THE END OF IMPEACHMENT.

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upon first. This was on the 16th of May. A vast audience had congregated in the Senate-chamber. Two Senators were present whose health was such that their lives were imperilled by coming. And then happened a prodigious thing: a Senator who expected to occupy the presidential office if the President was removed, voted for the President's conviction! It is not surprising that the silence of awe took possession of the dense assemblage as that Senator's name was called.

It is unnecessary to prolong the narrative. Thirty-five Senators voted guilty, and nineteen voted not guilty; and the ChiefJustice said, "Two-thirds of the Senators not having pronounced guilty, the President is acquitted upon the eleventh article." Under the impulse of a profound disappointment the Senate adjourned for ten days.' Much dragooning might be done in ten days. But the tenth day arrived without any accession of strength; the court of impeachment reassembled; the first and second articles were voted upon, with the same result as before-thirty-five Senators voting guilty, and nineteen not guilty. And then the court adjourned without day. Mr. Stanton immediately resigned office as Secretary of War and General Schofield was appointed, and, notwithstanding fearful prognostications of disaster and civil and political commotion, no evil results followed the acquittal; and experience proved, what good sense had already foreseen, that the political institutions of the country were as little in the power of Mr. Johnson to destroy as in that of Mr. Stanton to save.

'The night before this vote was taken, a meeting of impeaching Senators and others was held at the house of Senator Pomeroy, and Mr. Wade's "Cabinet" was there agreed upon; in the full expectation that in twenty-four hours Mr. Wade's Administration would be inaugurated. At this time the "impeachers" were very confident of success, though it was known that the vote would be close. They believed that there were one or two Senators regarded as doubtful, who would not dare to flinch in the supreme hour of the trial.

CHAPTER L.

THE CHASE MOVEMENT" AMONG THE DEMOCRATS IN 1868—THE FITNESS OF THAT MOVEMENT ITS SPONTANEOUSNESS-LETTER TO MR. BELMONT ADVOCACY BY THE HERALD OF MR. CHASEFRIENDS OF MR. CHASE IN THE NEW YORK CONVENTION-THE PLATFORM-A HALF-VOTE FOR MR. CHASE-EXCITEMENTNOMINATION OF GOVERNOR SEYMOUR—HOW MR. CHASE RECEIVED THE NEWS-PARTISAN MISREPRESENTATION – MB. CHASE'S VIEWS-A LETTER OF GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.

Ν

IN the summer of 1867, the nomination of Mr. Chase in 1868,

as the Republican candidate for President, seemed an event likely to happen; and no doubt a large body of Republicans, perhaps a majority of all, would then have preferred him to any other leader. But the same causes which operated to bring about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson were potent in making party sentiment in favor of General Grant; and this was neither a surprise nor a disappointment to Mr. Chase. He knew as little as any one of General Grant's political opinions, but he had seen and admired the patient and persistent energy with which that General had prosecuted the war; his administration of the duties of his office as General of the Army was marked by good sense and regard for law; and he was as likely to make a safe and successful President as any other purely military man; and Mr. Chase knew that the nomination of a military man by the Republican party had become necessary and inevitable; besides which, there were new watchwords among Republican leaders which he could not bring himself to adopt, though, under the circumstances in which he was placed, he was not in a position where he could repudiate without great misrepresentation of his motives.

MR. CHASE AND THE DEMOCRATS.

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But he observed with astonishment, and with gratification also, the rapid development among Democrats of a strong party in favor of placing him before the country as the Democratic candidate; not, indeed, that he seriously expected such a thing to happen, but because it indicated progress in the right direction; toward the practical application, by the Democratic party, of democratic principles in their relation to the newly-enfranchised people of the South.

This sudden and rapid development of a "Chase movement" among Democrats has been described as extraordinary and phenomenal. In one aspect it was so, and in another nothing was more natural. It was true that for long years Mr. Chase had been a distinguished leader in the antislavery movement: he had been far more instrumental in bringing about slave emancipation than any other member of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, and was, at this very time, the conspicuous, inflexible advocate of universal suffrage. In all this, however, there was nothing undemocratic, but rather the perfect application of Democratic principles. It was undeniably true, however, that the action of the party had been on the side of slavery. This was not because Democrats approved the slave-system as a moral or political good; but because, in the formation of Federal institutions, it had been necessary to accord to slavery certain political immunities and privileges. The Democracy believed these to be fundamental in the constitution of the Union. They believed them to be necessary to the preservation of the Constitution and the Union. And in these sentiments the whole country participated, if we except the "Independent Democracy," that small body of apparent impracticables, who insisted upon the exclusion of slavery from all places within the national jurisdiction. Of this organization, Mr. Chase, from its inception, had been the leading member. Except upon the subject of slavery, its principles were substantially those of the Oldline Democracy; and in 1849 no great difficulty had been experienced, therefore, in bringing the Old Line and the Independent Democrats together, to secure Mr. Chase's election to the United States Senate. He was known to be "sound" in many respects; to be a friend of State-rights, of personal liberty, and freedom of the press, of the subordination of the military to the

civil authority, and of that method of constitutional construction which had long been a watchword of the Democratic party. His conduct during the impeachment trial had been so preeminently upright and impartial that Democrats hailed it as a revival of the reign of law. He had exhibited during that time, too, that sort of lofty courage which naturally excites admiration and sympathy. There seems to have been a genuine fitness, therefore, that in the absence of a probably-successful leader of their own, Mr. Chase should be canvassed by the Democracy.

Certain it is, at any rate, that early in 1868, his name was freely discussed, and as the time approached for the meeting of the Democratic National Convention, leading Democrats everywhere turned their thoughts upon the Chief-Justice as a fit and available leader, while the same sentiment found a deep, spontaneous lodgment in the hearts of multitudes of the rank and file, and stirred the party to its depths. It excited among Republican leaders a great anxiety. They knew that the impeachment outrages had not met the approval, nor debauched the minds of the whole party; that Mr. Chase was still held in honor and veneration by a large minority within the Republican ranks, and that the scandalous assaults made upon him had rather increased than diminished these sentiments. Mr. Chase had gratifying proofs of this. Letters came to him from influential Republicans in all the States, assuring him of continued confidence, and of support should he be nominated even by a Democratic convention. And, indeed, as the time for the assembling of the convention drew nearer, what had been possibility of nomination seemed to be gradually assuming the character of a probability.

But all this was spontaneous, and went on without the agency of Mr. Chase, or Mr. Chase's personal or political friends. Preceding the day upon which the convention met-July 4th-there was but little communication between himself, or any of his friends, and Democratic leaders. He was visited by Alexander Long, of Ohio, noted as a radical Democrat during the war; and by Dr. Pierce, a brother-in-law of Senator Hendricks, of Indiana, who was a conspicuous candidate for the nomination; and by Colonel John D. Van Buren, of New York City, recognized as a confidential friend of Horatio Seymour; and, possibly, by two

swer.

MR. CHASE ON SUFFRAGE.

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or three others. But none of these gentlemen had authority to speak for any other persons than themselves, nor did they profess to have. An interview was arranged between Mr. Chase and Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, a leading Democrat of New York, which, however, did not take place. But the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. August Belmont, in the last week in May, addressed Mr. Chase a letter, marked "private and confidential," and written, that gentleman said, without consultation with anybody, but after being satisfied that most of the leading Democrats of New York were favorable to Mr. Chase's nomination. To that letter, on the 30th of May, Mr. Chase made an"The slavery question," he said, "is, as you say, settled. It has received a terrible solution; but it has a successor, in the question of reconstruction, and this question partakes largely of the nature of that. I never favored interference by Congress with slavery in the States; but, as a war measure, Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation had my hearty assent, and I united, as a member of his Administration, in the pledge it made to maintain the freedom of the enfranchised people. This pledge has been partly redeemed by the constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery throughout the United States; but its perfect fulfillment requires, in my judgment, the assurance of the right of suffrage to those whom the Constitution has made freemen and citizens. Hence, I have been and am in favor of so much of the reconstruction policy of Congress as bases the reorganization of the State governments in the South upon universal suffrage.” This was the vital point, and Mr. Chase did not shirk nor evade it; but met it honestly and fairly, and left no room for doubt or misapprehension. But it diminished the likelihood of his nomination, and he was inflexible in his resolution to make no concession. The Democrats admitted the utter extinction of slavery, but they were unwilling to admit the logical consequences of its extinction, by the application of their own principles, and preferred to resist a revolution as certain and resistless as fate itself!

The convention assembled in the city of New York, on the 4th of July. If the friends of Mr. Chase had been left free to choose the place of its meeting, with a view to "outside pressure," they would have chosen New York. The public sentiment of that city was overwhelmingly in his favor. It was not