Members of Congress were there. George Washington Julian was present; great, gifted, good, as he always is, proving to the world that even a great name cannot extinguish him. Nature was in one of her most generous moods when she formed him, for he towers above the people like a mountain surrounded by hills. He dwells in a higher atmosphere and sniffs a purer air than most Congressmen, and this may account for his always being found in the right place, never doubtful. People know just what George Washington Julian will do in any national crisis. So he is left alone to score the measures of his conscience, just as the earth is left to her orbit, or the magnetic needle to the pole.
CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADING COUNSEL AND THEIR ARGUMENTS.
With lightning leap the historical proceedings of the “High Court of Impeachment” have flashed all over the country. The bone and sinew of the matter have been given to the people, but the delicate life-currents and details which go to make the creation perfect, if not gathered by the pen, must be buried in the waste-basket of old Father Time. Decorum, dignity, solemnity, are the order of the day, and one might as well attempt a “glowing description” of a funeral as to weave in bright colors the opening scenes of the greatest trial on record.
Outside the Capitol, in the crowd, the incidents are beyond description. Men are there from all parts of the country, pleading, swearing for admittance--offering untold sums for a little insignificant bit of pasteboard. But the police, stony, frightful as the “head of Medusa,” shut the doors in their faces, inexorable as the fiat of the tomb. A limited number of honest, tender-hearted Senators are trying to smuggle in a few beloved “outsiders;” but the police are instantly convened into a “court of impeachment,” and the unfortunate Senator has to bow before the majesty of the law. A ticket is the only open sesame, and a bit of yellow pasteboard so dazzles the multitudes that even Andrew Johnson is forgotten for a time. But the fortunate ticket-holder, when once beyond the hurly-burly outside, finds that an entrance to a different atmosphere has been attained. It is like leaving the famished, parched plain at the mountain’s foot and climbing up into the cool region, almost among the eternal snows. The Senate chamber, always chilly in comparison with the warm, leaping blood of the House, is now wrapped in judicial robes of coldest gray. When it is remembered that Senators were allowed four tickets and members half that number, it will readily be understood that even the aristocracy had to be skimmed to fill the galleries, and with the exception of a few newspaper correspondents, the chosen ones belong to or are attaches of the proudest families in the land. And it is a most significant fact that women hold nearly all the tickets. They sail into the gentlemen’s gallery like a real “man of war,” shake out the silken, feathery crinoline, rub their little gloved hands in an ecstasy of delight, and while perching their heads significantly on one side, gaze sorrowfully at the few forlorn men stranded amongst their number, either through accident or to prove to the world that the genus man under the most trying circumstances is not extinct. As the Senate clock points to the hour of 1, Senator Wade leaves the chair, and Chief Justice Chase, robed in his judicial drapery, enters at a side door and takes the vacant seat. Very soon the managers of the impeachment file in, Bingham and Boutwell taking the lead. A table for their accommodation has been prepared, and as they take their seats the silence seems like the dead, unbroken calm inhabited only by time and space. The moment has arrived for the utterance of the most solemn words ever echoed in the Senate of the United States--the proclamation of the Sergeant-at-Arms calling a recreant President to stand forth and prove his innocence or else meet the just punishment of his crime. A momentary silence follows, and the counsel for the accused advance and take their seats. That which was uncertainty is now a positive fact.