From the time of the acquisition of Louisiana until the purchase of Alaska, the additions of territory to the United States had all been in the interest of slavery. Louisiana, stretching across the entire country from South to North, was of equal value to each section; but the acquisition of Florida, the annexation of Texas, the territory acquired from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, with the addition of Arizona under the Gadsden treaty, were all made under the lead of Southern statesmen to strengthen the political power and the material resources of the South. Meanwhile, by the inexcusable errors of the Democratic party, and especially of Democratic diplomacy, we lost that vast tract on the north known as British Columbia, the possession of which, after the acquisition of Alaska, would have given to the United States the continuous frontage on the Pacific Ocean from the south line of California to Behring's Straits. Looking northward for territory, instead of southward, was a radical change of policy in the conduct of the Government,—a policy which, happily and appropriately, it was the good fortune of Mr. Seward to initiate under impressive and significant circumstances.
[(1) Turner vs. The American Baptist Missionary Union, 5 McLean, 544.]
[(2) Mr. Jefferson, more promptly than other great statesmen of his generation, appreciated the degree of power residing in the House of Representatives. In a private letter discussing the subject he expressed views in harmony with Justice McLean's opinion, long before that opinion was delivered. He wrote to Mr. Monroe: "We conceive the Constitutional doctrine to be, that though the President and Senate have the general power of making treaties, yet whenever they include in a treaty matters confided by the Constitution to the three branches of the Legislature, an act of legislation will be necessary to confirm these articles, and that the House of Representatives, as one branch of the Legislature, are perfectly free to pass the act or to refuse it, governing themselves by their own judgment whether it is for the good of their constituents to let the treaty go into effect or not. On this depends whether the powers of legislation shall be transferred from the President, Senate, and House of Representatives, to the President, Senate, and Piamingo, or any other Indian, Algerine, or other chief.">[
CHAPTER XIV.
As the result of the great victory over the President in the political contest of 1866, and of his stubborn maintenance of a hostile attitude, the ardent and extreme men of the Republican party began, in the autumn of that year, to discuss the propriety of ending the whole struggle by impeaching Mr. Johnson and removing him from office. They believed that his contumacious and obstinate course constituted a high crime and misdemeanor, and the idea of Impeachment, as soon as suggested, took deep root in minds of a certain type. When Congress came together in December the agitation increased; and on the 7th of January (1867), directly after the holidays, two Missouri representatives (Loan and Kelso) attempted in turn to introduce resolutions in the House proposing an Impeachment, but each was prevented by some parliamentary obstruction. At a later hour of the same day Mr. James M. Ashley of Ohio rose to a question of privilege and formally impeached the President of high crimes and misdemeanors. "I charge him," said Mr. Ashley, "with an usurpation of power and violation of the law: in that he has corruptly used the appointing power; in that he has corruptly used the pardoning power; in that he had corruptly used the veto power; in that he has corruptly interfered in elections and committed acts which in contemplation of the Constitution are high crimes and misdemeanors."
Mr. Ashley's charges were very grave, but they created slight impression upon the House and did not alarm the country. Every one present felt that they were gross exaggerations and distortions of fact, and could not be sustained by legal evidence or indeed by reputable testimony of any kind. They were however referred in due form to the Judiciary Committee, with full power to send for persons and papers, to administer the customary oath to witnesses, and to make in all respects a thorough investigation. Nothing was heard from the committee until the 2d of March, when on the eve of the expiration of Congress they reported that many documents had been collected, a large number of witnesses examined, and every practicable thing done to reach a conclusion of the case; but that not having fully examined all the charges preferred against the President, they did not deem it expedient to submit any conclusion beyond the statement that sufficient testimony had been brought to the committee's notice to justify and demand a further prosecution of the investigation. They therefore passed the testimony they had taken into the custody of the Clerk of the House, as a notification to the succeeding Congress that inquiry into the matter should be pursued. The report was made by Mr. James F. Wilson of Iowa, chairman of the committee, and concurred in by all the Republican members. Mr. Rogers, a Democratic member from New Jersey, made a minority report, stating that he had carefully examined all the testimony in the case; that there was not one particle of evidence to sustain any of the charges which had been made; that the case was entirely void of proof; and that most of the testimony taken was of a secondary character, such as could not be admitted in any court of justice. He objected to continuing the subject and thereby keeping the country in a feverish state. No action was taken by the House except to lay both reports upon the table.
There was on the part of conservative Republicans a sincere hope that nothing more would be heard of the Impeachment question. If a committee industriously at work for sixty days could find nothing on which to found charges against the President, they thought that wisdom suggested the abandonment of the investigation. But Mr. Ashley, with his well-known persistency, was determined to pursue it; and on the 7th of March, the third day after the new Congress was organized, he introduced a resolution directing the Judicial Committee to continue the investigation under the same instructions as in the preceding Congress, with the additional power to sit during the recess. Mr. Ashley expressed the hope that "this Congress will not hesitate to do its duty because the timid in our own ranks hesitate, but will proceed to the discharge of the high and important trust imposed upon it, uninfluenced by passion and unawed by fear." He was answered with indignation by Mr. Brooks and Mr. Fernando Wood of New York, and the question becoming a party issue Mr. Ashley's resolution was carried without a division after an ineffectual attempt to lay it on the table,—a motion which was sustained by only thirty-two votes. The committee proceeded in their work during the recess of Congress, and reported the testimony on the 25th of the ensuing November (1867).
Some ninety-five witnesses had been examined, and the report of testimony covered twelve hundred octavo pages. Much of the evidence seemed irrelevant, and that which bore directly upon the question of the President's offense fell far below the serious character assigned to it by previous rumors. This was especially true in regard to the testimony given by General Grant. There were secret and ominous intimations that General Grant had been approached by the President with the view of ascertaining whether, if it should be determined to constitute a Congress of Democratic members from the North and rebel members from the South (leaving the Republicans to come in or stay out as they might choose), the Army could be relied upon to sustain such a movement. There is no doubt that many earnest Republicans were so impressed by the perverse course of President Johnson that they came to believe him capable of any atrocious act. They gave credulous ear, therefore, to these extravagant rumors; and in the end they succeeded in making a deep impression upon the minds of certain members of the Committee charged with the investigation into the President's official conduct.
The persons who were giving currency to these rumors never seemed to realize that General Grant, with his loyalty, his patriotism, and his high sense of personal and official honor, could not for a moment have even so much as listened to a proposition which involved an attack upon the legitimacy of the Congress of the United States, and practically contemplated its overthrow through means not different from those by which Cromwell closed the sessions of the Long Parliament. Nothing can be more certain than the fact that if President Johnson had ever made such an intimation to General Grant, it would have been at once exposed and denounced with a soldier's directness; and the President would have been promptly impeached for an offense in which his guilt would not have been doubtful.
It was not surprising, therefore, that by General Grant's testimony,(1) the entire charge was dissipated into thin air, and proved to be only one of the thousand baseless rumors which in that exciting period were constantly filling the political atmosphere. It was perhaps the intention of the Committee in examining General Grant on this point, to give him an opportunity in an official report to stamp the current rumors as utterly false. It can hardly be possible that a single member of the Committee believed that General Grant had silently received from the President a deliberate proposition to revolutionize the Government. When the essential truth of the matter was reached, it was found that General Grant had never heard any thing from the President, on the question of organizing Congress, at all different from the premises he had assumed in the series of disreputable speeches delivered by him in his extraordinary tour through the country the preceding year.