Irving Wallace - The Man

Abrahams folded the document, handed it up to the Secretary of the Senate, who lifted himself from his seat to receive it and turn it over to Chief Justice Johnstone.

“The court stands so instructed,” said the Chief Justice. He gestured toward the vacant chairs and oak table to his left. “Will the managers of the President of the United States please take the seats assigned to them.”

As Abrahams and the other three promptly found their places, the fifth chair was quickly occupied by Leach, the perspiring White House stenotypist, who hoisted a weighty briefcase to the table, unstrapped it, and then shoved it toward Felix Hart. While Abrahams’ partner began to distribute legal papers, pads, pencils, Leach located a note in his breast pocket and passed it down the row. Tuttle handed it to Abrahams, who opened it.

The lettering at the top of the half sheet read The White House . Beneath it, hastily penned, was the following:

Dear Nat, Before going to work, I got down on my knees beside the Lincoln bed and I prayed for the Lord Almighty to join in judging our cause and our worth. I don’t know if He heard, but I was kind of loud, so maybe He did, or maybe St. Christopher did. Anyway, make yourself heard beyond the Senate Chamber, just on the chance He is Up There listening. Win or lose, you try for Heaven. But give them Hell. Your eternally grateful friend, Doug Dilman.

Tenderly, Nat Abrahams refolded the note and deposited it in his pocket. He would be heard loud and clear, he silently pledged, but first the traducers and haters would have to be heard.

Chief Justice Johnstone’s bass was booming across the Chamber. “The Senate is now sitting for the trial of the Articles of Impeachment. The House of Representatives and the President of the United States appear by counsel. The court is now prepared to hear the opening arguments.” He bent to his right and looked below. “Gentlemen managers of the House of Representatives, you will now proceed in support of the Articles of Impeachment… Senators will please give their undivided attention. Proceed-proceed-Mr. Manager Miller.”

Had Zeke Miller dared to wear galluses and snap them before this dignified assembly, as he had often been pictured doing during campaigns in the Deep South, they could have been no more real than the illusion of them at this moment. He exuded humble folksiness, as he hooked his thumbs into his lapel buttonholes and came in short, uneven strides to center stage. His stained teeth were bared, and his thin lips curled in an attempt at a winning, self-deprecating smile, as he examined the faces of the expectant senators.

“Mr. Chief Justice and gentlemen of the Senate,” he began, “it was on a similar day to this one, back in 1868, that your honorable predecessors sat forward in their chairs in this Chamber to hear and judge evidence against another Chief Executive of the United States, who had attempted to render ineffective the constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch of government and who had otherwise proved himself unfit for the highest office in the land and a detriment to the domestic well-being of our beloved nation. The fact that, by the luck of a single vote, he escaped removal from the Presidency in no way lessens the integrity and patriotism of the House of Representatives that had the courage to impeach him and the Senate that had the onerous duty to try him. Had the charges against him been more objectively drawn, fewer in number and better prepared, he would have been driven from office, crude and malevolent turn-coat that he was, and although my native South would have suffered more intensely, time and good judgment would have tempered vengeance, and American justice would have prevailed the sooner. Nevertheless, the legislative branch of the government of our fathers proved then, and it proves today, that it will forever serve as the watchdog of democracy over incipient tyrants who are elevated to the executive office by accidents of fate.

“We gather here, today, on behalf of 230 million American people, as watchdogs once more, guardians of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our responsibility, however, is far, far graver than that assumed by our predecessors in 1868. In that other time, the one impeached, for all his reckless malversation in office, presided over a Union he could harm but could not liquidate. The world was slow and small then, and the island of the Union, no longer riven, only hurt and bloodied, was a fortress unto its own, and withdrawn enough so that no single fumbler, no single incompetent, no lone traitor, could bring it to disaster.

“We, today, live in another and terrible age, the nuclear age, a clouded and fearful time where the jet, the rocket, the hydrogen bomb can liquidate life on this wondrous planet of the Maker in minutes, fulfilling the terrible prophecy of the Apocalypse. Contracting, momentarily, our view of our era, we live in the one great free republic of this planet, where intelligent and God-conscious men have laboriously, through two centuries, constructed a utopia of peace-loving, free and independent citizens, who dwell in prosperity and equality. We are the fortunate heirs of a society that is sinless and decent, lawful and just, a Christian society so brilliantly arranged that in our government, in our government of the people, by the people, for the people, there are three branches of government, with their magnificent checks and balances, one upon the other, assuring the preservation of our democracy.

“A world such as I have described, sensitive to every national indiscretion, capable of self-extinction in the blink of an eye, a democracy such as I have described, delicately responding to any mutinous hand that would rock and sink the ship of state-a world such as this, in this new epoch of ours, cannot afford executive leadership which, out of ignorance or wickedness or selfishness, can destroy us all through the madness of a perverted bias. Because we are the elected caretakers of the life of our proud country and of our good neighbors, to preserve ourselves under the judgment of the Supreme Being who made us all, we are met here today to cast down from his high seat a pretender and usurper who has placed himself above the law, above every standard of common decency, above and outside the pale of respect, wittingly or unwittingly leading the United States and the world toward inevitable total extinction.

“Who is this evildoer among us? You know, and I know, but I shall enunciate it clearly for the world beyond this Chamber to know, and to realize that we are men of good will. The one I refer to is not a man among ordinary men like ourselves. He is not possessed of our good intention and good purpose. I hesitate to identify him for what he truly is, as we know him and this trial shall prove him to be. He is-no, let not the words be mine, but those of one of greater stature than myself, an immortal American liberal who loved black Americans with the same fervor as he loved white Americans, yet who loved America more and would not see it wrecked by the one other President in our history whose disgraceful conduct earned him impeachment. The words I shall repeat were spoken in the House of Representatives by Thaddeus Stevens, upon hearing that President Andrew Johnson had committed his most notorious act of treachery and infamy. ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ Stevens thundered to his colleagues. ‘If you don’t kill the beast, it will kill you!’

“The beast. Yes, the beast, he had branded that earlier dangerous and delinquent President-and the appellation, I say to you honorable gentlemen, is far more aptly suited to the one who sits in the White House today. On behalf of the entire country, I paraphrase the warning of a great dead statesman-I entreat you, I implore you-if you don’t remove the beast, it will kill you and me and all of us-and the beast that you must expel from the government, from the company of civilized men, is the one under trial today, the one already entered in the roll call of history’s blackguards and villains. He is the beast who dares bear the name of a man-I refer to Douglass Dilman-known to the press as His Accidency-known to our shame as the President of the United States!”