Impeachment of a Cabinet Officer

A FEW weeks before the opening of the Centennial Exhibition, the country was startled by the public accusation of a cabinet minister of serious malfeasance in office. That minister was General William W. Belknap, the Secretary of War. He was charged with having received a bribe from a post-trader to whom he had granted permission to sell goods to any officer and private soldiers. Articles of impeachment were formally presented to the senate, on the 4th of April (1876), and when the day fixed for the commencement of the trial arrived, the Secretary's counsel interposed the plea of non-jurisdiction. On the 29th of May the Senate decided that it had jurisdiction of the case, and it was determined to proceed with the prosecution. The arguments of counsel closed on the 26th of July, and on the first day of August the Senate voted on the verdict. The result was an acquittal.

Soon after this the Senate acted upon a proposed Amendment of the National Constitution concerning popular education. In his annual message in December, 1875, the President had recommended such action, and early in the session Mr. Blaine, of Maine, offered a joint resolution to that effect in the House of Representatives. The proposed Amendment (making the Sixteenth) was passed by the House by an almost unanimous vote. It was as follows:

"ARTICLE XVI, Section I.--No State shall make a law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public land devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect or denomination; nor shall any fund so raised, or lands so used, be divided among any religious sects or denominations.

"Section 2.--This Article shall not vest, enlarge or diminish legislative power in Congress."

The proposed Amendment was carried to the Senate, where it lay undisturbed for several months. Meanwhile, certain religionists raised a clamor against it, outside of Congress, that had an effect upon one of the great political parties. The subject seemed to be passing out of the public mind when, on the 7th of August, 1876, Senator Frelinghuysen moved that the joint resolution proposing a Sixteenth Amendment of the Constitution, prohibiting the appropriation of any school fund for the support of sectarian schools, etc., be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Substitutes were submitted, and on the 10th of August the Judiciary Committee reported the following substitute:

"ARTICLE XVI, Section I.--No State shall make any law respecting any establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under any State. No public property and no public revenue of, nor any loan of credit by or under the authority of the United States, or any State, Territory, and District, or municipal corporation, shall be appropriated to or made or used for the support of any school, educational or other institution under the control of any religious or anti-religious sect, organization or denomination, or wherein the particular creed or tenets shall be taught in any school or institution, supported in whole or in part by such revenue or loan of credit; and no such appropriation or loan of credit shall be made to any religious or anti-religious sect, organization, or denomination, or to promote its interests or tenets.

"This Article shall not be construed to prohibit the reading of the Bible in any school or institution, and it shall not have the effect to impair the rights of property already vested.

"Section 2.--Congress shall have power by appropriate legislation to provide for the prevention and punishment of the violation of this Article."

This proposed amendment, so important in its bearings upon the public welfare--so well calculated to secure our public schools and other methods for the intellectual training of the young from the malign influence of theological sectarianism, and to increase more and more the wholesome separation of Church and State, was defeated by a strict party vote--twenty-eight republicans to sixteen democrats--the votes of two-thirds of the members of the Senate present being necessary to carry the measure. A week later Congress adjourned. Among the more important acts of the session was one in which the Government took the initial step in the direction of the resumption of specie payments by authorizing the issue, from the Mint, of $10,000,000 of silver coin to take the place of the same amount of fractional paper currency. The bill provided that the Treasury might buy $20,000,000 of bullion at the rate of not exceeding $200,000 a month, to be issued in coin at the same rate, if required. It also contained propositions for making silver coin a legal tender, but these were stricken out, except an allowance of not more than five dollars in silver, as a legal tender, in any one payment. This bill became a law late in July, 1876. The consequence was that, within a year, nearly every vestige of the fractional paper currency disappeared from circulation, and silver coin became excessively plentiful. At the extraordinary session of Congress called in October, 1877, for the purpose of providing for the deficiency of money necessary for the public service, a bill making silver coin a legal tender equally with gold, was passed by the House of Representatives. What its fate may be in the Senate was undetermined, when this record was closed on the first of December, 1877.