CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



131 



laws of the land. I do not speak now of er- 

 rors of judgment, but of open and avowed 

 illegal acts personally done or authorized by 

 himself. But he has not always had even the 

 countenance of his Cabinet officers. The test- 

 oath was suspended by the President against 

 the opinion of Attorney- General Speed. If 

 Cabinet officers have been concerned in these 

 illegal transactions, I have for them, to a large 

 extent, the same excuse that I have for myself, 

 the same that I have for the members of this 

 House and for the people of this country. In 

 the beginning they did not understand the 

 President's character, capacity, and purposes. 



" His capacity has not been comprehended by 

 the country. Violent sometimes in language, 

 indiscreet in manner, impulsive in action, un- 

 wise often in declamation, he is still animated 

 by a persistency of purpose which never yields 

 under any circumstances, but seeks by means 

 covert and tortuous as well as open and direct 

 the accomplishment of the purpose of his life. 



"I care not to go into an examination in- 

 deed, I have neither the time nor the taste for 

 it now of the tortuous ways by which he has 

 controlled men who in the public estimation 

 are superior to himself. But my excuse for 

 Cabinet officers, for members of Congress, for 

 the country, is that in 1865, when he issued his 

 proclamation for the reorganization of North 

 Carolina, no one understood him. General 

 Grant in his testimony says that he considered 

 the plan temporary, to be approved or annulled 

 when Congress should meet in December. But 

 when Congress assembled the President told 

 us that the work was ended; that the rebel- 

 lious States were restored to the Union. He 

 then planted himself firmly upon the proposi- 

 tion laid down in his North Carolina proclama- 

 tion in defiance of the Constitution ; in defiance 

 of the decision of the Supreme Court of the 

 United States that the power was in Congress 

 to decide whether the government of a State 

 was republican or not ; in defiance of the car- 

 dinal principle of the sovereignty of the people 

 through Congress. He ratified substantially in 

 his message that which he had assumed merely 

 in the proclamation of the 29th of May, that 

 he was the United States for the purpose of 

 deciding whether the government of a State 

 was republican or not. 



" Sir, if this whole case rested merely upon 

 that assumption, that exercise of power, I 

 maintain that it would bring him specifically 

 and exactly within the control of this House, 

 for the purpose of arraigning him before the 

 Senate upon the charge of seizing and usurp- 

 ing the greatest power of the legislative depart- 

 ment ^of the Government, unless it be that of 

 taxation, which he has also usurped and exer- 

 cised in defiance of the Constitution. But even 

 then the nature of the proceeding was not fully 

 understood, and his motives were only partially 

 disclosed. The public mind did not compre- 

 hend the character and extent of the usurpa- 

 tion. 



" Thus it was that his motive was concealed. 

 He was not understood, and the charity of tho 

 country silenced suspicions of evil. But he 

 moved on step by step. The country in the 

 mean while was under the influence of his bold 

 declarations, made frequently from the 14th of 

 April to about the 1st of July, 1865 ; declara- 

 tions which, even in the coldest of us, made the 

 blood kindle in our veins, as he set forth the 

 punishment to which the rebels were entitled. 

 Even the most violent of the Northern people, 

 they who had suffered from the war, those 

 who had offered their sons, their brothers, and 

 their husbands in sacrifice for the Republic, 

 shuddered when they listened to his declama- 

 tion as to the power and duty of this Govern- 

 ment to punish those who had been engaged in 

 the rebellion. But from July, 1865, his con- 

 duct and his policy have been entirely opposed 

 to the declarations made in the spring and early 

 summer of that year. I see in those declara- 

 tions only this: that they were designed and' 

 intended, when they were uttered, to conceal 

 from the public the great purpose he had in 

 view, which was, to wrest this Government 

 from the power of the loyal people of the North 

 and turn it over to the tender mercies of those 

 who had brought upon the country all the 

 horrors of civil war. 



"I pass, sir, to the testimony of Judge Math- 

 ews, of Ohio, a person whom I never saw 

 but once, and of whom I know nothing except 

 what the record discloses. He was an officer 

 of the Northern Army, and he has been a judge 

 of some of the courts in Cincinnati or vicinity. 

 He says that in the month of February, 1865, 

 when Mr. Johnson was passing from Tennes- 

 see to Washington to take the oath of office as 

 Yice-President, he called upon him at the 

 Burnett House. The conversation was appar- 

 ently unimportant, but it discloses a purpose 

 on the part of Mr. Johnson. He said to Judge ' 

 Mathews, 'You and I were old Democrats.' 

 'Yes,' replied Judge Mathews. Says Mr. 

 Johnson, 'I will tell you what it is: if the coun- 

 try is ever to be saved it is to be done through the 

 old Democratic party.' That was in February, 

 1865. He had then received the suffrages of a 

 free and generous people. They had taken him 

 from Tennessee, where he would have had no 

 abiding-place but for the armies of the Repub- 

 lic that protected him in his person and prop- 

 erty. He was then entering upon the second 

 office in the gift of the people, chosen by the 

 great party of power and of progress in the 

 country, which had saved the Union in its 

 days of peril. No act had been by them done 

 which could possibly have alienated him from 

 them. Jefferson Davis was still at Richmond. 

 The armies of Lee menaced the capital of his 

 country. Andrew Johnson was approaching 

 that capital for the purpose of taking the oath 

 of office. That capital was merely a fortified 

 garrison. He then declares that the country 

 cannot be saved except by the old Democratic 

 party. 



