The House of Representatives impeached Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President of United States at five o’clock p.m. on February 24, 1868 by a vote of 126 yeas to 47 nays. On February 25, Thaddeus Stevens and John A. Bingham appeared in the Senate chamber. Mr. Stevens spoke, "In obedience to the order of the House of Representatives and of all the people of the United States. We do impeach Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors in office; and we further inform the Senate that the House of Representatives will in due time exhibit articles against him, and make good the same, and in their name we demand that the Senate take order for the appearance of said Andrew Johnson to answer said impeachment."
 
 

The action of President Johnson that led directly to his impeachment was his deliberate violation of the Tenure of Office Act. By discharging Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton on February 21, 1868, Johnson intentionally defied Congress.
 
 

The Constitutionality of the Act was a major point of contention during the trial. The Tenure of Office Act was repealed in 1887. In 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstititional even though it had been repealed almost 40 years before. The ruling came in the Myers v. U.S. case that dealt with the ability of Congress to limit the removal powers of the President with regard to postmasters.
 
 

The following editorials from Harper's Weekly, during the House and Senate portions of Johnson's Impeachment, describe the legal and political issues that resulted in the first presidential impeachment (and acquital) in American history.
 
 

Before this paper is issued the question of impeachment will probably be decided. The offense of the President is plain. He assumes to put himself above the law, upon the ground that in his judgment the law is unconstitutional. A plea more preposterous can hardly be conceived, for if he be the judge of one law he is the judge of all, and no law will be executed until he approves it. Mr. Brooks, in the very unwise and braggadocio speech which he made in the House upon the presentation of the resolution of impeachment, said that the President had as much right to judge of the constitutionality of the Tenure-of-Office Act as the Senate or the House. Undoubtedly he has; but the Constitution expressly declares that if the President objects to an act upon the ground of want of constitutionality, or upon any other ground, if he can not persuade Congress to agree with him, and the act is again passed by a two-thirds vote, it becomes the law of the land, notwithstanding the judgment of the President.
 
 

The New York Times echoes the remark of Mr. Brooks in saying of the President: "But it can scarcely be unlawful for him to perform an act in violation of an unconstitutional law, which is simply no law at all; and until the validity of this law shall have been decided by the Supreme Court the question of the President’s guilt or innocence can scarcely be entertained." That is to say, if the President vetoes a bill, and it becomes a law despite the veto, the President may set it aside until the Supreme Court declares it to be valid. Now if the President is not bound by the law, nobody else is; and the Times declares that no law is binding, even if passed by a two-thirds vote of Congress, until the Supreme Court has approved it. Such a theory reduces the function of the representatives of the people to the mere initiation of laws, and vests the real power of the Government exclusively in the Executive and Judiciary.
 
 

The Tenure-of-Office Act was passed by Congress, vetoed by the President, passed over his veto by the constitutional majority, and became the law. The President acknowledged it to be a law by conforming to its requirements, and explaining to the Senate why he had suspended the Secretary of War. The Senate did not approve the suspension, and there the matter should have ended. But by subsequently assuming to remove the Secretary the President deliberately and distinctly violates the law which forbids the removal of any civil officer appointed with the consent of the Senate without its concurrence if it be in session. There could not be a more flagrant defiance of law or usurpation of authority. If the President, as we have said, may do it in the case of one law, however constitutionally enacted, until the Supreme Court had passed upon it, and the consequent confusion and uncertainty would be intolerable. The assumption of Mr. Brooks and of the New York Times that a law may be held unconstitutional until pronounced otherwise by the court is subversive of the government and of civil order; and the question ought, therefore, to be distinctly settled whether the President has the power of dispensing with the laws? a power which the English two hundred years ago dethroned King James II for claiming.
 
 

The debate in the House need not have been so bitter. It was useless to answer the taunts and threats of Mr. Brooks. It was foolish in Mr. Ingersoll to predict that Mr. Wade would be in the White House within ten days, and equally foolish in Mr. Pruyn to deny it. Mr. Farnsworth’s tirade against the Democratic Party was elicited by Mr. Brooks’s claim that the brute force was upon his side. The truth is, that Mr. James Brooks, who vainly aspires to some kind of leadership in the last party to which he has joined himself, very feebly initiated in the debate the part which Davis, Benjamin, and the other conspirators played in the session of 1860-61. His speech required no answer, and the orators of the majority should have confined themselves to the simple point at issue. Moreover, there should have been no attempt to restrict debate. There is no occasion for excessive haste. The constitution provides every method of proceeding. The President will not resist impeachment, and upon this simple point of deliberate violation of the law, the only point which should be raised, his trial, if ordered, need not last long.
 
 

The President of the United States is impeached, and will be tried under the Constitution and by the laws; and Mayor Hoffman of New York made an exceedingly silly remark when he said that the assassins of Abraham Lincoln and the impeachers of Andrew Johnson will be equally infamous in history. Whether Mr. Hoffman seriously thinks so, or merely said so under the pressure of party necessity, he is equally to be pitied. The immediate and remarkable change of opinion and of action upon the part of the House of Representatives was sufficient to show that impeachment was not a party measure. Indeed, however desirable it might have been thought in an exclusively party view, it was the almost unanimous conviction of the dominant party that the offenses of the President, however disastrous in their consequences, were not such open and absolute violations of law and of his duty as imperatively to demand impeachment. But when, emboldened by a wise forbearance, the President pointedly violated the law and defied the Representatives of the people, seizing with one hand the prerogative of Congress and with the other that of the Supreme Court, thus usurping all the functions of the Government, the remedy which the Constitution provides was instantly applied, and he was solemnly summoned to answer to the country and to declare the reasons of his conduct.
 
 

The summons revealed the truth that the President had no friends. No party in the country is responsible for him. The Republicans elected him, and he has striven in every way to defeat their policy. The Democrats thought him rather worse than Caligula’s horse; and although he nominates one of their advocates for the mission to Austria, and their late Presidential candidate Minister to England; although he consorts chiefly with the most notorious Copperhead, and hails Democratic successes at the polls as vindications of his policy; although he has struggled hard to deliver the late rebel States wholly into the power of the rebels, and to cause the abandonment and betrayal of those to whom he promised to be a Moses; yet the Democratic party have seen his two chief Secretaryships filled with old Whigs and Republicans, while the faithful have been kept from a monopoly of the patronage. This is the mortal sin which "the natural governors of the country" never forgive, and the Democrats, who were glad enough to use him as a party weapon against the Republicans, turn quietly upon their heels when he plainly transcends the law, and without a word for him betake themselves to maligning and falsifying those who bring him to judgment.
 
 

But all the Democratic orators in Congress, all the newspapers which oppose the impeachment, all the speakers at the "Conservative" meeting of protest— whether the wise Mr. Gerard, the consistent Mr. Brooks, or the foolish Mr. Hoffman— say but two things: first, that Mr. Stanton was not appointed by the President; and, second, that the President has a right to test the constitutionality of the law. The first point is a very small quibble. How did Mr. Stanton happen to be Secretary of War under the present Administration? Because the President, finding him in office, invited him to remain. It was the only way in which, under the circumstances, he could have been appointed; and it would be very hard to show that the request to remain was not a perfect appointment. As to the second point, the simple and sufficient reply is that if the President chooses to test a law he must do it as every other citizen does—at the risk of the consequences. The police do not release a sneak-thief until the constitutionality of the law against larceny, which he declares that he questions, can be determined. He is tried for violating the law. The position taken by the opponents of impeachment is really that when the President vetoes a proposed law for unconstitutionality, and it is passed over his veto by the constitutional two-thirds, he may still impose his veto. And refuse to obey the law until the Court holds it to be valid. If this be not a fundamental change in our system of government, we should like to know what would be? If this be not revolution, there is no such thing.
 
 

One of the most persistent defamers of Congress says that "it can not be unlawful for the President to violate an unconstitutional law, which is simply no law at all." If this means any thing, it is that the President may decide the question of constitutionality; or may refuse to execute the law until he can have a decision of the Supreme Court. But if he may refuse to execute one law he may refuse to execute all laws, until he has such a decision, and all legislation must wait, if he chooses to call it unconstitutional, until the Court pronounces; the Court, of course, taking its own time. When the people of the United States assent to such a doctrine as this they will assent to the over-throw of their own power, and will have intrusted the Government to one man elected for four years, and to nine men appointed for life.
 
 

Those who think impeachment an exciting disturbance are mainly the supporters of the reaction which would place the country as nearly as possible just where it was before the war. But the great national necessity is not the restoration of the old southern policy in the government— it is the completion of its destruction. What we want is peace, and what hinders it? The President. His obstinate refusal to co-operate with Congress, whether in the matter of the Freedman’s Bureau, of the civil rights of all citizens, of the Constitutional Amendment, or of the final reconstruction policy, has produced all the turmoil of the last two years. With the Government a unit in its general political policy, it can have time to attend to the financial and other necessities of the time. But those who sneer at Congress for doing nothing but discuss reconstruction forget that not only is that of necessity the paramount question, but that with the Executive incessantly striving to baffle its policy, Congress could not desert its constant care of the subject without guilt. The moment this state of things is changed and harmony restored, public attention will be concentrated upon other and pressing questions. The President will be fairly tried. He will not be convicted, we are very sure, except upon testimony and argument that will satisfy the most doubting; and should he be removed from office public confidence will be wonderfully quickened by the full accord between the great branches of the government, while a man whose conspicuous elevation has been a profound humiliation to every self-respecting American will sink suddenly and forever into oblivion.
 
 

There is a persistent assertion made in some quarters that the President is not to be tried for an offense of the highest possible character, the insinuation being that he should, therefore, not be tried at all, or that his trial is a work of mere party desperation. It is very true that the President is not charged with such an offense as endeavoring to convey the forts of the United States into the hands of a foreign enemy, but he is charged with the deliberate violation of a law, with the usurpation of the powers of the other two branches of the Government; and his character and career compel every candid man to regard the offense as tentative merely; nor do we suppose any such man doubts that, had he been allowed impunity in setting aside the law, under any pretense whatever, his next step, might have plunge the country into terrible confusion. The pleas which he incessantly urges that he merely wished to test the constitutionality of the law is entitled to precisely the same respect with the declaration of a royal motu proprio that, "From considerations of affection for my beloved people, and from regard for public order, the freedom of the press is abolished." Men who mean mischief are not in the habit of saying that they mean it.
 
 

It is said that the President had been shorn of power, that he had been rendered harmless, and that there was therefore all the less reason for impeaching him, except for the highest possible offense. But how had he been shorn of power? Merely by the laws of Congress, of which the Tenure-of-Office law was one. And for what is he impeached? For violating one of those laws. Unwilling to be restrained, and resolved, if possible, to exert all his force for mischief, the President tries to set aside the laws, and naturally begins with the one which he considers the weakest, and which he believes the country will regard as the most unimportant. It is urged that he can neither control the purse nor the sword. But what have been all his efforts to get a creature of his own into the War Department, and to summon Sherman or Thomas to Washington, but attempts to discover whether he could not control the sword? If he could put Rousseau, or Steedman, or Granger into the War Department, would he hesitate to do it, and for what purpose would he place either of them there? It is childish to argue that the President is bound by the law when he is impeached for violation of the law. It is equally trivial to insist that the law is an unimportant one. It is the violation of law that is in question. It was upon a rate of thirty-one shillings and sixpence that John Hampden made his stand against the ship-money. If the King could not dispense with the law, it was as illegal to attempt the collection of a penny as of a million pounds. If the President may disregard or violate the least law, all the laws are at his mercy.
 
 

In the case of the President the constitutionality of the law is not now mooted. Is the Tenure-of Office bill a law? If so, does it include the present Secretary of War as one of the officers who can not be removed without the consent of the Senate? If so, did the President remove him without consulting the Senate? These are the questions. If they shall be answered affirmatively, what reply is it to say, even could it be proved, that the President meant no mischief? The best and wisest man in the Executive Chair could not be allowed to use his discretion in obeying the laws any more than the best and wisest Congress could be allowed to dispense altogether with the Executive. But when a man who has the confidence of no party whatever, who is merely upheld against the dominant party by political opposition which despises him, whom nobody trusts or respects, and from whose action the baffled rebellion hopes to pluck a tardy victory—when such a man in the Executive Chair assumes to violate laws at his pleasure, under whatever his plea, he can not expect an immunity that could not be wisely granted to the most trusted and beloved citizen.
 
 

The case of the Managers of the House against the President, as we have elsewhere stated, has been conducted with great skill. The chain of evidence is continuous; nor has it been broken, or in any degree weakened, by the onsets in cross-examination of the President’s counsel. Those gentlemen, or most of them, are very eminent lawyers. The ability of Mr. Stanbery has been manifested to the country while he was Attorney-General. Judge Curtis is acknowledged to be one of the most accomplished jurists in the United States. Mr. Evarts is also a very distinguished lawyer—a man of remarkably clear, alert, and incisive mind. The other gentlemen of the President’s counsel, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Groesbeck, have taken no part in the trial during the presentation of the case by the Managers.
 
 

There can be little question that upon all points susceptible of proof by evidence the Managers have justified their articles; and it was illustrative of the peculiar tact of General Butler that he reserved to the last one of his strongest points, and somewhat surprised and annoyed his antagonists when he produced it. This was the testimony of Mr. Creecy, Appointment-Clerk of the Treasury Department, and the autograph letter of the President to Secretary M’Culloch last August, notifying him that he had suspended Mr. Stanton in pursuance of the Tenure-of-Office Act, thereby shaming his own assertion that he had acted "Under the Constitution," and without recognizing the law in question. Indeed, General Butler has unquestionably had the best of the week’s work. Only one serious effort of his has been baffled by the President’s counsel; and Mr. Evarts’s occasional caustic manner has not in the least disturbed the vast imperturbability of the practical advocate.
 
 

The case for the Managers, notwithstanding the array of articles, was really very simple. The most of it is of course already familiar, for all the transactions have been public. That there is a Tenure-of-Office law prescribing the conditions under which certain officers, including the Secretary of War, are to be removed, is not denied. That Mr. Stanton was peremptorily removed by the President during the session of the Senate is in evidence. That General Thomas, having been previously reinstated by the President as Adjutant-General, was appointed by him Secretary of War ad interim is proved. That General Thomas signed himself as such, and attempted to exercise the duties of the office; that he declared his intention to obtain possession by force if resisted, and that he stated his failure to do so was in consequence of the legal action of Mr. Stanton, is also proved. It is established further that the President officially acknowledged the validity of the law by confessedly acting under its authority, while he declared that he did not recognize it as binding; that in September, after the suspension of Mr. Stanton last summer, the President called General Emory to the command of the Department of the District, and upon his arrival to assume command had a detailed conversation in regard to the available military force there; that upon the day of the attempted removal of Mr. Stanton the President sent for General Emory and asked him again about the troops and what changes had been made; that when the General proceeded to explain the movements of regiments the President said he referred to other changes made within a day or two, to which the General replied that he knew of none, and that as all orders must by law pass through the hands of General Grant, if any new ones had been issued, he should of course be aware of them; that the President seemed surprised, and when the General showed him the order directing all orders for the army to pass through General Grant, the President said it was in derogation of his constitutional rights as Commander-in-Chief, to which General Emory replied that the officers of the army were of opinion that it was their duty to obey the order, which was in obedience to the law of Congress. It is further proved that the expressions ascribed to the President in the speeches during his Western trip were actually used by him.
 
 

The attempt of the Managers to show, in further proof of conspiracy, by the testimony of Mr. Chandler, that Mr. Edmund Cooper, late Private Secretary of the President, was made by him Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in order that the money of the Government might be obtained by the President for his purposes, was overruled by the Senate; the ground of its action being understood to be that the evidence would open too wide and irrelevant a range of inquiry. This was the only apparently important point not made by the Managers, and this was not essential. They closed the case promptly at the end of the first week, and the Senate then adjourned until the following Thursday to give the President’s counsel an opportunity to prepare themselves fully, with the understanding that they will not call a great many witnesses.
 
 

The case is thus brought to the exact point which we have before indicated as the one upon which the force of the President’s counsel was most likely to be concentrated. Conceding the facts claimed and substantially proved, that the law was regularly enacted, and that it forbade the removal during the session of the Senate of certain officers appointed by the President without the approval of the Senate; conceding that Mr. Stanton was Secretary of War, and was removed by the President without the consent of the Senate—then the question arises, was Mr. Stanton appointed Secretary of War by President Johnson? If he were, the law has been violated. If he were not, the law does not touch the case. The position taken by the Managers is revealed by a little remark of Mr. Wilson when he offered the first evidence for the prosecution. After putting in the commission of Mr. Stanton, signed by President Lincoln, Mr. Wilson said that it was the only commission the Managers proposed to prove, and that commission, in the judgment of the Managers, made Mr. Stanton Secretary of War. The battle will be joined just at this point. We will not anticipate the arguments, but the rule of common sense is plainly with the Managers. If a man holds an appointed office and the appointing power is changed, but the new power directs him to remain, it seems to be tolerably clear that he is reappointed. This is a subject, however, upon which there may be the utmost refinement of legal subtlety, of which we shall doubtless have a notable exhibition.
 
 

Should the appointment of Mr. Stanton as Secretary be maintained by the Managers, and he be judged to stand within the operation of the law, it is possible that the President’s counsel may try to show that there was no improper intention in its violation by the President. We doubt if the utmost skill can do this, for it is impossible to destroy the evidence that he had already recognized its validity. And even could it be done—even were it conceded that he had always refused to acknowledge the constitutionality of the law, yet the violation by the Executive of a law regularly enacted and not declared invalid by any court, is the substitution of the President’s will for the law of the land, and the intention must be inferred from the fact. The President is not charged with what is generally called a crime, but with a high misdemeanor in the discharge of political functions. Should he be removed, he will not subsequently be pursued with a criminal prosecution, as the Constitution authorizes when a crime otherwise punishable has been committed. Indeed the case is very simple, and addresses itself to the common-sense of the whole country. Mr. Seward had already asked the people of the United States whether they would have Mr. Johnson for king; and we presume that the Senate will answer in their name—"Decidedly not."
 
 

The case for the President was opened by Mr. Curtis. His great renown as an able lawyer, possibly the head of his profession in the country, and the weight of his personal character, gave peculiar interest to his plea. It was known that he would say the best that could be said for his client; that he would subject the letter of the law to the most trying ordeal of possible interpretation; and that he would ingeniously shift the lights and shadows upon the facts of the case to favor his own view, in the manner of all great advocates, and with an effect deepened by the apparent passionlessness of his manner. Indeed the advocate has no art so profoundly skillful as the air of severe judicial impartiality: the appearance of seeking the truth for the truth’s sake merely, and urging the acquittal of his client as a homage which a magnanimous jury or Senate will naturally be anxious to offer to their own high sense of justice. This quality Mr. Curtis possesses, and he has been trained in a school favorable to its development, for he has been Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
 
 

Yet, when the best has been said for the President, how unsatisfactory it is! The first thing that impresses the reader of the argument of Mr. Curtis is that, however able, there is nothing new in it. The whole case is so simple and so open to the public appreciation that the line of defense which was indicated at the very beginning of the trial as the only possible line, is the one that has been followed. Mr. Curtis’s argument subjects the Tenure-of-Office Act to the most searching verbal analysis; but while it marshals probabilities and possibilities, and suggestions and surmises, with consummate skill, the great facts steadfastly and impregnably confront them all. Mr. Curtis contends that Mr. Stanton is not within the scope of the law; that the law is against precedent and interpretation; that, therefore, amidst the conflict of authorities and the uniformity of practice, to question the validity of the law is not necessary hostility to the Government; that Mr. Stanton has not been removed; and that Mr. Stanton having been removed the office was vacant.
 
 

These points are elaborated with great ability; but the mind remains unconvinced, because it is part of the skill of the orator to omit a whole series of facts which control the case, and which are familiar to the country. The argument of Mr. Curtis assumes that an upright magistrate, anxious to execute the laws, and theoretically preserving order and promoting concord at a time of great national disturbance, finds himself at last constrained to doubt the validity of a law, and therefore seeks a judicial interpretation of its constitutionality. Were this really the case, Mr. Curtis would perhaps not have made his ingenious plea, for the President would very possibly not have been impeached. He is impeached because the violation of a law by this particular President under the peculiar circumstances in which he stands is of itself evidence of intention. In another case it might not be. In another case, as we have formerly supposed, and as Mr. Butler stated in his opening speech, there might have been a friendly understanding between the Executive and the Legislature in order to test the law. But his is a very different case. If, under any circumstances, such conduct upon the part of the Executive ought to be tolerated, and it is certainly very doubtful, in this case it would be madness. Men must be judged by their conduct and character. If Andrew Johnson should be allowed to set aside laws because he professed to have scruples as to their constitutionality, the country would deserve the anarchy into which it would inevitably fall.
 
 

Mr. Curtis fortifies the doubts which the President professes to entertain by the opinion of many eminent men, and by what he claims to be the settled interpretation. But the question is not of opinions, but of laws. The Tenure-of-Office Bill may seem unwise to the shades of the great departed, but if laws were to be disregarded because great men had prospectively condemned them, government would be at an end. Mr. Curtis farther says, that if the President did not take the responsibility of testing the law in the Courts, it could not be tested. But if he takes the responsibility he must also take the risk. One law properly passed is as binding upon him as another. If he is to execute only the laws which he thinks constitutional, it makes no difference to an honest officer whether they immediately concern himself or others. He has no right, as Mr. Curtis suggests, to leave them in the latter case to be tested by those whom they affect. If a law be unconstitutional, the Executive ought not to connive at its execution; and if he is to be the judge in any case, he is the judge in all cases. Nothing can be plainer, no principle more vitally important, than that the President must execute all the laws, without exception, which have not been adjudged unconstitutional, or resign. If possible inconveniences result, they are not to be compared with the certain perils of any other course.
 
 

We doubt if Mr. Stanbery or Mr. Evarts can add weight to the argument of Mr. Curtis. Even should the witnesses for the President establish what his counsel wish, we do not see how it could be sufficient. They certainly can not disprove that the Tenure-of-Office Act is a law regularly enacted; that it has not been declared unconstitutional; that it authorizes the Secretary of War, and the other Secretaries, to hold their offices "for and during the term of the President by whom they may have been appointed, and one month thereafter, subject to removal by and with the advice and consent of the Senate;" and that the President removed the Secretary of War without the advice and consent of the Senate. And if Mr. Curtis has been unable to show that Mr. Stanton does not stand within the terms of the law are his colleagues likely to do it?
 
 

Whoever has read the opinions of Senators Fessenden, Grimes, and Trumbull, however he may regret the conclusions to which they come, will not deny the ability, dignity, and candor with which their views are stated. They all knew the storm of obloquy that was sure to follow their action, but they leave no doubt that, however they may differ with many of their party friends upon the particular point involved in the Impeachment, they are still in hearty sympathy with the great purposes of the party.
 
 

Senator Grimes said:

"Mr. Johnson’s character as statesman, his relations to political parties, his conduct as a citizen, his efforts at reconstruction, the exercise of his pardoning power, the character of his appointments, and the influences under which they were made, are not before us on any charges, and are not impugned by any testimony. Nor can I suffer my judgment of the law governing this case to be influenced by political considerations. I can not agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable President. Whatever may be my opinion of the incumbent, I can not consent to trifle with the high office he holds. I can do nothing which, by implication, may be construed into an approval of impeachment as a part of future political machinery. However widely, therefore, I may and do differ with the President respecting his political views and measure, and however deeply I have regretted, and do regret the differences between himself and the Congress of the United States, I am not able to record my vote that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors by reason of those differences. I am acting in a judicial capacity, under conditions whose binding obligation can hardly be exceeded, and I must act according to the best of my ability and judgment, and as they require. If, according to their dictates, the President is guilty, I must say so; if, according to their dictates, the President is not guilty, I must say so."
 
 

Senator Fessenden said:

"The people have not heard the evidence as we have heard it. The responsibility is not upon them, but upon us. They have not taken an oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws. I have taken that oath; I can not render judgment upon their conviction, nor can they transfer to themselves my punishment if I violate my oath. I should consider myself undeserving of the confidence that the just and intelligent people imposed upon me in this great responsibility, and unworthy a place among honorable men, if, for any fear of public reprobation, and for the sake of securing popular favor, I should disregard the conviction of my judgment and my conscience. The consequences which may follow, either from conviction or acquittal, are not for me, with my convictions, to consider. The future is in the hands of Him who made and governs the universe, and the fear that He will not govern it wisely and well would not excuse me for a violation of His law."
 
 

Senator Trumbull said:

"In coming to the conclusion that the President is not guilty of any of the high crimes and misdemeanors with which he stands charged, I have endeavored to be governed by the case made without reference to other acts of his not contained in the record, and without giving the least heed to the clamor of intemperate zealots who demand the conviction of Andrew Johnson as a test of party faith, or seek to identify with and make responsible for his acts those who from convictions of duty feel compelled on the case made to vote for his acquittal. His speeches and the general course of his administration have been as distasteful to me as to any one, and I should consider it the great calamity of the age if the disloyal element, so often encouraged by his measures, should gain political ascendancy. If the question was, is Andrew Johnson a fit person for President? I should answer no; but it is not a party question, nor upon Andrew Johnson’s deeds and acts, except so far as they are made to appear in the record, that I am to decide…In view of the consequences likely to flow from this day’s proceedings, should they result in convictions on what my judgment tells me are insufficient charges and proofs, I tremble for the future of my country. I cannot be an instrument to produce such a result; and at the hazard of the ties even of friendship and affection, till calmer times shall do justice to my motives, no alternative is left me but the inflexible discharge of duty."
 
 

Any party would be infinitely poorer which should lose the sympathy and support of such men; and a party which should formally exclude them would justly forfeit the sympathy of the most intelligent and honest citizens.