History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 46

Mr. Stevens moved that the amendments of the Senate be non-concurred in, and that the House ask a Committee of Conference.

Mr. Boutwell opposed the amendment. "If I did not believe," said he, "that this bill, in the form in which it now comes to us from the Senate, was fraught with great and permanent danger to the country, I would not attempt to resist further its pa.s.sage."

He objected to the bill on the ground that it proposed to reconstruct the rebel State governments at once, through the agency of disloyal men, and that it gave additional power to the President when he had failed to use the vast power which he already possessed in behalf of loyalty and justice.

Mr. Stokes saw in the bill the principle of universal amnesty and universal suffrage. "I would rather have nothing," said he, "if these governments are reconstructed in a way that will place the rebels over Union men."

"Now, what has the Senate done?" Mr. Stevens asked. "Sent back to us an amendment which contains every thing else but protection. It has sent us back a bill which raises the whole question in dispute as to the best mode of reconstructing these States by distant and future pledges which this Congress has no authority to make and no power to execute. What power has this Congress to say to a future Congress, When the Southern States have done certain things, you shall admit them, and receive their members into this House?"

"Our friends," said he, in another part of his remarks, "who love this bill, love it now because the President is to execute it, as he has executed every law for the last two years, by the murder of Union men, and by despising Congress and flinging into our teeth all that we seek to have done."

Mr. Stevens thought that in two hours a Committee of Conference could frame a bill and report it to the House free from all these difficulties--free from all this extraneous matter--which would protect every loyal man in the Southern States, and do no injustice to the disloyal.

Mr. Blaine supported the bill as it came from the Senate. "Congress,"

said he, "no more guarantees, under this bill, the right of any rebel in any State to vote than did Congress guarantee to the rebels in Tennessee the right to vote."

"Although this bill," said Mr. Wilson of Iowa, "does not attain all I desire to accomplish, it does embrace much upon which I have insisted.

It reaches far beyond any thing which the most sanguine of us hoped for a year ago. It secures equal suffrage to all loyal men; it sets aside the pretended governments which now abuse power in the rebel States; it insists on the ratification of the Const.i.tutional Amendment, under the operation of which all the rebels who now occupy official position in the States affected by this bill will be rendered ineligible to office, State or national; it presents an affirmative policy, on the part of Congress, hostile to that of the President; it demonstrates the ability of Congress to agree upon a given line of future action; and, finally, it reserves to Congress jurisdiction over the whole case when the people of any Southern disorganized State may present a Const.i.tution and ask for admission to this body as a part of the governing power of the nation. There is too much of good in this to be rejected. I will vote to concur in the amendment of the Senate."

Mr. Bingham maintained that in the bill, as it pa.s.sed the House, they had voted as extensive powers to the President as were conferred upon him by the bill as amended by the Senate. The former bill provided that the General in command of the army should detail army officers; but all officers of the army are under command of the Commander-in-chief as const.i.tuted by the supreme law of the land. "For myself," said he, "I had rather that my right hand should forget its cunning, and that my tongue should cleave to the roof of my mouth, than to find myself here so false to my own convictions, and so false to the high trust committed to me by that people who sent me here as to vote against this bill."

"This bill," said Mr. Farnsworth, "provides a platform ten steps in advance of the platform upon which we went to the people last fall. We then only expected the ratification of the amendment to the Const.i.tution proposed by Congress at its last session, and the formation of Const.i.tutions, republican in form, which should give the people there the right to send loyal men here as Senators and Representatives. But by this bill we extend impartial suffrage to the black man--universal suffrage."

"I am one of those who believe we ought to do something," said Mr.

Schenck. "I believe we ought to declare to these rebel States, as we do by this bill, that they shall be put under martial law, and held by the strong hand to keep the peace until they have complied with whatever conditions are imposed upon them. But while we do this, I think it equally important to announce to them, to announce to the country, to announce to our const.i.tuents as the completion of the whole platform upon which we go before the nation, the terms which we require of them."

Mr. Garfield favored the Senate amendment. "There are some gentlemen,"

said he, "who live among the eagles on the high mountain peaks, beyond the limit of perpetual frost, and they see the lineaments in the face of freedom so much clearer than I do, whenever any measure comes here that seems almost to grasp our purpose, they rise and tell us it is all poor and mean and a surrender of liberty."

"These terms embrace, in my judgment," said Mr. Thayer, "every guarantee, every safeguard, and every check which it is proper for us to demand or apply. Upon these foundations we can safely build, for by them we retain the final control of the question in our own hands."

Mr. Hotchkiss opposed the bill as amended. "If you allow this bill to go into operation as it now stands," said he, "without making any amendment of its provisions, and permit these elections to be held, as they must necessarily be held under this bill, under the authority, control, and regulation of the rebel governments in those States, there will be no security whatever, and you will have the elections in New Orleans held under the control of Mayor Monroe and the mob which he used to such fell purpose last summer. That is the entertainment to which this bill invites us.

"I regard this as a flank movement," said Mr. Bromwell, "by which is to be brought about that darling scheme of certain politicians--universal amnesty and universal suffrage. Whether it end in universal suffrage or not, one thing is certain, it is universal amnesty."

"It would be emphatically," said Mr. Donnelly, "a government of rebels. I say a government of rebels, because although the amendment which has reached us from the Senate contains the words, 'Except such as may be disfranchised for partic.i.p.ation in the rebellion,' that disfranchis.e.m.e.nt has to come from the rebels themselves, and surely there is no man upon this floor weak enough to suppose that they will so disfranchise themselves."

Mr. Le Blond opposed both bills. Of the one before the House, he said: "This bill is quite as infamous, quite as absurd, as the bill that the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Stevens,] who is Chairman of the Committee on Reconstruction, contends for and hangs so tenaciously to. It confers all the powers that that bill gives; it confers all the powers that the most radical could claim consistently."

"I shall content myself," said Mr. Eldridge, "with denouncing this measure as most wicked and abominable. It contains all that is vicious, all that is mischievous in any and all of the propositions which have come either from the Committee on Reconstruction or from any gentleman upon the other side of the House."

"If you do not take this bill," said Mr. Delano, "although in all its parts it does not suit you, what are you likely to give the American people? Nothing. I will not return to my const.i.tuents admitting that I have failed to try to do something in this great trial of the nation.

It is not for rebels that I legislate; it is not for the right of those who have sought to destroy this Government that I extend mercy; but it is for the liberties, rights, and welfare of my country, for all parts of it."

"If this bill be pa.s.sed," said Mr. Banks, "in my belief there will be no loyal party known and no loyal voice heard in any of these States, from Virginia to Texas."

Many members subsequently presented arguments and opinions for and against the bill, in speeches limited to fifteen minutes in length.

This occupied a session protracted until near midnight.

On the following morning, February 19th, a vote was taken, and the House refused to concur in the amendments of the Senate, and asked a Committee of Conference.

The action of the House having been announced in the Senate, that body immediately proceeded to consider a motion made by Mr. Williams, that they insist on their amendment and agree to the conference. The proposition to give the subject into the hands of a Committee of Conference was opposed by many Senators, who thought a question of so much importance should be deliberated upon in a full Senate. If such a committee were appointed, their report could only be adopted or rejected without modification or amendment. They would only have the power which they possess over a nomination by the President--power to reject a nominee without naming another.

"The result arrived at by the Senate in reference to this bill," said Mr. Conness, "was after the most mature consideration that was ever given to any proposition that came before this body, resulting in an unanimity, at least on this side of the chamber, unparalleled in legislative proceedings--a result hailed by the country at large, demanded by the most intelligent and powerful of the American press, alike acceptable to the industrial and commercial interests of the country, which suffer from a continual disorganization of the country affecting its vital industries."

"The fact that it is a very important bill," said Mr. Williams, "only makes it the more necessary, as it seems to me, to adopt the usual practice in such cases"--that of appointing a Committee of Conference.

Mr. Sumner favored the appointment of such a committee. The Senate had made its best endeavor, the House had refused to concur, and now to ask that body to vote upon the question again without a Committee of Conference would kill the bill. In such a case there could be no hope during the session for any just and beneficent measure either of protection or reconstruction.

Mr. Fessenden had taken no part in the debate upon the bill when it was on its pa.s.sage. A majority of his political friends having determined that the measure which pa.s.sed the Senate was the best that could be accomplished, he had deemed it his duty not to present his individual objections to the bill. "I would have very much preferred,"

said he, "the Military Bill, as it was called, pure and simple, without having any thing else upon it, and leaving to other legislation, if it was judged expedient, what else might be done."

Mr. Trumbull had not before said a word in reference to this bill. He never regarded the Military Bill as it came from the House of Representatives as of the slightest importance. Section fourteenth, of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill conferred all the powers given in the Military Bill. If these had not been used for the protection of the loyal people of the South, would the reiteration of the statute be to any purpose? Yet Mr. Trumbull thought the amendment put upon the bill by the Senate contained every guarantee that had ever been asked for by any one. He was unwilling that a great question like this, open in all its parts, should be submitted to a Committee of Conference.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hon. John Conness, Senator from California.]

The vote was finally taken, after a prolonged discussion. The Senate insisted on its amendment, and refused to appoint a Committee of Conference.

The bill having gone back to the House of Representatives, they resolved by a vote of one hundred and twenty-six to forty-six to recede from their disagreement to the amendment of the Senate, and to concur in the same with amendments, providing that no person excluded from holding office by the recently proposed Const.i.tutional Amendment should be eligible for membership in the convention to frame a const.i.tution for any of the rebel States, nor should any such person be allowed to vote for members of such convention. Another amendment proposed by the House was the addition of a section (sixth) to the bill providing that until the rebel States should be admitted to representation in Congress, any civil governments existing therein should be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount authority of the United States, who may at any time abolish, modify, control, or supersede them.

This qualified concurrence on the part of the House having been announced in the Senate, that body proceeded immediately to consider the question of acquiescence.

Mr. Sherman said that his only objection to the amendment of the House was, that it disfranchised ten or fifteen thousand leading rebels from voting at the elections, yet he was willing to agree to the amendment.

Mr. Sumner congratulated Mr. Sherman on the advanced step he had taken. "To-morrow," said Mr. Sumner, "I hope to welcome the Senator to some other height."

Mr. Sherman was unwilling to admit that he had come to Mr. Sumner's stand-point. He was willing to accept the bill, although it excluded a few thousand rebels from voting, yet "I would rather have them all vote," said he, "white and black, under the stringent restrictions of this bill, and let the governments of the Southern States that are about now to rise upon the permanent foundation of universal liberty and universal equality, stand upon the consent of the governed, white and black, former slaves and former masters."

Then followed an extended discussion of the question as to whether the Senate should agree to the amendments proposed by the House. Mr.

Doolittle proposed and advocated an amendment providing that nothing in the bill should be construed to disfranchise persons who have received pardon and amnesty. This amendment was rejected--yeas, 8; nays, 33.

The vote was then taken upon the final pa.s.sage of the bill as amended by the House; it pa.s.sed the Senate--yeas, 35; nays, 7.

The Bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States," having thus pa.s.sed both houses of Congress on the 20th of February, it was immediately submitted to the President for his approval.

On the second of March the President returned the bill to the House, in which it originated, with his objections, which were so grave that he hoped a statement of them might "have some influence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men with whom the decision must ultimately rest."

The Veto Message was immediately read by the clerk of the House of Representatives. The following extracts present the President's princ.i.p.al objections to the measure:

"The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the absolute domination of military rulers. * * *

"It is not denied that the States in question have each of them an actual government, with all the powers, executive, judicial, and legislative which properly belong to a free State. They are organized like the other States of the Union, and like them they make, administer, and execute the laws which concern their domestic affairs. An existing _de facto_ government, exercising such functions as these, is itself the law of the State upon all matters within its jurisdiction. To p.r.o.nounce the supreme law-making power of an established State illegal is to say that law itself is unlawful. * * *

"The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for any purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is known that they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable right to exercise their own judgment.

"I submit to Congress whether this measure is not, in its whole character, scope, and object, without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Const.i.tution, and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure.