The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1868-04-25
The High Old Court.

The dispatches from Washington announce
that the last of the evidence in the impeach-
ment trial was handed in on Monday, that the
Court then adjourned over to Wednesday, and
that on the latter day the summing up by the
managers and counsel on opposite sides com
menced.
The evidence, as rapidly as given in, was
published to the country, SO that not only are
the jury, composed of tue Senate--which have
the legal decision of the case but the greater
jury of the whole country and the world, to
whom pertains the moral decision, in full pos,
session of the evidence, and the one quite rs
ready to make up its decision as the other
No one who has paid the least attention to
the progress of the trial has failed to note,
that OF all the eleven charges preferred, the
prosecution have dwindled down to an at
tempt to sustain but single one--all the rest
being virtually abandoned-and that one is
the naked proposition that the President, in
removing Stanton, violated the tenure-ofotficc
law This is the whele-the head and front
of his offending. 1.-THE constitution" saysa
radical paper grandiloquently, makes it the
special duty of the President to take care that
the laws be faithfully executed, but in the face
of this constitutional injunction, Johnson
dared to bid defiance to law and treat with
contempt the peoples representatives ~ Ire
mendous otfense 1t was law that the cabi-
net unanimously Stanton neutrality-suspicious.
ced clearly nccnstitutional-bindi upon
nobody, and of the nullity of which the radicals
themselves were so well convinced that they
passed a special law prevent its being taken
before the Supreme Court where they knew it
would be pronounced a nullity. Abraham
Lincoln, in the first three months of his ad-
ministration violated a dozen of laws BY
what authority did he call out $4,000 men in
April, 1861, and in June 100000! BY what
authority did he suspended the habeas corpus
act. and do dozen of other things some
well enough and Others outrageous Con-
gress had to pass half dozen of indemnifying
laws to shield him from individual prosecu.
tions in the courts, but who ever proposed to
impeach him?
But did President johnson even violate the
VIGOROUSLY unconstitutional tenure of.office
law No intelligent, impartial reader of the
evidence can honestly say otherwise than that
the managers failed conspicuously, even on
this point, to make q case against the Presi-
dent. Did the managers, or their evidence,
ever answer this question: Was the President
prohibited, by the tenure-of-office law, from
removing the three Cabinet ministers appoint
ed by Mr.. Lincoln, including Mr. Stanton Z All
the evidence, on the contrary, showed conclu-
sively that the act was framed with the express
purpose to allow the President TO constitute
his Cabinet with members of his own choosing,
and to remove, if ne pleased, the Secretary of
State, Secretary of War and Secretary of the
Navy. The language OF the act and the ex-
planatory declarations of official organs of the
House and Senate prove this. Several of the
members of the Senate arc upon the record MS
having so declared themselves in January and
February, 1867. The whole charge of violat-
ing law then falls to the ground
Yet we believe the President will be I'M
peached and ousted from his office. 1t will be
done, however, purely from partisan motives
for reasons of partisan necessity-without u
semblancc of law, right or justice. Having
undertaken the job, the party must put it
through, or become the laughing stock of the
world. But whether they had not better be-
come laughing stock now than the execra-
ton of posterity fer having committed the
greatest judicial crime of the age, is a question
for them to settle.