Fifty Years of Public Service Part 12

I knew S. S. c.o.x ("Sunset" c.o.x, as he was called), as a member of the Forty-first Congress. He had served in some previous Congress as a member from Ohio; but when I knew him he was serving as a member from New York.

c.o.x was an able man, as a speaker, a writer, and a diplomat. He was always listened to with great respect and attention when he addressed the House, but a considerable amount of fun was poked at him after a certain occasion when he had interrupted General Butler a time or two in debate, and the General, finally losing patience, replied to one of his questions with the admonition: "Shoo, fly, don't bodder me!" I was present at the time; the galleries were filled, as they always were in those days; and when General Butler uttered this reproof the whole House, galleries, and floor, was in an uproar, maintaining the confusion for some minutes. When it seemed like subsiding, it would break out again and again, and so it continued for quite a while. When order was finally restored c.o.x undertook to reply; but he could not do so. He had been so crippled by the response of the audience to Butler's remark that he never recovered from it.

c.o.x was a splendid man. He always thought in those days that he had not been quite appreciated by his friends in the Democratic party, and they thought the same way; but he was so good-humored, and such a whole-souled man and so fond of wit that he really never did get what he was ent.i.tled to.

I was trying to pa.s.s a bill which I had prepared for the purpose of prohibiting and wiping out polygamy in Utah. I had reported the bill from the Committee on Territories, and I was doing my best to pa.s.s it. For some reason or other (afterwards I learned it was an ulterior reason to help out a friend), General Schenck undertook to defeat the measure, and for this purpose he asked to have it referred to the Committee on Judiciary. This committee probably had jurisdiction over the subject; I did not think so at the time, and believed that such a reference would kill the bill. He seemed to be making some headway with the Republicans, when c.o.x came over to me from the Democratic side of the House, and proposed that if I would yield to him for five minutes he would help me to pa.s.s the bill. I told him to go back to his seat and that I would yield to him directly. When I did c.o.x took the floor, and to my utter astonishment he denounced the bill as the most outrageous bill that had ever been brought before the House, declaring in the most spirited manner that of course it ought to be referred to the Judiciary Committee, because every one knew that such a reference would kill it.

But he was shrewder than I apprehended at the moment. His talk had the desired effect, for the Republicans who had been following Schneck determined that they would not be responsible for killing the bill; they came back to me, and the measure was pa.s.sed through the House by a substantial majority.

CHAPTER IX THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON 1865

As I look back now over the vista of years that have come and gone, it seems to me that I entered the Lower House of Congress just at the beginning of the most important period in all our history.

The great President had been a.s.sa.s.sinated; the war was over; Andrew Johnson, a Union Democrat, was President of the United States.

Reconstruction was the problem which confronted us, how to heal up the Nation's wounds and remake a Union which would endure for all time to come. These were the difficult conditions that had to be dealt with by the Thirty-ninth Congress.

Andrew Johnson was the queerest character that ever occupied the White House, and, with the exception of Lincoln only, he entered it under the most trying and difficult circ.u.mstances in all our history; but Lincoln had, what Johnson lacked, the support and confidence of the great Republican party. Johnson was never a Republican, and never pretended to be one. He was a lifelong Democrat, and a slave-holder as well; but he was loyal to the Union, no man living more so. As a Senator from Tennessee, alone of all the Southern Senators he faced his colleagues from the South in denouncing secession as treason. His subsequent phenomenal course in armed opposition to the rebellion brought about his nomination for the Vice-Presidency as a shrewd stroke to secure the support of the War Democrats of the North and the Union men of his State and section.

He came to the Presidency under the cloud of President Lincoln's a.s.sa.s.sination, when the majority of the North believed that a Southern conspiracy had laid the great President low. The seceding States hated him as a traitor to his own section; the North distrusted him as a Democrat. At first I believe the very radical element of the Republican party in Congress, led by old Ben Wade of Ohio, than whom there was no more unsafe man in either house of Congress, were disposed, if not openly to rejoice, which they dared not do, to see with some secret satisfaction the entrance of Johnson into the White House. It is well known that Wade did say in his first interview with President Johnson, when, as a member of the committee on the conduct of the war, he waited on him, "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the G.o.ds, there will be no more trouble in running the Government."

I have already, in another chapter, described the scene which took place in the Senate chamber when Johnson was inducted into office as Vice-President; the exhibition he made of himself at the time of taking the oath of office, in the presence of the President of the United States and the representatives of the Governments of the world. All this, advertised at the time in the opposition press, added to the prejudice against Johnson in the North and made his position more trying and difficult.

There were two striking points in Johnson's character, and I knew him well: First, his loyalty to the Union; and, second, his utter fearlessness of character. He could not be cowed; old Ben Wade, Sumner, Stevens, all the great leaders of that day could not, through fear, influence him one particle.

In 1861, when he was being made the target of all sorts of threats on account of his solitary stand against secession in the Senate, he let fall this characteristic utterance:

"I want to say, not boastingly, with no anger in my bosom, that these two eyes of mine have never looked upon anything in the shape of mortal man that this heart has feared."

This utterance probably ill.u.s.trates Johnson's character more clearly than anything that I could say. He sought rather than avoided a fight. Headstrong, domineering, having fought his way in a State filled with aristocratic Southerners, from the cla.s.s of so-called "low whites" to the highest position in the United States, he did not readily yield to the dictates of the dominating forces in Congress.

Lincoln had a well-defined policy of reconstruction. Indeed, so liberal was he disposed to be in his treatment of the Southern States, that immediately after the surrender of Richmond he would have recognized the old State Government of Virginia had it not been for the peremptory veto of Stanton. Congress was not in session when Johnson came to the Presidency in April, 1865. To do him no more than simple justice, I firmly believe that he wanted to follow out, in reconstruction, what he thought was the policy of Mr. Lincoln, and in this he was guided largely by the advice of Mr. Seward.

But there was this difference. Johnson was, probably in good faith, pursuing the Lincoln policy of reconstruction; but when the Legislatures and Executives of the Southern States began openly pa.s.sing laws and executing them so that the negro was substantially placed back into slavery, practically nullifying the results of the awful struggle, the untold loss of life and treasure, Mr.

Lincoln certainly would have receded and would have dealt with the South with an iron hand, as Congress had determined to do, and as General Grant was compelled to do when he a.s.sumed the Presidency.

From April to the rea.s.sembling of Congress in December, Johnson had a free hand in dealing with the seceded States, and he was not slow to take advantage of it. He seemed disposed to recognize the old State Governments; to restrict the suffrage to the whites; to exercise freely the pardoning power in the way of extending executive clemency not only to almost all cla.s.ses, but to every individual who would apply for it. The result was, it seemed to be certain that if the Johnson policy were carried out to the fullest extent, the supremacy of the Republican party in the councils of the Nation would be at stake.

To express it in a word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of reconstruction was the firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party, and by restoring the Democrats to power bring back Southern supremacy and Northern va.s.salage.

The impeachment, in a word, was the culmination of the struggle between the legislative and the executive departments of the Government over the problem of reconstruction. The legislative department claimed exclusive jurisdiction over reconstruction; the executive claimed that it alone was competent to deal with the subject.

This is a very brief summary of the conditions which confronted us when I entered the Thirty-ninth Congress. Representatives of the eleven seceding States were there to claim their seats in Congress.

The Republican members met in caucus the Sat.u.r.day evening preceding the meeting of Congress on Monday. I, as a member-elect, was present, and I remember how old Thaddeus Stevens at once a.s.sumed the dominating control in opposition to the President's plan.

Stevens was a most remarkable character,--one of the most remarkable in the legislative history of the United States. He believed firmly in negro equality and negro suffrage. As one writer eloquently expresses it:

"According to his creed, the insurgent States were conquered provinces to be shaped into a paradise for the freedman and a h.e.l.l for the rebel. His eye shot over the blackened southern land; he saw the carnage, the desolation, the starvation, and the shame; and like a battered old warhorse, he flung up his frontlet, sniffed the tainted breeze, and snorted 'Ha, Ha!'"

It was at once determined by the Republican majority in Congress that the representatives of the eleven seceding States should not be admitted. The Const.i.tution expressly gives to the House and Senate the exclusive power to judge of the admission and qualification of its own members.

We were surprised at the moderation of the President's message, which came in on Tuesday after Congress a.s.sembled. In tone and general character the message was wholly unlike Johnson. It was an admirable state doc.u.ment, one of the finest from a literary and probably from every other standpoint that ever came from an Executive to Congress. It was thought at the time that Mr. Seward wrote it, but it has since been a.s.serted that it was the product of that foremost of American historians, J. C. Bancroft, one of Mr. Johnson's close personal friends.

There existed three theories of dealing with the Southern States: one was the President's theory of recognizing the State Governments, allowing the States to deal with the suffrage question as they might see fit; the Stevens policy of wiping out all State lines and dealing with the regions as conquered military provinces; and the Sumner theory of treating them as organized territories, recognizing the State lines.

Johnson dealt in a masterful manner with the subject in his message.

He said:

"States, with proper limitations of power, are essential to the existence of the Const.i.tution of the United States.

"The perpetuity of the Const.i.tution bring with it the perpetuity of the States; their mutual relations makes us what we are, and in our political system this connection is indissoluble. The whole cannot exist without the parts nor the parts without the whole.

So long as the Const.i.tution of the United States endures, the States will endure; the destruction of the one is the destruction of the other; the preservation of the one is the preservation of the other.

"The true theory is that all pretended acts of secession were, from the beginning, null and void. The States cannot commit treason, nor screen the individual citizens who may have committed treason, any more than they can make valid treaties or engage in lawful commerce with any foreign power. The States attempting to secede placed themselves in a condition where their vitality was impaired but not extinguished, their functions suspended but not destroyed."

It was but the Johnson theory which we presented to the world, denying the right of any State to secede; a.s.serting the perpetuity, the indissolubility of the Union.

But the question was, whether the members from the seceding States should be admitted to the Senate and House; and he dealt with this most difficult problem in a statesmanlike way. He said:

"The amendment to the Const.i.tution being adopted, it would remain for the States whose powers have been so long in abeyance, to resume their places in the two branches of the National Legislature, and thereby complete the work of restoration. Here it is for you, fellow citizens of the Senate, and for you, fellow citizens of the House of Representatives, to judge, each of you for yourselves, of the elections, returns and qualifications of your own members."

On the suffrage question, he said:

"On the propriety of making freedmen electors by proclamation of the Executive, I took for my counsel the Const.i.tution itself, the interpretations of that instrument by its authors, and their contemporaries, and the recent legislation of Congress. They all unite in inculcating the doctrine that the regulation of the suffrage is a power exclusively for the States. So fixed was this reservation of power in the habits of the people, and so unquestioned has been the interpretation of the Const.i.tution, that during the Civil War the late President never harbored the purpose,--certainly never avowed it,--of disregarding it; and in acts of Congress nothing can be found to sanction any departure by the Executive from a policy which has so uniformly obtained."

Aside from the worst radicals, the message pleased every one, the country at large and the majority in Congress; and there was a general disposition to give the President a reasonably free hand in working out his plan of reconstruction. But as I stated, the Legislatures of the Southern States and their Executives a.s.sumed so domineering an att.i.tude, practically wiping out the results of the war, that the Republican majority in Congress a.s.sumed it to be its duty to take control from the Executive.

What determined Johnson in his course, I do not know. It was thought that he would be a radical of radicals. Being of the "poor white" cla.s.s, he may have been flattered by the attentions showered on him by the old Southern aristocrats. Writers of this period have frequently given that as a reason. My own belief has been that he was far too strong a man to be governed in so vital a matter by so trivial a cause. My conviction is that the radical Republican leaders in the House were right; that he believed in the old Democratic party, aside from his loyalty to the Union; and was a Democrat determined to turn the Government over to the Democratic party, reconstructed on a Union basis.

I cannot undertake to go into all the long details of the memorable struggle. As I look back over the history of it now, it seems to me to bear a close resemblance to the beginning of the French Revolution, to the struggle between the States General of France and Louis XVI. Might we not, if things had turned differently, drifted into chaos and revolution? If Johnson had been impeached and refused to submit, adopting the same tactics as did Stanton in retaining the War Department; had Ben Wade taken the oath of office and demanded possession, Heaven only knows what might have been the result.

But reminiscing in this way, as I cannot avoid doing when I think back over those terrible times, I lose the continuity of my subject.

An extension to the Freedman's Bureau bill was pa.s.sed, was promptly vetoed by the Executive, the veto was as promptly overruled by the House, where there was no substantial opposition, but the Senate failed to pa.s.s the bill, the veto of the President to the contrary notwithstanding.

I had not the remotest idea that Johnson would dare to veto the Freedman's Bureau bill, and I made a speech on the subject, declaring a firm conviction to that effect. A veto at that time was almost unheard of. Except during the administration of Tyler, no important bill had ever been vetoed by an Executive. It came as a shock to Congress and the country. Excitement reigned supreme. The question was: "Should the bill pa.s.s the veto of the President regardless thereof?"

Not the slightest difficulty existed in the House; Thaddeus Stevens had too complete control of that body to allow any question concerning it there. The bill, therefore, was promptly pa.s.sed over the veto of the President.

But the situation in the Senate was different. At this time the Sumner-Wade radical element did not have the necessary two-thirds majority, and the bill failed to pa.s.s over the veto of the President.

The war between the executive and legislative departments of the Government had fairly commenced, and the first victory had been won by the President.

The Civil Rights bill, drawn and introduced by Judge Trumbull, than whom there was no greater lawyer in the United States Senate, in January, 1866, on the rea.s.sembling of Congress, was pa.s.sed. Then began the real struggle on the part of the radicals in the Senate, headed by Sumner and Wade, to muster the necessary two-thirds majority to pa.s.s a bill over the veto of the President.

Let me digress here to say a word in reference to Charles Sumner.

For ten years he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate, and no man, by education, experience, knowledge of world politics, and travel, was ever more fitted to occupy that high position. He was one of the most cultivated men of his day, a radical, and filled one of the most important places in the history of his time. When he entered the Senate, the South dominated this Government; the great triumvirate, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, had just pa.s.sed. The day he entered, Clay for the last time, feeble, emaciated, appeared on the Senate floor.

Compromise was the word, and the Southerners so dominated that it was considered treason to mention the slavery question. Charles Sumner was an abolitionist; he was not afraid, and at the very first opportunity he took the floor and denounced the inst.i.tution in no unmeasured terms. Chase and Seward were present that day, and quickly followed Sumner's lead. Seward, however, was far more conservative than either Sumner or Chase.

It was the mission of Charles Sumner to awake the public conscience to the horrors of slavery. He performed his duty unfalteringly, and it almost cost him his life. Mr. Lincoln was the only man living who ever managed Charles Sumner, or could use him for his purpose. Sumner's end has always seemed to me most pitiful.

Removed from his high position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, followed relentlessly by the enmity of President Grant, than at the very acme of his fame; drifting from the Republican party, his own State repudiating him, Charles Sumner died of a broken heart.