash, hot-headed, sensational, bent on leading the party into an indefensible position; while its opponents were spoken of as faint-hearted, as truckling to the Administration, as afraid to strike the one blow imperatively demanded for the safety of the Republic.
Blaine describes the contrasting views of impeachment advocates and opponents within the party.
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With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
In my judgment our sole authority for the acts which we have done during the last four years was the authority communicated to Congress by the Constitution to suppress insurrection.
These divergent practices had been allowed to develop for seventy-seven years of the nation's life, when, admonished by the Stockton case of the latitudinary results to which loose methods might lead, Congress took jurisdiction of the…
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