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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



influence of the President. Are we to leave 

 this officer, if we judge him to be guilty of 

 high crimes and misdemeanors, in control of 

 the Army and the Navy, with his declaration 

 upon the record that under certain circum- 

 stances he will not execute the laws ? He has 

 the control of the Army. Do you not suppose 

 that next November a single soldier at each 

 polling-place in the Southern country, aided 

 by the whites, could prevent the entire negro 

 population from voting ? And, if it is for the 

 interest of the President to do so, have we any 

 reason to anticipate a different course of con- 

 duct ? At any rate, such is the logic of the 

 propositions which he-has presented to us. If 

 that logic be followed, the next presidential 

 election will be heralded by civil war, or the 

 next inauguration of a President of the United 

 States will be the occasion for the renewal of 

 fratricidal strife. 



" Mr. Speaker, we are at present involved in 

 financial difficulties. I see no way of escape 

 while Mr. Johnson is President of the United 

 States. I assent to much of what he has said 

 in his message concerning the effects of the 

 Tenure-of-Office Act. From my experience in 

 the internal revenue office, I reach the conclu- 

 sion that it is substantially impossible to col- 

 lect the taxes while the Tenure-of-Office Act is 

 in force ; and I have no doubt that whenever 

 a new Administration is organized, of what- 

 ever party it may be, some of the essential 

 provisions of that act will be changed. The' 

 reason, Mr. Speaker, of the present difficulty 

 is due to the fact that the persons engaged in 

 plundering the revenues of the country are 

 more or less associated criminally with public 

 officers. The character of those public officers 

 can be substantially known in the internal 

 revenue office and in the Treasury Depart- 

 ment ; but if the Secretary of the Treasury 

 and the President, before they can remove offi- 

 cers against whom probable cause exists, are 

 obliged to wait until they have evidence which 

 will satisfy the Senate of their guilt, the very 

 process of waiting for that evidence to be pro- 

 cured exhausts the public revenues. There is 

 but one way of overcoming this difficulty. 

 When the President, the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, and the Commissioner of Internal 

 Revenue, are in harmony, and the Commis- 

 sioner is satisfied from the circumstances exist- 

 ing that an officer is in collusion with thieves, 

 he can ask the President for the removal of 

 that man; and then there should exist the 

 power of removal by a stroke of the pen. 

 Neither the official nor his friends should 

 know the reason therefor. Nothing so in- 

 spires officials with zeal in the discharge of 

 their duties as to feel that if they are derelict 

 their commissions may at any moment be taken 

 from them. 



"But what is our position to-day? Can 

 this House and the Senate, with the knowl- 

 edge that they have of the President's purposes 

 and of the character of the men who surround 



him, give him the necessary power ? Do they 

 not feel that, if he be allowed such power, 

 these places will be given to worse men? 

 Hence I say that with Mr. Johnson in office 

 from this time until the 4th of March, 1869, 

 there is no remedy for these grievances. These 

 are considerations only why we should not hes- 

 itate to do that which justice authorizes us to 

 do if we believe that the President has been 

 guilty of impeachable offences. 



" Mr. Speaker, all rests here. To this House 

 is given under the Constitution the sole power 

 of impeachment ; and this power of impeach- 

 ment furnishes the only means by which we 

 can secure the execution of the laws. And 

 those of our fellow-citizens who desire the ad- 

 ministration of the law ought to sustain this 

 House while it executes that great law which 

 is in its hands and which is nowhere else, while 

 it performs a high and solemn duty resting 

 upon it by which that man who has been the 

 chief violator of law shall be removed, and 

 without which there can be no execution of 

 the law anywhere. Therefore the whole re- 

 sponsibility, whatever it may be, for the non- 

 execution of the laws of the country is, in the 

 presence of these great facts, upon this House. 

 If this House believes that the President has 

 executed the laws of the country, that he has 

 obeyed the provision of the Constitution to 

 take care that the laws be faithfully executed, 

 then it is our duty to sustain him, to lift up his 

 hands, to strengthen his arms ; but if we be- 

 lieve, as upon this record I think we cannot 

 do otherwise than believe, that he has disre- 

 garded that great injunction of the Constitu- 

 tion to take care that the laws be faithfully ex- 

 ecuted, there is but one remedy. The remedy 

 is with this House, and it is nowhere else. If 

 we neglect or refuse to use our powers when 

 the case arises demanding decisive action, the 

 Government ceases to be a Government of 

 laws and becomes a Government of men." 



Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, from the minority of 

 the committee, said : " The position which the 

 minority of the committee occupy in this case 

 may be summed up in these words : that no 

 civil officer of the United States can be lawfully 

 impeached except for a crime or misdemeanor 

 known to the law; that this body must be 

 guided by the law, and not by that indefinite 

 something called its conscience, which may be 

 one thing to-day and quite a different one to- 

 morrow. If the case now before us, tested by 

 the principles of criminal law, discloses high 

 crimes or misdemeanors coming within the rule 

 I have stated, then the gentleman is right in 

 demanding that the President of the United 

 States be impeached ; and I here throw open 

 to the gentleman the range of both statutory 

 and common law impeachable crimes. If these 

 cannot be found in the record of this case, then 

 no amount of conscience in House and Senate 

 can justify us in proceeding further with it. 

 " " Briefly I will refer to some of the facts to 

 which the gentleman from Massachusetts has 



