The Honorable Benjamin R. Curtis (1809-1874), former associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, also later served as lead counsel for President Andrew Johnson during his 1868 impeachment trial. While the focus of this article is Curtis’ role in that proceeding, he is known as the only justice in American history to have stepped down from the high court on a matter of principle. Curtis resigned in 1857 after dissenting from the majority’s notorious decision in the Dred Scott case, which denied the enslaved plaintiff’s bid for emancipation.

Our first presidential impeachment took place in a postwar era marked by acrimonious political disagreements over Reconstruction. On Feb. 24, 1868, the House of Representatives adopted articles of impeachment charging the president with conspiring to violate certain laws, and for making speeches that disparaged Congress. The crux of the resolution, however, was a claimed violation of the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 for the removal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The House majority also elected seven congressmen to serve as their legal managers for the prosecution in the Senate. Only a small portion of the official record of Curtis’ opening remarks as leader of a team of five defense attorneys is reprinted here, chosen for its contemporary relevance to the same legal issues that this nation must now face anew, more than 150 years later:

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