In the Senate on the 14th, Trumbull, quoting from the testimony of the

House Committee, said that Hall's carbines, originally owned by the

Government, but condemned and sold as useless at about $2 each, were

purchased back for the Government, in April or May, at $15 each. In

June, the Government sold them again at $3.50 each. Afterwards in

August, they were purchased by an agent of the Government at $12.50 each

and turned over to the Government at $22 each, and the Committee of the

House was then trying to prevent this last payment from being made, and

eventually succeeded in doing so. The beneficiary in this case was one

Simon Stevens, not a relative of Thaddeus Stevens, but a protege of his,

and an occupant of his law office. He operated through General Fremont,

not through Cameron.

"Sir," said Dawes, "amid all these things is it strange that the public

treasury trembles and staggers like a strong man with a great burden

upon him? Sir, the man beneath an exhausted receiver gasping for breath

is not more helpless to-day than is the treasury of this Government

beneath the exhausting process to which it is subjected."

Somewhat later Congressman Van Wyck showed, among other things, that

Thurlow Weed, by the favor of Cameron, had established himself between

the Government and the powder manufacturers in such a way as to pocket a

commission of five per cent on purchases of ammunition.[61]

The committee visited severe censure on Thomas A. Scott, for acting as

Assistant Secretary of War, while holding the office of vice-president

of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. Scott said that he ceased to draw

salary from the railroad when he became Assistant Secretary, but that

he had retained his railroad connection because he considered it of more

value to himself than the other position. The committee considered it

highly improper for him to hold the power to award large Government

contracts for transportation and to fix prices therefor while he had

personal railroad interests, and while Secretary Cameron, to whom he

owed his appointment, was interested in the Northern Central Railroad.

The latter was commonly called "Cameron's road." An order had been

issued by Scott, without consultation with the Quartermaster-General of

the army, fixing the rates to be paid for the transportation of troops,

baggage, and supplies. The Quartermaster-General testified that Scott's

order as to prices was addressed to one of his own subordinates and that

he first saw it in the hands of that subordinate. He construed it,

however, as an order from his superior officer and therefore as

governing himself. Officers of other railroads testified that the rates

fixed by Scott were much too high considering the magnitude and kind of

work to be done. Thus, the rate for transporting troops was fixed at two

cents per mile per man, whether carried in passenger cars or in box

cars, and whether taken as single passengers or by regiments.

Nicolay and Hay tell us that Cameron's departure from the Cabinet was in

consequence of his disagreement with the President as to that part of

his report relating to the arming of slaves; that although nothing more

was said by either himself or Lincoln on that subject, "each of them

realized that the circumstance had created a situation of difficulty and

embarrassment which could not be indefinitely prolonged." Cameron, they

say, began to signify his weariness of the onerous labors of the War

Department, and hinted to the President that he would prefer the less

responsible duties of a foreign mission. To outsiders this affair

seemed to have completely blown over when, on January 11, 1862, Lincoln

wrote the following short note:

MY DEAR SIR: As you have more than once expressed a desire for

a change of position, I can now gratify you consistently with

my view of the public interest. I, therefore, propose

nominating you to the Senate next Monday as Minister to Russia.

Very sincerely your friend,

A. LINCOLN.

The real facts were given to the world by A. K. McClure somewhat later

in his book on "Lincoln and Men of War-Time." He says that Cameron's

dismissal was due to the severe strain put upon the national credit,

which led to the severest criticisms of all manner of public profligacy,

culminating in a formal appeal to the President from leading financial

men of the country for an immediate change of the Secretary of War; that

Lincoln's letter of dismissal was sent to Cameron by the hand of

Secretary Chase, and that it was extremely curt, being almost, if not

quite, literally as follows: "I have this day nominated Hon. Edwin M.

Stanton to be Secretary of War and you to be Minister Plenipotentiary to

Russia"; that Cameron in great agitation brought this missive to the

room of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War, where Mr. McClure

happened to be dining and showed it to them; that he wept bitterly, and

said that it meant his personal degradation and political ruin. Scott

and McClure volunteered to see Lincoln and ask him to withdraw the

offensive letter and to permit Cameron to antedate a letter of

resignation, to which Lincoln consented. "The letter conveyed by Chase

was recalled; a new correspondence was prepared, and a month later given

to the public."[62]

McClure palliates Cameron's conduct by saying that "contracts had to be

made with such haste as to forbid the exercise of sound discretion in

obtaining what the country needed; and Cameron, with his peculiar

political surroundings and a horde of partisans clamoring for spoils,

was compelled either to reject the confident expectation of his friends

or to submit to imminent peril from the grossest abuse of his delegated

authority." This is another way of saying that he was compelled either

to pay his political debts out of his own pocket, or give his henchmen

access to the public treasury, and that he chose the latter alternative.

The House of Representatives passed a resolution of censure upon Cameron

for investing Alexander Cummings with the control of large sums of the

public money and authorizing him to purchase military supplies without

restriction when the services of competent public officers were

available. A few days later the President sent to the House a special

message, assuming for himself and the entire Cabinet the responsibility

for adopting that irregular mode of procuring supplies in the then

existing emergency, a message which, when read in the light of

Cummings's testimony, adds nothing to Lincoln's fame.

There was a struggle in executive session of the Senate, lasting four

days, over the confirmation of Cameron as Minister to Russia. Trumbull

took the lead in opposition. He considered it an immoral act, like

giving to an unfaithful servant a "character" and exposing society to

new malfeasance at his hands. He believed and said that the new office

conferred upon him would serve simply as whitewash to enable him to

recover his seat in the Senate, and that that was the reason why he

wanted the mission to Russia.

Sumner, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, had been

much impressed by Cameron's anti-slavery zeal. As soon as the nomination

came in, he moved that it be confirmed unanimously and without reference

to any committee, which was the usual custom in cases where ex-Senators

of good repute were nominated to office. Objection being made, the

nomination went over. This was the day on which Dawes made his speech in

the House. Sumner saw the speech, called Cameron's attention to it, and

asked what answer should be made to such accusations. Cameron replied

that he had never made a contract for any kind of army supplies since he

had been Secretary of War, but had left all such business to the heads

of bureaus charged with such duties, and had never interfered with them.

On the 15th he put this statement in writing and addressed it to

Vice-President Hamlin:--

I take this occasion to state that I have myself not made a

single contract for any purpose whatever, having always

interpreted the laws of Congress as contemplating that the

heads of bureaus, who are experienced and able officers of the

regular army, shall make all contracts for supplies for the

branches of the service under their care respectively.

So far I have not found any occasion to interfere with them in

the discharge of this portion of their responsible duties.

I have the honor to be, respectfully, your obedient servant,

SIMON CAMERON.

HON. H. HAMLIN,

President of the Senate of the United States.

In reply Dawes produced documents to show that there were then

outstanding contracts, made by Cameron himself, for 1,836,900 muskets

and rifles, and for only 64,000 by the Chief of Ordnance, the officer

charged with that duty, and that on the very day when the letter to

Hamlin was written, Cameron made a contract, against the advice of the

Chief of Ordnance, for an unlimited number of swords and sabres--all

that a certain Philadelphia firm could produce in a given time. This was

done after he had resigned and before his successor, Stanton, had been

sworn in.[63]

Cameron was confirmed as Minister to Russia on the 17th, by a vote of 28

to 14. The Republican Senators who voted against confirmation were

Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Trumbull, and Wilkinson. Trumbull handed

me this list of names for publication, saying that all of them desired

to have it published.

Cameron remained abroad until time and more exciting events had cast a

kindly shadow on his record. He then came home and a few years later was

reelected to the Senate. When the attack was made on his dear friend

Sumner, which ended in displacing him from the chairmanship of the

Committee on Foreign Relations, which he had held ten years, Cameron

retreated to a Committee room, as to a cyclone cellar, where he remained

until the deed was done, leaving Trumbull, Schurz, and Wilson to fight

the battle for his dear friend. Then he returned and sat down in the

chair thus made vacant. He subsequently explained that he did so because

his name was the next one to Sumner's on the committee list.[64]

FOOTNOTES:

[56] E. Corning & Co., of Albany, were dealers in stoves and hardware.

[57] House Report no. 2, 37th Congress, 2d Session, p. 390. Cummings

reappears in Welles's _Diary_, near the close of Andrew Johnson's

Administration, as a favored candidate for the office of Commissioner of

Internal Revenue. The report of the Committee on Government Contracts

had been forgotten or only vaguely remembered. Welles had a dim

recollection that Cummings had a spotted record, and he warned Johnson

against him. Seward indorsed him, however; said he was "a capital man

for the place--no better could be found." (_Diary of Gideon Wells_, III,

414.)

[58] _Cong. Globe_, February, 1862, p. 710.

[59] _Cong. Globe_, January. 1862, p. 208.

[60] _Cong. Globe_, April, 1862, p. 1841.

[61] _Cong. Globe_, February, 1862, p. 712.

[62] _Lincoln and Men of War Time_, p. 165.

[63] Dawes, _Cong. Globe_, April, 1862, p. 1841.

[64] _Congressional Record_, 43d Cong., 1st Sess., p. 3434.

CHAPTER XII

ARBITRARY ARRESTS

The jaunty manner in which Secretary Seward administered the laws

respecting the liberty of the citizen in the earlier years of the war is

treated by John Hay with a humorous touch under date October 22, 1861:

To-day Deputy Marshal came and asked what he should do with

process to be served on Porter in contempt business. I took him

over to Seward and Seward said: "The President instructs you

that the _habeas corpus_ is suspended in this city at present,

and forbids you to serve any process upon any officer here."

Turning to me: "That is what the President says, is it not, Mr.

Hay?" "Precisely his words," I replied; and the thing was

done.[65]

Prior to the assembling of Congress in July, 1861, the President had

given to General Winfield Scott authority in writing to suspend the

privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ at any point on the line of the

movement of troops between Philadelphia and Washington City. Without

other authority Seward began to issue orders for the arrest and

imprisonment of persons suspected of disloyal acts or designs, not only

on the line between Philadelphia and Washington City, but in all parts

of the country.

When the special session of Congress began, Senator Wilson, Chairman of

the Committee on Military Affairs, introduced a joint resolution to

declare these and other acts of the President "legal and valid to the

same intent and with the same effect as if they had been issued and

done under the previous express authority and direction of the Congress

of the United States." The clause of the Constitution which says that

the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ shall not be suspended

unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may

require it, does not say in what mode, or by what authority, it may be

suspended.

Straightway there were differences of opinion as to the lodgment of the

power to suspend, whether it was in the executive or in the legislative

branch of the Government. Other differences cropped up as to the

phraseology of the Wilson Resolution and its legal intendment. It might

be construed as an affirmance by Congress that the President's act

suspending the writ was lawful at the time when he did it, or, on the

other hand, that it became lawful only after Congress had so voted, and

hence was unlawful before. These diversities of opinion were very

tenaciously held by different members of the Senate and House, of equal

standing in the legal profession. The result was that Wilson's joint

resolution was debated at great length, but did not pass. Instead of it

an amendment was added to one of the military bills declaring that all

acts, proclamations, and orders of the President after the 4th of March,

1861, respecting the army and navy, should stand approved and legalized

as if they had had the previous express authority of Congress; and the

bill was passed as amended. This was understood to be a mere makeshift

for the time being.

The general question was again brought to the attention of Congress by

Trumbull, December 12, 1861, when he introduced in the Senate the

following resolution:

Resolved, that the Secretary of State be directed to inform the

Senate whether, in the loyal states of the Union, any person or

persons have been arrested by orders from him or his

department; and if so, under what law said arrests have been

made and said persons imprisoned.

When this resolution came up for consideration (December 16), Senator

Dixon, of Connecticut, objected strongly to it. He thought that it was

unnecessary and unwise, and that it could result in nothing advantageous

to the cause of the Union. Some of the persons referred to, he said, had

been arrested in his own state. They had manifested their treasonable

purposes by attempting to institute a series of peace meetings,

so-called, by which they hoped to debauch the public mind under false

pretense of restoring peaceful relations between the North and the

South. The Secretary of State had put a sudden stop to their treasonable

designs by arresting and imprisoning one or more of them. He contended

that the Secretary had done precisely the right thing, at precisely the

right time, and had nipped treason in Connecticut in the bud. The only

criticism which loyal citizens had to make of his doings was that he had

not arrested a greater number. If there had been any error on the part

of the Executive, it had been on the side of lenity and indulgence. He,

Dixon, would not vote for an inquiry into the legality of such arrests

because they found their justification in the dire necessity of the

time.

Trumbull asked how the Senator knew that the persons arrested were

traitors. Who was to decide that question? If people were to be arrested

and imprisoned indefinitely, without any charges filed against them,

without examination, without an opportunity to reply, at the click of

the telegraph, in localities where the courts were open, far from the

theatre of war, such acts were the very essence of despotism. The only

purpose of making the inquiry was to regulate these proceedings by law.

If additional legislation was necessary to put down treason or punish

rebel sympathizers in Connecticut, or in any other loyal state, he

(Trumbull) was ready to give it, but he was not willing to sanction

lawlessness on the part of public officials on the plea of necessity. He

denied the necessity. The principle contended for by the Senator from

Connecticut would justify mobs, riots, anarchy. He understood that some

of the parties arrested had been discharged without trial and he asked

if Mr. Dixon justified that. Then the following ensued:

MR. DIXON. I do.

MR. TRUMBULL. Then the Senator justifies putting innocent men

in prison. Else why were they discharged? I take it that was

the reason for their discharge. I have heard of such cases.

MR. DIXON. They ought to be discharged, then.

MR. TRUMBULL. They ought to be discharged, and they ought to be

arrested, too. An innocent man ought to be arrested, put into

prison, and by and by discharged. Sir, that is not my idea of

individual or constitutional liberty. I am engaged, and the

people whom I represent are engaged, in the maintenance of the

Constitution and the rights of the citizens under it. We are

fighting for the Government as our fathers made it. The

Constitution is broad enough to put down this rebellion without

any violations of it. I do not apprehend that the present

Executive of the United States will assume despotic powers. He

is the last man to do it. I know that his whole heart is

engaged in endeavoring to crush this rebellion, and I know that

he would be the last man to overturn the Constitution in doing

it. But, sir, we may not always have the same person at the

head of our affairs. We may have a man of very different

character, and what we are doing to-day will become a precedent

upon which he will act. Suppose that when the trouble existed

in Kansas, a few years ago, the then President of the United

States had thought proper to arrest the Senator or myself, and

send him or me to prison without examination, without

opportunity to answer, because in his opinion we were dangerous

to the peace of the country, and the necessity justified it.

What would the Senator have thought of such action?

The debate lasted the whole day. Senators Hale, Fessenden, Kennedy, and

Pearce, of Maryland, supported the resolution. Senators Wilson, of

Massachusetts, and Browning, of Illinois, opposed it.

Read in the light of the present day the arguments of the opposition are

extremely flimsy. They said in effect: "We know that our rulers mean

well; if we ask them any questions, we shall cast a doubt upon their

acts and then the wicked will be encouraged in their wrongdoing, and

treason will multiply in the land." It was Trumbull's opinion that

arbitrary arrests were causing division and dissension among the loyal

people of the North, and were thus doing more harm than good, even from

the standpoint of their apologists. Democratic conventions censured

them. That of Indiana, for example, resolved:

That the total disregard of the writ of _habeas corpus_ by the

authorities over us and the seizure and imprisonment of the

citizens of the loyal states where the judiciary is in full

operation, without warrant of law and without assigning any

cause, or giving the party arrested any opportunity of defense,

are flagrant violations of the Constitution, and most alarming

acts of usurpation of power, which should receive the stern

rebuke of every lover of his country, and of every man who

prizes the security and blessings of life, liberty, and

property.

At the close of the debate, Senator Doolittle moved to refer the

resolutions to the Committee on the Judiciary, in order to have a report

on the question whether the right to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_

appertains to the President or to Congress. This motion was opposed by

Trumbull, but it prevailed by a vote of 25 to 17, and the subject was

shelved for six months.

The question upon which Senator Doolittle wanted information had already

been decided, so far as one eminent jurist could decide it, in the case

of John Merryman, a citizen of Maryland, who was arrested at his home

in the middle of the night on the 25th of May, 1861. He applied to Chief

Justice Taney for a writ directing General Cadwalader, the commandant of

Fort McHenry, to produce him in court, on the ground that he had been

arrested contrary to the Constitution and laws of the United States. He

stated that he had been taken from his bed at midnight by an armed force

pretending to act under military orders from some person to him unknown.

The Chief Justice issued his writ and General Cadwalader sent his

regrets by Colonel Lee, saying that the prisoner was charged with

various acts of treason and that the arrest was made by order of General

Keim, who was not within the limits of his command. He said further that

he was authorized by the President of the United States to suspend the

writ of _habeas corpus_ for the public safety. He requested that further

action be postponed until he could receive additional instructions from

the President.

Judge Taney thereupon issued an attachment against General Cadwalader

for disobedience to the high writ of the court. The next day United

States Marshal Bonifant certified that he sent in his name from the

outer gate of the fort, which he was not permitted to enter, and that

the messenger returned with the reply that there was no answer to his

card, and that he was thereupon unable to serve the writ. The Chief

Justice then read from manuscript as follows:

1. The President, under the Constitution and laws of the United

States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas

corpus_, nor authorize any military officer to do so.

2. A military officer has no right to arrest and detain a

person not subject to the rules and articles of war, for an

offense against the laws of the United States, except in aid of

the judicial authority and subject to its control, and if the

party is arrested by the military, it is the duty of the

officer to deliver him over immediately to the civil authority

to be dealt with according to law.

The Chief Justice then remarked orally that if the party named in the

attachment were before the court he should fine and imprison him, but

that it was useless to attempt to enforce his legal authority, and he

should, therefore, call upon the President of the United States to

perform his constitutional duty and enforce the process of the court.

July 8, 1862, the House, after a brief debate, passed a bill reported by

its Judiciary Committee directing the Secretaries of State and of War to

report to the judges of the courts of the United States the names of all

persons held as political prisoners, residing in the jurisdiction of

said judges, and providing for their prompt release unless the grand

jury should find indictments against them during the first term of court

thereafter. The bill also authorized the President, during any recess of

Congress, to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_

throughout the United States, or any part thereof, in cases of

rebellion, or invasion, where the public safety might require it, until

the meeting of Congress. Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, who reported the bill,

explained that the committee did not attempt to decide whether the right

to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ was vested in the executive or in

the legislative branch of the Government. That was a matter of dispute,

and the bill was intended to settle doubts, not theoretically but

practically. If the right belonged to the Executive under the

Constitution the passage of the bill would do no harm; if it belonged to

Congress the bill would enable the President to exercise it legally. A

motion to lay the bill on the table was negatived by a vote of 29 to 89,

after which it was passed without a division.

July 15, Trumbull reported this bill from the Judiciary Committee of the

Senate with a recommendation that it pass. It was opposed vigorously by

Wilson, of Massachusetts, who called it a general jail delivery for the

benefit of traitors. He moved to strike out all of it except the section

which authorized the President to suspend the privilege of the writ of

_habeas corpus_. This motion was rejected by a majority of one, but the

session came to an end on the following day without a final vote on the

passage of the bill.

In the meantime President Lincoln had seen fit to transfer the license

of making arbitrary arrests from the Secretary of State to the Secretary

of War. The change was no betterment, however, for, where Seward had

previously chastised the suspected ones with whips, Stanton now

chastised them with scorpions. Arbitrary arrests became more numerous

and arbitrary than before. A special bureau was created for them under

charge of an officer styled the Provost Marshal of the War Department.

In the ensuing political campaign the Democrats made the greatest

possible use of the issue thus presented, and they showed large gains in

the congressional elections in the autumn of 1862. They carried New

York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Horatio Seymour was elected governor of the Empire State, and William A.

Richardson (Democrat) was chosen by the legislature of Illinois as

Senator in place of Browning, who was filling the vacancy caused by the

death of Senator Douglas. It is impossible to say how much influence the

arbitrary arrests had in producing these results, but it is certain that

the Republican leaders were alarmed. Stanton fell into a panic. The

general jail delivery apprehended by Wilson took place by a stroke of

Stanton's pen on the 22d of November, without waiting for the final vote

on Trumbull's bill, and Wilson himself voted for the bill.

In the House, Thaddeus Stevens introduced a bill to indemnify the

President and all persons acting under his authority for arrests and

imprisonments previously made. This was passed under the previous

question, December 8, unfairly and without debate.

When Congress reassembled in December, Trumbull called up the House bill

and offered a substitute for it. He held that under the Constitution

Congress must authorize and regulate the suspension of the writ of

_habeas corpus_. He would not, however, limit the exercise of the

executive power to the time of meeting of the next Congress, as the

House bill provided. His substitute proposed that the suspension of the

writ should be left to the discretion of the President as to time and

place during the continuance of the rebellion, but that political

prisoners should not be held indefinitely without knowing the charges

against them. The second section provided that lists of all prisoners of

this class in the loyal states should be furnished, within twenty days,

to the courts of the respective districts and laid before the grand

juries with a statement of the charges against them, and if no

indictments should be found against them during that term of court they

should be discharged upon taking an oath of allegiance to the United

States, and (if required by the judge) giving a bond for good behavior.

Future arrests for political offenses were to be regulated in like

manner. Collamer moved to strike out the second section, but failed by

two votes.

Republican resistance to this measure now ceased and the role of

opposition was taken up by the Democrats. Powell, of Kentucky, contended

that the power to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ was lodged in

Congress exclusively and could not be delegated to the President. He

raised the objection also that there was no definition of the phrase

"political offenses." Trumbull agreed to strike out that phrase

altogether, in which case the President would have the power to suspend

the writ for all offenses, and could determine for himself which ones

were political and which were non-political. As to the right of Congress

to delegate its own powers to the President in analogous cases, he cited

the power to borrow money, the power to grant letters of marque and

reprisal, and the power to call forth the militia, all of which were

lodged in Congress, but which Congress never exercised directly, but

only by delegating its powers to the Executive.

Senator Carlile, of Virginia, held that the writ of _habeas corpus_

ought never to be suspended in places where the courts were open.

Trumbull replied that if it were not suspended in those places it could

never be suspended at all, for if there were no courts open, the writ

itself could not be issued. Yet the Constitution clearly contemplated

the necessity of suspending it in certain conditions where it actually

existed.

February 23, 1863, Trumbull's substitute was agreed to by yeas 25, nays

12, and the bill was passed by 24 to 13. All of the negative votes,

except two, were cast by Democrats.

February 27, the Senate took up the Stevens House bill to indemnify the

President and adopted a substitute proposed by Trumbull. The substitute

was not adopted by the House, but a conference was asked for and agreed

to by the Senate. The conferees decided to consolidate into one act the

Indemnity Bill and the _Habeas Corpus_ Bill, which was still pending

between the two houses. The report of the Conference Committee was

presented to the Senate by Trumbull on March 2, one day before the end

of the Thirty-seventh Congress.

Except the financial bills, this was the most important measure of the

session, and the one about which the most heat had been engendered. On

the 24th of September, 1862, the President had proclaimed martial law

throughout the nation as to persons discouraging enlistments or

resisting the Conscription Act and had suspended the writ of _habeas

corpus_ as to such persons. On the 1st of January following, he had

issued the Emancipation Proclamation, of which he had given preliminary

notice one hundred days before. These measures were extremely

distasteful to the Democrats and especially so to those of the border

slave states. The pending measure was intended to condone all former

arbitrary arrests and to sanction an indefinite number in the future,

although providing for speedy trials.

When the report was presented, Powell, of Kentucky, moved to postpone it

till the following day. Trumbull would not agree to any postponement

unless there was an understanding on both sides that a vote should be

taken within a limited time. It was finally agreed between himself and

Bayard, of Delaware, that it should be postponed until seven o'clock in

the evening, with the understanding that there should be no

filibustering on the measure. The postponement was to be for debate and

discussion only. "So far as I know, or can learn, or believe," said

Bayard, "it is delay for no other purpose." Powell was present when this

colloquy took place and he neither affirmed nor denied. Trumbull took it

to be an agreement between the two political parties.

The debate began with a speech from Senator Wall (Democrat), of New

Jersey, who held the floor till midnight, when Saulsbury, of Delaware,

moved that the Senate adjourn. The motion was negatived by 5 to 31.

Powell moved that the bill be laid upon the table. This was negatived

without a division. Then Powell began a speech against the bill. At

12.40 A.M., Richardson moved that the Senate adjourn; negatived by 5 to

30. Powell continued his speech and became involved in a running debate

with Cowan, of Pennsylvania, who took the floor after Powell had

finished and made a speech, apparently unpremeditated, but nevertheless

a great speech, going to the foundation of things and showing that the

Administration must be sustained in this crisis, since otherwise the

fabric of self-government in the United States would perish. He did not

say that he approved of, or condoned, arbitrary arrests in the loyal

states. All his implications were to the contrary, but he insisted that

those who would save the country and ward off chaos and anarchy could

not pause now to contend with each other on the issue whether the

President had the right to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ or

whether Congress had it. He said that he observed signs, on the

Democratic side, of filibustering against the bill, and he thought that

such tactics were unjustifiable and highly dangerous. His argument

carried the greater force because of his habitual conservatism. While it

did not, perhaps, change any votes, it probably dampened the resistance

of the Northern Democrats to the bill.

When Cowan had concluded, Powell took the floor to reply. At 1.53 A.M.,

Bayard interrupted him with a motion to adjourn, which was negatived by

4 to 35. Powell resumed his speech and made a much longer one than his

first, at the end of which he moved an adjournment, negatived by 4 to

32. Then Bayard made a long speech against the bill. He finished at 5

o'clock and Powell made another motion to adjourn, which was negatived,

4 to 18, no quorum voting.

Some confusion followed the disclosure of the absence of a quorum.

Several motions were made and withdrawn, and finally Fessenden called

for the yeas and nays on Powell's motion to adjourn. In the mean time a

quorum had been drummed up and the roll-call showed 4 yeas to 33 nays.

There was considerable noise and confusion on the floor when the result

was announced and the presiding officer (Pomeroy, of Kansas) said

quickly:

The question is on concurring in the report of the Committee of

Conference. Those in favor of concurring in the report will say

"aye"; those opposed, "no." The ayes have it. It is a vote. The

report is concurred in.

Trumbull instantly moved to take up a bill from the House relating to

public grounds in Washington City, and his motion was agreed to. Then

Powell wanted to go on with the Indemnity Bill and was informed by

Grimes that it had already passed. He denied that it had passed and

called for the yeas and nays. Trumbull claimed the floor and his claim

was sustained by the chair. Powell called it a piece of "jockeying."

After some further recrimination the Senate adjourned.

On reassembling, the question whether the bill had passed or not was

again taken up. The Senate Journal showed that it had passed, and the

question arose on a motion to correct the Journal. In the debate which

ensued it was proved that the presiding officer did actually put the

motion in the words quoted above; that, of the four Democrats who voted

on the last roll-call, none heard it; that the Democrats were in fact

filibustering against the bill, or at all events that Powell was doing

so, for he avowed that he had intended to defeat it by any means in his

power. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the passage of the

bill was accomplished by the sharp practice of Pomeroy; but it was

_damnum absque injuria_, snap judgment being no worse than

filibustering. Moreover, there is evidence that of the thirteen

Democratic Senators, only four or five were really determined to kill

the bill at all hazards. All except that number absented themselves from

the night session, while all or nearly all the Republicans remained in

their places.

The Conference Report was concurred in on the 2d of March and the bill

was approved by the President on the following day. We may infer,

therefore, that the power to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ resides

in the legislative branch of the Government, of which the President is a

part, and that Congress may delegate its powers to the President and

prescribe conditions and limitations to its exercise.

No legislation more wholesome was enacted during the war period. No act

of the period was more precise and lucid and less equivocal in its

terms. Yet within two months it was grossly violated by the banishment

of Clement L. Vallandigham, an ex-member of Congress from Ohio.

Vallandigham was the incarnation of Copperheadism. I heard his speech of

January 14, 1863, in the House, in which he discharged all the

pro-slavery virus that he had been collecting from his boyhood days. As

a public speaker he had no attractions, but rather, as it seemed to me,

the tone and front of a fallen angel defying the Almighty. There was

neither humor nor persuasion nor conciliation in his make-up. He was

cold as ice and hard as iron. Although born and bred in a free state, he

avowed himself a pro-slavery man. In the speech referred to he took two

hours to prove the following propositions: (1) That the Southern

Confederacy never could be conquered; (2) that the Union never could be

restored by war; (3) that it could be restored by peace; (4) that

whatever else might happen, African slavery would be "fifty-fold

stronger" at the end of the war than it had been at the beginning.

General Ambrose E. Burnside, after his defeat at Fredericksburg, had

been sent to take command of the Department of the Ohio. Vallandigham

was now seeking the nomination of his party for governor of Ohio, and

his chances of success were not flattering until Burnside caused him to

be arrested for alleged treasonable utterances in a speech delivered at

the town of Mount Vernon on the 1st day of May, 1863. He was taken out

of his bed at Dayton in the night and carried to Cincinnati, put in a

military prison, tried by a military commission, found guilty, and

sentenced to close confinement in Fort Warren during the continuance of

the war. President Lincoln commuted his sentence to banishment to the

Southern Confederacy. He was accordingly sent across the army lines and

handed over to his supposed friends, who did not, however, receive him

with any touching marks of affection.

Under the Act of Congress approved March 3, 1863, it was the duty of the

Secretary of War within twenty days to report the arrest of Vallandigham

to the judge of the United States District Court for southern Ohio, with

a statement of the charges against him, in order that they might be laid

before the grand jury, and if an indictment were found against him, to

bring him to trial; and if no indictment were found during that term of

court, to discharge him from confinement. Any officer, civil or

military, holding a prisoner in contravention of that act was guilty of

a misdemeanor and liable to a fine of not less than five hundred dollars

and to imprisonment in the common jail not less than six months.

Accordingly, all the proceedings in the case of Vallandigham subsequent

to his arrest were unwarranted and lawless. The arrest itself was,

perhaps, permissible under the act, because the President had the right

to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_. When Vallandigham applied for

the writ, Judge Leavitt refused it on that ground. The refusal of the

writ, however, did not justify the later proceedings.

The military trial of Vallandigham and his subsequent banishment led to

vehement protests from Northern Democrats, which, in the light of the

present day, seem not unreasonable. President Lincoln replied at great

length and on the whole successfully to one such protest which came from

a committee of citizens of New York, of which Erastus Corning was

chairman. He did not fare so well in a later controversy with a

committee of the Ohio Democratic State Convention, who visited the

Executive Mansion and submitted their protest in writing under date of

June 26. In this communication they covered the same ground as the New

York men and added these words:

And finally, the charge and the specifications on which Mr.

Vallandigham was tried entitled him to a trial before the civil

tribunals according to the express provisions of the late acts

of Congress approved by yourself July 17, 1862, and March 3,

1863.

Mr. Lincoln replied to everything in the protest of the Ohio men except

this paragraph. His failure to reply on this point gave them the

opportunity to retort that his answer was "a mere evasion of the grave

questions involved." This is the only instance in Mr. Lincoln's

controversial writings, so far as I can discover, where such a retort

seems justified. The correspondence is published in Appleton's Annual

Cyclopaedia, 1863.

The New York _Tribune_ deprecated, in no querulous tone, but in

moderate and dignified language, the entire proceedings in

Vallandigham's case, and deemed them not helpful to the cause of the

Union, but the contrary.

Vallandigham was not the kind of man to win public sympathy, even for

his misfortunes. Moreover, his transference to the society that he was

supposed to be most fond of (as an alternative to close confinement in

Fort Warren) had a flavor of jocularity that dulled the edge of

criticism; but his strength in his own party was vastly augmented by

these proceedings. He was nominated for governor by acclamation, and

would probably have been elected had not the victories at Gettysburg and

Vicksburg, two months later, withdrawn attention from him, inspired the

Unionists with new enthusiasm, and correspondingly depressed their

opponents.

Burnside, finding himself sustained by his superiors in doctoring

Copperheadism in Ohio, enlarged the scope of his practice. On the 1st of

June he issued an order forbidding the circulation of the New York

_World_ in his department and stopping the publication of the Chicago

_Times_. Brigadier-General Ammen was charged with the execution of the

latter order. On the following day, Ammen notified Wilbur F. Storey, the

editor of the _Times_, that he would not be allowed to issue his paper

on the 3d of June. Storey appealed to the United States District Court

for protection. Shortly after midnight Judge Drummond issued a writ

directing the military authorities to take no further steps under

Burnside's order to suppress the _Times_ until the application for a

permanent writ of injunction could be heard in open court. The judge

said:

I may be pardoned for saying that personally and officially I

desire to give every aid and assistance in my power to the

Government and the Administration in restoring the Union, but

I have always wished to treat the Government as a government

of law and a government of the Constitution, and not a

government of mere physical force. I personally have contended

and shall always contend for the right of free discussion and

the right of commenting under the law and under the

Constitution upon the acts of the officers of the Government.

Notwithstanding the order of the judge, a body of troops broke into the

office of the _Times_ at half-past three o'clock in the morning, after

nearly the whole edition had been printed, and took possession of the

establishment. When daylight came there was great excitement in Chicago.

Although the _Times_ was a Copperhead sheet of an obnoxious type, many

loyal citizens were convinced that Burnside's order would produce vastly

more harm than good to the Union cause. A meeting was hastily called at

the circuit court room, at which Senator Trumbull and Congressman I. N.

Arnold were present. Hon. William B. Ogden, ex-mayor, president of the

Chicago and Northwestern Railway, a Republican in politics, offered for

adoption a resolution requesting President Lincoln to suspend or rescind

Burnside's order suppressing the _Times_. The resolution was adopted

unanimously by the meeting and a petition to that effect was drawn up,

signed, and sent around town for additional signatures. It was then

telegraphed to the President, and Trumbull and Arnold sent an additional

telegram asking that it might receive his prompt attention.

Outside of the room, however, the utmost contrariety of opinion existed.

The streets were filled with heated disputants, and there was danger of

rioting throughout the day following the suppression of the newspaper.

In the evening of June 3, a great meeting of persons opposed to

Burnside's order was held in the Court-House Square, which was addressed

by General Singleton, Moses M. Strong, of Wisconsin, B. G. Caulfield,

and E. G. Asay, Democrats, and by Senator Trumbull and Wirt Dexter,

Republicans.

In the mean time Judge Drummond was hearing the arguments of Storey's

lawyers on the question of making permanent the injunction that had

already been disobeyed. While the proceedings were going on, a telegram

came from Burnside to Ammen, dated Lexington, Kentucky, June 4, saying

that his order for the suppression of the Chicago _Times_ had been

revoked by order of the President of the United States. The soldiers

were accordingly withdrawn and Mr. Storey resumed possession of his

property.

The Chicago _Evening Journal_ published the following outline of

Trumbull's speech on this event:

The point of Judge Trumbull's speech was to show the importance

of adhering to the Constitution and laws in all measures

adopted for the suppression of the rebellion. He contended that

they furnished ample provisions for dealing with traitors in

our midst; that the Administration and its friends were

weakened by resort to measures of doubtful authority against

rebel sympathizers where the law furnished adequate remedies;

that while no one questioned the authority of military

commanders in the field and within their lines where the civil

authorities were overborne, to exercise supreme authority, the

right to do this in the loyal portions of the country, where

the judicial tribunals were in full operation, was very

questionable. He held that by its exercise in such localities

the enemies of the country were given a great advantage, by

alleging that their constitutional rights and privileges were

arbitrarily interfered with. He insisted that the Constitution

and laws were supreme in war as well as in peace, and that the

denial of this proposition was an acknowledgment that the

people were incapable of self-government--an admission that

constitutional liberty and the rights of the citizen,

guaranteed by fundamental laws, were of no value except in

peaceful times, so that in tumultuous times personal liberty

regulated by law, to establish which the Anglo-Saxon race had

been contending for centuries, must give way to the discretion

of any man who might happen at the time to be at the head of

the Government; that this, the American people are not prepared

to admit, nor was it necessary they should; that the right of

free speech and a free election should never be surrendered;

but that this freedom did not imply the right, in time of civil

war, to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the country,

either directly or indirectly, against which the laws made

ample provision.

The legislature of Illinois was then in session and both houses passed

resolutions condemning the action of the military authorities in

suppressing the Chicago _Times_.[66]

FOOTNOTES:

[65] _Letters and Diaries_, I, 47.

[66] The New York _Tribune_, June 6, said: "We trust the great majority

of considerate and loyal citizens share the relief and satisfaction we

feel in view of the President's course in revoking the order of General

Burnside which directs the suppression of the Chicago _Times_. And we

further trust that the zealous and impulsive minority, who would have

had General Burnside's order sustained, will, on calm reflection,

realize and admit that the President has taken the wiser and safer

course. We cannot reconcile the decision of the Executive in this case

with his action in regard to Vallandigham. Journalists have no special

license to commit treason, and Vallandigham's sympathy with the rebels

was neither more audacious nor more mischievous than that of the

_Times_. Yet it is better to be inconsistently right than consistently

wrong--better to be right to-day, though wrong yesterday, than to be

wrong both days alike."

CHAPTER XIII

INCIDENTS OF THE YEARS 1863 AND 1864

James W. White, of New York City, writes, March 6, to ask Trumbull, as a

member of the Seward Committee, whether it is a fact that President

Lincoln had knowledge of the dispatches written by Secretary Seward to

Minister Adams, dated April 10, 1861, and July 5, 1862, before they were

sent, and whether he approved the same.

This refers to an event which very nearly upset President Lincoln's

Cabinet in the beginning of 1863. Secretary Seward had entered the

Cabinet under strong suspicions of lukewarmness toward the war policy of

the President, which suspicions were shared by the Republican Senators

generally. Consequently they were prepared to believe that the want of

success which attended the Union arms was due to a lack of earnestness

at headquarters, and that the man who paralyzed Lincoln was the

Secretary of State. While this feeling was rankling in many bosoms, and

especially among those who had considered the Executive remiss in

dealing with the slavery question, the official correspondence of the

State Department of the preceding year came from the press, containing,

among other letters, one from Seward to Minister Adams dated July 5,

1862, with the following words:

It seems as if the extreme advocates of African slavery and its

most vehement opponents were acting in concert together to

precipitate a servile war--the former by making the most

desperate attempts to overthrow the Federal Union, the latter

by demanding an edict of universal emancipation as a lawful and

necessary, if not, as they say, the only legitimate way of

saving the Union.

Probably this was a private note, which got into the published volume by

mistake, but it was oil on the flames in 1863, and it became public

simultaneously with the news of General Burnside's defeat at

Fredericksburg. These were among the darkest hours of the war. The

Republican Senators thought that the rebellion would never be put down

unless Seward were forced out of the Cabinet and that now was the time

to act. A caucus was held and a committee appointed, of which Senator

Collamer was chairman, to visit the President and express the opinion

that Mr. Seward had lost the confidence of Congress and the country, and

that his resignation was necessary to a successful prosecution of the

war. Trumbull was one of the members of the committee.

Seward's unlucky letter, which formed the occasion of Judge White's

communication to Trumbull, was written shortly before Lincoln's

preliminary proclamation of emancipation as to slaves in the rebel

states was published. Senator Sumner took the letter to the President

and asked if he had ever given his sanction to it. He replied that he

had never seen it before. The newspapers got hold of this fact and made

it hot for Seward. The New York _Times_, however, denied, apparently by

authority, that Seward had ever sent any dispatch to a foreign minister

without first submitting it to the President and getting his approval of

it. Such a denial would be technically correct if this letter were a

private communication, not intended for the public archives. Judge

White, in a public letter, maintained that Seward never had submitted

this letter to his chief, thus raising a question of veracity with the

_Times_. So he wrote the foregoing letter to Trumbull hoping to find a

backer in him. Trumbull replied in the following terms:

Pressing engagements and an indisposition to become involved

in the controversy to which your letter of the 6th alludes must

be my apology for not sooner replying to your inquiries. The

want of harmony, not to say the antagonism, between some of the

dispatches referred to and the avowed policy of the President

would seem to afford sufficient evidence to a discerning public

that both could not have emanated from the same mind. In view,

therefore, of the manner in which the information in my

possession was obtained, and not perceiving at this time that

the public good would be subserved by any disclosure I could

make, I must be excused for not undertaking to furnish

extraneous evidence in the matter.

The accusations of the senatorial committee against Seward were

summarized by Lincoln truthfully and with a touch of humor. "While they

seemed to believe in my honesty," he said, "they also appeared to think

that whenever I had in me any good purpose Seward contrived to suck it

out unperceived." Seward was no more to blame for the ill success of the

Union armies than any other member of the Cabinet. The inefficiency in

our armies, according to Gideon Welles, resided in the President's chief

military adviser, General Halleck. However that may have been, it is

well that the errand of the Republican Senators to the White House

proved fruitless, since, if successful, it might have created a

precedent which would have upset our form of government.

G. Koerner, Minister to Spain, writes from Madrid, March 22, 1863, that

he is very much discouraged about the prospects of the war. He trusts

more to the exhaustion of the South than to the victories of the North.

My situation, under the circumstances, has been a very

unpleasant one. For days and weeks I have avoided meetings and

reunions where I would have had to answer questions, often

meant in a very friendly manner, but still embarrassing to me.

My family has also lived very retired, for the additional

reason that we are not able to return the many hospitalities to

which we are invited constantly. We have the greatest trouble

in the world to live here in the most modest manner within our

means. We forego many, very many, of the comforts we were

accustomed to at home.

From Columbus, Georgia, October 26, 1863, Alfred Iverson (former

Senator), trusting that the difficulties in which the two sections are

involved may not have extinguished the feelings of courtesy and humanity

in the hearts of individual gentlemen, writes, at the instance of an

anxious mother, to make inquiries in reference to Charles G. Flournoy,

supposed to have been captured with other Confederate soldiers by

General Grant's forces in the vicinity of Vicksburg, and to be confined

in a military prison at Alton, Illinois.

Walter B. Scates (former judge of the supreme court of Illinois,

Democrat, now serving as assistant adjutant-general in the Thirteenth

Army Corps) writes from New Orleans, November 14, 1863, that he is

thoroughly convinced of the propriety and necessity of destroying

slavery as a means of ending this most wicked war and preventing a

recurrence of a like misfortune; is ready to take an active part in the

organization of colored regiments, that they may assist in maintaining

the Government and winning their own freedom.

From Topeka, Kansas, November 16, John T. Morton remonstrates against

the appointment of M. W. Delahay as judge of the United States District

Court, because he is utterly incompetent. Says he gave up the practice

of his profession in Illinois because he was so ignorant that nobody

would employ him. O. M. Hatch confirms Morton; says the appointment is

unfit to be made; has known Delahay personally for twenty years. Jesse

K. Dubois and D. L. Phillips confirm Hatch.

Jackson Grimshaw writes from Quincy, December 3:

Will the Senate confirm that miserable man Delahay for Judge

in Kansas? The appointment is disgraceful to the President, who

knew Delahay and all his faults, but the disgrace to the

Administration will be greater if the Senate confirms him. He

is no lawyer, could not try a case properly even in a Justice's

court and has no character. Mr. Buchanan in his worst days

never made so disgraceful an appointment to the bench.

Herndon relates that Delahay's expenses to the Chicago nominating

convention, as an expected delegate from Kansas, were promised by

Lincoln. He was not a delegate and never had the remotest chance of

being one, but he came as a "hustler" and Lincoln paid his expenses all

the same. He was nevertheless appointed judge, was impeached by Congress

in 1872 under charges of incompetency, corruption, and drunkenness on

and off the bench, and resigned while the impeachment committee was

taking testimony.

Major-General John M. Palmer writes from Chattanooga, December 18, 1863:

The Illinois troops (now voters) are beginning to talk about

the Presidency. Mr. Lincoln is by far the strongest man with

the army, and no combination could be made which would impair

his strength with this army unless, perhaps, Grant's candidacy

would. The people of Tennessee would now vote for Lincoln, it

is thought by many. Andy Johnson is understood to be a

Presidential aspirant by most people in this state. He is not

as popular as I once thought he was, though if he will exert

himself to do so he can be Governor, or Senator, when the state

is reorganized. He is understood to favor emancipation, and the

people are prepared for it, but I fear personal questions will

complicate the matter. The truth is all these Southern

politicians are behind the times sadly. There is nothing

practical about them. Now, when the whole social and political

fabric is broken up, new foundations might be laid for

institutions which would in their effects within twenty years

compensate the State for all its losses, heavy as they are. But

not much will be done, I fear, because the politicians don't

seem to know what is required. One fourth of the people are

destitute, and yet the leaders have not humanity and energy

enough to induce them to organize for mutual assistance. There

are farms enough in middle Tennessee deserted by their rebel

owners to give temporary homes to thousands, and yet no one

will take the responsibility of putting them in possession, but

the leaders quietly suffer the poor to wander homeless all over

the country.

Colonel Fred Hecker writes from Lookout Valley, Tennessee, December 21:

Again we are encamped in Lookout Valley after heavy fighting

and marching from November 22 to December 16, stopping a

victorious march at the gates of Knoxville, returning with

barefooted, ragged men, but cheerful hearts. This was more than

a fight. It was a wild chase after an enemy making no stand,

leaving everywhere in our hands, muskets, cannon, ammunition,

provisions, stores, etc., and large numbers of prisoners.

These, as well as the populations, were unanimous in declaring

that the people of the South are tired of the war and rebellion

and are in earnest in the desire for peace and order. I

conversed much with men of different positions in life,

education, and political parties, from the enraged secessionist

to the unwavering Union man just returning from his

hiding-place, and I am fully convinced that most of the work is

done. A great many had no idea what war was till both armies,

passing over the country, had taught them the lesson, and there

is such a prevailing union feeling in North Carolina, northern

Alabama, and Georgia, as I have ascertained in a hundred

conversations with men of that section of the country, that the

result of the next campaign is not the least doubtful. You

remember what I told you about General Grant at a time when

this excellent man was pursued by malice and slander. I feel

greatly satisfied that his enemies are now forced to do him

justice. The battle of Chattanooga, with all its great

consequences, was a masterpiece of planning and manoeuvring,

and every man of us is proud to have been an actor in this ever

memorable action. Revolution and war sift men and consume

reputations with the voracity of Kronos, and it is good that it

is so.

From Chattanooga, January 24, 1864, Major-General John M. Palmer writes:

I saw Grant yesterday and had a conversation with him.

Peace-at-any-price men would have a hard bargain in him as

their candidate. He is a soldier and, of course, regards

negroes at their value as military materials. He has just

enough sentiment and humanity about him to make him a careful

general, and he esteems men, black or white, as too valuable to

be wasted. He does not desire to be a candidate for the

Presidency; prefers his present theatre of service to any

other. Nor will the officers of the army willingly give him up.

He has no enemies, and it is very difficult to understand how

he can have any. He is honest, brave, frank, and modest. Is

perfectly willing that his subordinates shall win all the

reputation and glory possible; will help them when he can, with

the most unselfish earnestness. He demands no adulation, and

gives credit for every honest effort, and if efforts are

unsuccessful he has the sense, and the sense of justice, to

understand the reasons for failure and to attach to them their

proper importance. Nobody is jealous of Grant and he is jealous

of no one. He is not a great man. He is precisely equal to his

situation. His success has been wonderful and must be

attributed, I think, to his fine common sense and the faculty

he possesses in a wonderful degree of making himself

understood. I do not think he will be anybody's candidate for

the Presidency this time, but after that his stock will be at a

premium for anything he wants. Mr. Lincoln is popular with the

army, and will, as far as the soldiers can vote, beat anything

the Copperheads can start. No civilian or mere book-making

general can get votes in the army against him.

J. K. Dubois, Springfield, January 30, says:

We are receiving daily old regiments who are reenlisting and

are sent home on furlough for thirty days to see their friends

and recruit. This is very damaging to the Copperhead crew of

our state. They swear and groan over this fact, for they have

preached and affirmed that the soldiers were held in subjection

by their officers, and that as soon as their time was up they

would show their officers and the President that they would

have nothing more to do with this Abolition crusade. And so

when these same men's time will have expired, commencing next

June, they say to rebels both front and rear: "We were at the

beginning of this fight and we intend also to be at the end."

All honor to these brave and loyal men.

Israel B. Bigelow, Brownsville, Texas, May 5, 1864, says that before the

war it was commonly said that soil and climate would regulate slavery.

In theory this was right if slavery was right, and whether

right or wrong, slavery is declining, and with my very hearty

concurrence--to my own astonishment. No man ever regarded a

Massachusetts Abolitionist with greater abhorrence than myself,

and yet I have subscribed to Mr. Lincoln's ironclad oath. Time

works wondrous changes in men's feelings, and there are

thousands of slaveholders in this state who, two years ago,

cursed Mr. Lincoln and his Government, who are now willing to

have their slaves freed if the war can be brought to an end.

We now come upon the first evidence of any difference, of a personal

kind, existing between Senator Trumbull and President Lincoln. Opposing

views on questions of public policy, such as the Confiscation Bill and

arbitrary arrests, have already been noted. A difference of another kind

is disclosed in a letter from N. B. Judd, Minister to Prussia. Judd had

returned to his post after a visit to this country. He wrote to Trumbull

under date, Berlin, January, 1864:

When I last saw you your conviction was that L. would be

reelected. I tell you combinations can't prevent it. Events

possibly may. But until some event occurs, is it wise or

prudent to give an impression of hostility for no earthly good?

Usually your judgment controls your feelings. Don't let the

case be reversed now. Although a severe thinker you are not

constitutionally a croaker. Excuse the freedom of my writing. I

have given you proofs that I am no holiday friend of yours.

The next piece of evidence found is a letter from Trumbull himself to

H. G. McPike, of Alton, Illinois, one of the few letters of which he

kept a copy in his own handwriting:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 1864.

The feeling for Mr. Lincoln's reelection _seems_ to be very

general, but much of it I discover is only on the surface. You

would be surprised, in talking with public men we meet here, to

find how few, when you come to get at their real sentiments,

are for Mr. Lincoln's reelection. There is a distrust and fear

that he is too undecided and inefficient to put down the

rebellion. You need not be surprised if a reaction sets in

before the nomination, in favor of some man supposed to possess

more energy and less inclination to trust our brave boys in the

hands and under the leadership of generals who have no heart in

the war. The opposition to Mr. L. may not show itself at all,

but if it ever breaks out there will be more of it than now

appears. Congress will do its duty, and it is not improbable we

may pass a resolution to amend the Constitution so as to

abolish slavery forever throughout the United States.

The third scrap is a letter from Governor Yates to Trumbull dated

Springfield, February 26, to whom, perhaps, McPike showed Trumbull's

letter quoted above. Yates writes:

As you are a Senator from _Illinois_, the state of Mr. Lincoln,

please be cautious as to your course till I see you. I have

such strong regard for you personally that I do not wish either

enemies or friends on our side, who would like to supplant you,

to get any undue advantage over you.

Trumbull believed there was a lack of efficiency in the use made, by the

executive branch of the Government, of the means placed at its disposal

for putting down the rebellion. That such was his opinion was made clear

by his participation in the anti-Seward movements of the previous year.

Whether the opinion was justified or not, it was so generally

entertained in Washington that if the nomination had rested in the hands

of the Senators and Representatives in Congress, Lincoln would have had

very few votes in the Baltimore Convention. Albert G. Riddle describes a

scene in the White House in February, 1864, illustrative of public

sentiment in Washington at that time. The reception room of the

Executive Mansion was filled with persons, most of whom were inveighing

against Lincoln, who was not present. The one most loud and bitter

against the President was Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. His assaults

were so amazing that Riddle cautioned him to choose some other place

than the Executive Mansion for uttering them; advised him to make his

speeches in the Senate, or get himself elected to the coming National

Union Convention and then denounce Lincoln, where his words might have

some effect. Wilson replied that he knew the people were for Lincoln and

that nothing could prevent his renomination.[67]

The opposition was based wholly upon charges of inefficiency and lack of

earnestness and vigor in the prosecution of the war. But the feeling,

both among the people at home and the soldiers in the field, was so

overwhelmingly for Lincoln, that when the delegates came together in

convention the opposition in Congress was silenced. After the

nominations of both parties had been made, however, the previous

distrust reappeared on a larger scale and became so pronounced that

Lincoln himself thought that he was about to be defeated and took steps

to turn the Government over to McClellan practically before the

constitutional period for his own retirement.[68] If Lincoln himself was

in despair, other persons who shared his gloom might be excused.

The radicals who were opposed to Lincoln held a convention in the city

of Cleveland on the 31st of May, 1864, and nominated General John C.

Fremont for President and General John Cochrane for Vice-President.

Among the leaders in this movement were B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri,

Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts, and Rev. George B. Cheever, of New

York. They had the sympathy of Ben Wade, of Ohio, and Henry Winter

Davis, of Maryland, and they reckoned upon the support of many radical

Germans of the fiery type, perhaps sufficiently numerous to turn the

votes of some important Western States. On the 21st of September,

Fremont withdrew as a candidate and on the 23d the President asked for

the resignation of Montgomery Blair as Postmaster-General, which the

latter immediately gave. The simultaneous retirement of Fremont and

Blair, who were known to be enemies to each other, led to a suspicion

that there was some connection between the two events. The account given

by Nicolay and Hay conveys no hint of this, but is confused and

self-contradictory. Evidence is available to indicate that Fremont made

his retirement conditional upon the removal of Blair from the Cabinet,

and that Lincoln, although reluctant to lose Blair from his official

family, deemed it a necessity to get the third ticket out of the

presidential contest, for public reasons.[69]

In the Senatorial contest of 1867 the false accusation was made that

Trumbull had refused to make speeches in favor of Lincoln's reelection;

whereas he was the leading speaker at the great Union Mass Meeting at

Springfield on the 5th of October, 1864, which was addressed by

Doolittle, Yates, and Logan also. His correspondence shows that he

spoke at several other places during that month.

But speech-making did not gain the victory in the election of 1864. That

fight was won by General Sherman at Atlanta, aided by General Sheridan

in the Valley of Virginia, and by Admiral Farragut at Mobile.

FOOTNOTES:

[67] Riddle's _Recollections of War-Time_, p. 267.

[68] Nicolay & Hay, ix, 251.

[69] A letter dated August 9, 1910, in my possession, from Mr. Gist

Blair, son of Montgomery Blair, says: "I have always understood that my

father retired from Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet in order to secure the

withdrawal of Fremont as a candidate against Mr. Lincoln. There are

letters which I cannot now put my hand on, which indicate that Mr.

Lincoln continued to consult my father practically the same as if he

were a member of the Cabinet, up to the time of Mr. Lincoln's death."

CHAPTER XIV

THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION

Donn Piatt, meeting William H. Seward on the street on the morning

immediately after the issuing of the preliminary proclamation of

emancipation, complimented him for his share in the act, whereupon the

following colloquy ensued:

"Yes," said Seward, "we have let off a puff of wind over an accomplished

fact."

"What do you mean, Mr. Seward?"

"I mean that the emancipation proclamation was uttered in the first gun

fired at Sumter and we have been the last to hear it. As it is, we show

our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach

them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."[70]

Seward did not say this in a censorious spirit, but what he did say was

true. The proclamation applied only to states and parts of states under

rebel control. It did not emancipate any slaves within the emancipator's

reach. Whether it freed anybody anywhere was a matter of dispute. What

its legal effect would be after the war should cease, no one could say.

Moreover, if the President had legal authority to issue the

proclamation, then he, or a successor in office, could revoke it.

The Constitution had not given to the Federal Government power to

emancipate slaves. The proclamation did not purport to rest upon any

constitutional power, but upon war powers solely. But war powers last

only while war lasts, and when it comes to an end, all sorts of people

have all sorts of opinions as to the validity of acts done under them.

Public opinion at the time was keenly alive to doubts regarding the

President's powers in this particular. Congress was flooded with

petitions calling for action to confirm and validate the proclamation,

but the way was beset with difficulties. Should the Constitution be

amended, or would an act of Congress suffice? If the Constitution should

be amended, should it abolish slavery everywhere or only in the places

designated by the President? Should loyal slave-owners be compensated,

as Lincoln desired? What were the chances of getting such an amendment

ratified by three fourths of the states? And for this purpose should the

rebel states be counted as still in the Union? If so, the requisite

number might not be obtained.

The first resolution offered in Congress for such an amendment of the

Constitution was proposed in the House on the 14th of December, 1863, by

Representative James F. Wilson of Iowa, in these words:

SECTION 1. Slavery being incompatible with a free government is

forever prohibited in the United States; and involuntary

servitude shall be permitted only as a punishment for crime.

SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce the foregoing

section by appropriate legislation.

On the 13th of January, 1864, Senator Henderson, of Missouri, offered a

resolution to amend the Constitution by adding thereto the following

article:

Slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for

crime, shall not exist in the United States.

These resolutions were referred to the Judiciary Committees of the

respective houses.

On the 10th of February, Trumbull reported the Henderson Resolution from

the Committee on the Judiciary, with an amendment in the nature of a

substitute in the following terms:

ARTICLE XIII

SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as

a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly

convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place

subject to their jurisdiction.

SECTION 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by

appropriate legislation.

The phraseology followed pretty closely that of the Ordinance of 1787.

Trumbull adopted it because it was among the household words of the

nation. To become effective as a part of the Constitution, this article

required the votes of two thirds of each branch of Congress and

ratification by the legislatures of three fourths of the States.

Presenting the resolution to the Senate, Trumbull said that nobody could

doubt that the conflict then raging, and all the desolation and death

consequent thereon, had their origin in the institution of slavery; that

even those who contended that the trouble was due to the agitators and

abolitionists of the North must admit that if there were no slavery

there would be no abolitionists. So also it must be admitted that if

there had been no slavery there would have been no secession and no

civil war. All the strife that had ever afflicted the nation, or all

that could be considered menacing to the country's peace, had had its

source in that institution. Various laws had been passed by Congress to

give freedom to slaves of rebel owners and even these laws had not been

executed properly. The President of the United States had issued a

preliminary proclamation in September, 1862, and a final one in January,

1863, declaring all slaves under rebel control free, but not those

under our control. The legal effect of such a proclamation had been a

matter of dispute. Some persons held that the President had the

constitutional power to issue it and that all the slaves designated were

free, or would become so whenever the rebellion should be crushed; while

others contended that it had no effect either _de jure_ or _de facto_.

It was the duty of the lawmaking power to put an end to this uncertainty

by some act more comprehensive than any that had yet been adopted. Would

a mere act of Congress suffice? It had been an axiom of all parties from

the beginning of the Government that Congress had no authority to

interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. We had authority,

of course, to put down the enemies of the country and the right to slay

them in battle; we had authority to confiscate their property; but did

that give us authority to slay the friends of the Union, to confiscate

their property, or to free their slaves? In his opinion the only

conclusive and irrepealable way to make an end of slavery was by an

amendment of the Constitution, and the only practical question remaining

was whether the resolution recommended by the committee could secure a

two-thirds vote in Congress and the concurrence of three fourths of the

states. There were thirty-five states, including those in rebellion, and

two territories about to become states. Presumably the affirmative votes

of twenty-eight states would be required for ratification.

In this speech Trumbull gave public expression to his feelings regarding

the feeble prosecution of the war to which he had given private

expression in the letters to friends referred to in the preceding

chapter. He said:

I trust that within a year, in less time than it will take to

make this constitutional amendment effective, our armies will

have put to flight the rebel armies. I think it ought to have

been done long ago. Hundreds of millions of treasure and a

hundred thousand lives would have been saved had the power of

this republic been concentrated under one mind and hurled in

masses upon the main rebel armies. This is what our patriotic

soldiers have wanted and what I trust is now soon to be done.

But instead of looking back and mourning over the errors of the

past, let us remember them only for the lessons they teach for

the future. Forgetting the things which are past, let us press

forward to the accomplishment of what is before. We have at

last placed at the head of our armies a man in whom the country

has confidence, a man who has won victories wherever he has

been, and I trust that his mind is to be permitted,

uninterfered with, to unite our forces, never before so

formidable as to-day, in one or two grand armies, and hurl them

upon the rebel force.[71]

The feeling here expressed by Trumbull was the prevailing sentiment at

Washington at that time, even in President Lincoln's Cabinet. Both

Gideon Welles and Edward Bates shared it. Welles wrote:

In this whole summer's campaign I have been unable to see or

hear or obtain evidence of power or will or talent or

originality on the part of General Halleck. He has suggested

nothing, decided nothing, done nothing but scold and smoke and

scratch his elbows. Is it possible that the energies of a

nation should be wasted by the incapacity of such a man?

When Welles said to the President that he had observed the "inertness if

not incapacity of the General-in-Chief, and had hoped that he [the

President] who had better and more correct views would issue peremptory

orders," Lincoln replied that it was better that he, who was not a

military man, should defer to Halleck, rather than Halleck to him.

Additional light is thrown by an entry in Hay's "Diaries"[72] under date

April 28, 1864, where Lincoln says:

When it was proposed to station Halleck in general command, he

insisted, to use his own language, on the appointment of a

General-in-Chief who should be held responsible for results. We

appointed him, and all went well enough until after Pope's

defeat, when he broke down,--nerve and pluck all gone,--and has

ever since evaded all possible responsibility, little more,

since that, than a first-rate clerk.

General Francis V. Greene, reviewing the war as a whole, says that

If Lincoln had placed Grant in command of the Western armies in

July, 1862, when Halleck was made General-in-Chief, instead of

in October, 1863, it would have probably shortened the war by a

year.[73]

This opinion is concurred in by General Grenville M. Dodge, one of the

surviving major-generals of the Civil War,[74] and I imagine that it

will not be disputed by any military man at the present day. These

citations show that the opinions held by Trumbull, as to the

inefficiency of the directing force of the Union armies, up to the time

when Grant was called to take command at Washington, were not those of a

mere fault-finder and backbiter.

A notable speech in favor of the anti-slavery amendment was made by

Henderson, of Missouri, who was himself a slave-owner. The most

impressive speech made in either branch of Congress, however, was that

of Senator Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. The fact that he represented a

slaveholding State could not fail to add force to any argument he might

make in support of the measure, but the argument itself, both in its

moral and its legal aspects, was of surpassing merit. It deserves a high

place in the annals of senatorial eloquence.

The constitutional amendment was under debate in the Senate until the

8th of April, 1864, when it was passed by a vote of 38 to 6. The

negative votes were the two from Delaware, two from Kentucky, and those

of Hendricks, of Indiana, and McDougall, of California. It then went to

the House, where it was under consideration till the 15th of June, when

it failed of passage by a vote of 93 to 65, not two thirds. The

Democrats generally voted in the negative. A second attempt to pass it

was made in the House on February 1, 1865, this time successfully, the

yeas being 119 and the nays, 56. There was an extraordinary scene in the

House when the final vote was taken. It is described by George W.

Julian, in his "Recollections" (page 250), thus:

The time for the momentous vote had now come, and no language

could describe the solemnity and impressiveness of the

spectacle pending the roll-call. The success of the measure had

been considered very doubtful, and depended upon certain

negotiations, the result of which was not fully assured, and

the particulars of which never reached the public.[75] The

anxiety and suspense during the balloting produced a deathly

stillness, but when it became certainly known that the measure

had prevailed, the cheering in the densely packed hall and

galleries surpassed all precedent and beggared all description.

Members joined in the general shouting, which was kept up for

several minutes, many embracing each other, and others

completely surrendering themselves to their tears of joy....

The ratification of the amendment was announced by the Secretary of

State on the 18th of December, 1865. Three states, South Carolina,

Alabama, and Florida, when they ratified it, passed resolutions

expressing their understanding that the second section did not authorize

Congress to legislate on the political status or civil relations of the

negroes, but merely to confirm and protect their freedom. On November 1,

1865, Governor Perry, of South Carolina, wrote to President Johnson,

saying that his state had abolished slavery in all good faith and never

would wish to restore it again, but that his people feared that the

second section might be construed to give Congress local power over

legislation respecting negroes and white men in the state of freedom. To

this letter Secretary Seward replied that the second section was "really

restraining in its effect instead of enlarging the powers of Congress."

By this he meant that it restrained Congress to the single subject of

slavery. It did not give citizenship or civil rights to the freedmen.

The legislature of South Carolina accordingly ratified the amendment on

the 13th of November, and put on record the letter of Seward as the

official interpretation of this clause by the Federal Executive. Alabama

did substantially the same on the 2d of December and Florida on the 28th

of December. Seward's interpretation of the second section of the

amendment turned out to be correct, but many years of doubt and gloom

were to pass before a decision upon it was reached in the Supreme Court.

From what has gone before it appears doubtful whether President

Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation freed any slaves legally. Its

immediate value was not so much in its effect upon the blacks as upon

the whites. It liberated millions of the latter from bondage to a false

philosophy and a monstrous social creed and made possible and necessary

the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. To Senator Trumbull belongs

the distinction of having traced its lines and this is his title to

immortality.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] _Memories of Men who Saved the Union_, by Donn Piatt, p. 150.

[71] _Cong. Globe_, 1863-64, part 2, p. 1314.

[72] Vol. I, p. 187.

[73] _Scribner's Magazine_, July, 1909.

[74] In a letter to the writer.

[75] The particulars referred to by Julian were subsequently made public

by Mr. A. G. Riddle in his _Recollections of War-Time_, p. 325. Two

Democrats were induced to vote in the affirmative and one other to be

absent when the vote was taken. One of them was induced to vote right by

the promise of an office for his brother; another was facing an election

contest in the coming Congress where his own seat was claimed by a

Republican opponent. The Democrat was promised favorable consideration

by the Republicans before the testimony in the case was examined. The

third was counsel for a railroad against whose interests a bill was

about to be reported in the Senate, which bill was in the control of

Charles Sumner. The bill would not be reported, or not reported soon, if

the Congressman should be absent when the vote was taken. These

arrangements, Riddle says, were negotiated by James M. Ashley, of Ohio,

in whose hands the Republicans of the House had deposited their honor

for the time being. If the three Democrats had voted in the negative,

the result would have been 117 to 59, one less than the necessary two

thirds. But that would only have delayed the adoption of the amendment

till the next Congress.

CHAPTER XV

RECONSTRUCTION

The next event of world-wide concern was the assassination of President

Lincoln, which took place April 14, 1865. It does not come within the

scope of this work, except as it finds expression or comment in the

Trumbull papers. One such, found in a letter of Norman B. Judd, Minister

to Prussia, dated Berlin, May 7, ought to be preserved.

At the present moment he [Lincoln] is deified in Europe.

History shows no similar outburst of grief and indignation.

Crowned heads and statesmen, parliaments and corporate bodies,

literary institutions and the people, all vie in pronouncing

the eulogy. The entire press of Europe has for the last ten

days been filled with nothing else. We have had a very

impressive and imposing funeral service. Kings,

Representatives, Ministers, and the Diplomatic Corps were

amongst the number present. The people assembled to three times

the capacity of the church. I told my colleagues to come

without uniform.--Something new under the sun at this Court of

Uniforms.

When the work of Reconstruction began, two opposing ideas came in

conflict with each other respecting the status of the seceding states.

One was that the act of secession annihilated the State Governments and

put the inhabitants and their belongings in the condition of newly

acquired territories, subject in all things to the conquering power.

This opinion was held by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. The other

view was that every act of secession was null and void; that state

sovereignty was suspended but not extinguished in the Confederacy; and

that when the rebellion was crushed, it became the duty of the General

Government to recognize the loyal men in each state, as the rightful

nucleus of sovereignty, to assist them to set the state Governments

going again; in harmony, however, with accomplished facts, including the

abolishment of slavery.

The latter view had been adopted by President Lincoln in a proclamation

issued simultaneously with his annual message to Congress December 8,

1863. This proclamation declared that whenever the voters of any

seceding state, not less in number than one tenth of those who had voted

in the presidential election of 1860, should reestablish a loyal State

Government, it should be recognized as the true Government of the state.

The qualifications of voters should be those existing in the state

immediately before secession, "excluding all others," but it was

provided that all previous proclamations of the President and all acts

of Congress in reference to slavery should be held inviolable. It was

explained that the question of admitting to seats in Congress any

persons who might be elected by such states as members would rest with

the respective houses exclusively. It was added that while this plan of

Reconstruction was favored by the President he did not mean that no

other would be acceptable.

In pursuance of the proclamation an election was held in February, 1864,

in that portion of Louisiana controlled by the Union army under command

of General Banks, at which election 11,411 votes were cast--the whole

vote of the state had usually been about 40,000. At this election,

Michael Hahn had been chosen governor and he was inaugurated as such on

the 4th of March, with impressive ceremonies, "in the presence of more

than 50,000 people," as General Banks announced. Writing to Governor

Hahn under date, March 13, 1864, Lincoln said:

Now you are about to have a convention which, among other

things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely

suggest for your private consideration whether some of the

colored people may not be let in, as, for instance, the very

intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in

our ranks. They will probably help, in some trying time to

come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.

But this is only a suggestion, not to the public but to you

alone.

A constitutional convention of Louisiana was elected March 28, 1864; it

assembled April 6; adopted a free state constitution July 22, which was

ratified by popular vote September 5. Under this constitution a

legislature was elected by which two Senators were chosen to represent

the state at Washington. Their credentials were referred to the

Committee on the Judiciary, and on the 8th of January, 1865, Trumbull

called at the White House to consult with Lincoln respecting their

admission. One of the consequences of the interview was the unanimous

agreement of the Judiciary Committee in favor of a joint resolution

recognizing the Government of which Michael Hahn was the head. This

resolution was reported by Trumbull on the 23d of February. Sumner

objected to it because the constitution did not grant negro suffrage,

and he avowed the intention of using all parliamentary means to defeat

it. In this endeavor he had the cooeperation of Senators Chandler and

Wade and of most of the Democrats. The latter opposed the resolution

because the constitution was not the work of the majority of the white

people of the state. On the 24th, there was a debate of some bitterness

between Sumner and Doolittle. The latter contended that the vote of

Louisiana was needed to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment of the Federal

Constitution. To this Sumner replied that the so-called state of

Louisiana was a shadow, that no such state existed, and that its

ratification would be worthless if obtained. In this contention he was

sustained by Garrett Davis, of Kentucky.

There were only seven working days remaining of the Thirty-eighth

Congress, and Sumner managed to stave off the vote, although there was a

large majority in favor of the resolution, as was shown by roll-calls on

various motions. There was a sharp passage-at-arms between Trumbull and

Sumner, which made a breach between them for a considerable time.

On the 11th of April, five days before his assassination, Lincoln

delivered a carefully prepared address from the balcony of the White

House in response to a greeting of citizens who had assembled to welcome

him on his return from Richmond after the surrender of that city. He

embraced the occasion to call attention again to the question of

Reconstruction which was now becoming momentous. He referred to the plan

which he had recommended in his annual message of December, 1863, and

said that it had received the approval of every member of his Cabinet

(which then included Chase and Blair). It had not been objected to by

any professed emancipationist until after the news reached Washington

that the people of Louisiana were about to take action in accordance

with it. Then the question had been raised whether the seceded states

were in the Union or out of it. He did not consider that question a

material one, but rather a pernicious abstraction, having only the

mischievous effect of dividing loyal men. The question now uppermost was

how to get the seceded states again into their proper practical

relations with the Union. "Let us all join," he said, "in doing the

acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these

states and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own

opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the states from without

into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having

been out." The question was not whether the Louisiana Government as

reconstructed was quite all that was desirable, but whether it was wiser

to take it and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it.

"Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only, to what it should

be, as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching

the egg than by smashing it." He concluded by saying that his remarks

would apply generally to other states, but that there were peculiarities

pertaining to each state, and important and sudden changes occurring in

the same state, so that no exclusive and inflexible plan could safely be

prescribed as to details. Therefore, he held himself free to make some

new announcement to the people of the South when satisfied that such

action would be proper.

This was, in a political sense, his last will and testament. No other

communication from him to his countrymen was more fraught with wisdom

and patriotism. It received the prompt endorsement of William Lloyd

Garrison, who defended it when attacked by Professor Newman, of London

University.[76] Garrison held not only that Lincoln had no right to

interfere with the voting laws of the states, but that it would be bad

policy to do so; for if negro suffrage were imposed upon the South

against the will of the people, then, "as soon as the State was

organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white population, with

their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would unquestionably

alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices and exclude

those thus summarily brought to the polls."

Garrison saw further than Sumner, but nobody at the North then imagined

the tremendous consequences that were to follow the upsetting of

Lincoln's plan. If Trumbull's resolution had passed, it would have

served as a precedent for all the seceding states, in which case most of

the misery of the next fifteen years in the South, including the

carpet-bag governments and the Ku-Klux-Klan, would have been avoided.

President Johnson at first had been rather more radical than the

majority of his party as to the measure of punishment to be visited upon

the leaders of the rebellion. He had several times talked about "making

treason odious," and had said that traitors should take back seats in

the work of Reconstruction, and had used language which implied that

some of the more prominent Confederates ought to be tried and executed

for treason. He had a sharp difference with General Grant as to the

inclusion of General Lee in that category, Grant insisting that no

officer or soldier who had observed the terms of capitulation at

Appomattox could be rightfully molested.[77]

But this feeling of animosity on Johnson's part gradually passed away.

In an authorized interview with George L. Stearns, October 3, 1865, on

the subject of Reconstruction, and again in an interview with Frederick

Douglass and others, February 7, 1866, on the suffrage question, he said

nothing about making treason odious, but declared himself opposed to

unrestricted negro suffrage because he believed it would lead to a war

of races--a war between the non-slaveholding class (the poor whites) and

the negroes. The former hated and despised the latter, and this feeling

he thought would be intensified if the suffrage were granted to the

negroes.

"The query comes up," said Johnson in his colloquy with Douglass,

"whether these two races, situated as they were before, without

preparation, without time for the slightest improvement, whether the one

should be turned loose upon the other, and be thrown together at the

ballot-box with this enmity and hate existing between them. The question

comes up right there, whether we don't commence a war of races. I think

I understand this thing, and especially is this the case when you force

it upon a people without their consent."

Johnson had adopted not only Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction, but his

Cabinet also. At its first meeting, April 16, the unfinished project for

the establishment of civil government in Virginia, drafted by Secretary

Stanton at Lincoln's instance, was presented but not acted on. At a

subsequent meeting, May 8, it was considered and adopted, and was

promulgated as an Executive Order on the following day. It recognized

Francis M. Peirpoint, who had been nominal governor in Lincoln's time,

as actual governor, and declared that in order to guarantee to the state

of Virginia a republican form of government and to afford the advantage

and security of domestic laws, and the full and complete restoration of

peace, he would be aided by the Government of the United States in the

measures he might take to accomplish those ends.

A loyal State Government of considerable scope and solidity, formed by

Johnson himself as military governor, already existed in Tennessee. This

was now recognized by the President as an accomplished fact. W. G.

Brownlow had been elected governor, and a legislature had been

constituted, which had passed a franchise act that limited the voting

privilege to whites and excluded rebels of a certain grade. The Lincoln

State Government of Louisiana and a similar one in Arkansas were allowed

to stand.

On the 29th of May, the President issued an Executive Order appointing

W. W. Holden provisional governor of North Carolina, and prescribing

certain duties to be performed by him; among others that of calling a

convention to be chosen by the loyal people of the state for the purpose

of altering or amending the state constitution, and forming a government

fit to be recognized and defended by the Government of the United

States. Following the precedent made by Lincoln in the Louisiana case,

the qualifications of voters at the election of delegates to the

convention were fixed and declared to be those "prescribed by the

constitution and laws of North Carolina in force immediately before the

20th day of May, 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of

secession," excepting, however, certain classes of whites. Similar

orders followed in rapid succession for reorganizing Mississippi,

Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida, the last one

bearing date July 13, 1865. Before the form of the order was adopted, a

vote had been taken in the Cabinet on the question whether negroes

should be allowed to vote in the election of Delegates. Of the six

members present, three had voted in the affirmative and three in the

negative. Seward was not present, being still confined to his bed by the

wounds inflicted on him the night when Lincoln was assassinated. The

President then took the matter in his own hands, and at the next meeting

of the Cabinet read the North Carolina order and none of the members

offered any objection to it.

Thus Reconstruction had been mapped out, so far as the executive branch

of the Government was concerned, before the Thirty-ninth Congress

assembled.

Together with the order for Reconstruction in North Carolina, the

President issued a proclamation of amnesty for all persons who had

participated in the rebellion, excepting, however, certain specified

classes of offenders. This proclamation bore the same date, and was

published simultaneously with the North Carolina order; but the

newspapers of the day, while commenting upon and generally approving,

made little account of the fact that negroes were excluded from voting

at the election for delegates. The New York _Tribune_ of May 30 merely

said: "Of course no blacks can vote." The New York _Times_ made mention

of the same fact.

The New York _Evening Post_ of the same date, however, after pointing

out that only white men and taxpayers could vote in the coming election

in North Carolina, said:

Unless, in the process of the reorganization, we build upon the

principle laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that

all men are created free and equal, there is no assurance that

the different elements of which our social and political state

is composed will subsist in harmony and tranquil cooeperation.

In that direction lies our way to political safety. If we

attempt to build upon any foundation of inequality between

races and castes, we shall find a condition of things

prevailing similar to that which has been the source of so many

calamities to Ireland.

The first blast against Andrew Johnson was sounded by Wendell Phillips

at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston, May 31, on a

resolution offered by himself affirming that

The reconstruction of the rebel states without negro suffrage

is a practical surrender to the Confederacy and will make the

anti-slavery proclamation of the late President, and even the

expected amendment of the Constitution utterly inefficient for

the freedom and protection of the negro.

This resolution was supported by Phillips in a spirit of blind fury.

Every life and every dollar that had been spent by the North had been

stolen, he contended, if this policy should prevail, and "there was but

one way in which the people could still hold the helm of affairs, and

that was by a repudiation of the entire war debt!" Such a party would

have his voice and vote until God called him home. "Better, far better,

would it have been for Grant to have surrendered to Lee, than for

Johnson to have surrendered to North Carolina."

The New York _Tribune_, June 2, took notice of Phillips, and, after

adverting to his intemperate attacks on Salmon P. Chase and Abraham

Lincoln in the past, turned to his "like delicate attentions" to Mr.

Lincoln's successor.

President Johnson [it said] believes in, and favors, the

extension of the elective franchise to blacks, but since he

holds that no state has gone out, or could go out, of the

Union, he believes that the Southern state constitutions stand

as before, and that the right of suffrage stands as before

until legally changed. We do not insist [it continued] that

this is the true doctrine--we do not admit an _unqualified_

right in the enfranchised people of any state to do as they

will with the residue. Yet we insist that President Johnson's

view is one that a true man may honestly, conscientiously

hold--may hold it without being a hypocrite, a demagogue, or a

tool of the slave power. And we think few considerate persons

will deny that it is greatly desirable, _if_ the desired

reparation in the _status_ of the freedmen can be achieved

_through_ the several states rather than over them--that it

would be more stable, less grudging, more real, if thus

accomplished. In fact, we should prefer waiting a year or two,

or accepting a limited enfranchisement, to a full recognition

of the Equal Rights of Man by virtue only of a presidential

edict, or order from the War Department, or even an act of

Congress.

The New York _Times_, June 21, concurred, saying:

It is an open question whether the Government should or should

not attempt to secure suffrage to the Southern blacks; the best

men may differ about it.

It scored Wendell Phillips for advocating repudiation of the national

debt as a cure for any other evil whatsoever.

When Mr. Phillips says that if the Government and the people do

not accept his doctrine, he will turn scoundrel and join a

party of scoundrels, he does his doctrine the very worst injury

possible.

Meanwhile there was a witches' caldron boiling in the South. The

Confederate States had been impoverished by the war. Their labor system

had been overturned under circumstances and in a mode that no other

people had ever experienced. The negroes knew nothing of the

responsibilities of freedom. They could not understand the meaning of a

contract. The ex-slaves, when hired for a specified time, might abandon

their work the next day or the next week, and return the following day

or week and run the risk of being flogged or shot, either for going away

or for coming back. The ex-masters, knowing only one way of getting work

out of the negro,--that of compulsion,--contended and believed that

there was no other way, or none that would serve the purpose during

_their_ lifetime; and since the crops of the present year could not wait

for the milder teachings of education and reason, they adopted the only

means that would secure immediate results. The planters, or the majority

of them, were still further crippled by having no money to pay wages.

All of their money had become filthy rags by the downfall of the

Confederacy. The only alternative was hiring labor on shares. This was

an embarrassment that the Northern men (carpet-baggers) who went to the

South directly after the war did not suffer from. Some of these, tempted

by the high price of cotton and the low price of land, hired or bought

plantations, and they had the pick of the labor market because they

could pay cash. Their example was a fresh irritation to the impecunious

native planter, who, in losing the Confederacy, had lost everything

except the clothes he stood in, which were much the worse for wear.

If there was to be a crop of cotton, or of anything, in 1865, the

laboring population must be kept in some kind of order. Work days must

be continuous, and not alternative with hunting and fishing days and

play days. The planters looked to their legislatures in this emergency,

and the legislatures enacted laws as near to the old slave codes as the

condition of emancipation would allow,--if not nearer. These enactments

began to reach the North before the Thirty-ninth Congress assembled.

They were accompanied by tales of cruelty and outrage committed upon the

freedmen, and of disloyal utterances and threats on the part of the

unreconciled whites, male and female, who had been deprived of every

weapon except their tongues. Little account was made of the need of time

in which to become reconciled to these changes and to acquire admiration

for those who had brought them about.

Among letters which reached Trumbull was one from Colonel J. W. Shaffer,

of the Union Army, dated New Orleans, December 25, 1865, who gave the

following account of what he had observed along the Gulf Coast:

I have been to Mobile, spent a week there, have traveled around

in this state, talked much with friend and enemy, and I

unhesitatingly say that our President has been going too fast.

I am told by all Union men that after the surrender of the

rebel armies the men returned perfectly quiet, came to Southern

and Northern Union men, saying, "We don't know what is expected

of us by the Government, but one thing is certain, we are tired

of war and desire above all things to return to the quiet

pursuits of life and try to mend our fortune as best we can,

and cultivate a friendly feeling with all parts of the country

once more; now tell us how to do this." Soon, however, to their

surprise they found that the control of everything was to be

again put in their hands, and at once they became insolent,

abused the Government openly, and openly declared that Union

men and Yankees must leave as soon as the military is

withdrawn. Had they been given to understand that the

Government was going to continue to govern and control, and

that Union men alone would be trusted with the management of

affairs, these people would have been entirely satisfied, glad

to escape with their lives, and would at once have adapted

themselves to circumstances. Now they are drunk with power,

ruling and abusing every loyal man, white and black.

Per contra, Dr. C. H. Ray wrote, under date September 29, 1865, on the

subject of Reconstruction:

What are our Republican papers thinking of when they make war

upon the President as they are now doing? I see that there is

hardly one to stand up in his defense, and that he will be

fought out of our ranks into the arms of the Democracy. I do

not see that he is so guilty as he is said to be, and for one I

cannot join the cry against him. What do his assailants

expect--to carry the country on the Massachusetts idea of negro

suffrage, female suffrage, confiscation, and hanging? If so,

they will drive all moderate men out of the party and the

remainder straight to perdition.

Only five Northern States at this time allowed negroes to vote at

elections, and one of these (New York) required a property qualification

from blacks but not from whites. The state of Illinois had an unrepealed

black code similar to that of Kentucky, and had added to it, as lately

as 1853, a law for imprisoning any black or mulatto person brought into,

or coming into, the state, for the purpose of residing there, whether

free or otherwise. Some litigation for the enforcement of this act was

begun in Cass County in 1863, while the Civil War was in progress.[78]

FOOTNOTES:

[76] _Life of Garrison_, by his sons, IV, 123.

[77] Grant's testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary, July

18, 1867. McPherson, p. 303.

[78] _Journal_ of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. IV, no. 4.

CHAPTER XVI

ANDREW JOHNSON'S FIRST MESSAGE

Said the New York _Times_, December 6, 1865:

Probably no executive document was ever awaited with greater

interest than the message transmitted to Congress yesterday. It

is safe to say that none ever gave greater satisfaction when

received. Its views on the most momentous subjects, domestic

and foreign, that ever concerned the nation, are full of

wisdom, and are conveyed with great force and dignity.

The original manuscript of the message thus eulogized was discovered

nearly half a century later by Professor Dunning, of Columbia

University, in the handwriting of George Bancroft, among the Johnson

papers in the Library of Congress.

It remains a document creditable alike to the man who composed it and to

the one who made it his own by sending it as an official communication

to Congress. It breathed the spirit of peace and harmony, of justice

tempered with mercy, of human kindness and helpfulness, of

self-abnegation and self-restraint, all couched in the tone of high

statesmanship. It adhered, however, to the opinion previously expressed

by the President, that the Executive had no right to extend the suffrage

to persons to whom it had not been granted by state authority.

A discriminating yet warm eulogium of the message was pronounced by the

New York _Nation_, which was then in the sixth month of its existence.

It had criticized the President's Reconstruction acts as too hasty. Two

or three months' time it considered too short to reconcile whites and

blacks and teach them to respect each other's rights. Nevertheless,

taken for all in all, the message was one which every American might

read with pride.

We do not know [it continued] where to look in any other part

of the globe, for a statesman whom we could fix upon as likely

to seize the points of so great a question, and state them with

so much clearness and breadth, as this Tennessee tailor who was

toiling for his daily bread in the humblest of employments when

the chiefs of all other countries were reaping every advantage

which school, college, and social position could furnish. Those

who tremble over the future of democracy may well take heart

again when men like Lincoln and Johnson can at any great crisis

be drawn from the poorest ranks of society, and have the

destinies of the nation placed in their hands with the free

assurance that their very errors will be better and wiser than

the skill and wisdom of kings and nobles. For if the President

were to commit to-morrow every mistake or sin which his worst

enemies have ever feared, his plan of Reconstruction would

still remain the brightest example of humanity, self-restraint,

and sagacity ever witnessed--something to which the history of

no other country offers any approach, and which it is safe to

say none but a democratic society would be capable of carrying

out.

The statesmanship of George Bancroft did not govern very long. The irony

of fate decreed that within two months of the time when such words as

the foregoing were uttered by the most competent critics in the land,

the President of whom they were spoken should be in bitter strife with

the majority of his own party, and within two years be facing trial by

impeachment.

Andrew Johnson was born of a fighting race and in a region of fighters.

He shared the poverty and ignorance of the mountaineers of East

Tennessee. Hard labor was his portion in youth and early manhood. He was

a tailor by trade.[79] He could read, but could not write until he was

married, when the latter accomplishment was imparted to him by his wife.

With this kind of start he became, like Abraham Lincoln, and in much the

same way and facing the same difficulties, a public speaker, and

acquired by steady practice the faculty of making his meaning clear to

the commonest understanding. When he found himself in the Senate of the

United States, shortly before the outbreak of secession, he had few if

any superiors as a debater in that body, and the Union had not a more

unflinching defender, North or South. Alexander H. Stephens, a competent

judge, considered Johnson's speech against secession the best one made

in the Senate during the whole controversy. Secretary Seward, who

accompanied him in his "swing around the circle" in 1866, said that he

was then the best stump speaker in the country. Certainly the speech

with which he began that tour at New York on the 29th of August was a

great one. It fills five pages of McPherson's "History of

Reconstruction." It was extemporaneous, but faultless in manner and

matter; it was charged with the spirit of patriotism, and it will bear

comparison with anything in the annals of American polemics. If he had

made no other speech in that campaign the results might have been far

different, and the Union party which elected him might have avoided the

breach which soon became remediless.

The first blow leading to this breach was struck by Sumner in the

Senate, December 19, 1865, when he referred to a message of the

President, of the previous day, on the condition of the South, as a

"whitewashing message" akin to that of President Pierce on the affairs

of Kansas. When Reverdy Johnson deprecated such an assault on the

President of the United States, Sumner replied that it was "no assault

at all," but after two other Senators (Doolittle and Dixon) had said

that it was the same as accusing the President of falsifying, he replied

that he did not so intend it, but he did not withdraw or modify it.

Certain acts of Southern legislatures on the subjects of apprenticeship,

vagrancy, domicile, wages, patrols, idleness, disobedience of orders,

and violation of contracts on the part of laborers were early brought to

the attention of the Thirty-ninth Congress. Many of these acts betokened

an intention on the part of the lawmakers to reduce the freedmen to a

state of serfdom or peonage. The Virginia legislature, for example,

passed a vagrancy act, the ultimate effect of which, Major-General Terry

said, would be to "reduce the freedmen to a condition of servitude worse

than that from which they had been emancipated--a condition which will

be slavery in all but its name." Whereupon the general, being in command

of the military department, issued an order dated January 26, 1866, that

"no magistrate, civil officer, or other person, shall, in any way or

manner, apply or attempt to apply, the provisions of said statute to any

colored person in this department." President Johnson refused to

interfere with General Terry's order when it was brought to his

attention.

On the 13th of December, Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, introduced a

bill to declare invalid all acts, ordinances, rules, and regulations in

the states lately in insurrection, in which any inequality of civil

rights was established between persons on account of color, race, or

previous condition of servitude. The Natick cobbler was as keen and

fluent a debater as the Knoxville tailor. He had a Yankee drawl in his

pronunciation which detracted from the real merits of his argument, and

so it came to pass that, contrary to the usual fate of extempore

speaking, his speeches read better than they sounded. His speech in

support of his measure on the 21st of December was in his best style. It

was devoid of passion or invective. He cherished no ill-feeling toward

any person, high or low, who had been engaged in the rebellion. He did

not seek or desire to punish anybody. Least of all did he desire to

raise an issue with the President. He wanted only peace, order,

friendship, and brotherhood between North and South, as soon as

possible; but there could be no peace with these statutes staring us in

the face. Therefore, he demanded that they be swept into oblivion with

the slave codes that had preceded them.

Wilson desired an immediate vote on his bill. Senator Sherman thought

that it ought to be referred to a committee and postponed until the

anti-slavery amendment of the Constitution should be officially

proclaimed. Trumbull concurred with Sherman. He said:

I do not rise, sir, with a view of discussing the bill under

consideration: it is one relating to questions of a very grave

character, and ought not to pass without due consideration. The

Senator from Massachusetts tells us that it has been submitted

to distinguished lawyers, and they all conceded its propriety,

and nobody disputes the power of Congress to pass it. Doubtless

that was their opinion and is the opinion of the Senator from

Massachusetts. Perhaps it would be my opinion upon

investigation. I will not undertake to say, at this time, what

the powers of the Congress of the United States may be over the

people in the lately rebellious states.

There was a time between the suppression of the rebellion and

the institution of any kind of government in those states when

it was absolutely necessary that some power or other to prevent

anarchy should have control. The Senator from Delaware, and I

believe the Senator from Maryland, said the rebellion was over,

but at the time that the rebellion ceased there was no

organized government whatever in most of the rebel states; and

was the Government of the United States to withdraw its forces

and leave the people in a state of anarchy for the time being?

Surely not. As a consequence of the rebellion and of the

authority clearly vested in the Government of the United States

to put down the rebellion, in my judgment the Government had

the right, in the absence of any local governments, to control

and govern the people till state organizations could be set up

by the people which should be recognized by the Federal

Government as loyal and true to the Constitution. It must be

so. It is a necessity of the condition of things.

But, sir, I do not propose at this time to discuss this bill.

It is one, I think, of too much importance to be passed without

a reference to some committee. The bill does not go far enough,

if what we have been told to-day in regard to the treatment of

freedmen in the Southern States is true. The bill, perhaps,

also may be premature in the sense stated by the Senator from

Ohio. We have not yet the official information of the adoption

of the constitutional amendment. That that amendment will be

adopted, there is very little question; until it is adopted

there may be some question (I do not say how the right is) as

to the authority of Congress to pass such a bill as this, but

after the adoption of the constitutional amendment there can be

none.

The second clause of that amendment was inserted for some

purpose, and I would like to know of the Senator from Delaware

for what purpose? Sir, for the purpose, and none other, of

preventing state legislatures from enslaving, under any

pretense, those whom the first clause declared should be free.

It was inserted expressly for the purpose of conferring upon

Congress authority by appropriate legislation to carry the

first section into effect. What is the first section? It

declares that throughout the United States and all places

within their jurisdiction neither slavery nor involuntary

servitude shall exist; and then the second section declares

that Congress shall have authority by appropriate legislation

to carry this provision into effect. What that "appropriate

legislation" is, is for Congress to determine, and nobody else.

Mr. Saulsbury here interrupted, saying, "I wish to ask the honorable

Senator a question, with his consent, first answering his own. He asks

me for what purpose that second section was introduced. I do not know; I

had nothing to do with it. And now I wish to ask the honorable Senator

whether, when it was before this body for adoption, he avowed in his

advocacy of it that it was meant for such purposes as are now claimed."

Then the following colloquy ensued:

MR. TRUMBULL. I never understood it in any other way.

MR. SAULSBURY. Did you state it to the Senate?

MR. TRUMBULL. I do not know that I stated it to the Senate. I

might as well have stated to the Senator from Delaware that the

clause which declared that Slavery should not exist anywhere

within the United States means that slavery should not exist

within the United States! I could make it no plainer by

repetition or illustration than the statement itself makes it.

I reported from the Judiciary Committee the second section of

the constitutional amendment for the very purpose of conferring

upon Congress authority to see that the first section was

carried out in good faith, and for none other; and I hold that

under that second section Congress will have the authority,

when the constitutional amendment is adopted, not only to pass

the bill of the Senator from Massachusetts, but a bill that

will be much more efficient to protect the freedman in his

rights. We may, if deemed advisable, continue the Freedmen's

Bureau, clothe it with additional powers, and if necessary back

it up with a military force, to see that the rights of the men

made free by the first clause of the constitutional amendment

are protected. And, sir, when the constitutional amendment

shall have been adopted, if the information from the South be

that the men whose liberties are secured by it are deprived of

the privilege to go and come when they please, to buy and sell

when they please, to make contracts and enforce contracts, I

give notice that, if no one else does, I shall introduce a bill

and urge its passage through Congress that will secure to those

men every one of these rights: they would not be freemen

without them. It is idle to say that a man is free who cannot

go and come at pleasure, who cannot buy and sell, who cannot

enforce his rights. These are rights which the first clause of

the constitutional amendment meant to secure to all; and to

prevent the very cavil which the Senator from Delaware suggests

to-day, that Congress would not have power to secure them, the

second section of the amendment was added.

There were some persons who thought it was unnecessary to add

the second clause. It was said by some that wherever a power

was conferred upon Congress there was also conferred authority

to pass the necessary laws to carry that power into effect,

under the general clause in the Constitution of the United

States which declares that Congress shall have authority to

pass all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution

any of the powers conferred by the Constitution. I think

Congress would have had the power, even without the second

clause, to pass all laws necessary to give effect to the

provision making all persons free; but it was intended to put

it beyond cavil and dispute, and that was the object of the

second clause, and I cannot conceive how any other construction

can be put upon it.

Now, sir, I trust that this bill may be referred, because I

think that a bill of this character should not pass without

deliberate consideration and without going to some of the

committees of the Senate. But the object which is had in view

by this bill I heartily sympathize with, and when the

constitutional amendment is adopted I trust we may pass a bill,

if the action of the people in the Southern States should make

it necessary, that will be much more sweeping and efficient

than the bill under consideration. I will not sit down,

however, without expressing the hope that no such legislation

may be necessary. I trust that the people of the South, who in

their state constitutions have declared that slavery shall no

more exist among them, will by their own legislation make that

provision effective. I trust there may be a feeling among them

in harmony with the feeling throughout the country, and which

shall not only abolish slavery in name, but in fact, and that

the legislation of the slave states in after years may be as

effective to elevate, enlighten, and improve the African as it

has been in past years to enslave and degrade him.[80]

On the 18th of December the adoption of the anti-slavery amendment was

officially announced. On the same day the President sent to the Senate

two reports on the condition of affairs, and the state of opinion, in

the South,--a very brief one from Lieutenant-General Grant and a much

longer one from Major-General Carl Schurz. The former was an incidental

result of a three weeks' tour of inspection for military purposes.

General Grant had spent one day in Raleigh, North Carolina, two days in

Charleston, South Carolina, and one day each in Savannah and Augusta,

Georgia. The substance of his report was that he did not think it

practicable to withdraw the military at present; that the citizens of

the Southern States were anxious to return to self-government within the

Union as soon as possible; that they were in earnest in wishing to do

what they supposed was required of them by the Government and not

humiliating to them as citizens.

I am satisfied [he said] that the mass of thinking men of the

South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith.

The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of

the people of the two sections--slavery and state rights, or

the right of a state to secede from the Union--they regard as

having been settled forever by the highest tribunal--arms--that

man can resort to. I was pleased to learn from the leading men

whom I met that they not only accepted the decision arrived at

as final, but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away

and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has

been a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like

benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and

in council.

He alluded to a belief widely spread among the freedmen that the lands

of their former owners were to be divided, in part at least, among them

and that this belief was seriously interfering with their willingness to

make labor contracts for the ensuing year. Then he added:

In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman's mind does

not seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman has the

right to live without care or provision for the future. The

effect of the belief in the division of lands is idleness and

accumulation in camps, towns, and cities. In such cases, I

think, it will be found that vice and disease will tend to the

extermination or great reduction of the colored race. It cannot

be expected that the opinions held by men at the South for

years can be changed in a day; and, therefore, the freedmen

require for a few years not only laws to protect them, but the

fostering care of those who will give them good counsel and on

whom they can rely.

General Schurz's investigation had been made at the special request of

the President. He had spent three months in South Carolina, Georgia,

Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The President, when appointing him,

had said that his own policy of Reconstruction was merely experimental

and subject to change if it did not lead to satisfactory results. Schurz

says in his "Reminiscences?"[81] that when he returned to Washington

from his journey he had much difficulty in procuring an interview with

the President; that the latter received him coldly and did not ask him

for the results of his investigation; and that when he (Schurz) said

that he intended to write a report, the President said that he need not

take that trouble on his account. Schurz was convinced that the

President wished to suppress his testimony and he resolved that he

should not do so. He accordingly wrote the report and sent it in, with

the accompanying documents, and let his friends in the Senate know that

he had done so. On the 12th of December the Senate, on Sumner's motion,

called for the report. The President did not respond immediately. In the

mean time he had had a conversation with General Grant whose views were

for the most part in accord with his own, and he asked the latter to

communicate the information he had gained during his Southern tour in

order to make it a part of his reply to the Senate Resolution. The reply

occupies only one page and a half of McPherson's "Reconstruction."

Schurz's consists of forty-four printed pages of text and fifty-eight

pages of appendix; Schurz considered this the best paper he had ever

written on a public matter, and there can be no doubt that it had great

influence in Congress and on the Republican party. Yet the brief report

of Grant was the sounder of the two. Indeed, Schurz himself in his later

years had doubts as to the validity of his own conclusions.[82]

Schurz's conclusions may be summarized thus: