Chapter VIII…

Chapter VIII

With the disposition manifested in both Houses of Congress it was feared that the conflict between the Legislative and Executive Departments of the Government would assume a virulent and vindictive spirit. It was known that President Johnson was deeply offended by the indirect refusal of the House to pass any resolution in the remotest degree approving his course. He had doubtless been led to believe that the influence of such eminent Republicans as Mr. Seward in his Cabinet, Mr. Cowan and Mr. Doolittle in the Senate and Mr. Raymond in the House, would bring about so considerable a division in the Republican ranks as to give the Administration, by uniting with the Democratic party, the control of Congress, or at least of one branch. The test vote of January 9th was an unwelcome demonstration of the degree to which the President had almost wilfully deceived himself and had been innocently deceived by others. He foresaw the struggle and with his combative nature prepared for it.

On the last day of the preceding Congress, March 3, 1865, an Act had been passed to establish a bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees. It was among the very last Acts approved by Mr. Lincoln, and was primarily designed as a protection to the freedmen of the South and to the class of white men known as "refugees,"--driven from their homes by the rebels on account of their loyalty to the Union. Protection was needed by both classes during the disorganization necessarily incident to so great and sudden a change in their condition and in their relations to society. The total destruction of the long-established labor system of the South--based as it had been on chattel-slavery--led inevitably to great confusion, indeed almost to social anarchy. The result was that many of the freedmen, removed from the protection of their old masters, were exposed to destitution and to many forms of suffering. But for the interposition of the National Government there was serious danger that thousands of them might be reduced to starvation. Having taken the responsibility of freeing them, first by Proclamation of the President and then by Amendment of the Constitution, it would have been a lasting reproach to the Government not to extend protection and assistance to such of them as were thrown into dire extremity of want. They could not be left to the chance relief of the alms-giver, for their number was too large. The white population of the South were themselves reduced almost to poverty by the long struggle; and even if they had been able they were in no mood to extend relief to negroes who, as they believed, had been wrongfully released from slavery.

The Act provided that the Bureau should have supervision and management of all abandoned lands and control of all subjects relating to freedmen and refugees from the Rebel States, under such regulations as might be prescribed by the Commissioner at the head of the Bureau and by the President. The Secretary of War was authorized "to direct such issues of provisions, clothing and fuel as he may deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may approve." The Commissioner was authorized to lease, for a term of three years, to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, not more than forty acres of the lands which had been abandoned by their owners or confiscated to the United States, at a rental of six per cent on the last appraised value. At the end of three years the occupant was entitled to purchase and receive the land, with such title as the United States could convey, at a price proportioned to the rental value. Very little permanent advantage came to the negro from this provision; for the abandoned lands were legally reclaimed by their owners and the confiscations, few in number, would, by the Constitution, be only for the life of the owner. Temporary relief however was afforded; but much harm was done by creating in the minds of ignorant freedmen, just redeemed from slavery, the belief that the Government would give to each of them "forty acres of land and a mule."

The Commissioner selected was Major-General Oliver O. Howard, who had gone through the war with marked honor. He was a lieutenant of ordnance when Sumter was fired upon and a brigadier-general in the regular army three years later. He had discharged his military duties with steadiness, intelligence, earnestness and courage. He was a man of pure character, of deep religious faith, and was somewhat an exception to West-Point graduates in being from the outset thoroughly anti-slavery in his intellectual and moral convictions. It was the possession of these characteristics which led Secretary Stanton to select General Howard for the important trust. For his ease and his peace of mind he should have declined the place, as he might well have done, since it was not a military duty to accept. During his administration of the office he was subjected to unreasonable fault-finding, often to censure and obloquy; but throughout the whole he bore himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,--triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane of army service.

On the first attempt to enforce the provisions of the original Act, its advocates and sympathizers found that it did not go far enough, nor give power enough to its agents to effect the desired object. On the 12th of January, therefore, Mr. Trumbull introduced from the Judiciary Committee a supplementary Act to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau. By the new bill the President was authorized to "divide the section of country containing the refugees into districts, not exceeding twelve in number, each containing one or more States, and with the advice and consent of the Senate to appoint an Assistant Commissioner for each district." The Bureau, at the discretion of the President, might be placed under a Commissioner and Assistant Commissioners to be detailed from the Army. Sub-districts, not to exceed the number of counties or parishes in each State, were provided for; and to each sub-district an agent, either a citizen or officer of the Army, might be detailed for service. Each Assistant Commissioner might employ not more than six clerks. The President of the United States, through the War Department and through the Commissioner, was authorized to extend military jurisdiction and protection over all employees, agents and officers of the Bureau; and the Secretary of War was authorized to issue such provisions, clothing, fuel and other supplies, including medical stores, and to afford such aid, as he might deem needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute refugees and freedmen, their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he might direct. The President was also authorized to reserve from sale or settlement under the Homestead and Pre-emption Laws, public lands in Florida, Mississippi and Arkansas, not to exceed three millions of acres of good land in all, for the use of the freedmen, at a certain rental to be named in such manner as the Commissioner should be regulation prescribe; or the Commissioner could purchase or rent such tracts of land in the several districts as might be necessary to provide for the indigent refugees and freedmen depending upon the Government for support.

It was further provided that wherever in consequence of any State or local law any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, such as the right to enforce contracts, to sue, to give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold or convey real and personal property, were refused or denied to freedmen on account of race or color or any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, or whenever they were subjected to punishment for crime different from that provided for white persons, it was made the duty of the President, through the Commissioner, to extend military jurisdiction and protection over all cases affecting persons against whom such unjust discriminations were made. It was made the duty of the officers and agents of the Bureau to take jurisdiction of and to hear and determine all cases, in which by local law discrimination was made against the freedmen. This was to be done under such rules and regulations as the President, through the Commissioner, might prescribe. But the jurisdiction was to cease "whenever the discrimination on account of which it is conferred shall cease," and was in no event to be exercised in any State "in which the ordinary course of judicial proceeding has not been interrupted by the Rebellion, nor in those States after they shall have been fully restored to their constitutional relations to the United States, and when the courts of the State and of the United States, within their limits, are not disturbed or stopped in the peaceable course of justice."

In the time of peace, these provisions seemed extraordinary, but the condition of affairs, in the judgment of leading Republican statesmen, justified their enactment. The Thirteenth Amendment, about to be formally promulgated by the Executive Department of the Government, as incorporated in the Constitution, had made every negro a free man. The Southern States had responded to this Act of National authority by enacting a series of laws which really introduced, as has already been shown, a new, offensive and most oppressive form of servitude. Thus not only was rank injustice contemplated by the States lately in rebellion, but they conveyed also an insulting challenge to the authority of the Nation. It was as if they had said to the National Government: "In order to destroy the Confederacy and restore the Union you have manumitted these black men; but we will demonstrate to you, by our local legislation, that you are powerless to give them any further freedom than we are willing to concede, and we defy you to show by what means you can achieve it!"

The first answer of the National Government to this defiance was Mr. Trumbull's bill conferring upon the Freedmen's Bureau a degree of power which combated and restrained the Southern authorities at every point where wrong was committed or menaced. It was designed for the purpose of extending to the freeman protection against all the wrongs of local legislation, and to make him feel that the Government which had freed him would not desert him and allow his release from slavery to be made null and void. Mr. Johnson's policy of declaring all the States at once restored to the Union and in full possession of their powers of local legislation, would carry with it necessarily the confirmation of the odious laws already enacted in those States, and also the power to make them as stringent and binding upon the freedmen as the discretion of Southern legislators might dictate. The war would thus have practically injured the negro, for after taking from him that form of protection which slavery afforded, it would have left him an object of still harsher oppression than slavery itself--an oppression that would be inspired and quickened by a spirit of vengeance.

The bill was debated at full length, nearly every prominent man in the Senate taking part. Mr. Hendricks of Indiana and Mr. Garrett Davis of Kentucky opposed it in speeches of excessive bitterness, and Mr. Guthrie of Kentucky with equal earnestness but less passion. It was sustained with great ability by all the leading Republican senators; and on the final passage, in an unusually full Senate, the vote in its favor was 37; those opposed were 10. There were only three absentees. Even those Republican senators who had given strong evidence of sympathy with the Administration did not unite with the Democrats on this issue. Mr. Cowan declined to vote, while Messrs. Dixon, Doolittle and Norton voted in the affirmative. The public opinion of the country unmistakably sustained this legislation--the purpose to extend protection to the freedmen being deep-set and all-pervading among the men of the North who had triumphed in the war. When the bill reached the House it was referred to the Select Committee on Freedmen's Affairs, of which Mr. Thomas D. Eliot of Massachusetts was chairman. It was promptly reported and came to a final vote on the 6th of February, when it was passed on a call of yeas and nays by 136 to 33. It was a clear division upon the line of party, the nays being composed entirely of Democrats, with the possible exception of Mr. Rousseau of Kentucky, who had been elected with the aid of Republican votes.

One of the most striking speeches made in the House upon the subject was by Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota. He had carefully prepared for the debate and dwelt with great force upon the educational feature. "Education," said he, "means the intelligent exercise of liberty; and surely without this liberty is a calamity, since it means simply the unlimited right to err. Who can doubt that if a man is to govern himself he should have the means to know what is best for himself, and what is injurious to himself, what agencies work against him and what for him? The avenue to all this is simply education. Suffrage without education is an edged tool in the hands of a child,--dangerous to others and destructive to himself. Now what is the condition of the South in reference to all this? I assert that it is such as would bring disgrace upon any despotism in Christendom. The great bulk of the people are rude, illiterate, semi-civilized: hence the Rebellion; hence all the atrocious barbarities that accompanied it. . . . I repeat, the condition of the South in this respect would be shameful to any semi-civilized people, and is such as to render a republican government, resting upon the intelligent judgment of the people, an impossibility."

It is worthy of remark that the question so cogently presented and enforced by Mr. Donnelly--that of the connection between education and suffrage--disclosed the general fact that even among Republicans there was no disposition at this period to confer upon the negro the right to vote. Even so radical a Republican as Mr. Fessenden, during the debate in the Senate on this question, said, "I take it that no one contends--I think the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts himself (Mr. Sumner), who is the great champion of universal suffrage, would hardly contend--that now, at this time, the whole of the population of the recent slave States is fit to be admitted to the exercise of the right of suffrage. I presume no man who looks at the question dispassionately and calmly could contend that the great mass of those who were recently slaves (undoubtedly there may be exceptions), and who have been kept in ignorance all their lives, oppressed and more or less forbidden to acquire information, are fitted at this stage to exercise the right of suffrage, or could be trusted to do it unless under such good advice as those better informed might be prepared to give them."

The bill, as finally passed by both Houses, reached the President on the 10th of February. On the 19th he sent a message to Congress informing each House that, having with much regret come to the conclusion that it would not be consistent with the public welfare to give his approval to the measure, he returned the bill to the Senate, stating his objections to its becoming a law. The main argument of the President was based upon the principle that legislation such as that contained in the bill was not proper for States that were deprived of their right of representation in both branches of Congress. "The Constitution," he said, "imperatively declares, in connection with taxation, that each State shall have at least one representative, and fixed the rule for the number to which in future times each State shall be entitled. It also provides that the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, and adds with peculiar force that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. . . . Burdens have now to be borne by all the country, and we may best deem that they shall be borne without murmur when they are voted by a majority of the representatives of all the people. . . . At present all the representatives of eleven States are excluded, those who were the most faithful during the war not less than others. The State of Tennessee, for instance, whose authorities were engaged in rebellion, was restored to all her Constitutional relations to the Union by the patriotism and energy of her patriot people. I know no reason why the State of Tennessee should not fully enjoy all her Constitutional relations. . . . The bill under consideration refers to certain of the States as thought they had not been fully restored in all their Constitutional relations to the United States. If they have not let us at once act together to secure that desirable end at the earliest possible moment. In my judgment most of these States, so far at least as depends upon their own acts, have already been fully restored and should be deemed as entitled to enjoy their Constitutional rights as members of the Union."

He reviewed at some length the minor provisions of the bill, objected to them as unwarrantably interfering with the local administration of justice, and declared that a system for the support of indigent persons in the United States was never contemplated by the authors of the Constitution. "Nor can any good reason be advanced," said the President, "why as a permanent establishment it should be founded for one class or color of our people more than another." He objected to it on the ground of its expense. "The appropriations asked for by the Freedmen's Bureau, as already established, for the current year, amount," he said, "to $11,745,000; and it may be safely estimated that the cost to be incurred under the pending bill will require double that amount,--more than any sum expended in any one year of the Administration of John Quincy Adams."

The argument of the message based on expense and extravagance was much applauded by the opponents of the Republican party, and there was a great expectation that it would create a strong re-action in favor of the President; but those who thus reckoned utterly failed to appreciate the temper of the public mind. The disbursement of vast sums in the war had accustomed the people to large appropriations of money, and the pecuniary aspect of the case, upon which the President had much relied, made far less impression than he anticipated. The philanthropists did not deem the question at issue to be one of dollars and cents; and those less disposed to sympathize with the humanitarian aspects of the subject had not yet learned the lesson of economy which the adversity of after years taught them. The great expansion of our currency, the ease with which money had been obtained, and the extravagance with which it had been expended in all the walks of life, produced in the minds of the people an indifference to the question of economy. The President, in his own long career, had exercised a rigid watchfulness over the disbursements of public money, and he did not fully realize the great change which had been wrought in the people--a change sure to follow the condition of war if historic precedents may be trusted--a change in which economy gives way to lavishness and careful circumspection is followed by loose disregard of established rules. It is a condition not implying dishonesty or even recklessness, but one which follows from a positive inability in the public mind to estimate the expenditure of money by the standards which are applied in the era of peaceful industry, careful supervision and prudent restraint.

The Senate voted upon the veto the day after it was received. Greatly to the surprise of the public the dominant party was unable to pass the bill against the objections of the President. Messrs. Dixon, Doolittle, Morgan, Norton and Van Winkle had voted for it, but now changed their votes and thereby reversed the action of the Senate. These senators, with the addition of Nesmith and Willey, who did not vote on the passage of the bill, gave the final count of 30 in favor of the passage to 18 against--lacking the two-thirds and therefore failing to pass the bill. The result was wholly unlooked for and the vote of Governor Morgan of New York gave great uneasiness to his political associates. It was for a time believed that under the persuasive influence of Mr. Seward, with whom he had long been on terms of close intimacy, Mr. Morgan might be intending to join the Administration party. The same was thought possible with regard to Mr. Van Winkle of West Virginia, his location suggesting the possibility of such a change. The excitement among Republicans was great for a time, because if they should so far lose control of either branch of Congress as to be unable to override the vetoes of the President, all attempts to enforce a more radical policy of Reconstruction than Mr. Johnson could be induced to approve would necessarily be futile. It was soon ascertained however, that the apprehension of danger was unfounded and that Messrs. Morgan and Van Winkle did not design any change of political relations, but were only more cautious and perhaps wiser than the other Republican senators.

A few weeks later, the disaster of the veto--for such it was esteemed by Republicans--was repaired by the passage of another bill, originating in the House. This was simply a bill to continue in force the original Freedmen's Bureau Act, with some enlarging provisions to make it more effective. The Act was so framed as to escape the objections which had controlled some of the Republican votes that sustained the President's veto. Among the most important of the changes were the limitation of the statute to the term of two years and a serious modification of the judicial powers accorded to the officers of the Bureau in the preceding bill. It was not so elaborately debated in either branch as was the original act, but its passage was retarded by the interposition of other measures and it did not reach the President until the first week in July.

The President promptly returned the bill to the House with his veto. He found it to fall within the objections which he had assigned in his message vetoing the Senate bill on the same subject. He believed that the only ground upon which this kind of legislation could be justified was that of the war-making power. He admitted therefore that the original Act organizing a Freedmen's Bureau, passed during the existence of the war, was proper and Constitutional. By its own terms it would end within one year from the cessation of hostilities and the declaration of peace. It would probably continue in force, he thought, as long as the freedmen might require the benefit of its provisions. "It will certainly," said he, "remain in operation as a law until some months subsequent to the meeting of the next session of Congress, when, if experience shall make evident the necessity of additional legislation, the two Houses will have ample time to mature and pass the requisite measures." The President renewed in varied forms the expression of his belief that all the States should be admitted to the privilege of legislation, especially in matters affecting their own welfare. The House proceeded at once to vote upon the reconsideration of the bill, and by 104 in the affirmative and 33 in the negative passed it over the veto of the President. The Senate voted on the same day with the House, and passed it against the President's objections by 33 in the affirmative and 12 in the negative. A measure of very great importance to the colored race was thus completed, after serious agitation in both Houses and against two vetoes by the President. It required potent persuasion, re-enforced by the severest exercise of party discipline to prevent a serious break in both Houses against the bill. The measure had lost, under discussion, much of the popularity which attended its first introduction in Congress.

On the same day that Mr. Trumbull introduced his original bill to enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau, he introduced another bill, more important in its scope and more enduring in its character, --a bill "to protect all persons of the United States in their civil rights and furnish the means of their vindication." It was referred to the Judiciary Committee on the 5th day of January and was reported back on the 11th. The bill was one which exemplified in a most striking manner the revolution produced by the war. It declared that "there shall be no discrimination in civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude; but the inhabitants of every race and color shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefits of all laws and provisions for the security of personal property; and shall be subject to like punishments, fines and penalties, and none other,--any law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."

Any person who under any law, statute or regulation of any kind should attempt to violate the provisions of the Act, would be punished by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars or by imprisonment not exceeding one year. Very stringent provisions were made, and a whole framework of administration devised, by which the rights conferred under this enactment could be enforced through "the judicial power of the United States." The district attorneys, marshals, deputy marshals of the United States, the commissioners appointed by the Circuit and Territorial Courts of the United States, the officers and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, and every other officer who was sufficiently empowered by the President of the United States, were, by the Act, specially authorized and required, at the expense of the United States, to institute proceedings against every person who should violate its provisions, and "cause him or them to be arrested and imprisoned for trial at such court of the United States or Territorial court as, by this Act, has cognizance of the case." Any person who should obstruct or hinder an officer in the performance of his duty or any person lawfully assisting him in the arrest of an offender, or who should attempt to rescue any person from the custody of an officer, was in turn subjected to severe penalties.

The bill was designed, in short, to confer upon the manumitted negro of the South the same civil rights enjoyed by the white man, with the exception of the right of suffrage; to give him perfect equality in all things before the law, and to nullify every State law wherever existing, that should be in conflict with the enlarged provisions of the Federal statute. It left no loophole for escape on the question of the citizenship of the negro. As the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States then stood he was not a citizen of the United States; and to prevent this question being raised the word inhabitant was used,--thus making the conferment of civil rights so broad that it was impossible to defeat the full intent of the law by any technical evasion. It was undoubtedly a very sweeping enactment, the operation of which was not confined to the States which had been slave-holding, but bore directly upon some of the free States where the negro had always been deprived of certain rights fully guaranteed to the white man.

Lest "inhabitant" might be held to mean "citizen" in the connection in which it was used Mr. Trumbull proposed, at the initial point of the discussion, to amend by inserting the declaration that "all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States without distinction of color." Mr. Guthrie of Kentucky and Mr. Howard of Michigan both asked whether that would naturalize all the Indians in the United States. Mr. Trumbull thought not, because "we deal with the Indians as foreigners--as separate nations;" but he was willing to change it so as specifically to exclude Indians. Mr. Cowan asked "whether the amendment would not have the effect of naturalizing children of Chinese and gypsies born in this country." Mr. Trumbull replied that it undoubtedly would. Mr. Cowan then thought it would be proper to hear the senators from California on that question, because "at the present rate of emigration the day may not be very distant when California, instead of belonging to the Indo-European race, may belong to the Mongolians, may belong to the Chinese." Mr. Trumbull inquired if the children of Chinese born in this country were not citizens? Mr. Cowan thought they were not.

Mr. Reverdy Johnson of Maryland pointed out a difficulty not anticipated by Mr. Trumbull. By using the word inhabitant in the bill he made it impossible for any State in the Union to "draw any distinction between citizens who have been there from birth, or have been residents for a long time, and him who comes into the State for the first time as a foreigner. He becomes at once an inhabitant. If he comes from England or from any of the countries of the world he becomes that moment an inhabitant; and if this bill is to pass in the shape it stands he can buy, he can sell, he can hold, he can inherit and be inherited from and possess all the rights of a native-born citizen," without being naturalized. Mr. Johnson pointed out another difficulty which perhaps the senator from Illinois did not foresee. Many of the States in the North as well as in the South forbade the marriage of a black man with a white woman or a white man with a black woman. This law would destroy all State power over the subject; and the man who offended in the matter of marriage between the races, so far from being punished himself, could bring the judge who attempted to enforce the law against him into punishment. The bill, after much elaboration of debate and many amendments offered and defeated, came to a vote on the 2d of February and was passed by 33 yeas to 12 nays. Mr. Dixon of Connecticut, one of the Administration Republicans, voted for the bill; Mr. Cowan and Mr. Norton against it; Mr. Doolittle did not vote.

The bill immediately went to the House, and on the 1st of March that body proceeded to consider it without its reference to the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Wilson of Iowa, chairman of that committee, said they had considered it informally, and in order to save time it was brought up for action at once. The first amendment offered was to strike out "inhabitants" and insert "citizens of the United States," and thus avoid the embarrassments that might result from giving it so broad an extension. The amendment was promptly agreed to. Mr. Wilson, by another amendment, removed the difficulties suggested in the Senate by Reverdy Johnson, touching the question of marriage between the races. He supported the bill in a speech of great strength and legal research. He admitted at the outset that "some of the questions presented by the measure are not entirely free from defects. Precedents, both judicial and legislative, are found in sharp conflict concerning them. The line which divides these precedents is generally found to be the same which separates the early from the later days of the Republic. The farther the Republic drifted from the old moorings of the equality of human rights, the more numerous became the judicial and legislative utterances in conflict with some of the leading features sought to be re-established by this bill."

The debate was continued by Mr. Rogers of New Jersey, in the opposition, by Mr. Russell Thayer of Pennsylvania, who made an uncommonly able speech in its favor, and by Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin, who tersely presented the objections entertained by the Democratic party to such legislation. There were some apprehensions in the minds of the members on both sides of the House that the broad character of the bill might include the right of suffrage, but to prevent that result Mr. Wilson moved to add a new section declaring that "nothing in this Act shall be so construed as to affect the laws of any State concerning the right of suffrage." Mr. Wilson said that the amendment he proposed did not change his own construction of the bill; he did not believe the term "civil rights" included the right of suffrage; he offered it simply from excessive caution, because certain gentlemen feared trouble might arise from the language of the bill. The amendment was unanimously agreed to, not one voice on either side of the House being raised against it. Mr. Bingham, Mr. Raymond and other prominent members of the House, to the number of forty in all, debated the bill exhaustively. It was passed by 111 yeas to 38 nays.

The bill reached the President on the 18th of March (1866), and on the 27th he sent to the Senate a message regretting that it contained provisions which he could not approve. "I am therefore constrained," he said, "to return it to the Senate, in which it originated, with my objections to its becoming a law." The President stated that by the first section the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as black,--people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood,--"are made citizens of the United States." The President did not believe that this class possessed "the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States." He sought to raise prejudice against the bill because it proposed "to discriminate against large number of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners, in favor of the negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence have now suddenly been opened." "It is proposed," he said, "by a single legislative enactment to confer the rights of citizens upon all persons of African descent born within the extended limits of the United States, while persons of foreign birth who make our land their home must undergo a probation of five years, and can then only become citizens of the United States upon the proof that they are of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed towards the good order and happiness of the same."

The President sought to impress upon Congress, in strong language, the injustice of advancing four millions of colored persons to citizenship "while the States in which most of them reside are debarred from any participancy in the legislation." He found many provisions of the bill in conflict with the Constitution of the United States as it had been hitherto construed, and argued elaborately against its expediency or necessity in any form. "The white man and the black race," said the President, "have hitherto lived in the South in the relation of master and slave,--capital owning labor. Now suddenly the relation is changed and as to the ownership, capital and labor are divorced. In this new relation, one being necessary to the other, there will be a new adjustment, which both are deeply interested in making harmonious. . . . This bill frustrates this adjustment. It intervenes between capital and labor and attempts to settle questions of political economy through the agency of numerous officials, whose interest it will be to foment discord between the two races, for as the breach widens their employment will continue and when the breach is closed their occupation will terminate."

"The details of this bill," continued the President, "establish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race; in fact, the distinction between white and colored is by the provisions of this bill made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race." "The provisions of the bill," he maintained, "are an absorption and assumption of power by the General Government, which, being acquiesced in, must eventually destroy our federative system of limited power and break down the barriers which preserve the rights of States. It is another step, or rather stride, towards centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the General Government. The tendency of the bill must be to resuscitate rebellion and to arrest the progress of those influences which are more closely thrown around the States--the bond of union and peace."

The debate upon the President's veto was not very prolonged but was marked by excitement approaching to anger. Mr. Trumbull, who had charge of the bill, analyzed the President's argument with consummate ability and readily answered him on every point of Constitutional law which he had adduced. He did more than this. He pointed out with unflinching severity what he considered the demagogical features of the message. "The best answer," said Mr. Trumbull, "to the President's objection that the bill proposes to make citizens of Chinese and gypsies and his reference to the discrimination against foreigners, is to be found in a speech delivered in this body by the President himself, on the occasion of a message being sent to the Senate by Mr. Buchanan, then President of the United States, returning with his objections what was known as the Homestead Bill. On that occasion Senator Johnson of Tennessee said, 'This idea about poor foreigners somehow or other bewilders and haunts the imagination of a great many. I am constrained to say that I look upon this objection to the bill as a mere quibble on the part of the President, as being hard pressed for some excuse in withholding his approval of the measure. His allusion to foreigners in this connection looks to me more like the ad captandum of the mere politician or demagogue, than a grave and sound reason to be offered by the President of the United States in a veto message on so important a measure as the Homestead Bill.'"

In exposing the inconsistency between Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, and Andrew Johnson, Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Trumbull said that he would not use as harsh language as Mr. Johnson had used towards President Buchanan when he accused him of "quibbling and demagogery." Mr. Trumbull argued with great force that the citizen has a counter-claim upon the Government for the comprehensive claim which the Government has upon the citizen. "It cannot be that we have constituted a government," said Mr. Trumbull, "which is all-powerful to command the obedience of the citizen but has no power to afford him protection." "Tell it not, sir," said he, "to the father whose son was starved at Andersonville, or the widow whose husband was slain at Mission Ridge, or the little boy who leads his sightless father through the streets of your city, of the thousand other mangled heroes to be seen on every side of us to-day, that this Government, in defense of which the son and the husband fell, the father lost his sight and the others were maimed and crippled, had the right to call those persons to its defense, but now has no power to protect the survivors or their friends in any rights whatever in the States. Such, sir, is not the meaning of our Constitution: such is not the meaning of American citizenship. Allegiance and protection are reciprocal rights."

During the progress of the debate a curious incident showed the temper engendered in the Senate. Mr. Trumbull, on the 5th of April, intimated his readiness to have the vote taken if the Senate was ready. It was late in the evening. Mr. Cowan interposed the suggestion that two senators detained at home by illness, Mr. Dixon of Connecticut and Mr. Wright of New Jersey, could not with safety come out at night. The point of courtesy was strongly insisted upon by Mr. Guthrie, Mr. Hendricks and other members. Mr. Wade spoke very excitedly in reply to it. "If the President of the United States," said he, "can impose his authority upon a question like this and can by a veto compel Congress to submit to his dictation, he is an emperor and a despot. Because I believe the great question of Congressional power and authority is at stake here, I yield to no importunities on the other side. I feel myself justified in taking every advantage which the Almighty has put in my hands to defend the power and authority of this body. I will not yield to these appeals of comity on a question like this, but I will tell the President and everybody else that if God Almighty has stricken a member of this body so that he cannot be here to uphold the dictation of a despot, I thank him for it and I will take every advantage of it I can."

Mr. Wade was answered with great severity by Mr. McDougal of California. Mr. Guthrie spoke with much spirit, but not with the temper of Mr. McDougal. "I should not like it to go out from this body," said the senator from Kentucky, "that Mr. Stockton was removed to get rid of his vote. I do not want it to go out from this body that we would not extend a courtesy to sick senators because we could pass a bill without their votes when we might not pass it if they were here. The time will come when the people, being convinced of these things, will say that there is more to be feared from a combined Congress than from a President, in relation to the liberties of the people." The angry position of Mr. Wade was not sustained by the Senate and the motion to adjourn was carried by 33 to 12. The debate continued throughout the next day and disclosed during its progress that Senator Lane of Kansas had joined the small band of Administration Republicans. He attempted to take part in the debate but was unmercifully dealt with by Mr. Wade, Mr. Trumbull and others, and paid dearly for his personal defection. When the vote was taken upon passing the bill over the President's veto the ayes were 33 and the noes 15. Every senator was present except Mr. Dixon of Connecticut, still detained from the Senate from illness. There was one vacancy, Mr. Stockton's seat not having yet been filled. Among the nays were Mr. Cowan, Mr. Doolittle, Mr. Lane of Kansas, Mr. Norton and Mr. Van Winkle.

The bill went to the House and after a very brief debate came to a vote on the 9th of April--yeas 122, nays 41. Speaker Colfax directed that his name should be called in order that he might have the honor of recording himself for the bill. He then announced that having received the vote of two-thirds of each House the Civil Rights Bill had become a law, the President's objections to the contrary notwithstanding. The announcement was received with an outburst of applause, in which the members of the House as well as the throng of spectators heartily joined--the speaker being unable to restore order for several minutes. It recalled the scene of a little more than a year before, when the rejoicing over the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment was equally demonstrative.

To many persons of conservative mind the bill seemed too radical--to many it seemed positively rash. It was an illustration of how rapidly public opinion is changed, and with what force it may be brought to bear upon a given question in a period that is filled with the spirit of revolutionary excitement. If five years before the most pronounced anti-slavery man in the country had been told that not only would slavery be abolished, not only would the slave be transformed into a citizen, but that the National Government would confer upon him all the civil rights pertaining to the white man and would stretch forth its arm to protect him in those rights throughout the limits of the Republic, it would have seemed to him as the wildest fancy of a distempered brain. But his had actually come to pass through the ordinary forms of legislation, and by such a preponderating display of senatorial and representative strength as had scarcely ever before controlled a public policy since the foundation of the Government.

It was not, of course, without some misgiving, without a certain timidity and distrust, that many Republicans were brought to the support of these measures. They did not object to their inherent and essential justice and rightfulness, but with instinctive caution they feared that an attempt to wipe away the prejudices of two centuries in a single day might lead to a dangerous re-action, and to a consequent change in the political control of the country. Many who were borne along in the irresistible current of aggressive reform dreaded all the more the effect of the votes which the moral and political pressure of their constituents compelled them to give. In the Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery they went forward without distrust, with complete approbation of conscience, with undoubting belief in the expediency of the act. They knew that the great mass of the North was heartily opposed to slavery: they knew that its abolition was not merely right but was destined to be popular. It affected moreover only that great section of country which had engaged in the crime of rebellion; and if it were viewed only as a punishment of those who had sought the destruction of the Government, they felt more than justified in inflicting it.

But the legislation now accomplished was of a different type. In no State of the North had there ever been social equality between the negro and the white man. It had been most nearly approached in New England, but still there were points of prejudice which time had not effaced nor custom changed. In the Middle and Western States the feeling was much deeper. In many of their laws a discrimination was made against the negro, and a direct interference with the habits of loyal communities on this subject involved many considerations which did not in any degree attach to legislation affecting only the Southern States. There was among Democratic leaders a confidence as marked as the timidity on the part of the Republicans. They were sure of a re-action in their favor; they believed that the Republicans had taken the step which would prove fatal to them, and that with the prejudices of the people supplemented by the patronage of the President a serious division would ensue, which would prove fatal to Radical ascendency in a majority of the Northern states. Overcome in both chambers by the aggressive force of a majority which transcended the limit of two-thirds, they congratulated themselves that this very power, beyond the restraint of the Executive and exercised in defiance of his opinions, would prove the pitfall of Republicanism wherever race prejudice was kept alive.

The passage of these bills by Congress, their persistent veto by the President and their re-enactment against his objections, produced, as had been anticipated, not only an open political hostility, but one which rapidly advanced to a condition in which violent epithet and mutual denunciation indicated the deplorable relations of the two great departments of the Government. The veto of the Freedmen's-Bureau Bill, on the 19th of February, was followed by a large popular meeting in Washington, on the 22d, to approve the President's action. The meeting adjourned to the White House to congratulate the President, and he in turn made a long speech in which he broke through all restraint, and spoke his mind with exasperating frankness. "I have," said the President, "fought traitors and treason in the South. I opposed Davis, Toombs, Slidell, and a long list of others whose names I need not repeat, and now, when I turn around at the other end of the line, I find men--I care not by what name you call them (a voice: 'Call them traitors')--who still stand opposed to the restoration to the Union of these States. (A voice: 'Give us their names.') A gentleman calls for their names. Well! suppose I should give them? I look upon them, I repeat it as President or citizen, as being as much opposed to the fundamental principles of this Government, and believe they are as much laboring to pervert or destroy them, as were the men who fought against them in the Rebellion. (A voice: 'Give us the names.') I say Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. (Tremendous applause.) I say Charles Sumner. (Tremendous applause.) I say Wendell Phillips and others of the same stripe are among them. (A voice: 'Give it to Forney.') Some gentleman in the crowd says, 'Give it to Forney.' I have only to say that I do not waste my ammunition upon dead ducks." (Laughter and applause.) . . . "They may traduce me," continued the President, "they may slander me, they may vituperate, but let me say to you that it has no effect upon me; and let me say in addition that I do not intend to be bullied by my enemies. . . . There is an earthquake coming, gentlemen: there is a ground-swell coming of popular judgment and indignation. The American people will speak for their interests, and they will know who are their friends and who their enemies. What positions have I held under this Government?--beginning with an alderman and running through all the branches of the Legislature. (A voice: 'From a tailor up.') Some gentleman says I have been a tailor. (Tremendous applause.) Now that did not discomfit me in the least; for when I used to be a tailor I had the reputation of being a good one and of making close fits (great laughter); always punctual with my customers and always did good work. (A voice: 'No patchwork.') No: I do not want any patchwork. I want a whole suit. But I will pass by this little facetiousness. . . . I was saying that I held nearly all positions, from alderman, through both branches of Congress, to that which I now occupy; and who is there that will say Andrew Johnson ever made a pledge that he did not redeem or made a promise that he did not fulfill?"

Some one had spoken in Congress about the Presidential obstacle to be gotten out of the way. Mr. Johnson interpreted this as meaning personal violence to himself. "I make use," said he, "of a very strong expression when I say that I have no doubt the intention was to incite assassination and so get out of the way the obstacle to place and power. Whether by assassination or not, there are individuals in this Government, I doubt not, who want to destroy our institutions and change the character of the Government. Are they not satisfied with the blood which has been shed? Does not the murder of Lincoln appease the vengeance and wrath of the opponents of this Government? Are they still unslaked? Do they still want more blood? I am not afraid of the assassin attacking me where a brave and courageous man would attack another. I only dread him when he would go in disguise, his footsteps noiseless. If it is blood they want let them have courage enough to strike like men."

The speech produced a very unfavorable impression upon the country. Its low tone, its vulgar abuse, recalled Mr. Johnson's unhappy words at the time of his inauguration as Vice-President, and produced throughout the country a feeling of humiliation. His effort to make it appear that his political opponents meditated assassination was regarded as a thoroughly unscrupulous declaration, as an unworthy attempt to place himself beside Lincoln in the martyrdom of duty--to suggest that as Lincoln had fallen, sacrificed to the spirit of hostility in the South, so he, in pursuing his line of duty, was in danger of being sacrificed to hostility in the North. The delivery of this speech was the formal forfeiture of the respect and confidence of the great majority of the people who had elected him to his place, and he failed to secure compensation by gaining the respect or confidence of those who had opposed him. A few Democrats who wished to worry and divide the Republican party, the place-hunters who craved the favor of the Executive, a few deserters from the Republican ranks unable to pursue the path of exacting duty, represented by their combination a specious support for the President. Natives of the border States, who had been unwilling to join in treasonable demonstrations against the Government but who had not been inspired with sufficient loyalty to join actively in its defense, now naturally rallied around Mr. Johnson. The residents of Washington, consisting at that time of Southern men and Southern sympathizers, now applauded the President because they saw an opportunity to distract and defeat the Republican party. But the entire mass of those who were now eager to sustain the President exhibited but a pitiable contrast with the magnificent party which he had voluntarily abandoned.

The increasing fierceness of the struggle between the President and Congress gave rise to every form of evil suspicion and evil imputation. The close vote on the Civil Rights Bill admonished the Republicans of their danger. If Mr. Dixon had not been confined to his house by illness, if Mr. Stockton had not been a few days before deprived of his seat, the Administration would have been able to rally seventeen votes in the negative, leaving but thirty-three to the Republicans out of a Senate of fifty members. The exigencies of the situation presented the strongest possible temptation to take every fair advantage, and this naturally led to the imputation of unfair advantage. A large number of honest-minded opponents believed that a careful calculation had been made by the Republican leaders, and that they had found the margin so close as to be unsafe in a contest with the President. If the margin had been broader and the two-thirds vote assured past all reasonable danger, it was asserted, and no doubt believed, that the Constitution would not have been strained to exchange Mr. Stockton for a Republican senator, who was sure to succeed him. It was the first attempt in our history to establish the policy of the Government without regard to the President, and indeed against his power. In the case of President Tyler the reverse had been practically attempted. In his controversy with the Whigs his friends constituted more than a third in each House --thus making his veto effective and leading him to attempt the administration of the Government without regard to the opinions of Congress. Mr. Tyler had failed; but thus far in the controversy with Johnson, Congress had succeeded. It was said, however, with great pertinacity by the friends of the President, that Congress was enabled to do this only by the exclusion of eleven States of the Union from representation; and from this fact came the Democratic denunciation of the Republican party for administering the affairs of the Government in a revolutionary spirit.

The narrow escape of the measure again created great uneasiness, not only among the Republicans in Congress but throughout the country. One or two more defections would imperil Republican control of the Senate. The loyalty of every member to his party was therefore scanned with closest observation. Rumors, gossip, inventions of all kinds were set afloat in the public press,--hinting first at one man and then at another among the Republican senators as likely to weaken, as about going over to the Administration, as having just had a confidential interview with Mr. Seward, as dining the evening before with the President, or as being concerned in some matter of even less consequence. When public interest is heightened the imagination of the people is stimulated, until trifles light as air have fatal significance in one direction or the other. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1866 (the tentative period, as it may be called, in fixing the relations of the President and Congress) this suggestion of doubt, this latent apprehension, continued, and was not indeed wholly removed until the political lines were definitely drawn by the elections for representatives to Congress in the ensuing autumn.

The situation in all its bearings was one of peculiar embarrassment, beset with extraordinary difficulties to those who directed the proceedings of Congress. In reviewing the events of that day, whatever may be thought respecting their wisdom and expediency, candid men of all parties will concede that the Republican leaders exhibited great determination of purpose, remarkable steadiness of nerve and unflagging devotion to principle. They were absolutely without precedent to guide them in the exigencies and emergencies of the situation. It was well said at the time that the framers of the Constitution in 1787 were not confronted with difficulties so grave or surrounded with problems so complex and unproved, as were the leaders of Congress during the period of Reconstruction. The framers of the Constitution met for one purpose, upon which all were agreed. They had only to reconcile differences of detail and to adjust the jealousies of local interest; but in 1866 Congress was called upon to exclude the President practically from all share in the law-making power, and to charge him on his oath of duty to faithfully execute laws, against which he had constantly entered his solemn protest, not only as inexpedient but as unconstitutional. Perhaps a man of more desperate resolution than Mr. Johnson might have used his Executive power more effectively against Congress, but he must have done so at the expense of his fidelity to sworn obligations. The practical deduction as to the working of our Governmental machinery, from the whole experience of that troublous era, is that two-thirds of each House, united and stimulated to one end, can practically neutralize the Executive power of the Government and lay down its policy in defiance of the efforts and the opposition of the President.

The defection of Senator Lane of Kansas from the ranks of the most radical Republicans caused great surprise to the country. He had been so closely identified with all the tragic events in the prolonged struggle to keep slavery out of Kansas, that he was considered to be an irreconcilable foe to the party that tolerated or in any way apologized for its existence. The position he had taken in voting against the Civil Rights Bill worried and fretted him. He keenly felt his separation from the sympathy of such men as Sumner, Chandler, Wade, and the whole host who had nobly fought the battle of Kansas in the halls of Congress. He felt still more keenly the general and somewhat indignant disapproval of his action, freely expressed by the great mass of his constituents. One of his intimate friends said that on the very day of his vote he received a telegram warning him that if he voted against the bill it would be the mistake of his life. The telegram reached him after the roll had been called. He said excitedly, "The mistake has been made. I would give all I possess if it were undone." He was still further disturbed by imputations upon his integrity in connection with some transactions of the Indian Bureau--imputations which were pronounced baseless by the two senators from Indiana (Thomas A. Hendricks and Henry S. Lane), one a political opponent and the other a political friend, who had impartially examined all the facts. But under the mortification caused by parting with old political associates, and the humiliation to which he was subjected by groundless imputations upon his character, his mind gave way and on the 11th of July, 1866 he committed suicide.

General Lane was a native of Indiana, son of a reputable lawyer, Amos Lane, who was a representative in Congress during the Administrations of Jackson and Van Buren. He thus inherited Democracy of the most aggressive type. He was a man of violent passions and marked courage. He commanded a regiment of Indiana volunteers at the battle of Buena Vista, and in 1852 was elected a member of the House of Representatives. He was a warm supporter of Douglas and voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He immediately afterwards emigrated to Kansas, as he said, "to see fair play under the doctrine of popular sovereignty." His career thenceforward formed a large part of the history of Kansas. He contributed perhaps as largely as any other one man to the victory of the Free-State policy, and became as violent in his hostility to the Democratic party as he had formerly been in its advocacy. When his State was admitted to the Union in 1861 he was rewarded with the honor of being one of her first senators in Congress. His course in the Senate, until the time of his defection, had been specially marked for its aggressiveness in support of the war and the destruction of the institution of slavery. He was profoundly attached to Mr. Lincoln and had received many marks of his friendship. The motive for his strange course under President Johnson was never clearly disclosed. He was in the full vigor of life when he closed it with his own hands, being a few weeks beyond his fifty-first birthday.

The Administration of Mr. Johnson had, before the death of Mr. Lane, been unhappily associated in the popular mind with another suicide. A few days before the assembling of Congress Mr. Preston King, collector of the port of New York, had drowned himself in the Hudson River by leaping from a ferry-boat. He had been for more than twenty years an intimate friend of Mr. Johnson and held, as already narrated, a confidential relation to him at the time of his accession to the Presidency. He had been especially influential in the National Republican Convention of 1864 in securing for Mr. Johnson the nomination for the Vice-Presidency. The original disagreement with Mr. Seward was generally ascribed to the influence of Mr. King upon the President, but when, with Mr. Seward in the Cabinet, Mr. King was appointed collector of customs for the port of New York, it was understood to mean that a perfect reconciliation had taken place between all the Republican factions in his State. The change in the President's position was a complete surprise to Mr. King and left him in a peculiarly embarrassing situation. He was essentially a radical man in all his political views, and the evident tendency of the President towards extreme conservatism on the question of reconstruction was a keen distress to him. He was at a loss to determine his course of action. If he should resign his position it would be the proclamation of hostility to one to whom he was deeply attached. If he should remain in office he feared it might be at the expense of forfeiting the good will of the tens of thousands of New-York Republicans who had always reposed the utmost confidence in his fidelity to principle, and who had rewarded him with the highest honors in their power to bestow. He had not desired the collectorship, and consented to accept it only from his sincere friendship for the President and from his earnest desire to harmonize the Republican party in New York and bring its full strength to the support of the Administration. The office had given him no pleasure. It had indeed brought him nothing but care and anxiety. The applications for place were numerous and perplexing, the daily routine of duty was onerous and exacting, and his pecuniary responsibility to the Government, much exaggerated by his worried mind, constantly alarmed him. Mr. King found himself therefore so situated that, whichever way he turned, he faced embarrassment in his career, and as he imagined, disaster to his reputation. In the conflicting emotions incident to his entangled position, his brain was fevered, and his intellect became disordered. From the anguish which his sensitive nature could not endure, he sought relief in the grave.

Mr. King was born in 1806 at Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, New York, which throughout his life continued to be his home. He became prominent in political affairs, while still a young man, as a zealous supporter of President Jackson in whose interest he edited a paper. He attached himself to that strong school of New-York Democrats of whom Silas Wright was the acknowledged leader. After conspicuous service in the New-York Legislature, he entered Congress in 1845 and remained until 1851. When the South demanded the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise Mr. King followed his personal convictions, broke from his Democratic associations and aided in the organization of the Republican party. He adhered steadily to the fortunes of the new party and brought with him a strong popular support--the large Republican majorities in Northern New York being originally due in no small degree to his personal influence and earnest efforts.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter IX

The controversies between the President and Congress, thus far narrated, did not involve what have since been specifically known as the Reconstruction measures. Those were yet to come. The establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau was at best designed to be a temporary charity; and the Civil Rights Bill, while growing out of changes effected by the war, was applicable alike to all conditions and to all times. The province of the Special Committee on Reconstruction was to devise and perfect those measures which should secure the fruits of the Union victory, by prescribing the essential grounds upon which the revolted States should be re-admitted to representation in Congress. The principal objects aimed at were at least four in number. That which most largely engaged popular attention at the outset was the increased representation which the South was to secure by the manumission of the negroes. In the original Constitution only three-fifths of the slaves were permitted to be enumerated in the basis of apportionment. Two-fifths were now added and an increase of political power to the South appeared probably as the somewhat startling result of the civil struggle. There was an obvious injustice in giving to the white men of the South the right to elect representatives in Congress apportioned to their section by reason of the four and a half million of negroes, who were enumerated in the census but not allowed to exercise any political power. By permitting this, a Confederate soldier who fought to destroy the Union would be endowed with a larger power of control in the National Government than the loyal soldier who fought to maintain the Union. To allow this to be accomplished would be a mere mockery of justice, the utter subversion of fair play between man and man.

Another subject deeply engaging Northern thought was the definition of American citizenship. There was a strong desire to place it on such substantial foundation as should prevent the possibility of sinister interpretation by the Judiciary, and guard it at the same time against different constructions in different States. This was an omission in the original Constitution--so grave an omission, indeed, that the guarantee entitling citizens of each State to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States, was in many cases ignored, often indeed defied and destroyed. If we were now to have a broader nationality as the result of our civil struggle, it was apparent to the mass of men, as well as to the publicist and statesman, that citizenship should be placed on unquestionable ground--on ground so plain that the humblest man who should inherit its protections would comprehend the extent and significance of his title.

A third point had taken possession of the popular mind, quickened and intensified as it was by the conflict between the President and Congress. The President, as already stated, had by the lavish use of the pardoning power signalized his change on the subject of Reconstruction. Many of the worst offenders in the Confederate cause had received Executive clemency. Not only had the general mass of rebels been pardoned by the amnesty proclamation of May 29th, but many thousands of the classes excepted in that instrument had afterwards received special pardons from the President. The crime of treason, which they had committed, was thus condoned, and the Executive pardon could be pleaded against any indictment or any attempt to punish by process of law. If there should be no provision to the contrary, these pardoned men would thus become as eligible to all the honors and emoluments of the Republic as though they had not for four years been using their utmost efforts to destroy its existence. It was therefore the general expectation of the people that by some law, either statute or organic, the political privileges of these men, so far as the right to hold office was involved, should be restricted, and that, without contravening the full force and effect of the President's pardon, they might justly be deprived of all right to receive the honors of the Nation and of the State. From the crime of rebellion they had been freed by the President, but it was expected that Congress would clearly define the difference between pardoning a rebel for treason to his county and endowing him with the right to enjoy the honors and emoluments of office.

Other subjects had entered into the public apprehension and were brought prominently to the attention of Congress, and by Congress referred to the Reconstruction Committee. There was a fear that if, by a political convulsion, the Confederates of the South should unite with the Democratic opponents of the war in the North and thus obtain control of the Government, they might, at least by some indirect process if not directly, impair the public obligations of the United States incurred in suppressing the Rebellion. They feared that the large bounties already paid to Union soldiers, and the generous pensions already provided or which might afterwards be provided, for those who had been maimed or for the orphan and the widow of those who had fallen, might, in the advent of the same adverse political power in the Government, be objected to, unless at the same time a similar concession should be granted to the misled and deceived masses of the South, who had with reckless daring been forced into the service of the ill-starred Confederacy. It was therefore expected that Congress would, so far as organic law could attain that end, guard the sacredness of the public debt and the equal sacredness of the National pensions, and that to do this effectively it should be provided that no recognition should ever be made, either by the National Government or by any State Governments, of debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion.

Still another subject was considered to be of grave consequence. Preventive measures of the most stringent character were demanded against a threatened danger to the National credit. With the single exception of land, which is the basis of all property, the South had lost the largest aggregate investment held in one form in the entire country. The money value of Southern slaves, reckoned at current prices, was larger when the war broke out than the money value of railroads or of manufacturing establishments in the United States. For the defense of this great interest the war had been avowedly undertaken. Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that the ambitions and conspiring politicians of the South had assumed the danger to this vast investment as the pretext for destroying the Government; and they had met with the fate so solemnly foretold in Sacred Writ,--they had drawn the sword and perished by the sword. As the one grand consummation of the struggle, the institution of slavery had disappeared. It was probably, nay, it was certainly to be expected, that in the destruction of so large an investment great suffering would come to many who had not participated in the Rebellion; to many indeed who had opposed it. That remuneration for losses should be asked was apparently inevitable.

Men of financial skill and experience saw that if such a contingent liability should overhang the National Treasury the public credit might be fatally impaired. The acknowledged and imperative indebtedness of the Government was already enormous; contingencies yet to be encountered would undoubtedly increase it, and its weight would press heavily upon the people until a firmly re-established credit should enable the Government to lower the rate of interest upon its bonds. So long as the Government was compelled to pay its interest in coin, while the business of the country was conducted upon the basis of suspended paper, the burden upon the people would be great. It would be vastly increased in imagination (and imagination is rapidly transformed to reality in the tremulous balance which decides the standard of public credit) if the Nation should not be able to define with absolute precision the metes and bounds of its aggregate obligation. Hence the imperious necessity of excluding all possibility of the payment of from two to three thousand millions of dollars to the slave-holders of the South. If that were not accomplished, the burden would be so great that the Nation which had survived the shock of arms might be engulfed in the manifold calamities of bankruptcy.

The magnitude of the reforms for which the popular desire was unmistakable, may in some degree be measured by the fact that they involved the necessity of radical changes in, and important additions to, the Federal Constitution. It was frankly acknowledged that if the President's plan of Reconstruction should be followed, involving the instant admission of senators and representatives from the revolted States, these Constitutional changes could not be effected, because the party desiring them would no longer control two-thirds of both Senate and House. Mr. Seward, in his persuasive mode of presenting his views, had urged as a matter of justice that legislation affecting the Southern States should be open to the participation of representatives from those States; but Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who had as keen an intellect as Mr. Seward and a more trenchant style, declared that view to involve an absurdity. He avowed his belief that there was no greater propriety in admitting Southern senators and representatives to take part in considering the financial adjustments and legislative safeguards rendered necessary by their crime, than it would have been to admit the Confederate generals to the camp of the Union Army, when measures were under consideration for the overthrow of the Rebellion.

The great mass of Republicans in Congress maintained that it was not only common justice but common sense to define, without interposition or advice from the South, the conditions upon which the insurrectionary States should be re-clothed with the panoply of National power. "In no body of English laws," said Mr. Stevens, in an animated conversation in the House, "have I ever found a provision which authorizes the criminal to sit in judgment when the extent of his crime and its proper punishment were under consideration." The argument, therefore, which Mr. Seward had made with such strength for the President was, in the judgment of the great majority of Norther people, altogether ill-founded. By the caustic sentence of Mr. Stevens it had been totally overthrown. The average judgement approved the sharply defined and stringent policy of Congress as set forth by Mr. Stevens, rather than the policy so comprehensively embodied and so skilfully advocated by Mr. Seward on behalf of the Administration. Whatever may have been the temptations presented by the apparent magnanimity and broad charity of Mr. Seward's line of procedure, they were more than answered by the instincts of justice and by the sense of safety embodied in the plan of Reconstruction announced and about to be pursued by Congress.

The Joint Special Committee on Reconstruction, appointed at the opening of the Thirty-ninth Congress in December, did not meet for organization until the 6th of January, 1866. As an indication of the respectful manner in which they desired to treat the President, and the care with which they would proceed in their important duties, they appointed a sub-committee to wait on Mr. Johnson and advise him that the committee desired to avoid all possible collision or misconstruction between the Executive and Congress in regard to their relative positions. They informed the President that in their judgment it was exceedingly desirable that while this subject was under consideration by the joint committee no further action in regard to Reconstruction should be taken by him unless it should become imperatively necessary. The committee plainly declared that mutual respect would seem to require mutual forbearance on the part of the President and Congress. Mr. Johnson replied in effect that, while desiring the question of Reconstruction to be advanced as rapidly as would be consistent with the public interest, he earnestly sought for harmony of action, and to that end he would take no further steps without advising Congress. This promise of each branch of the Government to wait patiently on the other was no doubt sincere, but it soon proved difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the compact. When two co-ordinate departments were holding antagonistic views on the vital question at issue, collisions between them could not be averted. As matter of fact the resolution, as has been seen by events already narrated, so far from proving itself to be an adjustment did not serve even as a truce between the President and Congress. It was found impracticable to secure repression and the contest went forward with constantly accelerating speed.

The first question on the subject of Reconstruction which engaged the attention of Congress, was the re-adjustment of the basis of representation; and for a time it absorbed all others. The first proposition to amend the Constitution in this respect had been made by Mr. Stevens on the 5th of December, providing "that representatives shall be apportioned among the States which may be within the Union according to their respective legal voters, and for this purpose none shall be named as legal voters who are not either natural born citizens of the United States or naturalized foreigners." During the month of December the question of representation was discussed, partly in public debate, but more in conference among members; and the plan of placing the basis upon legal voters, at first warmly urged, was quickly abandoned as its probable results were scrutinized. When Congress convened after the holidays, on Friday the 5th of January, Mr. Spalding of Ohio, in a speech already referred to, proposed an amendment to the Constitution in regard to representation in Congress, directing that "people of color shall not be counted with the population in making up the ratio of representation, except it be in States where they are permitted to exercise the elective franchise," and this was probably the earliest foreshadowing of the real change in the basis of representation that was made by the Fourteenth Amendment.

On the ensuing Monday Mr. Blaine of Maine proposed the following, in lieu of the Constitutional provision then existing: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which shall be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by taking the whole number of persons, except those whose political rights or privileges are denied or abridged by the constitution of any State on account of race or color." Mr. Blaine objected to taking voters as the basis of representation. "If," said he, "voters instead of population shall be made the basis of representation, certain results will follow, not fully appreciated perhaps by some who are now urgent for the change. I shall confine my examination of these results to the nineteen free States, whose statistics are presented in the census of 1860, and the very radical change which the new basis of apportionment would produce among those States forms the ground of my opposition to it. The ratio of voters to population differs very widely in different sections, varying, in the States referred to, from a minimum of nineteen per cent to a maximum of fifty-eight per cent; and some of the changes which its effect would work in the relative representation of certain States would be monstrous. For example, California has a population of 358,110 and Vermont a population of 314,369, and each has three representatives on this floor to-day. But California has 207,000 voters and Vermont had only 87,000. Assuming voters as the basis of apportionment and allowing to Vermont three representatives, California would be entitled to eight. The great State of Ohio, with nearly seven times the population of California, would have but little more than two and a half times the number of representatives; and New York, with quite eleven times the population of California, would have, in the proposed method of apportionment, less than five times as many members of this House."

Mr. Blaine adduced some other examples less extreme than those quoted, but the generalization was no doubt too broad and presented in some respects an erroneous conclusion. The only mode of getting at the number of voters was by the ballots cast at the general elections, and the relative ratio was varied by so many considerations that it did not correctly represent the actual number of voters in each State. But the facts presented by Mr. Blaine and elaborated by other speakers turned the attention of the House away from an apportionment based on voters.

Mr. Conkling, a few days later, in referring to Mr. Blaine's argument, maintained that "the ratio, in dividing the whole population of the United States into two hundred and forty-one representative districts, leaving out such extreme cases as California, would not be seriously affected by assuming the white male voters as the basis of apportionment." On the 15th of January Mr. Conkling submitted a Constitutional amendment on the subject, in two forms; making the proviso in one case that "whenever in any one State the political rights or privileges of any man shall be denied or abridged on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation," and the other providing that "when the elective franchise in any State shall be denied or abridged on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color so denied shall be excluded from the basis of representation."

On the 22d of January the Reconstruction Committee, both in the Senate and House, reported their proposed amendment to the Constitution on this subject. It was in these words: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State--excluding Indians not taxed; provided, that whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, all persons of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation." The amendment was substantially the second form of that proposed by Mr. Conkling. He was a member of the Reconstruction Committee and opened the discussion on the subject with a carefully prepared speech. The peculiar feature of this amendment was that if any portion of the people should be excluded by reason of race or color, every individual of that race or color would be excluded from the basis of apportionment. As Mr. Stevens expressed it, if one man should be excluded from the ballot-box on account of his race, then the whole race should be excluded from the basis of apportionment.

The proposition led to a long debate, the differences being to a great extent among members on the Republican side. Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island objected to it, because it would not effect the object aimed at. "Suppose," said he, "this amendment is adopted by three-fourths of the States and becomes a part of the Constitution, and after its adoption the State of South Carolina should re-instate her old constitution, striking out the word 'white,' and re-establishing the property qualification of fifty acres of land or town-lots or the payment of taxes, there would then be no discrimination of color in South Carolina; yet, while the number of her voters would not be enlarged five hundred, the representation would be exactly as it is, with the addition of two-fifths of the enfranchised freedmen." Mr. Blaine objected that "if by ordinary fair play we exclude any class from the basis of representation they should be excluded from the basis of taxation, and therefore we should strike out the word 'taxes.' Ever since the Government was founded taxation and representation have gone hand in hand. If we exclude that principle from this amendment we shall be accused of narrow, illiberal, mean-spirited, money-grasping policy."

Mr. Donnelly of Minnesota supported the measure, not as a finality but as a partial step,--as one of a series of necessary laws. Mr. Sloan of Wisconsin made an urgent argument for the basing of representation upon voters, "as those voters are determined by the States." Mr. John Baker of Illinois objected to the amendment, because it "leaves any State of the Union perfectly free to narrow her suffrage to any extent she pleases, imposing proprietary and other disqualifying tests and strengthening her aristocratic power over the people, provided only she steers clear of a test based on race or color." Mr. Ingersoll of Illinois followed the speech of his colleague, Mr. Baker, by moving to add to the Constitutional amendment these words: "and no State within this Union shall prescribe or establish any property qualifications which may or shall in any way abridge the elective franchise." Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island argued against Mr. Ingersoll's amendment as needlessly abridging the power of the States. On the 24th of January Mr. Lawrence of Ohio moved that "the pending resolution and all amendments be recommitted to the Committee on Reconstruction, with instructions to report an amendment to the Constitution, which shall, first, apportion direct taxation among the States according to the property in each, and second, apportion the representation among the States upon the basis of male voters who may be citizens of the United States."

Mr. Shellabarger followed his colleague, giving objections to the amendment as reported by the Committee on Reconstruction: "First, it contemplates and provides for and in that way authorizes the States to wholly disfranchise an entire race of people; second, the moral teaching of the clause offends the free and just spirit of the age, violates the foundation principle of our own Government and is intrinsically wrong; third, associated with that clause in our Constitution relating to the States being republican this amendment makes it read thus: 'the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, provided, however, that a government shall be deemed republican when whole races of its people are disfranchised, unrepresented and ignored.'" Mr. Eliot of Massachusetts moved an amendment that representation should be based upon the whole number of persons, "and that the elective franchise shall not be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color."

Mr. Pike of Maine made a strong speech against the amendment, the spirit of which was in favor of declaring universal suffrage. He added to the illustrations already given of the inefficacy of the proposed amendment to reach the desired end, one of special force and pertinency. "Suppose," said he, "this Constitutional amendment to be in full force, and a State should provide that the right of suffrage should not be exercised by any person who had been a slave or who was the descendant of a slave, whatever his race or color?" He suggested that it was "a serious matter to tell whether this simple provision would not be sufficient to defeat the Constitutional amendment which we here so laboriously enact and submit to the States." Mr. Conkling argued that "the amendment we are proposing is not for Greece or Rome, or anywhere where anybody besides Africans were held as slaves. It is to operate in this country, where one race, and only one, has been held in servitude." Mr. Pike replied that "in no State has slavery been confined to one race." "So far," added he, "as I am acquainted with their statutes, slavery has not been confined to the African race. I have examined the matter with some care, and I know of no slave-statute which says that Africans alone shall be slaves. Well-authenticated instances exist in every slave State, where men of Caucasian descent, of Anglo-Saxon blood, have been confined in slavery and they and their posterity held as slaves, so that not only were free blacks found everywhere but white slaves abounded."

On the 29th of January the debate closed, and the resolutions originally reported from the Committee on Reconstruction, together with the suggested amendments, were again referred to that committee. Especial interest was taken by many members in the language proposed by Mr. Schenck of Ohio: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to the number of male citizens of the United States over twenty-one years of age having the qualifications of electors of the most numerous branch of the Legislature;" and also in the proposition of Mr. Broomall of Pennsylvania, providing that "when the elective franchise shall be denied by the constitution or laws of any State, to any proportion of its male citizens over the age of twenty-one years, the same proportion of its entire population shall be excluded from the basis of representation." Two days afterwards, on the 31st of January, Mr. Stevens reported from the Joint Committee on Reconstruction the proposition in this form: "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State--excluding Indians not taxed; provided that whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color, the persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation." Mr. Schenck submitted his amendment basing apportionment upon the number of male citizen of the United States who are voters, but it was rejected by an overwhelming vote, only twenty-nine of the entire House voting in the affirmative. The amendment, as reported from the committee, was then adopted,--yeas 120, nays 46. It was substantially a party division, though some half-dozen Republicans voted in the negative.

The amendment reached the Senate on the thirty-first day of January and on the sixth of February was taken up for consideration. Mr. Fessenden, chairman of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, was entitled to open the debate, but yielded to Mr. Sumner. Mr. Sumner, with his rigid adherence to principle, opposed the amendment. "Knowing as I do," said he, "the eminent character of the committee which reports this amendment, its intelligence, its patriotism and the moral instincts by which it is moved, I am at a loss to understand the origin of a proposition which seems to me nothing else than another compromise of human rights, as if the country had not already paid enough in costly treasure and more costly blood for such compromise in the past." He declared that he was "painfully impressed by the discord and defilement which the amendment would introduce into the Constitution." He quoted the declaration of Madison in the convention of 1787, that it was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea of property in man. "Of all that has come to us from that historic convention, where Washington sat as President and Franklin and Hamilton sat as members, there is nothing having so much of imperishable charm. It was wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea than man could hold property in man. Accordingly, in this spirit the Constitution was framed. This offensive idea was not admitted. The text at least was kept blameless. And now, after generations have passed, surrounded by the light of Christian truth and in the very blaze of human freedom, it is proposed to admit into the Constitution the twin idea of inequality in rights, and thus openly set at naught the first principles of the Declaration of Independence and the guarantee of republican government itself, while you blot out a whole race politically. For some time we have been carefully expunging from the statute-books the word 'white,' and now it is proposed to insert into the Constitution itself a distinction of color."

Upon this foundation Mr. Sumner spoke at great length, his speech filling forty-one columns of the Congressional Globe. It would hardly be proper indeed to call it a speech. It was a great historic review of the foundation of the Republics of the world, an exhaustive analysis of what constituted a true republic, closing with an eloquent plea for the ballot for the freedmen. He demanded "enfranchisement for the sake of the public security and public faith." He pleaded for the ballot as "the great guarantee." The ballot, he declared, "is a peacemaker, a schoolmaster, a protector." "Show me," said he, as he approached the conclusion of his speech--"show me a creature with erect countenance and looking to heaven, made in the image of God, and I show you a man who, of whatever country or race--whether darkened by equatorial sun or blanched with the northern cold--is an equal with you before the heavenly Father, and equally with you entitled to all the rights of human nature." . . . "You cannot deny these rights without impiety. God has so linked the National welfare with National duty that you cannot deny these rights without peril to the Republic. It is not enough that you have given liberty. By the same title that we claim liberty do we claim equality also. . . . The Roman Cato, after declaring his belief in the immortality of the soul, added, that if this were an error it was an error that he loved; and now, declaring my belief in liberty and equality as the God-given birthright of all men, let me say in the same spirit, if this be an error it is an error which I love; if this be a fault it is a fault which I shall be slow to renounce; if this be an illusion it is an illusion which I pray may wrap the world in its angelic form."

Mr. Sumner's speech may be regarded as an exhaustive and masterly essay, unfolding and illustrating the doctrine of human rights. As such it remains a treatise of great value; but as a political argument calculated to shape and determine the legislation of Congress, it was singularly inapt. As a counter-proposition he submitted a preamble and joint resolution in these words: "Whereas it is provided by the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State of the Union a republican form of government, and whereas, by reason of the failure of certain States to maintain governments which Congress might recognize, it has become the duty of the United States, standing in the place of guarantor," . . . "Therefore be it resolved, that there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly invested with peculiar privileges or powers, and there shall be no denial of rights, civil or political, on account of race or color within the limits of the United States or the jurisdiction thereof, but all persons therein shall be equal before the law, whether in the court-room or at the ballot-box, and this statute, made in pursuance of the Constitution, shall be the supreme law of the land, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

Mr. Fessenden replied to Mr. Sumner in an elaborate speech in justification of the amendment proposed by the Reconstruction Committee. His argument was marked with all his peculiar ability, and the two speeches contain within themselves the fullest exposition of the difference in mental quality of the two eminent New-England statesmen who were so long rivals in the Senate of the United States. Mr. Fessenden was above all things practical; he was unwilling at any time to engage in legislation that was not effective and direct; he had no sympathy with mere declarations, was absolutely free from the vanity so often exhibited in legislative bodies, of speaking when there was no question before the body for decision, or of submitting resolutions merely in response to a popular sentiment, without effecting any valuable result. In short, Congress was with him a law-making body. It met for that business and so far as he could direct its proceedings, Mr. Fessenden, as chairman at different times of leading committees, held it to its work. He was felicitous with his pen beyond the rhetorical power of Mr. Sumner, though not so deeply read, nor so broad in scholarship and general culture.

He made an able argument for the pending amendment as the most effective method of bringing the South to do justice to the colored race. He believed that if the Southern States should feel that they could derive larger political power in the Government of the United States by admitting colored men to the elective franchise, they would in time conclude to do so; and doing so they would be compelled in the mere process to realize their indebtment to that race, and thus from self-interest, if not from a sense of justice, would extend equal protection to the whole population. Mr. Fessenden could not refrain from some good-natured ridicule of the declaratory resolutions which Mr. Sumner had offered. "Sir," said he, "does the Constitution authorize oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly? Not at all. Are you not as safe under the Constitution as you are under an Act of Congress? Why re-enact the Constitution merely to put it in a bill? What do you accomplish by it? What remedy does it afford? It is merely as if it read this way: 'Whereas it is provided in the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State of the Union a republican form of government, therefore we declare that there shall be a republican form of government, and nothing else.' That is all there is of it. Of what particular use it is as a bill, practically, is more than I can tell. I presume the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts will very easily explain it, but it reminds me (I say it with all due respect to him) of a political travesty of a law argument by an eminent lawyer of his own State, running somewhat in this way;--

'Let my opponents do their worst, Still my first point is point the first, Which fully proves my case, because, All statute laws are statute laws.'

The sequitur is obvious,--the case is proved because, inasmuch as the Constitution provides that there shall be no aristocracy, no oligarchy, no monopoly, therefore Congress has resolved that there shall not be any thing of the kind."

Mr. Fessenden would not admit the essential justice of the argument which Mr. Sumner made in behalf of universal suffrage, and showed that he was not consistent in the ground which he took. "While," said he, "the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts argued with great force that every man should have the right of suffrage, his argument, connected with the other principle that he laid down, and the application of it, --that taxation and representation should go together,--would apply with equal force and equal equity to woman as to man; but I notice that the Honorable Senator carefully and skillfully evaded that part of the proposition. If a necessary connection between taxation and representation applies to the individuals in a State, and that is the application which the Honorable Senator made of it,--an application never made by our ancestors, but applied by them to communities and not to individuals,--I should like him to tell me why, according to his own argument, every female that is taxed should not be allowed to have the right of suffrage."

"There are," said Mr. Fessenden, "but two propositions to be considered in the pending amendment; one is whether you will base representation on voters, and the other is the proposition which is before the Senate. I suppose the proposition to base representation upon actual voters would commend itself to the Honorable Senator from Massachusetts. I believe I have in my desk a proposition he made to amend the Constitution (laid before the Senate so early in the session that the bell which called us together had hardly struck its note before it was laid upon the table), in which he proposed that representation in the United States should be based on voters. Let me ask him if that does not leave in the hands of the States the same power that exists there now, and has existed heretofore? What is the difference? How does the Honorable Senator find the pending proposition so objectionable, and the one he offered so suitable to accomplish the purpose which he desires to accomplish? The two propositions, in respect to the point upon which the gentleman has made his speech, are identical in effect."

The Constitutional amendment was debated earnestly until the 9th of March. One of the boldest and most notable speeches was made by Mr. Henderson of Missouri, who surprised the Senate by taking a more radical ground than the Reconstruction Committee. He moved the following as a substitute for the committee's proposition to amend the Constitution: "No State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race." Mr. Henderson, though representing a State lately slave-holding, was in advance of the majority of his associates from the free States; but he defended his amendment with great ability. He said, "I am aware that the Senate will vote it down now. Let them vote it down. It will not be five years from to-day before this body will vote for it. You cannot get along without it. You may adopt the other proposition, but the States will not accept it. The Northern States in my judgement will not accept it, because they will misapprehend the meaning of it." When the vote was reached ten senators, including Mr. Henderson, sustained his proposition in favor of negro suffrage. The resolution of the Reconstruction Committee, after several attempts to modify it, came to a vote,--yeas 25, nays 22. Two-thirds being required the amendment was defeated. A reconsideration was made for the purpose of resuming the discussion, but the resolution was never taken up again, having become merged in a new proposition.

Pending the consideration of the Constitutional amendment so long before Congress, the Reconstruction Committee reported, and both Houses of Congress agreed to adopt, a resolution declaring that "No senator or representative shall be admitted into either branch of Congress from any of said States until Congress shall have declared such State entitled to representation." It was the pressure of the State of Tennessee for admission which brought about this declaration. Her condition was regarded as peculiar, and her senators and representatives were seeking admission to their appropriate bodies, claiming exemption from the general requirements of the Reconstruction policy, because they had, without the aid of Congress, established a loyal State government. This was regarded as totally inexpedient, and the committee reported the resolution, as they declared, "in order to close agitation upon a question which seems likely to disturb the action of the Government, as well as to quiet the uncertainty which is agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which have been declared to be in insurrection." The objection to this course was, that in a certain degree it involved the renunciation on the part of both Senate and House of their right to be the exclusive judge of the qualification of members of their respective bodies. Mr. Stevens was the author of the resolution and it really included, as its essential basis, the view which he had so strenuously insisted upon, that the insurrectionary States must be treated by Congress, in all that related to their restoration to the Union, as if they were new States seeking admission for the first time. Instead of each House acting as the judge of the qualifications of its members, both Houses agreed that neither should take a step in that regard until there had been common action declaring the State entitled to representation. A similar proposition at the opening of the session had been defeated in the Senate: its ready adoption now showed how the contest between the President and Congress was driving the latter day by day to more radical positions.

After the defeat in the Senate of the amendment touching representation, and the postponement by the House of another amendment reported from the Committee on Reconstruction touching the protection of citizens in their rights and immunities, there was a general cassation of discussion on the question of changing the Constitution, and a common understanding in both branches to await the formal and final report of the Committee. That report was made by Mr. Stevens on Monday, the 30th of April.(1) It consisted of a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in which were consolidated under one article the several amendments which had been proposed, and which in their aggregate, as finally shaped, made up the famous Fourteenth Amendment. In addition to this was a bill reciting the desirability of restoring the lately revolted States to full participation in all political rights, and enacting in substance that when the Constitutional amendment should be agreed to by them, their senators and representatives in Congress might be admitted. A further bill was reported, declaring certain persons who had been engaged in rebellion to be ineligible to office under the Government of the United States.

The debate on the consolidated Fourteenth Amendment was opened on the 8th of May by Mr. Stevens. The House had agreed that all speeches should be limited to half an hour. The debate was therefore condensed and direct. Mr. Stevens complained of the Senate for having defeated the amendment relating to representation, and though assenting to that which was now reported by the committee, thought it inferior to, and less effective than, the one which had failed. The third section he thought too lenient. "There is," said he, "a morbid sensibility sometimes called mercy, which affects a few of all classes from the priest to the clown, which has more sympathy for the murderer on the gallows than for his victim. I hope I have a heart as capable of feeling for human woe as others. I have long since wished that capital punishment were abolished. But I never dreamed that all punishment could be dispensed with in human society. Anarchy, treason and violence would reign triumphant. The punishment now prescribed is the mildest ever inflicted upon traitors. I might not consent to the extreme severity pronounced upon them by a provisional Governor of Tennessee--I mean the late lamented Andrew Johnson of blessed memory--but I would have increased the severity in this section. . . . In my judgment we do not sufficiently protect the loyal men in the rebel States from the vindictive persecutions of their rebel neighbors."

Mr. Blaine of Maine called the attention of Mr. Stevens to the fact that on the 17th of July, 1862, Congress had passed an Act of which the following was one section: "That the President is hereby authorized, at any time hereafter, by proclamation, to extend to persons who may have participated in the existing rebellion in any State or part thereof, pardon and amnesty, with such exceptions, at such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the public welfare." "Under and in pursuance of this Act," said Mr. Blaine, "the late President Lincoln issued a proclamation granting a great number of pardons upon certain specified conditions, and subsequently President Johnson issued his celebrated amnesty proclamation granting pardons to certain specified classes in the South that had participated in the Rebellion. . . . Do we not by the proposed action place ourselves in the attitude of taking back by Constitutional amendment that which has been given by Act of Congress, and by Presidential proclamation issued in pursuance of the law? and will not this be justly subjected to the charge of bad faith on the part of the Federal Government?"

Mr. Stevens replied that a pardon, whether by the President having the power or specifically by Act of Parliament or Congress, extinguishes the crime. "After that," said he, "there is no such crime in the individual. A man steals and he is pardoned. He is not then a thief and you cannot call him a thief, or if you do you are liable to an action for slander. None of those who have been fully pardoned are affected by this provision."

Mr. Blaine replied that the Constitutional amendment would be held to override the President's proclamation, being organic in its nature and therefore supreme. "That," said Mr. Blaine, "is my understanding and that, it seems to me, would be the legal construction; but if the gentleman from Pennsylvania is correct, then I maintain that it is the bounded duty of this House to make the language so plain that he who runs may read--that there may be no doubt about its construction."

Mr. Garfield said that "the point made by the gentleman from Maine shows that, whatever may be the intention of the committee or of the House, the section is at least susceptible of double construction. Some may say that it revokes and nullifies in part the pardons that have already been granted in accordance with law and the proclamation of the President. Others may say that it does not apply to the rebels who have been pardoned."

Mr. Stevens interrupted Mr. Garfield and said, "I was not perhaps sufficiently explicit in what I stated in answer to the interrogatory of the gentleman from Maine. I admit that a pardon removes all liability to punishment for a crime committed, but there is a vast difference between punishment for a crime and withholding a privilege. While I admit that the pardon will be full and operative so far as the crime is concerned, it offers no other advantage than an exemption from punishment for the crime itself."

Mr. Garfield, resuming, said that he was about to remark that "if the section does not apply to those who have been pardoned then it would apply to so small a number of people as to make it of no practical value, for the excepted classes in the general system of pardons form a very small fraction of the rebels."

Mr. Boyer, a Democratic member from Pennsylvania, declared that the effect of the amendment if adopted would be to disfranchise for a period of four years nine-tenths of the voting population of eleven States.

The point was subsequently alluded to by the leading lawyers of the House, with the general admission that, whatever might have been the implied pledge of the President or of Congress, or whatever might be the effect of the pardon of the President, it did not in any limit the power of the people to amend their Constitution. To the proposition to exclude those who had been engaged in the Rebellion from the right of suffrage for National office until 1870, there was a strong hostility from two classes--one class opposing because it was a needless proscription, and the other, equally large, because it did not go far enough in proscribing those who had been guilty of rebellion. The amendment came to a vote on the 10th of May and the result was 128 ayes to 37 noes. Not a single Republican vote was cast against it. Mr. Raymond voted in the affirmative, and his ringing response elicited loud applause both on the floor and in the galleries.

When the Senate proceeded to consider the Constitutional amendment it soon became evident that it could not be adopted in the form in which it came from the House. The first important change was suggested by Mr. Howard of Michigan on behalf of the Senate members of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. He proposed to prefix these words to the first clause of the amendment: "All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside." Mr. Doolittle moved to insert "excluding Indians not taxed," but Mr. Howard made a pertinent reply that "Indians born within the limits of the United States, who maintain their tribal affiliations, are not in the sense of this amendment born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." Mr. Doolittle's amendment was supported by only ten senators on a call of the ayes and noes, and the amendment proposed by Mr. Howard was then agreed to without division. Mr. Howard next proposed to amend the second section of the constitutional amendment by striking out the word "citizens" and inserting "inhabitants, being citizens of the United States." This was done, as Mr. Fessenden explained, "to prevent a State from saying that though a person is a citizen of the United States he is not a citizen of the State, and to make it conform to the first clause as just amended."

Mr. Howard offered next to change the third clause as it came from the House by inserting a substitute, which is precisely that which became formally incorporated in the amendment as it passed. Mr. Hendricks of Indiana moved to amend by inserting after the word "shall" the words "during the term of his office," so as to read, "shall, during the term of his office, have engaged in insurrection or rebellion." Mr. Hendricks understood "the idea upon which this section rests, to be that men who held office, and upon assuming the office took the oath prescribed by the Constitution, became obligated by that oath to stand by the Constitution and the oath," and that "going into the Rebellion was not only a breach of their allegiance but a breach of their oath," and that "persons who had violated the oath to support the Constitution of the United States ought not to be allowed to hold any office." Mr. Howard hoped the amendment would not be adopted. "If," said he, "I understand the senator from Indiana right, he holds that although a person may have taken that Constitutional oath, if he has not committed insurrection during the continuance of the term of his office, but committed that act after the expiration of that term, the previous taking of the oath by him adds to the act no additional moral guilt. I do not concur with him in that view. It seems to me that where a person has taken a solemn oath to support the Constitution of the United States, there is a fair implication that he cannot afterwards commit an act which in its effect would destroy the Constitution of the United States, without incurring at least the moral guilt of perjury."

Mr. Reverdy Johnson supported Mr. Hendricks's amendment. "The effect of the amendment of the committee," said he, "would be to embrace nine-tenths, perhaps, of the gentlemen of the South, to disfranchise them until Congress shall think proper, by a majority of two-thirds of each branch, to remove the restriction. If the suggestion of the senator from Indiana is not adopted," continued Mr. Johnson, "then all who have at any time held any office under the United States, or who have been in any branch of the Legislature of a State, which they could not be without taking the oath required by the Constitution of the United States, are to be excluded from holding the office or senator or representative, or that of an elector for President or Vice-President, or any office, civil or military, under the United States." Mr. Fessenden reminded the senator from Maryland that the provision, as proposed by the committee, included exactly those classes to whom the obligation of an oath to support the Constitution was prescribed in the sixth article of the Constitution, namely "Senators and representatives and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution."

Mr. Sherman of Ohio pointed out that the amendment of Mr. Hendricks would exclude from the operation of the section those who had left the army of the United States to join the Rebellion. Mr. Hendricks's amendment received but eight votes in the Senate, falling short of the admitted Administration strength. Mr. Reverdy Johnson moved to strike out the words which included members of the State Legislatures, but the amendment secured only ten votes. He also moved to strike out the words "having previously taken," and insert "at any time within ten years preceding the 1st of January, 1861, had taken;" and this also received but ten votes. Mr. Van Winkle moved to amend so that a majority of all the members elected to each House should be empowered to remove the disability, instead of two-thirds as required by the amendment. This also received but ten votes.

In further discussion of the extent to which the pardon of the President goes, Mr. Reverdy Johnson cited a case which had just been argued by himself and others but was not yet decided, in the Supreme Court of the United States, as to whether an attorney in that court could be bound to take the ironclad oath as prescribed by Act of Congress, January 24, 1865. He had no doubt, he said, that the operation of the pardon was to clear the party pardoned from the obligation to take that oath. The case referred to was that since so widely known as ex parte Garland, and decided by the Supreme Court adversely to the Constitutionality of the statute. Mr. Howe of Wisconsin interrupted the senator from Maryland and asked him whether he knew "of any authority which has gone to the extent of declaring that either an amnesty or a pardon can impose any limitation whatever upon the power of the people of the United States, through an amendment to their Constitution, to fix the qualifications of officers." Mr. Johnson replied, "That is not the question to which I spoke. It is quite another inquiry. I was speaking of the operation of a statute."

Mr. Doolittle also answered his colleague by saying, "I know it may be said that by an amendment to the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, you can annul all existing rights. You could, perhaps, by an amendment to the Constitution, enact a provision which would deprive individual citizens of their property, and vest the whole of it in the Government of a State or in the Government of the United States. You might, perhaps, by a Constitutional amendment, pass a bill of attainder by which certain men would be sentenced to death and to corruption of blood. But, sir, would it be right? That is the question." Mr. Doolittle was discussing it on the ground of its moral rightfulness and not upon the ground of the power of the people to amend their Constitution. An attempt was made to insert the word "voluntarily" in the amendment, so that only those would be under disabilities who had voluntarily taken part in the Rebellion; but this received only ten votes. The Senate rejected it for the obvious reason that it would open the entire amendment to evasion.

The amendment, as supported by Mr. Howard, was finally agreed to with only ten votes in the negative. Mr. Hendricks, in lieu of the amendment on the subject of representation, moved to add a clause excluding two-fifths of "such persons as have been discharged from involuntary servitude since the year 1861, and to whom the elective franchise may be denied." He did this in order that representation should be maintained on the same numerical basis that existed before the war. The amendment was rejected without a division. Mr. Doolittle offered an amendment on the subject of representation, embodying the two propositions of making voters the basis of representation and providing that "direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States according to the value of the real and personal taxable property situated in each State, not belonging to the State or to the United States;" but after elaborate debate it received only seven votes. On motion of Mr. Williams of Oregon the amendment to section two was still further amended by substituting the words "the right to vote" for "elective franchise," as already agreed to. Mr. Clarke of New Hampshire, who had shown throughout the discussion great aptness at draughting Constitutional provisions in appropriate language, now moved to substitute for section four, which had gone through various mutations not necessary to recount here, the precise section as it now stands in the Constitution.

In the course of the discussion Mr. Doolittle had moved that in imposing political disabilities, those should be excepted "who have duly received pardon and amnesty under the Constitution and laws." He had just admitted the broadest possible power of a Constitutional amendment duly adopted, and, recognizing that the amendment as it stood would certainly include those who had received pardon from the President, desired to avert that result. His amendment was very briefly debated and on a call of the ayes and noes received only ten votes. The effect of this vote unmistakably settled, in the judgment of the law-making power of the Government, that the operation of the Fourteenth Amendment would not in the least degree be affected by the President's pardon. Before the proposed amendment of Mr. Doolittle, Mr. Saulsbury had tested the sense of the Senate practically on the same point, by moving to make the clause of the amendment read thus: "Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House and the President may by the exercise of the pardoning power, remove such disabilities;" but it was rejected by a large majority, and every proposition to permit the pardon of the President to affect the disabilities prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment in any way whatever was promptly overruled.

As a result of this decision, Southern men who, under the Fourteenth Amendment, had incurred disabilities by reason of participation in the Rebellion, could not assume office under the National Government until their disabilities should be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, even though they had previously been pardoned by the President. The language of the amendment, the very careful form in which the tense was expressed, appeared to leave no other meaning possible, and the intention of legislators was definitively established by the negative votes already referred to. The intention indeed was in no wise to interfere with the pardon of the President, leaving to that its full scope in the remission of penalty which it secured to those engaged in the Rebellion. The pertinent clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was regarded as merely prescribing a qualification for office, and the Constitutional lawyers considered it to be within the scope of the amending power as much as it would be to change the age at which a citizen would be eligible to the Senate or the House of Representatives.(2)

One of the singular features attending the discussion and formation of this amendment, was that all the Democratic senators preferred the third section as embodied in the Constitutional amendment finally passed, to that which had been proposed as it passed the House. The amendment could not probably be incorporated in the Constitution for a year and according to the original proposition of the House, therefore, it would only have excluded those who participated in the Rebellion from the ballot-box for a period of three years,--until the 4th of July, 1870; whereas the third section, as adopted, perpetually excluded the great mass of the leading men of the South from holding public office, either in Nation or State, unless their disabilities should be removed by a vote of two-thirds in each House of Congress. No adequate explanation was given for the preference, and the final vote substituting that which was incorporated in the Constitution for the House proposition was 42 in the affirmative to 1 in the negative. The negative vote was given by Reverdy Johnson; while such staunch Democrats as Guthrie of Kentucky, Hendricks of Indiana, McDougal of California and Willard Saulsbury of Delaware voted to prefer the one to the other. Mr. Johnson afterward explained that he voted under a misapprehension; so that the substitution was made, in effect, by a unanimous vote of the Senate.

On the final passage in the Senate of the consolidated amendment the ayes were 33 and the noes 11. When the amendment was returned to the House, Mr. Stevens briefly explained the changes that had been made in the Senate. The first section was altered to define who are citizens of the United States and of the States. Mr. Stevens declared this to be an excellent amendment, long needed to settle conflicting decisions between the several States and the United States. He said the second section had received but slight alteration. "I wish," he continued, "it had received none. It contains much less power than I could wish. It has not half the vigor of the amendment which was lost in the Senate." The third section, he said, had been wholly changed by substituting the ineligibility of certain high officials for the disfranchisement of all rebels until 1870. Mr. Stevens declared that he could not look upon this as an improvement. "It opens the elective franchise to such as the States may choose to admit. In my judgment it endangers the government of the country, both State and National, and may give the next Congress and President to the reconstructed rebels." The fourth section, "which renders inviolable the public debt and repudiates the rebel debt, will secure the approbation of all but traitors." "While I see," concluded Mr. Stevens, "much good in the proposition I do not pretend to be satisfied with it; yet I am anxious for its speedy adoption, for I dread delay. The danger is that before any Constitutional guard shall have been adopted, Congress will be flooded by rebels and rebel sympathizers." The House came to a final test on the Senate amendments on the 13th of June and concurred in all of them by a single vote--ayes 120, noes 32. The work of Congress in securing the Fourteenth Amendment was thus made complete.

The Constitutional amendment not requiring the assent of the President (for the good reason that the two-thirds of each House which can override a veto are here required in advance), was submitted to the Senate without delay. The notification to the States was dated June 16th. Connecticut was the first to assent to the amendment.--her Legislature being in session and her ratification made complete on the 30th,--precisely a fortnight from the date of submission. New Hampshire followed on the 7th of July. The third State was Tennessee. Her Legislature ratified the amendment on the 19th of July, by a vote of 58 to 17, counting both branches. Many of the States would doubtless have held extra sessions of their Legislatures to expedite the adoption of the amendment if such a course had been considered desirable by the leading members of Congress. It was deemed best, however, to leave the question open to discussion and deliberation, in order that the provisions of the amendment, in all their length and breadth, should be completely understood by the people before the formal assent of the States should be urged. The three States named were the only ones which ratified the amendment before Congress adjourned.(3)

When the Reconstruction Committee reported the Fourteenth Amendment, they reported with it a bill declaring that "whenever said amendment shall become a part of the Constitution of the United States, and any State lately in insurrection shall have ratified the same and shall have modified its constitution and laws in conformity therewith," such State should be admitted to representation. There had been during the entire session of Congress a disposition to make an exception in favor of the State of Tennessee. She had of her own motion elected her loyal governor, and now for a year and a half the administration of the State was in a comparative degree orderly and regular. When telegraphic intelligence of the action of the Tennessee Legislature reached the Capitol Mr. Bingham of Ohio moved a joint resolution, reciting in effect by preamble, that as the "State of Tennessee has in good faith ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, and has also shown to the satisfaction of Congress, by a proper spirit of obedience in the body of her people, her return to due allegiance to the Government, laws and authority of the United States; therefore, be it resolved that the State of Tennessee is hereby restored to her former, proper, practical relations to the Union, and is again entitled to be represented in Congress by senators and representatives duly elected and qualified, upon their taking the oaths of office required by existing laws." Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts desired to add a condition that Tennessee, as a prerequisite to the privilege of representation, should provide "an equal and just system of suffrage for the male citizens within its jurisdiction who are not less than twenty-one years of age." Mr. Bingham declined to admit it, shutting off all amendments by the force of the previous question, for which the House sustained his demand. After a few hours' debate the House passed the joint resolution by 125 ayes to 12 noes. The Democrats all supported the measure, though they objected strenuously to some of the implications of the preamble. The few votes in the negative were given by some radical Republicans, though Mr. Stevens, the leader of that wing of the party, supported the bill.

When the bill admitting Tennessee reached the Senate, there was a discussion of some length in regard to changing the preamble which had been adopted by the House, the principal aim being to insert the declaration that "said State Government can only be restored to its former political relations in the Union by the consent of the law-making power of the United States." There was division among the Republican senators in regard to the expedience of this change. It was the judgment of the more conservative Republicans who followed Mr. Fessenden, that it was needless to risk a veto of an important bill of this character by confronting the President with a distinct negative of his own theory in a place where it practically availed nothing. After much discussion however it was concluded to change the preamble for the sake of establishing a precedent in the first one of the Confederate States restored to the right of representation in Congress. The phrase, "hereby restored to her former, proper, practical relations to the Union," was one much cherished, because it was the original expression of Mr. Lincoln in his last public speech. The House readily concurred in the change of preamble.

The President accepted the challenge of his theory embodied in the preamble, not by veto, but in the more innocent form of argument. "If," said he, in a special message of July 25th, "the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States be one of the conditions of admitting Tennessee, and if, as is also declared by the preamble, said State Government can only be restored to its former political relations to the Union by the consent of the law-making power of the United States, it would really seem to follow that the joint resolution, which at this late day has received the sanction of Congress, should have been passed, approved and placed on the statute-books before any amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the State of Tennessee for ratification. Otherwise the inference is plainly deducible that while in the opinion of Congress the people of a State may be too disloyal to be entitled to representation, they may nevertheless have an equally potent voice with other States in amending the Constitution, upon which so essentially depends the stability, prosperity and very existence of the nation."

The argument in the message was regarded as an ingenious censure of Congress by the President, and was loudly applauded on the Democratic side of the House. He concluded by declaring that notwithstanding the anomalous character of the resolution, he had affixed his signature to it. "My approval, however," he added, "is not to be construed as an acknowledgment of the right of Congress to pass laws preliminary to the admission of duly qualified representatives from any of the States." The senators and representatives of the State were sworn in and took their seats as soon as the President's message approving the bill was read, and the reconstruction of Tennessee was complete. She had regained all her rights as a member of the Union, coming in through the gateway of two Constitutional Amendments, the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth. It was evident from that moment that no one of the Confederate States would ever again be admitted, so long as the Republican party held power in the country, except by giving their assent to the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Constitution. The bill from the Reconstruction Committee requiring this as a condition was not enacted into law, but the admission of Tennessee was a precedent stronger than law. Of all the seceding States Tennessee was held to be the least offending, and the feeling of kindliness towards her had been manifest from the first among Republicans. It was evident therefore to the least observing, that no other State which had been engaged in the Rebellion would be permitted to resume the privilege of representation on less exacting conditions than had been imposed on Tennessee. It might be that their own conduct would cause more exacting conditions to be imposed.

Congress adjourned on the 28th of July. Elections were to be held in the ensuing autumn for representatives to the Fortieth Congress, and an opportunity was thus promptly afforded to test the popular feeling on the issue raised by the President's plan of Reconstruction. The appeal was to be made to the same constituency which two years before had chosen him to the Vice-Presidency,--augmented by the vote of Tennessee, now once more authorized to take part in electing the representatives of the nation. Seldom in the history of the country has a weightier question been submitted to popular arbitrament; seldom has a popular decision been evoked which was destined to exercise so far-reaching an influence upon the progress of the nation, upon the prosperity of the people. It was not an ordinary political contest between partisans of recognized and chronic hostility. It was a deadly struggle between the Executive and Legislative Departments of the Government, both of which had been chosen by the same party. This peculiar fact imparted to the contest a degree of personal acrimony and political rancor never before exhibited in the biennial election of representatives in Congress.

[(1) The following is the form in which the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (consolidated from various propositions previously discussed) was originally reported from the Committee on Reconstruction by Mr. Stevens:--

"ARTICLE XIV.

"SECT. 1. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"SECT. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But whenever in any State the elective franchise shall be denied to any portion of its male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of male citizens shall bear to the whole number of such male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age.

"SECT. 3. Until the fourth day of July in the year 1870, all persons who voluntarily adhered to the late insurrection, giving it aid and comfort, shall be excluded from the right to vote for representatives in Congress and for electors for President and Vice-President of the United States.

"SECT. 4. Neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation already incurred, or which may hereafter be incurred, in aid of insurrection or war against the United States, or any claim for compensation for loss of involuntary service or labor.

"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."]

[(2) Among the prominent Southern men who had received the pardon of the President, and who, desiring to hold office under the National Government, had their disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment subsequently removed by Congress, were: M. C. Butler, James L. Orr, and William Aitken of South Carolina; Joseph E. Brown, Henry W. Hilliard, and Lafayette McLaws of Georgia; F. M. Cockrell, George G. Vest, and John B. Clarke of Missouri; J. D. C. Atkins and George Maney of Tennessee; Randall Gibson of Louisiana; Otho R. Singleton of Mississippi; Alexander R. Boteler of Virginia; Allen T. Caperton and Charles J. Faulkner of West Virginia; M. W. Ransom, Thomas S. Ashe, and A. M. Scales of North Carolina; W. B. Machen of Kentucky; John T. Morgan and James L. Pugh of Alabama.

These gentlemen had all held high positions either in the civil or military service of the Confederacy. A great number of additional names might be cited of persons who, having been fully pardoned by the President, were afterwards relieved of their disabilities by Congress. The names quoted are but a few of the more conspicuous of those who have, since the Rebellion, held high official positions under the Government of the United States.]

[(3) The form of the Fourteenth Amendment, as finally agreed upon by Congress and submitted to the States for ratification, is as follows:--

"ARTICLE XIV.

"SECT. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

"SECT. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number, counting the whole number of persons in each, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

"SECT. 3. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds in each House, remove such disability.

"SECT. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payment of pensions, and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter X

The hostility of the President to all measures which the Republican party deemed necessary for the proper reconstruction of the Southern States, had made a deep impression upon certain members of his Cabinet, and before midsummer it was known that a crisis was impeding. On the 11th of July Mr. William Dennison, the Postmaster-general, tendered his resignation, alleging as the chief cause the difference of opinion between himself and the President in regard to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. He had for some months felt that it would be impossible for him to co-operate with the President, and the relations between them were no longer cordial, if they were not indeed positively hostile. Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, the first assistant Postmaster-general, was an outspoken supporter of the measures of the Administration, and was using every effort to prejudice Mr. Johnson's mind against Mr. Dennison, whom he was ambitious to succeed. Mr. Dennison felt that he was seriously compromising his position at home by remaining in the Cabinet, though he had been urged to that course by some zealous opponents of the Administration, who desired, as long as possible, to restrain the President from using the patronage of the Government in aid of his policy. Mr. Randall was promptly nominated as Mr. Dennison's successor and proved, in all respects, a faithful follower of his chief.

A week later Mr. James Speed resigned his post as Attorney-general. He had been regarded as very conservative on all pending issues relating to Reconstruction, but he now saw plainly that the President was inevitably drifting, not only to extreme views on the issue presented, but to an evident alliance with the Democratic party and perhaps a return to its ranks. Against this course Mr. Speed revolted. His inheritance of Whig principles, his anti-slavery convictions, his personal associations, all forbade his following the President in his desertion of the Republican party. He saw his duty, and promptly retired from a position which he felt that he could not hold with personal consistency and honor. His successor was Henry Stanbery of Ohio, a lawyer of high reputation and a gentleman of unsullied character. He belonged to that association of old Whigs who, in their extreme conservatism on the slavery question, had been driven to a practical union with the Democratic party.

A few days after Mr. Speed's resignation Mr. James Harlan retired from the Interior Department. He would have broken his relations with the President long before, but for the same cause that had detained Mr. Dennison. He was extremely reluctant to surrender the large patronage of the Interior Department to the control of a successor who would undoubtedly use it to promote the Reconstruction policy of the President, just as Mr. Randall would use the patronage of the Post-office Department. Mr. Harlan had therefore remained in the Cabinet as long as was consistent with his personal dignity, for the purpose of protecting the Republican principles which the President and he were alike pledged to uphold. He was succeeded by Mr. Orville H. Browning of Illinois, who had been a devoted friend of Mr. Lincoln, and had done much to secure his nomination at Chicago. He had served for two years in the Senate after the death of Mr. Douglas, and but for the immediate control over his course by President Lincoln would have been a co-laborer with those who were hostile to the mode in which the war was prosecuted. His faith in Mr. Lincoln, his great admiration for his talents and his strong personal attachment to him, had for the time maintained Mr. Browning in loyalty to the Republican party; but with the restraining influence of the great President gone, Mr. Browning, by reason of his prejudices not less than his convictions, at once affiliated and co-operated with the Democratic party. He was a man of fair ability and of honorable intentions, but always narrow in his views of public policy. Any thing that could possibly be considered radical inevitably encountered his hostility.

The political campaign of 1866 was one of greater excitement than had ever been witnessed in this country, except in the election of a President. The chief interest was in choosing members of the House of Representatives for the Fortieth Congress, and in controlling the Legislatures which were to choose senators of the United States and pass upon the Fourteenth Amendment. In elections of this character, even in periods of deepest interest, the demonstrations of popular feeling are confined to the respective States, but in this instance there were no less than four National Convention, three of them, at least, of imposing magnitude and exerting great influence on popular action.

The first was called by the friends of President Johnson to meet in Philadelphia on the 14th of August. The object was to effect a complete consolidation of the Administration Republicans and the Democratic party, under the claim that they were the true conservators of the Union, and that the mass of the Republican party, in opposing President Johnson, were endangering the stability of the Government. A large majority of the delegates composing the convention were well-known Democrats, and they were re-enforced by some prominent Republicans, who had left their party and followed the personal fortunes of President Johnson. The most conspicuous of these were Montgomery Blair (who for some years had been acting with the Republicans), Thurlow Weed, Marshall O. Roberts, Henry J. Raymond, John A. Dix and Robert S. Hale in New York, Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania, James R. Doolittle and Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, O. H. Browning of Illinois, and James Dixon of Connecticut. The Democrats were not only overwhelmingly in the majority, but they had a very large representation of the leaders of the party in several States. So considerable a proportion of the whole number were men who had been noticeably active as opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, that the convention was popularly described as a gathering of malignant copperheads, who, during the war, could not have assembled in the city where they were now hospitably received, without creating a riot. Among the most conspicuous and most offensive of this latter class,--those who had especially distinguished themselves for the bitterness, and in some cases for the vulgarity, of their personal assaults upon Mr. Lincoln,--were Mr. Vallandingham of Ohio, Fernando Wood, Benjamin Wood and James Brooks of New York, Edmund Burke and John G. Sinclair of New Hampshire, Edward J. Phelps of Vermont, George W. Woodward, Francis W. Hughes and James Campbell of Pennsylvania, and R. B. Carmichael of Maryland. Among the leading Democrats, less noted for virulent utterances against the President, were Samuel J. Tilden, Dean Richmond and Sanford E. Church of New York, John P. Stockton and Joel Parker of New Jersey, David R. Porter, William Bigler and Asa Packer of Pennsylvania, James E. English of Connecticut, Robert C. Winthrop and Josiah G. Abbott of Massachusetts, William Beach Lawrence of Rhode Island, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland.

Mr. Vallandingham's participation in the proceedings was met with objection. He had not spoken more violently and offensively against President Lincoln and against the conduct of the war than some other members of the convention, but his course had been so notorious and had been rendered so odious by his punishment, both in being sent beyond the rebel lines and afterwards in being defeated for governor of his State by more than one hundred thousand majority, that many of the delegates were not content to sit with him,--a sentiment which Mr. Vallandingham is said to have considered one of mawkish sentimentality, but one to which he deferred by quietly withdrawing from all participation in the proceedings. It was believed, and indeed openly asserted, at the time, that if he had chosen to remain the attempt to eject him by resolution, as was threatened, would have led to a practical dissolution of the convention.

The work of the convention was embodied in a long series of resolutions reported by Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, and an address prepared and read by Mr. Henry J. Raymond. Both the resolutions and the address simply emphasized the issue already presented to the country by the antagonistic attitude of the President and Congress. In the resolutions, in the address, and in all the speeches, the one refrain was the right of every State to representation in Congress. The convention challenged the right of Congress to deny representation to a State, for a single day after the war was ended and submission to the National authority had been proclaimed throughout the area of the Rebellion. In every form in which the argument could be presented, they disputed the right of power to attach any condition whatever to the re-admission of the rebel States to a free participation in the proceedings of Congress. One of the resolutions declared that "representation in the Congress of the United States or in the Electoral College is a right recognized by the Constitution as abiding in every State and as a duty imposed upon its people, fundamental in its nature and essential to the exercise of our republican institutions; and neither Congress nor the General Government has any authority or power to deny the right to any State, or withhold its enjoyment under the Constitution from the people thereof; and we call upon the people of the United States to elect to Congress, as members thereof, none but men who admit this fundamental right of representation and who will receive to seats in Congress their loyal representatives from every State in allegiance to the United States." This sentiment was embodied in many forms in Mr. Raymond's address, was, in fact, the one fundamental article in the creed of the Administration and the Democratic party, and afforded the common ground for their political co-operation.

Mr. Raymond undoubtedly marred the general effect of his address by carrying his argument to an extreme point. "It is alleged," said he, "that the condition of the Southern States and people is not such as renders safe their re-admission to a share in the government of the country, that they are still disloyal in sentiment and purpose, and that neither the honor, the credit, nor the interest of the Nation would be safe if they were re-admitted to a share in its counsels." Mr. Raymond maintained, even if the truth of this premise were granted, that it was sufficient to reply that "we have no right, for such reasons, to deny to any portion of the States or people rights expressly conferred upon them by the Constitution of the United States, and we have no right to distrust the purpose or the ability of the people of the Union to protect and defend, under all contingencies and by whatever means may be required, its honor and its welfare."

This assertion of the right of the Southern States to take part at once and peremptorily in the legislation of a country they had sought to ruin, was not conceded by the people of the loyal States. They did not require any refinement of argument to convince them that men who attempt to destroy a Government should not be permitted at once to share in its administration. They believed that the Congress of the United States would be guilty of a great wrong if it should unconditionally surrender its power to the men who demanded admission to peaceful control of the National only because they had failed to disrupt it by war. Mr. Raymond's personal friends and admirers, who were not confined to any one party, were amazed at the recklessness of his position. He did violence to sound logic by claiming more than was necessary to his argument, and he seriously injured his reputation for political shrewdness by attempting to enforce a policy which grated on the sensibilities and aroused the prejudices of the vast majority of those who had filled the ranks of the Union Army.

Great advantage was expected by the President's supporters from the fact that the convention, as they averred, was so truly "National"--having delegates from every State of the Union. This feature was presented as in hurtful contrast with Republican conventions, whose members came almost entirely from the loyal States. A striking spectacle was attempted by having members from Northern and Southern States enter the great wigwam (which had been specially prepared for the meetings of the convention) arm in arm. To intensify the effect Massachusetts and South Carolina headed the procession, General Couch and ex-Speaker Orr typifying in this display the thorough cordiality of Unionist and Confederate in the return of peace and amicable relations. The danger of all such exhibitions is that they may be made a subject of ridicule. This did not escape. The "wigwam" was parodied by the political wits of the Republican party as "Noah's Ark," into which there went, as described in Genesis, "in two and two," "of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth." The humor which this comparison evoked was of a kind especially adapted to the stump and was used most effectively. Indeed the President's supporters, long before the canvass closed, heartily regretted that they had ever resorted to dramatic scenes as a method of promoting a political cause.

The convention of the President's supporters was followed a fortnight later (September 3rd) in the same city--Philadelphia--by a still more imposing assemblage called by the loyalists of the South, who, desiring to explain their exact situation to co-operating friends, invited delegations from the Northern States to meet them. Prominent Republicans from every loyal Commonwealth responded in full force to these men who were endeavoring to reconstruct their States on an enduring basis of Constitutional liberty. Pennsylvania sent a generous delegation as hosts to those who were to enjoy the hospitalities of the State. Governor Curtin haded the list. Associated with him were General Geary, already named as his successor, General Simon Cameron, at that time a private citizen, Colonel John W. Forney, then editor of the Philadelphia Press, and representatives from every Congressional district in the State. Other States responded with equal cordiality. Senators Morgan and Harris, Horace Greeley, and John Jacob Astor, came from New York. Massachusetts sent her governor, her senators, and all her living ex-governors. It became, indeed, the fashion for the New-England States to send governors and ex-governors, and every State was represented in this way. New Jersey did likewise. The Western States were fully represented by their ablest and most zealous men. Two future Presidents were on the delegation from Ohio, with General Schenck and Stanley Matthews and the influential German editor Frederick Hassaurek. Oliver P. Morton came from Indiana, Lyman Trumbull from Illinois, Fairchild and Howe from Wisconsin, Zachariah Chandler and Carl Schurz (then editor of the Detroit Post) from Michigan. The border slave States sent strong men. N. B. Smithers came from Delaware; Senator Creswell, Francis Thomas, and C. C. Fulton of the Baltimore American, from Maryland; Governor Boreman, A. W. Campbell and Nathan Goff from West Virginia; Robert J. Breckenridge accompanied ex-Attorney-general Speed from Kentucky; while Missouri sent Governor Fletcher, sustained by an able delegation, of whom Van Horn, Finkelnburg and Louis Gottschalk were prominent members. A number of business men, headed by E. W. Fox, came from St. Louis.

Many of the Southern States were somewhat scantily represented. It was not safe in certain sections of the South to hold a convention for the selection of delegates, and yet one or more appeared from every one of the lately rebellious States. Thomas J. Durant and H. C. Warmoth came from Louisiana; D. H. Bingham and M. J. Safford from Alabama; G. W. Ashburn from Georgia; and Governor A. J. Hamilton, Lorenzo Sherwood and George W. Paschal from Texas. Albion W. Tourgee, who has since won a brilliant reputation in literature, came from North Carolina with a strong delegation; J. W. Field and H. W. Davis from Mississippi. Virginia and Tennessee, of the original Confederacy, sent a large number of good men. From the former came John Minor Botts, George W. Somers, Lucius H. Chandler, Daniel H. Hoge, Lewis McKenzie, James M. Stewart, and some hundred and fifty others; the latter was represented by Governor Brownlow, Joseph S. Fowler, Samuel Arnell, A. W. Hawkins, Thomas H. Benton, General John Eaton, Barbour Lewis, and many others whose loyalty had been tested by many forms of personal peril.

These names give a fair indication of the character and weight of the convention. It was intended to be, and was, a representative body of true Union men, of the men who had borne persecution for Loyalty's sake, of the men who, having aided in achieving great victory, were resolved that it should not fail to bear its legitimate fruits. The delegates from all the States first assembled in Independence Square, and after a meeting of congratulation, marked by great enthusiasm, proceeded to form into two conventions,--one containing the loyalists who had called the convention, and the other the Northern delegates who had met to welcome them. Of the Southern Convention Mr. Thomas J. Durant of Louisiana was selected as temporary chairman, and Honorable James Speed of Kentucky as permanent chairman; and of the Northern Convention Governor Curtis of Pennsylvania was both temporary and permanent chairman. The motive for thus separating was to leave the Southern loyalists entirely untrammeled in their proceedings, in order that their voice might have greater weight in the country than if it were apparently directed by a large majority of Northern men assembling in the same body with them.

The Northern Convention concluded its proceedings on the third day with a mass-meeting larger than any that had ever assembled in Philadelphia. The Southern Convention remained in session full five days. The interest was sustained from beginning to end, and besides the delegates present, a vast assemblage of people thronged the streets of Philadelphia during all the sessions of the conventions. In an off year, as partisans call it, there had never been seen so great excitement, enthusiasm and earnestness in any political assemblage. Mr. Durant called the Southern Convention to order with the same gavel that had been used in the Secession Convention in South Carolina. Governor Hamilton of Texas, who presented it for the occasion, reminded his audience that the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and that it seemed a poetic retribution that a convention of Southern loyalists should be called to order with the same instrument that had rapped the South into disunion and anarchy.

On taking the chair as permanent president of the Southern Convention, Mr. Speed spoke of the Administration, of which for the past few months he had been a reluctant member, with a freedom which, during his connection with it, would have been improper if not impossible. He described the late convention in this place as one with which "we could not act." "Why was that convention here? It was here in part because the great cry came up from the white man of the South,--My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me; and then the cry came up from the black man of the South--My Constitutional and my natural rights are denied me. These complaints are utterly antagonistic, the one to the other; and this convention is called to say which is right. Upon that question, if upon the truth as you feel it, speak the truth as you know it, speak the truth as you love permanent peace, as you may hope to establish the institutions of this Government so that our children and our children's children shall enjoy a peace that we have not known. . . . The convention to which I have referred, as I read its history, came here to simply record in abject submission the commands of one man. That convention did his commands. The loyal Congress of the United States had refused to do his commands; and whenever you have a Congress that does not resolutely and firmly refuse, as the present Congress has done, to merely act as the recording secretary of the tyrant at the White House, American liberty is gone forever."

Mr. Speed's language was a complete revelation, more emphatic than had yet been made, of the great differences which had prevailed in the Cabinet of the President with respect to his policy; and his words naturally created a sensation, not alone in the convention, but throughout the country. The fact of his identification with the President, in the closest official intercourse, ever since his accession, added vastly to the weight of Mr. Speed's address and gave to it an influence which he had not, perhaps, anticipated when he delivered it. This influence was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the author of the speech was a native and citizen of the South. It was a stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Northern Republicans to find a man from the South taking advanced ground that possibly involved peril to himself before the angry contest should be finally settled.

--The address agreed upon in the Southern Convention was in the form of an appeal "from the loyal men of the South to their fellow-citizens of the United States." It declared that the representatives of eight millions of American citizens "appeal for protection and justice to their friends and brothers in the States that have been spared the cruelties of the Rebellion and the direct horrors of civil war." "Having," said the address, "lost our champion, we return to you who can make presidents and punish traitors. Our last hope, under God, is in the unity and firmness of the States that elected Abraham Lincoln and defeated Jefferson Davis."

--"We cannot better define at once our wrongs and our wants than by declaring, that since Andrew Johnson affiliated with his early slanderers and our constant enemies, his hand has been laid heavily upon every earnest loyalist of the South."

--"History, the just judgment of the present and the certain confirmation of the future, invites and commands us to declare, that after neglecting his own remedies for restoring the Union, Andrew Johnson has resorted to the weapons of traitors to bruise and beat down patriots."

--"After declaring that none but the loyal should govern the reconstructed South, he has practiced upon the maxim that none but traitors shall rule."

--"In the South he has removed the proved and trusted patriot from office, and selected the unqualified and convicted traitor."

--"After brave men, who had fought the great battle for the union, had been nominated for positions, their names were recalled and avowed rebels substituted."

--"Every original Unionist in the South, who stands fast to Andrew Johnson's covenants from 1861 to 1865, has been ostracized."

--"He has corrupted the local courts by offering premiums for the defiance of the laws of Congress, and by openly discouraging the observance of the oath against treason."

--"While refusing to punish one single conspicuous traitor, though great numbers have earned the penalty of death, more than one thousand devoted Union soldiers have been murdered in cold blood since the surrender of Lee, and in no cases have their assassins been brought to judgment."

--"He has pardoned some of the worst rebel criminals, North and South, including some who have taken human life under circumstances of unparalleled atrocity."

--"While declaring against the injustice of leaving eleven States unrepresented, he has refused to authorize the liberal plan of Congress, simply because they have recognized the loyal majority and refused to perpetuate the traitor minority."

--"In every State south of Mason and Dixon's line his policy has wrought the most deplorable consequences,--social, moral, and political."

Upon these indictments a powerful address was based, giving argument, illustration, fact and indisputable conclusion. The address was framed by Senator Creswell of Maryland, and the style and tone were beyond praise. It was received with great applause in the convention, was adopted with unanimity, and created a profound influence upon the public opinion of the North. It was the deliberate, well-conceived and clearly stated opinion of thoughtful and responsible men, was never disproved, was practically unanswered, and its serious accusations were in effect admitted by the South. The one objective point proclaimed in the address, repeated in the resolutions, echoed and re-echoed by every speaker, both in the Northern and Southern Conventions, was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was evidently the unalterable determination of the Republicans to make that the leading feature of the campaign, to enforce it in every party convention, to urge it through the press, to present it on the stump, to proclaim it through every authorized exponent of public opinion. They were determined that the Democratic party of the North should not be allowed to ignore it or in any way to evade it. It was to be the Shibboleth of the Republican canvass, and the rank and file in every loyal State were engaged in its presentation and its exposition.

The friends of the Administration, feeling the disadvantage under which they labored by an apparent combination of all the earnest supporters of the war for the Union against them, sought to create a re-action in their favor by calling a soldiers' convention to meet at Cleveland, on the 17th of September. A considerable number of respectable officers responded to the summons; but relatively the demonstration was weak, ineffective and in the end hurtful to the Administration. The venerable General Wool of the regular army, the oldest major-general in the United States at the time, was made president of the convention and his selection was significant of the proceedings. He had been all his life a solider and nothing but a soldier. He was a major of infantry in the war of 1812 and had been in continuous service thereafter. He denounced the Abolitionists after the manner that had been the custom in the regular army prior to the war. He thought the convention had been called to protest against another war which he was sure the Abolitionists were determined to force on the county. "Another civil war is foreshadowed," said he, "unless the freedmen are placed on an equality with their previous masters. If this cannot be accomplished, radical partisans, with a raging thirst for blood and plunder, are again ready to invade the Southern States and lay waste the country not already desolated, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. These revengeful partisans would leave their country a howling wilderness for the want of more victims to gratify their insatiable cruelty. . . . Let there be peace! Yet there are those among us who are not sufficiently satiated with blood and plunder, and cry for more war." General Wool would have been severely criticised if it had not been remembered that for nearly sixty years he had been a faithful soldier and had loyally followed the flag of the Union in three wars.

Many members of the convention were outspoken Democrats and their presence, therefore, did not indicate and division in the Republican ranks,--the objective point to which all the efforts of the Administration were steadily addressed. Conspicuous representatives of this class were Generals John A. McClernand of Illinois, J. W. Denver of California, Willis A. Gorman of Minnesota, James B. Steedman of Ohio. The delegates who had been Republicans were all of the most conservative type, and it is believed that every one of them became permanently identified with the Democratic party. The most prominent of these were General Thomas Ewing of Kansas, Governor Bramlette and General Rousseau of Kentucky, and Honorable Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio. General Gordon Granger and General George A. Custer of the regular army were very active in organizing the convention. It was evident that the number of soldiers present was small; and the convention really failed in its principal aim, which was to strengthen the President in the loyal States.

A telegram, expressing sympathy with its proceedings, was received by the convention from a number of Confederate officers who were gathered at Memphis. But it was unfortunate that General N. B. Forrest was a conspicuous signer; still more unfortunate that the convention passed a resolution of thanks to Forrest and his rebel associates for the "magnanimity and kindness" of their message. Forrest's name was especially odious in the North for his alleged guilty participation in the massacre at Fort Pillow. All other circumstances united did not condemn the convention in Northern opinion so deeply as this incident. Further investigation of the Fort Pillow affair has in some degree ameliorated the feeling against General Forrest, but at that time his name among the soldiers of the Union was as bitterly execrated as was that of the Master of Stair among the Macdonalds of Glencoe, or of Haynau, at a later day, among the patriots of Hungary.

The only noteworthy speech in the convention was delivered by General Thomas Ewing. It was able, but extreme in its hostility to the policy of Congress. He and Mr. Browning were law-partners at the time of Mr. Johnson's accession to the Presidency. Both had supported Mr. Lincoln, and both now resolved to oppose the Republican party. General Ewing's loss was regretted by a large number of friends. He had inherited talent and capacity of a high order, was rapidly rising in his profession, and seemed destined to an inviting political career in the party to which he had belonged from its first organization. In supporting the policy of President Johnson he made a large sacrifice,--large enough certainly to free his action from the slightest suspicion of any other motive than conviction of duty. General Ewing has since adhered steadily to the Democratic party.

The fourth of the National Conventions which this remarkable year witnessed, was that of the citizen soldiers and sailors, held at Pittsburg on the 25th and 26th of September. Nine out of ten, perhaps even a larger proportion, of those who had defended the Union with arms, were hostile to the President's policy. As soon therefore as it was attempted to secure a political advantage for the Administration by calling the Cleveland Convention, the great mass of Union soldiers demanded that a convention be held in which their true position might be proclaimed. The response was overwhelming both in numbers and enthusiasm. Pittsburg was literally overrun. In addition to the large number of regimental and company officers who had done their duty in the service, there was an immense outpouring of privates. It was said that not less than twenty-five thousand who had served in the ranks of the Union army were present. A private soldier, L. Edwin Dudley, was chosen temporary president, and a majority of the prominent officers of the convention were privates and non-commissioned officers. Mr. Dudley was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington, and being refused a leave of absence for two days to attend the convention, he promptly resigned his place and joined his brethren at Pittsburg. The incident of the resignation strikingly illustrates the depth of feeling which the contest between the President and Congress had developed among the soldiery of the Union.

Officers of high rank in the volunteer service were not wanting. Generals Butler and Banks of Massachusetts, Palmer and Farnsworth of Illinois, Negley, Geary, Hartranft and Collis of Pennsylvania, Cochrane, Barnum and Barlow of New York, Chamberlain from Maine, Schenck and Cox from Ohio, Duncan and Harriman from New Hampshire, Daniel McCauley of Indiana, and many of their fellow-officers, took active and zealous part in the convention. Every loyal State except possibly Oregon was represented. Far-off California and Nevada, then without the facility of railway connection, sent delegates. The border States of the South were present in full force, and Union men who had borne their part in the civil contest came from every Confederate State. General John A. Logan had been unanimously elected as permanent president of the convention, but at the last moment he found himself unable to attend and his place was filled, with equal unanimity of selection, by General Jacob D. Cox of Ohio. General Cox, on taking the chair, made an address of great firmness. It was even radical in its positions and aggressive in its general tone.

He said it was "unpleasant to recognize the truth that it is in the minds of some to exalt the Executive Department of the Government into a despotic power and to abase the representative portion of our Government into the mere tools of despotism. Learning that this is the case, we now, as heretofore, know our duty, and knowing, dare maintain it. The citizen soldiery of the United States recognize the Congress of the United States as the representative government of the people. We know and all traitors know that the will of the people has been expressed in the complexion and character of the existing Congress. . . . We have expressed our faith that the proposition which has been made by Congress for the settlement of all difficulties in the country [the Fourteenth Amendment] is not only a wise policy, but one so truly magnanimous that the whole world stood in wonder that a people could, under such circumstances, be so magnanimous to those whom they had conquered. And when we say we are ready to stand by the decision of Congress, we only say as soldiers that we follow the same flag and the same principles which we have followed during the war."

The resolutions, read by General B. F. Butler, were explicit and unqualified in their declarations, and were indorsed with absolute unanimity. They declared that "the action of the present Congress in passing the pending Constitutional amendment is wise, prudent and just. That amendment clearly defines American citizenship and guarantees all his rights to every citizen. It places on a just and equal basis the right of representation, making the vote of a man in one State equally potent with the vote of another man in any State. It righteously excludes from places of honor and trust the chief conspirators and guiltiest rebels, whose perjured crimes have drenched the land in blood. It puts into the very frame of our Government the inviolability of our National obligations, and nullifies forever the obligations contracted in support of the Rebellion." The resolutions further declared it to be "unfortunate for the country that the propositions contained in the Fourteenth Amendment have not been received with the spirit of conciliation, clemency and fraternal feeling in which they were offered, as they are the mildest terms ever granted to subdued rebels."

The members of the convention were in a tempest of anger against the President. They declared "that his attempt to fasten his scheme of Reconstruction upon the country is as dangerous as it is unwise; that his acts in sustaining it have retarded the restoration of peace and unity; that they have converted conquered rebels into impudent claimants to rights which they have forfeited and to places which they have desecrated. If the President's scheme be consummated it would render the sacrifice of the Nation useless, the loss of her buried comrades vain, and the war in which we have so gloriously triumphed a failure, as it was declared to be by President Johnson's present associates in the Democratic National Convention of 1864." Many other propositions of an equally decisive character were announced by the convention, and General John Cochrane declared that "a more complete, just and righteous platform for a whole people to occupy has never before been presented to the National sense."

Of the four conventions held, this, of the soldiers who had fought the battles of the Union, was far the most influential upon public opinion. In its membership could be found representatives of every great battle-field of the war. Their testimony was invaluable. They spoke for the million comrades with whom they had stood in the ranks, and their influence consolidated almost en masse the soldier vote of the country in support of the Republican party as represented by Congress. Their enthusiasm was greater, their feeling more intense, their activity more marked than could be found among the civilians of the country who were supporting the same principles. They declared the political contest to be their own fight, as they expressed it, and considered themselves bearing the banner of loyalty as they had borne it in the actual conflict of arms. Their convention, their expressions, their determination were felt throughout the entire Union as an aggressive, irresistible force. From their ranks came many of the most attractive and most eloquent speakers, who discussed the merits of the Constitutional amendment before popular audiences as ably as they had upheld the flag of the Union through four years of bloody strife. Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the year. Not even the members of Congress, who repaired to their districts with the amendment as the leading question, could commend it to the mass of voters with the strength and with the good results which attended the soldier orators who were inspired to enter the field.

Other events powerfully contributed to the political overthrow of the President. After the change in his policy in the summer and autumn of 1865, which has already been noted, the Southern rebels, who had at first been cast down and discouraged, saw before them the prospect of regaining complete ascendency in their respective States. As the division between the President and Congress widened, their confidence increased; and as their confidence increased, a reign of lawlessness and outrage against the rights of the defenseless was inaugurated. The negroes, who had begun to learn their freedom, were not only subjected to laws of practical re-enslavement, but to a treatment whose brutality could not have been foreseen. It was estimated that before the adjournment of Congress more than a thousand negroes and many white Unionists had been murdered in the South, without even the slightest attempt at prosecuting the murderers. Though the aggregate number of victims was so great, they were scattered over so vast a territory that it was difficult to impress the public mind of the North with the real magnitude of the slaughter. But this incredulity vanished in a moment when the nation was startled on the 30th of July, two days after the adjournment of Congress, by a massacre at New Orleans, which had not the pretense of justification or even or provocation.

The circumstances that led to it may be briefly stated. The convention which formed the free constitution of the State in 1864 was ordered to re-assemble by its president, upon authority which, he held, was conferred upon him by the convention at the time the constitution was formed. Apprehending that some measures were to be taken hostile to the re-establishment of rebel power in the State of Louisiana, it was resolved by the opponents of the Republican party that the members of the convention should not be allowed to come together and organize. Threats were insufficient to effect this end. Intimidation of every character had been tried in vain. The men who thought they had the right, as American citizens, to meet for conference refused to be bullied out of their plain privileges under the guarantees of the National Constitution. There was a dispute as to their legal right to take any action touching the constitution of the State--a dispute altogether proper for judicial inquiry. Even if they had assembled and proceeded to amend the constitution, their action could have had no binding effect until approved by the vote of the people. The question which lay at the bottom of the agitation was that of negro suffrage; but the negroes were not entitled to vote under the constitution as its stood, nor could they vote upon an amendment to the constitution conferring the right of suffrage upon them. Whatever the convention might do, therefore, would be ineffectual until approved by a majority of the white men of the State. It obviously followed that the men who violently resisted the assembling of the convention could not justify themselves by the declaration that negro suffrage was about to be imposed upon them. Their position practically was that a majority of the white population should not exercise the right of giving suffrage to the negro.

When the convention attempted to assemble against the desire and remonstrance of their political opponents, a bloody riot ensued--not a riot precipitated by the ordinary material that makes up the mobs of cities, but one sustained by the obvious sympathy and the indirect support of the municipal authorities of New Orleans, and by the leading rebels of the State. General Absalom Baird, an able and prudent officer of the regular army, was in command of the district, but was purposely deceived by the municipal authorities, to the end that troops might not be at hand to quell the riot and stop the assassination which had been planned with diabolical ingenuity. The slaughter, in point of numbers, resembled that of a brisk military engagement in the field. The number killed outright was about forty. The wounded exceeded one hundred and fifty, of whom perhaps one-third were severely injured, many of them mortally. The city police of New Orleans aided the rioters. General Sheridan, in command of the department, officially reported that "the killing was in a manner so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say it was murder." The lamentable transaction was investigated by a committee of Congress, composed of Messrs. Eliot of Massachusetts, Shellabarger of Ohio, and Boyer of Pennsylvania, the first two being Republicans, the last-named a Democrat. An investigation was also made under the direction of the War Department, by a commission of military officers, composed of Generals Mower, Quincy, Gregg, and Baldy. These officers reported that in their opinion "the whole drift and current of the evidence tend irresistibly to the conclusion that there was among the class of violents known to exist in the State, and among the members of the ex-Confederate associations, a preconcerted plan and purpose of attack upon the convention, provided any possible pretext therefor could be found."

The majority of the Congressional Committee took the same view, declaring that "the riotous attack upon the convention with its terrible results of massacre and murder was not an accident. It was the determined purpose of the mayor of the city of New Orleans to break up this convention by armed force." The Congressional Committee did not make their investigation until the succeeding winter session of 1866-7. "We state one fact," said the committee, "significant both as bearing upon the question of preparation and as indicating the true and prevailing feeling of the people of New Orleans. Six months have passed since the convention assembled, when the massacre was perpetrated and more than two hundred men were slain and wounded. This was done by city officials and New-Orleans citizens, but not one of those men has been punished, arrested or even complained of. These officers of the law, living in the city and known to that community, acting under the eye of superiors, clothed with the uniform of office, and some of them known, as the proof shows, to the chief officer of police, have not only escaped punishment but have been continued in their places."

Not only were the men who instigated and committed the terrible murders left unpunished, but, as the committee said, "the gentlemen who composed the convention have not, however, been permitted to escape. Prosecutions in the criminal court, under an old law passed in 1805, were at once commenced and are now pending against them for breach of the peace." Another authority declares that "the judge of the criminal court in New Orleans instructed the grand jury to find bills of indictment against the members of the convention and the spectators, charging them with murder; giving the principle of law and applying it in this case, that whoever is engaged in an unlawful proceeding from which death ensues to a human being, is guilty of murder, and alleging that as the convention had no right to meet and the police had killed many men on the day of its meeting, the survivors were, therefore, guilty of murder." The Congressional Committee did not hesitate to declare that "the facts tend strongly to prove that the criminal actors in the tragedy were the agents of more criminal employés, and demonstrate the general sympathy of the people in behalf of the men who did the wrong against those who suffered the wrong."

The President came in for a full share of censure in connection with this unhappy event. The committee reported that "The President knew that riot and bloodshed were apprehended. He knew what military orders were in force, and yet, without the confirmation of the Secretary of War or the General of the Army, upon whose responsibility these military order had been issued, he gave orders by telegraph, which if enforced, as they would be, would have compelled our soldiers to aid the rebels against the men in New Orleans who had remained loyal during the war, and sought to aid and support, by official sanction, the persons who designed to suppress, by arrest and criminal process under color of law, the meeting of the convention; and all this, although the convention was called with the sanction of the governor, and by one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Louisiana claiming to act as President of the convention. The effect of the action of the President was to encourage the heart, to strengthen the hand, and to hold up the arms of those who intended to prevent the convention from assembling." Mr. Boyer, the minority member of the committee, submitted a report dissenting from the conclusions of the majority, and making, as nearly as could be done, a defense of the men who had really been the guilty aiders and abettors of the crime; but he did not deny the fact of the riot nor of the great number of its victims.

The substantial correctness of the report made by the majority of the Congressional Committee was never shaken, though it was angrily attacked by the supporters of the Administration. Aside from the credit imparted to it by the conscientious character of both Mr. Eliot and Mr. Shellabarger, the corroboration of all its material statements by the Commission of Army officers was invaluable. The military men were not suspected of partisan motives. They had no political theories to maintain, no animosities to indulge, no personal revenges to cherish. They proceeded as coolly as though they were investigating alleged frauds by army contractors or were hearing evidence touching the damage to frontier settlers by an Indian raid. The intelligence and impartiality of investigations entrusted to army officers have become proverbial, and their report of the facts in the New Orleans riot arrested the attention of the North in an unprecedented degree. Every thing possible was done by the opponents of the Republican party to break the force of the damaging facts, but apparently without success. Indeed the people of the United States have rarely been stirred to greater excitement than that aroused by the full details of this nefarious transaction as it came to them through the public press and through official reports. The effect was disastrous to the President, and was hurtful, in the extreme, to the cause of prompt reconstruction. The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds. In their wrathful zeal for justice they would hear no apology and no defense of the President. They held him as an accomplice in the crime,--as one having in advance a guilty knowledge of the pre-arranged assassination. In every way in which public indignation can be expressed, in every form in which public anger can vent itself, the loyal people of the Northern states manifested their feelings, and did not spare in their bitter denunciations the personal character of the President or the unspeakable guilt of his Southern supporters.

The bloody tragedy of midsummer, which had weighed down the people with a sense of the gravest solicitude, was followed by what might well be termed its comedy. During the early spring the President had accepted an invitation from the citizens of Chicago to attend the ceremony of laying a corner-stone for a monument to be erected to the memory of Stephen A. Douglas. The date fixed for the President's visit was September 6th, and he left Washington on the 28th of August, accompanied by Secretary Welles, Postmaster-general Randall, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, by a considerable number of army officers and by a complement of private secretaries and newspaper reporters,--apparently intending to convert the journey into a political canvass. Mr. Seward joined the company in New York. The somewhat ludicrous effect produced by combining a series of turbulent partisan meetings to be addressed by the President with the solemn duty of paying respect to the memory of a dead statesman, did not fail to have its effect upon the appreciative mind of his countrymen, and from the beginning to the end of the tour there was a popular alternation between harsh criticism and contemptuous raillery of Mr. Johnson's conduct.

His journey was by way of Philadelphia and New York, to Albany; thence westward to Chicago. At all the principal cities and towns along the route large bodies of people assembled. Democrat and Republican, Administration and anti-Administration, were commingled. The President spoke everywhere in an aggressive and disputatious tone. It has been the decorous habit of the Chief Magistrate of the country, when upon a tour among his fellow-citizens, to refrain from all display of partisanship, and to receive popular congratulations with brief and cordial thanks. President Johnson, however, behaved as an ordinary political speaker in a heated canvass, receiving interruptions from the crowd, answering insolent remarks with undignified repartee, and lowering at every step of his progress the dignity which properly appertains to the great office. At Cleveland the meeting resembled occasions not unfamiliar to our people, where the speaker receives from his audience constant and discourteous demonstrations that his words are unwelcome. The whole scene was regarded as lamentable and one which must have been deeply humiliating to the eminent men who accompanied the President.

He made the tour the occasion for defending at great length his own policy of Reconstruction, and arraigned with unsparing severity the course of Congress in interposing a policy of its own. The most successful political humorist of the day(1), writing in pretended support of the President, described his tour as being undertaken "to arouse the people to the danger of concentrating power in the hands of Congress instead of diffusing it through one man." Wit and sarcasm were lavished at the expense of the President, gibes and jeers and taunts marked the journey from its beginning to its end. "My policy" was iterated and reiterated, until the very boys in the streets, without knowing its meaning, knew it was the source and subject of ridicule, and made it a jest and a by-word at Mr. Johnson's expense. The whole journey came to be known as "swinging around the circle," and its incidents entered daily into the thoughts of the people only as subjects of disapprobation on the part of the more considerate, and of persiflage and ribaldry on the part of those who regarded it only as a matter of amusement. With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined. Upon the direct public issue which he had raised he would undoubtedly have been beaten in nearly all the Northern states, but when his weakness had brought him within fair range of ridicule, he became powerless even in the place of power.

Meanwhile, during the National Conventions referred to and during the remarkable tour of the President, the cause of his opponents was urged in every State and in every district, with extraordinary energy on the part of leaders, with corresponding interest on the part of the people. The contest for the governorship of New York between Reuben E. Fenton and John T. Hoffman, and for the governorship of Pennsylvania between John W. Geary and Hiester Clymer, excited deep interest far beyond the borders of either State. The vote for these candidates was looked to as giving the aggregate popular expression touching the merits of the Administration, and carried with it the united interest which attached to all the Congressional districts. When at last a test was reached and the people had an opportunity to speak the Administration was overwhelmingly defeated. Vermont, usually so strong in its Republican vote, now increased the ordinary majority by thousands. Maine elected General Chamberlain governor by twenty-eight thousand majority.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa were then all known in current phrase as October States. They voted for members of Congress and State officers on the second Tuesday of that month. The result was a significant verdict against the Administration. In Pennsylvania Geary, on a much fuller vote than was cast at the Presidential election two years before, led Clymer by nearly as large a majority as that by which Lincoln led McClellan. The Congressional elections resulted in the choice of eighteen Republicans to six Democratic representatives. Ohio, on her State ticket, gave forty-three thousand majority against the Administration, and elected sixteen Republican representatives in Congress, leaving only three districts to the Democrats. In Indiana, a State always hotly contested, the Republicans secured the popular vote by a majority of nearly fifteen thousand and carried every Congressional district except three. Iowa gave a popular majority of thirty-six thousand and carried every Congressional district for the Republicans.

Under the impulse and influence of these great victories in October the November States recorded a like result. New York, of course, absorbed the largest share of public interest. Two years before, Lincoln had beaten McClellan by less than seven thousand votes. Fenton had now double that majority over Hoffman and the Republicans carried two-thirds of the Congressional districts. Throughout the West, Republican victory swept every thing before it. Michigan gave thirty-nine thousand popular majority and a unanimous Republican delegation in Congress. Illinois gave fifty-six thousand popular majority, with nearly all the representatives. Wisconsin gave twenty-four thousand popular majority and elected every Republican candidate for representative except one. Northern States which had been tenaciously Democratic gave way under the popular pressure. New-Jersey Republicans elected a majority of the members of Congress and a majority of each branch of the State Legislature. Connecticut was carried by Governor Hawley against the most popular Democrat in the State, James E. English. California gave seven thousand majority for the Republicans, while Oregon elected a Republican governor and Republican representative in Congress.

The aggregate majority for the Republicans and against the Administration in the Northern States was about three hundred and ninety thousand votes. In the South the elections were as significant as in the North, but in the opposite direction. Wherever Republican or Union tickets were put forward for State or local offices in the Confederate States, they were defeated by prodigious majorities. Arkansas gave a Democratic majority of over nine thousand, Texas over forty thousand, and North Carolina twenty-five thousand. The border slave States were divided. Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky gave strong majorities for the Democrats, while West Virginia and Missouri were carried by the Republicans. The unhappy indication of the whole result was that President Johnson's policy had inspired the South with a determination not to submit to the legitimate results of the war, but to make a new fight and, if possible, regain at the ballot-box the power they had lost by war. The result of the whole election was to give to the Republicans one hundred and forty-three representatives in Congress and to the Democrats but forty-nine. The defeat was so decisive that if the President had been wise he would have sought a return of friendly relations with the party which had elected him, or at least some form of compromise which would have averted constant collision, with the certainty of defeat and humiliation. But his disposition was unyielding. His prejudices obscured his reason.

It was well known that the President felt much cast down by the result. He had, as is usual with Presidents, been surrounded by flatterers, and had not been advised of the actual state of public opinion. Political deserters, place-seekers and personal sycophants had constantly assured the President that his cause was strong and his strength irresistible. They had discovered that one of his especial weaknesses was an ambition to be considered as firm and heroic in his Administration as General Jackson had proved in the Executive chair thirty years before. He received, therefore, with evident welcome the constant adulation of a comparison between his qualities and those of General Jackson, and he came to fancy that he would prove, in his contest for the unconditional re-admission of Southern States to representation, as mighty a power in the land as Jackson had proved in his struggle with the Bank monopolists and with the Disunionists of South Carolina. But those who had studied the character of Johnson knew that aside from the possession of personal integrity, he had few qualities in common with those which distinguished Jackson. Johnson was bold and fluent in public speech, irresolute and procrastinating in action: Jackson wasted no words, but always acted with promptness and courage. Johnson was vain, loquacious, and offensively egotistic: Jackson, on the other hand, was proud, reserved, and with such abounding self-respect as excluded egotism. The two men, instead of being alike, were in fact signal contrasts in all that appertains to the talent for administration, to the quick discernment of the time for action, and to the prompt execution of whatever policy might be announced.

The Republicans had found an easier victory over Johnson than they had anticipated. They were well led in the great contest of 1866. In New England the President really secured no Republican support whatever. Soon after his accession to the Presidency he had induced Hannibal Hamlin, with whom he had been on terms of personal intimacy in Congress, to accept the Collectorship of Customs at Boston, but as soon as Mr. Hamlin discovered the tendency of Johnson's policy he made haste, with that strict adherence to principle which has always marked his political career, to separate himself from the Administration by resigning the office. It was urged upon him that he could maintain his official position without in any degree compromising his principles, but his steady reply to earnest friends who presented this view, was that he was an old-fashioned man in his conception of public duty, and he would not consent to hold a political office under a President from whose policy he instinctively and radically dissented. Mr. Hamlin's course was highly applauded by the mass of Republicans throughout the country, and especially by his old constituents in Maine. His action took from Mr. Johnson the last semblance of a prominent Republican friend in New England and gave an almost unprecedented solidity to the public opinion of that section.

The adherence of Mr. Seward to the Administration, the loss of Thurlow Weed as an organizer, and the desertion of the New-York Times, had created great fear as to the result in New York, but the popularity of Governor Fenton, supplemented by the support of Senator Morgan and of the younger class of men then coming forward, of whom Roscoe Conkling was the recognized chief, imparted an energy and enthusiasm to the canvass which proved irresistible. In Pennsylvania the contest was waged with great energy by both parties. The result would determine not merely the control of the local administration, not merely the character of the delegation in Congress, but the future leadership of the Republican party of the State. Simon Cameron sought a restoration to his old position of power by a return to the Senate. During the five years that had elapsed since he retired from the War Department Mr. Cameron's supremacy had been challenged by the political coterie that surrounded Governor Curtin. They boastfully proclaimed indeed that the sceptre of power was in their hands and could not be wrenched from them. But the reaction against them was strong and did not cease until Cameron had driven his leading enemies to seek refuge in the Democratic party.

In the West the hostility to the President and the support of the policy of Congress were even more demonstrative than in the East. All the prominent Republicans of Ohio were on the stump and the canvass was extraordinarily heated, even for a State which has had an animated contest every year since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Governor Morton's candidacy for the Senate gave great earnestness to the struggle in Indiana, while Senator Chandler not only rallied Michigan to the necessity of giving an immense majority, but with his tremendous vitality added nerve and zeal to every contest in the North-western States. The whole result proved to be one of commanding influence on the future course of public events. The Republicans plainly saw that the triumph of President Johnson meant a triumph of the Democratic party under an alias, that the first-fruits of such a victory would be the re-establishment of the late Confederate States in full political power inside the Union, and that in a little more than five years from the firing upon Sumter, and a little more than one year from the surrender of Lee, the same political combination which had threatened the destruction of the Union would be recalled to its control.

The importance, therefore, of the political struggle of 1866 cannot be overestimated. It has, perhaps, been underestimated. If the contest had ended in a victory for the Democrats the history of the subsequent years would, in all probability, have been radically different. There would have been no further amendment to the Constitution, there would have been no conditions of reconstruction, there would have been such a neutralization of the anti-slavery amendment as would authorize and sustain all the State laws already passed for the practical re-enslavement of the negro, with such additional enactments as would have made them cruelly effective. With the South re-admitted and all its representatives acting in cordial co-operation with the Northern Democrats, the result must have been a deplorable degradation of the National character and an ignoble surrender to the enemies of the Union, thenceforth to be invested with the supreme direction of its government.

There was an unmistakable manifestation throughout the whole political canvass of 1866, by the more advanced section of the Republican party, in favor of demanding impartial suffrage as the basis of reconstruction in the South. It came from the people rather than from the political leaders. The latter class, with few exceptions, shunned the issue, preferring to wait until public sentiment should become more pronounced in favor of so radical a movement. But a large number of thinking people, who gave more heed to the absolute right of the question than to its political expediency, could not see how, with consistency, or even with good conscience and common sense, the Republican party could refrain from calling to its aid the only large mass of persons in the South whose loyalty could be implicitly trusted. To their apprehension it seemed little less than an absurdity, to proceed with a plan of reconstruction which would practically leave the State governments of the South under the control of the same men that brought on the civil war.

They were embarrassed, however, in this step by the constantly recurring obstacle presented by the constitutions of a majority of the loyal States. In five New-England States suffrage to the colored man was conceded, but in Connecticut only those negroes were allowed to vote who were admitted freedmen prior to 1818. New York permitted a negro to vote after he had been three years a citizen of the State and had been for one year the owner of a freehold worth two hundred and fifty dollars, free of all incumbrances. In every other Northern State none but "white men" were permitted to vote. Even Kansas, which entered the Union under the shadow of the civil war, after a prolonged and terrible struggle with the spirit of slavery, at once restricted suffrage to the white man; while Nevada, whose admission to the Union was after the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, denied suffrage to "any negro, Chinaman or mulatto." A still more recent test was applied. The question of admitting the negro to suffrage was submitted to popular vote in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the autumn of 1865, and at the same time in Colorado, when she was forming her constitution preparatory to seeking admission to the Union. In all four, under the control of the Republican party at the time, the proposition was defeated.

With these indisputable evidences of the unpopularity of negro suffrage in the great majority of the Northern States, there was ample excuse for the reluctance of leading statesmen to adopt it as a condition of reconstruction, and force it upon the South by law before it had been adopted by the moral sense of the North. The period, however, was one calculated to bring about very rapid changes in public opinion; and there had undoubtedly been great advance in the popular judgment concerning this question since the elections of the preceding year. The question was really in the position where it would be materially influenced by the course of events in the South. The violence and murder at New Orleans in July had changed the views of many men; and, while the more considerate and conservative tried to regard that outbreak as an exceptional occurrence, the mass of the Northern people feared that it indicated a dangerous sentiment among a people not yet fitted to be entrusted with the administration of a State Government.

While these views were rapidly taking form throughout the North, they were strongly tempered and restrained by the better hope that the people of the South would be able to restore such a feeling of confidence as would prevent the exaction of other conditions of reconstruction and the consequent postponement of the re-admission of the Southern States to representation. The average Republican sentiment of the North was well expressed by the Republican State Convention of New York, which, after reciting the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, and declaring that "That amendment commends itself, by its justice, humanity, and moderation, to every patriotic heart," made this important declaration: "That when any of the late insurgent States shall adopt that amendment, such State shall, at once, by its loyal representatives, be permitted to resume its place in Congress." This view was generally concurred in by the Western States; and, if the Southern States had accepted the broad invitation thus given, there is little doubt that before the close of the year they might have been restored to the enjoyment of every power and privilege under the National Constitution. There would have been opposition to it, but the weight of public influence, and the majority in both branches of Congress, would have been sure to secure this result.

[(1) Petroleum V. Nasby.]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us