any such assumptions. There is certainly none in the character of the men whom the President asked to take the War Office, Grant, Sherman and Ewing; and it must be remembered that through Mr. Stanbery, in the case of Mississippi vs. Johnson, he had long before announced to the Southerners that his opposition to the Reconstruction Acts ceased with his unsuccessful veto of them, and that he should execute them both in letter and in spirit. It was Republican Senators who suggested to the President's counsel the nomination of General Schofield, a man entirely friendly with the President and acceptable to him. Neither the President nor the President's counsel approached any Senator with the proposition. It was the Republican Senators who were frightened, rather than the President or his counsel. These Senators knew that the law and the evidence were with the President, and that the Republican party was on trial, as much so as the President; and they knew that, if the Republican Senate should, upon the showing made by the President's counsel of the law and the evidence in the case, convict the President and remove him from office, the party would stand arraigned before the people for having destroyed the constitutional balance between the executive and the legislature in order to gain a partisan end. They recognized the dilemma into which the hot-headed leaders of the party in the House of Representatives had, by their hasty impeachment procedure, brought the party, and they were very much relieved to secure any understanding with the President's counsel whereby the chance of averting the catastrophe to the party, as well as to the country, might be increased. The suspicion that Mr. Stanton was playing his part for the purpose of securing the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1868, rather than from any motives of disinterested

patriotism, has about as little foundation as has the theory of salutary terror, produced by the impeachment, controlling the President's subsequent actions against his own preconceived plans and purposes. Both of these speculations are no valid parts of the history of this great transaction. What we have as certain facts are that the judgment was an acquittal, that it was rendered in accordance with law and evidence, and that it preserved the constitutional balance between the executive and the legislature in the governmental system of the country; and that for this the judgment of history coincides with the judgment of the court.

CHAPTER X

RECONSTRUCTION RESUMED

The McCardle Case-The Congressional Acts Admitting the Senators and Representatives elect from the Reconstructed "States " to Seats in Congress-The Veto of these Bills by the President-The Vetoes Overridden-Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the President's Proclamations Declaring Reconstruction Completed - Seward's Proclamation Declaring the Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Required Number of "States "-The Questions Suggested by Mr. Seward's First Proclamation-The Concurrent Resolution of Congress upon these Questions-The Correct ProcedureThe National Conventions of 1868-Platform and Nominees of the Republican Party-Democratic Platform and NomineesThe Election and the Electoral Vote-The Conduct of the President during the Campaign-Congress and the President -The President's Last Annual Message-The President's Amnesty Proclamation of December 25th, 1868-The President's Veto of the Bill in Regard to the Colored Schools in the District of Columbia-The Fifteenth Amendment-Criticism of the Republican View-Johnson's Retirement from the Presidency-The President and the Republican Party.

The McCardle case.

DURING the period of the impeachment trial, a case was in progress before the Supreme Court of the United States, which in its final settlement was destined to deprive the President of any hope that a judicial decision in regard to the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts could ever be attained. We have seen that in the cases of Mississippi VS. Johnson and of Georgia vs. Stanton the President had resisted the jurisdiction of the Court when

aimed directly at the Executive and his immediate agents. This was his duty, and he performed it sincerely and successfully. But it is not to be inferred from this that he would not have welcomed a judicial decision from the Supreme Court of the United States pronouncing these Acts null and void, if it could have been reached through the forms of a proper case, one not involving the executive authority at all.

Such a case had appeared in this Court in the winter term of 1867-68, and the argument as to the jurisdiction of the Court, and the decision of this point in the affirmative, had both been made before the impeachment trial began. One William H. McCardle, arrested and held by the military authorities in Mississippi for trial before a military commission on charge of having published in a newspaper, of which he was editor, libellous and incendiary articles, petitioned the Circuit Court of the United States for a writ of Habeas Corpus. The writ was issued, and return was made by the military commander, General A. C. Gillem, admitting the arrest and detention of McCardle, but contending that these acts were lawful. The Circuit Court, on the 25th of November, 1867, remanded McCardle, who had been held in custody between the time of the return to the writ and this date by the United States marshal, to the custody of General Gillem. McCardle then appealed from this judgment of the Circuit Court to the Supreme Court of the United States. Upon a motion to dismiss the appeal, made by the counsel of the military authorities, this Court decided that under the statute of February 5th, 1867, the Supreme Court of the United States could hear the appeal, and denied the motion to dismiss it.

The question was now before the Supreme Court upon its merits, and it involved the constitutionality

of the Reconstruction Acts. It was argued very ably, and the part of the Reconstruction Acts putting the districts of the South under martial law two years after the Civil War had ended, and when the civil authority of the United States was everywhere recognized and enforced, was pretty clearly shown to have been a very serious stretching of its powers by Congress, if not a distinct usurpation. The Republicans in Congress were greatly frightened, and while the case was under advisement in the Court, they hastened to repeal the Act of February 5th, 1867, and to make the repeal apply to appeals already taken under that Act, as well as to such as might be attempted in the future. The repealing bill was vetoed by the President on the 25th of March, but it was immediately repassed by the majority necessary to override the veto, repassed without the slightest regard to the President's very sound and convincing objections. This Act of the 27th of March was intended to prevent any decision upon the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts, and did do so most effectively, but it was an abominable subterfuge on the part of Congress and a shameful abuse of its powers.

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As will be remembered, seven of the ten Southern communities, viz., North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas, had already before the close of the impeachment trial ratified the State" constitutions framed for them by the carpet-bag, scalawag, negro conventions" held in each for them, had elected" State" officers and legislators, and the legislature of one of them, Arkansas, had ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as the legislature of each of them was required to do before it could be admitted to representation in Congress.