WITH savage energy the Great Commoner pressed to trial the first impeachment of a President of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanours.
His bill to confiscate the property of the Southern people was already pending on the calendar of the House. This bill was the most remarkable ever written in the English language or introduced into a legislative body of the Aryan race. It provided for the confiscation of ninety percent. of the land of ten great states of the American Union. To each negro in the South was allotted forty acres from the estate of his former master, and the remaining millions of acres were to be divided among the "loyal who had suffered by reason of the Rebellion."
The execution of this, the most stupendous crime ever conceived by an English law-maker, involving the exile and ruin of millions of innocent men, women, and children, could not be intrusted to Andrew Johnson.
No such measure could be enforced so long as any man was President and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy who claimed his title under the Constitution. Hence the absolute necessity of his removal.
