The viciousness of Zeke Miller’s opening attack elicited from the audience not what Abrahams had hoped for, which was shock and revulsion at such lese majesty, but surprisingly, a reaction of understanding and approval. In Abrahams’ eyes, it was as if Miller had thrown a spear near a large, coiled, dozing snake, not to harm it but to awaken it and warn it of danger from a beast in the jungle. And now the snake writhed awake, twisting and rising and hissing.
The senators, the House members, the gallery spectators stretched before Abrahams had been momentarily transformed into that malignant serpent. They were alerted to the beast at their back.
Abrahams watched Miller strut a few steps this way and that, satisfied, regaining his composure, as he waited for the audience to settle down. Abrahams did not bother to look at his own associates. He knew that they must feel as he felt, and he concentrated his contempt upon the House prosecutor. Hatred was an emotion almost unknown to Abrahams. For even the most unregenerated criminals, the most dangerous bigots, he had always been able to leaven disapproval with charity, trying to understand their motives, born of heredity and nurtured by environment. Yet, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt the awakening inside himself of blind hatred for Miller and Miller’s colleagues and all the ignorance and malice on earth that they represented.
As he assessed the content and tone of the opposition’s initial attack on Dilman, another thought came to Abrahams. The boundaries of the forensic battle were now more clearly drawn. Definitely, the conflict between the managers would not be warfare within the limits of legalistic weapons. The boundaries had widened to include emotional demagoguery at its basest level. How well Ben Butler had understood the value of this when he had opened his first barrage upon President Johnson in 1868. Snatches of Abrahams’ reading of that earlier impeachment trial came back to him now. Butler had made it clear at the very outset that the arena for an impeachment battle was not to be a gentlemanly courtroom but a political cockpit. What had he told his senator-jurors in that other time? This proceeding “has no analogy to that of a court.” Each step must be different “from those of ordinary criminal procedure.” Then, “A constitutional tribunal solely, you are bound by no law, either statute or common, which may limit your constitutional prerogative. You consult no precedents save those of the law and custom of parliamentary bodies. You are a law unto yourselves…”
Abrahams had begun to jot a note to his colleagues, reminding them of this precedent established by Ben Butler, reminding them this was not gloved fighting, but bare-knuckle, when, to his amazement, he realized that Zeke Miller had resumed, and that Zeke Miller had done homework at the same source.
“-and so, I repeat, able gentlemen, I repeat the words of my illustrious forebear who had opened for the House in that first impeachment of a President-I repeat-you are not tied down to the steps of ordinary criminal procedure, because you are an elected parliament. You don’t have to follow any precedents except those established by Congress. ‘You are a law unto yourselves, bound only by the natural principles of equity and justice, and that salus populi suprema est lex.’
“More and more as this trial progresses you will find me, and my fellow managers, harking back to the noble wisdom of our watchdog legislators of more than a century ago, the legislators who desperately tried to preserve the Union and government against the dictatorial encroachment of mad, drunk Andy Johnson. Again, with your leave, I echo the injunction of Ben Butler in 1868. In other times, in other lands, he pointed out, despotism was removed by assassination and rebellion. ‘Our fathers,’ he said, ‘more wisely, founding our government, have provided for such and all similar exigencies a conservative, effectual, and practical remedy by the constitutional provision that the “President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Constitution leaves nothing to implication, either as to the persons upon whom, or the body by whom, or the tribunal before which, or the offenses for which, or the manner in which this high power should be exercised; each and all are provided for by express words of imperative command.’ ”
Miller paused, surveyed his listeners, and then he said:
“We assemble here as warriors enlisted in the holy cause of the United States Constitution. Despotism has cast its black shadow across our fair land. As warriors of righteousness, we have heard the imperative command, and now, at any cost, we shall obey it.
“Honorable gentlemen and impartial judges, fellow warriors in this crusade, what are the charges we bring against the despot reigning in the White House? Are these four Articles of Impeachment, approved so overwhelmingly by your colleagues in the House, merely vindictive paper charges, indictments created out of envy, pique, spitefulness, and based on hearsay and conjecture? No! One thousand times no, and no again! The case of the People versus Douglass Dilman, President, motivated by patriotism and Americanism and nothing less, nay, motivated by a loftier purpose, motivated by duty to flag and country-this case is firmly based on the bedrock of truth and fact. Hear me-truth and fact!
“Let us proceed to examine the Articles of indictment one by one, and permit me to elaborate upon their fuller meaning, upon their intent, and upon the support of evidence we are prepared to give to each.”
Miller’s hand had gone into his pocket, extracted a rolled wad of notes bound by a rubber band. With deliberation, he removed the rubber band and spread out the notes.
“Article I,” he read, and then looked up. “Indictment number one arising from the heinous and treasonable behavior of the respondent…”
Nat Abrahams settled back, tightly crossing his arms over his chest, prepared to hear the outline of the prosecution’s case. There was no need for him to make notes. The pencils of Tuttle, Priest, and Hart would be busy. The stenotype beneath Leach’s fingers would capture it all for later reference. For Abrahams, it was enough to hear and weigh the slant and direction of the speech, so that he could make a final judgment about his own opening remarks.
Attentively, he listened.
Slurring the words, Miller hastily read Article I. Then, at a more deliberate pace, with greater care, he defined the indictment. The charge was treason. President Dilman was in possession of the nation’s topmost defense secrets. He was also possessor of a lady’s affection, and this lady, this Miss Wanda Gibson, who had once been tutored by, mesmerized by, employed by a professor of leftist leanings, had naturally gravitated to other employers who were of leftist persuasion. For five years she had worked as a confidential executive secretary for a Soviet Russian spy, who had since fled the country, and she had accepted a high salary, Judas money, from him and from his Vaduz Exporters, a secret Communist Front organization. Subsequently, from the President of the United States, who had perhaps been seduced by her beauty and proffered love, who had either innocently trusted her or deliberately sought to help her hold and improve her position, whose tongue had been loosened by a brain befogged by drink, Miss Gibson had acquired precious military secrets. Then, either because of her desire to impress her Soviet Communist employer or because of her long indoctrination in socialistic beliefs, she had passed on the American President’s confidences to Franz Gar, who had in turn speedily relayed them to Premier Kasatkin in Russia. Thus, knowing the secrets of our then current policy and strength, the U.S.S.R. had been in a position to anticipate and best us in divided Berlin, in India, in Brazil, and elsewhere.
In the immediate days ahead, Miller went on to explain, the House managers would fill in the details of this traitorous design. They would provide witnesses, from Vaduz employees to White House employees, to prove-to prove beyond a shadow of doubt-that the President of the United States had this close relationship with Miss Gibson. They would bring to the stand the President’s own personal secretary, and enter a diary she had kept as Exhibit A, and they would bring to the stand the President’s own social secretary, to p
rove his extramarital liaison with Miss Gibson. They would bring forth subpoenaed witnesses, ranging from the leftist-minded professor who had taught Miss Gibson at the University of West Virginia, to the Director of the FBI, to prove that the President’s indiscretions had opened every file in the Pentagon, in SAC, in Cape Kennedy, to the Premier of Russia.
Now Miller read Article II, and in his explanation of it, gave it little elaboration. Because the President had placed a blood relationship above his oath of office, because of “a natural and unfortunately understandable passion for a member of a minority race and a desire to help militant members of that race,” the President had been in secret collusion with the infamous Turnerite Group and its condemned and soon-to-be-executed leader, Jefferson Hurley. There would be ample evidence to convince the eminent Senate members of the President’s criminality. There would be entered into the record Exhibit B, a letter in the hand of Julian Dilman, confessing his intent to become a secret member of the Turnerites. There would be subpoenaed witnesses who had seen the President and his son holding their surreptitious and questionable meetings in the White House and at Trafford University. There would be read an affidavit signed by the Attorney General of the United States himself, to reveal by what means the President had obstructed the Department of Justice in his effort to protect the Turnerites, and thereby protect his son. And because of this prejudiced interference, it would be shown how the President was as responsible as the murderer Hurley for the death of a noble and selfless Southern magistrate, namely, Judge Everett Gage, now in his Mississippi grave, a martyr to executive selfishness and conspiracy.
With the lip-smacking, leering delight of a young boy slowly turning the pages of a nudist periodical, Representative Zeke Miller fluently rolled out the charges specified in omnibus Article III.
“We are grown men, men of the world, and we know that Babylon has existed, and that weak men are weak in the flesh,” said Miller, his words winking out across the Chamber. “Seduction of the innocent, the fair, the frail, lechery imposed upon other men’s daughters and wives and widows, exists. However”-and his high-pitched voice rose several decibels, like a Confederate bugle, until its shrillness knifed across every portion of the auditorium-“when the leader of our democratic and spiritual renaissance, through wicked and sinful behavior, profanes the sacred sanctum where once slept the illustrious Abe Lincoln, profanes the hallowed halls of the President’s House where the tread of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, and both Roosevelts was once heard, it is a time not for revulsion but for retribution.”
The President, said Miller, grown coarse and intemperate in his long years of solitary bachelorhood, often inflamed by drink, had become disrespectful of the opposite sex. One extramarital love affair, with one of his own race, had not been enough to satiate him. He had sought out and hired the sweet and innocent daughter of one of the nation’s most respected and beloved legislators. He had brought close to him this young lady, little qualified though she was for the position he had offered her, baiting her with it for no other purpose than ultimately to satisfy his carnal needs. Yes, he had degraded his office, and his manhood, and his race, by attempting to force himself upon Miss Sally Watson while intoxicated, seduce her, and only through the grace of the Lord had she escaped. In due time, the victim herself, agonizing as reliving the experience would be for her, would recount the details of the horrifying episode. Photographs of her injuries, taken immediately after the terrible experience, would be entered into the record as Exhibit C by the managers of the House.
Miller went quickly over the other specifications in Article III, and from his table Abrahams grudgingly had to concede the effectiveness of his tactic. Miller sensed that he had made an impression with the details of the Sally Watson charge. It had been strong stuff, as the faces of the senators indicated, and Miller was too clever to water it down.
He glossed over the Wanda Gibson affair. Mainly, he emphasized that the President had dwelt under the same roof with this single woman for five years, encouraged by the Reverend Spinger (who would be a witness to the fact), because the Reverend had offered her up as a bribe to get preferential treatment for his Crispus Society. Suffice it that, even after leaving his licentious house on Van Buren Street and moving into the White House, the President had been compelled to return in the night, against all security advice, in order to be by the side of his mistress.
Dilman’s veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Program required little explanation, according to Miller. There would be a host of specialists of every race to show how severely the veto had hindered America’s economic advance and had damaged domestic peace. Soon enough, the House managers would spell out in detail the reasons behind the President’s incredible veto: his inability to study the bill with a brain sodden with alcohol, his persistent desire to placate Afro-American extremists who had no desire for the domestic tranquillity that passage of the bill would insure, above all, his determination to insult Congress and take all the reins of government into his own hands.
As to the President’s history of alcohol addiction, that would be put forth in irrefutable affidavits collected throughout the Midwest, and in Washington, D.C., and its environs.
Now, his voice having become ragged, Zeke Miller paused and swallowed a few times. He laid aside his notes, and then standing wide-legged, hands on his hips, he surveyed the crowded Senate Chamber.
“At last,” he said, “we have come to Article IV, the gravest crime we can charge against the President, the one beside which all others seem petty misdemeanors in their meaning and portent. For, in commission of this single misdeed, the Chief Executive has, like an insane Samson, attempted to crumple the pillars of our institutions and bring our proud temple of democracy down into rubble and ruin. It was mainly for this high crime that Andrew Johnson was haled before the bar of justice, and it is for this same act of arrogant lawlessness, if for no other, that we are met here this afternoon.
“Once more, permit me to quote Ben Butler’s remarks, on a similar issue, in the first impeachment trial. ‘Has the President, under the Constitution, the more than kingly prerogative at will to remove from office, and suspend from office indefinitely, all executive officers of the United States, either civil, military or naval, at any time and all times, and fill the vacancies with creatures of his own appointment, for his own purposes, without any restraint whatever, or possibility of restraint by the Senate, or by Congress through laws duly enacted? The House of Representatives, on behalf of the people, join this issue by affirming that the exercise of such powers is a high misdemeanor in office.’ ”
Miller halted, pulled himself to his full bantam height, and scanned the rows of senators directly before him.
“Honorable gentlemen, need more be said today? Has there been, in this century, in these United States, a Presidential act more overtly and nakedly tyrannical? No, never, never, in any century. The offense may be read on your desks. The crime admits of no discussion. What remains is only punishment for the crime.
“Honorable gentlemen, we of the House do here and now charge the President of the United States with contemptuously breaking a major law of the land, a law almost unanimously passed by Congress, a law not vetoed by his pen. We, of the House, do here and now charge the President of the United States with summarily removing from office the Secretary of State of the United States without the legal consent of the Senate, and of so doing not because his first Cabinet member had been disabled or was incompetent, but because his first Cabinet member advocated policies that were and are desired by the majority of the American people. For this adherence to democracy, our Secretary of State was beloved by the American people as he was beloved by our late President. And because our Secretary of State earned this popularity, because he was the next in line to succession of the Presidency, because his popularity posed a threat to the uneasy holder of that primary office, he was fired illegally by a horn-mad, jealous, spiteful President. For this vicious act, honorable gentlemen, we
of the House do here and now charge the President of the United States with violation of the Constitution of the United States.”
Zeke Miller paused, sucked in his breath, drew back his shoulders, lifted his arms high above his head in an evangelistic posture of beseeching both the Lord above and the Senate below.
“Fellow Americans!” he shouted. “I close our argument with the prayer that the historic warning be emblazoned from this memorable day of justice undertaken, to the day of reckoning and final judgment in this Chamber. Fellow Americans, kill the beast before the beast kills you!”
The galleries broke out into an unrestrained burst of applause, and here and there senators, and the majority of the House members behind them, came to their feet, clapping their hands. Zeke Miller gave a short nodding bow, turned on his heel, and went swiftly to his table, where his colleagues waited, all standing, faces wreathed in smiles of congratulations and triumph.
From above, Chief Justice Johnstone’s gavel fell steadily, its pounding drowned out by the tumult and clamor.
Nat Abrahams, arms still crossed over his chest, sat grimly, observing the spectacle, the animated congressmen and spectators, the swiveling television cameras. He knew that Miller had scored, hit low, scored high.
Engaged in a trial, Abrahams always divested himself of self-delusion, not hope but self-delusion. The opposition, he calculated, was far ahead at this point. They would have to be caught. It would not be an easy matter overtaking them. Miller’s hour and twenty minutes of oratory had worn down the senators, undoubtedly exhausted the attentiveness of millions of television viewers. How could reason hold them now? When you were sated with a rich feast and heady wine, what taste would there be for health foods and the milk of kindness?
Behind Abrahams, the Chief Justice’s gavel monotonously pounded, and gradually the din of mob celebration began to subside.
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