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usion; not because rge H. Pendleton, peace-loving Union of a collapse. The coln was chosen for e place of Hannibal However, did not cease. was again inaugurated. after the evacuation of is best with the authoriOn the evening of the on Tenth Street in Washhe play is drawing toward Booth dashes into the Presioots him through the brain. stage, and escapes. The Presihe dies. This atrocious murder It is almost equivalent to the consternation and despair. In the as killed, Lewis Payne (or Powell) into the bed-chamber of the great Sec

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is prudent, clement, and great President. The were magnified. The voice of lamentation which

CHAPTER XXXII.

IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON.

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SPRING OF 1865- SURRENDER AT APPOMATTOX SECOND INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN - SCENE IN FORD'S THEATRE THE ASSASSINATION— JOHNSON'S ACCESSION - PRELIMINARIES TO IMPEACHMENT GROUNDS FOR THE IMPEACHMENT-MAJORITY REPORT OF JUDICIARY COMMITTEE PRETEXTS FOR IMPEACHMENT DISMISSAL OF STANTON ALLEGED CONSPIRACY BETWEEN GEN. LORENZO THOMAS AND THE PRESIDENT IS "SWINGING ROUND THE CIRCLE" A MISDEMEANOR? · -THE SENATE AS A COURT INSTANCES OF IMPEACHMENT - SPLENDID ARRAY OF COUNSEL-ATTORNEYGENERAL STANBERY-THE EXCITEMENT AND VOTE-MINOR HISTORY OF THE TRIAL DOUBTFUL SENATORS— MR. WARDEN'S RECITAL-SENATOR GRIMES AND PRESIDENT JOHNSON-MEET WITH REVERDY JOHNSON—SENATOR HENDERSON'S DOUBTFUL VOTE THE AUTHOR'S PART-DAY BREAKS FOR THE PRESIDENT.

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T is two o'clock in the afternoon of Palm Sunday on the 9th of April, 1865, that the two great generals of the respective armies which have been confronting each other for four years meet in the parlor of William McLean, at Appomattox Court House. General Grant proposes in the form of a military note the terms of surrender. They are discussed and settled. General Lee returns a formal answer. The rolls of officers and men are to be made in duplicate. The officers are to give their parole not to take up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged. Each company or regimental commander is to sign a like parole for the men of his command. The arms and property are to be parked and stacked, and transferred to the officers appointed to receive them. The side-arms of the officers, and their private horses and baggage are not embraced in this stipulation. The surrender is made. Then the men return home. They are not to be disturbed by the United States authorities so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they reside.

A pathetic account is given by an eye-witness of the farewell between General Lee and the weather-beaten officers whom he had commanded through the long and weary years of the war. As to the silent, poignant

JEFFERSON DAVIS' ARREST AND RELEASE.

579 parting of these veterans, the statements cannot be exaggerated. It was beyond all description beautiful, touching, sympathetic, and chivalric. Much apocryphal writing has been published, however, about the capture of exPresident Davis with a few friends, near the village of Erwinsville, by General Wilson's cavalry on the 10th of May. Much discussion also was had at the time about his imprisonment in Fortress Monroe. There he was kept in confinement until May, 1867. We know what followed. He was taken from this bastile to be tried on the charge of treason. Such men as Charles O'Conor and Horace Greeley were willing to be his bondsmen and his advisors. For a year and a half the cause remained upon the docket. It was finally dismissed.

The Presidential election of 1864 was a foregone conclusion; not because the Democratic candidates, General McClellan and George H. Pendleton, were not representatives of the best thought of the peace-loving Union devotees; but because the Confederacy was on the eve of a collapse. The downfall of the Confederacy was presaged. Mr. Lincoln was chosen for a second term. Andrew Johnson was elected in the place of Hannibal Hamlin. The political agitation through the country, however, did not cease.

On the 4th of March, 1865, President Lincoln was again inaugurated. The Confederacy did collapse within a month. After the evacuation of Richmond, the President visits that city. He does his best with the authorities for reconciliation. He returns to Washington. On the evening of the 14th of April, 1865, he attends Ford's Theatre, on Tenth Street in Washington, with his wife and a party of friends. The play is drawing toward the fifth act, when an actor named John Wilkes Booth dashes into the President's box, levels a pistol at his head, and shoots him through the brain. The assassin then leaps from the box to the stage, and escapes. The President lingers until the next morning, when he dies. This atrocious murder cannot be reckoned simply as a homicide. It is almost equivalent to the homicide of a great people. It causes consternation and despair. In the conspiracy by which the President was killed, Lewis Payne (or Powell) was particeps criminis. He bursts into the bed-chamber of the great Secretary of State, William H. Seward. He springs upon the couch of the sick man like a tiger thirsting for blood. He stabs him almost unto death, and escapes. We know the result of the trials which followed,- the fate of Payne and his fellow-conspirators, David E. Herold and George A. Atzerodt, and others inculpated, and the terrible fate which overtook Mrs. Mary E. Surratt. It was at her house that the plot was alleged to have been formed. She had no plea against the panic-no plan offered her escape. Others besides herself were sentenced, in the fury which ensued, without much deliberation.

Thus passed away this prudent, clement, and great President. The difficulties of the South were magnified. The voice of lamentation which

went up in behalf of the dead President, as his body was borne throughout the country, was mingled with execrations, loud and long, against the war and the Southern people.

Under these circumstances the Presidential office was a most difficult trust when Andrew Johnson succeeded to power. A Southern man, with intense views and invincible will, he soon finds that he cannot act in harmony with the extremes of the Republican party. His vetoes and the long conflict end in his utter alienation from the party which elected him. Elections turn on his "policies." The questions of amnesty and reconstruction which had been uppermost in the American mind from Lincoln's death on the 15th of April, have already been discussed. The moderation of Lincoln had no practical revival until 1876; or until the final composition by the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884. These last two decades constitute a cycle which encompasses the greatest events known to human history, including every form of crime and tragedy which has marked the calendars of mankind.

Conspicuous for its dramatic interest is the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. His trial is a scene for the best pencil of art; his acquittal an occasion for the loudest huzzas of honest patriotism.

Andrew Johnson became the Republican candidate for the office of VicePresident in 1864. This was partly in deference to the honored custom of selecting the two highest officers of the nation from different sections of the country. His courageous and aggressive opposition to secession and its consequences had commended him to the cordial support of Northern men. He belonged to that insurgent Alleghany range which did not bow to South Carolina. He would never have been thought of in connection with that high office, but for the sterling characteristics exhibited by him as a defiant Democrat in Congress, and as an equally determined provisional governor of Tennessee. At his accession to the office of President upon the death of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Johnson's mind was imbued with a sentiment of rancor toward the secession leaders. In this respect, he differed widely from his predecessor. Mr. Lincoln's kindly nature was averse to harsh measures. His cool judgment inclined him in favor of a generous policy.

But while Mr. Johnson was at that time unrelenting, and while he declared that "treason must be made odious," he had never been in harmony with the ultra-Republicans in their extreme views. He differed from them. radically upon the two great questions of restoring the seceded states to their relations in the Union, and of determining the proper status of the colored race in the body-politic. On these essential questions he took issue with the Republicans. It cannot be said that, in the course he pursued, he was inconsistent, or treacherous to principle. Prior to the Presidential election in 1864, the Republicans had never, as a party, decided that the state constitutions must be renovated further than by the recognition of emancipa

THE REASON FOR JOHNSON'S IMPEACHMENT.

581 tion, the abrogation of the slave-codes, the repudiation of all debts, whether Confederate, state, or municipal, which had been contracted in aid of rebellion, and the renunciation of the right of a state to secede from the Union. Even Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the house, who would have confiscated the property of the whole slave-holding class, hesitated long before urging the enfranchisement of the negroes. He saw that if that measure were enforced upon the South, consistency would require its adoption in Pennsylvania. The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed by Congress in 1866, refrained from enfranchising the negroes. It did not require the seceded

states to enfranchise them, as a condition of restoration.

The Republicans quarreled with President Johnson, therefore, not because he could be justly charged with political apostasy, but because he failed to keep step with the party in its march on the road of extreme radicalism. That party had an overwhelming majority in both branches of Congress. Its leaders were intolerant of opposition. They determined to get rid of the President.

A resolution was accordingly adopted on the 7th of March, 1867, authorizing the Judiciary committee "to inquire into the official conduct of Andrew Johnson, Vice-President of the United States, discharging the present duties of the office of President of the United States."

The committee were to report whether the said Andrew Johnson had been guilty of acts which were designed or calculated to corrupt and overthrow the government, and whether he alone, or conspiring with others, had been guilty of acts which are denominated crimes and misdemeanors by the Constitution.

Several months were spent by the committee in examining witnesses and collecting testimony. At the next session of Congress, in December, 1867, a majority report and two minority reports were made. That of the majority was signed by George S. Boutwell, Francis Thomas, Thomas Williams, William Lawrence, and John C. Churchill, Republicans. They reported in favor of the impeachment of the President, mainly because of his attempts to reconstruct the seceded states without calling on Congress to originate the process. There were other grounds of impeachment urged; but this was the principal one upon which the majority of the committee relied.

Messrs. James F. Wilson, of Iowa, and Frederick E. Woodbridge, of Vermont, were on the committee. They were Republicans. They took issue with the majority. At the close of an exhaustive examination of the facts and of the law, they concluded that the case presented no such high crimes and misdemeanors as called for "the interposition of the Constitutional power of the House." These gentlemen, however, condemned the course pursued by the President.

Messrs. Samuel S. Marshall, of Illinois, and Charles A. Eldridge, of Wisconsin, Democrats, of the committee, concurred in the legal conclusions

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