e
unprecedented, and the excitement at high tide. The fifty-seven
who had voted for impeachment in December, were now happy. They
felt, at last, that the country was safe. The whole land seemed
to be electrified, as they believed it would have been at any
previous time if the House had had the nerve to go forward; and
they rejoiced that the madness of Johnson had at last compelled
Congress to face the great duty. A committee of seven was appointed
by the Speaker to prepare articles of impeachment, of whom Thaddeus
Stevens was chairman. He was now rapidly failling in strength, and
every morning had to be carried up stairs to his seat in the House;
but his humor never failed him, and on one of these occasions he
said to the young men who had him in charge, "I wonder, boys, who
will carry me when you are dead and gone." He was very thin, pale
and haggard. His eye was bright, but his face was "scarred by the
crooked autograph of pain." He was a constant sufferer, and during
the session of the Committee kept himself stimulated by sipping a
little wine or brandy; but he was its ruling spirit, and greatly
speeded its work by the clearness of his perceptions and the strength
of his will. His mental force seemed to defy the power of disease.
The articles of impeachment were ready for submission in a few
days, and adopted by the House, on the second of March, by a majority
of considerably more than two thirds, when the case was transferred
to the Senate.

The popular feeling against the President was now rapidly nearing
its climax and becoming a sort of frenzy. Andrew Johnson was no
longer merely a "wrong-headed and obstinate man," but a "genius in
depravity," whose hoarded malignity and passion were unfathomable.
He was not simply "an irresolute mule," as General Schenck had
styled him, but was devil-bent upon the ruin of his country; and
his trial connected itself with all the memories of the war, and
involved the Nation in a new and final struggle for its life. Even
so sober and unimaginative a man as Mr. Boutwell, one of the managers
of the impeachment in the Senate, lost his wits and completely
surrendered himself to the passions of the hour in the following
passage of his speech in that body:

"Travelers and astronomers inform us that in the Southern heavens,
near the Southern Cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated
call the 'hole in the sky,' where the eye of man, with the aid of
the powers of the