To sum up this feature of the proceeding—the Republican majority of the Senate placed themselves and their party in the attitude of prosecutors in the case—instead of judges sworn to give the President an impartial trial and judgment that their course had the appearance, at least, of a conspiracy to evict the President for purely partisan purposes, regardless of testimony or the facts of the case-that public animosity against Mr. Johnson had been manufactured throughout the North by wild and vicious misrepresentations for partisan effect—that practically the entire Republican Party machinery throughout the country was bent to the work of prosecution. The party cry was "Crucify him!" "Convict him anyway, and try him afterwards!" With rare exceptions, the Republican Party of the country, press and people, were a unit in this insensate cry.
They were ready to strike, but not to hear.
There can be but one conclusion from these premises, established by the record of the trial—that the entire proceeding, from its inception in the House of Representatives to its conclusion in the Senate, was a thoroughly partisan prosecution on the part of the majority in both Houses, and that the country was saved from the shameful spectacle, and the dangerous consequences of such a proceeding, by the intervention and self-sacrifice of a few gentlemen who proposed to respect the obligation of their oath, and give Mr. Johnson, so far as in their power, a fair trial and judgment—and not having had such a trial—to give him the benefit of what he claimed he could prove in his own behalf and was not permitted to—and a verdict of "Not Guilty," regardless of consequences to themselves.
What every member of the Court had sworn to do was "impartial justice" to Andrew Johnson, and nothing less. The Counsel on neither side had taken that oath, but the Court had; and its performance of that oath was impossible without possession of all the information relating to and bearing upon the case that it was reasonably possible to obtain. That is the essential ingredient and characteristic of a fair trial.
THAT ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT OF JUDICIAL FAIRNESS WAS NOT SHOWN TO MR. JOHNSON IN THIS CASE BY THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY OF THE SENATE, as the official record of the trial clearly establishes. It was an ill-disguised and malevolent partisan prosecution.
CHAPTER XIII. — THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWER OF IMPEACHMENT.
The power conferred by the Constitution upon Congress to impeach and remove the President for cause, is unquestionably a wise provision. The natural tendency of the most patriotic of men, in the exercise of power in great public emergencies, is to overstep the line of absolute safety, in the conscientious conviction that a departure from strict constitutional or legal limitations is demanded by the public welfare.
The danger in such departures, even upon apparent necessity, if condoned or permitted by public judgment is in the establishment of precedents whereby greater and more dangerous infractions of organic law may be invited, tolerated, and justified, till government takes on a form of absolutism in one form or another, fatal to free institutions, fatal to a government of law, and fatal to popular liberty.
On the other hand, a too ready resort to the power of impeachment as a remedial agent—the deposition of a public officer in the absence of proof of the most positive and convincing character of the impeachability of the offense alleged, naturally tends to the other extreme, till public officers may become by common consent removable by impeachment upon insufficient though popular charges—even upon partisan differences and on sharply contested questions of public administration.