On Thursday, March 5th, 1868, the Senate of the United States was organized for the trial of the charges brought against Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, by the House of Representatives—Honorable Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States, presiding.  
The following gentlemen appeared as managers of the prosecution on the part of the House:
 
Hon. John A. Bingham, of Ohio; Hon. George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts; Hon. James F. Wilson, of Iowa; Hon. John A. Logan, of Illinois; Hon. Thomas F. Williams, of Pennsylvania; Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts; and Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania.
 
The following gentlemen appeared as counsel for the President:
 
Messrs. Henry Stanbery, of Kentucky; Benjamin R. Curtis, of Massachusetts; Thomas A. R. Nelson, of Tennessee; William M. Evarts, of New York, and William S. Groesbeck, of Ohio.
 
The following gentlemen comprised the United States Senate, sitting for the trial of the President:
 
California-Cornelius Cole, (R)-John Conness, (R). Connecticut-James Dixon, (D)-Orris S. Ferry, (R). Delaware-Willard Saulsbury, (D)-James A. Bayard, (D). Illinois-Lyman Trumbull, (R)-Richard Yates, (R). Indiana-Oliver P. Morton, (R)-Thomas A. Hendricks, (D). Iowa-James W. Grimes, (R)-James Harlan, (R). Kansas-Samuel C. Pomeroy, (R)-Edmund G. Ross, (R). Kentucky-Thomas C. McCreary, (D)-Garrett Davis, (D). Massachusetts-Charles Sumner, (R)-Henry Wilson, (R). Maine-William Pitt Fessenden, (R)-Lot M. Morrill, (R). Maryland-Reverdy Johnson, (D)-George Vickers, (D). Michigan-Zachariah Chandler, (R)-Jacob M. Howard, (R). Missouri-John B. Henderson, (R)-Charles D. Drake, (R). Minnesota-Alexander Ramsay, (R)-Daniel S. Norton, (D). New York-Roscoe Conkling, (R)-Edwin D. Morgan, (R). Nevada-James W. Nye, (R)-William M. Stewart, (R). Nebraska-Thomas W. Tipton, (R)-John M. Thayer, (R). New Jersey-Alexander G. Cattell, (R)-F. T. Frelinghuysen, (R). New Hampshire-Alexander H. Craigin, (R)-Jas. W. Patterson, (R). Ohio-John Sherman, (R)-Benjamin F. Wade, (R). Oregon-Henry W. Corbett, (R)-Geo. H. Williams, (R). Pennsylvania-Simon Cameron, (R)-Charles R. Buckalew, (D). Rhode Island-Henry B. Anthony, (R)-William Sprague, (R). Tennessee—David T. Patterson, (D)-Joseph S. Fowler, (R). Vermont-George F. Edmunds, (R)-Justin S. Morrill, (R). West Virginia-W. T. Willey,(R)-Peter (3. Van Winkle, (R). Wisconsin-James R. Doolittle, (D)-Timothy O. Howe, (R). [Forty-two Republicans and twelve Democrats.]
 
The House bringing the Impeachment was three-fourths Republican—the Senate that tried it was more than three-fourths Republican—the managers on the part of the House were all Republicans—the counsel for the President were three Democrats and one Republican—the President on trial was a Democrat—the interrogatories propounded to witnesses were generally received or rejected, according as their probable answers would make for or against the President—the people of the country at large were, as a rule, rigidly divided on party lines relative to the case, Republicans demanding the conviction of the President and Democrats urging his acquittal. The Chief Justice presiding in the trial was the only strictly nonpartisan factor in the case.
 
The answer of the President to the Articles of Impeachment having been presented on the 23rd of March, 1868—the replication of the House duly made, and all the preliminary steps completed, the proceedings in the actual trial commenced on the 30th day of March, 1868. Gen. Butler, one of the managers on the part of the House, made the opening argument for the prosecution, from which the following extracts are taken:
 
The first eight articles set out in several distinct forms the acts of the respondent removing Mr. Stanton from office, and appointing Mr. Thomas, ad interim, differing in legal effect in the purposes for which and the intent with which, either or both of the acts were done, and the legal duties and rights infringed, and the acts of Congress violated in so doing.
 
All the articles allege these acts to be in contravention of his oath of office, and in disregard of the duties thereof.
 
If they are so, however, the President might have the POWER to do them under the law; still, being so done, they are acts of official misconduct, and as we have seen, impeachable.
 
The President has the legal power to do many acts which, if done in disregard of his duty, or for improper purposes, then the exercise of that power is an official misdemeanor.
 
Ex. gr: he has the power of pardon; if exercised in a given case for a corrupt motive, as for the payment of money, or wantonly pardoning all criminals, it would be a misdemeanor. Examples might be multiplied indefinitely.
 
Article first, stripped of legal verbiage, alleges that, having suspended Mr. Stanton and reported the same to the Senate, which refused to concur in the suspension, and Stanton having rightfully resumed the duties of his office, the respondent, with knowledge of the facts, issued an order which is recited for Stanton's removal, with intent to violate the act of March 2, 1867, to regulate the tenure of certain civil offices, and with the further intent to remove Stanton from the office of Secretary of War, then in the lawful discharge of its duties, in contravention of said act without the advice and consent of the Senate, and against the Constitution of the United States.
 
Article 2 charges that the President, without authority of law, on the 21st of February, 1868, issued letter of authority to Lorenzo Thomas to act as Secretary of War ad interim, the Senate being in session, in violation of the tenure-of-office act, and with intent to violate it and the Constitution, there being no vacancy in the office of Secretary of War.
 
Article 3 alleges the same act as done without authority of law, and alleges an intent to violate the Constitution.
 
Article 4 charges that the President conspired with Lorenzo Thomas and divers other persons, with intent, by INTIMIDATION AND THREATS, to prevent Mr. Stanton from holding the office of Secretary of War, in violation of the Constitution and of the act of July 31, 1861.
 
Article 5 charges the same conspiracy with Thomas to prevent Mr. Stanton's holding his office, and thereby to prevent the execution of the civil tenure act.
 
Article 6 charges that the President conspired with Thomas to seize and possess the property under the control of the War Department by FORCE, in contravention of the act of July 31, 1861, and with intent to disregard the civil tenure-of-office act.
 
Article 7 charges the same conspiracy, with intent only to violate the civil tenure-of-office act.
 
Articles 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th may all be considered together, as to to the proof to support them.
 
It will be shown that having removed Stanton and appointed Thomas, the President sent Thomas to the War Office to obtain possession; that having been met by Stanton with a denial of his rights, Thomas retired, and after consultation with the President, Thomas asserted his purpose to take possession of the War Office by force, making his boast in several public places of his intentions so to do, but was prevented by being promptly arrested by process from the court.
 
This will be shown by the evidence of Hon. Mr. Van Horn, a member of the House, who was present when the demand for possession of the War office was made by General Thomas, already made public.
 
By the testimony of the Hon. Mr. Burleigh, who, after that, in the evening of the twenty-first of February, was told by Thomas that he intended to take possession of the War Office by force the following morning, and invited him up to see the performance. Mr. Burleigh attended, but the act did not come off, for Thomas had been arrested and held to bail.
 
By Thomas boasting at Willard's hotel on the same evening that he should call on General Grant for military force to put him in possession of the office, and he did not see how Grant could refuse it. Article 8 charges that the appointment of Thomas was made for the purpose of getting control of the disbursement of the moneys appropriated for the military service and Department of War.
 
In addition to the proof already adduced, it will be shown that, after the appointment of Thomas, which must have been known to the members of his cabinet, the President caused a formal notice to be served on the Secretary of the Treasury, to the end that the Secretary might answer the requisitions for money of Thomas, and this was only prevented by the firmness with which Stanton retained possession of the books and papers of the War office. It will be seen that every fact charged in Article 1 is admitted by the answer of the respondent; the intent also admitted as charged; that is to say, to set aside the civil tenure-of-office act, and to remove Mr. Stanton from the office of the Secretary for the Department of War without the advice and consent of the Senate, and, if not justified, contrary to the provisions of the Constitution itself.
 
The only question remaining is, does the respondent justify himself by the Constitution and laws?
 
On this he avers, that by the Constitution, there is "conferred on the President as a part of the executive power, the power at any and all times of removing from office all executive officers for cause, to be judged of by the President alone, and that he verily believes that the executive power of removal from office, confided to him by the Constitution, as aforesaid, includes the power of suspension from office indefinitely."
 
Now, these offices, so vacated, must be filled, temporarily at least, by his appointment, because government must go on; there can be no interregnum in the execution of the laws in an organized government; he claims, therefore, of necessity, the right to fill their places with appointments of his choice, and that this power can not be restrained or limited in any degree by any law of Congress, because, he avers, "that the power was conferred, and the duty of exercising it in fit cases was imposed on the President by the Constitution of the United States, and that the President could not be deprived of this power, or relieved of this duty, nor could the same be vested by law in the President and the Senate jointly, either in part or whole."
 
This, then, is the plain and inevitable issue before the Senate and the American people:
 
Has the President, under the Constitution, the more than kingly prerogative at will to remove from office and suspend from office indefinitely, all executive officers of the United States, either civil, military or naval, at any and all times, and fill the vacancies with creatures of his own appointment, for his own purposes, without any restraint whatever, or possibility of restraint by the Senate or by Congress through laws duly enacted?
 
The House of Representatives, in behalf of the people join this issue by affirming that the exercise of such powers is a high misdemeanor in office.
 
If the affirmative is maintained by the respondent, then, so far as the first eight articles are concerned—unless such corrupt purposes are shown as will of themselves make the exercise of a legal power a crime—the respondent must go, and ought to go quit and free.
 
Therefore, by these articles and the answers thereto, the momentous question, here and now, is raised whether the PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE ITSELF (IF IT HAS THE PREROGATIVES AND POWER CLAIMED FOR IT) OUGHT, IN FACT, TO EXIST AS APART OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT OF A FREE PEOPLE, while by the last three articles the simpler and less important inquiry is to be determined, whether Andrew Johnson has so conducted himself that he ought longer to held any constitutional office whatever. The latter sinks to merited insignificance compared with the grandeur of the former.
 
If that is sustained, then a right and power hitherto unclaimed and unknown to the people of the country is engrafted on the Constitution most alarming in its extent, most corrupting in its influence, most dangerous in its tendencies, and most tyrannical in its exercise.
 
Whoever, therefore, votes "not guilty" on these articles votes to enchain our free institutions, and to prostrate them at the feet of any man who, being President, may choose to control them.
 
A few days after this, Judge Curtis, of the President's counsel, spoke on behalf of the President. The first and principal Government of the Articles of Impeachment against Mr. Johnson was violation of the Office-Tenure Act, which had been passed the year before for the undisguised purpose of restricting the President's power to remove his Cabinet officers, particularly, his War Minister, Mr. Stanton. It was apparent that Mr. Butler had been embarassed in his plea by the proviso of that Act, that members of the Cabinet should hold "during the term of the President by WHOM THEY MAY HAVE BEEN APPOINTED and for one month longer."
 
Mr. Butler had asked—By whom was Mr. Stanton appointed? By Mr. Lincoln. Whose presidential term was he holding tinder when the bullet of Booth became a proximate cause of this trial? Was not this appointment in full force at that hour. Had any act of the respondent up to the 12th day of August last vitiated or interfered with that appointment? Whose Presidential term is the respondent now serving out? His own, or Mr. Lincoln's. If his own, he is entitled to four years up to the anniversary of the murder, because each presidential term is four years by the Constitution, and the regular recurrence of those terms is fixed by the Act of May 8, 1792. If he is serving out the remainder of Mr. Lincoln's term, then his term of office expires on the 4th of March, 1869, if it does not before.
 
Judge Curtis struck his first blow at the weak point of General Butler's speech. He said:
 
There is a question involved which enters deeply into the first eight Articles of Impeachment and materially touches two of the others; and to that question I desire in the first place to invite the attention of the court, namely—whether MR. STANTON'S CASE COMES UNDER THE TENURE-OF-OFFICE ACTS? * * * I must ask your attention therefore to the construction and application of the first section of that act, as follows: "that every person holding an official position to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and every person who shall hereafter be appointed to any such office and shall become duly qualified to act therein, is and shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified, except as herein OTHERWISE PROVIDED." Then comes what is otherwise provided. "PROVIDED, HOWEVER, That the Secretaries of State, Treasury, War, Navy, and Interior Departments, the Postmaster General and Attorney General, shall hold their offices respectively for AND DURING THE TERM OF THE PRESIDENT BY WHOM THEY MAY HAVE BEEN APPOINTED."
 
The first inquiry which arises on this language, is as to the meaning of the words "for and during the term of the President." Mr. Stanton, as appears by the commission which has been put in the case by the Honorable Managers, was appointed in January, 1862, during the first term of President Lincoln. Are the words "during the term of the President," applicable to Mr. Stanton's case? That depends upon whether an expounder of this law, judicially, who finds set down in it as a part of the descriptive words, "DURING THE TERMS OF THE PRESIDENT," HAS ANY RIGHT TO ADD, "AND DURING ANY OTHER TERM FOR WHICH HE MAY BE AFTERWARDS ELECTED."
 
I respectfully submit no such judicial interpretation can be put on the words. Then, if you please, take the next step: "During the term of the President by whom he was appointed." At the time when this order was issued for the removal of Mr. Stanton, was he holding the term of the President by whom he was appointed? The Honorable Managers say yes; because, as they, say, Mr. Johnson is merely serving out the residue of Mr. Lincoln's term. But is that so under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States? * * Although the President, like the Vice President, is elected for a term of four years, and each is elected for the same term, the President is not to hold the office absolutely during four years. The limit of four years is not an absolute limit. Death is a limit. "A conditional limitation," as the lawyers call it, is imposed on his tenure of office. And when the President dies his term of four years, for which he was elected and during which he was to hold provided he should so long live, terminates, and the office devolves upon the Vice President. For what period of time? FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE TERM FOR WHICH THE VICE PRESIDENT WAS ELECTED. And there is no more propriety, under the provisions of the Constitution of the United dictates, in calling the term during which Mr. Johnson holds the office of President, after it was devolved upon him, a part of Mr. Lincoln's term, then there would be propriety in saying that one sovereign who succeeded another sovereign by death, holds his predecessor's term.** They (the Cabinet officers) were to be the advisers of the President; they were to be the immediate confidential assistants of the President, for whom he was to be responsible, but in whom he was expected to repose a great amount of trust and confidence; and therefore it was that this Act has connected the tenure-of-office of these Secretaries to which it applies with the President by whom they were appointed. It says, in the description which the Act gives of the future tenure-of-office of Secretaries, that a controlling regard is to be had to the fact that the Secretary whose tenure is to be regulated was appointed by some particular President; and during the term of that President he shall continue to hold his office; but as for Secretaries who are in office, not appointed by the President, we have nothing to say; we leave them as they heretofore have been. I submit to Senators that this is the natural, and, having regard to the character of these officers, the necessary conclusion, that the tenure-of-office of a Secretary here described is a tenure during the term of service of the President by whom he was appointed; that it was not the intention of Congress to compel a President of the United States to continue in office a Secretary not appointed by himself. * * *
 
Shortly after this, occurred one of the most amusing and interesting incidents of the trial. Mr. Boutwell, who was altogether a matter-of-fact man, though at times indulging in the heroics, ventured, in the course of his argument, upon a flight of imagination in depicting the punishment that should be meted out to Mr. Johnson for venturing to differ with Congress upon the constitutionality of an act of that body. He said:
 
Travelers and astronomers inform us that in the Southern heavens, near the Southern cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated call the "hole in the sky," where the eye of man, with the aid of the powers of the telescope, has been unable to discover nebulae, or asteroid, or comet, or planet, or star, or sun. In that dreary, cold, dark region of space, which is only known to be less infinite by the evidences of creation elsewhere, the great author of celestial mechanism has left the chaos which was in the beginning. If this earth were capable of the sentiments and emotions of justice and virtue which in human mortal beings are the evidences and pledge of our divine origin and immortal destiny, it would heave and throb with the energy of the elemental forces of nature, and project this enemy (referring to President Johnson) of two races of men into that vast region, there forever to exist in a solitude eternal as life or as the absence of life, emblematical of, if not really, that outer darkness of which the Savior of mankind spoke in warning to those who are enemies to themselves and of their race and of God.
 
Mr. Evarts followed Mr. Boutwell, and in the course of his argument referred to this paragraph in Mr. Boutwell's speech in the following humorously sarcastic vein, during the delivery of which, the Senate was repeatedly convulsed with laughter. Mr. Evarts said:
 
I may as conveniently at this point of the argument as at any other pay some attention to the astronomical punishment which the learned and honorable manager Mr. Boutwell, thinks should be applied to this novel case of impeachment of the President. Cicero, I think it is, who says that a lawyer should know everything, for sooner or later, there is no fact in history, science or human knowledge that will not come into play in his arguments. Painfully sensitive of my ignorance, being devoted to a profession which "sharpens and does not enlarge the mind," I yet can admire without envy the superior knowledge evinced by the honorable manager. Indeed, upon my soul, I believe he is aware of an astronomical fact which many professors of the science are wholly ignorant of; but nevertheless, while some of his colleagues were paying attention to an unoccupied and unappropriated island on the surface of the seas, Mr. Manager Boutwell, more ambitious, had discovered an untenanted and unappropriated region in the skies, reserved, he would have us think, in the final councils of the Almighty as the place of punishment for deposed and convicted American Presidents.
 
At first, I thought that his mind had become so enlarged that it was not sharp enough to observe that the Constitution has limited the punishment, but on reflection I saw that he was as legal and logical as he was ambitious and astronomical; for the Constitution has said "remove from office," and has put no limit to the distance of removal so that it may be without the shedding of a drop of his blood or taking a penny of his property, or c............