RECONSTRUCTION AND SUFFRAGE--THE LAND QUESTION.
Visit of Indianans to the President--Gov. Morton and reconstruction
--Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War--Discussion of
negro suffrage and incidents--Personal matters--Suffrage in the
District of Columbia--The Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment--
Breach between the President and Congress--Blaine and Conkling--
Land bounties and the Homestead Law.
On the twenty-first of April I joined a large crowd of Indianans
in one of the calls on the President referred to at the close of
the last chapter. Gov. Morton headed the movement, which I now
found had a decidedly political significance. He read a lengthy
and labored address on "The Whole Duty of Man" respecting the
question of Reconstruction. He told the President that a State
could "neither secede nor by any possible means be taken out of
the Union"; and he supported and illustrated this proposition by
some very remarkable statements. He elaborated the proposition
that the loyal people of a State have the right to govern it; but
he did not explain what would become of the State if the people
were all disloyal, or the loyal so few as to be utterly helpless.
The lawful governments of the South were overthrown by treason;
and the Governor declared there was "no power in the Federal
Government to punish the people of a State collectively, by reducing
it to a territorial condition, since the crime of treason is
individual, and can only be treated individually." According to
this doctrine a rebellious State become independent. If the people
could rightfully be overpowered by the national authority, that
very fact would at once re-clothe them in all their rights, just
as if they had never rebelled. In framing their new governments
Congress would have no right to prescribe any conditions, or to
govern them in any way pending the work of State reconstruction,
since this would be to recognize the States as Territories, and
violate the principle of State rights. The Governor's theory of
reconstruction, in fact, made our war for the Union flagrantly
unconstitutional. The crime of treason being "individual," and
only to "be treated individually," we had no right to hold prisoners
of war, seize property, and capture and confiscate vessels, without
a regular indictment and trial; and this being so, every Rebel in
arms was in the full legal possession of his political rights, and
no power could prevent him from exercising them except through
judicial conviction of treason in the district in which the overt
act was committed. Singularly enough, he seemed entirely unaware
of the well-settled principle which made our war for the Union a
territorial conflict, like that of a war with Mexico or England;
that the Rebels, while still liable to be hung or otherwise dealt
with for treason, had taken upon themselves the further character
of public enemies; and that being now conquered they were conquered
enemies, having simply the rights of a conquered people. The
Governor further informed the President that if the revolted
districts should be dealt with as mere Territories, or conquered
provinces, the nation would be obliged to pay the debts contracted
by them prior to the war. These remarkable utterances, which he
repudiated in less than a year afterward, were emphatically endorsed
by the President, who entered upon the same theme at a dismal
length, freely indulging in his habit of bad English and incoherence
of thought. I was disgusted, and sorry that the confidence of so
many of my radical friends had been entirely misplaced.
During the latter part of April and early part of May the Committee
on the Conduct of the War completed its final report, making eight
considerable volumes, and containing valuable material for any
trustworthy history of the great conflict. Its opinions were
sometimes colored by the passions of the hour, and this was especially
true in the case of General McClellan; but subsequent events have
justified its conclusions generally as to nearly every officer and
occurrence investigated, while its usefulness in exposing military
blunders and incompetence, and in finally inaugurating the vigorous
war policy which saved the country, will scarcely be questioned by
any man sufficiently well-informed and fair-minded to give an
opinion.
On the 12th of May, a caucus of Republicans was held at the National
Hotel to consider the necessity of taking decisive measures for
saving the new Administration from the conservative control which
then threatened it. Senators Wade and Sumner both insisted that
the President was in no danger, and declared, furthermore, that he
was in favor of negro suffrage; and no action was taken because of
the general confidence in him which I was surprised to find still
prevailed. In the meantime, pending the general drift of events,
the suffrage question was constantly gaining in significance, and
demanding a settlement. It was neither morally nor logically
possible to escape it; and on my return to my constituents I prepared
for a thorough canvass of my district. The Republicans were
everywhere divided on the question, while the current of opinion
was strongly against the introduction of the issue as premature.
The politicians all opposed it on the plea that it would divide
the Republicans and restore the Democrats to power, and that we
must wait for the growth of a public opinion that would justify
its agitation. Governor Morton opposed the policy with inexpressible
bitterness, declaring, with an oath, that "negro suffrage must be
put down," while every possible effort was made to array the soldiers
against it. His hostility to the suffrage wing of his party seemed
to be quite as relentless as to the Rebels, while the great body
of the Republicans of the district deferred strongly to his views.
In the beginning of the canvass I even found a considerable portion
of my old anti-slavery friends unprepared to follow me; but feeling
perfectly sure I was right, and that I could revolutionize the
general opinion, I entered upon the work, and prosecuted it with
all my might for nearly four months. My task was an arduous one,
but I found the people steadily yielding up their prejudices, and
ready to lay hold of the truth when fairly and dispassionately
presented, while the soldiers were among the first to accept my
teachings. The tide was at length so evidently turning in my favor
that on the 28th of September Governor Morton was induced to make
his elaborate speech at Richmond, denouncing the whole theory of
Republican reconstruction as subsequently carried out, and opposing
the policy of negro suffrage by arguments which he seemed to regard
as overwhelming. He made a dismal picture of the ignorance and
degradation of the plantation negroes of the South, and scouted
the policy of arming them with political power. But their fitness
for the ballot was a subordinate question. A great national
emergency pleaded for their right to it on other and far more
imperative grounds. The question involved the welfare of both
races, and the issues of the war. It involved not merely the fate
of the negro, but the safety of society. It was, moreover, a
question of national honor and gratitude, from which no escape was
morally possible. To leave the ballot in the hands of the ex-
rebels, and withhold it from these helpless millions, would be to
turn them over to the unhindered tyranny and misrule of their
enemies, who were then smarting under the humiliation of their
failure, and making the condition of the freedmen more intolerable
than slavery itself, through local laws and police regulations.
The Governor referred to the Constitution and laws of Indiana,
denying the ballot to her intelligent negroes, and subjecting
colored men to prosecution and fine for coming into the State; and
asked with what face her people could insist upon conferring the
suffrage upon the negroes of the Southern States? But this was an
evasion of the question. The people of Indiana had no right to
take advantage of their own wrong, or to sacrifice the welfare of
four million blacks on the altar of Northern consistency. He should
have preached the duty of practical repentance in Indiana, instead
of making the sins of her people an excuse for a far greater
inhumanity to the negroes of the South.
He urged that the policy of negro suffrage would give the lie to
all the arguments that had ever been employed against slavery as
degrading and brutalizing to its victims. He said it was "to pay
the highest compliment to the institution of slavery," and "stultify
ourselves." But this was belittling a great national question, by
the side of which all considerations of party consistency were
utterly trivial and contemptible. The ballot for the negro was a
logical necessity, and it was a matter of the least possible
consequence whether the granting of it would "stultify ourselves"
or not.
He insisted that the true policy was to give the Southern negroes
a probation of fifteen or twenty years to prepare for the ballot.
He would give them "time to acquire a little property; time to get
a little education; time to learn something about the simplest
forms of business, and to prepare themselves for the exercise of
political power." But he did not explain how all this was to be
done, under the circumstances of their condition. He declared that
not one of them in five hundred could read, or was worth five
dollars in property of any kind, owning nothing but their bodies,
and living on the plantations of white men upon whom they were
dependent for employment and subsistence. How could such men
acquire "education," and "property," under the absolute sway of a
people who regarded them with loathing and contempt? Who would
grant them this "probation," and help them turn it to good account?
Was some miracle to be wrought through which the slave-masters were
to be transfigured into negro apostles and devotees? Besides,
under Governor Morton's theory of reconstruction and State rights,
neither Congress nor the people of the loyal States had anything
to do with the question. It was no more their concern in South
Carolina than in Massachusetts. His suggestion of a probation for
Southern negroes was therefore an impertinence. If not, why did
he not recommend a "probation" for the hordes of "white trash" that
were as unfit for political power as the negroes?
He was very earnest and eloquent in his condemnation of Mr. Sumner
for proposing to give the ballot to the negroes and disfranchise
the white Rebels, but his moral vision failed to discern anything
amiss in his own ghastly policy of arming the white Rebels with
the ballot and denying it to the loyal negroes.
He argued that the right to vote carried with it the right to hold
office, and that negro suffrage would lead to the election of negro
Governors, negro judges, negro members of Congress, a negro balance
of power in our politics, and a war of races. He seemed to have
no faith at all in the beneficent measures designed to guard the
black race from outrage and wrong, while full of apprehension that
the heavens would fall if such measures were adopted.
This speech was published in a large pamphlet edition and extensively
scattered throughout the country; but it proved a help rather than
a hindrance to my enterprise. I replied to it in several incisive
newspaper articles, and made its arguments a text for a still more
thorough discussion of the issue on the stump, and at the close of
my canvass the Republicans of the district were as nearly a unit
in my favor as a party can be made respecting any controverted
doctrine.
I now extended my labors briefly outside of my district, and by
special invitation from citizens of Indianapolis and members of
the Legislature, then in session, I spoke in that city on the 17th
of November. Every possible effort was made by the Johnsonized
Republicans to prevent me from having an audience, but they failed
utterly; and I analyzed the positions of Governor Morton in a speech
of two hours, which was reported for the "Cincinnati Gazette" and
subsequently published in a large pamphlet edition. The political
rage and exasperation which now prevailed in the ranks of the Anti-
Suffrage faction can be more readily imagined than described.
Their organ, the "Indianapolis Journal," poured out upon me an
incredible deliverance of vituperation and venom for scattering my
heresies outside of my Congressional district, declaring that I
had "the temper of a hedgehog, the adhesiveness of a barnacle, the
vanity of a peacock, the vindictiveness of a Corsican, the hypocrisy
of Aminadab Sleek and the duplicity of the devil." I rather enjoyed
these paroxysms of malignity, which broke out all over the State
among the Governor's conservative satellites, since my only offense
was fidelity to my political opinions, the soundness of which I
was finding fully justified by events; for the friends of the
Governor, in a few short months, gathered together and cremated
all the copies of his famous speech which could be found. But the
disowned document was printed as a campaign tract by the Democrats
for a dozen successive years afterward, and circulated largely in
several of the Northern States, while the Governor himself, by a
sudden and splendid somersault, became the champion and exemplar
of the very heresies which had so furiously kindled his ire against
me. These performances are sufficiently remarkable to deserve
notice. They did much to make Indiana politics spicy and picturesque,
and showed how earnestly the radical and conservative wings of the
Republican party could wage war against the common enemy without
in the least impairing their ability or disposition to fight each
other.
I have referred to these facts because they form a necessary part
of the story I am telling. The question of Negro Suffrage was a
very grave one, and the circumstances connected with its introduction
as a political issue are worthy of record; while Governor Morton
was a sort of phenomenal figure in American politics during the
war period, and played a very remarkable part in the affairs of
Indiana. It has aptly been said of him, and not by an enemy, that
his inconsistencies, in a study of his character, form the most
charming part of it, and that no man in public life ever brought
such magnificent resources to the support of both sides of a
question. His force of will was as matchless as his ambition for
power was boundless and unappeasable. He was made for revolutionary
times, and his singular energy of character was pre-eminently
destructive; but it can not be denied that his services to the
country in this crisis were great. Mr. Von Holst, in his
"Constitutional and Political History of the United States," has
a chapter on "The Reign of Andrew Jackson." When the history of
Indiana shall be written, it might fitly contain a chapter on "The
Reign of Oliver P. Morton." He made himself not merely the master
of the Democratic party of the State, and of its Rebel element,
but of his own party as well. His will, to a surprising extent,
had the force of law in matters of both civil and military
administration. His vigor in action and great personal magnetism
so rallied the people to his support, that with the rarest exceptions
the prominent leaders of his party quietly succumbed to his ambition,
and recoiled from the thought of confronting him, even where they
believed him in the wrong.
His hostility to me began with my election to Congress in 1849, in
which, as a Free Soiler, I had the united support of the Democratic
party of my district, of which he was then a member. I never
obtained his forgiveness for my success in that contest, and his
unfriendliness was afterward aggravated by his failure as a Republican
leader to supplant me in the district, and it continued to the end.
I knew him from his boyhood. We resided in the same village nearly
twenty years, and began our acquaintance as members of the same
debating club. For years we were intimate and attached friends,
and I believe no man was before me in appreciating his talents and
predicting for him a career of political distinction and usefulness.
During the war, earnest efforts were made by his friends and mine
looking to a reconciliation, and the restoration of that harmony
in the party which good men on both sides greatly coveted; but all
such efforts necessarily failed. If I had been willing to subordinate
my political convictions and sense of duty to his ambition, peace
could at once have been restored; but as this was impossible, I
was obliged to accept the warfare which continued and increased,
and which I always regretted and deplored. I only make these
statements in justice to the truth.
The bill providing for negro suffrage in the District of Columbia
was among the first important measures of the Thirty-ninth Congress.
The debate upon it in January, 1866, was singularly able and
thorough, and gave strong evidence of political progress. All
efforts to postpone the measure, or make the suffrage restrictive,
were voted down, and on the announcement of its passage the cheering
was tremendous. Beginning on the floor, it was quickly caught up
by the galleries, and the scene resembled that which followed the
passage of the Constitutional Amendment already referred to. The
majority was over two to one, thus clearly foreshadowing the
enfranchisement of the negro in the insurrectionary districts. I
believe only two of my colleagues voted with me for its passage.
The question of reconstruction was brought directly before Congress
by the report of the joint select committee on that subject,
submitting the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment. The second
section of the Amendment was a measure of compromise, and attempted
to unite the radical and conservative wings of the party by
restricting the right of representation in the South to the basis
of suffrage, instead of extending that basis in conformity to the
right of representation. It was a proposition to the Rebels that
if they would agree that the negroes should not be counted in the
basis of representation, we would hand them over, unconditionally,
to the tender mercies of their old masters. It sanctioned the
barbarism of the Rebel State Governments in denying the right of
representation to their freedmen, simply because of their race and
color, and thus struck at the very principle of Democracy. It was
a scheme of cold-blooded treachery and ingratitude to a people who
had contributed nearly two hundred thousand soldiers to the armies
of the Union, and among whom no traitor had ever been found; and
it was urged as a means of securing equality of white representation
in the Government when that object could have been perfectly attained
by a constitutional amendment arming the negroes of the South with
the ballot, instead of leaving them in the absolute power of their
enemies. Of course, no man could afford to vote against the
proposition to cut down rebel representation to the basis of
suffrage; but to recognize the authority of these States to make
political outlaws of their colored citizens and incorporate this
principle into the Constitution of the United States, was a wanton
betrayal of justice and humanity. Congress, however, was unprepared
for more thorough work. The conservative party which had so long
sought to spare slavery was obliged, as usual, to feel its way
cautiously, and wait on the logic of events; while the negro, as
I shall show, was finally indebted for his franchise to the desperate
madness of his enemies in rejecting the dishonorable proposition
of his friends.
As the question of reconstruction became more and more engrossing,
the signs of a breach between the President and Congress revealed
themselves. He had disappointed the hopes of his radical friends,
and begun to show his partiality for conservative and Democratic
ideas. His estrangement from his party probably had its genesis
in the unfortunate exhibition of himself at the inauguration of
Mr. Lincoln, and the condemnation of it by leading Republicans,
which he could not forget. Instead of keeping his promise to be
the "Moses" of the colored people he turned his back upon them in
a very offensive public speech. His veto of the Freedmen's Bureau
bill finally stripped him of all disguises, and placed him squarely
against Congress and the people, while the House met his defiance
by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction
policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between
Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech
on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him,
branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected
him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans,
and awakened general alarm. Everybody could now see the mistake
of his nomination at Baltimore, and that he was simply a narrow-
minded dogmatist and a bull-dog in disposition, who would do
anything in his power to thwart the wishes of his former friends.
During the month of March of this year, at the request of intelligent
working men in the employ of the Government, I introduced a bill
making eight hours a day's work in the navy yards of the United
States. This was the beginning of the eight hour agitation in
Congress. I had not given much thought to the necessity for such
legislation in this country, but the proposed measure seemed to me
an augury of good to the working classes, as the Ten Hour movement
had proved itself to be twenty years before. It could plead the
time laws of England as a precedent, enacted to protect humanity
against the "Lords of the Loom." These laws recognized labor as
capital endowed with human needs, and entitled to the special
guardianship of the State, and not as merchandise merely, to be
governed solely by the law of supply and demand. While I was a
believer in Free Trade, I was not willing to follow its logic in
all cases of conflict between capital and labor. My warfare against
chattel slavery and the monopoly of the soil had assumed the duty
of the Government to secure fair play and equal opportunities to
the laboring masses, and I was willing to embody that idea in a
specific legislative proposition, and thus invite its discussion
and the settlement of it upon its merits.
In April of this year a notable passage at arms occurred in the
House between Mr. Conkling and Mr. Blaine, which has been made
historic by the subsequent career of these great Republican chiefs.
The altercation between them was protracted and very personal, and
grew out of the official conduct of Provost Marshal General Fry.
The animosity engendered between these rivals at this early day
seems never to have been intermitted, and it can best be appreciated
by referring to the closing passages of their remarkable war of
words on the 30th of this month. Mr. Conkling's language was very
contemptuous, and in concluding he said:
"If the member from Maine had the least idea of how profoundly
indifferent I am to his opinion upon the subject which he has been
discussing, or upon any other subject personal to me, I think he
would hardly take the trouble to rise here and express his opinion.
And as it is a matter of entire indifference to me what that opinion
may be, I certainly will not detain the House by discussing the question
whether it is well or ill-founded, or by noticing what he says.
I submit the whole matter to the members of the House, making, as
I do, an apology (for I feel that it is due to the House) for the
length of time which I have been occupied in consequence of being
drawn into explanations, originally by an interruption which I
pronounced the other day ungentlemanly and impertinent, and having
nothing whatever to do with the question."
Mr. Blaine, in reply, referred to Mr. Conkling's "grandiloquent
swell" and his "turkey gobbler strut," and concluded:
"I know that within the last five weeks, as members of the House
will recollect, an extra strut has characterized the gentleman's
bearing. It is not his fault. It is the fault of another. That
gifted and satirical writer, Theodore Tilton, of the 'New York
Independent,' spent some weeks recently in this city. His letters
published in that paper, embraced, with many serious statements,
a little jocose satire, a part of which was the statement that the
mantle of the late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member from
New York. The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his
strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great. It is
striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to
marble, dung-hill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a
whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive
the almost profanation of that jocose satire!"
This uncomely sparring match seemed to have no significance at the
time beyond the amusement it afforded and the personal discredit
it attached to the combatants; but in its later consequences it
has not only seriously involved the political fortunes of both
these ambitious men, but rent the Republican party itself into
warring factions. Still more, it has connected itself in the same
way, and not very remotely, with the nomination of General Garfield
in 1880, and his subsequent assassination. Such are the strange
political revenges of a personal quarrel.
During this session of Congress the policy of Military Land Bounties
was very earnestly agitated, and threatened the most alarming
consequences. Probably no great question has been so imperfectly
understood by our public men as the land question, and the truth
of this is attested by the multiplied schemes of pillage and plunder
to which the public domain has been exposed within the past thirty
or forty years. Among these the project of Land Bounties to soldiers
has been conspicuous. Of the millions of acres disposed of by the
Government through assignable land-warrants in the pretended interest
of the soldiers of the Mexican War a very small fraction was
appropriated to their use. The great body of the land fell into
the hands of monopolists, who thus hindered the settlement and
productive wealth of the country, while the sum received by the
soldier for his warrant was in very many cases a mere mockery of
his just claims, and in no instance an adequate bounty. The policy,
however, had become traditional, and now, at the close of the
grandest of all our wars, it was quite natural for the country's
defenders to claim its supposed benefits. Congress was flooded
with their petitions, and it required uncommon political courage
to oppose their wishes. It was very plausibly urged that the
Nation, with its heavy load of debt, could not pay a bounty in
money, and that it should be done by drawing liberally upon the
thousand million acres of the public domain. Some of the advocates
of this policy openly favored the repeal of the Homestead law for
this purpose, just as Thurlow Weed, earlier in the war, had demanded
its repeal so that our public lands could be mortgaged to European
capitalists in security for the money we needed to carry on the
struggle. The situation became critical. Everybody was eager to
reward the soldier, and especially the politicians; and there seemed
to be no other way to do it than by bounties in land, for which
all our previous wars furnished precedents. The House Committee
on Public Lands considered the question with great care and anxiety,
and in the hope of check-mating that project made a report in
response to one of the many petitions for land bounty which had
been referred to it, embodying some very significant facts. It
showed that more than two millions and a quarter of soldiers would
be entitled to a bounty in land, and that it would require more
than one third of the public domain remaining undisposed of, and
cover nearly all of it that was really fit for agriculture; that
the warrants would undoubtedly be made assignable, as in the case
of previous bounties, and that land speculation would thus find
its new birth and have free course in its dreadful ravages; and
that it would prove the practical overthrow of the policy of our
pre-emption and homestead laws and turn back the current of American
civilization and progress. The report further insisted that the
Nation could not honorably plead poverty in bar of the great debt
it owed its defenders, and it was accompanied by a bill providing
a bounty in money at the rate of eight and one third dollars per
month for the time of their service, which was drawn after conferring
with intelligent men among them who fully appreciated the facts
and arguments of the committee. This report and its accompanying
bill had an almost magical effect. They not only perfectly satisfied
the soldiers everywhere, but revolutionized the opinion of both
Houses of Congress, and thus saved the public domain from the
wholesale spoilation that had threatened it. The bill was referred
to the Military Committee, and afterward became well known by its
title of "General Schenck's bill." It passed the House, but failed
in the Senate. It passed the House repeatedly at different session
of Congress afterward, although it never became a law; but it was
the timely and fortunate instrument through which the public domain
was saved from the wreck which menaced it in the hasty adoption of
a scheme which would have proved as worthless to our soldiers as
disastrous to the country.