The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-05-26
HE IMpEACHMEYr TRIAL.


To-day is fixed for the reassembling Of the
High Court of Impeachment It is generally
supposed that the court, when it adjourned
after voting On the eleventh article, fixed this
day for voting on the remaining ten articles
This is a mistake. The adjournment was
simply to a particular dsy-Tuesday, the
26th-vithout any reference to the business
to be transacted that day. When the motion
to adjourn was made, the Senate was engaged
in executing the order to take up the articles
and vote on them, beginning with the eleventh,
and the chief justice therefore ruled that any
motion interrupting that order could not be
entertained. An appeal was taken from this
decision, and it was overruled. The question
will probably arise, whether or not the order
thus interrupted is resumed, as of course,
on the reassembling of the court. Should
the chief justice rule in the affirmative, his
decision will no doubt be again overruled, if
the majority resolve to defer the vote and
they will, probably, resolve to defer the vote
unless they think that their plans for securing
the requisite two-thiris are likely to be sue
cessful.
So far there seems to be no reason to be-
heve that anything has occurred to strengthen
the prospects of the impeachers. In the list
of non-conforming senators there is not one
of whom 1t can be supposed that his convic-
tons have been changed, or that he will yield
to the arrogant and frantic demands of
party whose right to control the judicial ac-
ton of the Senate the recusant senators have
so emphatically denied and repudiated.
Neither is it credible that any one of them
will find reasons to vote for conviction on
any of the ten remaining articles, which did
not apply to the eleventh. That article was
selected as the strongest of the series. 1t
combined the important charges of all the
rest, but combined them in form that would
be likely to secure all who were at all inclined
to convict Failure on this article, by neces-
sary implication, involves failure on the others.
This consequence was plainly foreseen by the
impeachers, and hence, after their defeat on
the 17th they gave up the battle for lost, so
far as its result was to be governed by
any influences to which resort had then been
had. Their only hope of final success
was in the pressure of party discipline to be
exerted through the Chicago convention, and
by means of those instrumentalities and
agencies which have, hitherto, been found so
effective in the coercion of recalcitrant NAL
contents. But this is case in which the en-
ployment Of such agencies weakens rather
than strengthens the hands that use them.
The position assumed by the recusant sena-
tors is that in voting on the impeachment ar
ticles they are to be guided solely by their
own views of the law and the evidence. The
theory of the radicals is that, not only the
right of private judgment must be sacrificed
at the demand of the party, but that the exer-
else of the Judicial functions of the senator
must be subordinated to the same memorable
control. There can be no compromise be-
tween these positions. As long as the seven
senators justify their conduct
by an appeal to their duties as judges and
their rights as senators, just so long they
must resentfully resist the attempt to force
them into surrender of their rights
and a violation of their duties. To the
extent that the radicals make Impeachment
a party question, to that extent they iniure
their cause with those who maintain that
party influences should have no effect on
their decision. The Chicago convention in
adopting impeachment as a party measure
has, therefore, lessened its chances of sue
cess. A cautious and conscientious senator
would be more than ever apt to vote against
conviction after impeachment has been pre-
sented to the country as a party question.
When the case has assumed this aspect, not
only by virtue of its history, and its attendant
but through the official decla-
ration of the representatives of great party,
every vote for conviction will necessarily be
as partisan vote, and every sena-
tor that votes for conviction will be considered
to have surrendered his duties and his rights
to the control of his party. 1t is difficult to
see how the radicals have improved their pro-
spects by this course, or how the recusant
senators can longer act with a party which
thus condemns them.