Year: 1869

have boldly outraged their trust, broke


their oaths of obedience, and undermine


the very foundations of liberty, justice


and good government. When the rebel


lion was being suppressed by the volun


teer services OF patriotic soldiers amid tn


dangers of the battlefield, these mel
crept, without question into place an,


power, in the national councils. After al
the danger was passed, when no armed fo


remained, when penitent people bowet
their heads to the flag and renewed thei


allegiance to the government of th'


United States, then it was that thes


pretended patriots appeared before tn


nation and began to prate about th'
thousands of lives and millions of treasure
sacrificed in the suppression of the rebel
lion. They have since persistently sOugh
to inflame the predjudice engendered be
tween the sections, and retard th'
restoration Of peace and harmony, and by
every means to keep open and exposed tt
the poisonous breath of party passion thu
terrible wounds of four years. war;
They have prevented the return of peace
and the restoration of the union in every
way rendered dclusive, the purpose
promises, and pledges by which the army
was marshaled, treason rebuked, and
rebellion crushed and made the liberties
Of the people and the rights and powers
of the president objects of constant
attack. They have wrested from the
president his constitutional power of the
supreme command of the army and navy
They have destroyed the strength of the
executive department by making sAlbor-
dinate officers, Independent of, and able to
defy their Chief Magistrate. They have
attempted to place the president under the
power of bold, defiant, and treacherous
cabinet officer. They have robbed the
executive Of the prerogative of pardons
rendered null and void acts of clemen ~
granted to thosands of persons under the
provisions of the constitution and com
mitted gross usurpation by legislative
attempts to exercise this power in favor of
party adhcrents. They have conspired to
change the system of our government in
the form of articles of impeachment, and
contemplating, before hearing or trial,
that he should be placed under arrest,
held in durance, and when it became their
pleasure to pronounce his sentence, driven
from place and power in disgrace. They
have, in time Of peace, increased the ma
tional debt by reckless expenditures of the
public moneys, and added to the burdens
which already weigh upon the people
They have PERMITTED the nation to suffer
the evils of dcranged currency and an
enhancement in price of all the necessa-
of life. They have maintained large
standing army for the enforcement Of their
measures of oppression. They have en-
gagged in class-legislation, built and
encouraS ed monopolics, that the few might
be enriched at the expense of the many.
They have failed to act upon important
treaties, thereby endangeriny our peaceful
relations with foreign powers.


Their course Of usurpation has not
been limited to inroads upon the Executive
department, by unconstitutional and OPP
pressive enactmcnts; the people of ten
states of the union have been reduced to a
more intolerable than that from
which the patriots of the revolution re-
bellei. Millions of American citizens can
now say of their oppressors, with more
truth than our fathers did of British
tyrants, ''That they have forbidden gov.
ernments to pass laws of immediate and
pressing Importance, urless suspended
until their assent should be obtained; that
they have refused to pass other laws for
the accommodation of large districts of
people, unless these people would relin-
quish the right of representation in the
right inestimable to them,
and formidable to tyrants only that they
have made judges dependent on their will
alone for their tenure of Office, and the
amount and payment of their salaries
that they have erected multitude of new
Offices, and sent hither swarms Of officers
to harass our people and eat out their
substance; that they have affected to rem
der the military independent and superior
to the civil power combined with others,
to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitution and unacknowledged by our
laws; quartcred large bodies of armed
troops among us; protected them by mock
trial, from punishment for any murders
which they should commit on the inhabi-
tants imposed taxes upon us without our
consent deprived us in many cases, of
trial by jury; taken away our charters
excited domestic insurrection among us
abolished our most valuable laws altered
fundamentally the forms Of our govern
ment; suspended our own legislatures,
and declared themselves invested with
power to legislate for us in all cases
whatever"


This catalogue of crimes, long as it is,
is not complete. The Constitution vests
the judicial power of the United States in
one Supreme Court, whose jurisdiction
shall extend to all cases arising under the
constitution and laws of the United States.
Encouraged by this promise refugee
from tyranny, citizen of the United
States, who, by order Of military com
mander, given under the sanction of a
cruel and deliberate edict of Congress, had
been denied the constitutional rights OF
liberty of conscience, freedom of the press
and Of speech, personal freedom from
military arrest; of being held to answer
for crime only upon presentment of an
indictment, of trial by u jury, of the writ
Of habeas corpus, and the protection of q
civil and constitutional government. A
citizen thus deeply wronsed appeals to the
Supreme Court for the protection guaran
teed him by the organic law of the land


At once fierce and excited majority, by
the ruthless hand of legislative power
stripped the ermine from the judges, trans
ferred the sword of justice to the general
and rcmanded the oppressed citizens to ;
degradation and bondage worse thar
death.


|. will also be recorded as ore of til,
marvels of the times, that party claim
ing for itself monopoly of consistency
and patriotism, and boasting of its unlim-
tied sway, endeavored, by a costly ant
deliberate trial, to impeach one wht
defended the constitution and the union


not only throughout the war of th'


rebellion, but during the whole term o


Office as chief magistrate; but at the same


time, could find no warrant or means a


their command to bring to trial even thu


chief of the rebellion. Indeed the re


markable failures in this case were so Otter


repeated that, for propriety's sake, if fol