Posted on 12/11/2014 1:31:02 PM PST by WhiskeyX
1787-1800
February 5, 1798 To Arrest an Impeached Senator
WilliamBlount
When barely nine years old, the Senate confronted a crisis of authority. An impeached senator refused to attend his trial in the Senate chamber. Unlike the House of Representatives, or the British House of Commons, the Senate lacked a Sergeant at Arms to enforce its orders. On February 5, 1798, the Senate expanded the duties, title, and salary of its doorkeeper to create the post of Sergeant at Arms. It then directed that officer to arrest the fugitive senator—the Honorable William Blount of Tennessee (pictured).
A signer of the U.S. Constitution, William Blount in 1796 had become one of Tennessee's first two senators. A year later President John Adams notified Congress that his administration had uncovered a conspiracy involving several American citizens who had offered to assist Great Britain in an improbable scheme to take possession of the Spanish-controlled territories of Louisiana and the Floridas. Blount was among the named conspirators. He had apparently devised the plot to prevent Spain from ceding its territories to France, a transaction that would have depressed the value of his extensive southwestern land holdings.
On July 7, 1797, while the Senate pondered what to do about Blount, the House of Representatives, for the first time in history, voted a bill of impeachment. The following day, the Senate expelled Blount—its first use of that constitutional power—and adjourned until November. Prior to adjourning, the Senate ordered Blount to answer impeachment charges before a select committee that would meet during the recess. Blount failed to appear. He had departed for Tennessee with no intention of returning.
On February 5, 1798, as the Senate prepared for his trial and still uncertain as to whether or not a senator, or former senator, was even liable for impeachment, it issued the arrest order. The Sergeant at Arms ultimately failed in his first mission, as Blount refused to be taken from Tennessee. A year later, the Senate dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction—and possibly for lack of Blount.
Reference Items:
Melton, Buckner Jr. The First Impeachment: The Constitution's Framers and the Case of Senator William Blount. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.
Melton, Buckner F., Jr. “Federal Impeachment and Criminal Procedure: The Framers’ Intent.” Maryland Law Review 52 (1993): 437-57.
Today, it remains to be seen whether the Constitution's intended power to impeach Members of Congress is to be upheld or unconstitutionally denied.
Yes, if the senate of our newborn republic went beyond Article I Section 5, (Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member) and asked the House to impeach the jerk, it sure sounds like precedent to me.
The House thought Senators could be impeached, but the Senate decided that they couldn’t. Impeachment of members of Congress is unnecessary, because each House has the power to expel a member.
Sounds like the (dis)honorable Mr. Blount was a relative of Harry Reid. Same M.O.
Blount County, TN is named after him.
“The House thought Senators could be impeached, but the Senate decided that they couldn’t.”
That is not entirely accurate. Some of the Senators voted to dismiss the impeachment because they believed the Senate lost jurisdiction after the Senate expelled Blount and Blount remained at large in defiance of an arrest warrant. Although some of the Senators voted to dismiss the impeachment arguing Senators were not civil officers in the meaning of the Constitution, their motive was not precedent because the other Senators made the decision instead on the basis Blount was no longer a Member of the Senate. Furthermore, the decision to impeach Senator Blount was a precedent established by the 5th Congress, while the trail was deliberately postponed to obtain more favorable treatment by the 6th Congress, who then failed to establish a precedent because of the divided and inconclusive basis of its vote to dismiss the impeachment trial of a defendant the Senate had failed to take into custody before the Senate tribunal..
“The 1797 impeachment of Senator William Blount of Tennessee stalled on the grounds that the Senate lacked jurisdiction over him. Because, in a separate action unrelated to the impeachment procedure, the Senate had already expelled Blount, the lack of jurisdiction may have been either because Blount was no longer a Senator, or because Senators are not civil officers of the federal government and therefore not subject to impeachment.”
It shows that the impeachment process from the beginning has been a Blount instrument.
Love it!!!
yuk yuk
Actually, to this day...no one has ever presented any kind of evidence to say that President Adams was correct. Adams also tried dumping some stuff on Thomas Jefferson that never did stick. So, I’d be skeptical of anything that Samuel Adams ever said.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
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