Excerpt from Legal Masterpieces Specimens of Argumentation and Exposition, Vol. 2 of 2

The impeachment trial of President Johnson is the most memorable attempt ever made by a great nation to depose a constituted ruler in accordance with the forms of law. The imposing trial of Warren Hastings, with which the occasion is often compared, has been invested with undue significance by the eloquence of Burke; it was simply the arraignment of a subordinate official upon charges of peculation and cruelty, and bore no comparison with the momentous issues involved in the arraignment of the executive of forty millions of people. There had been five impeachment trials under the provision of the federal constitution, - Senator Blount, in 1797, Mr. Justice Chase, in 1803, and District Judges Pickering, Peck, and Humphreys, in 1803, 1830, and 1862, respectively, -in only two of which the charges were sustained.

The facts leading to strife between congress and President Johnson are part of the political history of the time, and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that, on February 24, 1868, by the decisive vote of one hundred and twenty - six ayes to forty-seven noes, the house of representatives passed a resolution impeaching the president. On Pebru ary 29th, George S. Boutwell, chairman of the committee appointed to prepare articles of impeachment, reported the articles on which the impeachment was based. There were eleven articles. The first nine charged the president with the violation of the tenure of office act of 1867 in removing Edwin M. Stanton from the office of secretary of of war, and authorizing or appointing General Lorenzo Thomas to act as secretary of war ad interim. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh articles charged him, specifically, with conspiring with Gen. Thomas to violate the act. The eighth article charged him with attempting, through Gen. Emory, in charge of the department of Washington, to is sue orders without the intervention of the general of the army, so that he might violate the act. The tenth charged him with speaking of congress in a manner which tended to bring a co-ordinate branch of the govern ment into ridicule and contempt. The eleventh article was a summary charge that he had denied the validity of the legislation of the thirty ninth congress, and had attempted and contrived to prevent the execu tion of certain laws.

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