I shall have the courage and honesty to vote according to the dictates of my judgment and for the highest good of my country."
He got this answer:
"Your motives are Indian contracts and greenbacks. Kansas repudiates you as she does all perjurers and skunks."
The Managers organised an inquisition for the purpose of torturing and badgering Ross into submission. His one vote was all they lacked.
They laid siege to little Vinnie Ream, the sculptress, to whom Congress had awarded a contract for the statue of Lincoln. Her studio was in the crypt of the Capitol. They threatened her with the wrath of Congress, the loss of her contract and ruin of her career unless she found a way to induce Senator Ross, whom she knew, to vote against the President.
Such an attempt to gain by fraud the verdict of a common court of law would have sent its promoters to prison for felony. Yet the Managers of this case, before the highest tribunal of the world, not only did it without a blush of shame, but cursed as a traitor every man who dared to question their motives.
As the day approached for the Court to vote, Senator Ross remained to friend and foe a sealed mystery. Reporters swarmed about him, the target of a thousand eyes. His rooms were besieged by his radical constituents who had been imported from Kansas in droves to browbeat him into a promise to convict. His movements day and night, his breakfast, his dinner, his supper, the clothes he
