p. 397 | News and Miscellany

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1868

News and Miscellany.

Can ye not discern the Signs of the Times? Matt. xvi,3.

Impeachment.—Impeachment, at last, is ended. To use an expressive slang phrase, it is “played out.” We shall hear no more of it in connection with Andrew Johnson. I know that some sanguine people still entertain the idea that at a later day, when six or eight new senators shall have been admitted to the Senate, if the President shall proceed according to the law of his nature to fresh outrages, he will be impeached and finally removed; but it is a mistaken view. The present House will not again impeach the President. The conduct of Messrs. Ross, Fowler, Van Winkle, and Henderson, has destroyed all hope of a righteous verdict in the Senate on impeachment, no matter what the conduct of the President may be, and let the articles read as they may. It is possible that injustice is done the senators named; but the conviction in the House is that they were determined to acquit the President, and that it was the result they were constantly considering, and not the facts and the law. I single out these men, and do not reckon among them the names of Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes, because there is a manifest distinction.

It is not probable that the world will ever know the secret causes that operated upon the minds of these senators. The Managers may investigate, and the Senate's Select Committee may sift all the facts it can gather; but it will still remain a mystery. If there was fraud, it will be concealed; if it was merely the result of personal resentments, still the public will never get at the real facts. Perhaps it is as well that something is left to the imagination, for the people will have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the President was not honestly acquitted.—Independent.