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 The President gave me private instructions to execute the laws until Congress modified or repealed them.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]
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 zoölogical 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."