the strong remarks made by the gentleman on the other side. But let it pass. What I desire to say to you, senators-and that is much more important than anything else—is this: when I made the statement which I did to the Senate, I made it with a full knowledge, as I believed, of what I was doing. It may be possible, senators, that I may have committed an error as to the date of the paper which was signed by Messrs. Logan and the other managers. My recollection is that that paper is without date, and I took it for granted that it was signed on the same day, the 9th of March, that was mentioned by the honorable gentleman; but that is an immaterial error, if it be one. I had the letters in my possession on the day I addressed you, and if the gentleman had seen fit to deny any statement contained in those letters upon that day I had them here ready to read to the Senate. I had no knowledge that this subject would be called up to-day until the honorable gentleman told me during your adjourn. ment of a few minutes. Since that notification I have sent for the letters. I was fearful, however, that they would not be here in time for me to read them now; but if it becomes necessary I shall ask the leave of the Senate to read .those letters to-morrow before my associate shall resume his argument in the case. I shall have them, and as this topic is introduced by the honorable gentleman, aud introduced, too, in terms of censure of me, I shall ask the honorable Senate to allow me to read those letters.

What is the point? If there be any point in connection with this matter, what is it, and why did I introduce the matter here at all in vindication of the President of the United States against the imputation that was made about Judge Black? Why did I refer to the letters at all? It was for the purpose of showing, in answer to the honorable manager, Mr. Boutwell, this great fact in explanation of the conduct with Judge Black, that the President of the United States had been placed in a dilemma such as no man under accusation had ever been placed in before-for the purpose of showing that, so far as that correspondence is concerned, it was a correspondence which arose after the articles of impeachment had been agreed upon, and probably after they had been preferred to the Senate. It was for that purpose that I introduced the correspondence. It has excited, awakened, and aroused the attention of this whole nation that the counsel for the President of the United States should abandon his cause, and that the true secret of that abandonment has not grown out of any insult the President of the United States rendered to the counsel, out of any injury which he did to them, but has grown out of the fact that a claim was pressed to the island referred to under the circumstances stated. Now, I will go further than I did the other day, and I will answer for it here and anywhere else; I believe that Judge Black acted improperly, under those circumstances, in withdrawing his services from the President of the United States, according to the best lights I have on the subject. Here is this accusation presented against him, and here is this astonishing claim presented to him, signed by four of the managers of this impeachment, presented at this extraordinary period of time, presented when this impeachment was hanging over him; and I maintain still that I had the right, and that it was my solemn and bounden duty, to vindicate him against the charge that was preferred.

Mr. Manager BUTLER. Does the gentleman know what he is saying? "A claim signed by four of the managers?"

Mr. NELSON. I meant to say letter. If I said "claim," I meant to say there was an indorsement. I am glad the gentleman has corrected me. What I mean to say, senators-I may have used some word I did not intend to usethe idea that I intend to convey is that a letter was in the first instance signed by the honorable manager, General Butler; that there was an indorsement of that letter by three other members of the House of Representatives who are managers in this case; that this letter and the indorsement of it had relation to the Alta Vela claim; that the subject was brought up to the consideration of the

President of the United States pending this impeachment, and that whether the letter indorsing General Butler's letter was signed on the 9th of March or at a later period is wholly immaterial. It was signed after this impeachment proceeding was commenced, and Judge Black endeavored to get the attention of the President to the claim and to have him decide upon it, as I am informed and believe, though I have no written evidence of that fact; Judge Black urged upon him after this impeachment proceeding commenced and after Judge Black bad met some of the other counsel and myself in the council chamber of the President. I was not present at that time, but I have it, I may say, from the lips of the President himself, and I believe it to be true, that Judge Black urged upon him a decision of this claim, and that his answer, among others, was that he did not think it a proper time for him to act on the claim, because the Congress of the United States was in session, and that if it was right and proper for a vessel to be sent down there, or any act of public hostility to take place, the President of the United States answered Judge Black, as I am informed and believe, by telling him that Congress was in session, and by asking him to call upon Congress to pass any law that might be necessary for that purpose, and that it was not proper for him to interfere in it. This is allMr. GRIMES rose.

Mr. NELSON. I will relieve the gentleman by stating that I have said as much as I desired to say. I will ask permission, when I receive those letters, in some form to put them before the Senate, and with this remark I will take

my seat.

Mr. Manager BUTLER. I trust not until they are shown not to have been mutilated.

Mr. NELSON. Sir!

Mr. Manager LOGAN rose.

Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, I ask that the argument in the cause may proceed. This matter has nothing to do with any question before us.

The CHIEF JUSTICE. The argument on behalf of the President will proceed. Mr. CAMERON. Mr. President, I trust the manager from Illinois will be allowed to be heard.

Mr. Manager LOGAN. Mr. President, if there is no objection I merely desire to say

The CHIEF JUSTICE. The honorable manager can proceed, if there be no objection.

Mr. Manager LOGAN. Just a moment. I merely wish to correct the gentleman from Tennessee, the counsel for the respondent, by saying that he is mistaken about this letter having been signed after the impeachment commenced by either General Butler or myself. I know well when I signed it, and the gentleman will find the correction, if he will examine thoroughly, and will certainly be kind enough to make it. I signed the letter long before there was anything thought of impeachment.

Mr. NELSON. If you will let me do so, I will say with great pleasure that I had no design to misrepresent any gentleman concerned in the cause; and in order that the matter may be decided I will have the letter brought here. I may have fallen into an errer about the date, but my understanding was that it was after the impeachment proceedings were commenced; but to obviate all difficulty I will produce the letter itself, no matter whether it shows I am mistaken or not. If it shows that I am mistaken I will bring it here in fairness to the Senate; and if it shows that I am right I will bring it again in fairness to the Senate. That is all the gentleman can ask, I am sure. I may possibly be mistaken.

Several SENATORS. Let the argument proceed.

The CHIEF JUSTICE. The argument on the part of the President will proceed.

WILLIAM M. EVARTS, esq., of counsel for the respondent, addressed the Senate as follows:

I am sure, Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, that no man of a thoughtful and considerate temper would wish to take any part in the solemn transaction which proceeds to-day unless held to it by some quite perfect obligation of duty. Even if we were at liberty to confine our solicitudes within the horizon of politics; even if the interests of the country and of the party in power, and if duty to the country and duty to the party in power, (as is sometimes the case, and as public men so easily persuade themselves is, or may be, the case in any juncture,) were commensurate and equivalent, who will provide a chart and compass for the wide, uncertain sea that lies before us in the immediate future? Who shall determine the currents that shall flow from the event of this stupendous political controversy; who measure their force; and who assume to control the storms that it may breed?

But if we enlarge the scope of our responsibility and of our vision, and take in the great subjects that have been constantly pressing upon our minds, who is there so sagacious in human affairs, who so confident of his sagacity, who so circumspect in treading among grave responsibilities and so assured of his circumspection, who so bold in his forecast of the future, and so approved in his prescience, as to see, and to see clearly, through this day's business?

Let us be sure, then, that no man should be here as a volunteer or lift a little finger to jostle the struggle and contest between the great forces of our government, of which we are witnesses, in which we take part, and which we, in our several vocations, are to assist in determining.

Of the absolute and complete obligation which convenes the Chief Justice of the United States and its senators in this court for the trial of this impeachment, and of its authentic commission from the Constitution, there can be no doubt. So, too, of the deputed authority of these honorable managers, and their presence in obedience to it, and the attendance of the House of Representatives itself in aid of their argument and their appeal, there is as little doubt. The President of the United States is here, in submission to the same Constitution, in obedience to it, and in the duty which he owes by the obligation he has assumed to preserve, protect, and defend it. The right of the President to appear by counsel of his choice makes it as clearly proper, under the obligations of a liberal profession, and under the duty of a citizen of a free state of sworn fidelity to the Constitution and the laws, that we should attend upon his defence; for though no distinct vocation and no particular devotion to the more established forms of public service hovers our presence, yet no man can be familiar with the course of the struggles of law, of government, of liberty in the world, not to know that the defence of the accused becomes the trial of the Constitution and the protection of the public safety.

It is neither by a careless nor capricious distribution of the most authentic service to the state that Cicero divides it among those who manage political candidacies, among those who defend the accused, and among those who in the Senate determined the grave issues of war and peace and all the business of the state; for it is in facts and instances that the people are taught their Constitu tion and their laws, and it is by fact and on instances that their laws and their Constitutions are upheld and improved. Constitutions are framed; laws established institutions built up; the processes of society go on until at length by some opposing, some competing, some contending forces in the state, an individual is brought into the point of collision, and the clouds surcharged with the great forces of the public welfare burst over his head. It is then that he who defends the accused, in the language of Cicero, and in our own recognition of the pregnant instances of English and American history, is held to a distinct. public service.

As, then, duty has brought us all here to this august procedure and has

assigned to each of us his part in it, so through all its responsibilities and to the end we must surrender ourselves to its guidance. Thus following, our footsteps shall never falter or be misled; and leaning upon its staff, no man need fear that it will break or pierce his side.

The service of the constitutional procedure of impeachment in our brief his tory as a nation has really touched none of the grave interests that are involved in the present trial. Discarding the first occasion in which it was moved, being against a member of the Senate, as coming to nothing important, political or judicial, unless to determine that a member of this body was not an officer of the United States; and the next trial, wherein the accusation against Judge Pickering partook of no qualities except of personal delinquency or misfortune, and whose result gives us nothing to be proud of, and to constitutional law gives no precedent except that an insane man may be convicted of crime by a party vote; and the last trial of Judge Humphreys, where there was no defence, and where the matters of accusation were so plain and the guilt so clear that it was understood to be, by accused, accusers, and court, but a mere formality, and we have trials, doubtless of interest, of Judge Chase and of Judge Peck. Neither of these ever went for a moment beyond the gravity of an important and solemn accusation of men holding dignified, valuable, eminent, public judicial trusts; and their determination in favor of the accused left nothing to be illustrated by their trials except that even when the matter in imputation and under investigation is wholly of personal fault and misconduct in office, politics will force itself into the tribunal.

But what do we behold here? Why, Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, all the political power of the United States of America is here. The House of Representatives is here as accuser; the President of the United States is here as the accused; and the Senate of the United States is here as the court to try him, presided over by the Chief Justice, under the special constitutional duty attributed to him. These powers of our government are here, this our government is here, not for a pageant or a ceremony; not for concord of action in any of the duties assigned to the government in the conduct of the affairs of the nation, but here in the struggle and contest as to whether one of them shall be made to bow by virtue of constitutional authority confided to the others, and this branch of the political power of the United States shall prove his master. Crime and violence have placed all portions of our political government at some disadvantage. The crime and violence of the rebellion have deprived this House of Representatives and this Senate of the full attendance of members that might make up the body under the Constitution of the United States, when it shall have been fully re-established over the whole country. The crime and violence of assassination have placed the executive office in the last stage of its maintenance under mere constitutional authority. There is no constitutional elected successor of the President of the United States, taking his power under the terms of the Constitution and by the authority of the suffrage; and you have now before you the matter to which I shall call your attention, not intending to anticipate here the discussion of constitutional views and doctrines, but simply the result upon the government of the country which may flow from your determination of this cause under the peculiar circumstances in which, for the first time, too, in the history of the government, a true political trial takes place. If you shall acquit the President of the United States from this accusation all things will be as they were before. The House of Representatives will retire to discharge their usual duties in legislation, and you will remain to act with them in those duties and to divide with the President of the United States the other associated duties of an executive character which the Constitution attributes to you. The President of the United States, too, dismissed from your presence uncondemned, will occupy through the constitutional term his place of authority, and however ill the course of politics may go, or however

well, the government and its Constitution will have received no shock. But if the President shall be condemned, and if by authority under the Constitution necessarily to be exerted upon such condemnation, he shall be removed from office, there will be no President of the United States; for that name and title is accorded by the Constitution to no man who has not received the suffrages of the people for the primary or the alternative elevation to that place. A new thing will have occurred to us; the duties of the office will have been annexed to some other office, will be discharged virtute officii and by the tenure which belongs to the first office. Under the legislation of the country early adopted, and a great puzzle to the Congress, that designation belongs to this Senate itself to determine, by an officer of its own gaining, the right under the legislation of 1792 to add to his office conferred by the Senate the performance of the duties of President of the United States, the two offices running along. Whatever there may be of novelty, whatever of disturbance, in the course of public affairs thus to arise from a novel situation, is involved in the termination of this cause; and therefore there is directly proposed to you, as a necessary result from one determination of this cause, this novelty in our Constitution: a great nation whose whole frame of government, whose whole scheme and theory of politics rest upon the suffrage of the people, will be without a President, and the office sequestered will be discharged by a member of the body whose judg ment has sequestered it.

I need not attract your attention, long since called to it, doubtless, in your own reflections, more familiar than I am with the routine, to what will follow in the exercise of those duties; and you will see at once that the situation, from circumstances for which no man is responsible, is such as to bring into the gravest possible consequences the act that you are to perform. If the President of the United States, elected by the people, and having standing behind him the second officer of the people's choice, were under trial, no such disturbance or confusion of constitutional duties, and no such shock upon the feelings and traditions of the people, would be effected; but, as I have said, crime and violence, for which none of the agents of the government are responsible, have brought us into this situation of solicitude and of difficulty.

It will be seen, then, that as this trial brings the legislative power of the government confronted with the executive authority, and its result is to deprive the nation of a President and to vest the office in the Senate, it is indeed the trial of the Constitution; over the head and in the person of the Chief Magistrate who fills the great office the forces of this contest are gathered, and this is the trial of the Constitution; and neither the dignity of the great office which he holds, nor any personal interest that may be felt in one so high in station, nor the great name and force of these accusers, the House of Representatives, speaking for "all the people of the United States," nor the august composition of this tribunal, which brings together the Chief Justice of the great court of the country and the senators who have States for their constituents, which recalls to us in the mere etiquette of our address the combined splendors of Roman and of English jurisprudence and power-not even this spectacle forms any important part in the watchful solicitude with which the people of this country are gazing upon this procedure. The sober, thoughtful people of this country, never fond of pageants when pageants are the proper thing, never attending to pageants when they cover real issues and interests, are thinking of far other things than these.

Mr. Chief Justice, it is but a few weeks since the great tribunal in which you habitually preside, and where the law speaks with authority for the whole nation, adjourned. Embracing, as it does, the great province of international law, the great responsibility of adjusting between State and general government the conflicting interests and passions belonging to our composite system, and with determining the limits between the co-ordinate branches of the gov