publican party and zealous opponents of the
President's policy, radically differed in judgment. Opinions of
distinguished lawyers on the Democratic side of the Senate, like
Reverdy Johnson, are not quoted, because partisan motives would be
ascribed to their conclusions.

Perhaps the best test as to whether the act of the President in
removing Mr. Stanton was good ground for impeachment, would be found
in asking any candid man if he believes a precisely similar act by
Mr. Lincoln, or General Grant, or any other President in harmony with
his party in Congress, would have been followed by impeachment, or by
censure, or even by dissent. It is hardly conceivable, nay, it is
impossible, that under such circumstances the slightest notice would be
taken of the President's action by either branch of Congress. If there
was a difference of opinion as to the intent and meaning of a law, the
general judgment in the case supposed would be that the President had
the right to act upon his own conscientious construction of the
statute. It might not be altogether safe to concede to the Executive
the broad scope of discretion which General Jackson arrogated to
himself in his celebrated veto of the Bank Bill, when he declared that
"The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be
guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer
who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will
support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by
others." But without approving the extreme doctrine which General
Jackson announced with the applause of his party, it is surely not an
unreasonable assumption that in the case of a statute which has had no
judicial interpretation and whose meaning is not altogether clear,
the President is not to be impeached for acting upon his own
understanding of its scope and intent:--especially is he not to be
impeached when he offers to prove that he was sustained in his opinion
by every member of his Cabinet, and offers further to prove by the
same honorable witnesses that he took the step in order to subject the
statute in dispute to judicial interpretation.

It is to be noted that in the progress of the trial the Managers on the
part of the House and the counsel of the President proceeded upon
entirely different ground as to what constituted an offense punishable
with impeachment. General Butler, who opened the case against the
President with circumspe