Year: 1868

of removal. OF course he has. II he had not
the passage of the Tenure-of- Office act would
have been entirely unnecessary. But any arguI
ment derived from construction placed
upon the Constitution by one Congress
is overturned by an opposite construction
by a later Congress. Any laws, still
more customs of former Congresses, avail
nothing against the subsequent positive
enactment to the contrary. What mattersi it to
the case of Andrew johnson that John Adams
removed Pickering sixty-eight years before the
Tenure of Office Law was passedf what mat
ters it that various Presidents and Attorneys
General may or may not have believed that
this right of removal was part OF the Execu-
tive. power, belonged to the President alone,
and could not be divided between him and the
Senatef ALI these precedents became rubbish
when Congress passed an act Overruling them.
Nor can it be claimed that the doubts which
may in former times have rested over tins
question can avail to Andrew johnson.


Whatever doubt or ground for dispute might
have existed down to the time when the
Tenure of Office act was passed, Mr.. johnson,
in the vote of the Senate restoring Stanton
after his suspension, as well as in
the vote of both houses passing the act
over his veto, had the authoritative
Judgment of the Senate that Secretary
Stanton was within the terms of the law, AID
could not be removed. In attempting to remove
him, therefore, he cannot plead ignorance OF
the judgment that would be rendered by the
Court as to the law. 1t was already before
him. He must have relied on the supposed
cowardice of Stanton, or of the Senate, or on
his supposed ability to carry out his resistance
to the will of Congress and the Senate, in this
respect, by force. 1t is vain, therefore, for his
counsel to ask whether there is not room for
honest difference of opinion, and, admitting
the President to be wrong, whether he was
not innOcently wrong. We answer, by no
means The point which is clearer than any
other in the whole case is that the President
ment of Congress, and acted with an equally
settled determination to fight them to the bit
ter end. This being so, he accepted the respon-
sibility for the consequences, and his motives
and opinions are of no more consequence than
those of Jefferson Davis. Knowing in advance
the views of the Court on the law, it is idle to
plead that he differed with it in opinion.


Mr.. Groesbecks physical weakness doubtless
enlisted for the time the sympathy of the
Senators, and aided rather than injured the
effect of his argument. But, on a critical survey
of his positions, most of which are the baldest
assumptions, his address only brings out more
clearly the rremediable weaknesses of his case.
He is pleading for Presidential prerogatives,
which would surrender Congress. the laws,
the Constitution, and the country. bound hand


Il H. Il.
No sophistry can obscure, no ingenuity
can unmake, this fact. If the Senate of the
United States could, by any fatuity, sustain
these usurpations, then the great Republic is
already like dream that is past. History will
say Of us that not even genius. popularity,
craftsmanship, or military prestige were needed
to subdue u.s. but that we bowed our necks to
the heel of the first despot who attempted our
subjugation, though he was ignorant, despiscd,
wicked, and weak.