THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Washington but throughout the country, was buzzing with rumors of iniquities which Andrew Johnson was meditating and would surely attempt if he were not disarmed. He was surely plotting a coup d'état. He had already slyly tried to get General Grant out of the way by sending him on a trumped-up diplomatic errand to Mexico. Although it was very difficult to imagine what kind of a coup d'état President Johnson possibly could think of, yet he was openly charged with entertaining various hellish designs, and there is no doubt that even the most absurd gossip found much lodgment with the people. At any rate, Andrew Johnson was believed to be capable of almost anything. When, therefore, the news came from Washington that Andrew Johnson was to be impeached, to be deprived of his office, it was not only welcomed by reckless partisanship, but as everybody that has lived through those times will remember, it struck a popular chord. There was a widespread feeling among well-meaning and sober people, that the country was really in some sort of peril, and that it would be a good thing to get rid of that dangerous man in the presidential chair.
But for this vague feeling of uneasiness approaching genuine alarm, I doubt whether Congress would ever have ventured upon the tragicomedy of the impeachment.
It explains also the fact that so many lawyers in Congress, as well as in the country, although they must have seen the legal weakness of the case against Andrew Johnson, still labored so hard to find some point upon which he might be convicted. It was for political, not for legal, reasons that they did so—not reasons of political partisanship, but the higher political reason that they thought the public interest made the removal of Andrew Johnson from his place of power, eminently desirable. I have to confess that I leaned somewhat to that
[ 252 ]
