Conneaut High School - Tattler Yearbook (Conneaut, OH)

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devolved upon the Vice President. Bitterly opposing his projects and doing all in their power to thwart him, our lawmakers passed acts unworthy of such an august body. Disregarding these restrictions the President was charged with crimes worthy of impeachment. By the majority of only one vote, however, was he saved, and the Union has been compelled to blot out none of its chief Executives’ names from the national roll of honor. It is the desire of every true hearted American citizen that the motives of our people’s representatives may be above reproach, and that harmony may exist among the factions, for only then will our nation be at its best. Wars have been averted as well as foreshadowed by the verdict of a just and unprejudiced jury. The distructiveness of a third struggle with our mother country was prevented by the intervention of a court of arbitration, and the Alabama Claims were settled peacefully. We have seen, how, in our country’s past history, the struggles of law have played a silent, but most active part. How shall the question of International dispute of the future, be settled? Shall we follow the barbaric custom of our ancestors and meet our enemy on the battlefield? Shall we engage in the wars which cost the country millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of the best men? It is to be hoped that the destructiveness of the past may be eliminated from the struggles of the future. Nations are gradually becoming more peaceful and are allowing the vital questions, internal and external, to be settled harmoniously by a tribunal. The Peace Conferences of the last decade have been a great stride toward the bloodless settlement of international disputes, and their true worth is gradually being realized by the nations. For only when the fate of Empires is entrusted to a Congress, efficient and unprejudiced, will the barbaric motto “Might makes Right” be cast aside, and “Might Subordinate to Right,” be the cry of the nations. CARL WILSON. 11

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this privilege is copied. The servants of the people, our law-makers, are chosen to accomplish the desires of their constituents, and only when empowered to criticise or to applaud may the people see the realization of their hopes. Hut once has Congress attempted to stop the flow of public opinion and divert just criticism from its natural course. Goaded to anger by the spurs of a fault-finding faction, the National Legislature instituted restrictions on the freedom of speech and of the press, possessing striking characteristics for shattering the peace of the newly-formed republic. What a fallacy to presume that the masses are to be silenced by mere laws. No law will close the mouth of a wronged people. After a long and tedious trial, by which one person was convicted, after the enactment of a series of measures which resulted in the downfall of the Federalist party. Congress repealed the obnoxious Alien and Sedition Laws Never again will the American people tolerate the passage of such acts, for they rejoice in their birthright of freedom. Under a minor pretext, seemingly, the people will, at times, rise to defend their rights; but if a careful study is made of the motives which impel them to action, momentous underlying principles are found to be involved. A mere word may flame the sparks of discord to a rebellion. The cases of the United States vs Brown and the United States vs Dred Scott were factors which aroused the commonwealth from legarthy to action, which culminated in the Civil War. Watching the proceedings closely as the days of the trial sped by, the feeling between the North and South became more and more intense. Finally, when convicted of treason, the entire country had been fully aroused, and the Union had suffered a wound which only the horrors of a Civil War could heal. “No legal controversy in the United States has ever equalled the Dred Scott case in point of historic interest.” Claiming freedom, resulting from removal of a slave to a free territory, Scott appealed the case to the highest court of the land. But what a shattering to all the hopes of the anti-slavery faction was the decision. The slave was property, the Missouri Compromise illegal, and slavery could exist from border to border of this free land. The North stood aghast, for she understood, as a sequence of this verdict, that the slave holder might walk the streets of Boston as freely as those of Richmond ; but the South was jubilant, for the slavery faction would inevitably be strengthened. But an irreparable breach had separated the two, and soon brother was fighting against brother, and father against son. On March 30th 1868 the “greatest state trial in the history of our country” was about to be tried, when Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors was brought before the .Senate of the United .States. By the work of an assassin, the one man, capable of carrying out the problems of reconstruction, had been removed, and the duties of the office 10

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CLASS ROLL Richard Armstrong “I’ve saw young men that knowed it all And didn t like the way things went on this terrestchul ball.” Class Speaker, Junior Farce, 1907. 12