Mr. Sumner demanded, first, "the complete re-establishment, in loyalty, as shown by an honest recognition of the unity of the Republic, and the duty of allegiance to it at all times, without mental reservation or equivocation of any kind." How Mr. Sumner could determine that "the recognition of the unity of the Republic" washonest, how he could know whether there was not, after all, a mental reservation on the part of the rebels now swearing allegiance, he did not attempt to inform the Senate. The next or second condition was somewhat more practical in fact, but might have been expressed in simpler form. He demanded "the complete suppression of all oligarchical pretensions, and the complete enfranchisement of all citizens, so that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race or color." His third condition was "the rejection of the rebel debt, and the adoption, in just proportions, of the National debt and the National obligations to Union soldiers, with solemn pledges never to join in any measure, directly or indirectly, for their repudiation, or in any way tending to impair the National credit." His fourth condition was "the organization of an educational system for the equal benefit of all, without distinction of color or race." His fifth had some of the objectionable features of his first, demanding "the choice of citizens for office, whether State or National, of constant and undoubted loyalty, whose conduct and conversation shall give assurance of peace and reconciliation." The rebel States were not to be, in Mr. Sumner's language, "precipitated back to political power and independence, but must wait until these conditions are, in all respects, fulfilled." In addition, he desired a declaration of the Senate that "the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, has become and is a part of the Constitution of the United States, having received the approval of the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States adhering to the Union." He declared that "the votes of the States in rebellion are not necessary, in any way, to its adoption, but they must all agree to it through their Legislatures, as a condition precedent to their restoration to their full rights as members of the Union." With these resolutions Mr. Sumner submitted another long series declaratory of the duty of Congress in respect to loyal citizens in the rebel States. His first series had defined what the lately rebellious States must agree to by popular vote, and he now outlined quite fully what would be the duty of Congress respecting the admission of those States to representation in the Senate and the House. The sum of the whole, or the central fact of the whole series, was that the color of the skin must not exclude a loyal man from civil rights.
On the succeeding day, the President, having received notice of the organization of the two Houses, communicated his annual message. It had been looked for with great interest and with varying speculations as to its character. It was expected, and as the event proved with good reason, that it would affect the relation of parties in the Northern States; that it would produce ill-feeling between the President and the Republicans, who had chosen him; and that it would lead, with equal certainty, to a tender of support from the Democrats who had hitherto opposed him. But Mr. Johnson had evidently resolved to exhibit a spirit of calmness and firmness in his official communication, and, while steadily maintaining his own ground, to avoid all harsh words that might give offense to those who differed from him. The moderation in language and the general conservatism which distinguished the message were perhaps justly attributed to Mr. Seward, who had no doubt hoped, by kindly words of conciliation, to avert the threatened break in the ranks of the Republican party. Mr. Seward had never in his Congressional career been a compromiser, but he now worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress. His argument was the one skillfully employed by all who seek an adjustment between those who ought to be friends: Let each party give way a little; let a common ground of action be established; and, above all, let the calamity of a party division be averted.
The President in his message dwelt at some length in a tone of moderation upon the condition of affairs in the South. He saw before him but two modes of dealing with the insurrectionary states,—one was "to bring them back into practical relations with the Union;" the other was to "hold them in military subjection." . . . "Military government," said the President, "established for an indefinite period, would offer no security for the suppression of discontent, would divide the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would envenom hatred rather than restore affection. . . ." The President set forth the danger of permanent arbitrary rule. "Once established, no precise limit to the continuance of the military governments is conceivable. They would occasion an incalculable and exhausting expense. Peaceful emigration would be prevented, for what emigrant abroad, what industrious citizen at home, would willingly place himself under military rule?"—"Besides," asked the President, "would not the policy of military rule imply that the States whose inhabitants may have taken part in the rebellion have, by the act of those inhabitants, ceased to exist? whereas the true theory is, that all pretended acts of secession were from the beginning null and void." The President then briefly explained how he had proceeded in the appointment of provisional governors, the calling of conventions, the election of civil governors and Legislatures, the choosing of senators and representatives in Congress,—compactly sketching the progress of events from the date of his accession until the date of the message.
Discussing his proposed policy he said with great frankness, "I know very well that for its success it requires, at least, the acquiescence of those States which it concerns; that it implies an invitation to those States, by renewing their allegiance to the United States, to resume their functions as States of the Union; but it is a risk that must be taken, and in the choice of difficulties, it is the smallest risk." He urged very earnestly the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in order that the negro should be freed, and with equal strength maintained that, as respected the qualifications for suffrage in each of the States "the General Government should not interfere, but leave that matter where it was originally left,—in the Federal Constitution." But the most partial friend of the President could hardly claim that he frankly communicated the proceedings or the spirit of the Southern conventions and Legislatures. He chose to ignore that subject, to hide it by fluent and graceful phrase from public criticism, and thus to keep from the official knowledge of Congress the most important facts in the whole domain of reconstruction. It was a great mistake in the President to pass over this subject in silence. Such a course enforced one of two impressions, either of which was hurtful to him. He must, according to the common understanding of Congress, have thought the character of Southern legislation so offensive that he could find no excuse for it and therefore would not mention it; or he must have regarded it as outside the line of his observation and beyond the pale of his power of review. Either construction was bad, but the second and more probable one was especially offensive.
The leading men of the Thirty-ninth Congress were mainly those of the Thirty-eighth, though there had been a few important changes. The eminent senator from Vermont, Jacob Collamer, died on the 9th of November (1865); and Luke P. Poland, afterwards a member of the House of Representatives, appeared as his successor. Mr. Solomon Foot, who announced Judge Collamer's death, survived him but a few months. On the 28th of March Mr. Sumner announced his death to the Senate; and eight days later—on the 5th of April (1866)—George F. Edmunds was sworn in as his successor. His first speech was in eulogy of his predecessor. Mr. Edmunds rose rapidly to prominence in the Senate and after the habit of his State has been maintained for a long period in his position.
Honorable James Guthrie of Kentucky, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under President Pierce, now entered the Senate as the successor of Lazarus W. Powell. He was a man of strong parts, possessing a steady industry and thrift not common to the South. He had for many years occupied a commanding financial position in the South-West. Richard Yates, the War Governor of Illinois, displaced William A. Richardson, the intimate friend of Douglas. John P. Hale gave way to Aaron H. Cragin. In recognition of Mr. Hale's ability and long and faithful public service, Mr. Lincoln nominated him to the Spanish Mission. John A. J. Creswell came from Maryland as the successor of Anthony Kennedy. George H. Williams, a Republican, came from Oregon to take the place of Benjamin F. Harding, a Democrat. John P. Stockton of New Jersey, a Democrat, took the place of John C. Ten Eyck, a Republican. Samuel J. Kirkwood entered as the successor of James Harlan to fill his unexpired term, and performed a somewhat unusual service in presenting the credentials of James Harlan as his successor for the first full term, beginning March 4, 1867. This was the first appearance of Mr. Kirkwood in the National field, though he had long been well known for honorable and eminent service in his State.
In the House the changes were more significant than in the Senate. Gilman Marston entered anew, having been absent serving with great credit as a brigadier-general in the war. General Banks resumed the seat which he had left to accept the governorship of Massachusetts in 1857. His checkered and remarkable career, both civil and military, during the eight intervening years had greatly increased his reputation. Henry C. Deming of Connecticut entered fresh from the field of war, choosing a political life rather than a return to literary labor. New York was greatly strengthened in her delegation. Roscoe Conkling resumed the seat which he had lost in the political reverses of 1862. Among the new members were Henry J. Raymond, the able founder and editor ofThe New-York Times, Robert S. Hale, who became at once distinguished in the arena of debate, and Hamilton Ward, afterwards Attorney-General of his State. These additions gave to the delegation a prestige which its numbers did not always secure. John H. Ketcham, who had attained the rank of brigadier-general by successful service in the field, took his seat in this Congress, destined to hold it for a long period, destined also to exert large political influence without ever once addressing the House of Representatives or an assembly of the people. Reuben E. Fenton, after long and able service in the House, was now transferred to the gubernatorial chair of his State.
Three new men of note entered from Pennsylvania—John M. Broomall, an independent thinker and keen debater, inflexible in principle, untiring in effort; Ulysses Mercur, whose learning as a lawyer and whose worth as a man have since received their reward in a promotion to the Supreme Bench of his State; George V. Lawrence, one of the best known and most sagacious political leaders of Western Pennsylvania, inheriting his capacity from his honored father, Joseph Lawrence, who died during his membership of the Twenty-seventh Congress. John L. Thomas, junior, entered as the representative of the city of Baltimore; and the venerable Francis Thomas returned from his hermitage and his weird life in the Alleghanies.
Ohio grew even stronger than before, and her delegation was again recognized as the leading one of the House. Samuel Shellabarger, John A. Bingham and Columbus Delano re-entered with reputation already established by previous service in Congress. William Lawrence, a conscientious legislator and careful lawyer, entered from the Bellefontaine District. Martin Welker, since promoted to the bench in his State, came from the Wooster District. One of the Cincinnati districts was represented by Benjamin Eggleston, a man of great force and energy; and the other, by a modest man, without experience in legislation, but who had been a good and true soldier in the war for the Union and was highly esteemed by his neighbors. He did not take an active part in Congress, but was destined to a prominence of which he little dreamed—Rutherford B. Hayes.
The Indiana delegation was strengthened on the Democratic side by the return of William E. Niblack, who had made a good record in the Thirty-seventh Congress, and by the entrance of Michael C. Kerr, who served for a long period and ultimately became Speaker of the House. Messrs. Julian, Orth, and Dumont were again elected. The last-named had made a reputation in the preceding Congress as a keen and able man. The Illinois delegation, which had contained a large majority of Democrats in the Thirty-eighth Congress, now returned strongly Republican,—Mr. Lincoln's victory of 1864 having, with three exceptions, carried with it every Congressional district. Four men of marked characteristics were among the new members of the delegation, one of whom was already widely known: the three others were destined to become so in different degrees—John Wentworth, Shelby M. Cullom, Burton C. Cook, and Jehu Baker. Wentworth had been in the House as a Democrat prior to the war, having represented the Chicago District continuously from March 4, 1843 to March 4, 1851; and again from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1855. He was endowed by nature with a mind as strong as his body, and that was of Titanic proportions. He was an ardent partisan in behalf of any cause he espoused; was willful, aggressive, and dominating. He was, at the same time, genial and kindly in many relations of life, not without gifts of both wit and humor, and courageous to the point of absolute fearlessness. He had been well educated at Dartmouth College in his native State, and long practice had made him a dangerous antagonist in debate. He had been an intense Democrat, but he refused to join Douglas in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and subsequently united with the Republicans.—Shelby M. Cullom, with good natural parts and sound education, amiable, pleasing, and endowed with the gracious quality which attracts and holds friends, won his way promptly in the House and gave early promise of the success which afterwards elevated him to the governorship of Illinois, and thence transferred him to the Senate of the United States.—Burton C. Cook was recognized as an able lawyer from the beginning of his service. He constantly grew in influence and strength during the eight years of his continuous membership, and at its close returned to the bar with an enviable reputation and with the assurance of that eminent success which has since attended his professional career.—Jehu Baker was a man of peculiarities, not to say oddities, of bearing; but these did not conceal his worth and ability, nor retard the growing reputation which has since retained him in a diplomatic position.
Missouri, then under the control of the Republican party, included in her delegation Robert T. Van Horn, a Pennsylvanian by birth, who had borne a conspicuous part in the contest with the disloyal elements of the State of his adoption; and John Hogan, a genial Irish Democrat from the St. Louis District. The Michigan delegation was the same as in the Thirty-eighth Congress, with the exception of Thomas W. Ferry, who now entered for the first time, and Roland E. Trowbridge, who had served in the Thirty-seventh Congress. The Iowa delegation was the same as in the Thirty-eighth Congress,—a very able body of men with growing influence in the House. The Wisconsin delegation was also in large part the same. But the new members were men of note. Among them were Halbert E. Paine and Philetus Sawyer. General Paine had served with distinction in the war and had lost a leg in battle. He was a lawyer in full practice, a man of the highest integrity, without fear and without reproach. Born in the Western Reserve, he was radical in his views touching the slavery question and progressive in all matters of governmental reform.—Philetus Sawyer was a native of Vermont, who, when a young man, had emigrated to Wisconsin. Without early advantages, either of education or fortune, he was in the best sense of the phrase a self-made man. He engaged in the business of lumbering and by sagacity had acquired wealth. It is easy to supply superlatives in eulogy of popular favorites; but Mr. Sawyer, in modest phrase, deserves to be ranked among the best of men,—honest, industrious, generous, true to every tie and to every obligation of life. He remained for ten years in the House, with constantly increasing influence, and was afterward promoted to the Senate. California sent an excellent delegation—McRuer, Higby, and Bidwell; and West Virginia contributed a valuable member in the person of Chester D. Hubbard.
The members of the House had been elected in 1864—borne to their seats by the force of the same popular expression that placed Mr. Lincoln in the Presidential chair for a second term. It is scarcely conceivable that had Mr. Lincoln lived any serious differences could have arisen between himself and Congress respecting the policy of reconstruction. The elections of 1865, held amid the shouts of triumph over a restored union, went by default in favor of the Republicans, who were justly credited with the National victory so far as any one political party was entitled to such honor. The people had therefore given no expression, in any official or registered form, touching the policy outlined by Mr. Johnson. He was the duly-elected Vice-President. He had come to the magistracy in presumed sympathy and close affiliation with the Republicans whose suffrages he had received. All beyond these facts was surmise or inference. No one knew any thing with precision respecting the new President's intentions.
He undoubtedly had control of an enormous public patronage. The Peace establishment of the Army, it was thought at that time, would not be less than seventy-five regiments, and this, with the necessary staff, would give to him the appointment of nearly two thousand officers without disturbing the commissions of those already in the regular service. A like increase was expected in the naval establishment. The internal-revenue system, devised for the support of the war, was all-pervasive in its character, and required for its administration a great number of officers and agents, all removable and appointable at the pleasure of the Executive. The customs' service was correspondingly large, having grown immensely during the war. In proportion to the population of the country there never had been, there has never since been, and perhaps there will never again be, so vast an official patronage placed at the absolute disposal of the President.
Public opinion, which has in later years tended to restrain the Executive Department from the personal use of the patronage of the Government, did not at that time exert a perceptible influence in this direction. The maxim originating with William L. Marcy, but frequently attributed to President Jackson, that "to the victor belong the spoils," was then held in full honor; and though it was deprecated by many and openly opposed in Congress by a few, it was acquiesced in by the vast majority and was the rule and practice of the National Administration. The patronage placed a formidable weapon in the hands of the President which could be so used as to annoy or help every Republican representative in Congress,—so used, indeed, as to prevent the election of many who were peculiarly offensive to Mr. Johnson. He had been reared in the Democratic school of proscription, and had measured the force and indulged in the use of patronage throughout all his political life in Tennessee. Though a man of the strictest personal integrity, he had apparently no scruples on this subject, but believed that the patronage of the Government might be honestly used to build up his own political power. When he entered political life he imbibed this doctrine from the teachings of President Jackson; he afterwards received its advantage under Van Buren; he aided in its enforcement under Polk; and when a senator, during the Administration of Buchanan, he witnessed its prodigious power in the overthrow of Douglas as a Presidential candidate, though a large majority of the rank and file of his party desired his nomination. While the Democratic masses were, in fact, clamorous for Douglas, he was defeated by combinations brought about through the active instrumentality of United-States district attorneys, collectors, marshals, and their deputies—all acting, as they had good reason to know, in harmony with the wishes of the Administration from whose favor they had received their places.
The Republicans of the loyal States, whose convictions and whose prejudices were strongly developed by the controversy between the President and Congress, had grave apprehensions as to the ultimate issue. At various times during the fifteen years preceding the war, they had seen men of strong anti-slavery professions, with strong anti-slavery constituencies, "palter in a double sense" when intrusted with the duties of a representative in Congress, and fall from the faith, influenced by what were termed the blandishments of power, or as was sometimes more plainly said, corrupted by the gifts of patronage. They had seen this results brought about by an Administration which the tempted and yielding representatives had been specially chosen to oppose. They had now double ground to fear that many more would prove treacherous to their professions of principle, since they could take refuge under the protection of an Administration chosen by their own party and still nominally professing to be Republican. The magnitude of the patronage at the President's disposal intensified the popular alarm; and the promptness with which a large proportion of those holding office echoed the President's sentiments and defended his policy, was taken as a signal that acquiescence therein would be the one condition upon which the honors and emoluments of public place could be enjoyed.
The great mass of loyal Republicans had descried a peculiar danger in the gentle, persuasive, insinuating words with which the President, in his annual message, sought to commend his policy. Phrasing of a specious type can deceive an individual far more easily that it can deceive a multitude of men. The quick comprehension of the people so far transcends that of a single person as to amount almost to the possession of a sixth sense. While the single person might be misled by fallacious statements and suppressions of truth by the President, the people discerned with keen precision the absolute facts of the case. They saw that the policy of the President was at war with the creed and the spirit of the Republican party, and that, if carried into effect, the legitimate fruits of the bloody struggle which had afflicted the Nation would be lost to posterity, the laws of humanity would be violated, and a fresh rebellion against National authority would be invited. The ancient maxim, that the voice of the people is the voice of God, is illogical in its direct statement, and like all adages it covers both a truth and an untruth. Its truth was now signally vindicated, when, against the authority of those in high places, against the instruction of those who had always before been trusted, the mass of the Republican party stood with heroic firmness for what they believed to be right. They stood against the seductions of patronage in the hands of the President whom they had elected, and against the eloquent pleadings of the Secretary of State who for ten years before the war had been their sagacious guide, their profound philosopher, their trusted friend.
It was this common instinct and prompt expression by the people which rescued Congress from the danger of injurious complication. The first test in the Senate, as to the solidity of the Republican party, was made on the 12th of December, when the resolution to form a select committee of reconstruction, passed by the House on the first day of the session, came up for consideration. It was amended on the motion of Mr. Anthony, by striking out that portion of it which provided that no member should be received into either House from the so-called Confederate States until the report of the committee was received and acted upon. This was held to impinge on the power of each House to be the judge of its own elections, and was expunged by general consent. On the propriety of the resolution thus amended a brief debate occurred, which to a certain extent enabled senators to define their position; and before it was concluded it was made evident that Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, Mr. Dixon of Connecticut, and Mr. Doolittle of Wisconsin, would separate from the mass of their Republican associates, would support the reconstruction policy of the President, and would ultimately become merged in the Democratic party. Mr. Norton of Minnesota not long afterwards became one of the supporters of the President, making a net loss of four to the Republican side of the chamber. The Senate, at that time, contained fifty members, twenty-five States being represented. Of this number the Democrats had but eleven. The loss of four still left the Republicans in possession of more than two-thirds of the seats in the Senate. The House had even a larger proportion of Republican members. These facts were destined to exert a wide and then unforseen influence upon the legislation of Congress and upon the political affairs of the country.
The House concurred promptly in the amendment which the Senate had made to the resolution providing for a joint committee on the subject of Reconstruction. It is not often that such solicitude is felt in Congress touching the membership of a committee as was now developed in both branches. It was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen. The contest, predestined and already manifest, between the President and Congress might, unless conducted with great wisdom, so seriously divide the party as to compass its ruin. Hence the imperious necessity that no rash or ill-considered step should be taken. Both in Congress and among the people the conviction was general that the party was entitled to the services of its best men. There was no struggle among members for positions on the committee; and when the names were announced they gave universal satisfaction to the Republicans. There was some complaint by the Democrats that they had only one representative upon the committee in the Senate and two in the House, but the relative strength of parties in both branches scarcely justified a larger representation of the minority.(1)
Even before the announcement of the names a great number of resolutions were offered in the House, intended to call forth expressions of opinion that should operate as instructions to the new committee, but none of them were of marked importance, except one indicating the pronounced divergence of the two parties regarding the mode of reconstruction. Each political party, in such parliamentary declarations, seeks to get the advantage of the other and each is in the habit of overrating the importance of expressions in this form. They are diligently contrived for catches and committals to be subsequently used in political campaigns, but it may well be doubted whether they ever produce substantial effect upon legislation or prove either gainful or hurtful in partisan contests. The practice is somewhat below the dignity of a legislative body, has never been resorted to in the Senate and might with great advantage be abandoned by the House.
The debate on Reconstruction, perhaps the longest in the history of National legislation, was formally opened by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens on the 18th of December (1865). He took the most radical and pronounced ground touching the relation to the National Government of the States lately in rebellion. He contended that "there are two provisions in the Constitution, under one of which the case must fall." The Fourth Article says that "new States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." "In my judgment," said Mr. Stevens, "this is the controlling provision in this case. Unless the law of Nations is a dead letter, the late war between the two acknowledged belligerents severed their original contracts and broke all the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new States or remain as conquered provinces." This was the theory which Mr. Stevens had steadily maintained from the beginning of the war, and which he had asserted as frequently as opportunity was given in the discussions of the House. He proceeded to consider the probable alternative. "Suppose," said he, "as some dreaming theorists imagine, that these States have never been out of the Union, but have only destroyed their State governments, so as to be incapable of political action, then the fourth section of the Fourth Article applies, which says, 'The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.'" "But," added he, "who is the United States? Not the Judiciary, not the President; but the sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives in congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. It means political government—the concurrent action of both branches of Congress and the Executive." He intended his line of debate to be an attack, at the very beginning, upon the assumption of the President in his attempt at Reconstruction. "The separate action of the President, or the Senate or the House," added Mr. Stevens, "amounts to nothing, either in admitting new States or guaranteeing republican forms of government to lapsed or outlawed States." "Whence springs," asked he, "the preposterous idea that any one of these, acting separately, can determine the right of States to send representatives or senators to the Congress of the Union?"
Though many others had foreseen and appreciated the danger, Mr. Stevens was the first to state in detail the effect which might be produced by the manumission of the slaves upon the Congressional representation of the Southern States. He pointed out the fact that by counting negroes in the basis of representation, the number of representatives from the South would be eighty-three; excluding negroes from the basis of representation, they would be reduced to forty-six; and so long as negroes were deprived of suffrage he contended that they should be excluded from the basis of representation. "If," said he, "they should grant the right of suffrage to persons of color, I think there would always be white men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide representation and thus continue loyal ascendency. If they should refuse to thus alter their election laws it would reduce the representation of the late slave States, and render them powerless for evil." Mr. Stevens's obvious theory at that time was not to touch the question of suffrage by National interposition, but to reach it more effectively perhaps by excluding the entire colored population from the basis of Congressional representation, until by the action of the Southern States themselves the elective franchise should be conceded to the colored population. As he proceeded in his speech, Mr. Stevens waxed warm with all his ancient fire on the slavery question. "We have," said he, "turned or are about to turn loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The diabolical laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the commonest laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound to look after them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not hedge them around with protecting laws, if we leave them to the legislation of their old masters, we had better have left them in bondage. Their condition will be worse than that of our prisoners at Andersonville. If we fail in this great duty now when we have the power, we shall deserve to receive the execration of history and of all future ages."
In conclusion Mr. Stevens declared that "Two things are of vital importance: first, to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any of the Amendments to the Constitution, until they are duly admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their conqueror; second, it should now be solemnly declared what power can revive, re-create and re-instate these provinces into the family of States and invest them with the rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should assert the sovereignty and assume something of the dignity of a Roman Senate." He denounced with great severity the cry that "This is a white man's Government." "If this Republic," said he with great earnestness, "is not now made to stand on solid principle, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to its centre. If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God's creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father, still increasing his afflictions, as he increased the severity of the plagues of Egypt until the tyrant consented to do justice, and when that tyrant repented of his reluctant consent and attempted to re-enslave the people, as our Southern tyrants are attempting to do now, he filled the Red Sea with broken chariots and drowned horses, and strewed the shore with the corpses of men. Sir, this doctrine of a white man's Government is as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame, and I fear to everlasting fire."
The speech of Mr. Stevens gave great offense to the Administration. He had not directly assailed the President by name, and had even assumed to construe one of the paragraphs of the message as referring the question of reconstruction anew to Congress; but this assumption was simply for effect and was well known by Mr. Stevens to be unfounded. The Administration did not misapprehend the drift and intention of Mr. Stevens, and its members saw that it was the first gun fired in a determined war to be waged against its policy and itsprestige. They were especially anxious that its defense should not be undertaken by Democrats, or at least that Democrats should not take the lead in defending it. Mr. Stevens spoke on the 18th of December, and Congress had already voted to adjourn on the 21st for the Christmas recess. The Administration desired the Mr. Stevens's speech should not be permitted to go unanswered to the country and thus hold public attention until Congress should re-assemble in January. It was important that some response be made to it at once; and Mr. Henry J. Raymond, widely known to the political world but now in Congress for the first time, was selected to make the reply.
In a political career that was marked by many inconsistencies, as consistency is measured by the party standard, with a disposition not given to close intimacies or warm friendships, Mr. Raymond had continuously upheld the public course of Mr. Seward, and had maintained a singular steadiness of personal attachment to the illustrious statesman from New York. On the other hand, he was the rival of Horace Greeley in the field of journalism and had become personally estranged from the founder of theTribune;though in his early manhood he had been one of his editorial assistants. The fact that theTribunewas against the Administration would of itself dispose Mr. Raymond to support it. But aside from this consideration, the chivalric devotion of Mr. Raymond to Mr. Seward would have great weight in determining his position in the pending conflict. Mr. Seward's committal to the policy and the assault upon it by theNew-York Tribunewould therefore through affection on the one side and prejudice on the other, naturally fix Mr. Raymond's position. He had acquired wide and worthy fame as conductor of theNew-York Times, had achieved a high reputation as a polemical writer, was well informed on all political issues and added to his power with the pen the gift of ready and effective speech.
On the twenty-fist day of December, the last day before the recess, Mr. Raymond, desiring the floor, was somewhat chagrined to find himself preceded by Mr. Finck of Ohio, a respectable gentleman of the Vallandingham type of Democrat,—representing a political school whose friendship to the Administration at that time was a millstone about its neck. Mr. Raymond followed Mr. Finck late in the day, and could not help showing his resentment that the ground which the Administration intended to occupy should be so promptly pre-empted by the anti-war party of the country. "I have," said Mr. Raymond at the opening of his speech, "no party feeling which would prevent me from rejoicing in the indications apparent on the Democratic side of the House, of a purpose to concur with the loyal Administration of the Government and with the loyal majorities in both Houses of Congress in restoring peace and order to our common country. I cannot, however, help wishing, sir, that these indications in the preservation of our Government had come somewhat sooner. I cannot help feeling that such expressions cannot now be of as much use to the country as they might once have been. If we could have had from that side of the House such indications of an interest in the preservation of the Union, such heartfelt sympathy with the friends of the Government for the preservation of the Union, such hearty denunciations for all those who were seeking its destruction, while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some years of war, some millions of money and rivers of blood and tears." This utterance was sharpened and made significant by the manner and by the accent of Mr. Raymond. No more pointed rebuke, no more keen reproach (not intended for Mr. Finck personally, but for his party) could have been administered. What the Administration or especially what Mr. Seward desired, and what Mr. Raymond was to speak for, was Republican support; and the prior indorsement of Mr. Johnson's position by the Democracy was a hinderance and not a help to the cause he had espoused.
Mr. Raymond's principal aim was to join issue with Mr. Stevens on his theory ofdead States. "The gentleman from Pennsylvania," said Mr. Raymond, "believes that what we have to do is to create new States out of this conquered territory, at the proper time, many years distant, retaining them meanwhile in a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage as Congress and the Government of the United States may see fit to prescribe. If I believed in the premises he assumes, possibly though I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has reached; but, sir, I cannot believe that these States have ever been out of the Union or that they are now out of the Union. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the American Union? Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of the Union is simply a nullity because it encounters the Constitution of the United States which is the supreme law of the land.
"Did the resolutions of those States," continued Mr. Raymond, "the declarations of their officials, the speeches of the members of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press, accomplish the result desired? Certainly not. All these were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was first announced. They proceeded to sustain their purpose of secession by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against them. Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt—a purpose unfulfilled. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms. In other words, they failed to secede."
Mr. Raymond's speech was listened to with profound attention, and evoked the high compliment of frequent interruptions from leading men on the Republican side of the House. Messrs. Schenck, Bingham and Spalding of Ohio, Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Kelley of Pennsylvania, all put pointed questions and were at once answered with undoubted tact and cleverness. Mr. Raymond was helped to a specious point by Mr. Niblack of Indiana, of which he made prompt and vigorous use, to the effect that the theory of Mr. Stevens, if carried to its legitimate consequences, would make those who resisted the Confederacy in the insurrectionary states guilty of treason to that power; and that therefore "we would be unable to talk of loyal men in the South. Loyal to what? Loyal to a foreign and independent power, which the gentleman from Pennsylvania was really maintaining the Confederacy for the time being to represent."
Immediately after the recess the Reconstruction debate was resumed, and an able speech made by Mr. Spalding of Ohio, reviewing the subject generally rather than specifically replying to Mr. Raymond. Representing one of the districts of the Western Reserve (the most radical section of the United States), it is interesting to see what Mr. Spalding declared would be satisfactory to the mass of his constituents as conditions precedent to the re-admission of the rebel States. He laid down five requirements:First, "to give a qualified right of suffrage to the freedmen in the District of Columbia;"second, to "so amend the Constitution of the United States that people of color shall not be counted with the population in making up the ratio of representation in Congress, except in those States where they are permitted to exercise the elective franchise;"third, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting nullification and secession;"fourth, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting the repudiation of the National debt and also prohibiting the assumption of the rebel debt;"fifth, to provide in the Constitution that "no person who has at any time taken up arms against the United States shall ever be admitted to a seat in the Senate or House of Representatives."
On the eighth day of January, two days after the re-assembling of Congress, Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio specifically answered the speech of Mr. Raymond. He spoke with care and preparation, as was his habit. He wasted no words, but in clear, crisp sentences subjected the whole question to the rigid test of logic. "I shall inquire," said Mr. Shellabarger, "whether the Constitution deals with States. I shall discuss the question whether an organized rebellion against a government is an organized State in that government; whether that which cannot become a State until all its officers have sworn to support the Constitution, remains a State after they have all sworn to overthrow that Constitution. If I find it does continue to be a State after that, then I shall strive to ascertain whether it will so continue to be a Government—a State—after, by means of universal treason, it has ceased to have any constitution, laws, legislatures, courts, or citizens in it."
"If, in debating this question," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "I debate axioms, my apology is that there are not other questions to debate in Reconstruction. If," said he with well-timed sarcasm, "in the discussion, I make self-evident things obscure or incomprehensible, my defense shall be that I am conforming to the usages of Congress. I will not inquire whether any subject of this Government, by reason of the revolt, passed from under its sovereignty or ceased to owe it allegiance; nor shall I inquire whether any territory passed from under that jurisdiction, because I know of no one who thinks that any of these things did occur. I shall not consider, whether, by the Rebellion, any State lost its territorial character or its defined boundaries or subdivisions, for I know of no one who would obliterate these geographical qualities of the States. These questions, however much discussed, are in no practical sense before Congress."
"What is before Congress?" asked Mr. Shellabarger. "I at once define and affirm it in a single sentence. It is, under our Constitution, possible to, and the late Rebellion did in fact, so overthrow and usurp, in the insurrectionary States, the loyal State Governments, as that during such usurpation such States and their people ceased to have any of the rights or powers of Government as States of the Union, and this loss of the rights and powers of Government was such that the United States may, and ought to, assume and exercise local powers of the lost State Governments, and may control the re-admission of such States to their powers of Government in this Union, subject to, and in accordance with, the obligation to guarantee to each State a republican form of Government."
Upon the broad proposition thus laid down by Mr. Shellabarger, he proceeded to submit an argument which, for closeness, compactness, consistency and strength had rarely, if ever, been surpassed in the Congress of the United States. Other speeches have gained greater celebrity, but it may well be doubted whether any speech in the House of Representatives ever made a more enduring impression, or exerted greater convincing power, upon the minds of those to whom it was addressed. It was a far more valuable exposition of the Reconstruction question than that given by Mr. Stevens. It was absolutely without acrimony, it contained no harsh word, it made no personal reflection; but the whole duty of the United States, and the whole power of the United States to do its duty, were set forth with absolute precision of logic. The Reconstruction debate continued for a long time and many able speeches were contributed to it. While much of value was added to that which Mr. Shellabarger had stated, no position taken by him was ever shaken.
Mr. Raymond had asked repeatedly and with great emphasiswhat specific acthad deprived these rebellious States of their rights as States of the Union. Mr. Shellabarger gave an answer to that question, which, as a caustic summary, is worthy to be quoted in full. "I answer him," said the member from Ohio, "in the words of the Supreme Court, 'The causeless waging against their own Government of a war which all the world acknowledge to have been the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race.' That war was waged by these people as States, and it went through long, dreary years. In it they threw off and defied the authority of your Constitution, your laws, and your Government. They obliterated from their State constitutions and laws every vestige of recognition of your Government. They discarded all their official oaths, and took, in their places, oaths to support your enemies' government. They seized, in their States, all the Nation's property. Their senators and representatives in your Congress insulted, bantered, defied and then left you. They expelled from their land or assassinated every inhabitant of known loyalty. They betrayed and surrendered your arms. They passed sequestration and other Acts in flagitious violation of the law of nations, making every citizen of the United States an alien enemy, and placing in the treasury of their rebellion all money and property due such citizens. They framed iniquity and universal murder into law. For years they besieged your Capital and sent your bleeding armies in rout back here upon the very sanctuaries of your national power. Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea. They carved the bones of your unburied heroes into ornaments and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons, organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried to your cities, and the yellow-fever to your wives and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destroyed, in the four years of horrid war, another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe in marching-column. And then to give to the infernal drama a fitting close, and to concentrate into one crime all that is criminal in crime and all that is detestable in barbarism, they murdered the President of the United States."
"I allude to these horrid events," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "not to revive frightful memories, or to bring back the impulses towards the perpetual severance of this people which they provoke. I allude to them to remind us how utter was the overthrow and the obliteration of all government, divine and human, how total was the wreck of all constitutions and laws, political, civil and international. I allude to them to condense their monstrous enormities of guilt into one crime, and to point the gentleman from New York to it and tell him that that was thespecific act."
Mr. Voorhees of Indiana followed on the day succeeding Mr. Shellabarger's speech, in support of a series of resolutions which he had offered on the same day that Mr. Raymond addressed the House, and further embarrassing Mr. Raymond by the proffer of Democratic support, and proportionately discouraging the Republicans from coming forward in aid of the Administration. The resolutions of Mr. Voorhees declared in effect that "the President's message is regarded by the House as an able, judicious and patriotic State paper;" that "the principles therein advocated are the safest and most practicable that can be applied to our disordered domestic affairs;" that "no State or number of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their connection with the Federal Union;" and that "the President is entitled to the thanks of Congress and the country for his faithful, wise and successful efforts to restore civil government, law and order to the States lately in rebellion." Mr. Voorhees made an exhaustive speech in support of these resolutions, indicating very plainly the purpose of the Democratic party to combine in support of the President. He was answered promptly and eloquently, though not without some display of temper, by Mr. Bingham of Ohio, who at the close of his speech moved a substitute for the series of propositions made by Mr. Voorhees—simply declaring that "this House has an abiding confidence in the President, and that in the future as in the past, he will co-operate with Congress in restoring to equal position and rights with the other States in the Union, the States lately in insurrection."
Up to this period there had been no outbreak of the Republican party against the President. There had been coolness and general distrust, with resentment and anger on the part of many, but the hope of his co-operation with the party had not yet been entirely abandoned. Mr. Bingham's resolution represented this hope, if not expectation, but the Republican members of the House were not willing to make so emphatic a declaration of their confidence as that resolution would imply; and when Mr. Bingham demanded the previous question he was interrupted by Mr. Stevens, who suggested that the whole subject be referred to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Mr. Bingham changed his motion accordingly; and the roll being called, the series of resolutions offered by Mr. Voorhees, with the substitute of Mr. Bingham, were sent to the Committee on Reconstruction by 107ayesagainst 32noes. Mr. Raymond and his colleague, Mr. William A. Darling, were the only Republicans who voted with the Democrats. The act was simple in a parliamentary sense, but its significance was unmistakable. A House, four-fifths of whose members were Republicans, had refused to pass a resolution expressing confidence in the President who, fourteen months before, had received the vote of every Republican in the Nation. From that day, January 9th, 1866, the relation of the dominant party in Congress to the President was changed. It may not be said that all hope of reconciliation was abandoned, but friendly co-operation to any common end became extremely difficult.
Mr. Raymond was bitterly disappointed. Few members had ever entered the House with greater personalprestigeor with stronger assurance of success. He had come with a high ambition—an ambition justified by his talent and training. He had come with the expectation of a Congressional career as successful as that already achieved in his editorial life. But he met a defeat which hardly fell short of a disaster. He had made a good reply to Mr. Stevens, had indeed gained much credit by it, and when he returned home for the holidays he had reason to believe that he had made a brilliant beginning in the parliamentary field. But the speech of Mr. Shellabarger had destroyed his argument, and had given a rallying-point for the Republicans, so incontestably strong as to hold the entire party in allegiance to principle rather than in allegiance to the Administration. If any thing had been needed to complete Mr. Raymond's discomfiture after the speech of Mr. Shellabarger, it was supplied in the speech of Mr. Voorhees. He had been ranked among the most virulent opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, had been bitterly denunciatory of the war policy of the Government, and was regarded as a leader of that section of the Democratic party to which the most odious epithets of disloyalty had been popularly applied. Mr. Raymond, in speaking of the defeat, always said that he could have effected a serious division in the ranks of Republican members if he could have had the benefit of the hostility of Mr. Voorhees and other anti-war Democrats.
Three weeks after Mr. Shellabarger's reply Mr. Raymond made a rejoinder. He struggled hard to recover the ground which he had obviously lost, but he did not succeed in changing hisstatusin the House, or in securing recruits for the Administration from the ranks of his fellow Republicans. To fail in that was to fail in every thing. That he made a clever speech was not denied, for every intellectual effort of Mr. Raymond exhibited cleverness. That he made the most of a weak cause, and to some extent influenced public opinion, must also be freely conceded. But his most partial friends were compelled to admit that he had absolutely failed to influence Republican action in Congress, and had only succeeded in making himself an apparent ally of the Democratic party—a position in every way unwelcome and distasteful to Mr. Raymond. His closing speech was marked by many pointed interruptions from Mr. Shellabarger and was answered at some length by Mr. Stevens. But nothing, beyond a few keen thrusts and parries and some sharp wit at Mr. Raymond's expense, was added to the debate.
Mr. Raymond never rallied from the defeat of January 9th. His talents were acknowledged; his courteous manners, his wide intelligence, his generous hospitality, gave him a large popularity; but his alliance with President Johnson was fatal to his political fortunes. He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party. It was an extremely mortifying fact to Mr. Raymond that with the power of the Administration behind him he could on a test question secure the support of only one Republican member, and he a colleague who was bound to him by ties of personal friendship.
The fate which befell Mr. Raymond, apart from the essential weakness of the issue on which he staked his success, is not uncommon to men who enter Congress with great reputation already attained. So much is expected of them that their efforts on the floor are almost sure to fall below the standard set up for them by their hearers. By natural re-action the receive, in consequence, less credit than is their due. Except in a few marked instances the House has always been led by men whose reputation has been acquired in its service. Entering unheralded, free from the requirements which expectation imposes, a clever man is sure to receive more credit than is really his due when his is so fortunate as to arrest the attention of members in his first speech. Thenceforward, if he be discreet enough to move slowly and modestly, he acquires a secure standing and may reach the highest honors with the House can confer.
If, ambitious of a career, Mr. Raymond had been elected to Congress when he was chosen to the New-York Legislature at twenty-nine years of age, or five years later when he was made Lieutenant-governor of his State, he might have attained a great parliamentary fame. It has long been a tradition of the House that no man becomes its leader who does not enter it before he is forty. Like most sweeping affirmations this has its exceptions, but the list of young men who have been advanced to prominent positions in the body is so large that it may well be assumed as the rule of promotion. Mr. Raymond was nearly forty-six when he made his first speech in the House. While he still exhibited the intellectual acuteness and alertness which had always been his characteristics, there was apparent in his face the mental weariness which had come from the prolonged and exacting labor of his profession. His parliamentary failure was a keen disappointment to him, and was not improbably one among many causes which cut short a brilliant and useful life. He died in 1869, in the forty-ninth year of his age.
This first debate on reconstruction developed the fact that the Democrats in Congress would endeavor to regain the ground they had lost by their hostility to Mr. Lincoln's Administration during the war. The extreme members of that party, while the war was flagrant, adhered to many dogmas which were considered unpatriotic and in none more so than the declaration that even in the case of secession "there is no power in the Constitution to coerce a State." They now united in the declaration, as embodied in the resolution of Mr. Voorhees, that "no State or number of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their connection with the Federal Union." This was intended as a direct and defiant answer to the heretical creed of Mr. Stevens, that the States by their attempted secession were really no longer members of the Union and could not become so until regularly re-admitted by Congress. By antagonizing this declaration the Democrats strove to convince the country that it was the accepted doctrine of their political opponents, and that they were themselves the true and tried friends of the Union.
The great majority of the Republican leaders, however, did not at all agree with the theory of Mr. Stevens and the mass of the party were steadily against him. The one signal proof of their dissent from the extreme doctrine was their absolute unwillingness to attempt an amendment to the Constitution by the ratification of three-fourths of the Loyal States only, and their insisting that it must be three-fourths of all the States, North and South. Mr. Stevens deemed this a fatal step for the party, and his extreme opinion had the indorsement of Mr. Sumner; but against both these radical leaders the party was governed by its own conservative instincts. They believed with Mr. Lincoln that the Stevens plan of amendment would always be questioned, and that in so grave a matter as a change to the organic law of the Nation, the process should be unquestionable—one that could stand every test and resist every assault.
The Republicans, as might well have been expected, did not stand on the defensive in such a controversy with their opponents. They became confidently aggressive. They alleged that when the Union was in danger from secession the Northern Democrats did all in their power to inflame the trouble, urged the Southern leaders to persevere and not yield to the Abolitionists, and even when war was imminent did nothing to allay the danger, but every thing to encourage its authors. Now that war was over, the Democrats insisted on the offending States being instantly re-invested with all the rights of loyalty, without promise and without condition. At the beginning of the war and after its close, therefore, they had been hand in hand with the offending rebels, practically working at both periods to bring about the result desired by the South. Their policy, in short, seemed to have the interests of the guilty authors of the Rebellion more at heart than the safety of the Union. Their efforts now to clothe the Southern conspirators with fresh power and to take no note of the crimes which had for four years drenched the land in blood, constituted an offense only less grave in the eyes of the Republicans than the aid and comfort given to the Rebellion in the hour of its inception.
These were the accusations and criminations which were exchanged between the political parties. They lent acrimony to the impending canvass and increased the mutual hostility of those engaged in the exciting controversy. The Republicans were resolved that their action should neither be misinterpreted by opposing partisans nor misunderstood by the people. They were confident that when their position should be correctly apprehended it would still more strongly confirm their claim to be the special and jealous guardians of the Union of the States—of a Union so strongly based that future rebellion would be rendered impossible, the safety and glory of the Republic made perpetual.
[(1)NOTE.—The members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction were as follows:—
On the part of the Senate.—William P. Fessenden of Maine, James W. Grimes of Iowa, Ira Harris of New York, Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, George H. Williams of Oregon, andReverdy Johnsonof Maryland.
On the part of the House.—Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, John A. Bingham of Ohio, Roscoe Conkling of New York, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, Henry T. Blow of Missouri,A. J. Rogersof New Jersey, andHenry Griderof Kentucky.]
The debate on the direct question of Reconstruction did not begin at so early a date in the Senate as in the House, but kindred topics led to the same line of discussion as that in which the House found itself engaged. During the first week of the session Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts had submitted a bill for the protection of freedman, designed to overthrow and destroy the odious enactments which in many of the Southern States were rapidly reducing the entire negro race to a new form of slavery. Mr. Wilson's bill provided that "all laws, statutes, acts, ordinances, rules and regulations in any of the States lately in rebellion, which, by inequality of civil rights and immunities among the inhabitants of said States is established or maintained by reason of differences of color, race or descent, are hereby declared null and void." For the violation of this statute a punishment was provided by fine of not less than five hundred dollars nor more than ten thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not less than six months nor more than five years.
In debating his bill Mr. Wilson declared that he had "no desire to say harsh things of the South nor of the men who have been engaged in the Rebellion. I do not ask their property or their blood; I do not wish to disgrace or degrade them; but I do wish that they shall not be permitted to disgrace, degrade or oppress anybody else. I offer this bill as a measure of humanity, as a measure that the needs of that section of the country imperatively demand at our hands. I believe that if it should pass it will receive the sanction of nineteen-twentieths of the loyal people of the country. Men may differ about the power or the expediency of giving the right of suffrage to the negro; but how any humane, just and Christian man can for a moment permit the laws that are on the statute-books of the Southern States and the laws now pending before their Legislatures, to be executed upon men whom we have declared to be free, I cannot comprehend."
Mr. Reverdy Johnson replied to Mr. Wilson in a tone of apology for the laws complained of, but took occasion to give his views of the status of the States lately in rebellion. "I have now," said Mr. Johnson, "and I have had from the first, a very decided opinion that they are States in the Union and that they never could have been placed out of the Union without the consent of their sister States. The insurrection terminated, the authority of the Government was thereby re-instituted;eo instantithey were invested with all the rights belonging to them originally—I mean as States. . . In my judgment our sole authority for the acts which we have done during the last four years was the authority communicated to Congress by the Constitution to suppress insurrection. If the power can only be referred to that clause, in my opinion, speaking I repeat with great deference to the judgment of others, the moment the insurrection was terminated there was no power whatever left in the Congress of the United States over those States; and I am glad to see, if I understand his Message, that in the view I have just expressed I have the concurrence of the President of the United States."
Mr. Sumner sustained Mr. Wilson's bill in an elaborate argument delivered on the 20th of December. There was an obvious desire in both branches of Congress and in both parties—those opposed to the President's policy and those favoring it—to appeal to the popular judgment as promptly as possible, and this led to a prolonged and earnest debate prior to the holidays, an occurrence unusual and almost unprecedented. Mr. Sumner declared that Mr. Wilson's bill was simply to maintain and carry out the Proclamation of Emancipation. The pledge there given was that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, would recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. "This pledge," said Mr. Sumner, "is without limitation in space or time. It is as extended and as immortal as the Republic itself, to that pledge we are solemnly bound; wherever our flag floats, as long as time endures, we must see that it is sacredly observed. The performance of that pledge cannot be intrusted to another, least of all to the old slave-masters, embittered against their slaves. It must be performed by the National Government. The power that gives freedom must see that freedom is maintained."
"Three of England's greatest orators and statesmen," continued Mr. Sumner, "Burke, Canning and Brougham, at successive periods unite in declaring, from the experience of the British West Indies, that whatever the slave-masters undertook to do for their slaves was always arrant trifling; that whatever might be its plausible form it always wanted the executive principle. More recently the Emperor of Russia, in ordering the emancipation of the serfs, declared that all previous efforts had failed because they had been left to the spontaneous initiative of the proprietors." . . . "I assume that we shall not leave to the old slave-proprietors the maintenance of that freedom to which we are pledged, and thus break our own promise and sacrifice a race." In concluding his speech Mr. Sumner referred to the enormity of the wrongs against the freedmen as something that made the blood curdle. "In the name of God," said he, "let us protect them; insist upon guarantees; pass the bill under consideration; pass any bill, but do not let this crying injustice rage any longer. An avenging God cannot sleep while such things find countenance. If you are not ready to be the Moses of an oppressed people, do not become their Pharaoh."
Mr. Willard Saulsbury of Delaware made a brief reply to Mr. Sumner, not so much to argue the points put forward by the senator from Massachusetts, not so much to deny the facts related by him or to discuss the principles which he had presented, as to announce that "it can be no longer disguised that there is in the party which elected the President an opposition party to him. Nothing can be more antagonistic than the suggestions contained in his Message and the speeches already made in both Houses of Congress." He adjured the President to be true and faithful to the principles he had foreshadowed, and pledged him "the support of two million men in the States which have not been in revolt, and who did not support him for his high office."
Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, one of the Republican senators who had indicated a purpose to sustain the President, was evidently somewhat stunned by Mr. Sumner's speech. He treated the outrages of which Mr. Sumner complained as exceptional instances of bad conduct on the part of the Southern people. "One man out of ten thousand," said Mr. Cowan, "is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of the whole people of the South; whereas nothing is said of the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men who treat the negro well." Mr. Cowan's argument was altogether inapposite; for what Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wilson had complained of was not the action of individual men in the South, but of laws solemnly enacted by Legislatures whose right to act had been recognized by the Executive Department of the National Government, and which had indeed been organized in pursuance of the President's Reconstruction policy,—almost in fact by the personal patronage of the President. The situation was one very difficult to justify by a man with the record of Mr. Cowan. He had been not merely a Republican before his entrance into the Senate but a radical Republican, taking ground in the campaign of 1860 only less advanced than that maintained by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens himself.
These debates in both Senate and House, at so early a period of the session, give a full and fair indication of the temper which prevailed in the country and in Congress. The majority of the members had not, at the opening of the session, given up hope of some form of co-operation with the President. As partisans and party leaders they looked forward with something of dismay to the rending of all relations with the Executive, and to the surrender of the political advantage which comes to the party and to the partisan from a close alliance between the Executive and Legislative Departments. On the re-assembling of Congress after the holidays a great change was seen and realized by all. It was feared by many, even of the most conservative, that the policy of Congress and the policy of the President might come into irreconcilable conflict, and that the party which had successfully conducted the Government through the embarrassments, the trials and the perils of a long civil war, might now be wrecked by an angry controversy between two departments of the Government, each owing its existence to the same great constituency,—the loyal people of the North.
Circumstances suggested the impossibility of a successful contest against the President and the Democratic party united. Even those elections which result, in the exuberant language of the press, in an overwhelming victory on the one side and an overwhelming defeat, on the other, are often found, upon analysis, to be based on very narrow margins in the popular result, the reversal of which requires only the change of a few thousand votes. This was demonstrated in many of the great States, even in the second election of Mr. Lincoln, when to the general apprehension he was almost unanimously sustained. From this fact it was well argued by Republicans in Congress that great danger to the party was involved in the impending dissension. Even the most sanguine feared defeat, and the naturally despondent already counted it as certain. Never before had so stringent a test of principle been applied to the members of both Houses. The situation was indeed peculiar. The great statesman who had been honored as the founder of the Republican party was now closely allied with the Administration. His colleague who had sat next him in the Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, and who, in the judgment of his partial friends, was the peer of Mr. Seward both in ability and in merit, did not hesitate to show from the exalted seat of the Chief Justice his strong sympathy with the President.
The leading commercial men, who had become weary of war, contemplated with positive dread the re-opening of a controversy which might prove as disturbing to the business of the country as the struggle of arms had been, and without the quickening impulses to trade which active war always imparts. The bankers of the great cities, whose capital and whose deposits all rested upon the credit of the country and were invested in its paper, believed that the speedy settlement of all dissension and the harmonious co-operation of all departments of the Government were needed to maintain the financial honor of the nation and to re-instate confidence among the people. Against obstacles so menacing, against resistance so ominous, against an array of power so imposing, it seemed to be an act of boundless temerity to challenge the President to a contest, to array public opinion against him, to denounce him, to deride him, to defy him.
It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration. No unmanly efforts to compromise, no weak shirking from duty, sullied the fame of the great body of senators and representatives. Even the Whig party in 1841, with Mr. Clay for a leader, did not stand so solidly against John Tyler as the Republican party, under the lead of Fessenden and Sumner in the Senate and of Thaddeus Stevens in the House, now stood against the Administration of President Johnson. The Whigs of the country, in the former crisis, lost many of their leading and most brilliant men,—a sufficient number indeed to compass the defeat of Mr. Clay three years later. The loss to the Republican party now was so small as to be unfelt and almost invisible in the political contests into which the party was soon precipitated. The Whigs of 1841 were contending only for systems of finance, and they broke finally with the President because of his veto of a bill establishing a fiscal agency for the use of the Government,—merely a National Bank disguised under another name. The Republicans of 1866 were contending for a vastly greater stake,—for the sacredness of human rights, for the secure foundation of free government. Their constancy was greater than that of the Whigs because the rights of person transcend the rights of property.
On the 12th of December Mr. Cowan had submitted a resolution requesting the President to furnish to the Senate information of "the condition of that portion of the United States lately in rebellion; whether the rebellion has been suppressed and the United States again put in possession of the States in which it existed; whether the United-States post-offices are re-established and the revenues collected therefrom; and also, whether the people of those States have re-organized their State governments; and whether they are yielding obedience to the laws and Government of the United States." Mr. Sumner moved an amendment, directing the President to furnish to the Senate at the same time "copies of such reports as he may have received from the officers or agents appointed to visit this portion of the Union, including especially any reports from the Honorable John Covode and Major-General Carl Schurz." The President's message, sent to the Senate a week later, in response to this resolution, was brief, being simply a statement of what had been accomplished by his Reconstruction policy, with an expression of his belief that "sectional animosity is surely and rapidly merging itself into a spirit of nationality; that representation, connected with a properly adjusted system of taxation, will result in a harmonious restoration of the relations of the States to the National Union." He transmitted the report of Mr. Schurz and also invited the attention of the Senate to a report of Lieutenant-General Grant, who had recently made a tour of the inspection through several of the States lately in rebellion.
The President evidently desired that General Grant's opinions concerning the South should be spread before the public. From the high character of the General-in-Chief and his known relations with the prominent Republicans in Congress, the Administration hoped that great influence would be exerted by the communication of his views. His report was short and very positive. He declared his belief that "the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith." At the same time he thought that "four years of war have left the people possibly in a condition not ready to yield that obedience to civil authority which the American people have been in the habit of yielding, thus rendering the presence of small garrisons throughout these States necessary until such time as labor returns to its proper channels and civil authority is fully established."