“Mr. Senator,” I answered, “I am very glad to hear you say so for my own satisfaction, and also on your own account, because your course was a disappointment. I believed that you would take ground against impeachment.”
“That was my original impression,” he replied, “but Johnson talked so foolishly, and was so abusive, I came to believe it would be just as well to turn him out.” After a pause he repeated earnestly: “I didn’t want to die without making this confession, that in the matter of impeachment you were right and I was wrong. But,” he added, “if it is just as convenient to you, I would rather you would say nothing about it until I am dead—and I won’t live many years.”
In his “Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet” John Sherman says:
I felt bound, with much regret, to vote “guilty” in response to my name, but I was entirely satisfied with the result of the vote, brought about by the action of several Republican senators.
James G. Blaine in “Twenty Years of Congress” is less apologetic and more candid. He says:
The sober reflection of later years has persuaded many who favored impeachment that it was not justifiable on the charges made, and that its success would have resulted in greater injury to free institutions than Andrew Johnson in his utmost endeavor was able to inflict.
It would be well if those who are urging the “recall” as a general panacea for mistakes and dissatisfaction in the working of elections, would study the personal motives and partizan manœuverings which were the soul and body of this enormity of injustice in American history.
INCLUDING A MASQUE IN THE MUIR WOODS