Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 36

He did not seem ambitious, was not in firm health, and though his ability was recognized, his service did not strengthen his party either in the Senate or in his State. A Democrat from Pennsylvania is somewhat out of harmony with the members of his party elsewhere, on account of the advocacy of the Protective system to which he is forced by the prevailing opinion among his const.i.tuents.

THE MESSAGE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Congress a.s.sembled in December, 1863, in very different spirit from that which prevailed either at the opening or at the adjournment of the preceding session. The President in his annual message recognized the great change for which "our renewed and profoundest grat.i.tude to G.o.d is due." Referring to the depressing period of the year before, he said "The tone of public feeling at home and abroad was not satisfactory. With other signs the popular elections then just pa.s.sed indicated uneasiness among ourselves, while amid much that was cold and menacing, the kindest words coming from Europe were uttered in accents of pity, that we were too blind to surrender a hopeless cause. Our commerce was suffering greatly by a few armed vessels built upon and furnished from foreign sh.o.r.es, and we were threatened with such additions from the same quarter as would sweep our trade from the sea and raise the blockade. We had failed to elicit from European governments any thing hopeful on this subject. . . .

"We are now permitted to take another view. The rebel borders are pressed still further back, and by the complete opening of the Mississippi the country, dominated by the Rebellion, is divided into distinct parts with no practical communication between them.

Tennessee and Arkansas have been substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens in each,--owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the beginning of the Rebellion,--now declare openly for emanc.i.p.ation in their respective States. Of those States not included in the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, Maryland and Missouri, neither of which three years ago would tolerate any restraint upon the extension of slavery into new territories, only now dispute as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits." The President dwelt with much satisfaction upon the good behavior of the slave population. "Full one hundred thousand of them are now in the United-States military service, about one-half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks, thus giving a double advantage,--of taking so much labor from the insurgents' cause, and supplying the places which otherwise might be filled with so many white men. So far as tested it is difficult to say that they are not as good soldiers as any. No servile insurrection or tendency to cruelty has marked the measures of emanc.i.p.ation and the arming of the blacks. . . . Thus we have a new reckoning. The crisis which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past."

The Thirty-seventh Congress was distinguished for its effective legislation on all subjects relating to the finances and to the recruitment of a great army. It was reserved to the Thirty-eighth Congress to take steps for the final abolition of slavery by the submission to the States of a Thirteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution.

The course of events had prepared the public mind for the most radical measures. In the short s.p.a.ce of three years, by the operation of war, under the dread of national destruction, a great change had been wrought in the opinions of the people of the Loyal States. When the war began not one-tenth of the citizens of those States were in favor of immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation.

It is very doubtful whether in September, 1862, the proclamation of the President would have been sustained by the majority of the Northern people. In every instance the measures of Congress were in advance of public opinion, but not so far in advance as to invite a calamity through re-action. The President was throughout more conservative than Congress. He had surprised every one with the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, but he was so anxious for some arrangement to be made for compensating the Border States for their loss of slaves, that he did not at once recommend the utter destruction of the inst.i.tution by an amendment to the Fundamental Law of the Republic. He left Congress to take the lead.

Mr. James M. Ashley of Ohio is ent.i.tled to the credit of having made the first proposition to Congress to amend the Const.i.tution so as to prohibit slavery throughout the United States. During the entire contest Mr. Ashley devoted himself with unswerving fidelity and untiring zeal to the accomplishment of this object.

He submitted his proposition on the fourteenth day of December.

Mr. Holman of Indiana objected to the second reading of the bill, but the speaker overruled the objection and the bill was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Wilson of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Mr. Arnold of Illinois subsequently introduced joint resolutions proposing a like amendment to the Const.i.tution. Mr. Holman moved to lay the resolution of Mr. Arnold on the table. The motion failed by a vote of 79 nays to 58 ayes.

The vote thus disclosed was so far from the two-thirds necessary to carry the const.i.tutional amendment as to be discouraging to the supporters of the measure.

AMENDMENT OF THE CONSt.i.tUTION.

On the thirteenth day of January, 1864, Mr. Henderson of Missouri introduced in the Senate a joint resolution proposing a complete abolition of slavery by an amendment to the Const.i.tution, and on the tenth day of February Mr. Trumbull, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, reported the proposition to the Senate in these words: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Mr. Garrett Davis of Kentucky proposed to amend the resolution so as to exclude the descendants of negroes on the maternal side from all places of office and trust under the government of the United States. Mr. Davis betrayed by this motion his apprehension that freedom to the negro would be followed by the enjoyment of civil rights and the exercise of political power. Mr. Davis proposed at the same time to amend the Const.i.tution so as to consolidate New England into two States to be called East New England and West New England, the evident attempt being to avenge the overthrow of the slave system by the degradation of that section of the country in which the anti-slavery sentiment had originated and received its chief support.

--It fell to Mr. Trumbull, as the senator who had reported the resolution, to open the debate. He charged the war and all its manifold horrors upon the system of slavery. He stated with clearness the views of the opposition in regard to the legal effect of the proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation, and with eloquent force of logic he portrayed the necessity of universal freedom as the chief means of ending not only the controversy on the battle-field, but the controversy of opinion.--Mr. Willard Saulsbury of Delaware on the 31st of March replied to Mr. Trumbull, and discussed the subject of slavery historically, citing the authority of the old and the new dispensations in its support.--Mr. Hendricks of Indiana objected to a proposition to amend the Const.i.tution while eleven States of the Union were unable to take part in the proceedings. He wished a const.i.tution for Louisiana as well as for Indiana, for Florida as well as for New Hampshire.--Mr. Clark of New Hampshire criticised the Const.i.tution, and traced the woes which the country was then enduring to the recognition of slavery in that instrument. From the twenty-eighth day of March until the eighth day of April, when the final vote was taken, the attention of the Senate was given to the debate, with only unimportant interruptions. Upon the pa.s.sage of the resolution, the yeas were 38, and the nays 6. The nays were Messrs. Garrett Davis, Hendricks, McDougall, Powell, Riddle, and Saulsbury. Upon the announcement of the vote, Mr. Saulsbury said, "I bid farewell to all hope for the reconstruction of the American Union."

When the joint resolution, pa.s.sed by the Senate, was read in the House, Mr. Holman objected to the second reading, and on the question, "Shall the joint resolution be rejected?" the yeas were 55 and the nays 76, an even more discouraging vote than the first.

With 55 members opposed to the amendment, it would require 110 to carry it, or 34 more than the roll-call had disclosed. The debate was opened by Mr. Morris of New York who treated the abolition of slavery as a necessary preliminary to the reconstruction of the Union.

--Mr. Fernando Wood denounced the movement as "unjust in itself, a breach of good faith utterly irreconcilable with expediency."

--Mr. Ebon C. Ingersoll of Illinois made a strong and eloquent appeal for the pa.s.sage of the amendment and the liberation of the slave. With the accomplishment of that grand end, said he, "our voices will ascend to Heaven over a country re-united, over a people disinthralled, and G.o.d will bless us."

--Mr. Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania argued earnestly against the amendment. He regarded it as the beginning of radical changes in our Const.i.tution, and the forerunner of usurpation. The policy pursued was uniting the South and dividing the North.

--Mr. Arnold of Illinois said, "in view of the long catalogue of wrongs which it has inflicted upon the country, I demand to-day the death of African slavery."

--Mr. Mallory of Kentucky maintained that Mr. Lincoln had been forced to issue the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation by the governors who met at Altoona. He was answered by Mr. Boutwell of Ma.s.sachusetts, who most effectively disproved the charge.

--Mr. Pendleton of Ohio maintained that three-fourths of the States possessed neither the power to establish nor to abolish slavery in all the States. He contended that the power to amend did not carry with it the power to revolutionize and subvert the form and spirit of the government.

The vote on the pa.s.sage of the amendment was taken on the fifteenth day of June. The yeas were 93, the nays were 65. The yeas were 27 short of the necessary two-thirds. Mr. Ashley of Ohio, who had by common consent a.s.sumed parliamentary charge of the measure, voted in the negative, and in the exercise of his right under the rules, entered upon the journal a motion to reconsider the vote.

This ended the contest in the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress. Mr. Ashley gave notice that the question would go to the country, and that upon the re-a.s.sembling of Congress in December he should press the motion to reconsider, and he expected that the amendment would be adopted. This result forced the question into the Presidential canva.s.s of 1864, and upon the decision of that election depended the question of abolishing slavery. The issue thus had the advantage of a direct submission to the votes of the people before it should go to the State Legislatures for ultimate decision.

PUBLIC AID TO THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

In the previous Congress an Act had been pa.s.sed which was approved by the President on the first day of July, 1862, to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes. The company authorized to build it was to receive a grant of public land amounting to five alternate sections per mile on each side of the road. In addition to the lands the Government granted the direct aid of $16,000 per mile in its own bonds, payable upon the completion of each forty miles of the road. The bill was pa.s.sed by a vote which in the main but not absolutely was divided on the line of party. The necessity of communication with our Pacific possessions was so generally recognized that Congress was willing to extend generous aid to any company which was ready to complete the enterprise. The a.s.sociation of gentlemen who had organized under the provisions of the Act, were unable, as they reported, to construct the road upon the conditions prescribed and the aid tendered. It was impossible to realize money from the lands under the grant, as they were too remote for settlement, and $16,000 per mile was declared insufficient to secure the means requisite for the construction of the road across trackless plains, and through rugged pa.s.ses of the Rocky Mountains.

The corporators had accordingly returned to Congress in 1864 for further help, and such was the anxiety in the public mind to promote the connection with the Pacific that enlarged and most generous provision was made for the completion of the road. The land-grant was doubled in amount; the Government for certain difficult portions of the road allowed $32,000 per mile, and for certain mountainous sections $48,000 per mile. The whole of this munificent grant was then subordinated as a second mortgage upon the road and its franchise, and the company was empowered to issue a first mortgage for the same amount for each mile--for $16,000, $32,000 and $48,000, according to the character of the country through which the road was to pa.s.s. Mr. Washburne of Illinois and Mr. Holman of Indian made an earnest fight against the provisions of the bill as needlessly extravagant, and as especially censurable in time of war when our resources were needed in the struggle for our national life. Mr.

Washburne had sustained the original bill granting the aid of lands and of bonds. He alleged, and produced a tabular statement in support of the a.s.sertion, that the Government was granting $95,000,000 to the enterprise, besides half of the land in a strip twenty miles wide from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.

PUBLIC AID TO THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

So earnest however was the desire of the Government to secure the construction of the road that the opponents of the bill were unable to make any impression upon the House. On an amendment by Mr.

Holman declaring that "the roads constructed under the Act shall be public highways and shall transport the property and the troops of the United States, when transportation thereof shall be required, free of toll or other charge," there could be secured but 39 votes in the affirmative. On an amendment by Mr. Washburne to strike out the section which subordinated the government mortgage to that of the railroad company on the lands and the road, but 38 voted in the affirmative and the bill pa.s.sed without a call of the yeas and nays. In the Senate there were only five votes against the bill.

Mr. Ten Eyck of New Jersey was the only Republican senator who voted in the negative. Whatever may have subsequently occurred to suggest that the grant was larger than was needed for the construction of the highway to the Pacific, there can be no doubt that an overwhelming sentiment, not only in Congress but among the people, was in favor of the bountiful aid which was granted. The terrible struggle to retain the Southern States in the Union had persuaded the Administration and the Government that no pains should be spared and no expenditure stinted to insure the connection which might quicken the sympathy and more directly combine the interests of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States. A more careful circ.u.mspection might perhaps have secured the same work with less expenditure; but even with this munificent aid a full year pa.s.sed before construction began from the eastern end of the road, and for a considerable period it was felt that the men who embarked their money in the enterprise were taking a very hazardous task on their hands. Many capitalists who afterwards indulged in denunciations of Congress for the extravagance of the grants, were urged at the time to take a share in the scheme, but declined because of the great risk involved.

Two organizations, composed of powerful men, were formed to prosecute the work. The California Company, with Governor Leland Stanford and the indomitable C. P. Huntington at the head, constructed the thousand miles stretching from the Bay of San Francisco to Salt Lake, and a company headed by Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames, two Ma.s.sachusetts men noted for strong business capacity, industry, and integrity, constructed the thousand miles from the Missouri River to the point of junction. In the history of great enterprises, no parallel can be found to the ability and energy displayed in the completion of this great work. With all the aids and adjuncts of surrounding civilization, there had never been two thousand miles of rail laid so rapidly as this was across trackless plains, over five rugged ranges of mountains, through a country without inhabitants, or inhabited only by wild Indians who offered obstruction and not help.

On the first day of the session, December 7, 1863, Mr. Elihu B.

Washburne of Illinois introduced a bill to empower the President to appoint a Lieutenant-General for all our forces. It was avowedly intended for General Grant who had already been appointed a Major- General in the Regular Army. Some opposition was shown to the measure, when it was formally reported from the Military Committee by Mr. Farnsworth of Illinois who ably supported it. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens indicated his intention to oppose it and was followed by Mr. Garfield who thought the action premature. Mr. Schenck also intimated that it might be difficult at that moment to say who would in the end command precedence among our generals. Eighteen months before, McClellan would have been chosen; after Gettysburg Meade would have been selected; at one time in the midst of his successes in the South-West Rosecrans might have been appointed.

As a matter of course Grant would now be selected. Mr. Schenck however announced his intention to support the measure.

Mr. Washburne closed the debate with an impressive plea for the bill. He avowed that it meant General Grant who had been "successful in every fight from Belmont to Lookout Mountain. The people of this country want a fighting general to lead their armies, and General Grant is the man upon whom we must depend to fight out this rebellion in the end." Mr. Washburne gave a unique description of General Grant in the critical campaign below Vicksburg: "General Grant did not take with him the trappings and paraphernalia so common to many military men. As all depended on celerity of movement it was important to be enc.u.mbered with as little baggage as possible.

General Grant took with him neither a horse nor an orderly nor a servant nor a camp-chest nor an overcoat nor a blanket nor even a clean shirt. His entire baggage for six days--I was with him at the time--was a tooth-brush. He fared like the commonest soldier in his command, partaking of his rations and sleeping upon the ground with no covering except the canopy of heaven." The speech of Mr. Washburne was very earnest and very effective, and, the vote coming at its conclusion, the House pa.s.sed the bill by 96 yeas to 41 nays. It was not strictly a party vote. Randall of Pennsylvania, Morrison of Illinois, Eldridge of Wisconsin, Voorhees of Indiana and several other Democratic partisans supported the measure, while Thaddeus Stevens, Winter Davis, Garfield, Broomall of Pennsylvania and others among the Republicans opposed it.

The bill was desired by the President who approved it on the 29th of February, 1864, and immediately nominated Ulysses S. Grant to be Lieutenant-General. Mr. Lincoln saw the obvious advantage of placing a man of General Grant's ability in command of all the armies. The General was ordered to Washington at once, and arrived at the capital on the eighth day of March. Mr. Lincoln had never before seen him, though both were citizens of Illinois and General Grant had been distinguished in the field for more than two years.

A new era opened in our military operations and abundant vigor was antic.i.p.ated and realized. General Sherman was left in command of the great army in the West. He had up to this time been serving with General Grant but was now to a.s.sume command of an enormous force and to engage in one of the most arduous, heroic, and successful campaigns in the military history of the country. The march from Vicksburg to Chattanooga, thence to Atlanta, to Savannah, and Northward to the Potomac, is one of the longest ever made by an army. From Vicksburg to Chattanooga the army was under command of General Grant, but the entire march of the same body of troops must have exceeded two thousand miles through the very heart of the insurrectionary country. But the great operations of both Grant and Sherman were incomplete when Congress adjourned on the Fourth of July. Its members returned home to engage in a canva.s.s of extraordinary interest and critical importance.

CHARACTER OF GENERAL SHERMAN.

The character and ability of General Sherman were not fully appreciated until the second year of the war. He had not aimed to startle the country at the outset of his military career with any of the brilliant performances attempted by many officers who were heard of for a day and never afterwards. With the true instinct and discipline of a soldier, he faithfully and skillfully did the work a.s.signed to him, and he gained steadily, rapidly, and enduringly on the confidence and admiration of the people. He shared in the successful campaigns of General Grant in the South-West, and earned his way to the great command with which he was now intrusted,--a command which in one sense involved the prompt success of all the military operations of the Government. Disaster for his army did not of course mean the triumph of the Rebellion, but it meant fresh levies of troops, the prolongation of the struggle, and a serious increase to the heavy task that General Grant had a.s.sumed in Virginia.

General Sherman was a graduate of West Point, and while still a young man had served with marked credit for some twelve years in the army. But he had more than a military education. Through a checkered career in civil life, he had enlarged his knowledge of the country, his acquaintance with men, his experience in affairs.

He had been a banker in California, a lawyer in Kansas, President of a college in Louisiana, and, when the war began, he was about to take charge of a railroad in Missouri. It would be difficult, if not impossible to find a man who has so thorough, so minute a knowledge of every State and Territory of the Union. He has made a special study of the geography and products of the country. Some one has said of him, that if we should suddenly lose all the maps of the United States, we need not wait for fresh surveys to make new ones, because General Sherman could reproduce a perfect map in twenty-four hours. That this is a pardonable exaggeration would be admitted by any one who had conversed with General Sherman in regard to the topography and resources of the country from Maine to Arizona.

General Sherman's appearance is strongly indicative of his descent.

Born in the West, he is altogether of Puritan stock, his father and mother having emigrated from Connecticut where his family resided for nearly two centuries. All the characteristics of that remarkable cla.s.s of men re-appear in General Sherman. In grim, determined visage, in commanding courage, in mental grasp, in sternness of principle, he is an Ironside Officer of the Army of Cromwell, modified by the impulsive mercurial temperament which eight generations of American descent, with Western birth and rearing, have impressed upon his character.

[* The Italicized words were underscored in the original letters of the President.]

[** THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS.

REPUBLICANS IN ROMAN; DEMOCRATS IN ITALIC.

The Senate was composed of same members as in Thirty-seventh Congress (given on pp. ----), with the following exceptions:-- ILLINOIS.--_William A. Richardson_ succeeded O. H. Browning.

INDIANA.--_Thomas A. Hendricks_ succeeded _David Turpie_.

MAINE.--Nathan A. Farwell succeeded William Pitt Fessenden.

MARYLAND.--_Reverdy Johnson_ succeeded _James Alfred Pearce_.

MINNESOTA.--Alexander Ramsey succeeded _Henry M. Rice_.

MISSOURI.--B. Gratz Brown succeeded _Robert Wilson_.

NEW JERSEY.--_William Wright_ succeeded _James W. Wall_.

NEW YORK.--Edwin D. Morgan succeeded Preston King.

PENNSYLVANIA.--_Charles R. Buckalew_ succeeded David Wilmot.

RHODE ISLAND.--William Sprague succeeded Samuel G. Arnold.

Waitman T. Willey and Peter G. Van Winkle were admitted as the first senators from West Virginia. Lemuel J. Bowden took Mr.

Willey's place as senator from Virginia, and colleague of John Carlile. The political power of West Virginia was thus actually represented at one time by four senators.

James W. Nye and William M. Stewart took their seats Feb. 1, 1865, as senators from the new State of Nevada.