Chapter V…

Chapter V

A great opportunity was now given to the South. It was given especially to the leading men of the South. Only a few weeks before, they had all been expecting harsh treatment, many, indeed, anticipated punishment, not a few were dejectedly looking forward to a life of exile and want. The President's policy, which had been framed for him by Mr. Seward, charged all this. Confidence took the place of apprehension, the fear of punishment was removed, those who conscious of guilt had been dreading expatriation were bidden by the supreme authority of the Nation to stay in their own homes, and to assist in building up the waste and desolate places.

Never in the history of the world had so mighty a rebellion been subdued. Never had any rebellion been followed by treatment so lenient, forgiving, and generous on the part of the triumphant Government. The great mass of those who had resisted the National authority were restored to all their rights of citizenship by the simple taking of an oath of future loyalty, and those excepted from immediate re-instatement were promised full forgiveness on the slightest exhibition of repentance and good works. Mr. Seward believed, and had induced the President to believe, that frank and open generosity on the part of the Government would be responded to in like spirit on the part of those who had just emerged from rebellion. The Administration, therefore, waited with confidence for its justification, which could be made complete only by the display of a manly appreciation and noble course on the part of those who had participated in the Rebellion.

The desire for a complete restoration of all the States to their normal position, as pictured so attractively by Mr. Seward, was general and deep throughout the North. The policy of the President was therefore essentially aided by the patriotic and ardent love for the Union,--a love always present with the loyal people of the free States, but developed in an extraordinary degree by the costly struggle which the slaveholders' rebellion had precipitated. If the Southern States should meet the overture of the Administration in the spirit in which it was made, the probability was decidedly in favor of their restoration to their old places without condition, without promise, without sacrifice. Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government. But they realized at the same time that the most important demands of far-seeing statesmanship and of true patriotism might be disregarded, and even contemned, by a wild, unreasoning wish of the people to see the old Government, in all its parts, promptly and fully re-established. The popular cry which demanded "the Union as it was, the Constitution as it is," was echoed by many from emotional love of country, and by many more from a conviction that the financial interests of the Government and the commercial interest of the people called for the speediest settlement of all political questions. The Administration believed, and with good reason, that the combined influence of sentiment for the Union and the supposed necessities of trade would overcome all obstacles, and that the rebellious States would be so promptly and completely reconstructed that their senators and representatives would be admitted at the beginning of the next session of Congress.

In forming an estimate of the probably response of the South to the plan of reconstruction now submitted, the Administration was certainly justified in believing that its own spirit of liberality and good will would be met with like spirit by those who, having failed in war, were specially interested in promptly securing all the conditions of a magnanimous peace. It could not anticipate that quibbles would be made by the defeated and lately suppliant parties, that captious objections would be interposed, that carping criticism would be indulged, that gross outrages would be perpetrated, that absurd conditions would be demanded, and that finally a postponement of the whole procedure would be hazarded, indeed its utter failure secured, by the lack of tact, by the willfulness, and by the apparent ignorance of the Southern men who were in control.

The kindness, consideration, gentleness of Mr. Seward's recommendations, instead of securing a return of like feeling, seemed rather to inflame the misjudging men of the South with a new sense of resentment. Instead of calling forth the natural and proper response, it appeared rather to impress them afresh with that vain imagination of Northern timidity which had always been the besetting weakness of the South. It seemed impossible at the time, it seems even more plainly impossible on a review of the facts after the lapse of years, that any body of reasonable men could behave with the ineffable folly that marked the proceedings of the Reconstruction Conventions in the South, and the still greater folly that governed the succeeding Legislatures of the lately rebellious States.

In the President's proclamation accompanying the appointment of provisional governors he had taken the ground that "the Rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, has deprived the people (of the revolting States) of all civil Government." It is evident, therefore, that the President--eager and even impatient as he was for the process of reconstruction to be completed--expected that a new Government would be built on the full recognition of the new order of things, casting behind all that pertained to the old, or had the spirit of the old. "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse." This Scripture was exactly applicable to the Southern Conventions which assembled for reconstruction. They could begin anew with organic laws adapted to the great revolution which had swept over them, or they could patch up the old constitutions now become indissolubly associated with a rebellion which had been fostered and protected under their provisions. In every State the Southern leaders chose the latter form of procedure. They assumed that the old constitutions were still in full force and vigor, and they made only such amendments to them as would in their judgment promptly insure to their States the right of representation in Congress. They did not even stop to submit these changes to the popular vote, but assumed for their own assemblages of oligarches the full power to modify the organic laws of their States--an assumption without precedent and without repetition in the history of State constitutions in this country, and utterly subversive of the fundamental idea of Republican Government.

With these incomplete and ill-digested changes in the organic laws of their respective States, the Reconstruction conventions usurped legislative power, and hastily proceeded to order the election of representatives in Congress. The Congressional elections proved to be little else than partisan assemblages under the dictatorial direction of rebel authorities--just as the Reconstruction Conventions were, in their membership and their organization, little else than consulting bodies of Confederate officers under the rank of brigadier-general, actually sitting throughout their deliberations in the uniform of the rebel service, and apparently dictating to the Government of the Union the grounds on which they would consent to resume representation in the National Congress. A joint committee of Congress subsequently commented with appropriate directness upon this offensive phase of the Southern Conventions. "Hardly is the war closed," said the committee, "before the people of the insurrectionary States come forward and haughtily claim, as a right, the privilege of participating at once in that Government which they have for four years been fighting to overthrow. Allowed and encouraged by the Executive to organize State Governments, they at once placed 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 peculiarly obnoxious. In the face of the law requiring an oath that would necessarily exclude all such men from Federal offices, they have elected, with very few exceptions, as senators and representatives in Congress, the very men who have actively participated in the Rebellion, insultingly denouncing the law as unconstitutional."

The oath referred to in the foregoing extract from the committee's report is that popularly known as the "Ironclad oath," prescribed by the Act of July 2, 1862, to be taken by every person elected or appointed to any office of honor or profit under the Government of the United States, either in the civil, military, or naval departments of the public service, the President alone excepted. The officer, before entering upon his duties or receiving any emolument, was compelled to swear that he had "never voluntarily borne arms against the United States;" that he had "voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility to the National Government;" that he had "neither sought nor accepted nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever under authority or pretended authority in hostility to the United States;" that he had "never yielded a voluntary support to any pretended Government within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto." Of course the men who had been waging war against the Government could not take this oath except by committing perjury and risking its pains and penalties. But nothing daunted by the existence of this obstacle at the threshold of public service, the most notorious rebels sought election to the Senate and House, boasting that they would prove the unconstitutionality of the Ironclad oath, and demand their seats.

Alexander H. Stephens "had the assurance," as the committee already quoted declared, "with that oath staring him in the face, to lay his credentials on the table of the Senate as a senator-elect from Georgia." When Congress adjourned, March 3, 1865, Mr. Stephens was acting as the Vice-President of the rebel Confederacy. Six weeks later the Confederacy was destroyed, and with a political agility unparalleled, with a degree of presumption unprecedented, Mr. Stephens secured an election to the Senate, and was in Washington at the ensuing session of Congress, asking admission to a seat as cooly as if every living man had forgotten that for four years he had been exerting his utmost effort to destroy the Constitution under which he now claimed the full rights of a citizen. In his astounding effrontery Mr. Stephens even went so far as to insist on interpreting to those loyal men, who had been conducting the Government of the United States through all its perils, the Constitution under which they had been acting, and to point out how they were depriving him of his rights by demanding an oath of loyalty and good faith as the condition on which he should be entitled to take part in legislating for the restored Union. The same committee, worthy at all times to be cited, declared further, that "Other rebels of scarcely less note and notoriety than Mr. Stephens 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 doctrine of secession, and declaring that they yielded only to necessity, they insist with unanimous voice upon their rights as States, and proclaim that they will submit to no conditions whatever as preliminary to their resumption of power under that Constitution which they still claim the right to repudiate."

Not only were the official acts of the Southern Conventions inspired by a spirit of apparently irreconcilable hatred of the Union, but the popular manifestations in the South were for more decided in the same direction. A sense of official propriety, no doubt, in some degree governed the conduct and modified the language of the members of the conventions. It was left to the press and the stump-orators of the South to give full expression to what they knew to be the ruling sentiment of the people. The report of the Congressional Committee, whose members had closely investigated all the facts, stated that "the Southern press, with few exceptions, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal States; defends the men who led, and the principles which incited, the Rebellion; denounces and reviles Southern men who adhered to the Union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep alive the fire and hate and discord between the sections; calling upon the President to violate his oath of office, overturn the Government by force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their seats in Congress. The National banner is openly insulted and the National airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among other notorious instances, at a dinner given in honor of a notorious rebel, who had violated his oath and abandoned his flag. The same individual is elected to an important office in the leading city of his State, although an unpardoned rebel, and so offensive that the President refused to allow him to enter upon his official duties. In another State the leading general of the rebel armies in openly nominated for governor by the House of Delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of satisfaction and openly indorsed by the press."

These representations of the prevailing spirit in the South and of the conduct of Southern men were not the loose and exaggerated statements of Northern partisans put forth in influence political opinion in the loyal States. They were the deliberate and conscientious statements of an eminent committee of the two Houses of Congress, of which Senator Fessenden of Maine was chairman. The quotations already made are from the same official report--a report based upon exhaustive testimony and prepared with scrupulous care. In that report, which is to be taken as an absolutely truthful picture of the Southern States at the time, it is averred that "witnesses of the highest character testify that, without the protection of United-States troops, Union men, whether of Northern or Southern origin, would be obliged to abandon their homes. The feeling in many portions of the country toward the emancipated slaves, especially among the ignorant and uneducated, is one of vindictive and malicious hatred. The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish."

It was further declared by Mr. Fessenden's committee "that the evidence of an intense hostility to the Federal Union, and an equally intense love for the late Confederacy, nurtured by the war, is decisive. While it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being, to the Federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from a representation in Congress." It was also proved before the committee, on the testimony, or rather the admissions, of witnesses who had been prominent in the Rebellion, that "the generally prevailing opinion in the late Confederacy defends the legal right of secession and upholds the doctrine that the first allegiance of the people is due to the States and not to the United States." It was further admitted by the same class of witnesses that "the taxes levied by the United States will be paid only on compulsion and with great reluctance," and that "the people of the rebellious States would, if they could see a prospect of success, repudiate the National debt." It was stated by witnesses from the South, with evident pride, that "officers of the Union Army, on duty in the South, and Northern men who go there to engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed," and that "Southern men who adhered to the Union are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted."

Upon the conclusion of the work of the respective conventions, the election of State Legislatures and of senators and representatives in Congress followed as promptly as was practicable in the several States. The Legislatures were all in session before the close of the year 1865, and their proceedings startled the country. If any need existed for proof of the spirit that animated the conventions, or of the ends to which they had directed their work, it was furnished in full by the action of the Legislatures. Indeed, when the latter bodies assembled, they were inspired with a fresh accession of courage and daring, imparted by the example of the former and the apparent acquiescence of the North in their proceedings. The period between the adjournment of the conventions and the assembling of the Legislatures was so short that there was no time for the maturing of public opinion in the North, and still less for bringing it to bear in any way upon Southern action. It is, moreover, doubtful whether any representation, however strong, from the North, would have exerted the slightest influence in holding the South back from its mad course. Emboldened by the support of the National Administration, the Southern leaders believed that they could carry their designs through, and, instead of being restrained by the protest or the advice of Republicans, they chose with apparent gladness the course that would prove most offensive to them. It would indeed, according to their own boasts, add a peculiar gratification to their anticipated triumph if they could feel assured that it would bring chagrin or a sense of humiliation to the Republican masses of the loyal States.

At this critical period it was the ill fortune of the South to be misled by the Democratic press and the Democratic orators of the North, as it had been before on perilous occasions. The South had been induced by the same press and the same orators to believe, in the winter of 1860-61, that efforts at secession would not be resisted by arms. Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if war should come, it would be in the free States and not in the slave States. The South, in 1865, had apparently forgotten these baseless assurances; they had forgotten that, in the hour of conflict, the Democrats who did not become loyal, at once became silent, and that the few--scattering exceptions to a general rule--who were demonstrative and loud in their sympathy for the rebels were compelled to flee or accept imprisonment in Fort Lafayette. They seemed again ready and eager to believe all the unsupported assertions which the Northern Democrats, in a spirit of effrontery and not without gasconade, ventured to put forth. It might be difficult to determine which displayed the greater folly--those who made false representations, or those who, warned by previous deception, appeared so ready to be influenced anew by deception equally gross.

The truth was that the Republicans of the North, constituting, as was shown by the elections of 1865, a majority in every State, were deeply concerned as to the fate and fortune of the colored population of the South. Only a minority of Republicans were ready to demand suffrage for those who had been recently emancipated, and who, from the ignorance peculiar to servitude, were presumably unfit to be intrusted with the elective franchise. The minority, however, was composed of very earnest men of the same type as those who originally created and combined the anti-slavery sentiment of the country, and who now espoused the right of the negro to equality before the law. Equality, they believed, could neither be conferred nor maintained unless the negro were invested with the badge of American manhood--the right to vote--a right which they were determined to guarantee as firmly to the colored man as it was already guaranteed to the white man.

The great mass of the Republicans stopped short of the demand for the conferment of suffrage on the negro. That privilege was indeed, still denied him in a majority of the loyal States, and it seemed illogical and unwarrantable to expect a more advanced philanthropy, a higher sense of justice, from the South than had been yet attained by the North. But without raising the question of suffrage, there were rights with which the negro must be endowed before he could essentially better his material condition or advance in knowledge. It was, first of all, required that he should have the full protection of the law of marriage, of which he had always been deprived, and that with the privilege he should be subjected to the honest observance of the obligations which marriage imposes--to the end that good morals should be inculcated, and that every child should have a responsible father. It was, in the second place, in the highest degree necessary that he should have the benefit of such laws as would assure to him the wages of his labor and confer upon him the right to acquire and hold real estate and other property, with the same security and protection enjoyed by the whites. In the third place, it was imperatively demanded that some provision be made for the rudimentary instruction of colored children, in order that they might learn the mechanical arts and have the privilege of working at such callings as were best adapted to them. The list of requirements might be enlarged, but the three which are given represent primary and indisputable necessities, without the concession and free establishment of which the negro, with nominal freedom, would be in a worse condition than if he had been left in slavery.

In view of these facts, the course of the new organized Legislatures was watched with deep and jealous interest. It was in their power to repair, in large degree, the blunders of policy--nay, the crimes against human rights--which the Reconstruction Conventions had abetted if not committed. The membership of the Legislatures in all the States was composed wholly of those who, either in the military or civil service, had aided the Rebellion. If in such an organization a spirit of moderation and justice should be shown, if consideration should be exhibited for the negro, even so far as to assure to him the inherent rights of human nature, a deep impression would be made on the conscience and the public opinion of the North. Such a course in the South might, indeed, open the way for the success of the simple and speedy process of reconstruction, upon which Mr. Seward had staked his reputation as a statesman, and to which Mr. Johnson had pledged the power and committed the fortunes of his Administration.

As soon as the Southern Legislatures assembled, it was made evident that their members disregarded, and even derided, the opinion of those who had conquered the Rebellion and held control of the Congress of the United States. If the Southern men had intended, as their one special and desirable aim, to inflame the public opinion of the North against them, they would have proceeded precisely as they did. They treated the negro, according to a vicious phrase which had at one time wide currency, "as possessing no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution by the Southern States was but a gross deception as long as they accompanied it with legislation which practically deprived the negro of every trace of liberty. That which was no offense in a white man was made a misdemeanor, a heinous crime, if committed by a negro. Both in the civil and criminal code his treatment was different from that to which the white man was subjected. He was compelled to work under a series of labor laws applicable only to his own race. The laws of vagrancy were so changed as, in many of their provisions, to apply only to him, and under their operation all freedom of movement and transit was denied. The liberty to sell his time at a fair market rate was destroyed by the interposition of apprentice laws. Avenues of usefulness and skill in which he might specially excel were closed against him lest he should compete with white men. In short his liberty in all directions was so curtailed that it was a bitter mockery to refer to him in the statutes as a "freedman." The truth was, that his liberty was merely of form and not of fact, and the slavery which was abolished by the organic law of a Nation was now to be revived by the enactments of a State.

Some of these enactments were peculiarly offensive, not to say atrocious. In Alabama, which might indeed serve as an example for the other rebellious States, "stubborn or refractory servants" and "servants who loiter away their time" were declared by law to be "vagrants," and might be brought before a justice of the peace and fined fifty dollars; and in default of payment they might be "hired out," on three days' notice by public outcry, for the period of "six months." No fair man could fail to see that the whole effect, and presumably the direct intent, of this law was to reduce the helpless negro to slavery for half the year--a punishment that could be repeated whenever desired, a punishment sure to be desired for that portion of each recurring year when his labor was specially valuable in connection with the cotton crop, while for the remainder of the time he might shift for himself. By this detestable process the "master" had the labor of the "servant" for a mere pittance; and even that pittance did not go to the servant, but was paid into the treasury of the county, and thus relived the white men from their proper share of taxation. There may have been more cruel laws enacted, but the statute-books of the world might be searched in vain for one of meaner injustice.

The foregoing process for restoring slavery in a modified form was applicable to men or women of any age. But for "minors" a more speedy and more sweeping methods was contrived by the law-makers of Alabama, who had just given their assent to the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. They made it the "duty of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers of the several counties," to report the "names of all minors under the age of eighteen years, whose parents have not the means or who refuse to support said minors," and thereupon it was made the duty of the Court to "apprentice said minor to some suitable person on such terms as the Court may direct." Then follows a suggestive proviso directing that "if said minor be the child of a freedman" (as if any other class were really referred to!) "the former owner of said minor shall have the preference;" and "the judge of probate shall make a record of all the proceedings," for which he should be entitled to a fee of one dollar in each case, to be paid, as this atrocious law directed, by "the master or mistress." To tighten the grasp of ownership on the minor who was now styled an apprentice, it was enacted in almost the precise phrase of the old slave-code that "whoever shall entice said apprentice from his master of mistress, or furnish food or clothing to him or her, without said consent, shall be fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars."

The ingenuity of the Alabama legislators in contriving schemes to re-enslave the negroes was not exhausted by the odious and comprehensive statutes already cited. They passed an Act to incorporate the city of Mobile, substituting a new charter for the old one. The city had suffered much from the suspension and decay of trade during the war, and it was in great need of labor to make repairs to streets, culverts, sewers, wharves, and all other public property. By the new charter, the mayor, aldermen, and common council were empowered "to cause all vagrants," . . . "all such as have no visible means of support," . . . "all who can show no reasonable cause of employment or business in the city," . . . "all who have no fixed residence or cannot give a good account of themselves," . . . "or are loitering in or about tippling-houses," "to give security for their good behavior for a reasonable time and to indemnify the city against any charge for their support, and in case of their inability or refusal to give such security, to cause them to be confined to labor for a limited time, not exceeding six calendar months, which said labor shall be designated by the said mayor, aldermen, and common council, for the benefit of said city."

It will be observed even by the least intelligent that the charge made in this city ordinance was, in substance, the poverty of the classes quoted--a poverty which was of course the inevitable result of slavery. To make the punishment for no crime effective, the city government was empowered "to appoint a person or persons to take those sentenced to labor from their place of confinement to the place appointed for their working, and to watch them while at labor and return them before sundown to their place of confinement; and, if they shall be found afterwards offending, such security may again be required, and for want thereof the like proceeding may again be had from time to time, as often as may be necessary." The plain meaning of all this was, that these helpless and ignorant men, having been robbed all their lives of the fruit of their labor by slavery, and being necessarily and in consequence poor, must be punished for it by being robbed again of all they had honestly earned. If they stubbornly continued in their poverty, the like proceeding (of depriving them of the fruits of their labor) "may again be had from time to time, as often as may be necessary." It would, of course, be found "necessary" just as long as the city of Mobile was in need of their labor without paying for it.

It has been abundantly substantiated, by impartial evidence, that when these grievous outrages were committed under the forms of law, by the joint authority of the Alabama Legislature and the city government of Mobile, the labor of thousands of willing men could be hired for the low wages of twenty-five cents per day, with an allowance of a peck of corn-meal and four pounds of bacon for each man per week. It does not change the character of the crime against these humble laborers, but it certainly enhances its degree that the law-makers of Alabama preferred an oppressive fraud to the honest payment of a consideration so small as to be almost nominal. A man must be in abject poverty when he is willing to work an entire week for a sum usually accorded in the Norther States for the labor of one day. But only a community blind to public justice and to public decency as well, could enact a law that in effect declares the poverty of the laborer to be a crime, in consideration of which he shall be deprived of the beggarly mite for which he is willing to give the sweat of his face.

Apparently fearing that the operations of the law already referred to would not secure a sufficient number of laborers for the work required in the city, the law-makers of Alabama authorized the municipal government of Mobile to "restrain and prohibit the nightly and other meetings or disorderly assemblies of all persons, and to punish for such offenses by affixing penalties not exceeding fifty dollars for any one offense; and in case of the inability of any such person to pay and satisfy said fine or penalty and the cost thereof, to sentence such person to labor for said city for such reasonable time, not exceeding six calendar months, for any one offense, as may be deemed equivalent to such penalty and costs, which labor shall be such as may be designated by the mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city."

Power was thus given to consider any evening meeting of colored persons a disorderly one, and to arrest all who were participating in it. Nothing was more natural than that the negroes, with their social and even gregarious habits, should, in their new estate of freedom, be disposed to assemble for the purpose of considering their own interests and their future prospects. It is eminently to the discredit of the State of Alabama and of the city of Mobile that so innocent a purpose should be thwarted, perverted, made criminal and punished.

The fact will not escape attention that in these enactments the words "master," "mistress," and "servant" are constantly used, and that under the operation of the laws a form of servitude was re-established, more heartless and more cruel than the slavery which had been abolished. Under the institution of slavery a certain attachment would spring up between the master and his salve, and with it came a certain protection to the latter against want and against suffering in his old age. With all its wrongfulness and its many cruelties, there were ameliorations in the slave system which softened its asperities and enabled vast number of people possessing conscience and character to assume the relation of master. But in the treatment of the colored man, now proposed, there was absolute heartlessness and rank injustice. It was proposed to punish him for no crime, to declare the laborer not worthy of his hire, to leave him friendless and forlorn, without sympathy, without rights under the law, socially an outcast and industrially a serf--a serf who had no connection with the land he tilled, and who had none of the protection which even the Autocracy of Russia extended to the lowliest creature that acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar.

These laws were framed with malignant cunning so as not to be limited in specific form of words to the negro race, but they were exclusively confined to that race in their execution. It is barely possible that a white vagrant of exceptional depravity might, now and then, be arrested; but the negro was arrested by wholesale on a charge of vagrancy which rested on no foundation except an arbitrary law specially enacted to fit his case. Loitering around tippling-shops, one of the offenses enumerated, was in far larger proportions the habit of white men, but they were left untouched and the negro alone was arrested and punished. In the entire code this deceptive form, of apparently including all persons, was a signally dishonest feature. The makers of the law evidently intended that it should apply to the negro alone, for it was administered on that basis with rigorous severity. The general phrasing was to deceive people outside, and, perhaps, to lull the consciences of some objectors at home, but it made no difference whatever in the execution of the statutes. White men, who had no more visible means of support than the negro, were left undisturbed, while the negro, whose visible means of support were in his strong arms and his willingness to work, was prevented from using the resources conferred upon him by nature, and reduced not merely to the condition of a slave, but subjected to the demoralization of being adjudged a criminal.

In Florida the laws resembled those of Alabama, but were perhaps more severe in their penalties. The "vagrant" there might be hired out for full twelve months, and the money arising from his labor, in case the man had no wife and children, was directed to be applied for "the benefit of the orphans and poor of the county," although the negro had been declared a vagrant because he had no visible means of support, and was therefore quite as much in need of the avails of his labor as those to whom the law diverted them. Among the curious enactments of that State was one to establish and organize a criminal court for each county, empowered to exercise jurisdiction in the trial of all offenses where the punishment did not affect the life of the offender. It is obvious that the law was originated mainly for the punishment of negroes; and to expedite its work it was enacted that "in the proceedings of said court, no presentment, indictment, or written pleading shall be required, but it shall be sufficient to put the party accused upon his or her trial, that the offense and facts are plainly set forth with reasonable certainty in the warrant of arrest." It was further provided that when fines were imposed and the party was unable to pay them, "the county commissioner may hire out, at public outcry, the said party to any person who will take him or her for the shortest time, and pay the fine imposed and the cost of prosecution." The fines thus paid went in the county treasury for the general expenses of the county. The law was thus cunningly contrived to hurry the negro into an odious form of slavery, and to make the earnings which came from his hard labor pay the public expenses, which were legitimately chargeable upon the property of the county.

Accompanying the Act establishing this court was a law prescribing additional penalties for the commission of offenses against the State; and this, like the former, was framed especially for the negro. Its first section provided that where punishment of an offense had hitherto been limited to fine or imprisonment, there should be superadded, as an alternative, the punishment of standing in the pillory for one hour, or whipping, not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, on the bare back. The latter punishment was reserved expressly for the negro. It was provided further that it "shall not be lawful for any negro, mulatto, or person of color to own, use, or keep and bowie-knife, dirk, sword, fire-arms, or ammunition of any kind, unless he first obtain a license to do so from the judge of probate for the county in which he is a resident." The judge could issue the license to him only upon recommendation of two respectable white men. Any negro attempting to keep arms of any kind was to be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, compelled to "forfeit the arms for the use of the informer, stand in the pillory" (and be pelted by the mob) "for one hour, and then whipped with thirty-nine lashes on the bare back." The same penalty was prescribed for any person of color "who shall intrude himself into any religious or other public assembly of white persons, or into any railroad-car or other vehicle set apart for the accommodation of white persons," and with a mock show of impartiality it was provided that a white man intruding himself into an assembly of negroes, or into a negro-car, might be subjected to a like punishment. This restriction upon the negro was far more severe than that imposed in the days of slavery, when, in many of the Southern States, the gallery of the church was permitted to be freely occupied by them. A peculiarly atrocious discrimination against the negro was included in the sixth section of the law from which these quotations are made. It was provided therein that "if any person or persons shall assault a white female with intent to commit rape, or be accessory thereto, he or they, upon conviction, shall suffer death;" but there was no prohibition and no penalty prescribed for the same crime against a negro woman. She was left unprotected by law against the brutal lust and the violence of white men.

In the laws of South Carolina the oppression and injustice towards the negro were conspicuously marked. The restriction as to fire-arms, which was general to all the States, was especially severe. A negro found with any kind of weapon in his possession was punished by "a fine equal to twice the value of the weapon so unlawfully kept, and, if that be not immediately paid, by corporal punishment." Perhaps the most radically unjust of all the statutes was reserved for this State. The Legislature enacted that "no person of color shall pursue the practice, art, trade, or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper, or any other trade or employment besides that of husbandry, or that of a servant under contract for labor, until he shall have obtained a license from the judge of the District Court, which license shall be good for one year only." If the license was granted to the negro to be a shopkeeper or peddler, he was compelled to pay a hundred dollars a year for it; and if he wished to pursue the rudest mechanical calling, he was compelled to pay a license-fee of ten dollars. No such fees were exacted of white men and no such fees were exacted of the free black man during the era of slavery. Every avenue for improvement was closed against him; and in a State which boasted somewhat indelicately of its chivalric dignity, the negro was mercilessly excluded from all chances to better his condition individually, or to improve the character of his race.

Mississippi followed in the general line of penal enactments prescribed in South Carolina, though her code was possibly somewhat less severe in the deprivations to which the negro was subjected. It was, however, bad enough to stir the indignation of every lover of justice. The Legislature had enacted a law that "if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service without just cause, he shall forfeit his wages for the year up to the time of quitting." Practically the negro was himself never permitted to judge whether the cause which drove him to seek employment elsewhere was just, the white man being the sole arbiter in the premises. It was provided that "every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro or mulatto, who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his term of service without good cause, and said officer shall be entitled to receive for arresting and carrying back every deserting employee aforesaid the sum of five dollars, and ten cents per mile from the place of arrest to the place of delivery, and these sums shall be held by the employer as a set-off for so much against the wages of said deserting employee; provided that said arrested party, after being so returned home, may appeal to a justice of the peace, or a member of the Board of Police, who shall summarily try whether said appellant is legally employed by the alleged employer."

It required little familiarity with Southern administration of justice between a white man and a negro to know that such appeal was always worse then fruitless, and that its only effect, if attempted, would be to secure even harsher treatment than if the appeal had not been made. The provisions for enticing a negro from his employer, included in this Act, were in the same spirit and almost in the same language as the provisions of the slave-code applicable to the negro before the era of emancipation. The person "giving or selling to any deserting freedman, free negro or mulatto, any food, raiment, or other things, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor," and might be punished by a fine of two hundred dollars and costs, or he might be put in prison, and be also sued by the employer for damages. For attempting to entice any freedman or free negro beyond the limits of the State, the person offending might be fined five hundred dollars; and if not immediately paid, the court could sentence the delinquent to imprisonment in the county jail for six months. The entire code of Mississippi for freedmen was in the spirit of the laws quoted. Justice was defied, and injustice incorporated as the very spirit of the laws. It was altogether a shameless proclamation of indecent wrong on the part of the Legislature of Mississippi.

Louisiana probably attained the worst eminence in this vicious legislation. At the very moment when the Thirty-ninth Congress was assembling to consider the condition of the Southern States and the whole subject of their reconstruction, it was found that a bill was pending in the Legislature of Louisiana providing that "every adult freed man or woman shall furnish themselves with a comfortable home and visible means of support within twenty days after the passage of this act," and that "any freed man or woman failing to obtain a home and support as thus provided shall be immediately arrested by any sheriff or constable in any parish, or by the police officer in any city or town in said parish where said freedman may be, and by them delivered to the Recorder of the parish, and by him hired out, by public advertisement, to some citizen, being the highest bidder, for the remainder of the year." And in case the laborer should leave his employer's service without his consent, "he shall be arrested and assigned to labor on some public works without compensation until his employer reclaims him." The laborers were not to be allowed to keep any live-stock, and all time spent from home without leave was to be charged against them at the rate of two dollars per day, and worked at that rate. Many more provisions of the same general character were contained within the bill, the whole character and scope of which were forcibly set before the Senate by Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts. It was not only a proof of cruelty enacted into law, but was such a defiance to the spirit of the Emancipation amendment that it subjected the Legislature which approved the amendment and enacted these laws, to a charge of inconsistency so grave as to make the former act appear in the light of both a legal and moral fraud. It was declaring the negro to be free by one statute, and immediately proceeding to re-enslave him by another.

By a previous law Louisiana had provided that all agricultural laborers should be compelled to "make contracts for labor during the first ten days of January for the entire year." With a demonstrative show of justice it was provided that "wages due shall be a lien on the crop, one-half to be paid at times agreed by the parties, the other half to be retained until the completion of the contract; but in case of sickness of the laborer, wages for the time shall be deducted, and where the sickness is supposed to be feigned for the purpose of idleness, double the amount shall be deducted; and should the refusal to work extend beyond three days, the negro shall be forced to labor on roads, levees, and public works without pay." The master was permitted to make deduction from the laborer's wages for "injuries done to animals or agricultural implements committed to his care, or for bad or negligent work," he, of course, being the judge. "For every act of disobedience a fine of one dollar shall be imposed upon the laborer;" and among the cases deemed to be disobedience were "impudence, swearing, or using indecent language in the presence of the employer, his family, or his agent, or quarreling or fighting among one another." It has been truthfully said of this provision that the master or his agent might assail the ear with profaneness aimed at the negro man, and outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line between ribaldry and decency. The care with which the law-makers of Louisiana provided that his delicate ears and sensitive nerves should not be offended with an oath or with an indelicate word from a negro, will be appreciated by all who have heard the crack of the whip on a Southern plantation.

The wrongs inflicted under the name of law, thus far recited, were still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether disproportionate to their property. Indeed, of property they had none. Just emerging from a condition of slavery in which their labor had been constantly exacted without fee or reward of any kind, it was impossible that they could be the owners of any thing except their own bodies. Notwithstanding this fact, the negroes, en masse, were held to be subjects of taxation in the State Governments about to be re-organized. In Georgia, for example, a State tax of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was levied in the first year of peace. The property of the State, even after all the ruin of the war, exceeded two hundred and fifty million dollars. This tax, therefore, amounted to less than one-seventh of one per cent upon the aggregate valuation of the State,--equal to the imposition of only a dollar and a half upon each thousand dollars of property. The Legislature of the State decreed, however, that a large proportion of this small levy should be raised by a poll-tax of a dollar per head upon every man in the State between the ages of twenty-one and sixty years. There were in Georgia at the time from eighty-five thousand to ninety thousand colored men subject to the tax: perhaps, indeed, the number reached one hundred thousand. It was thus ordained that the negroes, who had no property at all, should pay one-third as much as the white men, who had two hundred and fifty millions of property in possession. This odious and unjust tax was stringently exacted from the negro. To make sure that not one should escape, the tax was held as a lien upon his labor, and the employer was under distraint to pay it. In Alabama they devised for the same purpose two dollars on every person between the ages of eighteen and fifty, causing a still larger proportion of the total tax to fall on the negro than the Georgia law-makers deemed expedient.

Texas followed with a capitation tax of a dollar per head, while Florida levied upon every inhabitant between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-five years a capitation tax of three dollars, and upon failure or refusal to pay the same the tax-collector was "authorized and required to seize the body of the delinquent, and hire him out, after five days' public notice before the door of the Court House, to any person who will pay the said tax and the costs incident to the proceedings growing out of said arrest, for his services for the shortest period of time." As the costs as well as the capitation tax were to be worked out by the negro, it is presumable that, in the spirit of this tax-law, they were enlarged to the utmost limit that decency, according to the standard set up by this law, would permit. It is fair to presume that, in any event, the costs would not be less than the tax, and might, indeed, be double or treble that amount. As a negro could not, at that time, be hired out for more than seven dollars and a half per month, the plain inference is that for the support of the State of Florida the negro might be compelled to give one month's labor yearly. Even by the capitation tax alone, without the incident of the costs, every negro man was compelled to give the gains and profits of nearly two weeks' labor.

A poll-tax, though not necessarily limited in this manner, has usually accompanied the right of suffrage in the different States of the Union, but in the rebellious States it conferred no franchise. It might be supposed that ordinary generosity would have devoted it to the education of the ignorant class from which it was forcibly wrung, but no provision of the kind was even suggested. Indeed, in those States there was scarcely an attempt made to provide for the education of the freedmen, and the suggestions made in that direction carried with them another display of studied wrong. As an example of rank injustice the course of the Legislature of Florida may be profitably cited. That body passed an Act concerning schools for freedmen, in which the governor was authorized to appoint a superintendent of common schools for freedmen, and in each county the county commissioners were authorized to appoint assistant superintendents. These officers were directed to "establish schools for freedmen when the number of colored children in any county will warrant the same, provided" (and the proviso is one of great significance) "that the sums hereinafter authorized shall be sufficient to meet the expenses thereof." The funds provided for this seemingly philanthropic design were to be derived exclusively from a tax upon the colored man. The law directed that all colored men between the ages of twenty-one and fifty-five years should pay annually a dollar each, to be collected at the same time and in the same manner as the three-dollar poll-tax, which should be paid into the treasury of the State for the use of the freedmen, and should constitute a fund to be denominated "the common-school fund for the education of freedmen." It was further provided in this law, that "a tuition-fee shall be collected from each pupil, under such regulations as the superintendents shall prescribe, and paid into the treasury as a portion of the common-school fund for freedmen."

The salary of the superintendents of the schools for freedmen was fixed at a thousand dollars, and of the county superintendents at two hundred dollars. There were, at that time, about twelve thousand negro men subject to the capitation tax of three dollars, already referred to, and under that law they paid thirty-six thousand dollars annually into the State Treasury of Florida; but the school law forbade that the salary of superintendents and assistant superintendents should be paid from the fund derived from the poll-tax. They provided that it should be chargeable solely to the fund raised for common schools. As there were thirty-seven counties in Florida at that time, it is a fair presumption that twenty-five of them had assistant superintendents, whose aggregate salaries would amount to five thousand dollars. With the superintendent's salary, which was a thousand dollars, a draft of six thousand dollars for the salaries of white men was at once made upon the twelve thousand dollars which were to be collected from freedmen. Every teacher who was to teach in these schools was required to pay five dollars for his certificate, which also went into the school-fund; and the end of the whole matter was, that a bare pittance was left for the thirty thousand negro children in Florida of the school age. The whole scheme was a ghastly wrong, one which, if attempted upon that class of any population in the North which is able to pay only a poll-tax, would consign the party attempting it to defeat and disgrace, and, if its enforcement were attempted, would lead to riot and bloodshed.

These laws, with all their wrong (even a stronger word might be rightfully employed), were to become, and were, indeed, already an integral part of the reconstruction scheme which President Johnson had devised and proclaimed. Whoever assented to the President's plan of reconstruction assented to these laws, and, beyond that, assented to the full right of the rebellious States to continue legislation of this odious type. It was at once seen that if the party which had insisted upon the emancipation of the slave as a final condition of peace, should now abandon him to his fate, and turn him over to the anger and hate of the class from whose ownership he had been freed, it would countenance and commit an act of far greater wrong than was designed by the most malignant persecutor of the race in any one of the Southern States. When the Congress of the United States, acting independently of the Executive power of the Nation, decreed emancipation by amending the Constitution, it solemnly pledged itself, with all its power, to give protection to the emancipated at whatever cost and at whatever sacrifice. No man could read the laws which have been here briefly reviewed without seeing and realizing that, if the negro were to be deprived of the protecting power of the Nation that had set him free, he had better at once be remanded to slavery, and to that form of protection which cupidity, if not humanity, would always inspire.

The South had no excuse for its course, and the leaders of its public opinion at that time will always, and justly, be held to a strict accountability. Even the paltry pretext, afterwards so often advanced, that they were irritated and maddened by the interposition of carpet-bag power, does not avail in the least degree for the outrages in the era under consideration. When Mr. Johnson issued his proclamation of reconstruction, the hated carpet-bagger was an unknown element in the Southern states. What was done during the year immediately following the surrender of the rebel armies was done at Southern suggestion, done by Southern men, done under the belief that the President's policy would protect them in it, done with a fixed and merciless determination that the gracious act of emancipation should not bring amelioration to the colored race, and that the pseudo-philanthropy, as they regarded the anti-slavery feeling in the North, should be brought into contempt before the world. They deliberately resolved to prove to the public opinion of mankind that the negro was fit only to be a chattel, and that in his misery and degradation, sure to follow the iniquitous enactments for the new form of his subjection, it would be proved that he had lost and not gained by the conferment of freedom among a population where it was impossible for him to enjoy it. They resolved also to prove that slavery was the normal and natural state of the negro; that the Northern people, in taking any other ground, had been deceived by a sentiment and had been following a chimera; that the Southern people alone understood the question, and that interference with them by war or by law should end in establishing their justification before the public opinion of the world. The Southern men believed and boasted that they would subject to general reproach and expose to open shame that whole class of intermeddlers and fanatics (as they termed opponents of slavery) who had destroyed so many lives and wasted so much treasure in attempting the impossible and, even if possible, the undesirable.

There can be no doubt that the objectionable and cruel legislation of the Southern States--examples of which might be indefinitely cited in addition to those already given--exerted a strong influence upon Mr. Seward's mind. It is well known that, to those who were on intimate terms with him, he expressed a sorrowful surprise that the South should respond with so ill a grace to the liberal and magnanimous tenders of sympathy and friendship from the National Administration. He could not comprehend why confidence did not beget confidence, why generosity should not call forth generosity in return. There are good reasons for believing that Mr. Seward desired some modification of the President's policy of Reconstruction after he comprehended the spirit which had been exhibited by the Southern Conventions, and the still more objectionable spirit shown by the Southern Legislatures. His philanthropic nature, the record of his public life, his great achievements in the anti-slavery field, all forbid the conclusion that he could knowingly and willingly consent to the maltreatment and the permanent degradation of the freedmen. If he had no higher motives, the selfish one of preserving his own splendid fame must have inspired him.

Mr. Seward had reached the age of sixty-five years, and he surely could not consent to undo the entire work of his mature manhood. Consistency, it is true, is not the highest trait of statesmanship. Crises often arise in the conduct of National affairs when cherished opinions must be sacrificed and new departures taken. But this necessity can never apply to that class of political questions closely and inseparably allied with moral obligation. Mr. Seward had himself taught the nation that conflict on questions involving the rights of human nature is irrepressible. The slavery against which he had warred so long and so faithfully had been abolished in vain if another form of servitude, even more degrading in some of its aspects, was to take its place. To desert the colored man, and leave him to his fate, undefended, and defenseless against the wrongs already perpetrated and the greater wrongs foreshadowed, would do dishonor to the entire spirit of Mr. Seward's statesmanship, and would certainly be unworthy of his fame.

He strove no doubt to persuade himself, as Mr. Marcy had done in the Cabinet of President Pierce, that even if he did not approve the policy pursued, it was better for him to remain and prevent many evils sure to follow if he should resign. Mr. Seward felt moreover a certain embarrassment in deserting the Administration after he had induced the President to adopt the very policy which was now resulting adversely. But for his energetic interposition the President would have been executing an entirely different policy--one of severe and perhaps sanguinary character. After persuading Mr. Johnson to abandon his proposed line of action and to adopt that which Mr. Seward had himself originated, it might well occur to the distinguished Secretary of State that good faith to the President required him to remain at his post and aid in working out the best result possible. It would to Mr. Seward's apprehension be an act of unpardonable selfishness if in such a crisis to the Republic he should seek to increase his own popularity in the Northern States by separating from Mr. Johnson who had generously trusted him and cordially accepted his leadership. By resigning he could only add to the excitement which he especially desired to allay, whereas he might by continuing in his place of power be able to hold a part of the ground which would all be finally lost if he should join the crusade against the Administration. Under these motives Mr. Seward retained his portfolio. He staid on and on, continually hoping to do some act of patriotic service, and steadily losing that great host of friends who for twenty years had looked to him with unfaltering faith for counsel and direction.

Many who had been steadfastly devoted to Mr. Seward for the whole generation in which he had been prominent in public affairs, never could become reconciled to his course at this period. Some, indeed, refused to concede to him the benefit of worthy motives. He had, as they believed and declared, been incurably wounded in his pride, and disappointed in his ambition, when Mr. Lincoln, then a comparatively unknown man, was preferred to him by the Republican party as a candidate for the Presidency in 1860. He had, as they believed, bided his time for revenge. During the war, the pressure of patriotic duty, as his new but reluctant enemies alleged, held him steadily to his old faith; but now, when he could do it without positive danger to the country, he was bent on administering discipline to the party and its leaders. They likened him to Mr. Van Buren, revengefully defeating General Cass in 1848; to Mr. Webster, who on his death-bed gave his sympathy to the party which had always reviled him; to Mr. Fillmore, who deserted his anti-slavery professions in the hour of most pressing responsibility. Comments even more severe were made by many who had been deeply attached to Mr. Seward, and had deplored his defeat at Chicago. At such a period of excitement, it was not possible that a man of Mr. Seward's exalted position could in any degree change his party relations without great exasperation on the part of old friends, --an exasperation sure to lead to extravagance of expression and to personal injustice.

Mr. Seward's course at this period must not be judged harshly by a standard established from a retrospective view of the circumstances surrounding him. It is more just to consider the situation as it appeared to his own observation when his eyes were turned to the future. He no doubt looked buoyantly forward, according to his temperament, trusting always to the healing influences of time and to that re-action in the headlong course of Southern men which he felt sure would be brought about by the sting of personal reflection and the power of public opinion. A silver lining to the darkest cloud was always visible to his eye of faith, and he now brought to the contemplation of the adverse elements in the political field a full measure of that confidence which had always sustained him when adverse elements in the field of war caused many strong hearts to faint and grow weary.

The course of events developed occasions when Mr. Seward's influence proved valuable to the country, but it did not serve to recall his popularity. He was thwarted and defeated at all points by the Southern leaders whom he had induced the President to forgive and re-instate. These men had originally established their relations with Mr. Johnson by reason of Mr. Seward's magnanimous interposition. But once established they had been able, from motives adverted to in the previous chapter, to fasten their hold upon Mr. Johnson even to the exclusion of Mr. Seward. When Mr. Seward was beaten for the Presidential nomination in a convention composed of anti-slavery men who had learned their creed from him, Senator Toombs, in a tone full of exultation but not remarkable for delicacy, declared that "Actæon had been devoured by his own dogs." The fable would be equally applicable in describing the manner in which the Southern men, who owed their forgiveness and their immunity to Mr. Seward, turned upon him with hatred and with imprecation. They were graciously willing to accept benefits and favors at his hands so long as he would dispense them, but they never forgave him for the work of that grand period of his life, between his election to the Senate and the outbreak of the civil war, when he wrought most nobly for humanity and established a fame which no error of later life could blot from the minds of a grateful people.

Mr. Seward could not have been surprised at the treatment he thus received. He had for nearly half a century been an intelligent observer of the political field, and he could not recall a single Northern man who had risked his popularity at home in defense of what were termed the rights of the South who had not in the supreme crisis of his public life been deserted by the South. Mr. Webster, General Cass, William L. Marcy, Mr. Douglas, and President Pierce were among the most conspicuous of those who had been thus sacrificed. The last sixty days of Mr. Buchanan's Presidency furnished the most noted of all the victims of Southern ingratitude. Men of lower rank but similar experience were to be found in the years preceding the war in nearly every Norther State--men who had ventured to run counter to the principles and prejudices of their own constituency to serve those who always abandoned a political leader when they feared he might have lost the power to be useful to them. The pro-slavery men of the South, in following this course, presented a striking contrast to the anti-slavery men of the North who, under all circumstances and against all temptation, were faithful to the leaders who proved faithful to their cause.

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Chapter VI

During the progress of events in the South, briefly outlined in the preceding chapter, the Thirty-ninth Congress came together--on the first Monday of December, 1865. The Senate and House each contained a large majority of Republicans. In the House Mr. Colfax was re-elected Speaker, receiving 139 votes to 36 cast for James Brooks of New York. The address of the Speaker on taking the chair is usually confined to thanks for his election and courteous assurance of his impartiality and good intentions. But Mr. Colfax, instinctively quick, as he always was, to discern the current of popular thought, incorporated in the ceremonial address some very decisive political declarations. Referring to the fact that the Thirty-eighth Congress has closed nine months before, with "the storm-cloud of war still lowering over us," and rejoicing that "to-day, from shore to shore in our land there is peace," he proceeded to indicate the line of policy which the people expected. "The duties of Congress," said he, "are as obvious as the sun's pathway in the heavens. Its first and highest obligation is to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, to establish the rebellious States anew on such a basis of enduring justice as will guarantee all safeguards to the people and protection to all men in their inalienable rights." . . . "In this great work," he said, "the world should witness the most inflexible fidelity, the most earnest devotion to the principles of liberty and humanity, the truest patriotism and the wisest statesmanship."

The remarks of Mr. Colfax had evident reference to the perverse action of the Southern rebels, and were so entirely in harmony with the feeling of the House that at different stages of the brief address the Republican side of the chamber broke forth into loud applause. As soon as the election of Speaker and of the subordinate officers of the House was completed, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, recognized as the leader of the majority, offered a resolution for the appointment of a "joint committee of fifteen members--nine from the House and six from the Senate--who shall inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called Confederate States of America, and report whether they, or any of them, are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress, with leave to report at any time by bill or otherwise." His resolution demanded that "until such report shall have been made and finally acted upon by Congress, no member shall be received into either House from any of the so-called Confederate States," and further directed that "all papers relating to the representation of the said States shall be referred to the said committee without debate." Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin objected to the introduction of the resolution, and was met by Mr. Stevens with a motion to suspend the rules, which was carried by 129 ayes to 35 noes. Mr. John L. Dawson of Pennsylvania inquired whether it would not be in order to postpone the resolution until after the receipt of the President's message; but the House was in no disposition to testify respect for Mr. Johnson, and the resolution was adopted by as large a vote as that by which it had been received.

Mr. Niblack of Indiana offered a resolution that "pending the question as to the admission of persons claiming to have been elected representatives to the present Congress from the States lately in rebellion, such persons be entitled to the privileges of the floor of the House." This was a privilege always accorded to contestants for seats, but Mr. Wilson of Iowa now objected; and, on motion of Mr. Stevens, the House adjourned without even giving the courtesy of a vote to the resolution. No action of a more decisive character could have been taken to indicate, on the threshold of Congressional proceedings, the hostility of the Republican party, not merely to the President's plan of reconstruction, but to the men who, under its operation in the South, had been chosen to represent their districts in Congress. Against a bad principle a good one my be opposed and the contest proceed in good temper. But his is not practicable when personal feeling is aroused. The presence in Washington of a considerable number of men from the South, who, when Congress adjourned in the preceding March, were serving in the Confederate Army, and were now at the Capital demanding seats in the Senate and House, produced a feeling of exasperation amounting to hatred. The President's reconstruction policy would have been much stronger if the Southern elections to Congress had been postponed, or if the members elect had remained at home during the discussion concerning their eligibility. The presence of these obnoxious persons inflamed minds not commonly given to excitement, and drove many men to act from anger who were usually governed by reason.

In the Senate the proceedings were conducted with even more disregard of the President than had been manifested in the House. An entire policy was outlined by Mr. Sumner, without the slightest reference to what the President might communicate "on the state of the Union," and a system of reconstruction proposed which was in absolute hostility to the one that Mr. Johnson had devised. Mr. Sumner submitted resolutions defining the duty of Congress in respect to guarantees of the National security and National faith in the rebel States. While the conditions were not put forth as a finality, they were significant, if not conclusive, of the demands which would be made, first by the more advanced Republicans, and ultimately by the entire party. These resolutions declared that, in order to provide proper guarantees for security in the future, "Congress should take care that no one of the rebellious States should be allowed to resume its relations to the Union until after the satisfactory performance of five several conditions, which must be submitted to a popular vote, and be sanctioned by a majority of the people in each of those States respectively." These condition were, in some respects, marked by Mr. Sumner's lack of tact and practical wisdom as a legislator. He required stipulations, the fulfillment of which could not really be ascertained.

Mr. Sumner demanded, first, "the complete re-establishment, in loyalty, as shown by an honest recognition of the unity of the Republic, and the duty of allegiance to it at all times, without mental reservation or equivocation of any kind." How Mr. Sumner could determine that "the recognition of the unity of the Republic" was honest, how he could know whether there was not, after all, a mental reservation on the part of the rebels now swearing allegiance, he did not attempt to inform the Senate. The next or second condition was somewhat more practical in fact, but might have been expressed in simpler form. He demanded "the complete suppression of all oligarchical pretensions, and the complete enfranchisement of all citizens, so that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race or color." His third condition was "the rejection of the rebel debt, and the adoption, in just proportions, of the National debt and the National obligations to Union soldiers, with solemn pledges never to join in any measure, directly or indirectly, for their repudiation, or in any way tending to impair the National credit." His fourth condition was "the organization of an educational system for the equal benefit of all, without distinction of color or race." His fifth had some of the objectionable features of his first, demanding "the choice of citizens for office, whether State or National, of constant and undoubted loyalty, whose conduct and conversation shall give assurance of peace and reconciliation." The rebel States were not to be, in Mr. Sumner's language, "precipitated back to political power and independence, but must wait until these conditions are, in all respects, fulfilled." In addition, he desired a declaration of the Senate that "the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, has become and is a part of the Constitution of the United States, having received the approval of the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States adhering to the Union." He declared that "the votes of the States in rebellion are not necessary, in any way, to its adoption, but they must all agree to it through their Legislatures, as a condition precedent to their restoration to their full rights as members of the Union." With these resolutions Mr. Sumner submitted another long series declaratory of the duty of Congress in respect to loyal citizens in the rebel States. His first series had defined what the lately rebellious States must agree to by popular vote, and he now outlined quite fully what would be the duty of Congress respecting the admission of those States to representation in the Senate and the House. The sum of the whole, or the central fact of the whole series, was that the color of the skin must not exclude a loyal man from civil rights.

On the succeeding day, the President, having received notice of the organization of the two Houses, communicated his annual message. It had been looked for with great interest and with varying speculations as to its character. It was expected, and as the event proved with good reason, that it would affect the relation of parties in the Northern States; that it would produce ill-feeling between the President and the Republicans, who had chosen him; and that it would lead, with equal certainty, to a tender of support from the Democrats who had hitherto opposed him. But Mr. Johnson had evidently resolved to exhibit a spirit of calmness and firmness in his official communication, and, while steadily maintaining his own ground, to avoid all harsh words that might give offense to those who differed from him. The moderation in language and the general conservatism which distinguished the message were perhaps justly attributed to Mr. Seward, who had no doubt hoped, by kindly words of conciliation, to avert the threatened break in the ranks of the Republican party. Mr. Seward had never in his Congressional career been a compromiser, but he now worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress. His argument was the one skillfully employed by all who seek an adjustment between those who ought to be friends: Let each party give way a little; let a common ground of action be established; and, above all, let the calamity of a party division be averted.

The President in his message dwelt at some length in a tone of moderation upon the condition of affairs in the South. He saw before him but two modes of dealing with the insurrectionary states,--one was "to bring them back into practical relations with the Union;" the other was to "hold them in military subjection." . . . "Military government," said the President, "established for an indefinite period, would offer no security for the suppression of discontent, would divide the people into the vanquishers and the vanquished, and would envenom hatred rather than restore affection. . . ." The President set forth the danger of permanent arbitrary rule. "Once established, no precise limit to the continuance of the military governments is conceivable. They would occasion an incalculable and exhausting expense. Peaceful emigration would be prevented, for what emigrant abroad, what industrious citizen at home, would willingly place himself under military rule?"--"Besides," asked the President, "would not the policy of military rule imply that the States whose inhabitants may have taken part in the rebellion have, by the act of those inhabitants, ceased to exist? whereas the true theory is, that all pretended acts of secession were from the beginning null and void." The President then briefly explained how he had proceeded in the appointment of provisional governors, the calling of conventions, the election of civil governors and Legislatures, the choosing of senators and representatives in Congress,--compactly sketching the progress of events from the date of his accession until the date of the message.

Discussing his proposed policy he said with great frankness, "I know very well that for its success it requires, at least, the acquiescence of those States which it concerns; that it implies an invitation to those States, by renewing their allegiance to the United States, to resume their functions as States of the Union; but it is a risk that must be taken, and in the choice of difficulties, it is the smallest risk." He urged very earnestly the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in order that the negro should be freed, and with equal strength maintained that, as respected the qualifications for suffrage in each of the States "the General Government should not interfere, but leave that matter where it was originally left,--in the Federal Constitution." But the most partial friend of the President could hardly claim that he frankly communicated the proceedings or the spirit of the Southern conventions and Legislatures. He chose to ignore that subject, to hide it by fluent and graceful phrase from public criticism, and thus to keep from the official knowledge of Congress the most important facts in the whole domain of reconstruction. It was a great mistake in the President to pass over this subject in silence. Such a course enforced one of two impressions, either of which was hurtful to him. He must, according to the common understanding of Congress, have thought the character of Southern legislation so offensive that he could find no excuse for it and therefore would not mention it; or he must have regarded it as outside the line of his observation and beyond the pale of his power of review. Either construction was bad, but the second and more probable one was especially offensive.

The leading men of the Thirty-ninth Congress were mainly those of the Thirty-eighth, though there had been a few important changes. The eminent senator from Vermont, Jacob Collamer, died on the 9th of November (1865); and Luke P. Poland, afterwards a member of the House of Representatives, appeared as his successor. Mr. Solomon Foot, who announced Judge Collamer's death, survived him but a few months. On the 28th of March Mr. Sumner announced his death to the Senate; and eight days later--on the 5th of April (1866)--George F. Edmunds was sworn in as his successor. His first speech was in eulogy of his predecessor. Mr. Edmunds rose rapidly to prominence in the Senate and after the habit of his State has been maintained for a long period in his position.

Honorable James Guthrie of Kentucky, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under President Pierce, now entered the Senate as the successor of Lazarus W. Powell. He was a man of strong parts, possessing a steady industry and thrift not common to the South. He had for many years occupied a commanding financial position in the South-West. Richard Yates, the War Governor of Illinois, displaced William A. Richardson, the intimate friend of Douglas. John P. Hale gave way to Aaron H. Cragin. In recognition of Mr. Hale's ability and long and faithful public service, Mr. Lincoln nominated him to the Spanish Mission. John A. J. Creswell came from Maryland as the successor of Anthony Kennedy. George H. Williams, a Republican, came from Oregon to take the place of Benjamin F. Harding, a Democrat. John P. Stockton of New Jersey, a Democrat, took the place of John C. Ten Eyck, a Republican. Samuel J. Kirkwood entered as the successor of James Harlan to fill his unexpired term, and performed a somewhat unusual service in presenting the credentials of James Harlan as his successor for the first full term, beginning March 4, 1867. This was the first appearance of Mr. Kirkwood in the National field, though he had long been well known for honorable and eminent service in his State.

In the House the changes were more significant than in the Senate. Gilman Marston entered anew, having been absent serving with great credit as a brigadier-general in the war. General Banks resumed the seat which he had left to accept the governorship of Massachusetts in 1857. His checkered and remarkable career, both civil and military, during the eight intervening years had greatly increased his reputation. Henry C. Deming of Connecticut entered fresh from the field of war, choosing a political life rather than a return to literary labor. New York was greatly strengthened in her delegation. Roscoe Conkling resumed the seat which he had lost in the political reverses of 1862. Among the new members were Henry J. Raymond, the able founder and editor of The New-York Times, Robert S. Hale, who became at once distinguished in the arena of debate, and Hamilton Ward, afterwards Attorney-General of his State. These additions gave to the delegation a prestige which its numbers did not always secure. John H. Ketcham, who had attained the rank of brigadier-general by successful service in the field, took his seat in this Congress, destined to hold it for a long period, destined also to exert large political influence without ever once addressing the House of Representatives or an assembly of the people. Reuben E. Fenton, after long and able service in the House, was now transferred to the gubernatorial chair of his State.

Three new men of note entered from Pennsylvania--John M. Broomall, an independent thinker and keen debater, inflexible in principle, untiring in effort; Ulysses Mercur, whose learning as a lawyer and whose worth as a man have since received their reward in a promotion to the Supreme Bench of his State; George V. Lawrence, one of the best known and most sagacious political leaders of Western Pennsylvania, inheriting his capacity from his honored father, Joseph Lawrence, who died during his membership of the Twenty-seventh Congress. John L. Thomas, junior, entered as the representative of the city of Baltimore; and the venerable Francis Thomas returned from his hermitage and his weird life in the Alleghanies.

Ohio grew even stronger than before, and her delegation was again recognized as the leading one of the House. Samuel Shellabarger, John A. Bingham and Columbus Delano re-entered with reputation already established by previous service in Congress. William Lawrence, a conscientious legislator and careful lawyer, entered from the Bellefontaine District. Martin Welker, since promoted to the bench in his State, came from the Wooster District. One of the Cincinnati districts was represented by Benjamin Eggleston, a man of great force and energy; and the other, by a modest man, without experience in legislation, but who had been a good and true soldier in the war for the Union and was highly esteemed by his neighbors. He did not take an active part in Congress, but was destined to a prominence of which he little dreamed--Rutherford B. Hayes.

The Indiana delegation was strengthened on the Democratic side by the return of William E. Niblack, who had made a good record in the Thirty-seventh Congress, and by the entrance of Michael C. Kerr, who served for a long period and ultimately became Speaker of the House. Messrs. Julian, Orth, and Dumont were again elected. The last-named had made a reputation in the preceding Congress as a keen and able man. The Illinois delegation, which had contained a large majority of Democrats in the Thirty-eighth Congress, now returned strongly Republican,--Mr. Lincoln's victory of 1864 having, with three exceptions, carried with it every Congressional district. Four men of marked characteristics were among the new members of the delegation, one of whom was already widely known: the three others were destined to become so in different degrees--John Wentworth, Shelby M. Cullom, Burton C. Cook, and Jehu Baker. Wentworth had been in the House as a Democrat prior to the war, having represented the Chicago District continuously from March 4, 1843 to March 4, 1851; and again from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1855. He was endowed by nature with a mind as strong as his body, and that was of Titanic proportions. He was an ardent partisan in behalf of any cause he espoused; was willful, aggressive, and dominating. He was, at the same time, genial and kindly in many relations of life, not without gifts of both wit and humor, and courageous to the point of absolute fearlessness. He had been well educated at Dartmouth College in his native State, and long practice had made him a dangerous antagonist in debate. He had been an intense Democrat, but he refused to join Douglas in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and subsequently united with the Republicans.--Shelby M. Cullom, with good natural parts and sound education, amiable, pleasing, and endowed with the gracious quality which attracts and holds friends, won his way promptly in the House and gave early promise of the success which afterwards elevated him to the governorship of Illinois, and thence transferred him to the Senate of the United States.--Burton C. Cook was recognized as an able lawyer from the beginning of his service. He constantly grew in influence and strength during the eight years of his continuous membership, and at its close returned to the bar with an enviable reputation and with the assurance of that eminent success which has since attended his professional career.--Jehu Baker was a man of peculiarities, not to say oddities, of bearing; but these did not conceal his worth and ability, nor retard the growing reputation which has since retained him in a diplomatic position.

Missouri, then under the control of the Republican party, included in her delegation Robert T. Van Horn, a Pennsylvanian by birth, who had borne a conspicuous part in the contest with the disloyal elements of the State of his adoption; and John Hogan, a genial Irish Democrat from the St. Louis District. The Michigan delegation was the same as in the Thirty-eighth Congress, with the exception of Thomas W. Ferry, who now entered for the first time, and Roland E. Trowbridge, who had served in the Thirty-seventh Congress. The Iowa delegation was the same as in the Thirty-eighth Congress,--a very able body of men with growing influence in the House. The Wisconsin delegation was also in large part the same. But the new members were men of note. Among them were Halbert E. Paine and Philetus Sawyer. General Paine had served with distinction in the war and had lost a leg in battle. He was a lawyer in full practice, a man of the highest integrity, without fear and without reproach. Born in the Western Reserve, he was radical in his views touching the slavery question and progressive in all matters of governmental reform.--Philetus Sawyer was a native of Vermont, who, when a young man, had emigrated to Wisconsin. Without early advantages, either of education or fortune, he was in the best sense of the phrase a self-made man. He engaged in the business of lumbering and by sagacity had acquired wealth. It is easy to supply superlatives in eulogy of popular favorites; but Mr. Sawyer, in modest phrase, deserves to be ranked among the best of men,--honest, industrious, generous, true to every tie and to every obligation of life. He remained for ten years in the House, with constantly increasing influence, and was afterward promoted to the Senate. California sent an excellent delegation--McRuer, Higby, and Bidwell; and West Virginia contributed a valuable member in the person of Chester D. Hubbard.

The members of the House had been elected in 1864--borne to their seats by the force of the same popular expression that placed Mr. Lincoln in the Presidential chair for a second term. It is scarcely conceivable that had Mr. Lincoln lived any serious differences could have arisen between himself and Congress respecting the policy of reconstruction. The elections of 1865, held amid the shouts of triumph over a restored union, went by default in favor of the Republicans, who were justly credited with the National victory so far as any one political party was entitled to such honor. The people had therefore given no expression, in any official or registered form, touching the policy outlined by Mr. Johnson. He was the duly-elected Vice-President. He had come to the magistracy in presumed sympathy and close affiliation with the Republicans whose suffrages he had received. All beyond these facts was surmise or inference. No one knew any thing with precision respecting the new President's intentions.

He undoubtedly had control of an enormous public patronage. The Peace establishment of the Army, it was thought at that time, would not be less than seventy-five regiments, and this, with the necessary staff, would give to him the appointment of nearly two thousand officers without disturbing the commissions of those already in the regular service. A like increase was expected in the naval establishment. The internal-revenue system, devised for the support of the war, was all-pervasive in its character, and required for its administration a great number of officers and agents, all removable and appointable at the pleasure of the Executive. The customs' service was correspondingly large, having grown immensely during the war. In proportion to the population of the country there never had been, there has never since been, and perhaps there will never again be, so vast an official patronage placed at the absolute disposal of the President.

Public opinion, which has in later years tended to restrain the Executive Department from the personal use of the patronage of the Government, did not at that time exert a perceptible influence in this direction. The maxim originating with William L. Marcy, but frequently attributed to President Jackson, that "to the victor belong the spoils," was then held in full honor; and though it was deprecated by many and openly opposed in Congress by a few, it was acquiesced in by the vast majority and was the rule and practice of the National Administration. The patronage placed a formidable weapon in the hands of the President which could be so used as to annoy or help every Republican representative in Congress,--so used, indeed, as to prevent the election of many who were peculiarly offensive to Mr. Johnson. He had been reared in the Democratic school of proscription, and had measured the force and indulged in the use of patronage throughout all his political life in Tennessee. Though a man of the strictest personal integrity, he had apparently no scruples on this subject, but believed that the patronage of the Government might be honestly used to build up his own political power. When he entered political life he imbibed this doctrine from the teachings of President Jackson; he afterwards received its advantage under Van Buren; he aided in its enforcement under Polk; and when a senator, during the Administration of Buchanan, he witnessed its prodigious power in the overthrow of Douglas as a Presidential candidate, though a large majority of the rank and file of his party desired his nomination. While the Democratic masses were, in fact, clamorous for Douglas, he was defeated by combinations brought about through the active instrumentality of United-States district attorneys, collectors, marshals, and their deputies--all acting, as they had good reason to know, in harmony with the wishes of the Administration from whose favor they had received their places.

The Republicans of the loyal States, whose convictions and whose prejudices were strongly developed by the controversy between the President and Congress, had grave apprehensions as to the ultimate issue. At various times during the fifteen years preceding the war, they had seen men of strong anti-slavery professions, with strong anti-slavery constituencies, "palter in a double sense" when intrusted with the duties of a representative in Congress, and fall from the faith, influenced by what were termed the blandishments of power, or as was sometimes more plainly said, corrupted by the gifts of patronage. They had seen this results brought about by an Administration which the tempted and yielding representatives had been specially chosen to oppose. They had now double ground to fear that many more would prove treacherous to their professions of principle, since they could take refuge under the protection of an Administration chosen by their own party and still nominally professing to be Republican. The magnitude of the patronage at the President's disposal intensified the popular alarm; and the promptness with which a large proportion of those holding office echoed the President's sentiments and defended his policy, was taken as a signal that acquiescence therein would be the one condition upon which the honors and emoluments of public place could be enjoyed.

The great mass of loyal Republicans had descried a peculiar danger in the gentle, persuasive, insinuating words with which the President, in his annual message, sought to commend his policy. Phrasing of a specious type can deceive an individual far more easily that it can deceive a multitude of men. The quick comprehension of the people so far transcends that of a single person as to amount almost to the possession of a sixth sense. While the single person might be misled by fallacious statements and suppressions of truth by the President, the people discerned with keen precision the absolute facts of the case. They saw that the policy of the President was at war with the creed and the spirit of the Republican party, and that, if carried into effect, the legitimate fruits of the bloody struggle which had afflicted the Nation would be lost to posterity, the laws of humanity would be violated, and a fresh rebellion against National authority would be invited. The ancient maxim, that the voice of the people is the voice of God, is illogical in its direct statement, and like all adages it covers both a truth and an untruth. Its truth was now signally vindicated, when, against the authority of those in high places, against the instruction of those who had always before been trusted, the mass of the Republican party stood with heroic firmness for what they believed to be right. They stood against the seductions of patronage in the hands of the President whom they had elected, and against the eloquent pleadings of the Secretary of State who for ten years before the war had been their sagacious guide, their profound philosopher, their trusted friend.

It was this common instinct and prompt expression by the people which rescued Congress from the danger of injurious complication. The first test in the Senate, as to the solidity of the Republican party, was made on the 12th of December, when the resolution to form a select committee of reconstruction, passed by the House on the first day of the session, came up for consideration. It was amended on the motion of Mr. Anthony, by striking out that portion of it which provided that no member should be received into either House from the so-called Confederate States until the report of the committee was received and acted upon. This was held to impinge on the power of each House to be the judge of its own elections, and was expunged by general consent. On the propriety of the resolution thus amended a brief debate occurred, which to a certain extent enabled senators to define their position; and before it was concluded it was made evident that Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, Mr. Dixon of Connecticut, and Mr. Doolittle of Wisconsin, would separate from the mass of their Republican associates, would support the reconstruction policy of the President, and would ultimately become merged in the Democratic party. Mr. Norton of Minnesota not long afterwards became one of the supporters of the President, making a net loss of four to the Republican side of the chamber. The Senate, at that time, contained fifty members, twenty-five States being represented. Of this number the Democrats had but eleven. The loss of four still left the Republicans in possession of more than two-thirds of the seats in the Senate. The House had even a larger proportion of Republican members. These facts were destined to exert a wide and then unforseen influence upon the legislation of Congress and upon the political affairs of the country.

The House concurred promptly in the amendment which the Senate had made to the resolution providing for a joint committee on the subject of Reconstruction. It is not often that such solicitude is felt in Congress touching the membership of a committee as was now developed in both branches. It was foreseen that in an especial degree the fortunes of the Republican party would be in the keeping of the fifteen men who might be chosen. The contest, predestined and already manifest, between the President and Congress might, unless conducted with great wisdom, so seriously divide the party as to compass its ruin. Hence the imperious necessity that no rash or ill-considered step should be taken. Both in Congress and among the people the conviction was general that the party was entitled to the services of its best men. There was no struggle among members for positions on the committee; and when the names were announced they gave universal satisfaction to the Republicans. There was some complaint by the Democrats that they had only one representative upon the committee in the Senate and two in the House, but the relative strength of parties in both branches scarcely justified a larger representation of the minority.(1)

Even before the announcement of the names a great number of resolutions were offered in the House, intended to call forth expressions of opinion that should operate as instructions to the new committee, but none of them were of marked importance, except one indicating the pronounced divergence of the two parties regarding the mode of reconstruction. Each political party, in such parliamentary declarations, seeks to get the advantage of the other and each is in the habit of overrating the importance of expressions in this form. They are diligently contrived for catches and committals to be subsequently used in political campaigns, but it may well be doubted whether they ever produce substantial effect upon legislation or prove either gainful or hurtful in partisan contests. The practice is somewhat below the dignity of a legislative body, has never been resorted to in the Senate and might with great advantage be abandoned by the House.

The debate on Reconstruction, perhaps the longest in the history of National legislation, was formally opened by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens on the 18th of December (1865). He took the most radical and pronounced ground touching the relation to the National Government of the States lately in rebellion. He contended that "there are two provisions in the Constitution, under one of which the case must fall." The Fourth Article says that "new States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." "In my judgment," said Mr. Stevens, "this is the controlling provision in this case. Unless the law of Nations is a dead letter, the late war between the two acknowledged belligerents severed their original contracts and broke all the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new States or remain as conquered provinces." This was the theory which Mr. Stevens had steadily maintained from the beginning of the war, and which he had asserted as frequently as opportunity was given in the discussions of the House. He proceeded to consider the probable alternative. "Suppose," said he, "as some dreaming theorists imagine, that these States have never been out of the Union, but have only destroyed their State governments, so as to be incapable of political action, then the fourth section of the Fourth Article applies, which says, 'The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.'" "But," added he, "who is the United States? Not the Judiciary, not the President; but the sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives in congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. It means political government--the concurrent action of both branches of Congress and the Executive." He intended his line of debate to be an attack, at the very beginning, upon the assumption of the President in his attempt at Reconstruction. "The separate action of the President, or the Senate or the House," added Mr. Stevens, "amounts to nothing, either in admitting new States or guaranteeing republican forms of government to lapsed or outlawed States." "Whence springs," asked he, "the preposterous idea that any one of these, acting separately, can determine the right of States to send representatives or senators to the Congress of the Union?"

Though many others had foreseen and appreciated the danger, Mr. Stevens was the first to state in detail the effect which might be produced by the manumission of the slaves upon the Congressional representation of the Southern States. He pointed out the fact that by counting negroes in the basis of representation, the number of representatives from the South would be eighty-three; excluding negroes from the basis of representation, they would be reduced to forty-six; and so long as negroes were deprived of suffrage he contended that they should be excluded from the basis of representation. "If," said he, "they should grant the right of suffrage to persons of color, I think there would always be white men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide representation and thus continue loyal ascendency. If they should refuse to thus alter their election laws it would reduce the representation of the late slave States, and render them powerless for evil." Mr. Stevens's obvious theory at that time was not to touch the question of suffrage by National interposition, but to reach it more effectively perhaps by excluding the entire colored population from the basis of Congressional representation, until by the action of the Southern States themselves the elective franchise should be conceded to the colored population. As he proceeded in his speech, Mr. Stevens waxed warm with all his ancient fire on the slavery question. "We have," said he, "turned or are about to turn loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The diabolical laws of slavery have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the commonest laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound to look after them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not hedge them around with protecting laws, if we leave them to the legislation of their old masters, we had better have left them in bondage. Their condition will be worse than that of our prisoners at Andersonville. If we fail in this great duty now when we have the power, we shall deserve to receive the execration of history and of all future ages."

In conclusion Mr. Stevens declared that "Two things are of vital importance: first, to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any of the Amendments to the Constitution, until they are duly admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their conqueror; second, it should now be solemnly declared what power can revive, re-create and re-instate these provinces into the family of States and invest them with the rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should assert the sovereignty and assume something of the dignity of a Roman Senate." He denounced with great severity the cry that "This is a white man's Government." "If this Republic," said he with great earnestness, "is not now made to stand on solid principle, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to its centre. If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God's creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father, still increasing his afflictions, as he increased the severity of the plagues of Egypt until the tyrant consented to do justice, and when that tyrant repented of his reluctant consent and attempted to re-enslave the people, as our Southern tyrants are attempting to do now, he filled the Red Sea with broken chariots and drowned horses, and strewed the shore with the corpses of men. Sir, this doctrine of a white man's Government is as atrocious as the infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame, and I fear to everlasting fire."

The speech of Mr. Stevens gave great offense to the Administration. He had not directly assailed the President by name, and had even assumed to construe one of the paragraphs of the message as referring the question of reconstruction anew to Congress; but this assumption was simply for effect and was well known by Mr. Stevens to be unfounded. The Administration did not misapprehend the drift and intention of Mr. Stevens, and its members saw that it was the first gun fired in a determined war to be waged against its policy and its prestige. They were especially anxious that its defense should not be undertaken by Democrats, or at least that Democrats should not take the lead in defending it. Mr. Stevens spoke on the 18th of December, and Congress had already voted to adjourn on the 21st for the Christmas recess. The Administration desired the Mr. Stevens's speech should not be permitted to go unanswered to the country and thus hold public attention until Congress should re-assemble in January. It was important that some response be made to it at once; and Mr. Henry J. Raymond, widely known to the political world but now in Congress for the first time, was selected to make the reply.

In a political career that was marked by many inconsistencies, as consistency is measured by the party standard, with a disposition not given to close intimacies or warm friendships, Mr. Raymond had continuously upheld the public course of Mr. Seward, and had maintained a singular steadiness of personal attachment to the illustrious statesman from New York. On the other hand, he was the rival of Horace Greeley in the field of journalism and had become personally estranged from the founder of the Tribune; though in his early manhood he had been one of his editorial assistants. The fact that the Tribune was against the Administration would of itself dispose Mr. Raymond to support it. But aside from this consideration, the chivalric devotion of Mr. Raymond to Mr. Seward would have great weight in determining his position in the pending conflict. Mr. Seward's committal to the policy and the assault upon it by the New-York Tribune would therefore through affection on the one side and prejudice on the other, naturally fix Mr. Raymond's position. He had acquired wide and worthy fame as conductor of the New-York Times, had achieved a high reputation as a polemical writer, was well informed on all political issues and added to his power with the pen the gift of ready and effective speech.

On the twenty-fist day of December, the last day before the recess, Mr. Raymond, desiring the floor, was somewhat chagrined to find himself preceded by Mr. Finck of Ohio, a respectable gentleman of the Vallandingham type of Democrat,--representing a political school whose friendship to the Administration at that time was a millstone about its neck. Mr. Raymond followed Mr. Finck late in the day, and could not help showing his resentment that the ground which the Administration intended to occupy should be so promptly pre-empted by the anti-war party of the country. "I have," said Mr. Raymond at the opening of his speech, "no party feeling which would prevent me from rejoicing in the indications apparent on the Democratic side of the House, of a purpose to concur with the loyal Administration of the Government and with the loyal majorities in both Houses of Congress in restoring peace and order to our common country. I cannot, however, help wishing, sir, that these indications in the preservation of our Government had come somewhat sooner. I cannot help feeling that such expressions cannot now be of as much use to the country as they might once have been. If we could have had from that side of the House such indications of an interest in the preservation of the Union, such heartfelt sympathy with the friends of the Government for the preservation of the Union, such hearty denunciations for all those who were seeking its destruction, while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some years of war, some millions of money and rivers of blood and tears." This utterance was sharpened and made significant by the manner and by the accent of Mr. Raymond. No more pointed rebuke, no more keen reproach (not intended for Mr. Finck personally, but for his party) could have been administered. What the Administration or especially what Mr. Seward desired, and what Mr. Raymond was to speak for, was Republican support; and the prior indorsement of Mr. Johnson's position by the Democracy was a hinderance and not a help to the cause he had espoused.

Mr. Raymond's principal aim was to join issue with Mr. Stevens on his theory of dead States. "The gentleman from Pennsylvania," said Mr. Raymond, "believes that what we have to do is to create new States out of this conquered territory, at the proper time, many years distant, retaining them meanwhile in a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage as Congress and the Government of the United States may see fit to prescribe. If I believed in the premises he assumes, possibly though I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has reached; but, sir, I cannot believe that these States have ever been out of the Union or that they are now out of the Union. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the American Union? Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of the Union is simply a nullity because it encounters the Constitution of the United States which is the supreme law of the land.

"Did the resolutions of those States," continued Mr. Raymond, "the declarations of their officials, the speeches of the members of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press, accomplish the result desired? Certainly not. All these were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was first announced. They proceeded to sustain their purpose of secession by arms against the force which the United States brought to bear against them. Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt--a purpose unfulfilled. They failed to maintain their ground by force of arms. In other words, they failed to secede."

Mr. Raymond's speech was listened to with profound attention, and evoked the high compliment of frequent interruptions from leading men on the Republican side of the House. Messrs. Schenck, Bingham and Spalding of Ohio, Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Kelley of Pennsylvania, all put pointed questions and were at once answered with undoubted tact and cleverness. Mr. Raymond was helped to a specious point by Mr. Niblack of Indiana, of which he made prompt and vigorous use, to the effect that the theory of Mr. Stevens, if carried to its legitimate consequences, would make those who resisted the Confederacy in the insurrectionary states guilty of treason to that power; and that therefore "we would be unable to talk of loyal men in the South. Loyal to what? Loyal to a foreign and independent power, which the gentleman from Pennsylvania was really maintaining the Confederacy for the time being to represent."

Immediately after the recess the Reconstruction debate was resumed, and an able speech made by Mr. Spalding of Ohio, reviewing the subject generally rather than specifically replying to Mr. Raymond. Representing one of the districts of the Western Reserve (the most radical section of the United States), it is interesting to see what Mr. Spalding declared would be satisfactory to the mass of his constituents as conditions precedent to the re-admission of the rebel States. He laid down five requirements: First, "to give a qualified right of suffrage to the freedmen in the District of Columbia;" second, to "so amend the Constitution of the United States that people of color shall not be counted with the population in making up the ratio of representation in Congress, except in those States where they are permitted to exercise the elective franchise;" third, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting nullification and secession;" fourth, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting the repudiation of the National debt and also prohibiting the assumption of the rebel debt;" fifth, to provide in the Constitution that "no person who has at any time taken up arms against the United States shall ever be admitted to a seat in the Senate or House of Representatives."

On the eighth day of January, two days after the re-assembling of Congress, Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio specifically answered the speech of Mr. Raymond. He spoke with care and preparation, as was his habit. He wasted no words, but in clear, crisp sentences subjected the whole question to the rigid test of logic. "I shall inquire," said Mr. Shellabarger, "whether the Constitution deals with States. I shall discuss the question whether an organized rebellion against a government is an organized State in that government; whether that which cannot become a State until all its officers have sworn to support the Constitution, remains a State after they have all sworn to overthrow that Constitution. If I find it does continue to be a State after that, then I shall strive to ascertain whether it will so continue to be a Government--a State--after, by means of universal treason, it has ceased to have any constitution, laws, legislatures, courts, or citizens in it."

"If, in debating this question," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "I debate axioms, my apology is that there are not other questions to debate in Reconstruction. If," said he with well-timed sarcasm, "in the discussion, I make self-evident things obscure or incomprehensible, my defense shall be that I am conforming to the usages of Congress. I will not inquire whether any subject of this Government, by reason of the revolt, passed from under its sovereignty or ceased to owe it allegiance; nor shall I inquire whether any territory passed from under that jurisdiction, because I know of no one who thinks that any of these things did occur. I shall not consider, whether, by the Rebellion, any State lost its territorial character or its defined boundaries or subdivisions, for I know of no one who would obliterate these geographical qualities of the States. These questions, however much discussed, are in no practical sense before Congress."

"What is before Congress?" asked Mr. Shellabarger. "I at once define and affirm it in a single sentence. It is, under our Constitution, possible to, and the late Rebellion did in fact, so overthrow and usurp, in the insurrectionary States, the loyal State Governments, as that during such usurpation such States and their people ceased to have any of the rights or powers of Government as States of the Union, and this loss of the rights and powers of Government was such that the United States may, and ought to, assume and exercise local powers of the lost State Governments, and may control the re-admission of such States to their powers of Government in this Union, subject to, and in accordance with, the obligation to guarantee to each State a republican form of Government."

Upon the broad proposition thus laid down by Mr. Shellabarger, he proceeded to submit an argument which, for closeness, compactness, consistency and strength had rarely, if ever, been surpassed in the Congress of the United States. Other speeches have gained greater celebrity, but it may well be doubted whether any speech in the House of Representatives ever made a more enduring impression, or exerted greater convincing power, upon the minds of those to whom it was addressed. It was a far more valuable exposition of the Reconstruction question than that given by Mr. Stevens. It was absolutely without acrimony, it contained no harsh word, it made no personal reflection; but the whole duty of the United States, and the whole power of the United States to do its duty, were set forth with absolute precision of logic. The Reconstruction debate continued for a long time and many able speeches were contributed to it. While much of value was added to that which Mr. Shellabarger had stated, no position taken by him was ever shaken.

Mr. Raymond had asked repeatedly and with great emphasis what specific act had deprived these rebellious States of their rights as States of the Union. Mr. Shellabarger gave an answer to that question, which, as a caustic summary, is worthy to be quoted in full. "I answer him," said the member from Ohio, "in the words of the Supreme Court, 'The causeless waging against their own Government of a war which all the world acknowledge to have been the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race.' That war was waged by these people as States, and it went through long, dreary years. In it they threw off and defied the authority of your Constitution, your laws, and your Government. They obliterated from their State constitutions and laws every vestige of recognition of your Government. They discarded all their official oaths, and took, in their places, oaths to support your enemies' government. They seized, in their States, all the Nation's property. Their senators and representatives in your Congress insulted, bantered, defied and then left you. They expelled from their land or assassinated every inhabitant of known loyalty. They betrayed and surrendered your arms. They passed sequestration and other Acts in flagitious violation of the law of nations, making every citizen of the United States an alien enemy, and placing in the treasury of their rebellion all money and property due such citizens. They framed iniquity and universal murder into law. For years they besieged your Capital and sent your bleeding armies in rout back here upon the very sanctuaries of your national power. Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea. They carved the bones of your unburied heroes into ornaments and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons, organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried to your cities, and the yellow-fever to your wives and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destroyed, in the four years of horrid war, another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe in marching-column. And then to give to the infernal drama a fitting close, and to concentrate into one crime all that is criminal in crime and all that is detestable in barbarism, they murdered the President of the United States."

"I allude to these horrid events," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "not to revive frightful memories, or to bring back the impulses towards the perpetual severance of this people which they provoke. I allude to them to remind us how utter was the overthrow and the obliteration of all government, divine and human, how total was the wreck of all constitutions and laws, political, civil and international. I allude to them to condense their monstrous enormities of guilt into one crime, and to point the gentleman from New York to it and tell him that that was the specific act."

Mr. Voorhees of Indiana followed on the day succeeding Mr. Shellabarger's speech, in support of a series of resolutions which he had offered on the same day that Mr. Raymond addressed the House, and further embarrassing Mr. Raymond by the proffer of Democratic support, and proportionately discouraging the Republicans from coming forward in aid of the Administration. The resolutions of Mr. Voorhees declared in effect that "the President's message is regarded by the House as an able, judicious and patriotic State paper;" that "the principles therein advocated are the safest and most practicable that can be applied to our disordered domestic affairs;" that "no State or number of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their connection with the Federal Union;" and that "the President is entitled to the thanks of Congress and the country for his faithful, wise and successful efforts to restore civil government, law and order to the States lately in rebellion." Mr. Voorhees made an exhaustive speech in support of these resolutions, indicating very plainly the purpose of the Democratic party to combine in support of the President. He was answered promptly and eloquently, though not without some display of temper, by Mr. Bingham of Ohio, who at the close of his speech moved a substitute for the series of propositions made by Mr. Voorhees--simply declaring that "this House has an abiding confidence in the President, and that in the future as in the past, he will co-operate with Congress in restoring to equal position and rights with the other States in the Union, the States lately in insurrection."

Up to this period there had been no outbreak of the Republican party against the President. There had been coolness and general distrust, with resentment and anger on the part of many, but the hope of his co-operation with the party had not yet been entirely abandoned. Mr. Bingham's resolution represented this hope, if not expectation, but the Republican members of the House were not willing to make so emphatic a declaration of their confidence as that resolution would imply; and when Mr. Bingham demanded the previous question he was interrupted by Mr. Stevens, who suggested that the whole subject be referred to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Mr. Bingham changed his motion accordingly; and the roll being called, the series of resolutions offered by Mr. Voorhees, with the substitute of Mr. Bingham, were sent to the Committee on Reconstruction by 107 ayes against 32 noes. Mr. Raymond and his colleague, Mr. William A. Darling, were the only Republicans who voted with the Democrats. The act was simple in a parliamentary sense, but its significance was unmistakable. A House, four-fifths of whose members were Republicans, had refused to pass a resolution expressing confidence in the President who, fourteen months before, had received the vote of every Republican in the Nation. From that day, January 9th, 1866, the relation of the dominant party in Congress to the President was changed. It may not be said that all hope of reconciliation was abandoned, but friendly co-operation to any common end became extremely difficult.

Mr. Raymond was bitterly disappointed. Few members had ever entered the House with greater personal prestige or with stronger assurance of success. He had come with a high ambition--an ambition justified by his talent and training. He had come with the expectation of a Congressional career as successful as that already achieved in his editorial life. But he met a defeat which hardly fell short of a disaster. He had made a good reply to Mr. Stevens, had indeed gained much credit by it, and when he returned home for the holidays he had reason to believe that he had made a brilliant beginning in the parliamentary field. But the speech of Mr. Shellabarger had destroyed his argument, and had given a rallying-point for the Republicans, so incontestably strong as to hold the entire party in allegiance to principle rather than in allegiance to the Administration. If any thing had been needed to complete Mr. Raymond's discomfiture after the speech of Mr. Shellabarger, it was supplied in the speech of Mr. Voorhees. He had been ranked among the most virulent opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, had been bitterly denunciatory of the war policy of the Government, and was regarded as a leader of that section of the Democratic party to which the most odious epithets of disloyalty had been popularly applied. Mr. Raymond, in speaking of the defeat, always said that he could have effected a serious division in the ranks of Republican members if he could have had the benefit of the hostility of Mr. Voorhees and other anti-war Democrats.

Three weeks after Mr. Shellabarger's reply Mr. Raymond made a rejoinder. He struggled hard to recover the ground which he had obviously lost, but he did not succeed in changing his status in the House, or in securing recruits for the Administration from the ranks of his fellow Republicans. To fail in that was to fail in every thing. That he made a clever speech was not denied, for every intellectual effort of Mr. Raymond exhibited cleverness. That he made the most of a weak cause, and to some extent influenced public opinion, must also be freely conceded. But his most partial friends were compelled to admit that he had absolutely failed to influence Republican action in Congress, and had only succeeded in making himself an apparent ally of the Democratic party--a position in every way unwelcome and distasteful to Mr. Raymond. His closing speech was marked by many pointed interruptions from Mr. Shellabarger and was answered at some length by Mr. Stevens. But nothing, beyond a few keen thrusts and parries and some sharp wit at Mr. Raymond's expense, was added to the debate.

Mr. Raymond never rallied from the defeat of January 9th. His talents were acknowledged; his courteous manners, his wide intelligence, his generous hospitality, gave him a large popularity; but his alliance with President Johnson was fatal to his political fortunes. He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party. It was an extremely mortifying fact to Mr. Raymond that with the power of the Administration behind him he could on a test question secure the support of only one Republican member, and he a colleague who was bound to him by ties of personal friendship.

The fate which befell Mr. Raymond, apart from the essential weakness of the issue on which he staked his success, is not uncommon to men who enter Congress with great reputation already attained. So much is expected of them that their efforts on the floor are almost sure to fall below the standard set up for them by their hearers. By natural re-action the receive, in consequence, less credit than is their due. Except in a few marked instances the House has always been led by men whose reputation has been acquired in its service. Entering unheralded, free from the requirements which expectation imposes, a clever man is sure to receive more credit than is really his due when his is so fortunate as to arrest the attention of members in his first speech. Thenceforward, if he be discreet enough to move slowly and modestly, he acquires a secure standing and may reach the highest honors with the House can confer.

If, ambitious of a career, Mr. Raymond had been elected to Congress when he was chosen to the New-York Legislature at twenty-nine years of age, or five years later when he was made Lieutenant-governor of his State, he might have attained a great parliamentary fame. It has long been a tradition of the House that no man becomes its leader who does not enter it before he is forty. Like most sweeping affirmations this has its exceptions, but the list of young men who have been advanced to prominent positions in the body is so large that it may well be assumed as the rule of promotion. Mr. Raymond was nearly forty-six when he made his first speech in the House. While he still exhibited the intellectual acuteness and alertness which had always been his characteristics, there was apparent in his face the mental weariness which had come from the prolonged and exacting labor of his profession. His parliamentary failure was a keen disappointment to him, and was not improbably one among many causes which cut short a brilliant and useful life. He died in 1869, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

This first debate on reconstruction developed the fact that the Democrats in Congress would endeavor to regain the ground they had lost by their hostility to Mr. Lincoln's Administration during the war. The extreme members of that party, while the war was flagrant, adhered to many dogmas which were considered unpatriotic and in none more so than the declaration that even in the case of secession "there is no power in the Constitution to coerce a State." They now united in the declaration, as embodied in the resolution of Mr. Voorhees, that "no State or number of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their connection with the Federal Union." This was intended as a direct and defiant answer to the heretical creed of Mr. Stevens, that the States by their attempted secession were really no longer members of the Union and could not become so until regularly re-admitted by Congress. By antagonizing this declaration the Democrats strove to convince the country that it was the accepted doctrine of their political opponents, and that they were themselves the true and tried friends of the Union.

The great majority of the Republican leaders, however, did not at all agree with the theory of Mr. Stevens and the mass of the party were steadily against him. The one signal proof of their dissent from the extreme doctrine was their absolute unwillingness to attempt an amendment to the Constitution by the ratification of three-fourths of the Loyal States only, and their insisting that it must be three-fourths of all the States, North and South. Mr. Stevens deemed this a fatal step for the party, and his extreme opinion had the indorsement of Mr. Sumner; but against both these radical leaders the party was governed by its own conservative instincts. They believed with Mr. Lincoln that the Stevens plan of amendment would always be questioned, and that in so grave a matter as a change to the organic law of the Nation, the process should be unquestionable--one that could stand every test and resist every assault.

The Republicans, as might well have been expected, did not stand on the defensive in such a controversy with their opponents. They became confidently aggressive. They alleged that when the Union was in danger from secession the Northern Democrats did all in their power to inflame the trouble, urged the Southern leaders to persevere and not yield to the Abolitionists, and even when war was imminent did nothing to allay the danger, but every thing to encourage its authors. Now that war was over, the Democrats insisted on the offending States being instantly re-invested with all the rights of loyalty, without promise and without condition. At the beginning of the war and after its close, therefore, they had been hand in hand with the offending rebels, practically working at both periods to bring about the result desired by the South. Their policy, in short, seemed to have the interests of the guilty authors of the Rebellion more at heart than the safety of the Union. Their efforts now to clothe the Southern conspirators with fresh power and to take no note of the crimes which had for four years drenched the land in blood, constituted an offense only less grave in the eyes of the Republicans than the aid and comfort given to the Rebellion in the hour of its inception.

These were the accusations and criminations which were exchanged between the political parties. They lent acrimony to the impending canvass and increased the mutual hostility of those engaged in the exciting controversy. The Republicans were resolved that their action should neither be misinterpreted by opposing partisans nor misunderstood by the people. They were confident that when their position should be correctly apprehended it would still more strongly confirm their claim to be the special and jealous guardians of the Union of the States--of a Union so strongly based that future rebellion would be rendered impossible, the safety and glory of the Republic made perpetual.

[(1)NOTE.--The members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction were as follows:--

On the part of the Senate.--William P. Fessenden of Maine, James W. Grimes of Iowa, Ira Harris of New York, Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, George H. Williams of Oregon, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland.

On the part of the House.--Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, John A. Bingham of Ohio, Roscoe Conkling of New York, George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, Henry T. Blow of Missouri, A. J. Rogers of New Jersey, and Henry Grider of Kentucky.]

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Chapter VII

The debate on the direct question of Reconstruction did not begin at so early a date in the Senate as in the House, but kindred topics led to the same line of discussion as that in which the House found itself engaged. During the first week of the session Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts had submitted a bill for the protection of freedman, designed to overthrow and destroy the odious enactments which in many of the Southern States were rapidly reducing the entire negro race to a new form of slavery. Mr. Wilson's bill provided that "all laws, statutes, acts, ordinances, rules and regulations in any of the States lately in rebellion, which, by inequality of civil rights and immunities among the inhabitants of said States is established or maintained by reason of differences of color, race or descent, are hereby declared null and void." For the violation of this statute a punishment was provided by fine of not less than five hundred dollars nor more than ten thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not less than six months nor more than five years.

In debating his bill Mr. Wilson declared that he had "no desire to say harsh things of the South nor of the men who have been engaged in the Rebellion. I do not ask their property or their blood; I do not wish to disgrace or degrade them; but I do wish that they shall not be permitted to disgrace, degrade or oppress anybody else. I offer this bill as a measure of humanity, as a measure that the needs of that section of the country imperatively demand at our hands. I believe that if it should pass it will receive the sanction of nineteen-twentieths of the loyal people of the country. Men may differ about the power or the expediency of giving the right of suffrage to the negro; but how any humane, just and Christian man can for a moment permit the laws that are on the statute-books of the Southern States and the laws now pending before their Legislatures, to be executed upon men whom we have declared to be free, I cannot comprehend."

Mr. Reverdy Johnson replied to Mr. Wilson in a tone of apology for the laws complained of, but took occasion to give his views of the status of the States lately in rebellion. "I have now," said Mr. Johnson, "and I have had from the first, a very decided opinion that they are States in the Union and that they never could have been placed out of the Union without the consent of their sister States. The insurrection terminated, the authority of the Government was thereby re-instituted; eo instanti they were invested with all the rights belonging to them originally--I mean as States. . . In my judgment our sole authority for the acts which we have done during the last four years was the authority communicated to Congress by the Constitution to suppress insurrection. If the power can only be referred to that clause, in my opinion, speaking I repeat with great deference to the judgment of others, the moment the insurrection was terminated there was no power whatever left in the Congress of the United States over those States; and I am glad to see, if I understand his Message, that in the view I have just expressed I have the concurrence of the President of the United States."

Mr. Sumner sustained Mr. Wilson's bill in an elaborate argument delivered on the 20th of December. There was an obvious desire in both branches of Congress and in both parties--those opposed to the President's policy and those favoring it--to appeal to the popular judgment as promptly as possible, and this led to a prolonged and earnest debate prior to the holidays, an occurrence unusual and almost unprecedented. Mr. Sumner declared that Mr. Wilson's bill was simply to maintain and carry out the Proclamation of Emancipation. The pledge there given was that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, would recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. "This pledge," said Mr. Sumner, "is without limitation in space or time. It is as extended and as immortal as the Republic itself, to that pledge we are solemnly bound; wherever our flag floats, as long as time endures, we must see that it is sacredly observed. The performance of that pledge cannot be intrusted to another, least of all to the old slave-masters, embittered against their slaves. It must be performed by the National Government. The power that gives freedom must see that freedom is maintained."

"Three of England's greatest orators and statesmen," continued Mr. Sumner, "Burke, Canning and Brougham, at successive periods unite in declaring, from the experience of the British West Indies, that whatever the slave-masters undertook to do for their slaves was always arrant trifling; that whatever might be its plausible form it always wanted the executive principle. More recently the Emperor of Russia, in ordering the emancipation of the serfs, declared that all previous efforts had failed because they had been left to the spontaneous initiative of the proprietors." . . . "I assume that we shall not leave to the old slave-proprietors the maintenance of that freedom to which we are pledged, and thus break our own promise and sacrifice a race." In concluding his speech Mr. Sumner referred to the enormity of the wrongs against the freedmen as something that made the blood curdle. "In the name of God," said he, "let us protect them; insist upon guarantees; pass the bill under consideration; pass any bill, but do not let this crying injustice rage any longer. An avenging God cannot sleep while such things find countenance. If you are not ready to be the Moses of an oppressed people, do not become their Pharaoh."

Mr. Willard Saulsbury of Delaware made a brief reply to Mr. Sumner, not so much to argue the points put forward by the senator from Massachusetts, not so much to deny the facts related by him or to discuss the principles which he had presented, as to announce that "it can be no longer disguised that there is in the party which elected the President an opposition party to him. Nothing can be more antagonistic than the suggestions contained in his Message and the speeches already made in both Houses of Congress." He adjured the President to be true and faithful to the principles he had foreshadowed, and pledged him "the support of two million men in the States which have not been in revolt, and who did not support him for his high office."

Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, one of the Republican senators who had indicated a purpose to sustain the President, was evidently somewhat stunned by Mr. Sumner's speech. He treated the outrages of which Mr. Sumner complained as exceptional instances of bad conduct on the part of the Southern people. "One man out of ten thousand," said Mr. Cowan, "is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of the whole people of the South; whereas nothing is said of the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men who treat the negro well." Mr. Cowan's argument was altogether inapposite; for what Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wilson had complained of was not the action of individual men in the South, but of laws solemnly enacted by Legislatures whose right to act had been recognized by the Executive Department of the National Government, and which had indeed been organized in pursuance of the President's Reconstruction policy,--almost in fact by the personal patronage of the President. The situation was one very difficult to justify by a man with the record of Mr. Cowan. He had been not merely a Republican before his entrance into the Senate but a radical Republican, taking ground in the campaign of 1860 only less advanced than that maintained by Mr. Thaddeus Stevens himself.

These debates in both Senate and House, at so early a period of the session, give a full and fair indication of the temper which prevailed in the country and in Congress. The majority of the members had not, at the opening of the session, given up hope of some form of co-operation with the President. As partisans and party leaders they looked forward with something of dismay to the rending of all relations with the Executive, and to the surrender of the political advantage which comes to the party and to the partisan from a close alliance between the Executive and Legislative Departments. On the re-assembling of Congress after the holidays a great change was seen and realized by all. It was feared by many, even of the most conservative, that the policy of Congress and the policy of the President might come into irreconcilable conflict, and that the party which had successfully conducted the Government through the embarrassments, the trials and the perils of a long civil war, might now be wrecked by an angry controversy between two departments of the Government, each owing its existence to the same great constituency,--the loyal people of the North.

Circumstances suggested the impossibility of a successful contest against the President and the Democratic party united. Even those elections which result, in the exuberant language of the press, in an overwhelming victory on the one side and an overwhelming defeat, on the other, are often found, upon analysis, to be based on very narrow margins in the popular result, the reversal of which requires only the change of a few thousand votes. This was demonstrated in many of the great States, even in the second election of Mr. Lincoln, when to the general apprehension he was almost unanimously sustained. From this fact it was well argued by Republicans in Congress that great danger to the party was involved in the impending dissension. Even the most sanguine feared defeat, and the naturally despondent already counted it as certain. Never before had so stringent a test of principle been applied to the members of both Houses. The situation was indeed peculiar. The great statesman who had been honored as the founder of the Republican party was now closely allied with the Administration. His colleague who had sat next him in the Cabinet of Mr. Lincoln, and who, in the judgment of his partial friends, was the peer of Mr. Seward both in ability and in merit, did not hesitate to show from the exalted seat of the Chief Justice his strong sympathy with the President.

The leading commercial men, who had become weary of war, contemplated with positive dread the re-opening of a controversy which might prove as disturbing to the business of the country as the struggle of arms had been, and without the quickening impulses to trade which active war always imparts. The bankers of the great cities, whose capital and whose deposits all rested upon the credit of the country and were invested in its paper, believed that the speedy settlement of all dissension and the harmonious co-operation of all departments of the Government were needed to maintain the financial honor of the nation and to re-instate confidence among the people. Against obstacles so menacing, against resistance so ominous, against an array of power so imposing, it seemed to be an act of boundless temerity to challenge the President to a contest, to array public opinion against him, to denounce him, to deride him, to defy him.

It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration. No unmanly efforts to compromise, no weak shirking from duty, sullied the fame of the great body of senators and representatives. Even the Whig party in 1841, with Mr. Clay for a leader, did not stand so solidly against John Tyler as the Republican party, under the lead of Fessenden and Sumner in the Senate and of Thaddeus Stevens in the House, now stood against the Administration of President Johnson. The Whigs of the country, in the former crisis, lost many of their leading and most brilliant men,--a sufficient number indeed to compass the defeat of Mr. Clay three years later. The loss to the Republican party now was so small as to be unfelt and almost invisible in the political contests into which the party was soon precipitated. The Whigs of 1841 were contending only for systems of finance, and they broke finally with the President because of his veto of a bill establishing a fiscal agency for the use of the Government,--merely a National Bank disguised under another name. The Republicans of 1866 were contending for a vastly greater stake,--for the sacredness of human rights, for the secure foundation of free government. Their constancy was greater than that of the Whigs because the rights of person transcend the rights of property.

On the 12th of December Mr. Cowan had submitted a resolution requesting the President to furnish to the Senate information of "the condition of that portion of the United States lately in rebellion; whether the rebellion has been suppressed and the United States again put in possession of the States in which it existed; whether the United-States post-offices are re-established and the revenues collected therefrom; and also, whether the people of those States have re-organized their State governments; and whether they are yielding obedience to the laws and Government of the United States." Mr. Sumner moved an amendment, directing the President to furnish to the Senate at the same time "copies of such reports as he may have received from the officers or agents appointed to visit this portion of the Union, including especially any reports from the Honorable John Covode and Major-General Carl Schurz." The President's message, sent to the Senate a week later, in response to this resolution, was brief, being simply a statement of what had been accomplished by his Reconstruction policy, with an expression of his belief that "sectional animosity is surely and rapidly merging itself into a spirit of nationality; that representation, connected with a properly adjusted system of taxation, will result in a harmonious restoration of the relations of the States to the National Union." He transmitted the report of Mr. Schurz and also invited the attention of the Senate to a report of Lieutenant-General Grant, who had recently made a tour of the inspection through several of the States lately in rebellion.

The President evidently desired that General Grant's opinions concerning the South should be spread before the public. From the high character of the General-in-Chief and his known relations with the prominent Republicans in Congress, the Administration hoped that great influence would be exerted by the communication of his views. His report was short and very positive. He declared his belief that "the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith." At the same time he thought that "four years of war have left the people possibly in a condition not ready to yield that obedience to civil authority which the American people have been in the habit of yielding, thus rendering the presence of small garrisons throughout these States necessary until such time as labor returns to its proper channels and civil authority is fully established."

It was General Grant's opinion however that acquiescence in the authority of the General Government was so universal throughout the portions of the country he visited, that "the mere presence of a military force, without regard to numbers, is sufficient to maintain order." He urged that only white troops be employed in the South. The presence of black troops, he said, "demoralizes labor" and "furnishes in their camps a resort for freedmen." He thought there was danger of collision from the presence of black troops. His observations led him to the conclusion that "the citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible;" that "during the process of reconstruction they want and require protection from the Government;" that "they are in earnest, and wishing to do what they think is required by the Government, not humiliating to them as citizens;" and that "if such a course were pointed out they would pursue it in good faith." "The questions," continued General Grant, "heretofore dividing the people of the two sections--slavery and the right of secession--the Southern men regard as having been settled forever by the tribunal of arms. I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision as final, but now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country." He suggested that the Freedmen's Bureau be put under command of military officers in the respective departments, thus saving the expense of a separate organization. This would create a responsibility that would secure uniformity of action throughout the South. His general characterization of the Bureau was, that it tended to impress the freedman with the idea that he would not be compelled to work, and that in some way the lands of his former master were to be divided among the colored persons.

The supporters of the Administration considered General Grant's report a strong justification of their position towards the South, and they used it with some effect throughout the country. The popularity of the Lieutenant-General was boundless, and of course there was strong temptation to make the most of whatever might be said by him. Mr. Sumner immediately demanded the reading of the report of Mr. Schurz. He likened the message of the President to the "whitewashing" message of President Pierce with regard to the enormities in Kansas. "That," said he, "is its parallel." Mr. Doolittle criticized the use of the word "whitewashing," and asked Mr. Sumner to qualify it, but the Massachusetts senator declared that he had "nothing to modify, nothing to qualify, nothing to retract. In former days there was one Kansas that suffered under a local power. There are now eleven Kansases suffering as one: therefore, as eleven is more than one so is the enormity of the present time more than the enormity of the days of President Pierce." Later in the debate, Mr. Sumner indirectly qualified his harsh words, saying that he had no reflection to make on the patriotism or the truth of the President of the United States. "Never in public or in private," said he, "have I made such reflection and I do not begin now. When I spoke I spoke of the document that had been read at the desk. I characterized it as I though I ought to characterize it." The distinction he sought to make was not clearly apparent, the only importance attaching to it being that Mr. Sumner had not yet concluded that a bitter political war was to be made upon the President of the United States.

The character of Mr. Schurz's report at once disclosed the reason of Mr. Sumner's anxiety to have it printed with the report of General Grant. It was made after a somewhat prolonged investigation in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Department of the Gulf. Mr. Schurz's conclusions were that the loyalty of the masses and of most of the leaders in the South "consists of submission to necessity." Except in individual instances, he found "an entire absence of that national spirit which forms the basis of true loyalty and patriotism." He found that "the emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel-slavery in the old form could not be kept up; and although the freeman is no longer considered the property of the individual master he is considered the slave of society, and all independent State legislation will share the tendency to make him such. The ordinances abolishing slavery, passed by the conventions under the pressure of circumstances, will not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of servitude." "Practical attempts," Mr. Schurz continued, "on the part of the Southern people to deprive the negro of his rights as a freedman may result in bloody collision, and will certainly plunge Southern society into resistless fluctuations and anarchical confusion."

These evils, in the opinion of Mr. Schurz, "can be prevented only by continuing the control of the National Government in the States lately in rebellion, until free labor is fully developed and firmly established. This desirable result will be hastened by a firm declaration on the part of the Government that national control in the South will not cease until such results are secured." It was Mr. Schurz's judgment that "it will hardly be possible to secure the freedman against oppressive legislation and private persecution unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power." He felt sure of the fact that the "extension of the franchise to the colored people, upon the development of free labor and upon the security of human rights in the South, being the principal object in view, the objections raised upon the ground of the ignorance of the freedmen become unimportant."

Mr. Schurz made an intelligent argument in favor of negro suffrage. He was persuaded that the Southern people would never grant suffrage to the negro voluntarily, and that "the only manner in which the Southern people can be induced to grant to the freemen some measure of self-protecting power, in the form of suffrage, is to make it a condition precedent to re-admission." He remarked upon the extraordinary delusion then pervading a portion of the public mind regarding the deportation of the freedmen. "The South," he said, "stands in need of an increase and not a diminution of its laboring-force, to repair the losses and disasters of the last four years. Much is said of importing European laborers and Northern men. This is the favorite idea among planters, who want such emigrants to work on their plantations, but they forget that European and Northern men will not come to the South to serve as hired hands on the plantations, but to acquire property for themselves; and even if the whole European emigration, at the rate of two hundred thousand a year, were turned into the South, leaving not a single man for the North and West, it would require between fifteen and twenty years to fill the vacuum caused by the deportation of freedmen."

Mr. Schurz desired not to be understood as saying that "there are no well-meaning men among those who are compromised in the Rebellion. There are many, but neither their number nor their influence is strong enough to control the manifest tendency of the popular spirit." Apprehending that his report might be antagonized by evidence of a contrary spirit shown in the South by the action of their conventions, Mr. Schurz declared that it was "dangerous to be led by such evidence into any delusion." "As to the motives," said Mr. Schurz, "upon which the Southern people acted when abolishing slavery (in their conventions) and their understanding of the bearings of such acts, we may safely accept the standard they have set up for themselves." The only argument of justification was that "they found themselves in a situation where they could do no better." A prominent Mississippian (General W. L. Brandon) said in a public card, according to Mr. Schurz, "My honest conviction is that we must accept the situation until we can once more get control of our own State affairs. . . . I must submit for the time to evils I cannot remedy." Mr. Schurz expressed his conviction that General Brandon had "only put in print what a majority of the people say in more emphatic language."

The report of Mr. Schurz was quoted even more triumphantly by the opponents of the President's policy than was General Grant's by its friends. It was a somewhat singular train of circumstances that produced the two reports, while the sequel, so far as the authors were involved, was quite as remarkable as the contradictory character of the views set forth. In the early summer (1865) when Mr. Johnson had yielded many of his preconceived views of reconstruction to the persuasions of Mr. Seward, but was still adhering tenaciously to some exactions which the Secretary of State deemed unwise if not cruel, it had occurred to the President to procure an accurate and intelligent report of the Southern situation by a man of capacity. Mr. Johnson held at that particular time a middle ground, measuring from the original point of his extreme antagonism towards the Southern rebels to the subsequent point of his extreme antagonism towards the Northern Republicans. His selection of Mr. Schurz for the special duty was deemed significant, because at that period of a political career consistent only in the frequency and agility of its changes Mr. Schurz happened to take an extreme position on the Southern question--one that was in general harmony with the views entertained and avowed by Mr. Sumner. Mr. Schurz, according to his own declaration, had communicated his "views to the President in frequent letters and conversations," and added an assurance, the truth of which all who know Mr. Schurz will readily concede--"I would not have accepted the mission had I not felt that whatever preconceived opinions I might carry with me to the South I should be ready to abandon or modify, as my perception of facts and circumstances might command their abandonment or modification."

Mr. Schurz started on his mission in the early part of July, and was engaged in traveling, observing and taking copious notes until the middle of the ensuing autumn. His report did not reach the President until the month of November. In the intervening months Mr. Johnson had been essentially and rapidly changing his views,--growing more and more favorable to the Southern leaders, less and less in harmony with the Republican leaders. He had gone far beyond the balancing-point of impartiality, where he stood when he was willing to intrust the task of Southern investigation to a man of the radical views which Mr. Schurz then professed. He was now altogether unwilling to submit the report of Mr. Schurz to Congress as an ex cathedra exposition. If not in some way counterbalanced it would necessarily be considered authoritative, and in a certain sense accredited by the Administration.

It was the President's desire to neutralize the effect of Mr. Schurz's representations, which led to the report of General Grant, the chief points of which have been already quoted. The Commander of the Army was necessarily in close relations with the Executive Department, and was recognized by the President as possessing an extraordinary popularity in the Northern States. During the months that had passed since the war closed General Grant had been received, wherever he had been induced to visit, with a display of enthusiasm never surpassed in our country. The people looked upon him simply as the illustrious soldier who had led the armies of the Union to victory. They attributed to him no political views except those of undying loyalty to his country, and they sought no party advantage from the use of his name. He had indeed made no partisan expressions, either during the war or since its close, on any subject whatever, except the necessity of maintaining the Union--and this was a partisan question only in consequence of the evil course pursued by the Democratic party during the closing years of the war.

On the civil and political aspects of the situation General Grant had not deemed it necessary to mature his views. He desired above all things the speedy restoration of the Southern States to the Union as the legitimate result of the victories in the field. But so far as action or even the exertion of any positive influence was involved, he confined himself strictly to his duties as Commander of the United-States Army. President Johnson saw an opportunity for turning the prestige of General Grant to the benefit of his Administration. Towards the close of November the general was starting South on a tour of military inspection "to see what changes were necessary in the disposition of the forces, and to ascertain how they could be reduced and expenses curtailed." The President requested him "to learn during his tour, as far as possible, the feelings and intentions of the citizens of the Southern States towards the National Government,"--a request with which the general complied in a perfunctory manner, giving merely the impressions formed in the rapid journey of a few days. He left Washington on the 27th of November and passed through Virginia "without conversing or meeting with any of its citizens." He spent one day in North Carolina, one in South Carolina and two in Georgia. This was the whole extent of the observation upon which General Grant had innocently given his views, without the remotest suspicion that his brief report was to figure largely in the discussions of Congress upon the important and absorbing question of reconstruction.

The divergent conclusions which were thus made to appear between the authors of the conflicting reports did not cease with this single exhibition. It was soon perceived that in the President's anxiety to parry the effect of Mr. Schurz's report he had placed General Grant in a false position,--a position which no one realized more promptly than the General himself. Further investigation led him to a thorough understanding of the subject and to a fundamental change of opinion. It led him to approve the reconstruction measures of the Republican party, and in a subsequent and more exalted sphere to continue the policy which these measures foreshadowed and implied. Mr. Schurz, on the other hand, received new light and conviction in the opposite direction, and from the point of extreme Republicanism he gradually changed his creed and became, first a distracting element in the ranks of the party, and afterwards one of its malignant opponents in a great national struggle in which General Grant was the leader,--the aim of which struggle was really to maintain the views which Mr. Schurz had, with apparent sincerity, endeavored to enforce in his report to President Johnson. These changes and alternations in the position of public men are by no means unknown to political life in the United States, but in the case under consideration the actors were conspicuous, and for that reason their reversal of position was the more marked.

An interesting and important case, relating to the mode of electing United-States senators, came up for decision at this session and led to a prolonged debate, which was accompanied with much personal feeling and no little acrimony.--In the winter and spring of 1865 the Legislature of New Jersey was engaged in the duty of choosing a senator of the United States to succeed John C. Ten Eyck, whose term was about to expire. After many efforts at election it had been found that no candidate was able to secure "a majority of the votes of all the members elected to both Houses of the Legislature," which was described in the rule adopted by the joint convention of the two Houses as the requisite to election. On the 15th of March the convention rescinded this stringent rule and declared that "any candidate receiving a plurality of votes of the members present shall be declared duly elected." The Legislature was composed of a Senate with twenty-one members and an Assembly with sixty members. The resolution giving to a plurality the power to elect was carried in the joint convention by a majority of one--forty-one to forty. In this vote eleven senators were in the affirmative and ten in the negative, and of the members of the House thirty were in the affirmative and thirty in the negative. It was therefore numerically demonstrated that the resolution could not have been carried with the two Houses acting separately. There would have been a majority of one in the Senate and a tie in the House.

Proceeding to vote under this new rule, John P. Stockton, the Democratic candidate, received forty votes, John C. Ten Eyck, the Republican candidate, thirty-seven votes, and four other candidates one vote each. Forty-one votes were thus cast against Mr. Stockton, but as he had secured a plurality he was duly elected according to the rule adopted by the joint convention.--Mr. Stockton was thirty-nine years of age at the time of his election. His family had been for several generations distinguished in the annals of New Jersey. His great-grandfather Richard Stockton was a member of the Continental Congress and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence; his grandfather Richard Stockton was a senator of the United States under the administrations of Washington and John Adams; his father was the well-known Commodore Robert F. Stockton, who was conspicuously effective as a naval officer in the conquest of California, and afterwards a senator of the United States. Mr. Stockton entered the Senate, therefore, with personal prestige and a good share of popularity with his party.

On the 20th of March, five days after the alleged election of Mr. Stockton, seven senators and thirty-one members of the Assembly forwarded to the Senate of the United States a protest against his admission, for the reason that he was not elected by a majority of the votes of the joint meeting of the Legislature. The substantial ground on which the argument in the protest rested, was that a Legislature means at least a majority of what constitutes the Legislature as convened at the moment of election. This had been, as they set forth at length, the undoubted law and the unbroken usage of New Jersey, and an election falling short of this primary requirement was necessarily invalid. "The Constitution of the United States direct," said this memorial, "that a senator must be chosen by the Legislature, and a minority does not constitute the Legislature." They illustrated the wrongfulness of the position by the reductio ad absurdum. "The consequences which are possible," argued the protestants, "from admitting the right to elect by a plurality vote, furnish a conclusive argument against it. If two members vote for one person and every other member, by himself, for different individuals, the person having two votes would have a plurality. Can it be that in such a case he would be senator? This indeed is an extreme case, but such cases test the propriety of legal doctrine, and many equally unjust but less extreme may easily be offered."

Mr. Stockton took his seat on the first day of the ensuing session (December 4, 1865) and was regularly sworn in. At the same time the protest was presented by Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania and referred to the Judiciary Committee. That committee was composed of five Republicans and two Democrats, and was therefore politically biased, if at all, against Mr. Stockton. On the 30th of January, after a patient examination of nearly two months, the committee, greatly to the surprise of the Republican side of the chamber, reported that "Mr. Stockton was duly elected and entitled to his seat." The report was said to have been approved by every member of the committee except Mr. Clark of New Hampshire. The validity or invalidity of the election hinged upon the ability of the joint convention of the two branches to declare a plurality sufficient to elect. The committee decided that the convention possessed that power, and the report, drawn by Mr. Trumbull, argued the point with considerable ingenuity.

The subject came up for consideration in the Senate on the 22d of March (1866), Mr. Clark, the dissenting member of the committee, leading off in debate. He was ably sustained by Mr. Fessenden, who left little to be said, as was his habit in debating any question of constitutional law. He maintained that "the Legislature, in the election of a United-States senator, is merely the agent of the Constitution of the United States to perform a certain act. It is therefore under the control of no other power. No provision of the Constitution of New Jersey, directing the mode in which a senator shall be elected, or the course that shall be taken, or the rules of the proceeding, would bind in any way the Legislature which is to perform the act. Nor would any law of a previous Legislature have binding force. The existing Legislature is independent of every thing except the Constitution of the United States; but while it is thus independent and may disregard those provisions, being the mere agent of the Federal Constitution, still it must necessarily act as a Legislature in the performance of that duty. There must be a legislative act. . . . Whatever is done in relation to the election of a senator, must be done as a consequence of legislative action, otherwise it is no election by the Legislature. They vote to form a convention for the purpose of choosing a senator, and when they meet in convention that choice may be made. If there is legislative action previously that is sufficient. The convention can choose a senator because there has been legislative action which authorizes them to choose a senator in that form. The Legislature, when it votes to go into a convention of the two branches, may provide the mode of election. If it desires to change the ordinary and received law on the subject it may provide how the election shall be made. It may say that a plurality shall elect if it pleases. It may make any provision that it pleases, but it must be done by the Legislature. It must be the legislative body which gives the power that is to settle the mode of action. Now what are the facts in this case? There was no provision whatever made by the Legislature of the State of New Jersey as to the mode in which the senator should be chosen. The legislative action which authorized the convention was perfectly silent upon that subject. What then had the Legislature the right to conclude? Was it not this, and this only?--that when it authorized a body other than itself, though constituted of the same members, a convention to choose a senator, that body must proceed in the choice of a senator according to the universally received Parliamentary and common law upon the subject of elections. But this convention in New Jersey, without any legislative act, without any such authority conferred upon it, without any thing done on the subject by the Legislature which formed the body, undertook to say that they would change the received and acknowledged Parliamentary and common law in their mode of proceedings, and instead of acting according to that law, as the Legislature must have intended that it should do, would elect in a totally different manner from that prescribed by law, namely, by a plurality vote, for which they had no legislative sanction and for which there was no authority but their own will."

There was a long debate on the question, but the argument submitted by Mr. Fessenden was never refuted by his opponents, and it was practically repeated by every one who concurred in his general views. Mr. Stockton made an able presentation of his own case, perhaps better than any made for him, but he was never able to evade the point of Mr. Fessenden's argument, or even to dull it. The case came to a vote on the 23d of March, the first test coming upon an amendment to the committee's report, which declared Mr. Stockton "not entitled to a seat." This amendment was defeated--yeas 19, nays 21. The vote was then taken on the direct question of declaring him entitled to his seat. At the conclusion of the roll-call the yeas were 21, the nays 20, when Mr. Morrill of Maine rose and asked to have his name called. He voted in the negative and produced a tie. Thereupon Mr. Stockton rose and asked to vote. No objection being interposed his vote was received. The result was then announced 22 yeas to 21 nays, thereby confirming Mr. Stockton in his seat. Mr. Stockton, disclaiming any intention to reflect upon Mr. Morrill, intimated that he was under the obligation of a pair with Mr. William Wright (the absent colleague of Mr. Stockton) and therefore should not have voted. The two had undoubtedly been paired, but Mr. Morrill considered that the time had expired and acted accordingly. He was not only a gentleman of scrupulous integrity, but in this particular case he had taken counsel with his colleague, Mr. Fessenden, and with Mr. Sumner, safe mentors, and was advised by both that he had a clear right to vote. It cannot be denied however that Mr. Morrill's action created much ill-feeling on the Democratic side of the Senate.

Mr. Stockton's determination to vote must have been taken very hastily, without due reflection on his own part and without the advice of his political associates, who should have promptly counseled him against his unfortunate course. The Parliamentary position of the question, at the moment he committed the blunder of voting, was advantageous to him on the record. The Senate had defeated by a majority of two the declaration that he was not entitled to a seat, and the declaration in his favor, even after Mr. Morrill's negative vote, stood at a tie. Nothing therefore had been done to unseat him, and if he had left it at that point he would still have remained a member by the prima facie admission upon his regular credentials.

These proceedings took place on Friday and the Senate adjourned until Monday. Meanwhile the obvious impropriety of Mr. Stockton's vote upon his own case had deeply impressed many senators, and on Monday, directly after the Journal was read, Mr. Sumner raised a question of privilege and moved that the Journal of Friday be amended by striking out the vote of Mr. Stockton on the question of his seat in the Senate. He did this because, being on the defeated side, he could not move a reconsideration; but Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Poland, who had sustained Mr. Stockton's right to a seat, both offered to move a reconsideration, because they believed that he had no right to vote on the question. Mr. Poland made the motion and it was unanimously agreed to. Then, instead of urging the correction of the Journal of Friday, Mr. Sumner proposed a resolution declaring that "the vote of Mr. Stockton be not received in determining the question of his seat in the Senate," which was agreed to without a division. The original resolution being again before the Senate, Mr. Clark renewed his amendment declaring that John P. Stockton was not elected a senator from New Jersey, on which the yeas were 22 and the nays 21. As thus amended the resolution passed by 23 yeas to 20 nays. Mr. Riddle of Delaware voted with the majority for the purpose of moving a reconsideration on a succeeding day--a privilege from which he was excluded by the action of Mr. Clark of New Hampshire, who made the motion at once with the object of securing its defeat and thereby exhausting all power to renew the controversy. Mr. Clark of course voted against his own motion, and with its rejection Mr. Stockton ceased to be a member of the Senate.

More than half of those who sustained Mr. Stockton's right to his seat were Republicans, or had, until the current session of Congress, acted with the party. The majority of a single vote by which he was ejected would have been neutralized if Mr. Stockton's colleague could have been present. Mr. Wright was ill at his home in Newark and contradictory reports were made as to the time when he could probably be present. Some of the Republicans justified their urgent demand for a final vote on the belief entertained by them that Mr. Wright would never appear in the Senate again. As matter of fact he resumed his seat eight days after the decision of Mr. Stockton's case. His vote would have changed the result. The haste with which the question was brought to a decision can hardly be justified, and is a striking illustration of the intense party-feeling which had been engendered by the war. In a matter so directly affecting the interests and the feelings of the people of New Jersey it was certainly a hardship that the voice of the State was not heard. With one senator excluded from voting by parliamentary law and the other absent by reason of physical disability, Mr. Stockton had good ground for declaring that the Senate had not treated him with magnanimity or generosity. It is due to Mr. Stockton to say that under very trying circumstances he bore himself with moderation and dignity.

In the decision itself, however, there has been general acquiescence, and it led to an important reform in the manner of choosing United-States senators. The well-known Act of July 26, 1866, "regulating the time and manner of holding elections for senators in Congress," was the direct fruit of the Stockton controversy. Though it may not be perfect in all its details that law has done much to insure the fair and regular choice of senators. It has certainly accomplished a great deal by preventing various objectionable devices, which prior to its enactment had marked the proceedings of every senatorial election where the Legislature was almost equally divided between political parties. The reluctance to interfere with the supposed or asserted rights of States had too long delayed the needful exercise of National power. The Constitution provides that "the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives in Congress shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators."

There was a reluctance in the early administration of the Federal Government to assume any function which had been given alternatively to the States. It thus came to pass that many methods were developed in different States for choosing senators,--methods that widely differed in their essential characteristics. Hence there was variety, and even contrariety, where there should have been only unity and harmony. These divergent practices had been allowed to develop for seventy-seven years of the nation's life, when, admonished by the Stockton case of the latitudinary results to which loose methods might lead, Congress took jurisdiction of the whole subject. The exercise of this power was a natural result of the situation in which the nation was placed by the war. Previous to the civil conflict every power was withheld from the National Government which could by any possibility be exercised by the State Government. Another theory and another practice were now to prevail; for it had been demonstrated to the thoughtful statesmen who then controlled the Government, that every thing which may be done by either Nation or State may be better and more securely done by the Nation. The change of view was important and led to far-reaching consequences.

Alexander G. Cattell succeeded Mr. Stockton and served in the Senate with usefulness and high credit until March 4, 1871. He had been all his life engaged in commercial affairs, but had taken active part in politics and had held many positions of trust in his native State. In 1844, at twenty-eight years of age, he was a member of the Constitutional Convention of New Jersey and made his mark in its proceedings. His upright character, his recognized ability and his popular manners had given him a strong hold upon the people of his State.

William Wright, the colleague of Mr. Stockton, who was unable from illness to vote on his case, died the ensuing November (1866) at seventy-two years of age. He served two terms (1843-47) in the House of Representatives from the Newark district as a Whig, and was a zealous supporter of Mr. Clay in 1844. He was a wealthy manufacturer, largely engaged in trade with the South, and the agitation of the slavery question became distasteful to him. In 1850 he united with the Democratic party and was sent to the Senate in 1853.

Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen was chosen as Mr. Wright's successor. He was in his fiftieth year when he entered the Senate, but was known as a distinguished member of the New-Jersey bar and had served as Attorney-General of his State. His grandfather, Frederick Frelinghuysen, was a senator during the first term of Jackson and ran for Vice-President on the ticket with Mr. Clay in 1844. The family came with the early emigration from Holland and soon acquired a hold upon the confidence of the people of New Jersey which has been long and steadily maintained.--Mr. Frelinghuysen soon attained prominence in the Senate, and grew in strength and usefulness throughout his service in that body.

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