plexion of the Senate, showing more than four-fifths of that body of the party which had instituted the impeachment and was demanding conviction. To this party, as well, the Chief-Justice belonged, as a founder, a leader, a recipient of its honors, and a lover of its prosperity and its fame. The President, raised to the office from that of Vice-President-to which alone he had been elected-by the deplored event of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, was absolutely without a party, in the Senate or in the country; for the party whose suffrages he had received for the vice-presidency was the hostile force in his impeachment. And, to bring the matter to the worst, the succession to all the executive power and patronage of the Government, in case of conviction, was to fall into the administration of the President of the Senate-the creature, thus, of the very court invested with the duty of trial and the power of conviction.

Against all these immense influences, confirmed and inflamed by a storm of party violence, beating against the Senate-house without abatement through the trial, the President was acquitted. To what wise or fortunate protection of the stability of government does the people of this country owe its escape from this great peril? Solely, I cannot hesitate to think, to the potency-with a justice-loving, lawrespecting people-of the few decisive words of the Constitution which, to the common apprehension, had impressed upon the transaction the solemn character of trial and conviction, under the sanction of the oath to bind the conscience, and not of the mere exercise of power, of which its will should be its reason. In short, the Constitution had made the procedure judicial, and not political. It was this sacred interposition that stayed this plague of political resentments which, with their less sober and intelligent populations, have thwarted so many struggles for free government and equal institutions.

Over this scene, through all its long agitations, the ChiefJustice presided, with firmness and prudence, with circumspect comprehension, and sagacious forecast of the vast consequences which hung, not upon the result of the trial as affecting any personal fortunes of the President, but upon the maintenance

of its character as a trial-upon the prevalence of law, and the supremacy of justice, in its methods of procedure, in the grounds and reasons of its conclusion. That his authority was greatly influential in fixing the true constitutional relations of the Chief-Justice to the Senate, and establishing a precedent of procedure not easily to be subverted; that it was felt, throughout the trial, with persuasive force, in the maintenance of the judicial nature of the transaction, and that it never went a step beyond the office which belonged to him-of presiding over the Senate trying an impeachment-is not to be doubted.

The President was acquitted. The disappointment of the political calculations which had been made upon what was felt by the partisans of impeachment to be an assured result, was unbounded; and resentments, rash and unreasoning, were visited upon the Chief-Justice, who had influenced the Senate to be judicial, and had not himself been political. No doubt, this impeachment trial permanently affected the disposition of the leading managers of the Republican Party toward the Chief-Justice, and his attitude thereafter toward that party, in his character of a citizen. But the people of the country never assumed any share of the resentment of party feeling. The charge against him, if it had any shape or substance, came only to this: that the Chief-Justice brought into the Senate, under his judicial robes, no concealed weapons of party warfare, and that he had not plucked from the Bible, on which he took and administered the judicial oath, the commandment for its observance.-W. M. EVARTS.

to which he cheerfully renewed his fealty.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens was born near Crawfordsville, Georgia, on the 11th of February, 1812. He was descended from an Englishman who, having been an adherent of the Pretender, came to America in 1746, served as captain in the Revolutionary army, and afterwards settled in Georgia. Alexander was early left an orphan, but on account of his promising talent was sent to Franklin College by friends to be educated for the Presbyterian ministry. He graduated in 1832 with the first honor, and having determined to study law, he earned money by teaching to repay his college expenses. After being admitted to the bar he quickly won competence and reputation.

In 1836 he was elected to the State legislature and showed a liberal spirit in securing appropriations for railroads and for Mason Female College, the first established for the classical education of women. In 1843 he was elected to Congress on a general State ticket, but did not hesitate to support an act requiring the States to be divided into Congress

ional districts. He became a leader of the Southern Whigs, and advocated the annexation of Texas by Congressional action. He supported Henry Clay for the presidency in 1844, and opposed the policy of President Polk in regard to the Mexican War. In 1848, in consequence of a political dispute, Stephens recklessly engaged in a personal encounter with Judge Cone at a hotel in Atlanta and was severely cut in the right hand. Stephens assisted in securing the election of Zachary Taylor as President in 1848. Secession was first strongly advocated in the South in 1850, but Stephens set himself sternly in opposition, and drew up the "Georgia platform," which declared "the American Union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate." In 1852, General Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate for President, refused to endorse this platform, and Stephens, with other Southern Whigs, issued a card withdrawing from him their support.

In 1854 Stephens defended "popular sovereignty," as formulated by S. A. Douglas in the Kansas-Nebraska act. He aided in electing Buchanan to the presidency in 1856, though he had formerly been his antagonist. He soon found Buchanan's policy dangerous, and, like Douglas, sought to oppose it. Finding his opposition ineffectual and leading to misunderstanding among the Southern people, he resigned from Congress in 1859. Douglas was his choice for the presidency in 1860, yet when Lincoln was elected, he refused to regard that fact as a justification for Southern secession. Both before and after that election, Stephens' bold and eloquent advocacy of the Union, as guaranteeing all the constitutional rights of the Southern States, raised high hopes throughout the whole country that the secession would be defeated when brought directly to the decision of the people. His Union speech of November 14th, 1860, seemed to assure his continued resistance to the secession of Georgia. Yet when the State Convention adopted the ordinance of secession, Stephens at once yielded obedience, and his declaration to that effect caused him immediately to be chosen Vice-President of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States.

The heartiness of his support of the Confederacy was shown

in his speech of March 21, 1861, in which he declared slavery to be the corner-stone of the new government. During the war, Stephens had but little opportunity for action or expression of opinion. Yet his view of State rights set him in opposition to President Davis. In Georgia in 1864, there was a peace movement which finally led to a Peace Commission, of which Stephens was a member, being appointed by the Confederate government. A conference was held with President Lincoln and Secretary Seward at Hampton Roads in February, 1865, but as the Commission was not authorized to grant the terms which Lincoln laid down as preliminary, it came to naught. When the Confederacy was overthrown, Stephens was arrested at his home, Liberty Hall. He was confined for six months in Fort Warren, in Boston harbor, but in October, 1865, was released on parole.

Stephens at once set to work to heal the breaches caused by the great national struggle. He was soon elected to the United States Senate by the Georgia legislature under the proclamation issued by President Andrew Johnson, but Congress refused to recognize the validity of the President's act apart from previous legislation. Stephens employed his leisure in the preparation of his history of "The War Between the States" (2 vols., 1867-70). He then compiled a "School History of the United States" (1871). Though defeated in an attempt to secure a seat in the Senate in 1871, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1874, and continued to serve till 1882, when he resigned. Throughout his term he was severely crippled by rheumatism, being obliged to use crutches, and later to be moved in a wheel-chair. Yet the people of Georgia had confidence in the veteran statesman, and elected him governor by 60,000 majority. His last public speech was made at Savannah on the 12th of February, 1883, in the Georgia sesqui-centennial celebration.

Stephens was in person slender and boyish-looking., His voice was shrill and piping. He suffered from chronic illness, and weighed barely a hundred pounds. Yet he was always bold in expressing his opinions, and was disposed to take moderate views, which aroused antagonism from both extremes. He was generally on friendly terms with his political