The changes in the Senate on the 4th of March, 1869, were notable in
the character both of the retiring and incoming members.
--Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, entered the Senate for the fourth time.
His first election in 1848, to fill out the term of ex-Governor
Fairfield, was for three years. He resigned at the close of his second
term to accept the governorship of his State, and midway in his third
term he was promoted to the Vice-Presidency. From his earliest
participation in public life Mr. Hamlin enjoyed an extraordinary
popularity. Indeed, with a single exception, he was never defeated for
any office in Maine for which he was a candidate. In the great Whig
uprising of 1840 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the
Penobscot district, and was beaten by Elisha H. Allen, afterwards
widely known as Chief Justice of Hawaii and Minister from that kingdom
to the United States. The candidates were warm personal friends before
and after the contest.
--Matthew H. Carpenter succeeded Mr. Doolittle as senator from
Wisconsin. He was forty-five years of age and had gained high
reputation as a lawyer. He had become well known at the National
Capital by his appearance in the Supreme Court, and from his employment
by Secretary Stanton, during the war, in some government cases of
importance. He was a native of Vermont, but his active career was in
the North-West. His ambition as a lad was for the army; and he spent
some time at West Point, but left without graduating, and devoted
himself to the law. He completed his studies in the office of Mr.
Choate in Boston, and began the practice of his profession in
Wisconsin. Not long after his settlement in his new home, he lost his
sight from over-use of his eyes in study, and for a period of three
years was entirely blind. Judge Black, his intimate friend and
eulogist, believed that this appalling calamity wrought Mr. Carpenter
great good in the end: "It elevated, refined, strengthened all his
faculties. Before that time much reading had made him a very full man:
when reading became impossible, reflection digested his knowledge into
practical wisdom. He perfectly arranged his storehouse of facts and
cases, and pondered intently upon the first principles of jurisprudence."
His service in the Senate may rather be termed brilliant than useful.
The truth is that Mr. Carpenter attempted to do what no man can
accomplish: he tried to maintain his full practice at the bar, and
discharge his full duties as senator at the same time. His strength
was not equal to the double load. He was endowed with a high order
of ability. If he had given all his time to the Senate, or all to the
Bar, he would have found few peers in either field of intellectual
combat. Aside from the weight of his argument, his manner of speech
was attractive. He had an agreeable voice, precisely adapted in
volume and tone to the Senate Chamber. He was affluent in language,
graceful in manner, and, beyond all, was gifted with that quality--rare,
indefinable, but recognized by every one--which constitutes the orator.
--Carl Schurz now took his seat as a senator from Missouri. He was
born a Prussian subject, and had just completed his fortieth year. He
had been well educated in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in a partial
course at the university of Bonn. Though retaining a marked German
accent, he quickly learned to speak English with fluency and eloquence,
and yet with occasional idiomatic errors discernible when he words are
printed. He took active part before German audiences, for Frémont, in
the Presidential canvass of 1856, and began to make public addresses in
English in 1858, when he espoused the cause of Mr. Lincoln in the
famous contest with Douglas. He was widely sought as a speaker in both
of Mr. Lincoln's contests for the Presidency, 1860 and 1864. In the
latter year he was especially forcible, attractive, and effective.
Subsequently he fell off, apparently in strength, certainly in
popularity. As a lecturer he lost his hold upon the lyceum, and as a
political orator he began to repeat himself, not merely in sense but in
phrase. As a senator he did not meet the expectation of his friends.
His failure was in large part due to the fact that he has not the power
of speaking _extempore_. He requires careful and studious preparation,
and has never attained the art of off-hand parliamentary discussion,
which Colonel Benton likened to "shooting on the wing." So deficient
is Mr. Schurz in this talent, that he has been known to use a
manuscript in an after-dinner response, a style of speech whose chief
merit consists in its spontaneity, with apt reference to incidents
which could not possibly be foreseen.
The loss of Mr. Schurz's popularity--a popularity that was very marked
in the earlier period of his career--is due in part to certain unsteady
and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with
characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree
to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid
picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it
might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and
meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then
to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is
proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr.
Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other
countries of Europe,--first in Switzerland, then in France, then in
England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in
Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri,
and then in New York. He has not become rooted and grounded anywhere,
has never established a home, is not of any locality or of any class,
has no fixed relation to Church or State, to professional, political,
or social life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence
which unites old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friendship
its fullest development, its most gracious attributes.
The same unsteadiness has entered as a striking feature in the public
career of Mr. Schurz. The party he upheld yesterday met with his
bitterest denunciations the day before, and to-morrow he will support
the political organization of whose measures he is the most merciless
censor to-day. He boasts himself incapable of attachment to party, and
in that respect radically differs from the great body of his American
fellow-citizens. He cannot even comprehend that exalted sentiment
of honorable association in public life which holds together successive
generations of men,--a sentiment which in the United States causes
the Democrat to reverence the memory of Jefferson and Jackson and
Douglas, which causes his opponent to glory in the achievements of
Hamilton and Clay and Lincoln; a sentiment which in England has bound
the Whigs in a common faith and common glory, from Walpole to
Gladstone, and their more conservative rivals in a creed of loyalty
whose disciples, from Bolingbroke to Beaconsfield, include many of the
noblest of British patriots.
For these party associations, to whose influence, under the restraint
of intelligent patriotism, the wisest legislation is due, Mr. Schurz
has neither approbation nor appreciation. He aspires to the title of
"Independent," and has described his own position as that of a man
sitting on a fence, with clean boots, watching carefully which way he
may leap to keep out of the mud. A critic might, without carping,
suggest that it is the duty of an earnest man to disregard the
bespattering which fidelity to principle often incurs, and that a
beaten path to safe place for one's self is not an inspiring or worthy
object of statesmanship.
Nor is Mr. Schurz's independence of party more pronounced or more
complete than his independence of true American feeling. He has
taken no pride in appearing under the simple but lofty title of a
citizen of the United States. He stands rather as a representative
German-American. He has made his native nationality a political resource,
and has thereby fallen short of the full honor due to his adopted
nationality. The large body of American citizens of German birth are
intensely attached to their new home, and seek the most complete
identification of themselves and their descendants with the development
and destiny of the Great Republic. This is wise, and is in accordance
with the best traditions and best aspirations of the Teutonic race.
But to Mr. Schurz the Republic is not great! "This country," said he,
in his Centennial lecture, "is materially great, but morally small."
--Allen G. Thurman came suddenly into prominence in 1867. He was the
Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio against Rutherford B. Hayes.
For the three years immediately preceding his candidacy the Republican
majorities in the State had averaged nearly 45,000, while in 1863
Vallandingham had been beaten by 101,699. Without premonition or
visible cause, in an election for State officers only, and not for
representatives in Congress, the total vote of 1867 proved to be larger
than had ever been cast in the State, while the majority of General
Hayes was less than three thousand. The Legislature was carried at the
same time by the Democrats, and it proved that Mr. Thurman had lost
the Governorship only to be promoted at once to the United-States
Senate. The political revolution was as remarkable in character as it
was sudden in time. Ohio had shown profound loyalty to the Union and
an enthusiastic support of all measures for its preservation. Mr.
Thurman had run counter to the principles and prejudices of a large
number of the people of Ohio by his bitter hostility to the war, and
yet he now received a larger popular vote than had ever before been
given even to a Republican candidate, except in the year 1863 when so
many Democrats repudiated Vallandingham.
It was at the full maturity of his powers, in the fifty-sixth year of
his age, that Mr. Thurman took his seat in the Senate, March 4, 1869.
He had been chosen a representative in Congress for a single term
twenty-five years before, and had afterwards served a full term on the
Supreme Bench of Ohio, the last two years as Chief Justice of the
court. He was not therefore an untried man, but had an established
reputation for learning in the law, for experience in affairs, for
intellectual qualities of a high order. During the long interval
between his service in the House and his installment in the Senate
the relation of political parties had essentially changed. Mr. Thurman
had changed with the times and with his associates. When he took his
seat in the Twenty-ninth Congress the issue in regard to the extension
of slavery in the Territories was beginning to enlist public interest.
The first impulse of all the representatives from that extensive and
opulent domain, which had been saved from the blight of slavery by the
Ordinance of 1787, was to aid in extending a similar blessing to all
other Territories of the United States. With the exception of Stephen
A. Douglas and John A. McClernand of Illinois, and John Pettit of
Indiana, all the Democratic representatives from the four North-western
States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan) voted for the
anti-slavery proviso offered by Mr. Wilmot. Mr. Douglas, discerning
the future more clearly than his party associates, realized that the
chief strength of the Democracy must continue to lie in the South, and
that an anti-slavery attitude on the part of the North-western
Democrats would destroy the National prestige of the party and lead to
its defeat. The Democratic supporters of the Wilmot Proviso had
therefore choice of two paths: they must abandon their anti-slavery
attitude or they must leave the party. Mr. Thurman adhered to his
party. With this exception, his political course has been one of
unswerving constancy and fidelity to all the extreme demands and
severe creeds imposed upon the Democracy by the South. His Virginia
birth, his rearing within the lines of the old Virginia Military
reservation in Southern Ohio, his early associations with kindred and
his friends, all contributed to his education as a Democrat. He
naturally grew to strong influence with his associates, and when he
came to the Senate was entitled to be considered the foremost man of
his party in the Nation.
His rank in the Senate was established from the day he took his seat,
and was never lowered during the period of his service. He was an
admirable disciplined debater, was fair in his method of statement,
logical in his argument, honest in his conclusions. He had no tricks
in discussion, no catch-phrases to secure attention, but was always
direct and manly. His mind was not pre-occupied and engrossed with
political contests or with affairs of state. He had natural and
cultivated tastes outside of those fields. He was a discriminating
reader, and enjoyed not only serious books, but inclined also to the
lighter indulgence of romance and poetry. He was especially fond of
the best French writers. He loved Molière and Racine, and could quote
with rare enjoyment the humorous scenes depicted by Balzac. He took
pleasure in the drama, and was devoted to music. In Washington he
could usually be found in the best seat of the theatre when a good play
was to be presented or an opera was to be given. These tastes
illustrate the genial side of his nature, and were a fitting complement
to the stronger and sterner elements of the man. His retirement from
the Senate was a serious loss to his party--a loss indeed to the body.
He left behind him pleasant memories, and carried with him the respect
of all with whom he had been associated during his twelve years of
honorable service.
--William G. Brownlow, a quaint and eccentric man, took his seat as
senator from Tennessee. He was in the sixty-fourth year of his age,
and in impaired health. He was born in South-western Virginia in the
wild and mountainous region adjacent to the borders of three other
States. In early life he was a Methodist preacher of peculiar
earnestness and force, with special adaptations to the people among
whom his ministry lay. To his Church he always retained an intense
attachment and devotion. In his later years he published a work on
Methodism, under the strange title of "The Iron Wheel examined, and its
False Spokes extracted." He came into public and general notice as the
editor of the Knoxville _Whig_, which, though printed in the mountains
of Tennessee when facilities of communication were restricted, attained
wide circulation and influence. Its editor was known as "Parson"
Brownlow, a _sobriquet_ which attached to him through life. His paper
was strongly anti-Jackson, warmly espoused the cause of Mr. Clay, and
was distinguished in its editorials by a treatment of public questions
so original that for nearly a quarter of a century it was known and
quoted by the journals of the whole country.
But the odd and humorous editor, hitherto notorious for his partisan
intensity and for the extravagance of his diction, was suddenly
transformed into a moral hero. When the wild movement for secession
swept over Tennessee, and carried with it even such men as John Bell,
Brownlow took his stand for the Union. Threats could not move him,
persecution could not break him, the prison had no terrors for him.
His devotion to the National cause did not mean simply the waving of
the flag and the delivery of patriotic orations; it meant cold and
hunger, separation from his family, loss of property, possibly loss
of life. He endured all, and faced his bloodthirsty enemies with a
courage superior to their own. He won their respect by his brave
resistance, and was finally released from jail and banished from the
Confederacy. He came North, and remained until the progress of the
National arms enabled him to return to his home. His patriotic
devotion was rewarded by the boundless confidence of the loyal people
of Tennessee. At the close of the war he was chosen Governor, and was
now promoted to the Senate of the United States--too late for the
exertion of his once strong mental qualities, but early enough to
testify by his presence the triumph of loyalty and manhood in the
bloody strife through which he had passed.
--Thomas F. Bayard, who entered the Senate at the opening of the
Forty-first congress, was little known to the public, except as a member
of a family which had been for a considerable period prominent in the
political affairs of Delaware. His service in the Senate has been
remarkable for one leading characteristic,--the power, or the
accidental fortune, to create a public impression as to his career
precisely the reverse of its actual history. The illustrations are
many:--
In financial circles Mr. Bayard has been held as a fair and
conservative exponent of sound views, a jealous guardian of the public
credit. As matter of fact, he joined in a political crusade to enforce
the payment of the National debt in depreciated paper money, and almost
the first vote he ever gave in the Senate was against the bill
declaring the National debt to be payable in coin. He voted to except
specifically the fifteen hundred millions of 5-20 bonds from coin
payment, argued earnestly in favor of taxing the bonds of the
Government, refused to support the bill for the resumption of specie
payments, and united with others in a National movement to repeal the
Act after it had been for a considerable period in operation.
On the Southern question, in all its phases, Mr. Bayard has been
proclaimed by his supporters as calm, considerate, and just. In truth
he has gone as far as the most rancorous rebel leader of the South,
touching the Reconstruction laws and the suffrage of the negro. In the
Forty-second Congress, in an official report on the condition of the
South, Mr. Bayard joined with the minority of the committee in the
distinct avowal that negro suffrage would practically cease when the
Republican party should be defeated. These are the exact words in
which Mr. Bayard concurred: "_But whenever that party (the Republican)
shall go down, as go down it will at some time not long in the future,
that will be the end of the political power of the negro among white
men on this continent_." When Mr. Bayard united with other Democrats
in this declaration the right of the negro to vote had already been
protected by an Amendment to the Constitution. His language was,
therefore, a distinct threat to override the Constitution in order to
strip the negro of the political power which the Constitution had
conferred upon him. This threat was so serious and so lawless that it
should have received more attention than was bestowed upon it when
first put forth. It was not uncommon to hear brazen defiance of
Constitutional obligations from Southern speakers addressing Southern
audiences for mere sensational effect. But his was an announcement
made in the Senate of the United States, not hastily and angrily in the
excitement of debate, but with reflection and deliberation, in an
official report which had been studied for months and subscribed to in
writing by Mr. Bayard.
The common apprehension assigns to Mr. Bayard a high standing at the
bar and positive rank as a man of culture. As a lawyer Mr. Bayard has
doubtless cherished no ambition as he has attained no prominence, while
in point of education he never enjoyed facilities beyond those of the
common school or the private academy. Originally destined for
mercantile life, he did not receive in his early years the benefit of
liberal training; nor did his tastes lead him into any special personal
pursuit of literature or science, or even into a close, careful study
of the history of his own country,--a study which would have exempted
his public career from some of his more notable mistakes.
For obvious reasons Mr. Bayard has acquired exceptional popularity in
the South, and especially with Southern men in Congress. When those
who participated in the Rebellion were freed from their disabilities
and regained their old seats in the Senate and House, they found Mr.
Bayard in position, and they naturally accepted him as a leader. It
was fresh in the memory of these men that Mr. Bayard's friendship for
them had been constant and unremitting; that even in the fatal folly
and wrong of secession in 1861 they had his sympathy, to such an extent
that he advocated in a public speech the policy of permitting them to
separate peacefully from the Union. He spoke earnestly against the use
of the National power to hold these States to their duty as members of
a common government, and expressed the belief that it would be better
to have two republics, than to have one strong enough to command
respect for its laws and to enforce obedience at the cannon's mouth.
The avowal of these opinions north of the National Capital was greater
aid to the Southern conspirators than if Mr. Bayard had openly joined
their councils or expended his valor in the ranks of their army.
It was evidently not deemed prudent by Mr. Bayard to repeat his
disunion views. After Fort Lafayette, at Mr. Seward's command, had
opened its doors to men who publicly expressed disloyal sentiments in
the North, Mr. Bayard gave to the rebellion the benefit of his silence.
The great struggle went on; myriads of patriots stepped to the ranks of
the Union Army; the people were fired with love of country; from every
loyal platform and every loyal pulpit rang out words of faith and hope
for the cause and for its brave defenders. But Mr. Bayard's silence
was unbroken even by the thunders of Gettysburg almost within sound of
his home, or by the closing and complete triumph of the National arms.
He had spoken words of sympathy and encouragement to the enemies of the
Union. He never uttered a word of cheer for its friends.(1)
The organization of Governor Fenton's friends in New York, which had
failed to secure him the nomination for Vice-President at the Chicago
Convention, was strong enough to elect him to the Senate, even against
so worthy a competitor as Governor Morgan, who had the advantage of
being in the seat. It was a strong attestation of Mr. Fenton's
strength in his own State.--William A. Buckingham, whose distinction
as War Governor of Connecticut reached far beyond the limits of his
State, was now promoted to a seat in the Senate.--Daniel D. Pratt,
afterwards Commissioner of Internal Revenue, appeared from Indiana as
the successor of Thomas A. Hendricks.--John Scott, whose father had
been a representative in Congress, succeeded Mr. Buckalew as senator
from Pennsylvania. Mr. Scott had taken little part in politics, and
had been altogether devoted to his profession as a lawyer; but his
service in the Senate was distinguished by intelligence and fidelity.
No man wrought so effectively in exposing the condemnation of public
opinion the evil work of the Ku-Klux organizations in the South. At
the close of his term he returned to the practice of law, and was
honored by the appointment of chief solicitor to one of the largest
corporations in the world--the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.--Thomas
C. McCreery took his seat as senator from Kentucky. Originally a
lawyer, he had for many years devoted his attention to farming. He had
acquired prominence in his party by carefully preparing and accurately
committing to memory a political oration each year, which he delivered
at the Democratic State Convention. He was an upright, good-natured
man, with extreme Democratic views always amiably expressed.--John P.
Stockton, who was deprived of his seat three years before under
circumstances which seemed to impose a hardship upon him, now entered
with undisputed credentials from New Jersey.
The senators first admitted from the reconstructed States were about
equally divided between native Southerners and those who had gone from
the North at the close of the war; but all were Republicans except one
in Virginia and one in Georgia. John F. Lewis and John W. Johnston
were natives of the state, belonging to old and influential families.
The former was a Republican; the latter a Democrat.--In North Carolina,
John Pool was an old Whig, prominent in the politics of his State
before the war. Joseph C. Abbot was from New Hampshire, a
Brigadier-General in the Union Army.--Thomas J. Robertson of South
Carolina was a native of the State, and Frederick A. Sawyer was from
Massachusetts, but had lived in the State since 1859.--Joshua Hill and
Thomas M. Norwood of Georgia were both Southern men by birth. Mr. Hill
was a representative in the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses,
and when the State seceded refused to resign. He joined the
Republican party after the war. Mr. Norwood entered the Senate as a
Democrat.--Thomas W. Osborn and Abijah Gilbert, senators from Florida,
were both from the North, the former a native of New Jersey, the latter
of New York.--The senators from Alabama, Willard Warner and George E.
Spencer, the former born in Ohio, the latter in New York, were both
officers of the Union Army.--Hiram R. Revels and Adalbert Ames were the
senators from Mississippi. The former was born in the South. The
latter was born in Maine, was a graduate of West Point and became highly
distinguished as an officer in the war.--John S. Harris and William
Pitt Kellogg were senators from Louisiana. The former was a native of
New York. The latter was born in Vermont, but had long resided in
Illinois. He served in the Union Army with the rank of Colonel in the
Donelson and Shiloh campaigns under General Grant.--The senators from
Texas, Morgan C. Hamilton and J. W. Flanagan, were both natives of
the State and long domiciled in Texas.--Of the Tennessee senators one
was born in the South and one in the North.
The representation of the Southern States being complete in both Houses
before the close of the first session of the Forty-first Congress, an
impartial estimate could be made of the strength and capacity of the
men who were opprobriously designated in the South either as
Carpet-baggers or Scalawags. It was soon ascertained that the unstinted
abuse heaped upon them as a class was unjust and often malicious. The
large proportion, and notably those who remained in Congress beyond
two years, were men of character and respectability, in many cases
indeed of decided cleverness. But their misfortune was that they had
assumed a responsibility which could be successfully discharged only
by men of extraordinary endowments. If any considerable number of them
had been gifted in a high degree as orators, they would have had great
advantages among a people who rate mere eloquence above its true value.
If any of them had been men of large fortune (invested in Southern
property), and able to make lavish expenditure, they could have
produced a deep impression upon a people more given to admiration of
mere wealth than the people of the North. But of the entire list of
Republican senators and representatives from the reconstructed States,
there was not one who was regarded as exceptionally eloquent or
exceptionally rich; and hence they were compelled to enter the contest
without personal prestige, without adventitious aid of any kind. They
were doomed to a hopeless struggle against the influence, the
traditions, the hatred of a large majority of the white men of the South.
The Fifteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution, now pending and
about to be adopted, would confirm the colored man's elective franchise
and add the right of holding office. One of the senators just admitted
from Mississippi in advance of the ratification of the amendment
(Hiram R. Revels) was a colored man of respectable character and
intelligence. He sat in the seat which Jefferson Davis had wrathfully
deserted to take up arms against the Republic and become the ruler of a
hostile government. Poetic justice, historic revenge, personal
retribution were all complete when Mr. Revels' name was called on the
roll of the Senate. But his presence, while demonstrating the extent
to which the assertion of equal rights had been carried, served to
increase and stimulate the Southern resistance to the whole system of
Republican reconstruction. Those who anxiously and intelligently
studied the political situation in the South could see how unequal
the contest would be and how soon the men who organized the rebellion
would again wield the political power of their States--wield it
lawfully if they could, but unlawfully if they must; peaceably if that
would suffice, but violently if violence in their judgment became
necessary.
President Grant had scarcely taken a step in the duty of administration
before he realized that as soon as the current session of Congress
should terminate his hands would be completely tied, respecting the
removal and appointment of Federal officers, by the Tenure-of-office
Act. With his prompt and determined mode of procedure he caused it
to be known to Republican senators and representatives that so long as
the statute was in force he would simply stand still in the matter of
appointments and permit the incumbents to remain in position, except
where flagrant misconduct should call for suspension under the law.
This position was startling to all those who were desirous of securing
the appointment of political favorites, who in a party sense had
earned their reward and were waiting to receive it. There was a
general desire to remove the men whom President Johnson had forced
into office before the restraining Act was passed. But General Grant
was resolved that neither he nor the members of his Cabinet would go
through the disagreeable and undignified process of filing reasons for
suspending an officer, when in fact no reason existed aside from
obnoxious political opinion. The Republican members of both branches
quickly perceived that tying the hands of a hostile President like
Andrew Johnson afforded more satisfaction than the same process applied
to a friendly President like General Grant.
It was therefore determined by the Republicans to escape from their
embarrassment, even at the expense of an inconsistency which could but
prove humiliating to them. On the 9th of March, just five days after
Andrew Johnson had left the Presidency, General Butler introduced in
the morning hour of the House, a bill of two lines, absolutely
repealing the Tenure-of-office Act, for a constructive violation of
which he had ten months before urged the impeachment of President
Johnson and his expulsion from office. The standing committees had
not yet been announced; and therefore without reference or a moment's
debate or consideration of the measure, General Butler demanded the
_previous question_, which was sustained, and under a call of the
_ayes_ and _noes_, the bill was passed by 138 to 16. The small
minority was composed of Republicans. The Democrats, who had solidly
voted against the Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now
with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid
ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most
loudly for Johnson's decapitation.
When the bill reached the Senate, there was a disposition on the part
of some leading members of that body to pass it as promptly as it
had been passed by the House. Mr. Morton urged that it be put on its
passage without referring it; but the Senate was not prepared for such
haste, and on motion of Mr. Trumbull, the Bill was sent to the
Judiciary Committee. That Committee reported it without delay to the
Senate, with an amendment in the form of a substitute. The House bill
was a simple repeal in the fewest possible words. The Judiciary
Committee now proposed that instead of an absolute repeal, the
Tenure-of-office Act "be, and the same is, hereby suspended until the
next session of Congress."
This was a lame and impotent conclusion, and did not commend the
support or even the respect of the Senate. Mr. Thurman, a member of
the committee that reported it, made haste to announce that he had
not approved it. He treated the proposition for suspension as a
practical confession that the Tenure-of-office Act "is to be enforced
when it will have no practical effect, and is not to be enforced when
it would have practical effect." The chief defenders of the
proposition to suspend the Act were Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr.
Schurz. Mr. Edmunds, pressed by Mr. Grimes to furnish a good reason
for suspending the Act, replied that "owing to the peculiar
circumstances that have attended the last administration, it is
desirable that there should be an immediate and general removal of the
office-holders of the country as a rule; and as an agency of that
removal, subject to our approval when we meet again in confirmation
of their successors, these bad men being put out, we are willing to
trust this Executive with that discretion."
Coming from a senator of the United States, this declaration was
regarded as extraordinary. The "bad men" to whom Mr. Edmunds
referred were the appointees of President Johnson, and every one of
them had been confirmed by the Senate of the United States when the
Republicans had more than two-thirds of the body. If these appointees
were "bad men," why, it was pertinently and forcibly asked by the
aggrieved, did not Mr. Edmunds submit proof of that fact to his
Republican associates and procure their rejection? He knew, the
accused men declared, as much about their character when their names
were before the Senate, as he knew now when he sought, behind the
protection of his privilege, to brand them with infamy. To permit
them to be confirmed in the silence and confidence of an executive
session, and then in open Senate, when their places were wanted for
others, to describe them as "bad men," seemed to them a procedure
not to be explained on the broad principles of statesmanship, or
even on the common law of fair dealing.
Mr. Schurz was as anxious as Mr. Edmunds to give the President full
power to remove the office-holders. He declared that he "would be
the last man to hamper the President in the good work of cleaning out
the Augean stable, which he is now about to undertake." He was sure
that "the rings must be broken up," that "the thieves must be driven
out of the public service." He eulogized President Grant as especially
fit for the work. "We have," said he, "a President who is willing to
do what we and the country desire him to do." Mr. Schurz expressed
at the same time his "heartfelt concern" regarding a rumor that the
President was very sensitive touching the proposition reported by the
Judiciary Committee, and that "he will make no removals unless the
civil-tenure bill be repealed instead of being suspended." Mr. Schurz
was sure that "on all the great questions of policy the President and
Congress heartily agree," and he condemned "the attempts made to sow
the seeds of distrust and discord." It is somewhat amusing as well as
instructive to recall that in a little more than two years from that
time, when nearly all the appointees of President Johnson had been
turned out of office, Mr. Schurz began work again at "the Augean
stable," now locating it in the Grant administration, and demanding
that it should be cleansed, that "the rings" should be broken up, that
"the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He imputed
to President Grant's administration even greater corruption than he had
charged upon the administration of his predecessor, and from his
ever-teeming storehouse lavished abuse with even a more generous hand
upon the one that he had upon the other.
The amendment of the Judiciary Committee providing for a suspension of
the law until Congress should meet again--a period of about eight
months--was so objectionable that it won no substantial support from
senators. There was something so baldly and shamelessly partisan in
the proposition to suspend the Act just long enough to permit President
Grant, without obstruction or encumbrance, to remove the Democrats
whom President Johnson had appointed to office, that the common
instinct of justice, and even of public decency, revolted. The Tenure-
of-office Act was either right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient,
Constitutional or unconstitutional, and it was easy to see that men
could honestly differ as to its character in these respects. But it
was impossible to comprehend how a candid legislator could maintain
the Constitutionality and expediency of the Act, and then propose to
suspend it for that specific period of General Grant's administration,
when, if needed at all, it would be most needed. Within eight months
next ensuing the President would probably make more removals and
appointments than for the remainder of his term, and it was just for
this period that Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz urged that
the law be made inoperative,--inoperative in order that removals of
Democratic office-holders for good cause, and for no cause except that
they were Democrats, might in every way be expedited.
It was soon perceived that if the question before the Senate should be
reduced to a choice between suspension of the Act or to total repeal,
there was a danger that the majority would vote for repeal. To avert
that result, Mr. Edmunds asked to withdraw the proposition, and it was
accordingly recommitted to the Judiciary Committee on the 23d of March.
On the next day Mr. Trumbull reported a substitute for the existing
law, and the Senate, after brief discussion, agreed to it by _ayes_ 37,
_noes_ 15. The amendment seemed to be ingeniously framed to destroy
the original Act and yet appear to maintain it in another form. The
senators apparently wished to gratify General Grant and promote their
own purposes by rendering the removal of President Johnson's appointees
easy, and at the same time avoid the inconsistency involved in the
repeal of a law for whose enactment they had so strenuously contended
only two years before.
The first modification of the original Act, as embodied in the Senate
amendment, was to relieve the President altogether from the necessity
of filing charges against an officer whom he desired to suspend. In
the second place, all provisions of the original law authorizing the
Senate to pass specific judgment on the propriety of the suspension
and declaring that if the Senate did not approve the President's act
the person suspended should "forthwith" resume his office, were now
abandoned. The President was left at liberty to suspend any officer
without assigning a cause, and to nominate his successor. If the
nomination should be rejected, another might be made, and another,
and another, until the Senate should confirm. If the Senate should
stubbornly reject all the nominations and the session of Congress end
without a confirmation, then, in that remote and highly improbably
event, the suspended officer, according to the proposed law, should be
restored to his place. The substance of the original Act was gone,
but the Senate sought shelter from its record of inconsistency under
the small shadow of this distant and hypothetical restoration of the
suspended officer.
But the House would not consent that even the small shadow should
remain. Representatives well knew that it was not agreeable to
President Grant that any authority should be retained by the Senate
whereby an obnoxious officer could in any event be kept in place
against his wishes, and they were in hearty accord with him. The
House had always been jealous of the power of the Senate over
appointments to office, and but for the desire to punish President
Johnson the representatives would never have consented to the
Tenure-of-office Act. They were now determined, if possible, to strip
the Senate of its great aggrandizement of power. The feeling of many
members of the House was to sustain an amendment offered by General
Logan directing that "all civil offices, except those of judges of
the United-States courts, filled by appointment before the 4th of
March, 1869, shall become vacant on the 30th of June, 1869." This
would have been a wholesale removal beyond any scheme attempted since
the organization of the Government; but it was not deemed wise even
to bring it to a test, and the House contented itself with the
rejection of the Senate amendments by a decisive vote.
The subject was then referred to a Conference Committee, consisting
of Messrs. Trumbull, Edmunds, and Grimes of the Senate, and Messrs.
Benjamin F. Butler, C. C. Washburn, and John A. Bingham of the House.
The Bill reported by this committee to both Houses is the present law
on the subject.(2) Mr. Trumbull, in making the report, gave this
assurance to the Senate: "As the Committee of Conference report the
bill, the suspended officer would go back at the end of the session
unless somebody else was confirmed in the place." On the same day in
the House, in answer to a pressing question from Mr. Hoar of
Massachusetts, Mr. Bingham expressed the opinion that "no authority
without the consent of the President can get a suspended officer back
into the same office again." General Butler, another of the House
conferees, said: "I am free to say that I think this amendment upon
the question of removal and re-instatement of officers leaves the
Tenure-of-office Act as though it had never been passed, so far as
the power of the President over the Executive officers is concerned."
It was certainly an extraordinary spectacle, without precedent or
parallel, that the report of the conference should have one meaning
assigned to it in the Senate, and a diametrically opposite meaning
assigned to it in the House, and that these antagonistic meanings
should be made on the same day, and put forth by the conferees whose
names were attached to the report. Such a legislative proceeding
cannot be too strongly characterized.
But the popular understanding among Democrats and Republicans alike
was that the Tenure-of-office Act had been destroyed, and that Mr.
Trumbull's technical construction of the amendment was made merely to
cover the retreat of the Senate. By the new enactment, the provisions
which had led to the dispute between President Johnson and Congress
were practically extirpated; and thus a voluntary confession was
recorded by both Senate and House that they had forced an issue with
one Executive on an assumed question of right, which they would not
attempt with his successor. The members of the present House who in
the preceding Congress had voted to impeach the President, and the
great mass of the senators who voted to convict him, now voted to blot
out the identical clause of the Act under which they held the President
to be deserving of removal for even venturing to act upon his own fair
construction of its meaning. With all the plausible defenses that can
be made for this contradictory course, the fact remains that the
authors of the law precipitately fled from its enforcement the moment
a President with whom they were in sympathy was installed in office.
They thereby admitted the partisan intent that had governed the
enactment, just as they admitted the partisan intent that now led to
the practical repeal. Casting off all political disguises and
personal pretenses, the simple truth remains that the Tenure-of-office
Law was enacted lest President Johnson should remove Republican
office-holders too rapidly; and it was practically repealed lest
President Grant should not remove Democratic office-holders rapidly
enough.
While President Grant did not find himself in the least degree
embarrassed by the Tenure-of-office Act as amended, he did not
surrender his hostility to its existence in any form whatever. In his
first annual message (nine months after the legislation just narrated)
he earnestly recommended its total repeal. "It could not," said the
President, "have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution,
when providing that appointments made by the President should receive
the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to
retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against
the will of the President. _The law is inconsistent with a faithful
and efficient administration of the Government. What faith can an
Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he
has suspended for reason?_ How will such officials be likely to serve
an Administration which they know does not trust them?"
The President was evidently of the opinion that the doubtful and
contradictory construction of the Act as amended left the whole matter
(as described by Mr. Niblack of Indiana when the Committee report was
under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that
certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous
language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment.
The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the
most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the
Senate was indirect and evasive. That body had evidently sought to
gratify the wishes of President Grant, on the one hand, and to preserve
some semblance of its power over appointments, on the other. It was
freely predicted at the time that so long as the Senate and the
President were in political harmony nothing would be heard of the
Tenure-of-office Act, but that when the political interests of the
Executive should come in conflict with those of the Senate there would
be a renewal of the trouble which had characterized the relations of
President Johnson and the Senate, and which led to the original
Tenure-of-office Act with its positive assertion of senatorial power
over the whole question of appointment and removal.
William Pitt Fessenden took part in the first session of Congress under
the Presidency of General Grant. It was his last public service. On
the eighth day of the following September (1869) he died at his
residence in Portland, Maine, in the sixty-third year of his age.
He was one of the many victims of that strange malady which, breaking
out with virulence at the National Hotel in Washington on the eve of
Mr. Buchanan's inauguration (1856-57), destroyed many lives. Its
deadly poison undermined the constitutions of some who apparently
recovered health. Of these Mr. Fessenden was one. He regained the
vigor that carried him through those critical years of senatorial work
on which his fame chiefly rests; yet he always felt that he had been
irreparably injured by the insidious attack. The irritability and
impatience which he occasionally displayed in public and in private
came undoubtedly from suffering which he bore with heroic endurance
through the years when his public burdens were heaviest.
--His death was announced by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who
delivered an appreciate eulogy upon his character and public service.
Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate.
"All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the
financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr.
Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate--powers which he commanded
so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed as the Olympic wheel
caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there
were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot
be remembered now." This reference was well understood. Mr. Fessenden
and Mr. Sumner were never cordial. Members of the same party,
supporters of the same general measures, with perfect appreciation and
with profound respect each for the other, it seemed as impossible to
unite them cordially, as in earlier days it was to unite Adams and
Hamilton in the ranks of the Federalists.
--Mr. Fessenden had maintained a brilliant reputation for a long
period. When Mr. Webster, at the height of his senatorial fame, made
his celebrated tour through the Middle and Western States in 1837, he
selected Mr. Fessenden, a young man of thirty, as his traveling
companion,--selected him for his brilliancy, when he had choice of the
brilliancy of all New England. Mr. Garrett Davis, a senator from
Kentucky, in his eulogy of Mr. Fessenden, referred to Mr. Webster's
visit to that State, and described the warm greeting which Mr.
Fessenden received, the deep impression made upon him by Mr. Clay's
hospitality at Ashland, and the impression which the young man made
upon Mr. Clay, with whom he thenceforward became a marked favorite.
Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden met not long after as members of the House
in the Twenty-seventh Congress (under Harrison and Tyler). "Mr.
Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of
eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank,
honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he
was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of
passion and of fire."
--His eulogies in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin,
long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed
him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented
him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two
members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon
described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul
in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own
city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters
eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described
him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric
forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by
time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by
men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own.
--"A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living
breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead frame of
William Pitt Fessenden."
[(1) A few extracts from Mr. Bayard's speech of July 9, 1863, at Dover,
Del., will exhibit his spirit of disloyalty to the Union of the States.
Mr. Bayard said,--
"And is such a war necessary for the peace and happiness of the United
States? For half a century we have lived at peace with Great Britain,
with her Canadian possession upon our Northern border. Upon the South,
Mexico holds her government with no threats of trouble to us or our
citizens. _Why, then, may not two American confederacies exist side
by side without conflict, each emulating the other in the progress of
civilization?_ The coterminous kingdoms of Europe offer many examples
of similar peace and prosperity. _With such a sickening alternative as
civil war, why should not the experiment at least be made? It is this
question we are to pass upon to-day_." . . .
"If peace will restore and secure these blessings to the people of the
United States, even though a number of their former associates have
gone off under a new and independent organization, _in the name of
Heaven let us raise our voice for it!_ Shall this earnest cry for
peace be stifled at the bidding of a host of fanatical and cowardly
editors, aided by an army of greedy contractors and public leeches,
stimulating an ignorant mob to denounce and attack us as traitors and
secessionists?" . . .
"You and I are citizens of Delaware. _To her laws and government we
owe allegiance. Through our state we owe allegiance to the Federal
Government_, of which she is a member. But as State officials can
command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal
officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his
constitutional and legal control. _A palpable infraction of our
written charter of government_ by our rulers, justifies disobedience
upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are entitled to
loyal compliance."
{But who, as Mr. Webster had asked Mr. Hayne thirty years before, was
to judge of "the palpable infraction of our written charter of
government?" Was it the Judicial department of that government? Or
was it Mr. Bayard and his disloyal associates in Delaware to whom he
was addressing words of hostility to the National Administration and
of infidelity to the Union of the States? It is significant that Mr.
Bayard acknowledged allegiance to the National Government _only as he
owed it through the State_. This was the rank heresy upon which the
leaders of the Southern rebellion sought their justification.}]
[(2) The full text of the Amendment to the Tenure-of-office Act will be
found in Appendix B.]