The strategy was brilliant: to rouse emotion in his audience by playing on Republican ambivalence, Evarts provided moderates and even radical-leaning Republicans a way out of their dilemma, which was in effect to respect and preserve the office of the presidency even though they disapproved of Johnson for his crudeness, his bias, his obstructionism, and his disdain for a legally reconstructed nation. Evarts thus manipulated fellow Republicans, speaking for those who, like himself, thought Johnson a boor who had actually harmed the peace but who also believed that his conviction would destroy
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