ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS FREE-STATE FIGHTERS IN KANSAS TERRITORY. HIS
DEFECTION TO THE SIDE OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON WAS BITTERLY CRITICISED BY
HIS CONSTITUENTS, AND WAS THOUGHT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS SUICIDE IN
1866]
_New Congress Overwhelmingly Anti-Johnson_
He returned to Washington an utterly discomfited and disgraced man,
having gone out to win popular support, and having earned only popular
disgust. The humorists, pictorial as well as literary, pounced upon the
"swinging around the circle" as a fruitful subject for caricature or
satire, turning serious wrath into a bitter laugh. Andrew Johnson became
the victim not only of detestation but of ridicule.
The campaign was then--about the middle of September--virtually decided.
There was no longer any doubt that the election would not only preserve,
but materially increase, the anti-Johnson majority in Congress. But
before President Johnson started on his ill-starred journey,
arrangements had been made for the other national conventions. One of
them was designed to bring Southern loyalists, that is, Southern men who
had stood loyally by the National Government, together with Northern
Republicans. It met at Philadelphia on the 3rd of September. Senator
Zachariah Chandler and myself attended it as delegates sent there by the
Republicans of Michigan. It was a large gathering, the roll of which
bore many distinguished names from all parts of the country. Southern
members having been permitted to say but very little in the Johnson
convention a fortnight before, it was a clever stroke of policy on the
part of our managers to give the floor to the Southern loyalists
altogether. They availed themselves of the opportunity to lay before the
people of the country an account of their experiences and sufferings,
since the promulgation of the Johnson policy, which could not fail to
stir the popular heart. Their recitals of the atrocities committed in
the South were indeed horrible. Over a thousand Union citizens had been
murdered there since the surrender of Lee and in no case had the
assassins been brought to judgment. But after Mr. Johnson's "swing
around the circle" no further exertions could have saved his cause, and
no further exertion could have very much augmented the majority against
him. I am convinced he would have been beaten without his disgraceful
escapade. But his self-exhibitions made his defeat overwhelming. The
Republicans won in one hundred and forty-three Congressional districts,
the Democrats in only forty-nine. President Johnson was more at the
mercy of Congress than ever.
During the canvass I was somewhat in demand as a speaker and addressed
large meetings at various places. One of my speeches, delivered at
Philadelphia on the 8th of September, was printed in pamphlet form and
widely circulated as a campaign document. I have read it
again--thirty-nine years after its delivery--and I may say that after
the additional light and the experience which this lapse of time has
given us, I would now draw the diagnosis of the situation then existing
substantially as I did in that speech--barring some, not
many--extravagances of oratorical coloring, and the treatment of the
disqualification clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
_The Movement Toward Negro Suffrage_
It was in this campaign that the matter of negro suffrage was first
discussed on the hustings with a certain frankness. Efforts have since
been made, and are now being made, to make the Southern people
believe--and, I deeply regret to say, many of them actually do
believe--that the introduction of negro suffrage was a device of some
particularly malignant and vindictive radicals, to subject the South to
the extreme of distress and humiliation. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Admitting that there were people in the North who, before the
passions of the War had subsided, wished to see the rebels and their
sympathizers and abettors in some way punished for what they had done,
negro suffrage never was thought of as a punitive measure. I may say
that in all my intercourse with various classes of people--and my
opportunities were large--I have never heard it mentioned or suggested,
still less advocated, as a punitive measure. It never was in itself
popular with the masses--reason enough for the ordinary politicians to
be afraid of openly favoring it. There were only two classes of men who
at all thought of introducing it generally; those whom, without meaning
any disparagement, I would for the sake of convenience call the
doctrinaires,--men who, like Mr. Sumner, would insist as a general
principle that the negro, being a man, was as a matter of right as much
entitled to the suffrage as the white man; and those who, after a
faithful and somewhat perplexed wrestle with the complicated problem of
reconstruction, finally landed--or, it might almost be said, were
stranded--at the conclusion that to enable the negro to protect his own
rights as a free man by the exercise of the ballot was after all the
simplest way out of the tangle, and at the same time the most in
accordance with our democratic principles of government.
[Illustration: SENATOR ZACHARIAH CHANDLER
WHO WAS SENT, TOGETHER WITH CARL SCHURZ, TO THE PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION
OF 1866, BY THE REPUBLICANS OF MICHIGAN]
This view of the matter grew rapidly in popular appreciation as the
results of reconstruction on the Johnson plan became more and more
unsatisfactory. It gained very much in strength when it appeared that
the tremendous rebuke administered to the President's policy by the
Congressional elections of 1866 had not produced any effect upon Mr.
Johnson's mind, but that, as his annual message delivered on December
3rd showed, he was doggedly bent upon following his course. It was still
more strengthened when all the Southern legislatures set up under the
President's plan, save that of Tennessee, rejected the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution,--some unanimously, or nearly so,--and
even with demonstrations of contemptuous defiance. Then the question was
asked at the North with great pertinency: Are we to understand that the
white people of the States lately in rebellion will not agree that all
persons born or naturalized in the United States shall be
constitutionally recognized as citizens entitled in their civil rights
to the equal protection of the laws? That those States insist, not only
that the colored people shall not have the right of suffrage, but that
those people so excluded from the franchise shall even serve to increase
the basis of representation in favor of the whites--or in other words,
that the white people of the South shall come out of the rebellion
politically stronger than they were when they went into it? That all
those who engaged in the rebellion and fought to destroy the Union shall
be entitled to participate on even more favorable terms than ourselves
in the government of the same Union which but yesterday they sought to
destroy? That they refuse to safeguard the public debt incurred for
saving the Union and wish to keep open the possibility of an assumption
of the debts incurred by the rebel States for destroying the Union?
The fact was not overlooked that the great mass of the Southern negroes
were grossly ignorant and in other respects ill-fitted for the exercise
of political privileges. Many who then favored negro suffrage would have
greatly preferred its gradual introduction, first limiting it, as Mr.
Lincoln suggested to Governor Hahn of Louisiana, to those who had served
as soldiers in the Union army and those who were best fitted for it by
intelligence and education. But this would have reduced the negro vote
to so small a figure as to render it insufficient to counteract or
neutralize the power of the reactionary element. To that end the whole
vote was required; and for that reason it was demanded, in spite of the
imperfections it was known to possess and of the troubles it
threatened--which, however, at that period were much underestimated, as
is apt to be the case under similar circumstances.
_Reconstruction Under Military Control_
When the session of Congress opened on the 3rd of December, it was
virtually certain that unrestricted negro suffrage would come and that
President Johnson's reconstruction policy would be swept out of the way.
The Republican majority without delay passed a bill extending the
suffrage to the negroes in the District of Columbia, which then had a
municipal government of its own. The President put his veto on the bill,
but the veto was promptly overruled by two-thirds majorities in both
Houses. Then followed a series of legislative measures designed
substantially to substitute for the reconstruction work done by the
President a method of reconstruction based upon universal suffrage
including the negro vote, and to strip the President as much as possible
of all power to interfere. The first, upon the ground that life and
property were not safe under the existing provisional governments,
divided the late rebel States into five military divisions, each to be
under the command of a general officer who was to have the power to
declare martial law and to have offenders tried by military commission,
as the condition of public safety and order might seem to them to
require. Under their protection conventions were to be elected by
universal suffrage including the negro vote and excluding the
disqualified "rebel" vote, to frame new State constitutions containing
provision for the same sort of universal suffrage, such constitutions to
be subject to the approval of the people of the respective States and of
Congress. The State officers to be elected under these new constitutions
were, of course, to be elected by the same electorate, and the States
were to be regarded as entitled to representation in Congress, after
having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the National Constitution,
and after that Amendment had been ratified by a sufficient number of the
States generally to make it a valid part of the Constitution. A
supplementary reconstruction act gave the military commanders very
extensive control over the elections to be held, as to the registration
of voters, the mode of holding the elections, the appointment of
election officers, the canvassing of results, and the reporting of such
results to the President and through him to Congress. In order to strip
President Johnson of all power to interfere with the execution of this
measure beyond the appointment of the commanders of the various military
divisions, a provision was introduced in the Army Appropriation bill
which substantially ordained that all military orders and instructions
should be issued through the General of the Army (General Grant), who
was to have his headquarters at Washington; and that all orders and
instructions issued otherwise should be null and void. And when the
generals commanding the several divisions had expressed some doubt as
to the interpretation of some provisions of the Reconstruction Act, and
the President had issued instructions concerning those points which
displeased Congress, another act was passed, which, by way of
explanation of the meaning of its predecessors, still further enlarged
the powers of the military commanders and made them virtually rulers
over everything and everybody in those States. In the mean time, to tie
the President's hands still farther, the Tenure of Office Act had been
passed, which was to curtail or hamper President Johnson's power to
dismiss office-holders from their places so as to reduce as much as
possible his facilities for punishing the opponents and for rewarding
the friends of his policy, and thus, as it would now be called, for
building up an office-holders' machine for his use.
_The Public Fear of Johnson_
President Johnson in every case promptly vetoed the bills objectionable
to him or fulminated his protests against what he considered
unwarrantable encroachments upon his constitutional prerogatives. Some
of his messages, reported to have been written either by Mr. Seward or
by Mr. Jeremiah Black, a man of brilliant abilities, were strong in
argument as well as eloquent in expression. But they were not listened
to--much less considered. Mr. Johnson had personally discredited himself
to such a degree that the connection of his personality with anything he
advocated fatally discredited his cause. The air, not only in
Washington, but throughout the country, was buzzing with rumors of
iniquities which Andrew Johnson was meditating and would surely attempt
if he were not disarmed. He was surely plotting a _coup d'état_; he had
already slyly tried to get General Grant out of the way by sending him
on a trumped-up diplomatic errand to Mexico. When, therefore, the news
came from Washington that Andrew Johnson was to be impeached, to deprive
him of his office, it was not only welcomed by reckless partizanship,
but as everybody who has lived through those times will remember, it
struck a popular chord. There was a widespread feeling among
well-meaning and sober people that the country was really in some sort
of peril, and that it would be a good thing to get rid of that dangerous
man in the presidential chair.
But for this vague feeling of uneasiness approaching genuine alarm, I
doubt whether Congress would ever have ventured upon the tragi-comedy of
the impeachment.
It explains also the fact that so many lawyers in Congress, as well as
in the country, although they must have seen the legal weakness of the
case against Andrew Johnson, still labored so hard to find some point
upon which he might be convicted. It was for political, not for legal
reasons that they did so--not reasons of political partizanship, but the
higher political reason that they thought the public interest made the
removal of Andrew Johnson from his place of power eminently desirable. I
have to confess that I leaned somewhat to that opinion myself--not that
I believed in the sinister revolutionary designs of Mr. Johnson, but
because I thought that the presence of Mr. Johnson in the presidential
office encouraged among the white people of the South hopes and
endeavors which, the longer they were indulged in, the more grievous the
harm they would do to both races. It can indeed not be said that
President Johnson failed to execute the reconstruction laws enacted by
Congress by refusing to perform the duties imposed upon him, such as the
appointment of the commanders of military divisions. He even effectively
opposed, through his able and accomplished Attorney-General, Mr.
Stanbery, the attempts of two Southern governors to stop the enforcement
of the Reconstruction Act by the legal process of injunction. But the
mere fact that he was believed to favor the reactionary element in the
South and would do all in his power to let it have its way was in itself
an influence constantly inflaming the passions kindled by mischievous
hopes.
_The Fatal Bungling of Reconstruction_
The condition of things in the South had become deplorable in the
extreme. Had the reconstruction measures enacted by Congress, harsh as
they were, been imposed upon the Southern people immediately after the
War, when the people were stunned by their overwhelming defeat, and when
there was still some apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited upon
the leaders of the rebellion--as was the case, for instance, in Hungary
in 1849 after the collapse of the great insurrection--those measures
would have been accepted as an escape from something worse. Even negro
suffrage in a qualified form, as General Lee's testimony before the
Reconstruction Committee showed, might then have been accepted as a
peace-offering.
But the propitious moment was lost. Instead of gently persuading the
Southerners, as Lincoln would have done, that the full restoration of
the States lately in rebellion would necessarily depend upon the
readiness and good faith with which they accommodated themselves to the
legitimate results of the War, and that there were certain things which
the victorious Union government was bound to insist upon, not in a
spirit of vindictiveness, but as a simple matter of honor and
duty--instead of this President Johnson told them that their instant
restoration to their old status in the Union, that is, to complete
self-government and to participation in the National Government, on
equal terms with the other States, had become their indefeasible
constitutional right as soon as the insurgents laid down their arms and
went through the form of taking an oath of allegiance, and that those
who refused to recognize the immediate validity of that right were no
better than traitors and public enemies. Nothing could have been more
natural, under such circumstances, than that the master class in the
South should have seen a chance to establish something like
semi-slavery, and that, pressed by their economic perplexities, they
should have eagerly grasped at that chance. No wonder that what should
have been as gentle as possible a transition from one social state into
another degenerated into an angry political brawl, which grew more and
more furious as it went on. No wonder, finally, that when at last the
Congressional reconstruction policy, which at first might have been
quietly submitted to as something that might have been worse, and that
could not be averted, came at last in the midst of that brawl, it was
resented in the South as an act of diabolical malice and tyrannical
oppression not to be endured. And the worst outcome of all was, that
many white people of the South who had at first cherished a kindly
feeling for the negroes on account of their "fidelity" during the War,
now fell to hating the negroes as the cause of all their woes; that, on
the other hand, the negroes, after all their troubles, raised to a
position of power, now were tempted to a reckless use of that power; and
that a selfish partizan spirit growing up among the Republican majority,
instead of endeavoring to curb that tendency, encouraged, or, at least,
tolerated it for party advantage.
I have to confess that I took a more hopeful view of the matter at the
time, for I did not foresee the mischievous part which selfish partizan
spirit would play in that precarious situation. I trusted that the
statesmen of the Republican party would prove clear-sighted enough to
perceive in time the danger of excesses which their reconstruction
policy would bring to the South, and that they would be strong enough in
influence to combat that danger. Nothing could have been farther from my
mind than the expectation that before long it would be my lot to take an
active part in that combat on the most conspicuous political stage in
the country.