June 22, 1860. Bedford Gazette, Bedford, PA
The Covode Committee falling into Contempt. (Column 4)
The effort made by the self-righteous Covode to bring the Administration of President Buchanan into disrepute, through the instrumentality of a one-sided, partizan Committee, under the modus operandi of which, the said Covode was suffered to be prosecutor, witness, attorney, judge and part of the jury, has excited nothing but the contempt of all intelligent and liberal minded men. Many of the Opposition newspapers regard Covode as an arrant hypocrite and deprecate his bare-faced attempt to make party capital at the expense of the honor and character of our government.
The following from the Philadelphia Evening Journal, the organ of the Bell party in Philadelphia, we commend to the admirers of the immaculate Covode:
"The fact is, as every unprejudiced and/discerning man must see, that the present "Republican" majority in the House of Representatives, have employed their power during this session of Congress, chiefly in ex parte inquisitions into the conduct of the President and his Cabinet, in which the inquisitorial committees were packed with the enemies of the accused parties, whose action was so shaped as to elicit every fact that was likely to discredit the Administration, while every fact that would have been exculpatory, was suppressed. And all this was done, too, with the foreknowledge that whatever the result of the inquest might be, the parties originating it had the power, by a final vote in the House, to pass and record a sentence of condemnation, and with a foregone purpose to give the whole proceedings that damning issue.
The event, as exhibited in the resolutions passed yesterday, in censure of the President and the Secretary of the Navy, has consummated the design of the conspirators, and the journals of Congress are again disgraced with a denunciatory judgment, pronounced against the Executive of the nation, by a partisan majority in one branch of the Legislature, against every principle of constitutional right and power, and every rule of ordinary judicial propriety and justice.
Comment on this shameful abuse of the power of a majority in a single chamber of Congress is unnecessary. It is a striking example of abuse in those who have set themselves up as the special reformers of abuses. Those who will audaciously transgress all established limitations of legislative jurisdiction, and usurp functions denied to them by the fundamental law of the Government, for the purpose of exercising a malignant and dishonorable censorship over a co-ordinate department of the Administration, are not fit to be trusted with too much power. Moreover, the people will doubtless see that the whole aim of the "Covode," and other like has been to bring the President and his Constitutional advisers into public contempt, merely to provoke a counter current of feeling in favor of the "Republican" party, and, perceiving this fact, we trust that the only and real purpose of a shameful scheme of persecution will fail of realization.”
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And Wikipedia says the following about John Covode, the guy who created the above kind of attack on a President (Link):
"Covode is most famous for chairing a committee to investigate the possibility of impeaching President James Buchanan during the spring and summer of 1860."