THE PRESIDENT IMPEACHED.

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tutional, and the President nullified it, though he appointed the district Governors. Congress proceeded, however, to pass other acts,* and to re-organize the States according to the plan adopted. In pursuance of the plan, the States of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and North and South Carolina, were admitted to the Union against the veto of the President, in June and July, 1868. While these acts were in process, the President dismissed the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton,† directing him to turn over his portfolio to General Grant, and Congress, on the third of March, agreed upon articles of impeachment, which were presented to the Senate. On the twenty-sixth of May the President was acquitted, but one vote being wanted, however, to convict him.

On the fourth of July, 1868, a pardon was proclaimed to all who had been engaged in the war, and were not under indictment for felony or treason, and on the following Christmas, a general amnesty was declared. On the twenty-eighth of July the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution became the law of the land. It still further emphasized the results of the war by decreeing that no State should abridge the immunities of its citizens, assume any

Among these were those appointing a committee on Reconstruction, on the admission of Southern members to the House, increasing the power of the Freedman's Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act.

The first Congress, in 1789, after an earnest discussion, had determined that the power of removal rested with the President alone, but the "Tenure of Office Act," passed March 2d, 1867, provided that there should be no removal by the President without the consent of the Senate. Mr. Johnson's chief defence in the impeachment trial, was, however, that he had merely pursued the plan adopted by Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet.

debt of the war against the Union, or pay pensions to any who had been engaged in it. It reasserted the validity of the public debt, which at the time was of considerable importance, for at the close of the war the government found that it owed nearly twentyfive hundred million dollars, and was obliged to raise annually one hundred and fifty million to pay its interest. This caused the taxes assessed on the people to press very heavily, and it was only by the greatest efforts that bankruptcy was avoided. Up to the beginning of the war the government had relied for funds upon the import duties, but since that time the people have been familiar with income taxes (now abolished) and stamp taxes of a great variety of kinds, levied on bank checks, ale, beer, cigars, whiskey, matches, patent medicines, wines, and numerous articles of luxury, many of which we can well bear to have taxed. These taxes have since been lightened.

The year 1866 was notable for the successful solution of the problem of ocean telegraphy. The idea of this sort of communication occurred to Cyrus W. Field, in 1853, and in 1856, a line was constructed of one thousand miles, from New York to Newfoundland. This was followed by the first attempt to lay a cable in the ocean, from the Eastern to the Western Continent, which, after two failures, in 1857, and 1858, was successful in July, of the latter year, and messages of good-will were exchanged by Queen Victoria and the President. The cable was effective, however, for a few weeks only. In 1865, the Great

*On the fifth of December, 1865, the House of Representatives passed a resolution pledging the faith of the United States for the full payment of both principle and interest of the National Debt.