REPRESENTATION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.
Concurrent Resolution -- A "Venomous Fight" -- Passage in
the House -- The Resolution in the Senate -- "A Political
Wrangle" Deprecated -- Importance of the Question -- "A
Straw in a Storm" -- Policy of the President -- Conversation
between two Senators -- Mr. Nye's Advice to Rebels -- "A
Dangerous Power" -- "Was Mr. Wade once a Secessionist?" --
Garrett Davis' Programme for the President -- "Useless yet
Mischievous" -- The Great Question Settled.
It was understood when the Committee of Fifteen introduced the joint
resolution proposing a constitutional amendment relating to the basis
of representation, that this was only one of a series of measures
which they thought essential to the work of reconstruction, and which
they designed to propose at a proper time.
In pursuance of this plan, on the 20th of February, the day after the
veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and while the amendment of the
basis of reconstruction was pending in the Senate, Mr. Stevens brought
before the House, from the Committee of Fifteen, a "Concurrent
Resolution concerning the Insurrectionary States," as follows:
"_Be it resolved by the House of Representatives_, (the
Senate concurring,) That in order to close agitation upon a
question which seems likely to disturb the action of the
Government, as well as to quiet the uncertainty which is
agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which
have been declared to be in insurrection, no Senator or
Representative shall be admitted into either branch of
Congress from any of said States until Congress shall have
declared such State entitled to such representation."
After the reading of this resolution, Mr. Grider, of Kentucky, a
member of the Committee of Fifteen, offered the following minority
report:
"The minority of the Committee on Reconstruction, on the
part of the House, beg leave to report that said committee
have directed an inquiry to be made as to the condition and
loyalty of the State of Tennessee. There has been a large
amount of evidence taken, some part of it conducing to show
that at some localities occasionally there have been some
irregularities and temporary disaffection; yet the main
direction and weight of the testimony are ample and
conclusive to show that the great body of the people in said
State are not only loyal and willing, but anxious, to have
and maintain amicable, sincere, and patriotic relations with
the General Government. Such being the state of the facts,
and inasmuch as under the census of 1860 Congress passed a
law which was approved in 1863, fixing the ratio and
apportioning to Tennessee and all the other States
representation; and inasmuch as Tennessee, disavowing
insurrectionary purposes or disloyalty, has, under the laws
and organic law of said State, regularly elected her members
and Senators to the Congress of the United States, in
conformity to the laws and Constitution of the United
States, and said members are here asking admission; and
inasmuch as the House by the Constitution is the 'judge of
the election, returns, and qualification of its members,'
considering these facts and principles, we offer the
following resolution, to-wit:
"_Resolved_, That the State of Tennessee is entitled to
representation in the Thirty-ninth Congress, and the
Representatives elected from and by said State are hereby
admitted to take their seats therein upon being qualified by
oath according to law."
Mr. Stevens then said: "Having heard an ingenious speech upon that
side of the question, and not intending to make any speech upon this
side, as I hope our friends all understand a question which has
agitated not this body only, but other portions of the community, I
propose to ask for the question. I think I may say without
impropriety, that until yesterday there was an earnest investigation
into the condition of Tennessee, to see whether by act of Congress we
could admit that State to a condition of representation here, and
admit its members to seats here; but since yesterday there has arisen
a state of things which the committee deem puts it out of their power
to proceed further without surrendering a great principle; without the
loss of all their dignity; without surrendering the rights of this
body to the usurpation of another power. I call the previous
question."
Strenuous efforts were made by the Democratic minority to defeat the
proposed joint resolution by means of "dilatory motions." Repeated
motions were made to adjourn, to excuse certain members from voting,
and to call the House, on all of which the yeas and nays were called.
This "parliamentary tactics" consumed many hours. The minority seemed
resolved to make the passage of the resolution a question of physical
endurance. In reply to a proposition of Mr. Eldridge, of the minority,
that they would allow business to proceed if debate should be allowed,
Mr. Stevens said: "It is simply the return of the rebels of 1861. I
sat thirty-eight hours under this kind of a fight once, and I have no
objections to a little of it now. I am ready to sit for forty hours."
Late in the evening, a member of the minority proposed that the House
should take a recess for an hour, that the door-keeper might have the
hall fitted up as a dormitory. From indications, he thought such
accommodations would be necessary. At length, Mr. Eldridge said: "We
know our weakness and the strength and power of the numbers of the
majority. We have not had the assistance which we expected from the
other side of the House in our effort to obtain the privilege of
debating the resolution. We know perfectly well that it has become a
question of physical endurance. We know perfectly well that we can not
stand out against the overpowering majority of this House any great
length of time. We know if the majority will it, the resolution will
pass without debate. We have done all we could. We therefore yield to
that power, and throw the responsibility of this most extraordinary,
this most revolutionary measure, upon the majority of the House."
To this Mr. Stevens answered: "The gentlemen accept their situation
just as Jeff. Davis did his--because they can not help it. [Laughter.]
I confess, sir, for so small a number, they have made a most venomous
fight."
The vote was then taken upon the concurrent resolution, which passed
the House--yeas, 109; nays, 40.
The hopes which had arisen in the minds of the minority that a
considerable number of Republicans would permanently separate
themselves from the party that elected them, and adhere to the policy
and fortunes of the President, were disappointed. The imprudence of
the President himself, in making his unfortunate speech of the 22d of
February, tended to unite the Republicans in Congress against his
policy, and render fruitless the efforts of his new Democratic friends
in his favor.
On the 23d of February, Mr. Fessenden proposed that the pending
constitutional amendment should give way, to enable the Senate to
consider the concurrent resolution passed by the House concerning the
representation of the Southern States.
Mr. Sherman thought it would be better and wiser to allow this matter
to lie over for a few days. He thought it best not to press this
"declaration of political opinion" while the public mind and Senators
themselves were more or less affected by surrounding circumstances. "I
think," said he, "that we ought not to postpone all the important
business now pending in Congress for the purpose of getting into a
political wrangle with the President."
Mr. Fessenden replied: "The Senator from Ohio says we are getting up a
political wrangle with the President of the United States. When the
President of the United States tells Congress that it is transcending
its proper limits of authority, that it has nothing to do in the way
of judgment upon the great question of reconstructing the rebel
States, and Congress assumes to express its own sense upon that
question, I think it is hardly a proper term to apply to such a state
of things. I am not aware that there has been any effort anywhere to
get up a political wrangle or engage in a political wrangle with the
President. Certainly I have not. No man has ever heard me speak of him
except in terms of respect, in my place here and elsewhere.
"I am not sensible myself of any excitement that would prevent my
speaking upon this question precisely in the style which I deem it
deserves. I am not carried away by passion. I have reflected, and I am
ready to express my opinion upon the great question at issue; and the
Senator will allow me to say that, in my judgment, the sooner the
judgment of Congress is expressed, the better.
"He talks about important business to be done by this Congress. Sir,
is there any thing more important than to settle the question whether
the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States have
or have not something to say in relation to the condition of the late
Confederate States, and whether it is proper to admit Senators and
Representatives from them? If the President is right in his
assumption--for the assumption is a very clear one--that we have
nothing to say, we ought to admit these men at once, if they come here
with proper credentials, and not keep them waiting outside the door."
Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that transpired
yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not to have had
some influence upon him, and I think it as well to allow the influence
of those events to pass away. I do not wish now myself, nor do I wish
any Senator here, to reply to what was said yesterday by the President
of the United States. I would prefer that the Senate of the United
States, the only legislative body which can deliberate fully and
freely without any limitation on the right of debate, should
deliberate, reflect, and act calmly after the excitement of the events
of the last two or three days has passed off."
Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked: "If there be passion and excitement
in the country at this present time, I do not hold myself as an
individual responsible for any share of it; and I am here to say that
if I know myself--and if I do not know myself nobody about me knows
me--I am as competent to consider this particular question to-day as I
was the day before yesterday or last week, and, so far as my judgment
informs me, quite as competent to consider it as I expect to be next
week or the week after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote
against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because
I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of
my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I
care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another
day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as
individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat
of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate
of the nation, or by the lowest and the last magistrate of the
nation."
The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider the
concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, which had
already passed the House of Representatives.
Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of considerable
length. He presented extracts from the President's speech of the day
before, in which he had arrayed himself against the right of Congress
to decide whether a rebel State is in condition to be represented.
Mr. Fessenden considered the pending resolution as "transcending in
importance the question of the amendment of the Constitution, which
had been under discussion for several days." He deemed the resolution
necessary now, "in order that Congress may assert distinctly its own
rights and its own powers; in order that there may be no mistake
anywhere, in the mind of the Executive or in the minds of the people
of this country; that Congress, under the circumstances of this case,
with this attempted limitation of its powers with regard to its own
organization, is prepared to say to the Executive and to the country,
respectfully but firmly, over this subject they have, and they mean to
exercise, the most full and plenary jurisdiction. We will judge for
ourselves, not only upon credentials and the character of men and the
position of men, but upon the position of the States which sent those
men here. In other words, to use the language of the President again,
when the question is to be decided, whether they obey the
Constitution, whether they have a fitting constitution of their own,
whether they are loyal, whether they are prepared to obey the laws as
a preliminary, as the President says it is, to their admission, we
will say whether those preliminary requirements have been complied
with, and not he, and nobody but ourselves."
Mr. Fessenden made an extended argument on the subject of
reconstruction, affirming that while the people of the rebel States
had not passed from under the jurisdiction of the United States
Government, yet having no existence as States with rights in the Union
and rights to representation in Congress. "My judgment is," said he,
"that we hold the power over the whole subject in our hands, that it
is our duty to hold it in our hands, and to regard it as a matter of
the most intense interest to the whole people, involving the good of
the whole people, calling for our most careful consideration, and to
be adjudged without passion, without temper, without any of that
feeling which may be supposed to have arisen out of the unexampled
state of things through which we have passed."
On the 26th of February, Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate on the
pending concurrent resolution. He approved the principle but doubted
the expediency of now reäffirming it. "I regard it," said he, "as a
mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inopportune moment; the mere
assertion of a naked right which has never yet been disputed, and
never can be successfully; a mere assertion of a right that we have
over and over again asserted. My idea is that the true way to assert
this power is to exercise it, and that it was only necessary for
Congress to exercise that power in order to meet all these complicated
difficulties."
Mr. Sherman regarded the President's speech as humiliating and
unworthy of his high office. A part of the speech he characterized as
"the product of resentment, hatched by anger and passion, and hurled,
without reflection, at those he believed wished to badger and insult
him."
Mr. Sherman favored the prompt restoration of Tennessee. "I think our
first duty," said he, "is at once to prepare a mode and manner by
which she may be admitted into the Union upon such terms and
conditions as will make her way back the way of pleasantness and
peace."
Of the general question of reconstruction he said: "If I had any power
in arranging a plan, I would mark the line as broad and deep between
the loyal people who stood at our side and the rebels who fought
against us as between heaven and hell."
"How can you do it?" asked Mr. Howard.
"Whenever loyal men," replied Mr. Sherman, "present a State
organization, complying with such terms and conditions and tests of
loyalty as you may prescribe, and will send here loyal Representatives,
I would admit them; and whenever rebels send or come here, I would
reject them."
"I fear the storm," said Mr. Sherman, near the conclusion of his
speech. "I fear struggles and contentions in these eleven States,
unless there is some mode by which the local power of those States may
be put in loyal hands, and by which their voices may be heard here in
council and in command, in deliberation and debate, as of old. They
will come back here shorn of their undue political power, humbled in
their pride, with a consciousness that one man bred under free
institutions is as good, at least, as a man bred under slave
institutions. I want to see the loyal people in the South, if they are
few, trusted; if they are many, give them power. Prescribe your
conditions, but let them come back into the Union upon such terms as
you may prescribe. Open the door for them. I hope we may see harmony
restored in this great Union of ours; that all these States and all
these Territories may be here in council for the common good, and that
at as speedy a moment as is consistent with the public safety."
Mr. Dixon addressed the Senate in opposition to the concurrent
resolution, and in favor of the policy of the President. "It is my
belief," said he, "that what is known as the policy of the President
for the restoration of the late seceded States in this Government is
the correct policy. I believe it is the only safe policy." Having been
requested to state that policy, Mr. Dixon said: "It contemplates a
careful, cautious, discriminating admission of a loyal representation
from loyal States and districts in the appropriate House of Congress,
by the separate action of each, every case to be considered by itself
and decided on its own merits. It recognizes the right of every loyal
State and district to be represented by loyal men in Congress. It
draws the true line of distinction between traitors and true men. It
furnishes to the States lately in rebellion the strongest possible
inducement to loyalty and fidelity to the Government. It 'makes
treason odious,' by showing that while the traitor and the rebel are
excluded from Congress, the loyal and the faithful are cordially
received. It recognizes and rewards loyalty wherever it is found, and
distinguishes, as it ought, between a Horace Maynard and a Jefferson
Davis."
Of the purpose expressed in this resolution to "close agitation," Mr.
Dixon said: "The vast business interests of this country are eagerly
intent on this question. The people of this country are mutually
attracted, the North and the South, and they must sooner or later act
together. Whatever Congress may do, this question will not cease to be
agitated. Adjourn, if you see fit, without settling this question;
leave it as it is; admit no member from Tennessee; and when you go
through the States next fall which hold their elections for Congress,
see whether agitation has ceased. Sir, a word of caution may not be
unfit on that subject."
Mr. Dixon maintained that the Senate would surrender its independence
by resolving that Senators should not be admitted from rebel States
until Congress should have declared them entitled to such
representation. "Upon the question of credentials," said he, "this
whole question is before the Senate; and it is for us to consider on
that question whether the member presenting himself here for admission
is a traitor or whether he is true to his country."
"Suppose," said Mr. Trumbull, "that in a time of peace the Legislature
of Tennessee is disloyal, and swears allegiance to the Emperor
Maximilian, does the Senator deny the authority of Congress to inquire
into the character of that Legislature?"
"I do," replied Mr. Dixon. "It is for the Senate, and not for
Congress, to make the inquiry if a Senator from Tennessee in the
supposed case presents himself."
Mr. Trumbull said: "He denies the authority of Congress to decide
whether the constituency is traitorous or loyal!"
"That is another point," said Mr. Dixon.
"That is the very one I put," said Mr. Trumbull. "If all the members
of the Legislature of Tennessee swear allegiance to the Emperor
Maximilian, and send a Senator here, I want to know if Congress has a
right to inquire into the character of that Legislature?"
"I will answer that by asking another question," said Mr. Dixon.
"Suppose that was the case, that the Emperor Maximilian had entire
control of the State of Tennessee, and a person claiming a right so to
do should come here and offer himself as a member of the Senate, and
should be received here; that, in judging of the qualifications,
returns, and elections of the member, the Senate decided that he was a
Senator, has Congress any thing to do with the question? I ask him if
the House of Representatives can interfere? Is there an appeal to
Congress or any other tribunal? I ask him if that man is not a Senator
in spite of the world?"
"If," replied Mr. Trumbull, "the Senator means to ask me if the Senate
has not the physical power to admit any body, elected or not, I admit
they have the same right to do it that twelve jurymen would have,
against the sworn and uncontradicted testimony of a hundred witnesses,
to bring in a verdict directly against the evidence and perjure
themselves. I suppose we have the physical power to commit perjury
here, when we have sworn to support the Constitution. We might admit a
man here from Pennsylvania Avenue, elected by nobody, as a member of
this Senate; but we would commit perjury in doing it, and have no
right to do it."
Mr. Trumbull made an extended reply, which assumed somewhat the form
of a conversation, in which Mr. Dixon and other Senators participated.
Mr. Trumbull claimed that it required the concurrent action of both
houses of Congress to recognize any government in States where
rebellion had overthrown it.
On the 28th of February, the concurrent resolution still pending, Mr.
Nye, of Nevada, advocated its passage. He opposed the present
admission of any member from the seceding States. "We are told," said
he, "by the apologists of these men who are being elected on their
merits as rebels, to the exclusion of Union men, that 'we must not
expect too much of them.' I fully accede to this idea. A class that
during its whole political life has aimed at a monopoly of wealth, a
monopoly of labor, and a monopoly of political power; that engaged in
the attempt at revolution in order to establish more fully and to
perpetuate such monopoly; that, failing in this, has become more
bitter by disappointment, should have time; and, sir, I am decidedly
in favor of giving them all the time necessary for the most
substantial improvement. I would say to these men, 'Go home! Go back
and labor as industriously to disabuse the minds of your
constituencies as you labored to mislead and impose upon them. Tell
them that the Union Government always was and never can be any thing
else than a just Government. Tell them that the Constitution has
become the acknowledged sovereign, and that it presides in both houses
of Congress. Inform them, while you are about it, that the rebel
sympathizers and apologists in the North can do them no good; that
they are acting as much out of time and propriety now as they did in
the time of the war, when their encouragement only prolonged the
conflict and added to Southern disaster. You may say to your
constituencies that the majority in Congress is very tenacious on the
subject of the Union war debt; that it is determined to keep faith
with the national creditors; that it is bent on adopting and throwing
around it all the safeguards and precautions possible; and that your
admission just now, and your alliance with Northern sympathizers,
would not be propitious in raising the value of our public securities.
While you are conferring with your constituents, you may as well
repeat to them the common political axiom that Representatives are
elected to represent their constituents, and that it is not believed
at the seat of Government that a disloyal constituency would make such
a mistake as to send loyal Representatives to Congress. In short, you
may as well say to your people that, as Congress represents the
loyalty of the nation, South as well as North, and has much important
work on hand, some of it requiring a two-thirds majority, it is not
deemed wholly prudent to part with that majority out of mere comity to
men from whom no assistance could be expected. Finally, by way of
closing the suggestive instructions, you may give your constituents to
understand that, as you went out of Congress rebel end foremost, you
will not probably get into those vacant seats over yonder except that
you come back Union end foremost."
Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, held opinions of the pending question
different from those maintained by his colleague. He thought "the
power to suspend the right of a State to representation might imply a
dangerous power, and might imply a right to suspend it for any reason
that Congress might see fit. The power to suspend the right of a State
to be represented might hereafter be a terrible precedent." "There is
no provision in the Constitution," said Mr. Stewart, "conferring such
a power upon Congress. No authority of the kind is expressed in that
instrument, nor can I find any place where it is implied." In another
portion of his speech, which was very long, and occupied part of the
session of the succeeding day, Mr. Stewart remarked: "In the darkest
time of the rebellion, I deny that the right to represent Tennessee in
this hall by those who were loyal ever was for a moment suspended, but
their power to obey the law, their power to represent it was prevented
by treason. They were overpowered, and they were denied the right of
representation, not by Congress, not by the Government. This war was
to maintain for them that right which rebellion had sought to take
away from them, and had for a time suspended the harmonious relations
of the State to the General Government; and it will be too much to
admit that this Government has ever been in such a fix that the people
thereof were really not entitled to the protection of the
Constitution, and because they were denied it this war was brought on,
this war was prosecuted."
Mr. Johnson opposed the resolution in a protracted speech in which he
reviewed the entire subject of reconstruction. Of the condition and
rights of the Southern States he said: "They are as much States as
they were when the insurrection was inaugurated, and their relation to
their sister States, and their consequent relation to the Government
of the United States, is the same relation in which they stood to both
when the insurrection was inaugurated. That would seem to follow
logically as a necessary result, and if that is a necessary result,
does it not also follow that they are entitled to representation in
this chamber? Whether they can present persons who can take their
seats, because they have individually committed crimes against the
United States is another question; but I speak now of the right
itself."
Mr. Johnson argued that holding secession sentiments a few years ago
was no evidence of present disloyalty, and cited in proof of this
proposition a newspaper article purporting to give secession
resolutions drawn up by Mr. Wade, and passed at a meeting held at
Cleveland in 1859, which was presided over by Joshua E. Giddings.
This called forth an answer from Mr. Wade, who said: "The Senator from
Maryland called me in question for having been present at a meeting
which he affirmed was held in Cleveland some seven years ago by
persons called 'Sons of Liberty,' and he alleged that I there
consented to certain resolutions that were passed which favored the
doctrine of secession, and that I was chairman of the committee which
reported them. Sir, the charge is a total forgery so far as I am
concerned. I never was at any such meeting of the Sons of Liberty or
any other sons. I never uttered such a sentiment in my life; I am not
one of those who have or have had much association with gentlemen
holding to secession principles. My associations have all been the
other way. During the war that secession made my counsels were against
it. I was for war to the death against the principle of secession,
while many other gentlemen in my eye were either participants in or
apologists for that sentiment. I am perfectly aware that a war is
made--and I am willing to meet it anywhere--upon what are called
Radicals of the country, and I am one of them. In olden times I was
here in the Senate called an Abolitionist, but they have changed the
name since. They have all got to be Abolitionists now, and they have
changed my name to 'Radical.'
"Mr. President, in the history of mankind, so far as I have read or
know it, there never has been a time when parties were so organized on
radical principles of justice and right. The party with whom I act
appeal to no expediency, to none of your political policies; we dig
down to the granite of eternal truth, and there we stand, and they who
assail us have to assail the great principles of the Almighty, for our
principles are chained to his throne, and are as indestructible as the
Almighty himself. I want no warfare with any body; but if you will
make war upon such principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for
you. You can not prevail.
"I have been in these political warfares for a long time; I claim to
be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when there were not
five men with me to support me, and then I rose here and told those
who were inveighing like demons against the principles that they
called abolitionism, that I was an Abolitionist. To-day you are all
Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by compulsion. I have wondered a
great deal why men did not learn more about these things than they
seem to do. Our principles are assailed now with just the same
virulence that they used to be when we were in a small minority. I do
not hold that they have triumphed thus far because of any superior
capacity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that we, from
the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of the
people and conquered the predominant party of this country which had
stood completely dominating the whole nation for more than forty
years? Why is it that we have conquered you, and now are triumphant
here in this Senate and almost by two-thirds in both branches, with
the whole nation at our backs? What miracle has wrought this change?
None other than the great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and
right are destined among the American people to succeed, and the gates
of hell can not prevail against them, although they are trying at this
particular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.]
On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan first
claimed the attention of the Senate in a speech two hours in length.
He argued "that for any guilty part taken by the people in the late
war, that the sufferings and losses they endured in that war were the
natural and sufficient punishment; that after it they remain purged,
and ought to be reädmitted to all their constitutional rights at once.
That it is due to the dignity of the United States as a great nation,
if she punishes the actual traitors who incited the rebellion, that it
be done solemnly and according to the strictest form of law, in open
courts, where the prisoners may have counsel and witnesses, so that
they may make their defense, if they have any. That according to the
Constitution and laws all the States are still in the Union; that
secession ordinances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the
other; that they are neither dead by forfeiture or _felo de se_, but
are now in full and perfect existence, with all their municipal
machinery in full play. That the proposition of the Committee of
Fifteen to amend the Constitution is fundamental and revolutionary,
and destructive of the freedom of the States and the liberties of the
people; that it is a threat to deprive them of their rights by
compelling them either to admit negroes to the right of suffrage or to
give up a share of their representation, which is theirs by law and
the last amendment to the Constitution. That the resolution now before
us from the same committee is also revolutionary and destructive,
being an attempt to suspend the Constitution and laws in regard to
representation in Congress over eleven States of the Union until
Congress shall see fit to restore them. It is a declaration on the
part of the members of the present House and Senate, that having the
means of keeping these States from being represented here, they are
going to do so as long as they please; that no one of these measures
can be justified as a punishment for the rebellion; that the
Constitution forbids them as bills of pains and penalties, and as _ex
post facto_ in their character."
Mr. Garret Davis, in the course of a speech in opposition to the
resolution, suggested a summary solution of the present difficulties:
"There is," said he, "a provision in the Constitution which requires
the President to communicate to the two houses of Congress information
as to the state of the Union, and to recommend to them such measures
"as he shall deem proper and expedient. What does this necessarily
impose upon him? He has to ascertain what men compose the two houses
of Congress. It is his right, it is his constitutional function, to
ascertain who constitute the two houses of Congress. The members of
the Senate who are in favor of the admission of the Southern Senators
could get into a conclave with those Southern Senators any day, and
they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The President of the
United States has the constitutional option--it is his function, it
his power, it is his right--and I would advise him to exercise it, to
ascertain, where there are two different bodies of men both claiming
to be the Senate, which is the true Senate. If the Southern members
and those who are for admitting them to their seats constitute a
majority of the whole Senate, the President has a right--and, by the
Eternal! he ought to exercise that right forthwith, to-morrow, or any
day--to recognize the Opposition in this body and the Southern
members, the majority of the whole body, as the true Senate. And then
what would become of you gentlemen? Oh, if the lion of the Hermitage,
and that great statesman, the sage of Ashland, were here in the seat
of power, how soon would they settle this question! They would say to,
and they would inspire those to whom they spoke, 'You Southern men are
kept out of your seats by violence, by revolution, against the
Constitution, against right; the Union is dissolved, the Government is
brought to an end by keeping the Senators from eleven States out of
their seats when the Constitution expressly states that every State
shall have two Senators.'
"There is no plainer principle of constitutional law than that the
President has the right to ascertain and decide what body of men is
the Senate and what the House of Representatives when there are two
bodies of men claiming to be each. It is his right to do so, and the
people of America will sustain him in the noble and manly and
patriotic performance of his duty in determining the identity of the
true House. It ought to have been done at the beginning of this
session. When a petty clerk took upon himself to read the list of the
Representatives of the people of the United States, and to keep the
Representatives of eleven States out of their seats, the Constitution
guaranteeing to them those seats for the benefit of their constituents
and country, that subordinate never ought to have been tolerated for
one day in the perpetration of so great an outrage. Whenever Andrew
Johnson chooses to exercise his high function, his constitutional
right of saying to the Southern Senators, 'Get together with the
Democrats and the Conservatives of the Senate, and if you constitute a
majority, I will recognize you as the Senate of the United States,'
what then will become of you gentlemen? You will quietly come in and
form a part of that Senate."
Mr. Doolittle opposed the passage of the resolution. Referring to the
plan proposed by Mr. Davis, he said: "If such a thing should
happen--which God in his mercy, I hope, will always prevent--that the
Senate should be divided, and one portion should go into one room, and
another into another, each claiming to be the Senate, I suppose the
House of Representatives could direct its clerk to go to one body and
not go to the other, and I do not know but the President of the United
States would have the power, in case of such a division, to send his
private secretary with messages to one body and not send them to the
other. Perhaps that might occur; but it is one of those cases that are
not to be supposed or to be tolerated."
Mr. Wilson advocated the resolution: "The nation," said he, "is
divided into two classes; that the one class imperiously demands the
immediate and unconditional admission into these halls of legislation
of the rebellious States, _rebel end foremost_; that the other class
seeks their admission into Congress, at an early day, _loyal end
foremost_. He would hear, too, the blended voices of unrepentant
rebels and rebel sympathizers and apologists mingling in full chorus,
not for the restoration of a broken Union, for the unity and
indivisibility of the republic has been assured on bloody fields of
victory, but for the restoration to these vacant chairs of the
'natural leaders' of the South."
Referring to Mr. Davis' programme for the President's interference
with the Senate, Mr. Wilson said: "Sir, there was a time when a
Senator who should have said what we have recently heard on this floor
would have sunk into his seat under the withering rebuke of his
associates. No Senator or Representative has a right to tell us what
the Executive will do. The President acts upon his own responsibility.
We are Senators, this is the Senate of the United States, and it
becomes us to maintain the rights and the dignity of the Senate of the
United States. The people demand that their Senators and
Representatives shall enact the needed measures to restore, at the
earliest possible day, the complete practical relations of the seceded
States to the National Government, and protect the rights and
liberties of all the people, without regard to color, race, or
descent."
Mr. Fessenden, having the resolution in charge, made a second speech,
in which he answered objections which had been urged, and defended the
Committee of Fifteen against imputations of a disposition to delay the
work of reconstruction.
Mr. McDougal took occasion to say a few words against the resolution.
He said: "I would not dare to vote for this proposition, because I
have some regard for the great Judge who lives above. The question
pending now, as practically useless as it will be as rule, is yet
mischievous. It is in the way of teaching bad precedents, false law,
unsound loyalty. These things are like the worms that eat into the
majestic oaks which are used to build vessels to ride the sea, and
decay their strength, so that they fall down and make wrecks of
navies."
Mr. Hendricks had moved to amend the resolution by inserting the words
"inhabitants of" after the word "States." This amendment was rejected.
The Senate then proceeded to take the vote on the concurrent
resolution, which was passed--yeas, 29; nays, 18.
Thus the opinion of Congress was established, by a large majority,
that the two houses should act conjointly upon the whole question of
the representation of States, and that this question was entirely
independent, of the Executive.