XVI. REPRESENTATION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
Concurrent Resolution -- A "Venomous Fight" -- Passage in the House -- The Resolution in the Senate -- "A Political Wrangle" Deprecated -- Importance of the Question -- "A Straw in a Storm" -- Policy of the President -- Conversation between two Senators -- Mr. Nye's Advice to Rebels -- "A Dangerous Power" -- "Was Mr. Wade once a Secessionist?" -- Garrett Davis' Programme for the President -- "Useless yet Mischievous" -- The Great Question Settled.
It was understood when the Committee of Fifteen introduced the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment relating to the basis of representation, that this was only one of a series of measures which they thought essential to the work of reconstruction, and which they designed to propose at a proper time.
In pursuance of this plan, on the 20th of February, the day after the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and while the amendment of the basis of reconstruction was pending in the Senate, Mr. Stevens brought before the House, from the Committee of Fifteen, a "Concurrent Resolution concerning the Insurrectionary States," as follows:
"Be it resolved by the House of Representatives, (the Senate concurring,) That in order to close agitation upon a question which seems likely to disturb the action of the Government, as well as to quiet the uncertainty which is agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which have been declared to be in insurrection, no Senator or Representative shall be admitted into either branch of Congress from any of said States until Congress shall have declared such State entitled to such representation."
After the reading of this resolution, Mr. Grider, of Kentucky, a member of the Committee of Fifteen, offered the following minority report:
"The minority of the Committee on Reconstruction, on the part of the House, beg leave to report that said committee have directed an inquiry to be made as to the condition and loyalty of the State of Tennessee. There has been a large amount of evidence taken, some part of it conducing to show that at some localities occasionally there have been some irregularities and temporary disaffection; yet the main direction and weight of the testimony are ample and conclusive to show that the great body of the people in said State are not only loyal and willing, but anxious, to have and maintain amicable, sincere, and patriotic relations with the General Government. Such being the state of the facts, and inasmuch as under the census of 1860 Congress passed a law which was approved in 1863, fixing the ratio and apportioning to Tennessee and all the other States representation; and inasmuch as Tennessee, disavowing insurrectionary purposes or disloyalty, has, under the laws and organic law of said State, regularly elected her members and Senators to the Congress of the United States, in conformity to the laws and Constitution of the United States, and said members are here asking admission; and inasmuch as the House by the Constitution is the 'judge of the election, returns, and qualification of its members,' considering these facts and principles, we offer the following resolution, to-wit:
"Resolved, That the State of Tennessee is entitled to representation in the Thirty-ninth Congress, and the Representatives elected from and by said State are hereby admitted to take their seats therein upon being qualified by oath according to law."
Mr. Stevens then said: "Having heard an ingenious speech upon that side of the question, and not intending to make any speech upon this side, as I hope our friends all understand a question which has agitated not this body only, but other portions of the community, I propose to ask for the question. I think I may say without impropriety, that until yesterday there was an earnest investigation into the condition of Tennessee, to see whether by act of Congress we could admit that State to a condition of representation here, and admit its members to seats here; but since yesterday there has arisen a state of things which the committee deem puts it out of their power to proceed further without surrendering a great principle; without the loss of all their dignity; without surrendering the rights of this body to the usurpation of another power. I call the previous question."
Strenuous efforts were made by the Democratic minority to defeat the proposed joint resolution by means of "dilatory motions." Repeated motions were made to adjourn, to excuse certain members from voting, and to call the House, on all of which the yeas and nays were called. This "parliamentary tactics" consumed many hours. The minority seemed resolved to make the passage of the resolution a question of physical endurance. In reply to a proposition of Mr. Eldridge, of the minority, that they would allow business to proceed if debate should be allowed, Mr. Stevens said: "It is simply the return of the rebels of 1861. I sat thirty-eight hours under this kind of a fight once, and I have no objections to a little of it now. I am ready to sit for forty hours."
Late in the evening, a member of the minority proposed that the House should take a recess for an hour, that the door-keeper might have the hall fitted up as a dormitory. From indications, he thought such accommodations would be necessary. At length, Mr. Eldridge said: "We know our weakness and the strength and power of the numbers of the majority. We have not had the assistance which we expected from the other side of the House in our effort to obtain the privilege of debating the resolution. We know perfectly well that it has become a question of physical endurance. We know perfectly well that we can not stand out against the overpowering majority of this House any great length of time. We know if the majority will it, the resolution will pass without debate. We have done all we could. We therefore yield to that power, and throw the responsibility of this most extraordinary, this most revolutionary measure, upon the majority of the House."
To this Mr. Stevens answered: "The gentlemen accept their situation just as Jeff. Davis did his--because they can not help it. [Laughter.] I confess, sir, for so small a number, they have made a most venomous fight."
The vote was then taken upon the concurrent resolution, which passed the House--yeas, 109; nays, 40.
The hopes which had arisen in the minds of the minority that a considerable number of Republicans would permanently separate themselves from the party that elected them, and adhere to the policy and fortunes of the President, were disappointed. The imprudence of the President himself, in making his unfortunate speech of the 22d of February, tended to unite the Republicans in Congress against his policy, and render fruitless the efforts of his new Democratic friends in his favor.
On the 23d of February, Mr. Fessenden proposed that the pending constitutional amendment should give way, to enable the Senate to consider the concurrent resolution passed by the House concerning the representation of the Southern States.
Mr. Sherman thought it would be better and wiser to allow this matter to lie over for a few days. He thought it best not to press this "declaration of political opinion" while the public mind and Senators themselves were more or less affected by surrounding circumstances. "I think," said he, "that we ought not to postpone all the important business now pending in Congress for the purpose of getting into a political wrangle with the President."
Mr. Fessenden replied: "The Senator from Ohio says we are getting up a political wrangle with the President of the United States. When the President of the United States tells Congress that it is transcending its proper limits of authority, that it has nothing to do in the way of judgment upon the great question of reconstructing the rebel States, and Congress assumes to express its own sense upon that question, I think it is hardly a proper term to apply to such a state of things. I am not aware that there has been any effort anywhere to get up a political wrangle or engage in a political wrangle with the President. Certainly I have not. No man has ever heard me speak of him except in terms of respect, in my place here and elsewhere.
"I am not sensible myself of any excitement that would prevent my speaking upon this question precisely in the style which I deem it deserves. I am not carried away by passion. I have reflected, and I am ready to express my opinion upon the great question at issue; and the Senator will allow me to say that, in my judgment, the sooner the judgment of Congress is expressed, the better.
"He talks about important business to be done by this Congress. Sir, is there any thing more important than to settle the question whether the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States have or have not something to say in relation to the condition of the late Confederate States, and whether it is proper to admit Senators and Representatives from them? If the President is right in his assumption--for the assumption is a very clear one--that we have nothing to say, we ought to admit these men at once, if they come here with proper credentials, and not keep them waiting outside the door."
Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that transpired yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not to have had some influence upon him, and I think it as well to allow the influence of those events to pass away. I do not wish now myself, nor do I wish any Senator here, to reply to what was said yesterday by the President of the United States. I would prefer that the Senate of the United States, the only legislative body which can deliberate fully and freely without any limitation on the right of debate, should deliberate, reflect, and act calmly after the excitement of the events of the last two or three days has passed off."
Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked: "If there be passion and excitement in the country at this present time, I do not hold myself as an individual responsible for any share of it; and I am here to say that if I know myself--and if I do not know myself nobody about me knows me--I am as competent to consider this particular question to-day as I was the day before yesterday or last week, and, so far as my judgment informs me, quite as competent to consider it as I expect to be next week or the week after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate of the nation, or by the lowest and the last magistrate of the nation."
The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider the concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, which had already passed the House of Representatives.
Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of considerable length. He presented extracts from the President's speech of the day before, in which he had arrayed himself against the right of Congress to decide whether a rebel State is in condition to be represented.
Mr. Fessenden considered the pending resolution as "transcending in importance the question of the amendment of the Constitution, which had been under discussion for several days." He deemed the resolution necessary now, "in order that Congress may assert distinctly its own rights and its own powers; in order that there may be no mistake anywhere, in the mind of the Executive or in the minds of the people of this country; that Congress, under the circumstances of this case, with this attempted limitation of its powers with regard to its own organization, is prepared to say to the Executive and to the country, respectfully but firmly, over this subject they have, and they mean to exercise, the most full and plenary jurisdiction. We will judge for ourselves, not only upon credentials and the character of men and the position of men, but upon the position of the States which sent those men here. In other words, to use the language of the President again, when the question is to be decided, whether they obey the Constitution, whether they have a fitting constitution of their own, whether they are loyal, whether they are prepared to obey the laws as a preliminary, as the President says it is, to their admission, we will say whether those preliminary requirements have been complied with, and not he, and nobody but ourselves."
Mr. Fessenden made an extended argument on the subject of reconstruction, affirming that while the people of the rebel States had not passed from under the jurisdiction of the United States Government, yet having no existence as States with rights in the Union and rights to representation in Congress. "My judgment is," said he, "that we hold the power over the whole subject in our hands, that it is our duty to hold it in our hands, and to regard it as a matter of the most intense interest to the whole people, involving the good of the whole people, calling for our most careful consideration, and to be adjudged without passion, without temper, without any of that feeling which may be supposed to have arisen out of the unexampled state of things through which we have passed."
On the 26th of February, Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate on the pending concurrent resolution. He approved the principle but doubted the expediency of now reäffirming it. "I regard it," said he, "as a mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inopportune moment; the mere assertion of a naked right which has never yet been disputed, and never can be successfully; a mere assertion of a right that we have over and over again asserted. My idea is that the true way to assert this power is to exercise it, and that it was only necessary for Congress to exercise that power in order to meet all these complicated difficulties."
Mr. Sherman regarded the President's speech as humiliating and unworthy of his high office. A part of the speech he characterized as "the product of resentment, hatched by anger and passion, and hurled, without reflection, at those he believed wished to badger and insult him."
Mr. Sherman favored the prompt restoration of Tennessee. "I think our first duty," said he, "is at once to prepare a mode and manner by which she may be admitted into the Union upon such terms and conditions as will make her way back the way of pleasantness and peace."
Of the general question of reconstruction he said: "If I had any power in arranging a plan, I would mark the line as broad and deep between the loyal people who stood at our side and the rebels who fought against us as between heaven and hell."
"How can you do it?" asked Mr. Howard.
"Whenever loyal men," replied Mr. Sherman, "present a State organization, complying with such terms and conditions and tests of loyalty as you may prescribe, and will send here loyal Representatives, I would admit them; and whenever rebels send or come here, I would reject them."
"I fear the storm," said Mr. Sherman, near the conclusion of his speech. "I fear struggles and contentions in these eleven States, unless there is some mode by which the local power of those States may be put in loyal hands, and by which their voices may be heard here in council and in command, in deliberation and debate, as of old. They will come back here shorn of their undue political power, humbled in their pride, with a consciousness that one man bred under free institutions is as good, at least, as a man bred under slave institutions. I want to see the loyal people in the South, if they are few, trusted; if they are many, give them power. Prescribe your conditions, but let them come back into the Union upon such terms as you may prescribe. Open the door for them. I hope we may see harmony restored in this great Union of ours; that all these States and all these Territories may be here in council for the common good, and that at as speedy a moment as is consistent with the public safety."
Mr. Dixon addressed the Senate in opposition to the concurrent resolution, and in favor of the policy of the President. "It is my belief," said he, "that what is known as the policy of the President for the restoration of the late seceded States in this Government is the correct policy. I believe it is the only safe policy." Having been requested to state that policy, Mr. Dixon said: "It contemplates a careful, cautious, discriminating admission of a loyal representation from loyal States and districts in the appropriate House of Congress, by the separate action of each, every case to be considered by itself and decided on its own merits. It recognizes the right of every loyal State and district to be represented by loyal men in Congress. It draws the true line of distinction between traitors and true men. It furnishes to the States lately in rebellion the strongest possible inducement to loyalty and fidelity to the Government. It 'makes treason odious,' by showing that while the traitor and the rebel are excluded from Congress, the loyal and the faithful are cordially received. It recognizes and rewards loyalty wherever it is found, and distinguishes, as it ought, between a Horace Maynard and a Jefferson Davis."
Of the purpose expressed in this resolution to "close agitation," Mr. Dixon said: "The vast business interests of this country are eagerly intent on this question. The people of this country are mutually attracted, the North and the South, and they must sooner or later act together. Whatever Congress may do, this question will not cease to be agitated. Adjourn, if you see fit, without settling this question; leave it as it is; admit no member from Tennessee; and when you go through the States next fall which hold their elections for Congress, see whether agitation has ceased. Sir, a word of caution may not be unfit on that subject."
Mr. Dixon maintained that the Senate would surrender its independence by resolving that Senators should not be admitted from rebel States until Congress should have declared them entitled to such representation. "Upon the question of credentials," said he, "this whole question is before the Senate; and it is for us to consider on that question whether the member presenting himself here for admission is a traitor or whether he is true to his country."
"Suppose," said Mr. Trumbull, "that in a time of peace the Legislature of Tennessee is disloyal, and swears allegiance to the Emperor Maximilian, does the Senator deny the authority of Congress to inquire into the character of that Legislature?"
"I do," replied Mr. Dixon. "It is for the Senate, and not for Congress, to make the inquiry if a Senator from Tennessee in the supposed case presents himself."
Mr. Trumbull said: "He denies the authority of Congress to decide whether the constituency is traitorous or loyal!"
"That is another point," said Mr. Dixon.
"That is the very one I put," said Mr. Trumbull. "If all the members of the Legislature of Tennessee swear allegiance to the Emperor Maximilian, and send a Senator here, I want to know if Congress has a right to inquire into the character of that Legislature?"
"I will answer that by asking another question," said Mr. Dixon. "Suppose that was the case, that the Emperor Maximilian had entire control of the State of Tennessee, and a person claiming a right so to do should come here and offer himself as a member of the Senate, and should be received here; that, in judging of the qualifications, returns, and elections of the member, the Senate decided that he was a Senator, has Congress any thing to do with the question? I ask him if the House of Representatives can interfere? Is there an appeal to Congress or any other tribunal? I ask him if that man is not a Senator in spite of the world?"
"If," replied Mr. Trumbull, "the Senator means to ask me if the Senate has not the physical power to admit any body, elected or not, I admit they have the same right to do it that twelve jurymen would have, against the sworn and uncontradicted testimony of a hundred witnesses, to bring in a verdict directly against the evidence and perjure themselves. I suppose we have the physical power to commit perjury here, when we have sworn to support the Constitution. We might admit a man here from Pennsylvania Avenue, elected by nobody, as a member of this Senate; but we would commit perjury in doing it, and have no right to do it."
Mr. Trumbull made an extended reply, which assumed somewhat the form of a conversation, in which Mr. Dixon and other Senators participated. Mr. Trumbull claimed that it required the concurrent action of both houses of Congress to recognize any government in States where rebellion had overthrown it.
On the 28th of February, the concurrent resolution still pending, Mr. Nye, of Nevada, advocated its passage. He opposed the present admission of any member from the seceding States. "We are told," said he, "by the apologists of these men who are being elected on their merits as rebels, to the exclusion of Union men, that 'we must not expect too much of them.' I fully accede to this idea. A class that during its whole political life has aimed at a monopoly of wealth, a monopoly of labor, and a monopoly of political power; that engaged in the attempt at revolution in order to establish more fully and to perpetuate such monopoly; that, failing in this, has become more bitter by disappointment, should have time; and, sir, I am decidedly in favor of giving them all the time necessary for the most substantial improvement. I would say to these men, 'Go home! Go back and labor as industriously to disabuse the minds of your constituencies as you labored to mislead and impose upon them. Tell them that the Union Government always was and never can be any thing else than a just Government. Tell them that the Constitution has become the acknowledged sovereign, and that it presides in both houses of Congress. Inform them, while you are about it, that the rebel sympathizers and apologists in the North can do them no good; that they are acting as much out of time and propriety now as they did in the time of the war, when their encouragement only prolonged the conflict and added to Southern disaster. You may say to your constituencies that the majority in Congress is very tenacious on the subject of the Union war debt; that it is determined to keep faith with the national creditors; that it is bent on adopting and throwing around it all the safeguards and precautions possible; and that your admission just now, and your alliance with Northern sympathizers, would not be propitious in raising the value of our public securities. While you are conferring with your constituents, you may as well repeat to them the common political axiom that Representatives are elected to represent their constituents, and that it is not believed at the seat of Government that a disloyal constituency would make such a mistake as to send loyal Representatives to Congress. In short, you may as well say to your people that, as Congress represents the loyalty of the nation, South as well as North, and has much important work on hand, some of it requiring a two-thirds majority, it is not deemed wholly prudent to part with that majority out of mere comity to men from whom no assistance could be expected. Finally, by way of closing the suggestive instructions, you may give your constituents to understand that, as you went out of Congress rebel end foremost, you will not probably get into those vacant seats over yonder except that you come back Union end foremost."
Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, held opinions of the pending question different from those maintained by his colleague. He thought "the power to suspend the right of a State to representation might imply a dangerous power, and might imply a right to suspend it for any reason that Congress might see fit. The power to suspend the right of a State to be represented might hereafter be a terrible precedent." "There is no provision in the Constitution," said Mr. Stewart, "conferring such a power upon Congress. No authority of the kind is expressed in that instrument, nor can I find any place where it is implied." In another portion of his speech, which was very long, and occupied part of the session of the succeeding day, Mr. Stewart remarked: "In the darkest time of the rebellion, I deny that the right to represent Tennessee in this hall by those who were loyal ever was for a moment suspended, but their power to obey the law, their power to represent it was prevented by treason. They were overpowered, and they were denied the right of representation, not by Congress, not by the Government. This war was to maintain for them that right which rebellion had sought to take away from them, and had for a time suspended the harmonious relations of the State to the General Government; and it will be too much to admit that this Government has ever been in such a fix that the people thereof were really not entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and because they were denied it this war was brought on, this war was prosecuted."
Mr. Johnson opposed the resolution in a protracted speech in which he reviewed the entire subject of reconstruction. Of the condition and rights of the Southern States he said: "They are as much States as they were when the insurrection was inaugurated, and their relation to their sister States, and their consequent relation to the Government of the United States, is the same relation in which they stood to both when the insurrection was inaugurated. That would seem to follow logically as a necessary result, and if that is a necessary result, does it not also follow that they are entitled to representation in this chamber? Whether they can present persons who can take their seats, because they have individually committed crimes against the United States is another question; but I speak now of the right itself."
Mr. Johnson argued that holding secession sentiments a few years ago was no evidence of present disloyalty, and cited in proof of this proposition a newspaper article purporting to give secession resolutions drawn up by Mr. Wade, and passed at a meeting held at Cleveland in 1859, which was presided over by Joshua E. Giddings.
This called forth an answer from Mr. Wade, who said: "The Senator from Maryland called me in question for having been present at a meeting which he affirmed was held in Cleveland some seven years ago by persons called 'Sons of Liberty,' and he alleged that I there consented to certain resolutions that were passed which favored the doctrine of secession, and that I was chairman of the committee which reported them. Sir, the charge is a total forgery so far as I am concerned. I never was at any such meeting of the Sons of Liberty or any other sons. I never uttered such a sentiment in my life; I am not one of those who have or have had much association with gentlemen holding to secession principles. My associations have all been the other way. During the war that secession made my counsels were against it. I was for war to the death against the principle of secession, while many other gentlemen in my eye were either participants in or apologists for that sentiment. I am perfectly aware that a war is made--and I am willing to meet it anywhere--upon what are called Radicals of the country, and I am one of them. In olden times I was here in the Senate called an Abolitionist, but they have changed the name since. They have all got to be Abolitionists now, and they have changed my name to 'Radical.'
"Mr. President, in the history of mankind, so far as I have read or know it, there never has been a time when parties were so organized on radical principles of justice and right. The party with whom I act appeal to no expediency, to none of your political policies; we dig down to the granite of eternal truth, and there we stand, and they who assail us have to assail the great principles of the Almighty, for our principles are chained to his throne, and are as indestructible as the Almighty himself. I want no warfare with any body; but if you will make war upon such principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for you. You can not prevail.
"I have been in these political warfares for a long time; I claim to be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when there were not five men with me to support me, and then I rose here and told those who were inveighing like demons against the principles that they called abolitionism, that I was an Abolitionist. To-day you are all Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by compulsion. I have wondered a great deal why men did not learn more about these things than they seem to do. Our principles are assailed now with just the same virulence that they used to be when we were in a small minority. I do not hold that they have triumphed thus far because of any superior capacity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that we, from the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of the people and conquered the predominant party of this country which had stood completely dominating the whole nation for more than forty years? Why is it that we have conquered you, and now are triumphant here in this Senate and almost by two-thirds in both branches, with the whole nation at our backs? What miracle has wrought this change? None other than the great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and right are destined among the American people to succeed, and the gates of hell can not prevail against them, although they are trying at this particular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.]
On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan first claimed the attention of the Senate in a speech two hours in length. He argued "that for any guilty part taken by the people in the late war, that the sufferings and losses they endured in that war were the natural and sufficient punishment; that after it they remain purged, and ought to be reädmitted to all their constitutional rights at once. That it is due to the dignity of the United States as a great nation, if she punishes the actual traitors who incited the rebellion, that it be done solemnly and according to the strictest form of law, in open courts, where the prisoners may have counsel and witnesses, so that they may make their defense, if they have any. That according to the Constitution and laws all the States are still in the Union; that secession ordinances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the other; that they are neither dead by forfeiture or felo de se, but are now in full and perfect existence, with all their municipal machinery in full play. That the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen to amend the Constitution is fundamental and revolutionary, and destructive of the freedom of the States and the liberties of the people; that it is a threat to deprive them of their rights by compelling them either to admit negroes to the right of suffrage or to give up a share of their representation, which is theirs by law and the last amendment to the Constitution. That the resolution now before us from the same committee is also revolutionary and destructive, being an attempt to suspend the Constitution and laws in regard to representation in Congress over eleven States of the Union until Congress shall see fit to restore them. It is a declaration on the part of the members of the present House and Senate, that having the means of keeping these States from being represented here, they are going to do so as long as they please; that no one of these measures can be justified as a punishment for the rebellion; that the Constitution forbids them as bills of pains and penalties, and as ex post facto in their character."
Mr. Garret Davis, in the course of a speech in opposition to the resolution, suggested a summary solution of the present difficulties: "There is," said he, "a provision in the Constitution which requires the President to communicate to the two houses of Congress information as to the state of the Union, and to recommend to them such measures "as he shall deem proper and expedient. What does this necessarily impose upon him? He has to ascertain what men compose the two houses of Congress. It is his right, it is his constitutional function, to ascertain who constitute the two houses of Congress. The members of the Senate who are in favor of the admission of the Southern Senators could get into a conclave with those Southern Senators any day, and they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The President of the United States has the constitutional option--it is his function, it his power, it is his right--and I would advise him to exercise it, to ascertain, where there are two different bodies of men both claiming to be the Senate, which is the true Senate. If the Southern members and those who are for admitting them to their seats constitute a majority of the whole Senate, the President has a right--and, by the Eternal! he ought to exercise that right forthwith, to-morrow, or any day--to recognize the Opposition in this body and the Southern members, the majority of the whole body, as the true Senate. And then what would become of you gentlemen? Oh, if the lion of the Hermitage, and that great statesman, the sage of Ashland, were here in the seat of power, how soon would they settle this question! They would say to, and they would inspire those to whom they spoke, 'You Southern men are kept out of your seats by violence, by revolution, against the Constitution, against right; the Union is dissolved, the Government is brought to an end by keeping the Senators from eleven States out of their seats when the Constitution expressly states that every State shall have two Senators.'
"There is no plainer principle of constitutional law than that the President has the right to ascertain and decide what body of men is the Senate and what the House of Representatives when there are two bodies of men claiming to be each. It is his right to do so, and the people of America will sustain him in the noble and manly and patriotic performance of his duty in determining the identity of the true House. It ought to have been done at the beginning of this session. When a petty clerk took upon himself to read the list of the Representatives of the people of the United States, and to keep the Representatives of eleven States out of their seats, the Constitution guaranteeing to them those seats for the benefit of their constituents and country, that subordinate never ought to have been tolerated for one day in the perpetration of so great an outrage. Whenever Andrew Johnson chooses to exercise his high function, his constitutional right of saying to the Southern Senators, 'Get together with the Democrats and the Conservatives of the Senate, and if you constitute a majority, I will recognize you as the Senate of the United States,' what then will become of you gentlemen? You will quietly come in and form a part of that Senate."
Mr. Doolittle opposed the passage of the resolution. Referring to the plan proposed by Mr. Davis, he said: "If such a thing should happen--which God in his mercy, I hope, will always prevent--that the Senate should be divided, and one portion should go into one room, and another into another, each claiming to be the Senate, I suppose the House of Representatives could direct its clerk to go to one body and not go to the other, and I do not know but the President of the United States would have the power, in case of such a division, to send his private secretary with messages to one body and not send them to the other. Perhaps that might occur; but it is one of those cases that are not to be supposed or to be tolerated."
Mr. Wilson advocated the resolution: "The nation," said he, "is divided into two classes; that the one class imperiously demands the immediate and unconditional admission into these halls of legislation of the rebellious States, rebel end foremost; that the other class seeks their admission into Congress, at an early day, loyal end foremost. He would hear, too, the blended voices of unrepentant rebels and rebel sympathizers and apologists mingling in full chorus, not for the restoration of a broken Union, for the unity and indivisibility of the republic has been assured on bloody fields of victory, but for the restoration to these vacant chairs of the 'natural leaders' of the South."
Referring to Mr. Davis' programme for the President's interference with the Senate, Mr. Wilson said: "Sir, there was a time when a Senator who should have said what we have recently heard on this floor would have sunk into his seat under the withering rebuke of his associates. No Senator or Representative has a right to tell us what the Executive will do. The President acts upon his own responsibility. We are Senators, this is the Senate of the United States, and it becomes us to maintain the rights and the dignity of the Senate of the United States. The people demand that their Senators and Representatives shall enact the needed measures to restore, at the earliest possible day, the complete practical relations of the seceded States to the National Government, and protect the rights and liberties of all the people, without regard to color, race, or descent."
Mr. Fessenden, having the resolution in charge, made a second speech, in which he answered objections which had been urged, and defended the Committee of Fifteen against imputations of a disposition to delay the work of reconstruction.
Mr. McDougal took occasion to say a few words against the resolution. He said: "I would not dare to vote for this proposition, because I have some regard for the great Judge who lives above. The question pending now, as practically useless as it will be as rule, is yet mischievous. It is in the way of teaching bad precedents, false law, unsound loyalty. These things are like the worms that eat into the majestic oaks which are used to build vessels to ride the sea, and decay their strength, so that they fall down and make wrecks of navies."
Mr. Hendricks had moved to amend the resolution by inserting the words "inhabitants of" after the word "States." This amendment was rejected. The Senate then proceeded to take the vote on the concurrent resolution, which was passed--yeas, 29; nays, 18.
Thus the opinion of Congress was established, by a large majority, that the two houses should act conjointly upon the whole question of the representation of States, and that this question was entirely independent, of the Executive.
XVII. THE RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENT--IN THE HOUSE
A Constitutional Amendment Proposed and Postponed -- Proposition by Mr. Stewart -- The Reconstruction Amendment -- Death of its Predecessor Lamented -- Opposition to the Disfranchisement of Rebels -- "The Unrepentent Thirty-three" -- Nine-tenths Reduced to One-twelfth -- Advice to Congress -- The Committee Denounced -- Democratic and Republican Policy Compared -- Authority without Power -- A Variety of Opinions -- An Earthquake Predicted -- The Joint Resolution Passes the House.
While the joint resolution proposing a modification of the basis of representation was the subject of consideration in the Senate, a constitutional amendment relating to the rights of citizens was made the topic of brief discussion in the House. It had been previously introduced and referred to the Committee of Fifteen. From this committee it was reported back by Mr. Bingham. It was proposed in the following form:
"ARTICLE--. That Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and to all persons in the several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property."
This proposition was introduced on the 26th of February, and was debated during the sessions of three successive days.
Many members of the legal profession saw in the final clause a dangerous centralization of power. It was considered objectionable as seeming to authorize the General Government to interfere with local laws on the subject of property, the legal rights of women, and other matters hitherto considered wholly within the domain of State legislation; hence the Republican majority unanimously voted to postpone the amendment until April.
After this postponement, and the failure of the amendment relating to the basis of representation to pass the Senate, the subject of reconstruction was in the hands of the Committee of Fifteen until the 30th of April.
Individuals had, from time to time, introduced propositions on the subject, which were referred to the appropriate committee. The one which attracted most attention and excited greatest interest was a proposition in the Senate, by Mr. Stewart, of Nevada. This was in favor of a joint resolution providing that each of the States lately in rebellion shall be recognized as having resumed its relations with the Government, and its Representatives shall be admitted to Congress whenever it shall have amended its Constitution so as to provide--
"1. There shall be no distinction in civil rights among its citizens by reason of race or color or previous condition of servitude; 2. That all debts incurred in aid of the rebellion shall be repudiated; 3. That all claim for compensation for liberated slaves shall be relinquished; and 4. That the elective franchise be extended to all persons on the same terms, irrespective of race, color, or previous condition, provided that none be disfranchised who were qualified voters in 1860; and that upon these conditions being ratified by a majority of the present voting population of each State, (including all qualified to vote in 1860,) a general amnesty shall be proclaimed as to all who engaged in the rebellion."
This proposition had peculiar significance, since it emanated from a gentleman who, though elected as a Republican, had ever since the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau acted with the Conservatives. Mr. Sumner, "with open arms," welcomed the Senator from Nevada as "a new convert to the necessity of negro suffrage." Mr. Wilson was thankful to the author of this proposition for placing the whole question "on the basis of universal liberty, universal justice, universal suffrage, and universal amnesty." The resolution was referred to the Committee of Fifteen, with whom Mr. Wilson had no doubt it would receive "serious consideration."
On the 30th of April, Mr. Stevens reported from the Committee of Fifteen a joint resolution providing for the passage of the following amendment to the Constitution:
"ARTICLE--.
"SEC. 1. "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life; liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
"SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But whenever in any State the elective franchise shall be denied to any portion of its male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of male citizens shall bear to the whole number of such male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age.
"SEC. 3. Until the 4th day of July, in the year 1870, all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for Representatives in Congress and for electors for President and Vice-President of the United States.
"SEC. 4. Neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation already incurred, or which may hereafter be incurred, in aid of insurrection or of war against the United States, or any claim for compensation for loss of involuntary service or labor.
"SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
This proposed amendment to the Constitution was accompanied by two bills, one of which provided that when any State lately in insurrection should have ratified the amendment, its Senators and Representatives, if found duly elected and qualified, should be admitted as members of Congress. The other bill declared the high ex-officials of the late Confederacy ineligible to any office under the Government of the United States.
The proposed constitutional amendment was by a vote of the House made the special order for Tuesday, the 8th of May. On that day Mr. Stevens occupied the attention of the House with a brief argument in favor of the amendment. Referring to the death in the Senate of the amendment previously proposed, Mr. Stevens said: "But it is dead, and unless this (less efficient, I admit) shall pass, its death has postponed the protection of the colored race perhaps for ages. I confess my mortification at its defeat. I grieved especially because it almost closed the door of hope for the amelioration of the condition of the freedmen. But men in pursuit of justice must never despair. Let us again try and see whether we can not devise some way to overcome the united forces of self-righteous Republicans and unrighteous Copper-heads. It will not do for those who for thirty years have fought the beasts at Ephesus to be frightened by the fangs of modern catamounts."
Of the present proposition, Mr. Stevens said: "It is not all that the committee desired. It falls far short of my wishes, but it fulfills my hopes. I believe it is all that can be obtained in the present state of public opinion. Not only Congress, but the several States are to be consulted. Upon a careful survey of the whole ground, we did not believe that nineteen of the loyal States could be induced to ratify any proposition more stringent than this."
Referring to the section prohibiting rebels from voting until 1870, Mr. Stevens said: "My only objection to it is that it is too lenient. Here is the mildest of all punishments ever inflicted on traitors. I might not consent to the extreme severity denounced upon them by a provisional governor of Tennessee--I mean the late lamented Andrew Johnson of blessed memory--but I would have increased the severity of this section."
Mr. Blaine called attention to the fact that most of the persons whom the third section of the amendment was designed to disfranchise, had their political rights restored to them by the Amnesty Proclamation, or had been pardoned by the President.
Mr. Finck opposed the proposition in a speech of which the following are extracts: "Stripped of all disguises, this measure is a mere scheme to deny representation to eleven States; to prevent indefinitely a complete restoration of the Union, and perpetuate the power of a sectional and dangerous party.
"Sir, the whole scheme is revolutionary, and a most shallow pretext for an excuse to exclude the vote of eleven States in the next Presidential election. You can not exact conditions in this way from any State in the Union; no more from Georgia than from Massachusetts. They are each equal States in the Union, held together by the same Constitution, neither being the superior of the other in their relation to the Federal Government as States."
Commenting on the first section, designed to insert a recognition of civil rights in the Constitution, Mr. Finck said: "If it is necessary to adopt it in order to confer upon Congress power over the matters contained in it, then the Civil Rights Bill, which the President vetoed, was passed without authority, and is clearly unconstitutional."
To this inference, Mr. Garfield replied: "I am glad to see this first section here, which proposes to hold over every American citizen without regard to color, the protecting shield of law. The gentleman who has just taken his seat undertakes to show that because we propose to vote for this section, we therefore acknowledge that the Civil Rights Bill was unconstitutional. The Civil Rights Bill is now a part of the law of the land. But every gentleman knows it will cease to be a part of the law whenever the sad moment arrives when that gentleman's party comes into power. It is precisely for that reason that we propose to lift that great and good law above the reach of political strife, beyond the reach of the plots and machinations of any party, and fix it in the serene sky, in the eternal firmament of the Constitution, where no storm of passion can shake it, and no cloud can obscure it. For this reason, and not because I believe the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional, I am glad to see that first section here."
Mr. Garfield opposed the section disfranchising rebels as "the only proposition in this resolution that is not bottomed clearly and plainly upon principle--principle that will stand the test of centuries, and be as true a thousand years hence as it is to-day."
Mr. Thayer, while favoring the proposed amendment in all other particulars, was opposed to the third section. "I think," said he, "that it imperils the whole measure under consideration. What will continue to be the condition of the country if you adopt this feature of the proposed plan? Continual distraction, continued agitation, continued bickerings, continued opposition to the law, and it will be well for the country if a new insurrection shall not spring from its bosom."
Mr. Boyer denounced the proposition as "an ingenious scheme to keep out the Southern States, and to prevent the restoration of the Union until after the next Presidential election."
Mr. Kelley, if he "could have controlled the report of the Committee of Fifteen, would have proposed to give the right of suffrage to every loyal man in the country." He advocated the amendment, however, in all its provisions. He especially defended the third section. "This measure," said he, "does not propose to punish them; on the contrary, it is an act of amnesty, and proposes, after four years, to reinvest them with all their rights, which they do not possess at this time because of their crime."
The passage of the resolution was next advocated by Mr. Schenck. Referring to the third section, he denied the principle advanced by Mr. Garfield that there was any thing inconsistent or wrong in making it an exclusion for a term of years instead of exclusion altogether. "If there be any thing in that argument," said he, "in case of crime, you must either not sentence a man to the penitentiary at all, or else incarcerate him for the term of his natural life. Or, to compare it to another thing, which perhaps better illustrates the principle involved, when a foreigner arrives upon our shores we should not say to him, 'At the end of five years, when you have familiarized yourself with our institutions, and become attached to them, we will allow you to become a citizen, and admit you to all the franchises we enjoy,' but we should require that he be naturalized the moment he touches our soil, or else excluded from the rights of citizenship forever."
Mr. Schenck thought the loyal and true people throughout the land were "full ready to declare that those who have proved traitors, and have raised their parricidal hands against the life of the country, who have attempted to strike down our Government and destroy its institutions, should be the very last to be trusted to take any share in preserving, conducting, and carrying on that Government and maintaining those institutions."
Mr. Smith opposed the resolution in a speech which, if it added nothing to the arguments, contributed, by its good humored personalities and its harmless extravagancies, to the amusement of the auditors.
On the following day, May 9th, the consideration of the subject was resumed, and Mr. Broomall addressed the House in favor of the resolution. He began by counting the votes that would probably be cast against the amendment. "It would meet the opposition," said he, "of the unrepentant thirty-three of this body. It was also to be expected that the six Johnsonian new converts to Democracy would oppose and vote against this measure, commencing with the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Raymond,] who, I believe, has the disease in the most virulent form, thence down to the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Smith,] who preceded me on this question, and who has the mildest and most amiable type of the infection. Upon them, too, arguments are useless. There must, then, be thirty-nine votes against the measure, and I want there to be no more."
To the objection urged against the third section of the proposed amendment, that it would disfranchise nine-tenths of all the voters of the South, Mr. Broomall replied: "This is a grand mistake. There were in 1860 one million one hundred and twenty thousand voters in those eleven States. We may take seven hundred and fifty thousand as the number of individuals in the South who rendered aid and comfort to the enemy, not counting the comparatively few though powerful leaders who rendered aid and comfort outside of the army. But, sir, we do not propose to disfranchise even these seven hundred and fifty thousand. Supposing two hundred and fifty thousand of the rebel army were lost, we have five hundred thousand actual voters in the South to be disfranchised by this measure, if they come within the meaning of it. But do they come within the meaning of this provision? Why, sir, it does not embrace the unwilling conscripts; it does not embrace the men who were compelled to serve in the army. It would be fair to say three hundred thousand of these people belonged to the unwilling class, who were forced into the army by rigid conscription laws and the various contrivances of the leading rebels. This will leave two hundred thousand; and I say now it is utterly impossible, in my opinion, that the number of people in the South who can be operated upon by this provision should exceed two hundred thousand, if, indeed, it should reach the one half of that number. Is this nine-tenths of the voters of the South? Why, it is about one in every twelve."
Mr. Shanklin opposed the amendment as intended "to disfranchise the people of the Southern States who have gone into this rebellion, until the party in power could fasten and rivet the chains of oppression for all time to come, and hedge themselves in power, that they may rule and control those people at will."
Mr. Shanklin closed his speech with the following advice to Congress: "Discharge your joint Committee on Reconstruction; abolish your Freedmen's Bureau; repeal your Civil Rights Bill, and admit all the delegates from the seceded States to their seats in Congress, who have been elected according to the laws of the country and possess the constitutional qualification, and all will be well."
Mr. Raymond spoke in favor of the amendment, except the disfranchisement clause. He had opposed the Civil Rights Bill on the ground of want of constitutional power in Congress to pass it. He favored the first section of this amendment, since it gave the previous acts of Congress a constitutional basis.
In answer to Mr. Broomall's "ingenious argument," Mr. Raymond said: "It seems to me idle to enter into such calculations, which depend on a series of estimates, each one of which can not be any thing more than a wild and random guess. I take it that we all know perfectly well that the great masses of the Southern people 'voluntarily adhered to the insurrection;' not at the outset not as being originally in favor of it, but during its progress, sooner or later, they voluntarily gave in their adhesion to it, and gave it aid and comfort. They did not all join the army. They did not go into the field, but they did, at different times, from various motives and in various ways, give it aid and comfort. That would exclude the great body of the people of those States under this amendment from exercising the right of suffrage."
Mr. Raymond asserted that all that was offered to the rebel legislatures of the Southern States, in return for the concessions required of them, was "the right to be represented on this floor, provided they will also consent not to vote for the men who are to represent them! The very price by which we seek to induce their assent to these amendments we snatch away from their hands the moment that assent is secured. Is there any man here who can so far delude himself as to suppose for a moment that the people of the Southern States will accede to any such scheme as this? There is not one chance in ten thousand of their doing it."
Mr. McKee advocated the amendment. He thought that opposition to its third section was a rebuke to those States which had passed laws disfranchising rebels. To obviate all objections to this section, however, he proposed a substitute forever excluding "all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection" from holding "any office under the Government of the United States."
Mr. Eldridge did not intend "to make an argument on the merits of the joint resolution." His remarks were mostly in derogation of the committee by whom the measure was recommended. "The committee," said he, "report no facts whatever, and give us no conclusion. They simply report amendments to the Constitution. Was that the purpose for which the committee was organized? Was it to change the fundamental law of the land under which we of the loyal States assembled here? Was that the duty with which the committee was charged? Were they to inquire and report an entire change of the fundamental law of the nation which would destroy the States and create an empire? I say they were charged with no such duty. The resolution can not fairly be construed as giving to the committee any such power, any such jurisdiction. The committee stands resisting the restoration of this Union, and I hope that no further business will be referred to it. It has rendered itself unworthy of the high duty with which it was charged."
Mr. Eldridge asserted: "The whole scheme is in the interest of party alone, to preserve and perpetuate the party idea of this Republican disunion party."
The debate thus entering "the domain of partisan controversy," Mr. Boutwell, in a speech which followed, undertook to show how the proposition before the House "traverses the policy of the Democratic party with reference to the reconstruction of the Government." Mr. Boutwell described the policy of the Democratic party, "which," said he, "they laid down as early as 1856 in the platform made at Cincinnati, wherein they declared substantially that it was the right of a Territory to be admitted into this Union with such institutions as it chose to establish, not even by implication admitting that the representatives of the existing Government had any right to canvass those institutions, or to consider the right of the Territory to be recognized as a State.
"Now, sir, from that doctrine, which probably had its origin in the resolutions of 1798, the whole of their policy to this day has legitimately followed. First, we saw its results in the doctrine of Mr. Buchanan, announced in 1860, that, while the Constitution did not provide for or authorize the secession of a State from this Union, there was no power in the existing Government to compel a State to remain in the Union against its own judgment. Following that doctrine, they come legitimately to the conclusion of to-day, in which they are supported, as I understand, by the President of the United States upon the one side, and, as I know, by the testimony of Alexander H. Stephens, late Vice-President of the so-called Confederacy, upon the other. That doctrine, is that these eleven States have to-day, each for itself, an existing and unquestionable right of representation in the Government of this country, and that it is a continuous right which has not been interrupted by any of the events of the war."
On the other hand, Mr. Boutwell thus defined the position of "the Union party," which, he said, "stands unitedly upon two propositions. The first is equality of representation, about which there is no difference of opinion. The second is, that there shall be a loyal people in each applicant State before any Representative from that State is admitted in Congress. And there is a third: a vast majority of the Republican party, soon to be the controlling and entire force of that party, demand suffrage for our friends, for those who have stood by us in our days of tribulation. And for myself, with the right, of course, to change my opinion, I believe in the Constitutional power of the Government to-day to extend the elective franchise to every loyal male citizen of the republic."
Mr. Spalding favored the amendment, including the third section, to which exception had been taken by some of his friends. He asked, "Is it exceptionable? Is it objectionable? If it be so, it is, in my judgment, for the reason that the duration of the period of incapacity is not extended more widely. I take my stand here, that it is necessary to ingraft into that enduring instrument called the Constitution of the United States something which shall admonish this rebellious people, and all who shall come after them, that treason against the Government is odious; that it carries with it some penalty, some disqualification; and the only one which we seek to attach by this amendment is a disqualification in voting--not for their State and county and town officers, but for members of Congress, who are to be the law-makers, and for the Executive of the United States, this disqualification to operate for the short period of four years."
Mr. Miller advocated all the sections of the proposed amendment except the third. Of this he said: "Though it seems just on its face, I doubt the propriety of embodying it with the other amendments, as it may retard, if not endanger, the ratification of the amendment in regard to representation, and we can not afford to endanger in any manner a matter of such vital importance to the country."
Mr. Eliot had voted against the former amendment, which was passed by the House and rejected by the Senate. The present proposed amendment, while it was not all he could ask, was not open to the objections which then controlled his vote. In advocating the third section, he said: "It is clear, upon adjudged law, that the States lately in rebellion, and the inhabitants of those States, by force of the civil war, and of the Union triumph in that war, so far have lost their rights to take part in the Government of the Union that some action on the part of Congress is required to restore those rights. Pardon and amnesty given by the President can not restore them. Those men can not vote for President or for Representatives in Congress until, in some way, Congress has so acted as to restore their power. The question, then, is very simple: Shall national power be at once conferred on those who have striven, by all means open to them, to destroy the nation's life? Shall our enemies and the enemies of the Government, as soon as they have been defeated in war, help to direct and to control the public policy of the Government--and that, too, while those men, hostile themselves, keep from all exercise of political power the only true and loyal friends whom we have had, during these four years of war, within these Southern States?"
It had been argued against the third section that it could not be enforced, that it would be inoperative. To this objection Mr. Shellabarger replied: "It will not require standing armies. You can have registry laws. Upon this registry list you may place the names of men who are to be disqualified, and you may also have the names of all who are qualified to vote under the law. There they will stand, there they will be, to be referred to by your Government in the execution of its laws. And when it comes to this House or to the Senate to determine whether a man is duly elected, you can resort to the ordinary process applicable to a trial in a contested election case in either body, as to whether he has been elected by the men who were entitled to elect him."
Thursday, May 10th, was the last day of this discussion in the House. Mr. Randall first took the floor and spoke in opposition to the joint resolution. To the friends of the measure he said: "It is intended to secure what you most wish: an entire disagreement to the whole scheme by the eleven Southern States, and a continued omission of representation on this floor."
Mr. Strouse, in opposing the amendment, occupied most of his time in reading an editorial from the New York Times, which he characterized as "sound, patriotic, statesmanlike, and just."
Mr. Strouse expressed, as his own opinion, "that the States are, and never ceased to be, in law and in fact, constituent parts of our Union. If I am correct in this opinion, what necessity exists for these amendments of the Constitution? Let the States be represented in the Senate and House by men who can conscientiously qualify as members; and after that, when we have a full Congress, with the whole country represented, let any amendment that may be required be proposed, and let those most interested have an opportunity to participate in the debates and deliberations of matters of so much moment to every citizen."
Mr. Banks regarded the pending amendment as the most important question which could be presented to the House or to the country. "It is my belief," said he, "that reörganization of governments in the insurgent States can be secured only by measures which will work a change in the basis of political society. Any thing that leaves the basis of political society in the Southern States untouched, leaves the enemy in condition to renew the war at his pleasure, and gives him absolute power to destroy the Government whenever he chooses.
"There are two methods by which the change I propose can be made: one by extending the elective franchise to the negro, the other by restrictions upon the political power of those heretofore invested with the elective franchise--a part of whom are loyal and a part of whom are disloyal, a part of whom are friends and a part of whom are enemies.
"I have no doubt that the Government of the United States has authority to extend the elective franchise to the colored population of the insurgent States, but I do not think it has the power. The distinction I make between authority and power is this: We have, in the nature of our Government, the right to do it; but the public opinion of the country is such at this precise moment as to make it impossible we should do it. The situation of opinion in these States compels us to look to other means to protect the Government against the enemy.
"I approve of the proposition which disfranchises the enemies of the country. I think it right in principle. I think it necessary at this time. If I had any opinion to express, I should say to the gentlemen of the House that it is impossible to organize a government in the insurgent States, and have the enemies of the country in possession of political power, in whole or in part, in local governments or in representation here.
"An enemy to the Government, a man who avows himself an enemy of its policy and measures, who has made war against the Government, would not seem to have any absolute right to share political power equally with other men who have never been otherwise than friends of the Government.
"A pardon does not confer or restore political power. A general act of amnesty differs from an individual pardon only in the fact that it applies to a class of offenders who can not be individually described. It secures immunity from punishment or prosecution by obliterating all remembrance of the offense; but it confers or restores no one to political power.
"There is no justification for the opinion so strongly expressed, that this measure will fail because the rebel States will not consent to the disfranchisement of any portion of their own people. The proposition is for the loyal States to determine upon what terms they will restore to the Union the insurgent States. It is not necessary that they should participate in our deliberations upon this subject, and wholly without reason that they should have the power to defeat it. It is a matter of congratulation that they have not this power. We have the requisite number of States without them.
"I do not believe that there is a State in this Union where at least a clear majority of the people were not from the beginning opposed to the war; and could you remove from the control of public opinion one or two thousand in each of these States, so as to let up from the foundations of political society the mass of common people, you would have a population in all these States as loyal and true to the Government as the people of any portion of the East or West.
"The people knew that it was the rich man's war and the poor man's fight. The legislation of the insurgent States exempted, to a great degree, the rich men and their sons, on account of the possession of property, while it forced, at the point of the bayonet, and oftentimes at the cost of life, the masses of the people to maintain their cause. There is nothing in the whole war more atrocious than the cruel measures taken by the rebel leaders to force the people who had no interest in it, and were averse to sharing its dishonor and peril."
Mr. Banks remarked of the amendment: "It will produce the exact result which we desire: the immediate restoration of the governments of the States to the Union, the recognition of the loyal people, and the disfranchisement of the implacable and unchangeable public enemies of the Union, and the creation of State governments upon the sound and enduring basis of common interest and common affection."
Mr. Eckley advocated the joint resolution, citing a number of historical and political precedents in favor of its provisions. Of the disfranchising clause, he said: "The only objection I have to the proposition is, that it does not go far enough. I would disfranchise them forever. They have no right, founded in justice, to participate in the administration of the Government or exercise political power. If they receive protection in their persons and property, are permitted to share in the nation's bounties, and live in security under the broad ægis of the nation's flag, it is far more than the nation owes them."
Mr. Longyear favored the amendment, but disliked the third section, of which he said: "Let us then reject this dead weight, and not load down good provisions, absolutely essential provisions, by this, which, however good in and of itself, can not be enforced. I regard this provision, if adopted, both worthless and harmless, and, therefore, I shall vote for the proposed amendment as a whole, whether this be rejected or retained."
Mr. Beaman held a similar opinion. He said: "We very well know that such a provision would be entirely inoperative, because electors for President and Vice-President can be appointed by the Legislatures, according to a practice that has always obtained in South Carolina. The provision does not extend to the election of Senators, and, consequently, it can operate only to affect the election of members of this House, and that only for a period of four years."
Mr. Rogers denounced the proposed amendment in emphatic terms. He said: "The first section of this programme of disunion is the most dangerous to liberty. It saps the foundation of the Government; it destroys the elementary principles of the States; it consolidates every thing into one imperial despotism; it annihilates all the rights which lie at the foundation of the union of the States, and which have characterized this Government and made it prosperous and great during the long period of its existence. It will result in a revolution worse than that through which we have just passed; it will rock the earth like the throes of an earthquake, until its tragedy will summon the inhabitants of the world to witness its dreadful shock.
"In the third section, you undertake," said Mr. Rogers, "to enunciate a doctrine that will, if carried out, disfranchise seven or eight million people, and that will put them in a worse condition than the serfs of Russia or the downtrodden people of Poland and Hungary, until the year 1870."
Mr. Farnsworth advocated the amendment, but did not regard the third section as of any practical value. It did not provide punishment adequate to the guilt of the various offenders. "There is a large class of men," said he, "both in the North and South, equally--yea, and more--guilty than thousands of the misguided men who will be disfranchised by this provision, who will not be affected by it. I allude to those politicians and others at the South, who, keeping themselves out of danger, set on the ignorant and brave to fight for what they were told by these rascals were 'their rights;' and to other politicians, editors, 'copper-heads' in the North, some of whom were and are members of Congress, who encouraged them and discouraged our soldiers."
Mr. Bingham spoke in favor of the amendment. He preferred that the disfranchising clause should be embodied in an act of Congress. "I trust," said he, "that this amendment, with or without the third section, will pass this House, that the day may soon come when Tennessee--loyal Tennessee--loyal in the very heart of the rebellion, her mountains and plains blasted by the ravages of war and stained with the blood of her faithful children fallen in the great struggle for the maintenance of the Union, having already conformed her constitution and laws to every provision of this amendment, will at once, upon its submission by Congress, irrevocably ratify it, and be, without further delay, represented in Congress by her loyal Representatives and Senators.
"Let that great example be set by Tennessee, and it will be worth a hundred thousand votes to the loyal people in the free North. Let this be done, and it will be hailed as the harbinger of that day for which all good men pray, when the fallen pillars of the republic shall be restored without violence or the noise of words or the sound of the hammer, each to its original place in the sacred temple of our national liberties, thereby giving assurance to all the world that, for the defense of the republic, it was not in vain that a million and a half of men, the very elect of the earth, rushed to arms; that the republic still lives, and will live for evermore, the sanctuary of an inviolable justice, the refuge of liberty, and the imperishable monument of the nation's dead, from the humblest soldier who perished on the march, or went down amid the thunder and tempest of the dread conflict, up through all the shining roll of heroes and patriots and martyrs to the incorruptible and immortal Commander-in-chief, who fell by an assassin's hand in the capital, and thus died that his country might live."
The hour having arrived when, by understanding of the House, the discussion should close, Mr. Stevens closed the debate with a short speech. "I am glad," said he, "to see great unanimity among the Union friends in this House on all the provisions of this joint resolution except the third one. I am not very much gratified to see any division among our friends on that which I consider the vital proposition of them all. Without that, it amounts to nothing. I do not care the snap of my finger whether it be passed or not if that be stricken out. I should be sorry to find that that provision was stricken out, because, before any portion of this can be put into operation, there will be, if not a Herod, a worse than Herod elsewhere to obstruct our actions. That side of the house will be filled with yelling secessionists and hissing copper-heads. Give us the third section or give us nothing. Do not balk us with the pretense of an amendment which throws the Union into the hands of the enemy before it becomes consolidated. Do not, I pray you, admit those who have slaughtered half a million of our countrymen until their clothes are dried, and until they are reclad. I do not wish to sit side by side with men whose garments smell of the blood of my kindred. Gentlemen seem to forget the scenes that were enacted here years ago. Many of you were not here. But my friend from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] ought to have kept up his reading enough to have been familiar with the history of those days, when the men that you propose to admit occupied the other side of the House; when the mighty Toombs, with his shaggy locks, headed a gang who, with shouts of defiance on this floor, rendered this a hell of legislation.
"Ah, sir, it was but six years ago when they were here, just before they went out to join the armies of Catiline, just before they left this hall. Those of you who were here then will remember the scene in which every Southern member, encouraged by their allies, came forth in one yelling body because a speech for freedom was being made here; when weapons were drawn, and Barksdale's bowie-knife gleamed before our eyes. Would you have these men back again so soon to reënact those scenes? Wait until I am gone, I pray you. I want not to go through, it again. It will be but a short time for my colleague to wait. I hope he will not put us to that test."
At the close of his remarks, Mr. Stevens moved the previous question.
Mr. Garfield hoped that it would be voted down, that he might have an opportunity to offer a substitute for the third section, forever excluding the persons therein specified "from holding any office of trust or profit under the Government of the United States."
Nevertheless, the previous question was sustained, and a vote was taken on the joint resolution proposing the constitutional amendment as it came from the committee. The following are the yeas and nays:
YEAS--Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Delos R. Ashley, James M. Ashley, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Benjamin, Bidwell, Bingham, Blaine, Blow, Boutwell, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader W. Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Conkling, Cook, Cullom, Darling, Davis, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Dodge, Donnelly, Driggs, Dumont, Eckley, Eggleston, Eliot, Farnsworth, Perry, Garfield, Grinnell, Griswold, Abner C. Harding, Hart, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Holmes, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, Chester D. Hubbard, Demas Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, Hulburd, James Humphrey, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Kuykendall, Laflin, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, McClurg, McIndoe, McKee, McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Moorhead, Morrill, Morris, Moulton, Myers, Newell, O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Price, William H. Randall, Raymond, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Rollins, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Shellabarger, Spalding, Stevens, Stilwell, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, Trowbridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Robert T. Van Horn, Ward, Warner, Elihu B. Washburne, Henry D. Washburn, William B. Washburn, Welker, Williams, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, Woodbridge, and the Speaker--128.
NAYS--Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Boyer, Chanler, Coffroth, Dawson, Eldridge, Finck, Glossbrenner, Goodyear, Grider, Aaron Harding, Harris, Kerr, Latham, Le Blond, Marshall, McCullough, Niblack, Phelps, Radford, Samuel J. Randall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Rosseau, Shanklin, Sitgreaves, Smith, Strouse, Taber, Taylor, Thornton, Trimble, Whaley, Winfield, and Wright--37.
Applause on the floor and in the galleries greeted the announcement that two-thirds of the House having voted in the affirmative the joint resolution was passed.
The heavy majority by which this measure passed the House indicated an effect of the President's steady opposition, the opposite of what was anticipated. The amendment secured two votes which were cast against the Civil Rights Bill, while it lost no vote which that measure received.
It is remarkable that the joint resolution should have been carried with such unanimity when so many Republicans had expressed dissatisfaction with the third section. This is accounted for, however, by the pressure of the previous question, in which fifteen Democrats joined forces with the radical Republicans to force the undivided issue upon the House. A large minority of the Republican members were thus prevented from voting against the clause disfranchising the late rebels until 1870.
In the Senate, as will be seen, the amendment assumed a shape more in accordance with their wishes.
XVIII. THE RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENT--IN THE SENATE
Difference between Discussions in the House and in the Senate -- Mr. Sumner proposes to postpone -- Mr. Howard takes Charge of the Amendment -- Substitutes proposed -- The Republicans in Council -- The Disfranchising Clause stricken out -- Humorous Account by Mr. Hendricks -- The Pain and Penalties of not holding Office -- A Senator's Piety appealed to -- Howe vs. Doolittle -- Marketable Principles -- Praise of the President -- Mr. Mcdougall's Charity -- Vote of the Senate -- Concurrence in the House.
The joint resolution providing for amendments to the Constitution in relation to the rights of citizens, the basis of representation, the disfranchisement of rebels, and the rejection of the rebel debt, having passed the House of Representatives on the 10th of May, awaited only similar action of the Senate to prepare it to go before the several State Legislatures for final consideration. A fortnight had elapsed before it was taken up by the Senate. That body was much behind the House of Representatives in the business of the session. Notwithstanding the great size of the latter, it was accustomed to dispatch business with much greater rapidity than the Senate. The hour rule, limiting the length of speeches, and the previous question putting a boundary upon debate, being part of the machinery of the House, caused legislation to go on to final completion, which would otherwise have been swallowed up and lost in interminable talk.
The Senate, consisting of a smaller number, did not realize the need of such restrictions. Senators sometimes indulged themselves in speeches of such length as, if permitted in the House, would have proved an insurmountable obstacle to legislation.
The contrast between the discussions in the two houses of Congress was never more marked than in connection with the amendment relating to reconstruction. In this case the members of the House by special rule limited themselves to half an hour in the delivery of their speeches, which were consequently marked by great pertinency and condensation. In the Senate the speeches were in some instances limited only by the physical ability of the speakers to proceed. In one instance--the case of Garrett Davis--a speech was prolonged four hours, occupying all that part of the day devoted to the discussion. The limits of a volume would be inadequate for giving more than a mere outline of a discussion conducted upon such principles, and protracted through a period of more than two weeks.
The joint resolution was taken up by the Senate on the 23d of May. Mr. Sumner preferred that the consideration of the question should be deferred until the first of July. "We were able," said he, "to have a better proposition at the end of April than we had at the end of March, and I believe we shall be able to accept a better proposition just as the weeks proceed. It is one of the greatest questions that has ever been presented in the history of our country or of any country. It should be approached carefully and solemnly, and with the assurance we have before us all the testimony, all the facts, every thing that by any possibility can shed any light upon it."
The Senate proceeded, however, to the consideration of the joint resolution. Owing to the ill-health of Mr. Fessenden, who, as Chairman of the joint Committee on Reconstruction, would probably have taken charge of the measure, Mr. Howard opened the discussion and conducted the resolution in its passage through the Senate. He addressed the Senate in favor of all the sections of the proposed amendment except the third. "It is due to myself," said he, "to say that I did not favor this section of the amendment in the committee. I do not believe, if adopted, it will be of any practical benefit to the country."
Mr. Clark offered a substitute for the third section--the disfranchising clause--the following amendment, which, with slight modifications, was ultimately adopted:
"That no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or permitted to hold any office under the Government of the United States, who, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution thereof, shall have voluntarily engaged in any insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort thereto."
Mr. Wade offered a substitute for the whole bill, providing that no State shall abridge the rights of any person born within the United States, and that no class of persons, as to whose right to suffrage discrimination shall be made by any State except on the ground of intelligence, property, or rebellion, shall be included in the basis of representation. "I do not suppose," said Mr. Wade, "that if I had been on the committee I could have drawn up a proposition so good as this is that they have brought forward; and yet it seems to me, having the benefit of what they have done, that looking it over, reflecting upon it, seeing all its weak points, if it have any, I could, without having the ability of that committee, suggest amendments that would be beneficial."
Referring to the third section of the joint resolution, Mr. Wade remarked: "I am for excluding those who took any leading part in the rebellion from exercising any political power here or elsewhere now and forever; but as that clause does not seem to effect that purpose, and will probably effect nothing at all, I do not think it is of any consequence that it should have a place in the measure."
On the 24th of May, Mr. Stewart spoke three hours on the constitutional amendment. He advocated the extension to the States lately engaged in rebellion of all civil and political rights on condition of their extending impartial suffrage to all their people. He announced his policy as that of "protection for the Union and the friends of the Union, and mercy to a fallen foe. Mercy pleaded generous amnesty; justice demanded impartial suffrage. I proposed pardon for the rebels and the ballot for the blacks." Of the Committee on Reconstruction, Mr. Stewart said: "I realize the difficulties which they have been called upon to encounter. They have acted a noble part in their efforts to harmonize conflicting opinions. I rejoice in the manner in which the report is presented, and the liberal spirit manifested by the committee toward those who are anxious to aid in the perfection of their plan."
Mr. Johnson moved to strike out the third section, without offering a substitute.
Mr. Sherman offered a substitute for the second and third sections, apportioning representation according to the number of male citizens qualified to vote by State laws, and apportioning direct taxes according to the value of real and personal property.
The constitutional amendment was not again brought up for consideration in the Senate until Tuesday, May 29th. The several days during which the discussion was suspended in the Senate were not fruitless in their effect upon the pending measure. The amendment was carefully considered by the majority in special meetings, when such amendations and improvements were agreed upon as would harmonize the action of the Republicans in the Senate.
The first action of the Senate, when the subject was resumed, was to vote upon Mr. Johnson's motion to strike out the third section, which was passed unanimously--yeas, 43; nays, 0.
Mr. Howard, acting for the committee, then offered a series of amendments to the joint resolution under consideration. The first of these provided for the insertion as a part of section one, the following clause:
"All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside."
Another modification moved by Mr. Howard was the insertion, in place of the third section already stricken out, a clause disabling certain classes of rebels from holding federal offices. This amendment was substantially the same as that previously proposed by Mr. Clark.
It was proposed to amend section four, which, as passed by the House, simply repudiated the rebel debt, by inserting the following clause:
"The obligations of the United States incurred in suppressing insurrection, or in defense of the Union, or for payment of bounties or pensions incident thereto, shall remain inviolate."
Such were the amendments to the pending measure which the majority saw proper to propose.
At a subsequent period of the debate, Mr. Hendricks, in a speech against the joint resolution, gave his view of the manner in which these amendments were devised. Being spoken, in good humor, by one whom a fellow-Senator once declared to be "the best-natured man in the Senate," and having, withal, a certain appropriateness to this point, his remarks are here presented:
"For three days the Senate-chamber was silent, but the discussions were transferred to another room of the Capitol, with closed doors and darkened windows, where party leaders might safely contend for a political and party policy. When Senators returned to their seats, I was curious to observe who had won and who lost in the party lottery. The dark brow of the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Clark] was lighted with a gleam of pleasure. His proposed substitute for the third section was the marked feature of the measure. But upon the lofty brow of the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] there rested a cloud of disappointment and grief. His bantling, which he had named universal amnesty and universal suffrage, which he had so often dressed and undressed in the presence of the Senate, the darling offspring of his brain, was dead; it had died in the caucus; and it was left to the sad Senator only to hope that it might not be his last. Upon the serene countenance of the Senator from Maine, the Chairman of the Fifteen, there rested the composure of the highest satisfaction; a plausible political platform had been devised, and there was yet hope for his party."
On the 30th of May, the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, proceeded in the consideration of the constitutional amendment. The several clauses were taken up separately and in order.
Mr. Doolittle was desirous of amending the first section, relating to the rights of citizens, by inserting a clause excepting from its operation "Indians not taxed." His proposition was rejected.
"The Committee of Fifteen," said Mr. Doolittle, referring to the Civil Rights Bill, "fearing that this declaration by Congress was without validity unless a constitutional amendment should be brought forward to enforce it, have thought proper to report this amendment."
"I want to say to the honorable Senator," Mr. Fessenden replied, "that he is drawing entirely upon his imagination. There is not one word of correctness in all that he is saying; not a particle; not a scintilla; not the beginning of truth."
The first and second sections of the amendment were accepted in Committee of the Whole, with little further attempt at alteration.
The third section, cutting off late Confederate officials from eligibility to Federal offices, provoked repeated attempts to modify and emasculate it. Among them was a motion by Mr. Saulsbury to amend the final clause by adding that the President, by the exercise of the pardoning power, may remove the disability.
It augured the final success of the entire amendment in the Senate, that the numerous propositions to amend, made by those unfavorable to the measure, were voted down by majorities of more than three-fourths.
Mr. Doolittle, speaking in opposition to the third section, said that it was putting a new punishment upon all persons embraced within its provisions. "If," said he, "by a constitutional amendment, you impose a new punishment upon offenders who are guilty of crime already, you wipe out the old punishment as to them. Now, I do not propose to wipe out the penalties that these men have incurred by their treason against the Government. I would punish a sufficient number of them to make treason odious."
"How many would you like to hang?" asked Mr. Nye.
"You stated the other day that five or six would be enough to hang," replied Mr. Doolittle.
"Do you acquiesce in that?" asked Mr. Nye.
"I think I ought to be satisfied," replied Mr. Doolittle, "if you are satisfied with five or six.
"The insertion of this section," said Mr. Doolittle, continuing his remarks, "tends to prevent the adoption of the amendment by a sufficient number of States to ratify it. What States to be affected by this amendment will ratify it?"
"Four will accept that part of it," said Mr. James H. Lane.
"What four?" asked Mr. Doolittle.
"Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana," replied Mr. Lane. "I saw some gentlemen on Monday from Tennessee, who told me that this particular clause would be the most popular thing that could be tendered. And the very men that you want to hang ought to accept it joyfully in lieu of their hanging." [Laughter.]
"I do not know who those particular gentlemen were," said Mr. Doolittle. "Were they the gentlemen that deserved hanging or not?"
"They were Conservatives from Tennessee," replied Mr. Lane.
"I deem this section as the adoption of a new punishment as to the persons who are embraced within its provisions," said Mr. Doolittle.
"They seem to have peculiar notions in Wisconsin in regard to officers," said Mr. Trumbull; "and the Senator who has just taken his seat regards it as a punishment that a man can not hold an office. Why, sir, how many suffering people there must be in this land! He says this is a bill of pains and penalties because certain persons can not hold office; and he even seems to think it would be preferable, in some instances, to be hanged. He wants to know of the Senator from Ohio if such persons are to be excepted. This clause, I suppose, will not embrace those who are to be hanged. When hung, they will cease to suffer the pains and penalties of being kept out of office.
"Who ever heard of such a proposition as that laid down by the Senator from Wisconsin, that a bill excluding men from office is a bill of pains, and penalties, and punishment? The Constitution of the United States declares that no one but a native born citizen of the United States shall be President of the United States. Does, then, every person living in this land who does not happen to have been born within its jurisdiction undergo pains, and penalties, and punishment all his life because by the Constitution he is ineligible to the Presidency? This is the Senator's position."
Mr. Willey spoke in favor of the pending clause of the joint resolution. "I hope," said he, "that we shall hear no more outcry about the injustice, the inhumanity, and the want of Christian spirit in thus incorporating into our Constitution precautionary measures that will forever prohibit these unfaithful men from again having any part in the Government."
"The honorable Senator," remarked Mr. Davis in reply, "is a professor of the Christian religion, a follower of the lowly and humble Redeemer; but it seems to me that he forgot all the spirit of his Christian charity and faith in the tenor of the remarks which he made."
"This cry for blood and vengeance," exclaimed Mr. Saulsbury, "can not last forever. The eternal God who sits above, whose essence is love, and whose chief attribute is mercy, says to all his creatures, whether in the open daylight or in the silent hours of the night, 'Be charitable; be merciful.'"
Mr. Doolittle proposed two amendments to section three: the first to limit its application to those who "voluntarily engaged in rebellion," and the second to except those "who have duly received amnesty and pardon."
These propositions were both rejected by large majorities, only ten Senators voting for them. The third section, as proposed by Mr. Howard, was then adopted by a vote of thirty against ten.
The death of General Scott having been the occasion of an adjournment of Congress, the consideration of the constitutional amendment was not resumed until the 4th of June. Mr. Hendricks moved to amend by including in the basis of representation in the Southern States three-fifths of the freedmen. Mr. Van Winkle offered an amendment providing that no person not excluded from office by the terms of the third section shall be liable to any disability or penalty for treason after a term of years. Both of these propositions were rejected by the Senate.
On the 5th of June, Mr. Poland, Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Howe addressed the Senate in favor of the constitutional amendment. Mr. Poland did not expect to be able to say any thing after six months' discussion of this subject. He took more hopeful views of the President's tractability than many others. "Although these propositions," said he, "may not, in all respects, correspond with the views of the President, I believe he will feel it to be his patriotic duty to acquiesce in the plan proposed, and give his powerful influence and support to procure their adoption."
"While it is not the plan that I would have adopted," said Mr. Stewart, "still it is the best that I can get, and contains many excellent provisions."
"I shall vote for the Constitutional amendment," said Mr. Howe, "regretfully, but not reluctantly. I shall vote for it regretfully, because it does not meet the emergency as I hoped the emergency would be met; but I shall not vote for it reluctantly, because it seems to me just now to be the only way in which the emergency can be met at all."
An issue of some personal interest arose between Mr. Howe and his colleague, Mr. Doolittle, which led them somewhat aside from the regular channel of discussion.
"He has been a most fortunate politician," said Mr. Howe, "always to happen to have just those convictions which bore the highest price in the market."
"That I ever intended in the slightest degree," replied Mr. Doolittle, "to swerve in my political action for the sake of offices or the price of offices in the market, is a statement wholly without foundation."
Mr. Howe had said in substance that in 1848 Mr. Doolittle was acting with the Free Democratic party in New York, which was stronger than the Democratic party in that State. In 1852, when he left the Free Democratic party, and acted with the Democratic party in Wisconsin, the Democratic party was in the majority in that State. He did not leave the Democratic party and join the Republican party in 1854, but only in 1856, and then Wisconsin was no longer a Democratic State.
Mr. Doolittle, after having given a detailed account of his previous political career, remarked: "During the last six months, in the State of Wisconsin, no man has struggled harder than I have struggled to save the Union party, to save it to its platform, to save it to its principles, to save it to its supremacy. For six months, from one end of Wisconsin to the other--ay, from Boston to St. Paul--by every one of a certain class of newspapers I have been denounced as a traitor to the Union party because I saved it from defeat. Sir, it is not the first time in the history of the world that men have turned in to crucify their savior."
On the same day, June 6th, Messrs. Hendricks, Sherman, Cowan, and others having participated in the discussion, the Senate voted on another amendment offered by Mr. Doolittle, apportioning Representatives, after the census of 1870, according to the number of legal voters in each State by the laws thereof. This proposition was rejected--yeas, 7; nays, 31.
On the 7th of June, Mr. Garrett Davis occupied the entire time devoted to the constitutional amendment in opposing that measure, denouncing Congress, and praising the President. "There is a very great state of backwardness," said he, "in both houses of Congress in relation to the transaction of the legitimate, proper, and useful portion of the public business; but as to the business that is of an illegitimate and mischievous character, and that is calculated to produce results deleterious to the present and the future of the whole country, there has been a good deal, much too much, of progress made."
Of President Johnson Mr. Davis said: "He seems to be the man for the occasion; and his ability, resources, courage, and patriotism have developed to meet its great demands. If this ark which holds the rights and liberties of the American people is to be rescued and saved, he will be one of the chief instruments in the great work, and his glory and fame will be deathless."
On the 8th of June, the last day of the discussion, the constitutional amendment was opposed by Messrs. Johnson, McDougall, and Hendricks, and defended by Messrs. Henderson, Yates, and Howard.
"Let us bring back the South," said Mr. Johnson, in closing his remarks, "so as to enable her to remove the desolation which has gone through her borders, restore her industry, attend to her products, instead of keeping her in a state of subjection without the slightest necessity. Peace once existing throughout the land, the restoration of all rights brought about, the Union will be at once in more prosperous existence than it ever was; and throughout the tide of time, as I believe, nothing in the future will ever cause us to dream of dissolution, or of subjecting any part, through the powerful instrumentality of any other part, to any dishonoring humiliation."
"I went down once on the Mississippi," remarked Mr. McDougall, "at the opening of the war. I met a general of the Confederate army, and I took him by the hand and took him to my state-room, on board of my gun-boat. Said he, 'General,' throwing his arms around me, 'how hard it is that you and I have to fight.' That was the generosity of a combatant. I repeated to him, 'It is hard,' and he and I drank a bottle of wine or two--just as like as not. [Laughter.] This thing of bearing malice is one of the wickedest sins that men can bear under their clothes."
Speaking of the third section, which had encountered great opposition, as inflicting undue punishment upon prominent rebels, Mr. Henderson said: "If this provision be all, it will be an act of the most stupendous mercy that ever mantled the crimes of rebellion."
"Let us suppose a case," said Mr. Yates. "Here is a man--Winder, or Dick Turner, or some other notorious character. He has been the cause of the death of that boy of yours. He has shot at him from behind an ambuscade, or he has starved him to death in the Andersonville prison, or he has made him lie at Belle Isle, subject to disease and death from the miasma by which he was surrounded. When he is upon trial and the question is, 'Sir, are you guilty, or are you not guilty?' and he raises his blood-stained hands, deep-dyed in innocent and patriotic blood, the Senator from Pennsylvania rises and says, 'For God's sake! do not deprive him of the right to go to the legislature.' The idea is that if a man has forfeited his life, it is too great a punishment to deprive him of the privilege of holding office."
Speaking of radicalism, Mr. Yates remarked: "My fear is not that this Congress will be too radical; I am not afraid of this Congress being shipwrecked upon any proposition of radicalism; but I fear from timid and cowardly conservatism which will not risk a great people to take their destiny in their own hands, and to settle this great question upon the principles of equality, justice, and liberality. That is my fear."
Mr. Doolittle moved that the several sections of the amendment be submitted to the States as separate articles. This motion was rejected--yeas, 11; nays, 33.
The vote was finally taken upon the adoption of the constitutional amendment as a whole. It passed the Senate by a majority of more than two-thirds, as follows:
YEAS--Messrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Edmunds, Fessenden, Foster, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Morgan, Morrill, Nye, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Williams, Wilson, and Yates--33.
NAYS--Messrs. Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, and Van Winkle--11.
On the 13th of June, the joint resolution, having been modified in the Senate, reäppeared in the House for the concurrence of that branch of Congress. There was a short discussion of the measure as amended in the Senate. Messrs. Rogers, Finck, and Harding spoke against the resolution, and Messrs. Spalding, Henderson, and Stevens in its favor.
"The first proposition," said Mr. Rogers, "was tame in iniquity, injustice, and violation of fundamental liberty to the one before us."
"I say," said Mr. Finck, "it is an outrage upon the people of those States who were compelled to give their aid and assistance in the rebellion. You propose to inflict upon these people a punishment not known to the law in existence at the time any offense may have been committed, but after the offense has been committed."
"Let me tell you," said Mr. Harding, "you are preparing for revolutions after revolutions. I warn you there will be no peace in this country until each State be allowed to control its own citizens. If you take that from them, what care I for the splendid machinery of a national government?"
Mr. Stevens briefly addressed the House before the final vote was taken. He had just risen from a sick-bed, and ridden to the Capitol at the peril of his life. During the quarter of an hour which he occupied in speaking, the solemnity was such as is seldom seen in that assembly. Members left their seats, and gathered closely around the venerable man to hear his brave and solemn words. From his youth he had hoped to see our institutions freed from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor and the superior caste of the rich. But that bright dream had vanished. "I find," said he, "that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it in many of its parts to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the storms of despotism."
It might be inquired why, with his opinions, he accepted so imperfect a proposition. "Because," said he, "I live among men, and not among angels; among men as intelligent, as determined, and as independent as myself, who, not agreeing with me, do not choose to yield their opinions to mine." With an enfeebled voice, yet with a courageous air, he charged the responsibility for that day's patchwork upon the Executive. "With his cordial assistance," said Mr. Stevens, "the rebel States might have been made model republics, and this nation an empire of universal freedom; but he preferred 'restoration' to 'reconstruction.'"
The question was taken, and the joint resolution passed the House by a vote of over three-fourths--120 yeas to 32 nays. From the necessary absence of many members, the vote was not full, yet the relative majority in favor of this measure was greater than in the former vote.
The following is the Constitutional Amendment as it passed both Houses of Congress:
"ARTICLE--.
"SEC. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
"SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of such male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
"SEC. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
"SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.
"SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
The President was requested to send the Amendment to the several States for ratification.
On the 22d of June, President Johnson sent a message to Congress informing them that the Secretary of State had transmitted to the Governors of the several States certified copies of the proposed amendment. "These steps," said the President, "are to be considered as purely ministerial, and in no sense whatever committing the Executive to an approval of the recommendation of the amendment." It seemed to the President a serious objection to the proposition "that the joint resolution was not submitted by the two houses for the approval of the President, and that of the thirty-six States which constitute the Union, eleven are excluded from representation."
The President having no power under the Constitution to veto a joint resolution submitting a constitutional amendment to the people, this voluntary expression of opinion could not have been designed to have an influence upon the action of Congress. The document could have been designed by its author only as an argument with the State Legislatures against the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment, and as a notice to the Southern people that they were badly treated.
The President's message was received by Congress without comment, and referred to the Committee on Reconstruction.
XIX. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION
An important State Paper -- Work of the Committee -- Difficulty of obtaining information -- Theory of the President -- Taxation and Representation -- Disposition and doings of the Southern People -- Conclusion of the Committee -- Practical Recommendations.
On the 8th of June, the day on which the constitutional amendment passed the Senate, the report of the joint Committee on Reconstruction was presented to Congress. This important State paper had been looked for with great interest and no little anxiety by the people in all parts of the country. It was drawn up with marked ability, and was destined to have a most important bearing upon public opinion in reference to the great subject which, in all its bearings, it brought to the view of Congress and the country.
The committee having had unrivalled opportunities for obtaining information, their conclusions commanded the respect of those who differed from them, and obtained the almost unanimous approval of the party which carried the war to a successful close.
Referring to the nature of the work which was required of them, the committee said:
"Such an investigation, covering so large an extent of territory, and involving so many important considerations, must necessarily require no trifling labor, and consume a very considerable amount of time. It must embrace the condition in which those States were left at the close of the war; the measures which have been taken toward the reörganization of civil government, and the disposition of the people toward the United States--in a word, their fitness to take an active part in the administration of national affairs."
The first step to be taken by the committee, that of obtaining required information, and the difficulties attending it, were thus set forth:
"A call was made on the President for the information in his possession as to what had been done, in order that Congress might judge for itself as to the grounds of belief expressed by him in the fitness of States recently in rebellion to participate fully in the conduct of national affairs. This information was not immediately communicated. When the response was finally made, some six weeks after your committee had been in actual session, it was found that the evidence upon which the President seemed to have based his suggestions was incomplete and unsatisfactory. Authenticated copies of the constitutions and ordinances adopted by the conventions in three of the States had been submitted; extracts from newspapers furnished scanty information as to the action of one other State, and nothing appears to have been communicated as to the remainder. There was no evidence of the loyalty of those who participated in these conventions, and in one State alone was any proposition made to submit the action of the convention to the final judgment of the people.
"Failing to obtain the desired information, and left to grope for light wherever it might be found, your committee did not deem it either advisable or safe to adopt, without further examination, the suggestions of the President, more especially as he had not deemed it expedient to remove the military force, to suspend martial law, or to restore the writ of habeas corpus, but still thought it necessary to exercise over the people of the rebellious States his military power and jurisdiction. This conclusion derived greater force from the fact, undisputed, that in all those States, except Tennessee, and, perhaps, Arkansas, the elections which were held for State officers and members of Congress had resulted almost universally in the defeat of candidates who had been true to the Union, and in the election of notorious and unpardoned rebels--men who could not take the prescribed oath of office, and who made no secret of their hostility to the Government and the people of the United States.
"Under these circumstances, any thing like hasty action would have been as dangerous as it was obviously unwise. It appeared to your committee that but one course remained, viz.: to investigate carefully and thoroughly the state of feeling and opinion existing among the people of these States; to ascertain how far their pretended loyalty could be relied upon, and thence to infer whether it would be safe to admit them at once to a full participation in the Government they had fought for four years to destroy. It was an equally important inquiry whether their restoration to their former relations with the United States should only be granted upon certain conditions and guarantees, which would effectually secure the nation against a recurrence of evils so disastrous as those from which it had escaped at so enormous a sacrifice."
The theory of the President, and those who demanded the immediate admission of Southern Senators and Representatives, was stated in the report to amount to this:
"That, inasmuch as the lately insurgent States had no legal right to separate themselves from the Union, they still retain their positions as States, and, consequently, the people thereof have a right to immediate representation in Congress, without the imposition of any conditions whatever; and, further, that until such admission, Congress has no right to tax them for the support of the Government. It has even been contended that, until such admission, all legislation affecting their interests is, if not unconstitutional, at least unjustifiable and oppressive.
"It is moreover contended that, from the moment when rebellion lays down its arms, and actual hostilities cease, all political rights of rebellious communities are at once restored; that because the people of a State of the Union were once an organized community within the Union, they necessarily so remain, and their right to be represented in Congress at any and all times, and to participate in the government of the country under all circumstances, admits of neither question nor dispute. If this is indeed true, then is the Government of the United States powerless for its own protection, and flagrant rebellion, carried to the extreme of civil war, is a pastime which any State may play at, not only certain that it can lose nothing, in any event, but may be the gainer by defeat. If rebellion succeeds, it accomplishes its purpose and destroys the Government. If it fails, the war has been barren of results, and the battle may be fought out in the legislative halls of the country. Treason defeated in the field has only to take possession of Congress and the Cabinet."
The committee in this report asserted:
"It is more than idle, it is a mockery to contend that a people who have thrown off their allegiance, destroyed the local government which bound their States to the Union as members thereof, defied its authority, refused to execute its laws, and abrogated every provision which gave them political rights within the Union, still retain through all the perfect and entire right to resume at their own will and pleasure all their privileges within the Union, and especially to participate in its government and control the conduct of its affairs. To admit such a principle for one moment would be to declare that treason is always master and loyalty a blunder."
To a favorite argument of the advocates of immediate restoration of the rebel States, the report presented the following reply:
"That taxation should be only with the consent of the people, through their own representatives, is a cardinal principle of all free governments; but it is not true that taxation and representation must go together under all circumstances and at every moment of time. The people of the District of Columbia and of the Territories are taxed, although not represented in Congress. If it be true that the people of the so-called Confederate States have no right to throw off the authority of the United States, it is equally true that they are bound at all times to share the burdens of Government. They can not, either legally or equitably, refuse to bear their just proportion of these burdens by voluntarily abdicating their rights and privileges as States of the Union, and refusing to be represented in the councils of the nation, much less by rebellion against national authority and levying war. To hold that by so doing they could escape taxation, would be to offer a premium for insurrection--to reward instead of punishing treason."
Upon the important subject of representation, which had occupied much of the attention of the committee and much of the time of Congress, the report held the following words:
"The increase of representation, necessarily resulting from the abolition of slavery, was considered the most important element in the questions arising out of the changed condition of affairs, and the necessity for some fundamental action in this regard seemed imperative. It appeared to your committee that the rights of these persons, by whom the basis of representation had been thus increased, should be recognized by the General Government. While slaves they were not considered as having any rights, civil or political. It did not seem just or proper that all the political advantages derived from their becoming free should be confined to their former masters, who had fought against the Union, and withheld from themselves, who had always been loyal. Slavery, by building up a ruling and dominant class, had produced a spirit of oligarchy adverse to republican institutions, which finally inaugurated civil war. The tendency of continuing the domination of such a class, by leaving it in the exclusive possession of political power, would be to encourage the same spirit and lead to a similar result. Doubts were entertained whether Congress had power, even under the amended Constitution, to prescribe the qualifications of voters in a State, or could act directly on the subject. It was doubtful in the opinion of your committee whether the States would consent to surrender a power they had always exercised, and to which they were attached. As the best, not the only method of surmounting all difficulty, and as eminently just and proper in itself, your committee comes to the conclusion that political power should be possessed in all the States exactly in proportion as the right of suffrage should be granted without distinction of color or race. This, it was thought, would leave the whole question with the people of each State, holding out to all the advantages of increased political power as an inducement to allow all to participate in its exercise. Such a proposition would be in its nature gentle and persuasive, and would tend, it was hoped, at no distant day, to an equal participation of all, without distinction, in all the rights and privileges of citizenship, thus affording a full and adequate protection to all classes of citizens, since we would have, through the ballot-box, the power of self-protection.
"Holding these views, your committee prepared an amendment to the Constitution to carry out this idea, and submitted the same to Congress. Unfortunately, as we think, it did not receive the necessary constitutional support in the Senate, and, therefore, could not be proposed for adoption by the States. The principle involved in that amendment is, however, believed to be sound, and your committee have again proposed it in another form, hoping that it may receive the approbation of Congress."
The action of the people of the insurrectionary States, and their responses to the President's appeals, as showing their degree of preparation for immediate admission into Congress, was thus set forth in the report:
"So far as the disposition of the people of the insurrectionary States and the probability of their adopting measures conforming to the changed condition of affairs can be inferred, from the papers submitted by the President as the basis of his action, the prospects are far from encouraging. It appears quite clear that the anti-slavery amendments, both to the State and Federal Constitutions, were adopted with reluctance by the bodies which did adopt them; and in some States they have been either passed by in silence or rejected. The language of all the provisions and ordinances of the States on the subject amounts to nothing more than an unwilling admission of an unwelcome truth. As to the ordinance of secession, it is in some cases declared 'null and void,' and in others simply 'repealed,' and in no case is a refutation of this deadly heresy considered worthy of a place in the new constitutions.
"If, as the President assumes, these insurrectionary States were, at the close of the war, wholly without State governments, it would seem that before being admitted to participate in the direction of public affairs, such governments should be regularly organized. Long usage has established, and numerous statutes have pointed out, the mode in which this should be done. A convention to frame a form of government should be assembled under competent authority. Ordinarily this authority emanates from Congress; but under the peculiar circumstances, your committee is not disposed to criticise the President's action in assuming the power exercised by him in this regard.
"The convention, when assembled, should frame a constitution of government, which should be submitted to the people for adoption. If adopted, a Legislature should be convened to pass the laws necessary to carry it into effect. When a State thus organized claims representation in Congress, the election of Representatives should be provided for by law, in accordance with the laws of Congress regulating representation, and the proof, that the action taken has been in conformity to law, should be submitted to Congress.
"In no case have these essential preliminary steps been taken. The conventions assembled seem to have assumed that the Constitution which had been repudiated and overthrown, was still in existence, and operative to constitute the States members of the Union, and to have contented themselves with such amendments as they were informed were requisite in order to insure their return to an immediate participation in the Government of the United States. And without waiting to ascertain whether the people they represented would adopt even the proposed amendments, they at once called elections of Representatives to Congress in nearly all instances before an Executive had been chosen to issue certificates of election under the State laws, and such elections as were held were ordered by the conventions. In one instance, at least, the writs of election were signed by the provisional governor. Glaring irregularities and unwarranted assumptions of power are manifest in several cases, particularly in South Carolina, where the convention, although disbanded by the provisional governor on the ground that it was a revolutionary body, assumed to district the State."
The report thus sets forth the conduct naturally expected of the Southern people, as contrasted with their actual doings:
"They should exhibit in their acts something more than unwilling submission to an unavoidable necessity--a feeling, if not cheerful, certainly not offensive and defiant, and should evince an entire repudiation of all hostility to the General Government by an acceptance of such just and favorable conditions as that Government should think the public safety demands. Has this been done? Let us look at the facts shown by the evidence taken by the committee. Hardly had the war closed before the people of these insurrectionary States come forward and hastily claim as a right the privilege of participating at once in that Government which they had for four years been fighting to overthrow.
"Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State governments, they at once place in power leading rebels, unrepentant and unpardoned, excluding with contempt those who had manifested an attachment to the Union, and preferring, in many instances, those who had rendered themselves the most obnoxious. In the face of the law requiring an oath which would necessarily exclude all such men from Federal office, they elect, with very few exceptions, as Senators and Representatives in Congress, men who had actively participated in the rebellion, insultingly denouncing the law as unconstitutional.
"It is only necessary to instance the election to the Senate of the late Vice President of the Confederacy--a man who, against his own declared convictions, had lent all the weight of his acknowledged ability and of his influence as a most prominent public man to the cause of the rebellion, and who, unpardoned rebel as he is, with that oath staring him in the face, had the assurance to lay his credentials on the table of the Senate. Other rebels of scarcely less note or notoriety were selected from other quarters. Professing no repentance, glorying apparently in the crime they had committed, avowing still, as the uncontradicted testimony of Mr. Stephens and many others proves, an adherence to the pernicious doctrines of secession, and declaring that they yielded only to necessity, they insist with unanimous voice upon their rights as States, and proclaim they will submit to no conditions whatever preliminary to their resumption of power under that Constitution which they still claim the right to repudiate."
Finally the report thus presented the "conclusion of the committee:"
"That the so-called Confederate States are not at present entitled to representation in the Congress of the United States; that before allowing such representation, adequate security for future peace and safety should be required; that this can only be found in such changes of the organic law as shall determine the civil rights and privileges of all citizens in all parts of the republic, shall place representation on an equitable basis, shall fix a stigma upon treason, and protect the loyal people against future claims for the expenses incurred in support of rebellion and for manumitted slaves, together with an express grant of power in Congress to enforce these provisions. To this end they have offered a joint resolution for amending the Constitution of the United States, and two several bills designed to carry the same into effect."
The passage of the Constitutional Amendment by more than the necessary majority has been related. One of the bills to which reference is made in the above report--declaring certain officials of the so-called Confederate States ineligible to any office under the Government of the United States--was placed in the amendment in lieu of the disfranchising clause. The other bill provided for "the restoration of the States lately in insurrection to their full rights" so soon as they should have ratified the proposed amendment. This bill was defeated in the House by a vote of 75 to 48. Congress thus refused to pledge itself in advance to make the amendment the sole test of the reädmission of rebel States. Congress, however, clearly indicated a disposition to restore those States "at the earliest day consistent with the future peace and safety of the Union." The report and doings of the Committee of Fifteen, although by many impatiently criticised as dilatory, resulted, before the end of the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, in the reconstruction of one of the States lately in rebellion.
XX. RESTORATION OF TENNESSEE
Assembling of the Tennessee Legislature -- Ratification of the Constitutional Amendment -- Restoration of Tennessee proposed in Congress -- The Government of Tennessee not Republican -- Protest against the Preamble -- Passage in the House -- New Preamble proposed -- The President's Opinion deprecated and disregarded -- Passage in the Senate -- The President's Approval and Protest -- Admission of Tennessee Members -- Mr. Patterson's Case.
The most important practical step in the work of reconstruction taken by the Thirty-ninth Congress was the restoration of Tennessee to her relations to the Union. Of all the recently rebellious States, Tennessee was the first to give a favorable response to the overtures of Congress by ratifying the Constitutional Amendment.
Immediately on the reception of the circular of the Secretary of State containing the proposed amendment, Governor Brownlow issued a proclamation summoning the Legislature of Tennessee to assemble at Nashville on the 4th of July.
There are eighty-four seats in the lower branch of the Legislature of Tennessee. By the State Constitution, two-thirds of the seats are required to be full to constitute a quorum. The presence of fifty-six members seemed essential for the legal transaction of business. Every effort was made to prevent the assembling of the required number. The powerful influence of the President himself was thrown in opposition to ratification.
On the day of the assembling of the Legislature but fifty-two members voluntarily appeared. Two additional members were secured by arrest, so that the number nominally in attendance was fifty-four, and thus it remained for several days. It was ascertained that deaths and resignations had reduced the number of actual members to seventy-two, and a Union caucus determined to declare that fifty-four members should constitute a quorum. Two more Union members opportunely arrived, swelling the number present in the Capitol to fifty-six. Neither persuasion nor compulsion availed to induce the two "Conservative members" to occupy their seats, and the house was driven to the expedient of considering the members who were under arrest and confined in a committee room, as present in their places. This having been decided, the constitutional amendment was immediately ratified. Governor Brownlow immediately sent the following telegraphic dispatch to Washington:
"NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, Thursday, July 19--12 M.
"To Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
My compliments to the President. We have carried the Constitutional Amendment in the House. Vote, 43 to 18; two of his tools refusing to vote.
W. G. BROWNLOW."
On the 19th of July, the very day on which Tennessee voted to ratify the amendment, and immediately after the news was received in Washington, Mr. Bingham, in the House of Representatives, moved to reconsider a motion by which a joint resolution relating to the restoration of Tennessee had been referred to the Committee on Reconstruction.
This joint resolution having been drawn up in the early part of the session, was not adapted to the altered condition of affairs resulting from the passage of the constitutional amendment in Congress. The motion to reconsider having passed, Mr. Bingham proposed the following substitute:
"Joint resolution declaring Tennessee again entitled to Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Whereas, The State of Tennessee has in good faith ratified the article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress to the Legislatures of the several States, and has also shown, to the satisfaction of Congress, by a proper spirit of obedience in the body of her people, her return to her due allegiance to the Government, laws, and authority of the United States: Therefore,
Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the State of Tennessee is hereby restored to her former, proper, practical relation to the Union, and again entitled to be represented by Senators and Representatives in Congress, duly elected and qualified, upon their taking the oaths of office required by existing laws."
On the following day, this joint resolution was the regular order, and gave rise to a brief discussion.
Mr. Boutwell desired to offer an amendment providing that Tennessee should have representation in Congress whenever, in addition to having ratified the constitutional amendment, it should establish an "equal and just system of suffrage." Mr. Boutwell, although opposed to the joint resolution before the House, had no "technical" objections to the immediate restoration of Tennessee. "I am not troubled," said he, "by the informalities apparent in the proceedings of the Tennessee Legislature upon the question of ratifying the constitutional amendment. It received the votes of a majority of the members of a full house, and when the proper officers shall have made the customary certificate, and filed it in the Department of State, it is not easy to see how any legal objection can be raised, even if two-thirds of the members were not present, although that proportion is a quorum according to the constitution of the State."
Mr. Boutwell declared that his objections to the pending measure were vital and fundamental. The government of Tennessee was not republican in form, since under its constitution more than eighty thousand male citizens were deprived of the right of suffrage. The enfranchisement of the freedmen of Tennessee should be the beginning of the great work of reconstruction upon a republican basis. "We surrender the rights of four million people," said Mr. Boutwell in concluding his remarks; "we surrender the cause of justice; we imperil the peace and endanger the prosperity of the country; we degrade ourselves as a great party which has controlled the government in the most trying times in the history of the world."
Mr. Higby thought that Tennessee should not be admitted without a restriction that she should not be allowed any more representation than that to which she would be entitled were the constitutional amendment in full operation and effect.
Mr. Bingham advocated at considerable length the immediate restoration of Tennessee. "Inasmuch," said he, "as Tennessee has conformed to all our requirements; inasmuch as she has, by a majority of her whole legislature in each house, ratified the amendment in good faith; inasmuch as she has of her own voluntary will conformed her constitution and laws to the Constitution and laws of the United States; inasmuch as she has by her fundamental law forever prohibited the assumption or payment of the rebel debt, or the enslavement of men; inasmuch as she has by her own constitution declared that rebels shall not exercise any of the political power of the State or vote at elections; and thereby given the American people assurance of her determination to stand by this great measure of security for the future of the Republic, Tennessee is as much entitled to be represented here as any State in the Union."
Mr. Finck, Mr. Eldridge, and other Democrats favored the resolution, while they protested against and "spit on" the preamble.
The question having been taken, the joint resolution passed the House, one hundred and twenty-five voting in the affirmative, and twelve in the negative. These last were the following: Messrs. Alley, Benjamin, Boutwell, Eliot, Higby, Jenckes, Julian, Kelley, Loan, McClurg, Paine, and Williams.
The announcement of the passage of the joint resolution was greeted with demonstrations of applause on the floor and in the galleries.
On the day succeeding this action in the House, the joint resolution came up for consideration in the Senate. After a considerable discussion, the resolution as it passed the House was adopted by the Senate.
In place of the preamble which was passed by the House, Mr. Trumbull proposed the following substitute:
"Whereas, In the year 1861, the government of the State of Tennessee was seized upon and taken possession of by persons in hostility to the United States, and the inhabitants of said State, in pursuance of an act of Congress were declared to be in a state of insurrection against the United States; and whereas said State government can only be restored to its former political relations in the Union by the consent of the law-making power of the United States; and whereas the people of said State did on the 22d of February, 1865, by a large popular vote adopt and ratify a constitution of government whereby slavery was abolished, and all ordinances and laws of secession and debts contracted under the same were declared void; and whereas a State government has been organized under said constitution which has ratified the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing slavery, also the amendment proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and has done other acts proclaiming and denoting loyalty: Therefore."
Mr. Sherman opposed the substitution of this preamble. "These political dogmas," said he, "can not receive the sanction of the President; and to insert them will only create delay, and postpone the admission of Tennessee."
"I pay no regard," said Mr. Wade, "to all that has been said here in relation to the President probably vetoing your bill, for any thing he may do, in my judgment, is entirely out of order on this floor. Sir, in olden times it was totally inadmissible in the British Parliament for any member to allude to any opinion that the king might entertain on any thing before the body; and much more, sir, ought an American Congress never to permit any member to allude to the opinion that the Executive may have upon any subject under consideration. He has his duty to perform, and we ours; and we have no right whatever under the Constitution to be biased by any opinion that he may entertain on any subject. Therefore, sir, I believe that it is, or ought to be, out of order to allude to any such thing here. Let the President do what he conceives to be his duty, and let us do ours, without being biased in any way whatever by what it may be supposed he will do."
Mr. Brown entered his disclaimer. "Republicanism," said he, "means nothing if it means not impartial, universal suffrage. Republicanism is a mockery and a lie if it can assume to administer this government in the name of freedom, and yet sanction, as this act will, the disfranchisement of a large, if not the largest, part of the loyal population of the rebel States on the pretext of color and race."
The question being taken on the passage of the preamble as substituted by the Senate, together with the resolution of the House, resulted in twenty-eight Senators voting in the affirmative, and four in the negative. The latter were Messrs. Brown, Buckalew, McDougal, and Sumner.
The House concurred in the amendment of the Senate, without discussion, and the joint resolution went to the President for his approval.
On the 24th of July, the President, not thinking it expedient to risk a veto, signed the joint resolution, and at the same time sent to the House his protest against the opinions presented in the preamble. After having given his objections to the preamble and resolution at considerable length, the President said: "I have, notwithstanding the anomalous character of this proceeding, affixed my signature to the resolution. [General applause and laughter.] My approval, however, is not to be construed as an acknowledgment of the right of Congress to pass laws preliminary to the admission of duly-qualified representatives from any of the States. [Great laughter.] Neither is it to be considered as committing me to all the statements made in the preamble, [renewed laughter,] some of which are, in my opinion, without foundation in fact, especially the assertion that the State of Tennessee has ratified the amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress." [Laughter.]
After the reading of the President's Message, Mr. Stevens said: "Inasmuch as the joint resolution has become a law by the entire and cordial approval of the President, [laughter,] I am joint committee on reconstruction to ask that that committee be discharged from the further consideration of the credentials of the members elect from the State of Tennessee, and to move that the same be referred to the Committee of Elections of this House."
This motion was passed. At a later hour of the same day's session, Mr. Dawes, of the Committee on Elections, having permission to report, said that the credentials of the eight Representatives elect from Tennessee had been examined, and were found in conformity with law. He moved, therefore, that the gentlemen be sworn in as members of the House from the State of Tennessee.
Horace Maynard and other gentlemen from Tennessee then went forward amid applause, and took the oath of office.
On the day following, Joseph S. Fowler was sworn in, and took his seat as a Senator from Tennessee.
The next day Mr. Fowler presented the credentials of David T. Patterson as a Senator elect from Tennessee. A motion was made that these credentials be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, with instructions to inquire into the qualifications of Mr. Patterson.
The circumstances in this case were peculiar. Mr. Patterson had been elected circuit judge by the people of East Tennessee in 1854. His term of office expired in 1862, after Tennessee had passed the ordinance of secession and became a member of the Southern Confederacy. He was a firm, avowed, and influential Union man, and in the exercise of the duties of his office did much to protect the interests of loyal men. Persons who were opposed to secession, which with lawless violence was sweeping over the State, felt the importance of having the offices filled by Union men. Mr. Patterson was urged to again become a candidate for judge. He reluctantly consented, and was elected by a large majority over a rebel candidate. Governor Harris sent his commission, with peremptory orders that he should immediately take the oath to support the Southern Confederacy. Judge Patterson delayed and hesitated, and consulted other Union men as to the proper course to be pursued. They advised and urged him to take the oath. By so doing he could afford protection, to some extent, to Union men, against acts of lawless violence on the part of rebels. He was advised that, if he did not accept the office, it would be filled by a rebel, and the people would be oppressed by the civil as well as the military power of the rebels. He yielded to these arguments and this advice, and took the oath prescribed by the Legislature, which in substance was that he would support the Constitution of Tennessee and the Constitution of the Confederate States. He declared at the time that he owed no allegiance to the Confederate Government, and did not consider that part of the oath as binding him at all.
Judge Patterson held a few terms of court in counties when he could organize grand juries of Union men, and did something toward preserving peace and order in the community. He aided the Union people and the Union cause in every possible way, and thus became amenable to the hostility of the secessionists, who subjected him to great difficulty and danger. He was several times arrested, and held for some time in custody. At times he was obliged to conceal himself for safety. He spent many nights in out-buildings and in the woods to avoid the vengeance of the rebels.
In September, 1863, the United States forces under General Burnside having taken possession of Knoxville, Mr. Patterson succeeded, with his family, in making his escape to Knoxville, and did not return to his home until after the close of the rebellion.
The Committee on the Judiciary having taken into consideration the above and other palliating circumstances, proposed a resolution that Mr. Patterson "is duly qualified and entitled to hold a seat in the Senate." On motion of Mr. Clark this resolution was amended to read, "that, upon taking the oaths required by the Constitution and the laws, he be admitted to a seat in the Senate."
It was, however, thought better by the Senate to pass a joint resolution that in the case of Mr. Patterson there should be omitted from the test oath the following words: "That I have neither sought, nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under any authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United States." This joint resolution having passed the Senate, was immediately sent to the House of Representatives, then in session, and at once came up before that body for consideration. The resolution was eloquently advocated by Messrs. Maynard and Taylor, and opposed by Mr. Stokes, all of Tennessee.
"On the night of the 22d of February last," said Mr. Stokes, "I delivered a speech in Nashville, and there and then declared, if admitted as a member of this House, I would freeze to my seat before I would vote to repeal the test oath. [Long-continued applause on the floor and in the galleries.] I have made the same declaration in many speeches since then.
"Sir, I regard the test oath passed by the United States Congress as the salvation of the Union men of the South as well as of the North. I regard it as sacred as the flaming sword which the Creator placed in the tree of life to guard it, forbidding any one from partaking of the fruit thereof who was not pure in heart. Sir, this is no light question. Repeal the test oath and you permit men to come into Congress and take seats who have taken an oath to the Confederate Government, and who have aided and assisted in carrying out its administration and laws. That is what we are now asked to do. Look back to the 14th of August, 1861, the memorable day of the proclamation issued by Jefferson Davis, ordering every man within the lines of the confederacy who still held allegiance to the Federal Government to leave within forty-eight hours. That order compelled many to seek for hiding-places who could not take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government. When the rebel authorities said to our noble Governor of Tennessee, 'We will throw wide open the prison doors and let you out, if you will swear allegiance to our government,' what was his reply? 'You may sever my head from my body, but I will never take the oath to the Confederate Government.'"
Mr. Conkling said: "I should be recreant to candor were I to attempt to conceal my amazement at the scene now passing before us. Only eight short days ago and eleven States were silent and absent here, because they had participated in guilty rebellion, and because they were not in fit condition to share in the government and control of this country. Seven short days ago we found one of these States with loyalty so far retrieved, one State so far void of present offenses, that the ban was withdrawn from her, and she again was placed on an equal footing with the most favored States in the Union. The doors were instantly thrown open to her Senators and Representatives, the whole case was disposed of, and the nation approved the act. Here the matter should have rested; here it should have been left forever undisturbed. But no; before one week has made its round, we are called upon to stultify ourselves, to wound the interests of the nation, to surrender the position held by the loyal people of the country almost unanimously, and the exigency is that a particular citizen of Tennessee seeks to effect his entrance to the Senate of the United States without being qualified like every other man who is permitted to enter there.
"We are asked to drive a ploughshare over the very foundation of our position; to break down and destroy the bulwark by which we may secure the results of a great war and a great history, by which we may preserve from defilement this place, where alone in our organism the people never lose their supremacy, except by the recreancy of their Representatives; a bulwark without which we may not save our Government from disintegration and disgrace. If we do this act, it will be a precedent which will carry fatality in its train. From Jefferson Davis to the meanest tool of despotism and treason, every rebel may come here, and we shall have no reason to assign against his admission, except the arbitrary reason of numbers."
Mr. Conkling closed by moving that the joint resolution be laid on the table, which was carried by a vote of eighty-eight to thirty-one.
During the same day's session--which was protracted until seven o'clock of Saturday morning, July 28th--the same subject came up again in the Senate, on the passage of the resolution to admit Mr. Patterson to a seat in the Senate upon his taking the oaths required by the Constitution and laws. After some discussion, the resolution passed, twenty-one voting in the affirmative and eleven in the negative.
Mr. Patterson went forward to the desk, and the prescribed oaths having been administered, he took his seat in the Senate. Thus, on the last day of the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Tennessee was fully reconstructed in her representation.
XXI. NEGRO SUFFRAGE
Review of the Preceding Action -- Efforts of Mr. Yates for Unrestricted Suffrage -- Davis's Amendment to Cuvier -- The "Propitious Hour" -- The Mayor's Remonstrance -- Mr. Willey's Amendment -- Mr. Cowan's Amendment for Female Suffrage -- Attempt to Out-radical the Radicals -- Opinions for and against Female Suffrage -- Reading and Writing as a Qualification -- Passage of the Bill -- Objections of the President -- Two Senators on the Opinions of the People -- The Suffrage Bill becomes a Law.
On the reässembling of the Thirty-ninth Congress for the second session, December 3d, 1866, immediately after the preliminaries of opening had transpired, Mr. Sumner called up business which had been introduced on the first day of the preceding session--a year before--which still remained unfinished--the subject of suffrage in the District of Columbia. In so doing, the Senator from Massachusetts said: "It will be remembered that it was introduced on the first day of the last session; that it was the subject of repeated discussions in this chamber; that it was more than once referred to the Committee on the District of Columbia, by whose chairman it was reported back to the Senate. At several different stages of the discussion it was supposed that we were about to reach a final vote. The country expected that vote. It was not had. It ought to have been had. And now, sir, I think that the best way is for the Senate in this very first hour of its coming together to put that bill on its passage. It has been thoroughly debated. Every Senator here has made up his mind on the question. There is nothing more to be said on either side. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly willing that the vote shall be taken without one further word of discussion; but I do think that the Senate ought not to allow the bill to be postponed. We ought to seize this first occasion to put the bill on its passage. The country expects it; the country will rejoice and be grateful if you will signalize this first day of your coming together by this beautiful and generous act."
Objection being raised to the immediate consideration of the subject, it was decided that it must be deferred under a rule of the Senate until after the expiration of six days from the commencement of the session.
It is proper here to present a brief record of the proceedings upon the subject during the preceding session. The passage of a bill in the House of Representatives, and the discussion upon the subject in that body are given in a preceding chapter. This bill, as Mr. Morrill subsequently said in the Senate, was not an election bill, and conferred no right of voting upon any person beyond what he had before. It was a mere declaration of a right to vote. As such, the bill was favorably received by the Senate Committee to whom it was referred, and was by them reported back with favor, but was never put upon its passage.
Meanwhile the Senate Committee had under consideration a bill of their own, which they reported on the 10th of January. This bill provided for restricted suffrage, requiring the qualification to read and write. Mr. Yates, an original and uncompromising advocate of universal suffrage was opposed to this restriction. He was a member of the Committee on the District of Columbia, but had been prevented from being present in its deliberations when it was resolved to report the bill as then before the Senate. Fearing that the bill might pass the Senate with the objectionable restrictions, Mr. Yates moved that it be recommitted, which was done.
At a meeting of the committee called to reconsider the bill, Mr. Yates argued at length and with earnestness against disfranchisement on the ground of inability to read and write. The committee reversed their former decision, and reported the bill substantially in the form in which it subsequently became a law. The bill being before the Senate on the 16th of January, 1866, Mr. Garrett Davis opposed it in a speech of great length. He made use of every argument and referred to every authority within his reach to prove the inferiority of the negro race. After giving Cuvier's definition of the "negro," the Senator remarked: "The great naturalist might have added as other distinctive characteristics of the negro; first, that his skin exhales perpetually a peculiar pungent and disagreeable odor; second, that 'the hollow of his foot makes a hole in the ground.'" The Senator drew a fearful picture of the schemes of Massachusetts to use the negro voters, whom it was her policy to create in the South.
This subject did not again come up in the Senate until after the lapse of several months. On the 27th of June it was "disentombed" from what many supposed was its final resting place. Mr. Morrill proposed as an amendment that the elective franchise should be restricted to persons who could read and write. This was rejected; fifteen voting in the affirmative, and nineteen in the negative.
Mr. Willey opposed the bill before the Senate in a speech of considerable length. He advocated the bestowal of a qualified and restricted suffrage upon the colored people of the District. His chief objection to the measure before the Senate was that it was untimely. "Any thing not essential in itself," said he, "or very material to the welfare of the nation, or a considerable part of the nation, if it is calculated to complicate our difficulties, or inflame party passions or sectional animosities, had better be left, it appears to me, to a more propitious hour."
The "propitious hour" hoped for by the Senator, did not come around until after the opening of the second session. The subject did not again seriously occupy the attention of the Senate, with the exception of Mr. Sumner's effort to have it taken up on the first day of the session, until the 10th day of December, 1866.
On that day, Mr. Morrill, who, as Chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, had the bill in charge, introduced the subject with a speech of considerable length. "This measure," said he, "not only regulates the elective franchise in this District, but it extends and enlarges it. The principal feature of the bill is that it embraces the colored citizens of the District of Columbia. In this particular it is novel, and in this particular it is important. In this particular it may be said to be inaugurating a policy not only strictly for the District of Columbia, but in some sense for the country at large. In this respect it is, I suppose, that this bill has received so large a share of the public attention during the last session and the recess of the Congress of the United States."
Mr. Morrill called attention to the remonstrance of the Mayor of Washington, who had informed the Senate that in an election held for the purpose of ascertaining the sentiments of the voters of the city upon the subject, some six thousand five hundred were opposed to the extension of the elective franchise, while only thirty or forty were in favor of it.
"These six or seven thousand voters," said Mr. Morrill, "are only one in thirty at most of the people of this District, and it is very difficult to understand how there could be more significance or probative force attached to these six or seven thousand votes than to an equal number of voices independent of the ballot, under the circumstances. This is a matter affecting the capital of the nation, one in which the American people have an interest, as indirectly, at least, touching the country at large. What the National Congress pronounce here as a matter of right or expediency, or both, touching a question of popular rights, may have an influence elsewhere for good or for evil. We can not well justify the denial of the right of suffrage to colored citizens on the protest of the voters of the corporation of Washington. We may not think fit to grant it simply on the prayer of the petitioners. Our action should rest on some recognized general principle, which, applied to the capital of the nation, would be equally just applied to any of the political communities of which the nation is composed."
In closing his speech, Mr. Morrill remarked: "In a nation of professed freemen, whose political axioms are those of universal liberty and human rights, no public tranquillity is possible while these rights are denied to portions of the American people. We have taken into the bosom of the Republic the diverse elements of the nationalities of Europe, and are attempting to mold them into national harmony and unity, and are still inviting other millions to come to us. Let us not despair that the same mighty energies and regenerating forces will be able to assign a docile and not untractable race its appropriate place in our system."
Mr. Willey's amendment, proposed when the subject was last considered in the previous session, six months before, being now the pending question, its author addressed the Senate in favor of some restrictions upon the exercise of the elective franchise. "There ought to be some obligation," said he, "either in our fundamental laws in the States, or somewhere, by some means requiring the people to educate themselves; and if this can be accomplished by disqualifying those who are not educated for the exercise of the right of suffrage, thus stimulating them to acquire a reasonable degree of education, that of itself, it seems to me, would be a public blessing."
"I am against this qualification of reading and writing," said Mr. Wilson; "I never did believe in it. I do not believe in it now. I voted against it in my own State, and I intend to vote against it here. There was a time when I would have taken it, because I did not know that we could get any thing more in this contest; but I think the great victory of manhood suffrage is about achieved in this country."
"Reading and writing, as a qualification for voting," said Mr. Pomeroy, "might be entertained in a State where all the people were allowed to go to school and learn to read and write; but it seems to me monstrous to apply it to a class of persons in this community who were legislated away from school, to whom every avenue of learning was shut up by law."
Some discussion was elicited by a proposition made by Mr. Anthony to attach to Mr. Willey's amendment a provision excluding from the right to vote all "who in any way voluntarily gave aid and comfort to the rebels during the late rebellion."
This was opposed by Mr. Wilson. "We better not meddle with that matter of disfranchisement," said he. "There are but few of these persons here, so the prohibition will practically not amount to any thing. As we are to accomplish a great object, to establish universal suffrage, we should let alone all propositions excluding a few men here. Disfranchisement will create more feeling and more bitterness than enfranchisement."
Mr. Willey's amendment was finally so much "amended" that he could not support it himself, and it received but one affirmative vote, that of Mr. Kirkwood.
Mr. Cowan proposed to amend the bill by striking out the word "male" before the word "person," that females might enjoy the elective franchise. "I propose to extend this privilege," said he, "not only to males, but to females as well; and I should like to hear even the most astute and learned Senator upon this floor give any better, reason for the exclusion of females from the right of suffrage than there is for the exclusion of negroes.
"If you want to widen the franchise so as to purify your ballot-box, throw the virtue of the country into it; throw the temperance of the country into it; throw the purity of the country into it; throw the angel element--if I may so express myself--into it. [Laughter.] Let there be as little diabolism as possible, but as much of the divinity as you can get."
The discussion being resumed on the following day, Mr. Anthony advocated Mr. Cowan's amendment. "I suppose," said he, "that the Senator from Pennsylvania introduced this amendment rather as a satire upon the bill itself, or if he had any serious intention, it was only a mischievous one to injure the bill. But it will not probably have that effect, for I suppose nobody will vote for it except the Senator himself, who can hardly avoid it, and I, who shall vote for it because it accords with a conclusion to which I have been brought by considerable study upon the subject of suffrage."
After having answered objections against female suffrage, Mr. Anthony remarked in conclusion: "I should not have introduced this question; but as it has been introduced, and I intend to vote for the amendment, I desire to declare here that I shall vote for it in all seriousness, because I think it is right. The discussion of this subject is not confined to visionary enthusiasts. It is now attracting the attention of some of the best thinkers in the world, both in this country and in Europe; and one of the very best of them all, John Stuart Mill, in a most elaborate and able paper, has declared his conviction of the right and justice of female suffrage. The time has not come for it, but the time is coming. It is coming with the progress of civilization and the general amelioration of the race, and the triumph of truth, and justice, and equal rights."
Mr. Williams opposed the pending amendment. "To extend the right of suffrage to the negroes in this country," said he, "I think is necessary for their protection; but to extend the right of suffrage to women, in my judgment, is not necessary for their protection. Wide as the poles apart are the conditions of these two classes of persons. The sons defend and protect the reputation and rights of their mothers; husbands defend and protect the reputation and rights of their wives; brothers defend and protect the reputation and rights of their sisters; and to honor, cherish, and love the women of this country is the pride and the glory of its sons.
"When the women of this country come to be sailors and soldiers; when they come to navigate the ocean and to follow the plow; when they love to be jostled and crowded by all sorts of men in the thoroughfares of trade and business; when they love the treachery and the turmoil of politics; when they love the dissoluteness of the camp, and the smoke of the thunder, and the blood of battle better than they love the affections and enjoyments of home and family, then it will be time to talk about making the women voters; but until that time, the question is not fairly before the country."
Mr. Cowan defended his amendment and his position. "When the time comes," said he, "I am a Radical, too, along with my fellow Senators here. By what warrant do they suppose that I am not interested in the progress of the race? If the thing is to be bettered, I want to better it."
Mr. Morrill replied to the speech of Mr. Cowan. "Does any suppose," said Mr. Morrill, "that he is at all in earnest or sincere in a single sentiment he has uttered on this subject? I do not imagine he believes that any one here is idle enough for a moment to suppose so. If it is true, as he intimates, that he is desirous of becoming a Radical, I am not clear that I should not be willing to accept his service, although there is a good deal to be repented of before he can be taken into full confidence. [Laughter.]
"When a man has seen the error of his ways and confesses it, what more is there to be done except to receive him seventy and seven times? Now, if this is an indication that the honorable Senator means to out-radical the Radicals, 'Come on, Macduff,' nobody will object, provided you can show us you are sincere. That is the point. If it is mischief you are at, you will have a hard time to get ahead. While we are radical we mean to be rational. While we intend to give every male citizen of the United States the rights common to all, we do not intend to be forced by our enemies into a position so ridiculous and absurd as to be broken down utterly on that question, and who ever comes here in the guise of a Radical and undertakes to practice that probably will not make much by the motion. I am not surprised that those of our friends who went out from us and have been feeding on the husks desire to get in ahead; but I am surprised at the indiscretion and the want of common sense exercised in making so profound a plunge at once! If these gentlemen desire to be taken into companionship and restored to good standing, I am the first man to reach out the hand and say, 'Welcome back again, so that you are repentant and regenerated;' but, sir, I am the last man to allow that you shall indorse what you call Radicalism for the purpose of breaking down measures which we propose!"
"He alleges," replied Mr. Cowan, "that I am not serious in the amendment I have moved; that I am not in earnest about it. How does he know? By what warrant does he undertake to say that a brother Senator here is not serious, not in earnest? I should like to know by what warrant he undertakes to do that. He says I do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained in the same vinegar and persimmon school, [laughter;] I have not been doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twang which may characterize the gentleman, and which may be considered to be the evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally speak as a man, and as a good-natured man, I think. I hope I entertain no malice toward any body. But the honorable Senator thinks that I want to become a Radical. Why, sir, common charity ought to have taught the honorable Senator better than that. I think no such imputation, even on the part of the most virulent opponent that I have, can with any justice be laid to my door. I have never yielded to his radicalism; I have never truckled to it. Whether it be right or wrong, I have never bowed the knee to it. From the very word 'go' I have been a Conservative; I have endeavored to save all in our institutions that I thought worth saving."
Mr. Wade had introduced the original bill, and had put it upon the most liberal principle of franchise. "The question of female suffrage," said he, "had not then been much agitated, and I knew the community had not thought sufficiently upon it to be ready to introduce it as an element in our political system. While I am aware of that fact, I think it will puzzle any gentleman to draw a line of demarcation between the right of the male and the female on this subject. Both are liable to all the laws you pass; their property, their persons, and their lives are affected by the laws. Why, then, should not the females have a right to participate in their construction as well as the male part of the community? There is no argument that I can conceive or that I have yet heard that makes any discrimination between the two on the question of right.
"I shall give a vote on this amendment that will be deemed an unpopular vote, but I am not frightened by that. I have been accustomed to give such votes all my life almost, but I believe they have been given in the cause of human liberty and right and in the way of the advancing intelligence of our age; and whenever the landmark has been set up the community have marched up to it. I think I am advocating now the same kind of a principle, and I have no doubt that sooner or later it will become a fixed fact, and the community will think it just as absurd to exclude females from the ballot-box as males."
Mr. Yates opposed the pending amendment, deeming it a mere attempt on the part of the Senator from Pennsylvania to embarrass this question. "Logically," said he, "there are no reasons in my mind which would not permit women to vote as well as men, according to the theory of our government. But that question, as to whether ladies shall vote or not, is not at issue now. I confess that I am for universal suffrage, and when the time comes, I am for suffrage by females as well as males."
"While I will vote now," said Mr. Wilson, "or at any time, for woman suffrage as a distinct, separate measure, I am unalterably opposed to connecting that question with the pending question of negro suffrage. The question of negro suffrage is now an imperative necessity; a necessity that the negro should possess it for his own protection; a necessity that he should possess it that the nation may preserve its power, its strength, and its unity."
"Why was the consideration of this measure discontinued at the last session, and the bill not allowed to pass the Senate?" asked Mr. Hendricks.
"The bill passed the House of Representatives early in the session," replied Mr. Wilson. "It came to the Senate early in December. That Senator, I think, knows very well that we had not the power to pass it for the first five or six months of the session; that is, we had not the power to make it a law. We could not have carried it against the opposition of the President of the United States, and we had assurances of gentlemen who were in intimate relations with him that his signature would not be obtained. It would not have been wise for us to pass the bill if it was to encounter a veto, unless we were able to pass it over that veto. The wise course was to bide our time until we had that power, and that power came before the close of the session, but it came in the time of great pressure, when other questions were crowding upon us, and it was thought best by those who were advocating it, especially as the chairman of the committee, the Senator from Maine, [Mr. Morrill,] was out of the Senate for many days on account of illness, to let the bill go over until this December."
Mr. Johnson opposed the pending amendment. "I think if it was submitted to the ladies," said he--"I mean the ladies in the true acceptation of the term--of the United States, the privilege would not only not be asked for, but would be rejected. I do not think the ladies of the United States would agree to enter into a canvass and undergo what is often the degradation of seeking to vote, particularly in the cities, getting up to the polls, crowded out and crowded in. I rather think they would feel it, instead of a privilege, a dishonor."
Mr. Johnson was unwilling to vote for the amendment with a view to defeat the bill. "I have lived to be too old," said he, "and have become too well satisfied of what I think is my duty to the country to give any vote which I do not believe, if it should be supported by the votes of a sufficient number to carry the measure into operation, would redound to the interests and safety and honor of the country."
"The women of America," said Mr. Frelinghuysen, "vote by faithful and true representatives, their husbands, their brothers, their sons; and no true man will go to the polls and deposit his ballot without remembering the true and loving constituency that he has at home. More than that, sir, ninety-nine out of a hundred, I believe nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, of the women in America do not want the privilege of voting in any other manner than that which I have stated. In both these regards there is a vast difference between the situation of the colored citizens and the women of America.
"The learned and eloquent Senator from Pennsylvania said yesterday with great beauty that he wanted to cast the angel element into the suffrage system of America. Sir, it seems to me, that it would be ruthlessly tearing the angel element from the homes of America; and the homes of the people of America are infinitely more valuable than any suffrage system. It will be a sorry day for this country when those vestal fires of piety and love are put out."
On the next day, December 12th, the discussion being resumed, Mr. Brown advocated the amendment. "I stand," said he, "for universal suffrage, and as a matter of fundamental principle do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race, color, or sex. I will go further and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right; and I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitation upon it that does not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself."
Believing "that the metaphysical always controls the practical in all the affairs of life," Mr. Brown gave the "abstract grounds" upon which he deemed the right of woman to the elective franchise rested. Coming finally to the more practical bearings of the subject, he answered the objection, that "if women are entitled to the rights of franchise, they would correspondingly come under the obligation to bear arms." "Are there not large classes," he asked, "even among men in this country, who are exempt from service in our armies for physical incapacity and for other reasons? And if exemptions which appertain to males may be recognized as valid, why not similar exemptions for like reasons when applied to females? Does it not prove that there is nothing in the argument so far as it involves the question of right? There are Quakers and other religious sects; there are ministers of the Gospel; persons having conscientious scruples; indeed, all men over a certain age who under the laws of many of the States are released from service of that character. Indeed, it is the boast of this republic that ours is a volunteer military establishment. Hence I say there is nothing in the position that because she may not be physically qualified for service in your army, therefore you have the right to deny her the franchise on the score of sex."
In closing an extended speech, Mr. Brown remarked: "Even though I recognize the impolicy of coupling these two measures in this manner and at this time, I shall yet record my vote in the affirmative as an earnest indication of my belief in the principle, and my faith in the future."
Mr. Davis made another protracted speech against both the amendment and the original bill. "The great God," said he, "who created all the races, and in every race gave to man woman, never intended that woman should take part in national government among any people, or that the negro, the lowest, should ever have coördinate and equal power with the highest, the white race, in any government, national or domestic."
In conclusion, Mr. Davis advised the late rebels to "resist this great, this most foul, cruel, and dishonoring enslavement. Men of the South, exhaust every peaceful means of redress, and when your oppressions become unendurable, and it is demonstrated that there is no other hope, then strike for your liberty, and strike as did your fathers in 1776, and as did the Hollanders and Zealanders, led by William the Silent, to break their chains, forged by the tyrants of Spain."
"When it is necessary," said Mr. Sprague, "that woman shall vote for the support of liberty and equality, I shall be ready to cast my vote in their favor. The black man's vote is necessary to this at this time. Do not prostrate all the industrial interests of the North by a policy of conciliation and of inaction. Delays are dangerous, criminal. When you shall have established, firmly and fearlessly, governments at the South friendly to the republic; when you shall have ceased from receiving terms and propositions from the leaders of the rebellion as to their reconstruction; when you shall have promptly acted in the interest of liberty, prosperity will light upon the industries of your people, and panics, commercial and mercantile revolutions, will be placed afar off; and never, sir, until that time shall have arrived. And as an humble advocate of all industrial interests of the free people of the North, white and black, and as an humble representative of these interests, I urge prompt action to-day, to-morrow, and every day until the work has been completed. Let no obstacle stand in the way now, no matter what it may be. You will save your people from poverty and free principles from a more desperate combat than they have yet witnessed. Ridicule may be used in this chamber, calumny may prevail through the country, and murder may be a common occurrence South to those who stand firmly thus and who advocate such measures. Let it be so; for greater will be the crowning glory of those who are not found wanting in the day of victory. Let us, then, press to the vote; one glorious step taken, then we may take others in the same direction."
"The objection," said Mr. Buckalew, "which I have to a large extension of suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State power, is this: that thereby you will corrupt and degrade elections, and probably lead to their complete abrogation hereafter. By pouring into the ballot-boxes of the country a large mass of ignorant votes, and votes subjected to pecuniary or social influence, you will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the foundation for their ultimate destruction."
"After giving some considerable reflection to the subject of suffrage," said Mr. Doolittle, "I have arrived at the conclusion that the true base or foundation upon which to rest suffrage in any republican community is upon the family, the head of the family; because in civilized society the family is the unit, not the individual."
Mr. Pomeroy was in favor of the bill without the proposed amendment. "I do not want to weigh it down," said he, "with any thing else. There are other measures that I would be glad to support in their proper place and time; but this is a great measure of itself. Since I have been a member of the Senate, there was a law in this District authorizing the selling of these people. To have traveled in six years from the auction-block to the ballot with these people is an immense stride, and if we can carry this measure alone, of itself, we should be contented for the present."
The vote being taken on Mr. Cowan's amendment conferring the elective franchise upon women, the result was yeas, nine; nays, thirty-seven. The following are the names of those who voted in the affirmative:
Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster, Nesmith, Patterson, Riddle, and Wade.
Mr. Dixon then moved to amend the bill by adding a proviso:
"That no person who has not heretofore voted in this District shall be permitted to vote unless he shall be able, at the time of offering to vote, to read and also write his own name."
"I would deny to no man," said Mr. Dixon, "the right of voting solely on account of his color; but I doubt the propriety of permitting any man to vote, whatever his race or color, who has not at least that proof of intelligence which the ability to read and write furnishes."
"What is the test?" asked Mr. Saulsbury. "A person who can read and write. Is it his name, or only read and write?"
"His name," said one.
"Read and write his name!" continued Mr. Saulsbury. "A wonderful amount of education to qualify a man for the discharge of the high office and trust of voting! Great knowledge of the system of government under which we live does this impart to the voter!"
"If this were really an intelligence qualification," said Mr. Cowan, "I do not know what I might say; but of the fact that the ability of a man merely to write his own name and read it, is intelligence, I am not informed. To write a man's name is simply a mechanical operation. It may be taught to any body, even people of the most limited capacity, in twenty minutes; and to read it afterward certainly would not be very difficult."
"I understand the amendment to include," said Mr. Willey, "the qualification of reading generally, and also of writing his name; two tests, one the reading generally, and the other the writing his own name."
"Where is its precision?" asked Mr. Cowan; "where is it to end, and who shall determine its limits? I will put the case of a board belonging to the dominant party, and suppose they have the statute amended by my honorable friend from Connecticut before them, and a colored man comes forward and proposes to vote. They put to him the question, 'Can you write your name and read?' 'Oh, yes.' 'Well, let us see you try it.' He then writes his name and he reads it; and he is admitted if he is understood to belong to that party. But suppose, as has recently happened, that this dark man should come to the conclusion to vote on the other side, and it were known that he meant to vote on the other side, what kind of a chance would he have? Then the man of the dominant party, who desires to carry the election, says, 'You shall not only write your name and read it, but you must read generally. I have read the senatorial debates upon this question, and the honorable Senator from West Virginia, who originated this amendment, was of opinion that a man should read generally. Now, sir, read generally, if you please.' 'Well,' says he, 'what shall I read?' Read a section of the Novum Organum, or some other most difficult and abstruse thing, or a few sections from Okie's Physiology."
On the 13th of December, the last day of the discussion, Mr. Anthony occupied the chair during a portion of the session, and Mr. Foster took the floor in favor of the amendment proposed by his colleague. "The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania," said he, "from the manner in which he treats this subject, I should think, was now fresh from his reading of 'Much A-do about Nothing,' and was quoting Mr. Justice Dogberry, who said, 'To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to read and write comes by nature.' The Senator from Pennsylvania and others seem inclined to say, 'Away with writing and reading till there is need of such vanity.' I believe that the idea of admitting men to the elective franchise who can neither read nor write is going backward and downward.
"Who are the men who come forward to deposit their ballots in the ballot-boxes? They are the people of this country, to whom all questions must ultimately go for examination and correction. They correct the mistakes which we make, and which Congress makes, and which the Supreme Court makes. The electors at the ballot-boxes are the grand court of errors for the country. Now, sir, these Senators propose to allow men who can not read and write to correct our mistakes, to become members of this high court of errors.
"The honorable Senator from Massachusetts says he wants to put the ballot into the hands of the black man for his protection. If he can not read the ballot, what kind of protection is it to him? A Written or printed slip of paper is put into the hands of a man, black or white, and if he can not read it, what is it to him? What does he know about it? What can he do with it? How can he protect himself by it? As well might the honorable Senator from Massachusetts put in the hands of a child who knew nothing of firearms a loaded pistol, with which to protect himself against his enemies. The child would be much more likely to endanger himself and his friends by the pistol than to protect himself. A perfectly ignorant man who can not read his ballot is much more likely to use it to his own detriment, and to the detriment of the country, than he is to use it for the benefit of either."
"The argument in favor of making the right to vote universal," said Mr. Frelinghuysen, in making a second speech upon the question, "is that the ballot itself is a great education; that by its encouraging the citizen, by its inspiring him, it adds dignity to his character, and makes him strive to acquire learning. Secondly, that if the voting depended on learning, no inducement is extended to communities unfavorable to the right of voting in the colored man to give him the opportunity to learn; they would rather embarrass him, to prevent his making the acquisition, unless they were in favor of his voting; while if voting is universal, communities, for their own security, for their own protection, will be driven to establish common schools, so that the voter shall become intelligent."
Pursuing a similar line of thought, Mr. Wilson said: "Allow the black men to vote without this qualification and they will demand education, the school-houses will rise, school-teachers will be employed, these people will attend the schools, and the cause of education will be carried forward in this District with more rapidity than at any other period in its history. Give the negro the right of suffrage, and before a year passes round, you will see these men, who voted that they should not have the right to vote, running after them, and inquiring after the health of their wives and children. I do not think the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Davis] will be examining their pelvis or shins, or making speeches about the formation of their lips, or the angle of their foreheads on the floor of the Senate. You will then see the Democracy, with the keen scent that always distinguishes that party, on the hunt after the votes of these black men, [laughter;] and if they treat them better than the Republicans do, they will probably get their votes, and I hope they will.
"And it will be just so down in these rebel States. Give the negroes of Virginia the right to vote, and you will find Wise and Letcher and the whole tribe of the secessionists undertaking to prove that from the landing at Jamestown in 1620 the first families of the Old Dominion have always been the champions and the special friends of the negroes of Old Virginia, and that there is a great deal of kindred between them, [laughter;] that they are relations, brethren; that the same red blood courses in the veins of many of them. They will establish all these things, perhaps by affidavits. [Laughter.] And I say to you, sir, they will have a good opportunity to get a good many of their votes, for in these respects they have the advantage of us poor Republicans."
Of the pending amendment, Mr. Hendricks said: "I propose to vote for it, not because I am in favor, as a general proposition, of an intelligence qualification for the right to vote, but because in this particular instance, I think it to be proper to prescribe it."
"I shall vote," said Mr. Lane, "to enfranchise the colored residents of this District because I believe it is right, just, and proper; because I believe it is in accordance with those two grand central truths around which cluster every hope for redeemed humanity, the common fatherhood of God above us and the brotherhood of universal mankind."
"The bill for Impartial Suffrage in the District of Columbia," said Mr. Sumner, "concerns directly some twenty thousand colored persons, whom it will lift to the adamantine platform of equal rights. If it were regarded simply in its bearings on the District it would be difficult to exaggerate its value; but when it is regarded as an example to the whole country under the sanction of Congress, its value is infinite. It is in the latter character that it becomes a pillar of fire to illumine the footsteps of millions. What we do here will be done in the disorganized States. Therefore, we must be careful that what we do here is best for the disorganized States.
"When I am asked to open the suffrage to women, or when I am asked to establish an educational standard, I can not on the present bill simply because the controlling necessity under which we act will not allow it. By a singular Providence we are now constrained to this measure of enfranchisement for the sake of peace, security, and reconciliation, so that loyal persons, white or black, may be protected and that the Republic may live. Here in the District of Columbia we begin the real work of reconstruction by which the Union will be consolidated forever."
The question was taken upon Mr. Dixon's amendment, which was lost; eleven voting for, and thirty-four against the proposition. The vote was then taken upon the bill to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia. It passed the Senate, thirty-two voting in the affirmative, and thirteen in the negative.
On the following day, December 14th, the bill came before the House of Representatives and passed without discussion; one hundred and eighteen voting in the affirmative, and forty-six in the negative.
On the 7th of January, the President returned the bill to the Senate with his objections. The Veto Message was immediately read by the Secretary of the Senate.
The President's first objection to the bill was that it was not in accordance with the wishes of the people to whom it was to apply, they having "solemnly and with such unanimity" protested against it.
It seemed to the President that Congress sustained a relation to the inhabitants of the District of Columbia analogous to that of a legislature to the people of a State, and "should have a like respect for the will and interests of its inhabitants."
Without actually bringing the charge of unconstitutionality against this measure, the President declared "that Congress is bound to observe the letter and spirit of the Constitution, as well in the enactment of local laws for the Seat of Government, as in legislation common to the entire Union."
The Civil Rights Bill having become a law, it was, in the opinion of the President, a sufficient protection for the negro. "It can not be urged," said he, "that the proposed extension of suffrage in the District of Columbia is necessary to enable persons of color to protect either their interests or their rights."
The President argued that the negroes were unfitted for the exercise of the elective franchise, and "can not be expected correctly to comprehend the duties and responsibilities which pertain to suffrage. It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot-box a new class of voters not qualified for the exercise of the elective franchise, we weaken our system of government instead of adding to its strength and durability. It may be safely assumed that no political truth is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction."
The President occupied a considerable portion of his Message with a warning to the people against the dangers of the abuse of legislative power. He quoted from Judge Story that the legislative branch may absorb all the powers of the government. He quoted also the language of Mr. Jefferson that one hundred and seventy tyrants are more dangerous than one tyrant.
The statements of the President in opposition to the bill were characterized by Mr. Sherman as "but a resume of the arguments already adduced in the Senate," hence but little effort was made by the friends of the measure to reply.
Mr. Sherman, in noticing the President's statements in regard to the danger of invasions by Congress of the just powers of the executive and judicial departments, said, "I do not think that there is any occasion for such a warning, because I am not aware that in this bill Congress has ever assumed any doubtful power. The power of Congress over this District is without limit, and, therefore, in prescribing who shall vote for mayor and city council of this city it can not be claimed that we usurp power or exercise a doubtful power.
"There can be but little danger from Congress; for our acts are but the reflection of the will of the people. The recent acts of Congress at the last session, those acts upon which the President and Congress separated, were submitted to the people, and they decided in favor of Congress. Unless, therefore, there is an inherent danger from a republican government, resting solely upon the will of the people, there is no occasion for the warning of the President. Unless the judgment of one man is better than the combined judgment of a great majority, he should have respected their decision, and not continue a controversy in which our common constituency have decided that he was wrong."
The last speech, before taking the vote, was made by Mr. Doolittle. "Men speak," said he, "of universal negro suffrage as having been spoken in favor of in the late election. There is not a State in this Union, outside of New England, which would vote in favor of universal negro suffrage. When gentlemen tell me that the people of the whole North, by any thing that transpired in the late election, have decided in favor of universal, unqualified negro suffrage, they assume that for which there is no foundation whatever."
The question being taken whether the bill should pass over the President's veto, the Senate decided in the affirmative by a vote of twenty-nine yeas to ten nays.
The next day, January 8th, the bill was passed over the veto by the House of Representatives, without debate, by a vote of one hundred and thirteen yeas to thirty-eight nays. The Speaker then declared that notwithstanding the objections of the President of the United States, the act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia had become a law.