History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 42

The President's first objection to the bill was that it was not in accordance with the wishes of the people to whom it was to apply, they having "solemnly and with such unanimity" protested against it.

It seemed to the President that Congress sustained a relation to the inhabitants of the District of Columbia a.n.a.logous to that of a legislature to the people of a State, and "should have a like respect for the will and interests of its inhabitants."

Without actually bringing the charge of unconst.i.tutionality against this measure, the President declared "that Congress is bound to observe the letter and spirit of the Const.i.tution, as well in the enactment of local laws for the Seat of Government, as in legislation common to the entire Union."

The Civil Rights Bill having become a law, it was, in the opinion of the President, a sufficient protection for the negro. "It can not be urged," said he, "that the proposed extension of suffrage in the District of Columbia is necessary to enable persons of color to protect either their interests or their rights."

The President argued that the negroes were unfitted for the exercise of the elective franchise, and "can not be expected correctly to comprehend the duties and responsibilities which pertain to suffrage.

It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot-box a new cla.s.s of voters not qualified for the exercise of the elective franchise, we weaken our system of government instead of adding to its strength and durability. It may be safely a.s.sumed that no political truth is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction."

The President occupied a considerable portion of his Message with a warning to the people against the dangers of the abuse of legislative power. He quoted from Judge Story that the legislative branch may absorb all the powers of the government. He quoted also the language of Mr. Jefferson that one hundred and seventy tyrants are more dangerous than one tyrant.

The statements of the President in opposition to the bill were characterized by Mr. Sherman as "but a _resume_ of the arguments already adduced in the Senate," hence but little effort was made by the friends of the measure to reply.

Mr. Sherman, in noticing the President's statements in regard to the danger of invasions by Congress of the just powers of the executive and judicial departments, said, "I do not think that there is any occasion for such a warning, because I am not aware that in this bill Congress has ever a.s.sumed any doubtful power. The power of Congress over this District is without limit, and, therefore, in prescribing who shall vote for mayor and city council of this city it can not be claimed that we usurp power or exercise a doubtful power.

"There can be but little danger from Congress; for our acts are but the reflection of the will of the people. The recent acts of Congress at the last session, those acts upon which the President and Congress separated, were submitted to the people, and they decided in favor of Congress. Unless, therefore, there is an inherent danger from a republican government, resting solely upon the will of the people, there is no occasion for the warning of the President. Unless the judgment of one man is better than the combined judgment of a great majority, he should have respected their decision, and not continue a controversy in which our common const.i.tuency have decided that he was wrong."

The last speech, before taking the vote, was made by Mr. Doolittle.

"Men speak," said he, "of universal negro suffrage as having been spoken in favor of in the late election. There is not a State in this Union, outside of New England, which would vote in favor of universal negro suffrage. When gentlemen tell me that the people of the whole North, by any thing that transpired in the late election, have decided in favor of universal, unqualified negro suffrage, they a.s.sume that for which there is no foundation whatever."

The question being taken whether the bill should pa.s.s over the President's veto, the Senate decided in the affirmative by a vote of twenty-nine yeas to ten nays.

The next day, January 8th, the bill was pa.s.sed over the veto by the House of Representatives, without debate, by a vote of one hundred and thirteen yeas to thirty-eight nays. The Speaker then declared that notwithstanding the objections of the President of the United States, the act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia had become a law.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE MILITARY RECONSTRUCTION ACT.

Proposition by Mr. Stevens -- "Piratical Governments" not to be Recognized -- The Military Feature Introduced -- Mr.

Schofield's Dog -- The Only Hope of Mr. Hise -- Conversation Concerning the Reconstruction Committee -- Censure of a Member -- A Military Bill Reported -- War Predicted -- The "Blaine Amendment" -- Bill Pa.s.ses the House -- In the Senate -- Proposition to Amend -- Mr. Mcdougall Desires Liberty of Speech -- Mr. Doolittle Pleads for the Life of the Republic -- Mr. Sherman's Amendment -- Pa.s.sage in the Senate -- Discussion and Non-concurrence in the House -- The Senate Unyielding -- Qualified Concurrence of the House -- The Veto -- "The Funeral of the Nation" -- The Act -- Supplementary Legislation.

Soon after the pa.s.sage of the bill extending the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, Congress was occupied in devising and discussing a practical and efficient measure for the reconstruction of the rebel States. The germ of the great "Act for the more efficient government of the rebel States" is to be found in the previous session of Congress in a proposition made by Mr. Stevens on the 28th of May "to enable the States lately in rebellion to regain their privileges in the Union."

The Const.i.tutional Amendment had been eliminated in the Senate of features which Mr. Stevens regarded as of great importance. There was an indisposition on the part of the House to declaring by an act of Congress that the rebel States should be restored on the sole condition of their accepting and ratifying the Const.i.tutional Amendment. The bill proposed by Mr. Stevens was designed by its author as a plan of restoration to take the place of the proposition which accompanied the Const.i.tutional Amendment. This bill recognized the _de facto_ State governments at the South as valid "for munic.i.p.al purposes." It required the President to issue a proclamation within six months calling conventions to form legitimate State const.i.tutions, which should be ratified by the people. All male citizens above twenty-one years of age should be voters, and should be eligible to membership in these const.i.tutional conventions. All persons who held office under the "government called the Confederate States of America," or swore allegiance thereto, were declared to have forfeited their citizenship, and were required to be naturalized as foreigners before being allowed to vote. All citizens should be placed upon an equal footing in the reorganized States.

On the 28th of July, the last day of the session, Mr. Stevens brought this bill to the notice of the House, without demanding any action upon it. He made a solemn and affecting appeal to the House, and insisted upon it as the great duty of Congress to give all loyal men, white and black, the means of self-protection. "In this, perhaps my final action," said he, "on this great question, upon careful review, I can see nothing in my political course, especially in regard to human freedom, which I could wish to have expurged or changed."

On the 19th of December, 1866, a few days after the rea.s.sembling of Congress for the second session, Mr. Stevens called up his bill for the purpose of amending it and putting it in proper shape for the consideration of Congress after the holidays.

On the 3d of January, 1867, Mr. Stevens addressed the House in favor of his plan of reconstruction. "This bill," said he, "is designed to enable loyal men, so far as I could discriminate them in these States, to form governments which shall be in loyal hands, and may protect them from outrages."

As an amendment to this bill, Mr. Ashley, chairman of the Committee on Territories, offered a subst.i.tute which was intended to establish provisional governments in the rebel States.

Mr. Pike brought in review before the House three modes of dealing with the rebel States which had been proposed for the consideration and decision of Congress. The first was the immediate admission of the States into a full partic.i.p.ation in the Government, treating them as if they had never been in rebellion. The second was "the let-alone policy, which would merely refuse them representation until they had adopted the const.i.tutional amendments." The third mode was "the immediate action by Congress in superseding the governments of those States set up by the President in 1865, and establishing in their place governments founded upon loyalty and universal suffrage." The policy last mentioned was advocated by Mr. Pike. "It has got to be time for action," said he, "if we are to fulfill the reasonable expectations of the country during the life of this Congress."

On the 7th of January Mr. Stevens proposed to amend his bill by inserting a provision that no person should be disfranchised as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they were every day whipping negroes for trivial offenses. He had heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every adult negro they knew of.

On the 8th of January a speech was made by Mr. Broomall advocating the pa.s.sage of the bill before the House. "Can the negro in the South preserve his civil rights without political ones?" he asked. "Let the convention riot of New Orleans answer; let the terrible three days in Memphis answer. In the latter city three hundred negroes, who had periled their lives in the service of their country, and still wore its uniform, were compelled to look on while the officers of the law, elected by white men, set their dwellings in flames and fired upon their wives and children as they escaped from the doors and windows.

Their churches and school-houses were burned because they were their churches and school-houses. Yet no arrest, no conviction, no punishment awaits the perpetrators of these deeds, who walk in open day and boast of their enormities, because, forsooth, this is a white man's Government."

On the 16th of January the discussion was resumed. Mr. Paine first addressed the House. He opposed the second section of the bill, which recognized the _de facto_ governments of the rebel States as valid for munic.i.p.al purposes. "I am surprised," said he, "that the gentleman from Pennsylvania should be ready, voluntarily, to a.s.sume this burden of responsibility for the anarchy of murder, robbery, and arson which reigns in these so-called _de facto_ governments. He may be able to get this fearful burden upon his back; but if he does, I warn him of the danger that the sands of his life will all run out before he will be able to shake it off. He will have these piratical governments on his hands voluntarily recognized as valid for munic.i.p.al purposes until duly altered. He will have gratuitously become a copartner in the guilt which hitherto has rested upon the souls of Andrew Johnson and his Northern and Southern satellites, but which thenceforth will rest on his soul also until he can contrive duly to alter these governments. And so it will happen that the great Union party to which he belongs, and to which I belong, will become implicated, for how long a time G.o.d only knows, in this unspeakable iniquity which daily and hourly cries to Heaven from every rood of rebel soil for vengeance on these monsters."

Mr. Bingham moved to refer the two bills--that of Mr. Stevens and that of Mr. Ashley--to the Committee on Reconstruction. He opposed these bills as "a substantial denial of the right of the great people who saved this republic by arms to save it by fundamental law." He advocated the propriety of making the proposed Const.i.tutional Amendment the basis of reconstruction. It had already received the ratification of the Legislatures representing not less than twelve millions of the people of this nation. The fact that all the rebel States which had considered the amendment in their Legislatures had rejected it did not invalidate this mode of reconstruction. "Those insurrectionary States," said he, "have no power whatever as States of this Union, and can not lawfully restrain, for a single moment, that great body of freemen who cover this continent from ocean to ocean, now organized States of the Union and represented here, in their fixed purpose and undoubted legal right to incorporate the amendment into the Const.i.tution of the United States."

Mr. Bingham maintained that Congress has the power, without restriction by the Executive or the Supreme Court, to "propose amendments to the Const.i.tutions, and to decide finally the question of the ratification thereof, as well as to legislate for the nation." "I look upon both these bills," said Mr. Bingham, "as a manifest departure from the spirit and intent of our Const.i.tutional Amendment.

I look upon it as an attempt to take away from the people of the States lately in rebellion that protection which you have attempted to secure to them by your Const.i.tutional Amendment."

Mr. Dawson, in a speech of an hour's duration, maintained the doctrine, which he announced as that which had given shape to presidential policy, "that the attempt at secession having been suppressed by the physical power of the Government, the States, whose authority was usurped by the parties to the movement, have never, at any time, been out of the Union; and that having once expressed their acquiescence in the result of the contest and renewed their allegiance to the Union, they are, at the same time, restored to all the rights and duties of the adhering States."

On the other hand, the policy of Congress, in the opinion of Mr.

Dawson, was "a shameless outrage upon justice and every conservative principle,"--a "usurpation of Federal powers and a violation of State rights."

Mr. Maynard gave expression to his opinions by asking the significant question, "Whether the men who went into the rebellion did not by connecting themselves with a foreign government, by every act of which they were capable, denude themselves of their citizenship--whether they are not to be held and taken by this Government now as men denuded of their citizenship, having no rights as citizens except such as the legislative power of this Government may choose to confer upon them? In other words, is not the question on our part one of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, not of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt?"

On the 17th of January, Mr. Baker addressed the House in favor of referring the pending bill to the Committee on Reconstruction. He was opposed to the use of the term "Government," without qualification or restriction, as applied to the lately revolted States. He opposed the second section, as causing the _de facto_ governments to become valid for munic.i.p.al purposes long before the scheme of reconstruction contemplated by the bill is effectuated. "To recognize them in advance," said he, "would be to incur the danger of further embarra.s.sing the whole subject by the illogical consequences of our own illogical procedure."

At this stage Mr. Stevens arose and modified his subst.i.tute by withdrawing the second section, which contained the provision objected to by Mr. Baker as well as by his "ardent friend" Mr. Paine. Mr. Baker objected to that feature of the bill which provided that none should be deprived of the right to vote as a punishment for any crime save insurrection or treason. "The penitentiaries of these States," said he, "might disgorge their inmates upon the polls under the operation of this bill."

Mr. Grinnell was opposed to sending the question to the Committee on Reconstruction. He did not think it the most modest proposition in the world for Mr. Bingham to urge the reference to his committee of a great question which, the House generally desired to consider. "Let us have no delay," said he, "no recommitment, rather the earliest action upon this bill, as the requirement of the people who have saved the country, what the suffering implore, what justice demands, and what I believe G.o.d will approve."

"It is to my mind most clear," said Mr. Donnelly, in a speech upon the pending question, "that slavery having ceased to exist, the slaves became citizens; being citizens they are a part of the people, and being a part of the people no organization deserves a moment's consideration at our hands which attempts to ignore them."

Of the Southern States as under rebel rule, Mr. Donnelly remarked: "The whites are to make the laws, execute the laws, interpret the laws, and write the history of their own deeds; but below them; under them, there is to be a vast population--a majority of the whole people--seething and writhing in a condition of suffering, darkness, and wretchedness unparalleled in the world. And this is to be an American State! This is to be a component part of the great, humane, Christian republic of the world."

"It is hard," said Mr. Eldridge, in a speech against the bill, "sad to stand silently by and see the republic overthrown. It is indeed appalling to those accustomed from early childhood to revere and love the Const.i.tution, to feel that it is in the keeping of those having the power and determination to destroy it. With the pa.s.sage of this bill must die every hope and vestige of the government of the Const.i.tution. It is indeed the final breaking up and dissolution of the union of the States by the usurpation and revolutionary act of Congress."

"Your work of restoration," said Mr. Warner, "will never commence until the Congress of the United States a.s.sumes to be one of the departments of the General Government. It will never commence until you have declared, in the language of the Supreme Court, that the Executive, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, 'can not exercise a civil function.'"

"In less than two brief years of office," said Mr. Warner, speaking of the President, "he has exercised more questionable powers, a.s.sumed more doubtful const.i.tutional functions, obliterated more const.i.tutional barriers, and interposed more corrupt schemes to the expression of the popular sentiment or will of the people than all other Executives since the existence of the Government."

Mr. Spalding feared that the bill, should it become a law, would be found defective in not affording any protection to that loyal cla.s.s of the inhabitants of those communities upon whom the elective franchise was conferred. "These colored men," said he, "who are now recognized by the Government as possessing the rights of freemen, are to be in jeopardy of being shot down like so many dogs when they attempt to visit the polls." He then offered an amendment, which was accepted by Mr. Stevens, by which a section was added to the bill suspending the writ of _habeas corpus_ in the ten rebel States, and placing them under martial law until they should be admitted to representation in Congress under the provisions of the bill. In this section thus introduced may be seen the origin of that feature which, in an enlarged and extended form, gave character to the important measure ultimately adopted by Congress, which is popularly known as the "Military Reconstruction Bill."

The discussion was continued by Mr. Koontz. "It is a solemn, imperative duty," said he, "that this nation owes to its colored people to protect them against their own and the nation's foes. It would be a burning, lasting disgrace to the nation were it to hand them over to their enemies. I know of no way in which this protection can be better given than by extending to them the elective franchise.

Place the ballot in the hands of the black man and you give him that which insures him respect as well as protection."

Mr. Scofield maintained that the ratification of the Const.i.tutional Amendment by three-fourths of the loyal States was all that was necessary. "Twenty-three of the twenty-six States elected Legislatures instructed to adopt it. Very soon these twenty-three States, having a population in 1860 of twenty-one million five hundred thousand, and not less than twenty-seven millions now, will send to a perfidious Secretary the official evidence of the people's will. Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky alone give a negative answer. Who, then, stands in the way? One old man who is charged by law with the duty of proclaiming the adoption of the amendment, but who has determined to incorporate into the Union the _debris_ of the late Confederacy--he stands in the way."

"The Secretary is clever in work of this kind. An English n.o.bleman was at one time exhibiting his kennel to an American friend, and pa.s.sing by many of his showiest bloods, they came upon one that seemed nearly used up. 'This,' said the n.o.bleman, 'is the most valuable animal in the pack, although he is old, lame, blind, and deaf.' 'How is that?'

inquired the visitor. The n.o.bleman explained: 'His education was good, to begin with, and his wonderful sense of smell is still unimpaired.

We only take him out to catch the scent, and put the puppies on the track, and then return him to the kennel.' Do not suppose that I intend any comparison between the Secretary of State and that veteran hunter. Such a comparison would be neither dignified nor truthful, because the Englishman went on to say, 'I have owned that dog for thirteen years, and, hard as he looks, he never bit the hand that fed him nor barked on a false trail.'"

The laughter and applause which followed, were checked by the Speaker's gavel, which Mr. Schofield mistook for a notice to quit.

"Has my time expired?" asked he. "It has not," replied the Speaker.