History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 44

Mr. Stevens, having been remonstrated with by a Democratic member for expressing a wish to bring the question to vote without a prolonged debate, replied: "I am very willing that the debate which has been going on here for three weeks shall all be read over by the gentleman whenever he can take time to read it." "On behalf of the American people," said the same member, "I ask more time for debate." "I will see what the American people think of it in the morning. If they are generally for a prolongation of the debate, of course I will go with them. But I will wait until then, in order to ascertain what the people want."

On the following day, February 7th, Mr. Stevens introduced the discussion with a brief speech. "This bill provides," said he, that "the ten disorganized States shall be divided into five military districts, and that the commander of the army shall take charge of them through his lieutenants as governors, or you may call them commandants if you choose, not below the grade of brigadiers, who shall have the general supervision of the peace, quiet, and the protection of the people, loyal and disloyal, who reside within those precincts; and that to do so he may use, as the law of nations would authorize him to do, the legal tribunals where-ever he may deem them competent; but they are to be considered of no validity _per se_, of no intrinsic force, no force in consequence of their origin, the question being wholly within the power of the conqueror, and to remain until that conqueror shall permanently supply their place with something else. I will say, in brief, that is the whole bill. It does not need much examination. One night's rest after its reading is enough to digest it."

"Of all the various plans," said Mr. Brandegee, "which have been discussed in this hall for the past two years, to my mind it seems the plainest, the most appropriate, the freest from const.i.tutional objection, and the best calculated to accomplish the master aims of reconstruction.

"It begins the work of reconstruction at the right end, and employs the right tools for its accomplishment. It begins at the point where Grant left off the work, at Appomattox Court-house, and it holds those revolted communities in the grasp of war until the rebellion shall have laid down its spirit, as two years ago it formally laid down its arms."

Mr. Le Blond characterized the Committee on Reconstruction as "the maelstrom committee, which swallows up every thing that is good and gives out every thing that is evil."

"There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech, "but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on the part of the American people to defend themselves.

"I do not desire war; but as one American citizen, I do prefer war to cowardly submission and total destruction of the fundamental principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, nothing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded upon the b.l.o.o.d.y battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the American people again."

"Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, "that in this Congress we can find men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the right of trial by jury, the great privilege of _habeas corpus_; men who are willing to reverse the axiom that the military should be subordinate to the civil power, and to establish the abhorred doctrine resisted by the brave and free men of every age, that the military should be superior to the civil authority?"

"It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, "that the change proposed to be made by this bill in the management of the Southern States is so violent as gentlemen on the other side would have us suppose. They seem to believe that now the people of those States govern themselves; but the truth is, since the suppression of the rebellion, that is, since the surrender of the rebel armies in 1865, the government of those States have been virtually in the hands of the President of the United States.

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States from the people to the officers of the army, but only from the President to those officers."

Mr. Farnsworth, who next addressed the House, gave numerous authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated by rebels upon Union soldiers and citizens. "It is no longer a question of doubt," said he, "it can not be denied that the loyal men, the Union soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized and disloyal States are not protected. They are murdered with impunity; they are despoiled of their goods and their property; they are banished, scattered, driven from the country."

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic language. "You will carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have pa.s.sed through is not at all to be compared."

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. "Free government," said he, "brought him from a poor boy to as great a man as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washington and will yet receive it. He will not submit to have the citadel of liberty invaded and destroyed without using the civil and military powers to prevent it. He will maintain the Const.i.tution, sir, even to the spilling of blood."

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord with his theory by subst.i.tuting the phrase "the said States" for the words "so-called States." He also proposed some limitation of the extent to which the _habeas corpus_ should be suspended. "When these men," said he, "shall have fulfilled their obligations" and when the great people themselves shall have put, by their own rightful authority, into the fundamental law the sublime decree, the nation's will, that no State shall deny to any mortal man the equal protection of the laws--not of the laws of South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State, and above all, sir, of the great law, the Const.i.tution of our own country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to Oregon, and from Maine to Florida--then, sir, by a.s.senting thereto those States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, I labor and for that I strive."

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, "is to be left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the color of authority they exercise under illegal but _de facto_ State governments to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them any protection against murder and all the wrongs that rebels can inflict on loyal men, we can not, dare not refuse to pa.s.s this bill."

Since, however, the bill did not propose any "plan of reorganizing State governments in the late rebel States," Mr. Lawrence read amendments which he desired to introduce at the proper time, providing that the laws of the District of Columbia, "not locally inapplicable,"

should be in force in the rebel territory and that the United States courts should have jurisdiction.

Mr. Hise declared this a "stupid, cruel, unwise, and unconst.i.tutional measure." "If I had not been prepared," said he, "by other measures. .h.i.therto adopted and others. .h.i.therto introduced into this House, I should not have been less startled at the introduction of this than if I had received the sudden intelligence that the ten States enumerated in this bill had been sunk by some great convulsion of nature and submerged under an oceanic deluge."

"This is not, strictly speaking, a measure of reconstruction," said Mr. Ingersoll, "but a measure looking simply to the enforcement of order. It seems to me clear, then, that, not only under the laws of war and under the laws of nations, but under the express authority of the Const.i.tution itself, Congress possesses the rightful authority to establish military governments, as proposed by the bill under consideration."

Referring to Mr. Le Blond's antic.i.p.ated war, Mr. Ingersoll said: "I desire to ask the gentleman where he is going to get his soldiers to make war upon the Government and the Congress of the United States?

You will hardly find them in the rebel States. They have had enough of war; they have been thoroughly whipped, and do not desire to be whipped again. You will not get them from the loyal people of the Northern or Southern States. If you get any at all, you may drum up a few recruits from the Democratic ranks, but in the present weak and shattered condition of that party you would hardly be able to raise a very formidable army, and I tell the gentleman if the party decreases in the same ratio in the coming year as it has in the last, the whole party together would not form a respectable _corps d'armee_."

"How about the bread and b.u.t.ter brigade?" interposed a member.

"I did not think of that heroic and patriotic band," replied Mr.

Ingersoll, "but I do not apprehend much danger from that source; it would be a bloodless conflict; we would have no use either for the sword or musket; all that would be necessary to make a conquest over them would be found in the commissary department. Order out the bread and b.u.t.ter and peace would be restored."

Mr. Shanklin warned the House of the danger of establishing military governments in the South. "You may be in the plenitude of power to-day," he said, in conclusion, "and you may be ousted to-morrow. And I hope, if you do not cease these outrages upon the people of the country, such as you propose here, such as are attempting to be inflicted by your Freedmen's Bureau and your Civil Rights Bills, that the time will not be long before that army which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] seemed to think could not be raised--an army armed with ballots, and not with bayonet--will march to the polls and hurl the advocates of this and its kindred measures out of their places, and fill them with men who appreciate more highly and justly the rights of citizens and of freemen, with statesmen whose minds can grasp our whole country and its rights and its wants, and whose hearts are in sympathy with the n.o.ble, the brave, and the just, whether they live in the sunny South or the ice-bound regions of the North."

"I hail this measure," said Mr. Thayer, "as interrupting this baleful calm, which, if not disturbed by a proper exercise of legislative power upon this subject, may be succeeded by disaster and collision.

It furnishes at least an initial point from which we can start in the consideration and adjustment of the great question of reconstruction.

I regard this as a measure which lays the grasp of Congress upon this great question--a grasp which is to hold on to it until it shall be finally settled. I regard it as a measure which is to take that great question out of that sea of embarra.s.sment and sluggish inactivity in which, through the course which the President has thought proper to pursue, it now rests."

"For our neglect," said Mr. Harding, of Illinois, "to exert the military power of the Government, we are responsible for the blood and suffering which disgrace this republic. Let us go back, then, or rather let us come up to where we were before, and exercise jurisdiction over the territory conquered from the rebels, which jurisdiction the President has given up to those rebels, to the great suffering and injury of the Government and of loyal people."

"Let it be remembered all the time," said Mr. Sh.e.l.labarger, "that your country has a right to its life, and that the powers of your Government are given for its preservation. Let it be remembered that one portion of your republic has fallen into a state of rebellion, and is still in a state of war against your Government, and that the powers of the Government are to be exercised for the purposes of the protection and the defense of the loyal, and the disloyal too, in that part of the republic; and that, for the purpose of that defense, you are authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_, and to exercise such extraordinary powers as are necessary to the preservation of the great life of the nation. Let these things be remembered; and then let it also be remembered that the law-making power of the Government not only controls the President, but controls the purposes and the ends and the objects of war, and, of course, the movements of the armies that are to be employed in war. Let these things be remembered, and it seems to me that all the difficulties with which it is sought to surround this measure will at once disappear."

"What carried our elections overwhelmingly?" asked Mr. Hotchkiss. "It was the story of the Southern refugees told to the people of the North and the West. They told us they demanded protection. They enlisted the sympathy of Northern soldiers by telling that the very guerrillas who hung upon the skirts of our army during the war were now murdering Southern soldiers who fought on the Union side, and murdering peaceful citizens, murdering black men who were our allies. We promised the people if we were indorsed we would come back here and protect them, and yet not a step has been taken."

Mr. Griswold regretted to vote against a measure proposed by those whom he believed to "have at heart the best interest of the whole country." "It seems to me," said he, "that the provisions of this bill will lead us into greater danger than is justified by the evils we seek to correct. It is, Mr. Speaker, a tremendous stride that we propose to make by this bill to subject to military control ten million people who have once been partners of this common country, and who are to be united with us in its future trials and fortunes. This bill proposes to place all the rights of life, liberty, and happiness exclusively in the control of a mere military captain. This bill contains no provisions for the establishment in the future of civil governments there; it simply provides that for an indefinite period in the future a purely military power shall have exclusive control and jurisdiction there. That is, therefore, to me, another and a very serious objection to this bill."

"There is a necessity," said Mr. Raymond, "for some measure of protection to the people of the Southern States. I think it is clear that life, liberty, and property are not properly guarded by law, are not safe throughout those Southern States. They are not properly protected by the courts and judicial tribunals of those States; they are not properly protected by the civil authorities that are in possession of political power in those States."

Of the pending bill, he said: "It is a simple abnegation of all attempts for the time to protect the people in the Southern States by the ordinary exercise of civil authority. It hands over all authority in those States to officers of the army of the United States, and clothes them as officers of the army with complete, absolute, unrestricted power to administer the affairs of those States according to their sovereign will and pleasure. In my opinion there has not occurred an emergency which justifies a resort to this extreme remedy.

The military force ought to follow the civil authority, and not lead it, not take its place, not supersede it."

"We must compel obedience to the Union," said Mr. Garfield, "and demand protection for its humblest citizen wherever the flag floats.

We must so exert the power of the nation that it shall be deemed both safe and honorable to have been loyal in the midst of treason. We must see to it that the frightful carnival of blood now raging in the South, shall continue no longer. The time has come when we must lay the heavy hand of military authority upon these rebel communities and hold them in its grasp till their madness is past."

Mr. Stevens having expressed a wish to have an immediate vote, Mr.

Banks remarked: "I believe that a day or two devoted to a discussion of this subject of the reconstruction of the Government will bring us to a solution in which the two houses of Congress will agree, in which the people of this country will sustain us, and in which the President of the United States will give us his support."

"I have not the advantage," replied Mr. Stevens, "of the secret negotiations which the distinguished gentleman from Ma.s.sachusetts [Mr.

Banks] has, and from which he seems to expect such perfect harmony between the President and the Congress of the United States--within a few days. If I had that advantage, I do not know what effect it might have upon me. Not having it, I can not, of course, act upon it."

"In the remarks which I made," said Mr. Banks, "I made no allusion to any negotiations with the President. I have had no negotiations with the President of the United States, nor do I know his opinions, and in the vote which I shall give upon this question, neither the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] nor any other man has the right to a.s.sume that I accept the policy of the Executive in the smallest particular. I hope for a change of his position; I think that it is not impossible. At all events, I think it is something which is worth our while to try for."

The previous question was moved by Mr. Stevens; but a majority refusing to second the motion, the discussion was continued.

Mr. Ka.s.son denied the existence of a right in Congress "to establish a military government over people who have been in insurrection." He proposed as a subst.i.tute for the pending measure "A bill to establish an additional article of war for the more complete suppression of the insurrection against the United States." This provided for a division of the rebel territory into military districts, as did the original bill, and authorized commanders to declare martial law wherever it should be necessary for the "complete suppression of violence and disorder."

Mr. Ashley moved an amendment providing for the restoration to loyal owners of property confiscated by the rebel government, and providing that military government should cease so soon as the people of the rebel States should adopt State const.i.tutions securing to all citizens equal protection of the laws, including the right of the elective franchise, and should ratify the proposed amendment to the Const.i.tution.

Mr. Raymond thought that, on account of the great diversity of opinion, the whole subject should be referred to a select committee, who should be instructed to report within three or four days a bill which should "provide temporarily for the protection of rights and the preservation of the peace in the States lately in rebellion, and also for the speedy admission of those States to their relations in the Union upon the basis of the Const.i.tutional Amendment." Thus he hoped a result could be reached which "would command the support of Congress and of the country, and the approval, or at least the a.s.sent, of the Executive."

Mr. Boutwell remarked that previous propositions having been referred to the Committee on Reconstruction, they had agreed upon the bill before the House with a unanimity which no other report had ever obtained, nor had any bill submitted by that committee ever been so carefully considered as this. "To-day," said he, "there are eight millions and more of people, occupying six hundred and thirty thousand square miles of the territory of this country, who are writhing under cruelties nameless in their character--injustice such as has not been permitted to exist in any other country in modern times; and all this because in this capital there sits enthroned a man who, so far as the executive department is concerned, guides the destinies of the republic in the interest of rebels; and because, also, in those ten former States rebellion itself, inspired by the executive department of this Government, wields all authority, and is the embodiment of law and power every-where. Until in the South this obstacle to reconstruction is removed, there can be no effectual step taken toward the reorganization of the Government."

"A well man needs no remedies," said Mr. Niblack, in a speech against the bill; "it is only when he is sick that you can require him to submit to medicinal applications. A country at peace does not need and ought not to allow martial law and other summary remedies incident to a state of war. The highest and dearest interests of this country are made subordinate to party exigencies and to special and particular interests. No wonder, then, that trade languishes and commerce declines."

On the 12th of February, Mr. Bingham proposed an amendment making the restoration of the rebel States conditional upon their adoption of the Const.i.tutional Amendment, and imposing upon them, meanwhile, the military government provided by the pending bill.

Mr. Kelley advocated the bill as reported from the committee. "This,"

said he, "is little more than a mere police bill. The necessity for it arises from the perfidy of the President of the United States. Had he been true to the duties of his high office and his public and repeated pledges, there would have been no necessity for considering such a bill."

"Throughout the region of the unreconstructed States," said Mr.

Maynard, "the animating, life-giving principle of the rebellion is as thoroughly in possession of the country and of all the political power there to-day as it ever has been since the first gun was fired upon Fort Sumter. The rebellion is alive. It is strong--strong in the number of its votaries, strong in its social influences, strong in its political power, strong in the belief that the executive department of this Government is in sympathy and community of purpose with them, strong in the belief that the controlling majority of the supreme judiciary of the land is with them in legal opinion, strong in the belief that the controversy in this body between impracticable zeal and incorrigible timidity will prevent any thing of importance being accomplished or any legislation matured."

"It is," said Mr. Allison, "because of the interference of the President of the United States with the military law which exists in those States that this bill is rendered necessary. In my judgment, if we had to-day an Executive who was desirous of enforcing the laws of the United States to protect loyal men in those States, instead of defending the rebel element, this bill would not be needed."

Mr. Blaine submitted an amendment providing that any one of the "late so-called Confederate States" might be restored to representation and relieved of military rule when, in addition to having accepted the Const.i.tutional Amendment, it should have conferred the elective franchise impartially upon all male citizens over twenty-one years of age.

Mr. Blaine maintained that the people in the elections of 1866 had declared in favor of "universal, or, at least, impartial suffrage as the basis of restoration."