CONFLICT BETWEEN CIVIL AND MILITARY AUTHORITY.
The execution of the Fugitive Slave Law in the District of Columbia
became a question much discussed in Congress, and was a frightful
scandal to the Radical members. The law remained in force; and no
attempt was made by Congress to repeal it, or to provide for the
protection of the Executive officers whose duty it was to enforce it.
The subject gave Mr. Lincoln great concern, but he could see no way out
of the difficulty except to have the law executed. The District had
become the asylum of the runaway slaves from the Border States,
particularly from the rebel State of Virginia and the quasi-loyal State
of Maryland. So far as the State of Virginia was concerned, she was
still, according to the theory of the Administration, one of the United
States; and all Congressional laws on the statute book were enforced in
regard to her as well as to States not in rebellion, which made the
question one of great embarrassment. The Confiscation Act, which gave
liberty to all slaves that had been employed by the rebels for
insurrectionary purposes, had gone into effect in the month of August,
1861. The military governor of the District assumed that by virtue of
this law all slaves that came into the District from whatever section
had been thus employed, and consequently were free, and it became his
duty to give them military protection as free persons.
This state of things caused a fearful responsibility to rest upon the
shoulders of the civil executive authorities. The President gave me
private instructions to execute the laws until Congress modified or
repealed them. "In doing this," Mr. Lincoln said, "you will receive much
adverse criticism and a good deal of downright abuse from members of
Congress. This is certain to come, but it will be not so much intended
for you as for me; as our friend Senator Hale, the other day, said in
the Senate, 'We must not strike too high nor too low, but we must strike
between wind and water: the marshal is the man to hit.' And I say, we
shall have to stand it whatever they send."
Martial law had not been declared; there was not even a temporary
suspension of the civil authority, even in exceptional cases, in the
District of Columbia. It was conceded by all, that in time of danger the
temporary rule of military authority was virtually necessary to the
preservation of the federal capital; but at this time there was no
pretence of danger. The civil courts of the District being in full power
for the adjudication of all cases arising within their jurisdiction,
nothing but a pressing military necessity could give countenance or
pretext for the suspension of the civil law. It was, therefore, only a
question of time--and the time soon came--for a conflict to arise
between civil and military authority.
The conflict grew out of an order of the military governor to take a
female fugitive slave from the custody of the marshal and deliver her
into the hands of the military. The deputies to whom the order was shown
declined to obey the command, giving as a reason for their refusal that
she was held under due process of law, and that they had no authority to
give her up without the order of the court. Military officers, with a
strong guard, then arrested the deputy marshals, seized the jail,
released the slave, and left a military guard in charge of the captured
jail.[L]
[L] WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 22, 1862.
_Captain Sherwood, or Officer in Command at Central Guard House_:
SIR,--You will send a sentinel at once to the city jail, with
orders to relieve the man now on duty there at the jail door, and
give him orders to allow _no person whatsoever_ to enter or leave
the jail, without permission from General Wadsworth. This guard
will be maintained until further orders.
By Command of Brigadier-General Wadsworth,
JOHN A. KRESS,
_A. D. C._
I was temporarily absent at the time of the seizure. When I returned I
arrested the military guard, recaptured the jail, liberated the
prisoners placed therein by the military, and held the military guard as
prisoners. I was supported by the police and other civil authorities,
and by the citizens of Washington; the military governor was supported
by forces under his command, intended for the defence of the city. The
matter was eventually laid before the President. He called to his aid
his Attorney-General, who gave a prompt but decisive opinion that in the
present state of things in the District of Columbia the civil authority
outranked the military; and he gave the further opinion that the
military governor's conduct had been misguided and unauthorized, however
philanthropic might have been his purposes and intentions.
This decision on the subject of supremacy of authority by no means
reconciled or put at rest the perturbed, aggressive spirit in Congress
which opposed the President's policy. The enthusiastic adherents of this
opposition made the District jail an objective point in the furtherance
of their ends. They made personal visits to that institution, and
examined all the inmates whose color was not of orthodox Albino-Anglo
American tint. They would learn the story of their wrongs and injuries,
then straightway proceed to the halls of Congress and make known their
discoveries. Detectives were employed by them to make daily reports of
the "cruelty" shown to colored inmates of the jail, which reports were
soon dressed up in pathetic and classic language for the occasion.
Professional and amateur demagogues made sensational speeches (sometimes
written for them by department clerks and professional speech-writers),
and "Rome was made to howl" in the halls of the American Congress.
"Lincoln and his beastly negro catchers" were denounced in unmeasured
terms.
The jail was now by the necessities of its surroundings made the
receptacle for prisoners of all kinds,--civil, military, and State.
Orders from the War Department were issued to the custodian of the jail
to allow no person whatever to communicate with the military or State
prisoners without an order from the War Department. The chairman of the
District Committee in the Senate, and certain others of that Committee,
claimed the right, by virtue of their position, to go into the jail and
to examine all the prisoners, in the face of the orders of the Secretary
of War; and this was repeated almost daily.
The situation became unbearable, and I sent in my resignation. This,
however, was not accepted. The professional opinion of the
Attorney-General was again invoked by the President, and he gave his
views as to the duties of the custodian of the heterogeneous mass of
prisoners in the jail,--which resulted in the request of the President
to the Attorney-General to prepare such an order as was proper for the
marshal to sign, giving notice of what would be required for admission of
visitors to the jail. The paper was prepared in the Attorney-General's
office, signed and sent forth; and before the close of the day on which
it was signed, resolutions were passed in Congress declaring the marshal
guilty of contempt of that body for having presumed to issue what it deemed
a contemptuous restriction of its rights, and a committee was appointed to
wait upon the President to demand the instant dismissal of that insolent
officer. The President showed the committee my resignation already in his
hands, and informed them that he would neither accept the resignation nor
dismiss me from office, and gave his reasons for this action.
After this the opposition became more and more acrimonious and offensive
toward Mr. Lincoln and his Administration. The leaders of the opposition
now resorted to every means in their power to oppose him for his want of
respect, and for his _disobedience to the behests_ of the co-ordinate
branch of the government,--forgetting that, Congress having made the
offensive laws, it was the President's duty to execute them.
Soon the marshal's office was made the subject of legislation in
Congress, to shear it of its power and reduce its emoluments. The
custody of the jail and prisoners was soon given to a warden; and,
shortly after, an Act was passed relieving the marshal from the duties
of attending the Supreme Court of the United States, and providing a
special marshal for that Court,--thus leaving the office still one of
great responsibility, but without remuneration commensurate with its
duties.
Before the appointment of the warden, the District court had sentenced
three men to be hanged for murder, on a day subsequent to the change of
custody. On the day set for the execution, I refused to act as the
hangman. Congress again passed a resolution denouncing my conduct, and
instituted an investigation into the facts. The facts were that the
order of the court was that the marshal should hang the condemned men,
but Congress had unconsciously relieved him from that painful duty! The
warden had no order for their execution, and could not perform the
service with any more propriety than the marshal. The result of this
blundering legislation, superinduced by hasty, factious zeal to injure
an object of their dislike, was that Congress had nullified the solemn
acts of the United States District Court, and restored to life and
liberty and immunity from punishment three miscreants whose lives had
been forfeited and who should have been hanged! This legislative
jail-delivery was a source of great annoyance and of some amusement to
Mr. Lincoln. In speaking of certain members of Congress and the part
they had taken in this and other petty acts, he said: "I have great
sympathy for these men, because of their temper and their weakness; but
I am thankful that the good Lord has given to the vicious ox short
horns, for if their physical courage were equal to their vicious
dispositions, some of us in this neck of the woods would get hurt."
The opposition was continued to the last, and Mr. Lincoln adhered to his
policy to the end. But he was so outraged by the obloquy thrown upon his
worthiest official acts, so stung by the disparagement with which his
purest and most patriotic motives were impugned,--his existence, in a
word, was rendered so unhappy by the personal as well as political
attacks of those for whose sympathy and support he might naturally have
urged the most logical and valid plea,--that life became almost a burden
to him.
As illustrative of the amenities of language with which, at this epoch
of his life, the Chief Magistrate of our Republic was habitually
characterized, it will suffice to adduce such an expression as
this,--"That hideous baboon at the other end of the Avenue, whom Barnum
should exhibit as a zoological curiosity." Mr. Lincoln's existence was
so cruelly embittered by these and other expressions quite as virulent,
that I have often heard him declare, "I would rather be dead than, as
President, thus abused in the house of my friends."
In the summer of 1861, shortly after the inglorious repulse of the Union
army at Bull Run, Rev. Robert Collyer, the eminent divine, was on a
visit to the federal capital. Participating in the prevailing sentiment
in regard to the incapacity or inefficiency of the general government in
the conduct of military affairs, he chanced to pass through the White
House grounds on his way to the War Department. Casting a cursory glance
at the Executive Mansion as he passed, his attention was suddenly
arrested by the apparition of three pairs of feet, resting on the ledge
of an open window, in one of the apartments of the second story, and
plainly visible from below. The reverend gentleman paused, calmly
surveyed the grotesque spectacle, and mentally addressed to himself the
inquiry whether the feet, and boots belonging to them, were the property
of officers of the Executive government,--at the same time thinking that
if not, they would have proved sturdy pedestals to the bearers of
muskets upon the recent battle-field. Resuming his walk, he accosted a
rustic employee whom he found at work about the grounds, and pointing
to the window, with its incongruous adjuncts, he requested of the man
what that meant. "Why, you old fool," replied the rustic, "that's the
Cabinet that is a settin'; and them thar big feet's old Abe's."
Some time after, in referring to this experience of his visit to the
national capital in a lecture at Boston, the reverend gentleman
commented on the imbecility of the government, and satirically added:
"That's about all they are good for in Washington,--to project their
feet out of windows and jabber away; but they go nowhere, and accomplish
nothing." But he subsequently, on more than one occasion, rendered full
justice to the President's able and zealous discharge of his high trust,
saying: "I abused poor Lincoln, like the fool that the rustic called me,
while his heart was even then breaking with the anxieties and
responsibilities of his position."