consisted in my association with other members of the craft. I found
among the correspondents of the press a number of gentlemen of uncommon
ability and high principle--genuine gentlemen, who loved truth for its
own sake, who heartily detested sham and false pretense, and whose sense
of honor was of the finest. This was the rule, to which, as to all
rules, there were of course some exceptions; but they were rare. My more
or less intimate contact with public men high and low was not so
uniformly gratifying. I enjoyed, indeed, the privilege of meeting
statesmen of high purpose, of well-stored minds, of unselfish
patriotism, and of the courage of their convictions. But disgustingly
large was, on the other hand, the number of small, selfish politicians I
ran against--men who seemed to know no higher end than the advantage of
their party, which involved their own; who were always nervously
sniffing for the popular breeze; whose most demonstrative ebullitions of
virtue consisted in the most violent denunciations of the opposition;
whose moral courage quaked at the appearance of the slightest danger to
their own or their party's fortunes; and whose littlenesses exposed them
sometimes with involuntary frankness to the newspaper correspondent whom
they approached to beg for a "favorable notice" or for the suppression
of an unwelcome news item. They were by no means in all instances men of
small parts. On the contrary, there were men of marked ability and large
acquirements among them. But never until then had I known how great a
moral coward a member of Congress may be.
It is probably now as it was then. There were few places in the United
States where the public men appearing on the national stage were judged
as fairly and accurately as they were in Newspaper Row in Washington.
[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY
AT WHOSE REQUEST CARL SCHURZ BECAME THE CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE IN 1865]
I remained at the head of the _Tribune_ office in Washington, according
to my promise to Mr. Greeley, to the end of the winter season, and then
accepted the chief-editorship of the Detroit _Post_, a new journal
established at Detroit, Michigan, which was offered to me--I might
almost say urged upon me--by Senator Zachariah Chandler. In the meantime
I had occasion to witness the beginning of the political war between the
executive and the legislative power concerning the reconstruction of the
"States lately in rebellion."
_The Beginnings of the Struggle_
I am sure I do not exaggerate when I say that this political war has
been one of the most unfortunate events in the history of this Republic,
for it made the most important problem of the time, a problem of
extraordinary complexity, which required the calmest and most delicate
and circumspect treatment, the foot-ball of a personal and party brawl
which was in the highest degree apt to inflame the passions and to
obscure the judgment of everybody concerned in it. Since my return from
the South, the evil effects of Mr. Johnson's conduct in encouraging the
reactionary spirit prevalent among the Southern whites had become more
and more evident and alarming from day to day. Charles Sumner told me
that his personal experience with the President had been very much like
mine. When Sumner left Washington in the spring, he had received from
Mr. Johnson at repeated intervals the most emphatic assurances that he
would do nothing to precipitate the restoration of the "States lately in
rebellion" to the full exercise of self-governing functions, and even
that he favored the extension of the suffrage to the freedmen. The two
men had parted with all the appearance of a perfect friendly
understanding. But when the Senator returned to Washington in the late
autumn that understanding seemed to have entirely vanished from the
President's mind and to have given place to an irritated temper and a
certain acerbity of tone in the assertion of the "President's policy."
From various other members of Congress I heard the same story. Mr.
Johnson, strikingly unlike Abraham Lincoln, evidently belonged to that
unfortunate class of men with whom a difference of opinion on any
important matter will at once cause personal ill feeling and a
disturbance of friendly intercourse. By many Congressmen Mr. Johnson was
regarded as one who had broken faith, and the memory of the disgraceful
exhibition of himself in a drunken state at the inauguration ceremonies,
which under ordinary circumstances everybody would have been glad to
forget, was revived, so as to make him appear as a person of
ungentlemanly character. All these things combined to impart to the
controversies which followed a flavor of reckless defiance and rancorous
bitterness, the outbursts of which were sometimes almost ferocious.
[Illustration: TWO PORTRAITS OF CHARLES SUMNER]
The first gun of the political war between the President and Congress,
which was to rage four years, was fired by Thaddeus Stevens in the House
of Representatives by the introduction, even before the hearing of the
President's Message, of the resolution already mentioned, which
substantially proclaimed that the reconstruction of the late rebel
States was the business, not of the President alone, but of Congress.
This theory, which was constitutionally correct, was readily supported
by the Republican majority, and thus the war was declared. Of
Republican dissenters who openly took the President's part, there were
but few--in the Senate, Doolittle of Wisconsin, Dixon of Connecticut,
Norton of Minnesota, Cowan of Pennsylvania, and, for a short period,
Morgan of New York, as the personal friend of Mr. Seward. In the House
of Representatives, Mr. Raymond of New York, the famous founder of the
New York _Times_, acted as the principal Republican champion of the
"President's policy."
[Illustration: PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON
WHOSE RECONSTRUCTION POLICY LED TO THE FOUR YEARS' WAR BETWEEN HIMSELF
AND CONGRESS]
_Stevens the Dominating Figure of the Struggle_
Thaddeus Stevens was the acknowledged leader of the Republicans in the
House. Few historic characters have ever been more differently judged
from different points of view. A Southern writer of fiction has painted
him as the fiend incarnate; others have spoken of him as a great leader
of his time, far-sighted, a man of uncompromising convictions,
intellectually honest, of unflinching courage and energy. I had come
into personal contact with him in the Presidential campaigns of 1860 and
1864, when he seemed to be pleased with my efforts. I had once heard him
make a stump speech which was evidently inspired by intense hatred of
slavery, and remarkable for argumentative pith and sarcastic wit. But
the impression his personality made upon me was not sympathetic: his
face, long and pallid, topped with an ample dark-brown wig which was at
the first glance recognized as such; beetling brows overhanging keen
eyes of uncertain color which sometimes seemed to scintillate with a
sudden gleam; the under lip defiantly protruding; the whole expression
usually stern. His figure would have looked stalwart but for a deformed
foot which made him bend and limp. His conversation, carried on in a
hollow voice devoid of music, easily disclosed a well-informed mind, but
also a certain absolutism of opinion, with contemptuous scorn for
adverse argument. He belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men
who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous
abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he
himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which
he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot
out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he
accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham
Lincoln's hearty laugh at his own jests.
[Illustration: _From the collection of P. H. Meserve_
JOHN SHERMAN
WHO TRIED TO HEAL THE BREACH BETWEEN PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND THE SENATE]
[Illustration: THADDEUS STEVENS
THE LEADING OPPONENT OF THE MOVEMENT TO RESTORE SLAVERY, AND THE MOST
BITTER OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S ANTAGONISTS]
Thus Mr. Stevens' discourse was apt to make him appear a hardened cynic,
inaccessible to the finer feelings, and indifferent whether he gave pain
or pleasure. But now and then a remark escaped him--I say "escaped him,"
because he evidently preferred to wear the acrid tendencies of his
character on the outside--which indicated that there was behind his
cynicism a rich fund of human kindness and sympathy. And this was
strongly confirmed by his neighbors at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his
home, where on one of my campaigning tours I once spent a day and a
night. With them, even with many of his political opponents, "old
Thad," as they called him, appeared to be eminently popular. They had no
end of stories to tell about the protection he had given to fugitive
slaves, sometimes at much risk and sacrifice to himself, and of the many
benefactions he had bestowed with a lavish hand upon the widows and
orphans and other persons in need, and of his generous fidelity to his
friends. They did not, indeed, revere him as a model of virtue, but of
the occasional lapses of his bachelor life from correct moral standards,
which seemed to be well known and freely talked about, they spoke with
affectionate lenity of judgment.
When I saw him again in Washington at the opening of the Thirty-ninth
Congress, in December, 1865, he looked very much aged since our last
meeting, and infirm in health. In repose his face was like a death-mask,
and he was carried in a chair to his seat in the House by two stalwart
young negroes. There is good authority for the story that once when they
had set him down, he said to them, with his grim humor: "Thank you, my
good fellows. What shall I do when you are dead and gone?" But his eyes
glowed from under his bushy brows with the old keen sparkle, and his
mind was as alert as ever. It may be that his age--he was then
seventy-four--and his physical infirmities, admonishing him that at best
he would have only a few years more to live, served to inspire him with
an impatient craving and a fierce determination to make the best of his
time, and thus to intensify the activity of his mental energies. To
compass the abolition of slavery had been the passion of his life. He
had hailed the Civil War as the great opportunity. He had never been
quite satisfied with Lincoln, whose policy seemed to him too dilatory.
He demanded quick, sharp, and decisive blows.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN
HEAD OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE ON RECONSTRUCTION, WHICH WAS DENOUNCED BY
PRESIDENT JOHNSON AS AN "IRRESPONSIBLE CENTRAL DIRECTORY"]
Now that the abolition of slavery was actually decreed, he saw President
Johnson follow a policy which, in his view, threatened to undo the great
work. His scornful anger at Andrew Johnson was equaled only by his
contempt for the Republicans who sided with the President. He was bound
to defeat this reactionary attempt and to see slavery thoroughly killed
beyond the possibility of resurrection, at any cost. As to the means to
be employed, he scrupled little. He wanted the largest possible
Republican majority in Congress, and to this end he would have expelled
any number of Democrats from their seats, by hook or crook. When my old
friend and quondam law partner, General Halbert E. Paine, who was
chairman of the Committee on Elections in the House, told him that, in a
certain contested election case to be voted upon, both contestants were
rascals, Stevens simply asked: "Well, which is _our_ rascal?" He said
this, not in jest, but with perfect seriousness. He would have seated
Beelzebub in preference to the angel Gabriel, had he believed Beelzebub
to be more certain than Gabriel to aid him in beating the President's
reconstruction policy. His speeches were short, peremptory, and
commanding. He bluntly avowed his purposes, however extreme they seemed
to be. He disdained to make them more palatable by any art of
persuasion, or to soften the asperity of his attacks by charitable
circumlocution. There was no hypocrisy, no cant in his utterances. With
inexorable intellectual honesty, he drew all the logical conclusions
from his premises. He was a terror in debate. Whenever provoked, he
brought his batteries of merciless sarcasm into play with deadly effect.
Not seldom, a single sentence sufficed to lay a daring antagonist
sprawling on the ground amid the roaring laughter of the House, the
luckless victim feeling as if he had heedlessly touched a heavily
charged electric wire. No wonder that even the readiest and boldest
debaters were cautious in approaching old Thaddeus Stevens too closely,
lest something stunning and sudden happen to them. Thus the fear he
inspired became a distinct element of power in his leadership--not a
wholesome element, indeed, at the time of a great problem which required
the most circumspect and dispassionate treatment.
_William Pitt Fessenden_
A statesman of a very different stamp was Senator Fessenden of Maine,
who, being at the head of the senatorial part of the joint Committee on
Reconstruction, presided over that important body. William Pitt
Fessenden was a man who might easily have been overlooked in a crowd.
There was nothing in his slight figure, his thin face framed in spare
gray hair and side whiskers, and his quiet demeanor, to attract
particular notice. Neither did his appearance in the Senate Chamber
impress one at first sight as that of a great power in that important
assembly. I saw him more than once there walk with slow steps up and
down in the open space behind the seats, with his hands in his trousers
pockets, with seeming listlessness, while another senator was speaking,
and then ask to be heard, and, without changing his attitude, make an
argument in a calm conversational tone, unmixed with the slightest
oratorical flourish, so solid and complete that little more remained to
be said on the subject in question. He gave the impression of having at
his disposal a rich and perfectly ordered store of thought and knowledge
upon which he could draw with perfect ease and assurance. When I was
first introduced to him, he appeared to be rather distant in manner than
inviting friendly approach. But I was told that ill health had made him
unsociable and somewhat morose and testy, and, indeed, there was often
the trace of suffering and weariness in his face. It was also remarked
in the Senate that at times he was ill-tempered and inclined to indulge
in biting sarcasms and to administer unkind lectures to other senators,
which in some instances disturbed his personal intercourse with his
colleagues. But there was not one of them who did not hold him in the
highest esteem as a statesman of commanding ability and of lofty ideals,
as a gentleman of truth and conscience, as a great jurist and an eminent
constitutional lawyer, as a party man of most honorable principles and
methods, and as a patriot of noblest ambition for his country.
[Illustration: WENDELL PHILLIPS
WHOM PRESIDENT JOHNSON NAMED AS ONE OF THE ENEMIES OF THE REPUBLIC IN
HIS SPEECH OF FEBRUARY 22]
Being a man also of conservative instincts, averse to unnecessary
conflicts, and always disinclined to go to extremes, in action as well
as in language, he was expected to exert a moderating influence in his
committee; and this expectation was not disappointed so far as his
efforts to prevent a final breach between the President and the
Republican majority in Congress were concerned. But regarding the main
question whether the "States lately in rebellion" should be fully
restored to their self-governing functions and to full participation in
the government of the Republic without having given reasonable
guaranties for the maintenance of the "legitimate results of the war,"
he was in point of principle not far apart from Mr. Stevens.
_The President's Logic_
It must be admitted that, if we accept his premises, Mr. Johnson made in
point of logic a pretty plausible case. His proposition was that a
State, in the view of the Federal Constitution, is indestructible; that
an ordinance of secession adopted by its inhabitants, or its political
organs, did not take it out of the Union; that by declaring and treating
those ordinances of secession as "null and void," of no force, virtually
non-existent, the Federal government itself had accepted and sanctioned
that theory; that during the rebellion the constitutional rights and
functions of those States were merely suspended, and that when the
rebellion ceased they were _ipso facto_ restored; that, therefore, the
rebellion having actually ceased, those States were at once entitled to
their former rights and privileges--that is, to the recognition of their
self-elected State governments and to their representation in Congress.
Admitting the premises, this was logically correct in the abstract.
But this was one of the cases to which a saying, many years later set
afloat by President Cleveland, might properly have been applied: we were
confronting a condition, not a theory. The condition was this: Certain
States had through their regular political organs declared themselves
independent of the Union. They had, for all practical purposes, actually
separated themselves from the Union. They had made war upon the Union.
That war put those States in a position not foreseen by the
Constitution. It imposed upon the government of the Union duties not
foreseen by the Constitution; by "military necessity," war necessity,
the Union was compelled to emancipate the negroes from slavery and to
accept their military services. The war had compelled the government of
the Union to levy large loans of money and thus to contract a huge
public debt. The government had also, in the course of the war, the aid
of the Union men of the South. It had thus assumed solemn obligations
for value received or services rendered. It had assumed the duty to
protect the emancipated negroes in their freedom, the Southern Union men
in their security, and the public creditor from loss. This duty was a
duty of honor as well as of policy. The Union could, therefore, not
consent, either in point of honor or of sound policy, to the restoration
of the late rebel States to the functions of self-government and to full
participation in the national government so long as that restoration was
reasonably certain to put the freedom of the emancipated slaves, or the
security of the Southern Union men, or the rights of the public
creditor, into serious jeopardy.
[Illustration: SENATOR LYMAN TRUMBULL
WHO MOVED THAT THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU BILL OF JANUARY 12 BE PASSED OVER
PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S VETO]
_Lincoln's Policy versus Johnson's_
It was pretended at the time, and it has since been asserted by
historians and publicists of high standing, that Mr. Johnson's
Reconstruction policy was only a continuation of that of Mr. Lincoln.
This was true only in a superficial sense, and not in reality. Mr.
Lincoln had, indeed, put forth reconstruction plans which contemplated
an early restoration of some of the rebel States; but he had done this
while the Civil War was still going on, and for the evident purpose of
encouraging loyal movements in those States and of weakening the
Confederate State governments there by opposing to them governments
organized in the interest of the Union, which could serve as
rallying-points to the Union men. So long as the rebellion continued in
any form and to any extent, the State governments he contemplated would
have been substantially in the control of really loyal men who had been
on the side of the Union during the war. Moreover, he always
emphatically affirmed, in public as well as private utterance, that no
plan of reconstruction he had ever put forth was meant to be "exclusive
and inflexible," but might be changed according to different
circumstances.
Now circumstances did change; they changed essentially with the collapse
of the Confederacy. There was no more organized armed resistance to the
national government, to distract which loyal State governments in the
South might have been efficacious. But there was an effort of persons
lately in rebellion to get possession of the reconstructed Southern
State governments for the purpose, in part, of using their power to save
or restore as much of the system of slavery as could be saved or
restored. The success of these efforts was to be accomplished by the
precipitate and unconditional readmission of the late rebel States to
all their constitutional functions. This situation had not yet developed
when Lincoln was assassinated. He had not contemplated it when he put
forth his plans of reconstructing Louisiana and the other States. Had he
lived, he would have as ardently wished to stop bloodshed and to reunite
all the States as he ever did. But is it to be supposed, for a moment,
that, seeing the late master class in the South still under the
influence of their old traditional notions and prejudices, and at the
same time sorely pressed by the distressing necessities of their
situation, intent upon subjecting the freedmen again to a system very
much akin to slavery, Lincoln would have consented to abandon those
freedmen to the mercies of that master class!
_The Personal Bitterness of the Struggle_
No less striking was the difference of the two policies in what may be
called the personal character of the controversies of the time. When the
Republican majority in Congress had already declared its unwillingness
to accept President Johnson's leadership in the matter of
reconstruction, a strong desire was still manifested by many Republican
senators and members of the House to prevent a decided and irremediable
breach with the President. Some of them were sanguine enough to hope
that more or less harmonious cooeperation, or at least a peaceable
_modus vivendi_, might still be obtained. Others apprehended that the
President's policy, with its plausibilities, might after all find favor
with the popular mind, which was naturally tired of strife and
excitement, eager for peace and quiet, and that its opponents might
appear as reckless disturbers. Still others stood in fear of a rupture
in the Republican party, which, among other evil consequences, might
prove disastrous to their own political fortunes. Several men of
importance, such as Fessenden and Sherman in the Senate and some
prominent members of the House, seriously endeavored to pour oil upon
the agitated waters by making speeches of a conciliatory tenor. Indeed,
if Andrew Johnson had possessed only a little of Abraham Lincoln's sweet
temper, generous tolerance, and patient tact in the treatment of
opponents, he might at least have prevented the conflict of opinions
from degenerating into an angry and vicious personal brawl. But the
brawl was Johnson's congenial atmosphere.
The Judiciary Committee of the Senate, on January 12, 1866, reported a
bill to continue the existence, to increase the personnel, and to
enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau. It was discussed in both
Houses with great thoroughness and in a temperate spirit, and the
necessity of the measure for the protection of the freedmen and the
introduction of free labor in the South was so generally acknowledged
that the recognized Republican friends of the President in the Senate as
well as in the House supported it. It passed by overwhelming majorities
in both Houses, and everybody, even those most intimate with the
President, confidently expected that he would willingly accept and sign
it. But on the 19th of February he returned it with his veto, mainly on
the assumed ground that it was unnecessary and unconstitutional, and
also because it was passed by a Congress from which eleven States, those
lately in rebellion, were excluded--thus throwing out a dark hint that
before the admission of the late rebel States to representation this
Congress might be considered constitutionally unable to make any valid
laws at all. Senator Trumbull, in an uncommonly able, statesmanlike, and
calm speech, combated the President's arguments and moved that the bill
pass, the President's veto notwithstanding. But the "Administration
Republicans," although they had voted for the bill, now voted to sustain
the veto, and, there being no two-thirds majority to overcome it, the
veto prevailed. Thus President Johnson had won a victory over the
Republican majority in Congress. This victory may have made him believe
that he would be able to kill with his veto all legislation unpalatable
to him, and that, therefore, he was actually master of the situation. He
made the grave mistake of underestimating the opposition.
_A Humiliating Spectacle_