History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

CHAPTER XVI.

REPRESENTATION OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

Concurrent Resolution — A "Venomous Fight" — Passage in
the House — The Resolution in the Senate — "A Political
Wrangle" Deprecated — Importance of the Question — "A
Straw in a Storm" — Policy of the President — Conversation
between two Senators — Mr. Nye's Advice to Rebels — "A
Dangerous Power" — "Was Mr. Wade once a Secessionist?" —
Garrett Davis' Programme for the President — "Useless yet
Mischievous" — The Great Question Settled.

It was understood when the Committee of Fifteen introduced the joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment relating to the basis of representation, that this was only one of a series of measures which they thought essential to the work of reconstruction, and which they designed to propose at a proper time.

In pursuance of this plan, on the 20th of February, the day after the veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, and while the amendment of the basis of reconstruction was pending in the Senate, Mr. Stevens brought before the House, from the Committee of Fifteen, a "Concurrent Resolution concerning the Insurrectionary States," as follows:

"Be it resolved by the House of Representatives, (the Senate concurring,) That in order to close agitation upon a question which seems likely to disturb the action of the Government, as well as to quiet the uncertainty which is agitating the minds of the people of the eleven States which have been declared to be in insurrection, no Senator or Representative shall be admitted into either branch of Congress from any of said States until Congress shall have declared such State entitled to such representation."

After the reading of this resolution, Mr. Grider, of Kentucky, a member of the Committee of Fifteen, offered the following minority report:

"The minority of the Committee on Reconstruction, on the part of the House, beg leave to report that said committee have directed an inquiry to be made as to the condition and loyalty of the State of Tennessee. There has been a large amount of evidence taken, some part of it conducing to show that at some localities occasionally there have been some irregularities and temporary disaffection; yet the main direction and weight of the testimony are ample and conclusive to show that the great body of the people in said State are not only loyal and willing, but anxious, to have and maintain amicable, sincere, and patriotic relations with the General Government. Such being the state of the facts, and inasmuch as under the census of 1860 Congress passed a law which was approved in 1863, fixing the ratio and apportioning to Tennessee and all the other States representation; and inasmuch as Tennessee, disavowing insurrectionary purposes or disloyalty, has, under the laws and organic law of said State, regularly elected her members and Senators to the Congress of the United States, in conformity to the laws and Constitution of the United States, and said members are here asking admission; and inasmuch as the House by the Constitution is the 'judge of the election, returns, and qualification of its members,' considering these facts and principles, we offer the following resolution, to-wit:

"Resolved, That the State of Tennessee is entitled to representation in the Thirty-ninth Congress, and the Representatives elected from and by said State are hereby admitted to take their seats therein upon being qualified by oath according to law."

Mr. Stevens then said: "Having heard an ingenious speech upon that side of the question, and not intending to make any speech upon this side, as I hope our friends all understand a question which has agitated not this body only, but other portions of the community, I propose to ask for the question. I think I may say without impropriety, that until yesterday there was an earnest investigation into the condition of Tennessee, to see whether by act of Congress we could admit that State to a condition of representation here, and admit its members to seats here; but since yesterday there has arisen a state of things which the committee deem puts it out of their power to proceed further without surrendering a great principle; without the loss of all their dignity; without surrendering the rights of this body to the usurpation of another power. I call the previous question."

Strenuous efforts were made by the Democratic minority to defeat the proposed joint resolution by means of "dilatory motions." Repeated motions were made to adjourn, to excuse certain members from voting, and to call the House, on all of which the yeas and nays were called. This "parliamentary tactics" consumed many hours. The minority seemed resolved to make the passage of the resolution a question of physical endurance. In reply to a proposition of Mr. Eldridge, of the minority, that they would allow business to proceed if debate should be allowed, Mr. Stevens said: "It is simply the return of the rebels of 1861. I sat thirty-eight hours under this kind of a fight once, and I have no objections to a little of it now. I am ready to sit for forty hours."

Late in the evening, a member of the minority proposed that the House should take a recess for an hour, that the door-keeper might have the hall fitted up as a dormitory. From indications, he thought such accommodations would be necessary. At length, Mr. Eldridge said: "We know our weakness and the strength and power of the numbers of the majority. We have not had the assistance which we expected from the other side of the House in our effort to obtain the privilege of debating the resolution. We know perfectly well that it has become a question of physical endurance. We know perfectly well that we can not stand out against the overpowering majority of this House any great length of time. We know if the majority will it, the resolution will pass without debate. We have done all we could. We therefore yield to that power, and throw the responsibility of this most extraordinary, this most revolutionary measure, upon the majority of the House."

To this Mr. Stevens answered: "The gentlemen accept their situation just as Jeff. Davis did his—because they can not help it. [Laughter.] I confess, sir, for so small a number, they have made a most venomous fight."

The vote was then taken upon the concurrent resolution, which passed the House—yeas, 109; nays, 40.

The hopes which had arisen in the minds of the minority that a considerable number of Republicans would permanently separate themselves from the party that elected them, and adhere to the policy and fortunes of the President, were disappointed. The imprudence of the President himself, in making his unfortunate speech of the 22d of February, tended to unite the Republicans in Congress against his policy, and render fruitless the efforts of his new Democratic friends in his favor.

On the 23d of February, Mr. Fessenden proposed that the pending constitutional amendment should give way, to enable the Senate to consider the concurrent resolution passed by the House concerning the representation of the Southern States.

Mr. Sherman thought it would be better and wiser to allow this matter to lie over for a few days. He thought it best not to press this "declaration of political opinion" while the public mind and Senators themselves were more or less affected by surrounding circumstances. "I think," said he, "that we ought not to postpone all the important business now pending in Congress for the purpose of getting into a political wrangle with the President."

Mr. Fessenden replied: "The Senator from Ohio says we are getting up a political wrangle with the President of the United States. When the President of the United States tells Congress that it is transcending its proper limits of authority, that it has nothing to do in the way of judgment upon the great question of reconstructing the rebel States, and Congress assumes to express its own sense upon that question, I think it is hardly a proper term to apply to such a state of things. I am not aware that there has been any effort anywhere to get up a political wrangle or engage in a political wrangle with the President. Certainly I have not. No man has ever heard me speak of him except in terms of respect, in my place here and elsewhere.

"I am not sensible myself of any excitement that would prevent my speaking upon this question precisely in the style which I deem it deserves. I am not carried away by passion. I have reflected, and I am ready to express my opinion upon the great question at issue; and the Senator will allow me to say that, in my judgment, the sooner the judgment of Congress is expressed, the better.

"He talks about important business to be done by this Congress. Sir, is there any thing more important than to settle the question whether the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States have or have not something to say in relation to the condition of the late Confederate States, and whether it is proper to admit Senators and Representatives from them? If the President is right in his assumption—for the assumption is a very clear one—that we have nothing to say, we ought to admit these men at once, if they come here with proper credentials, and not keep them waiting outside the door."

Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that transpired yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not to have had some influence upon him, and I think it as well to allow the influence of those events to pass away. I do not wish now myself, nor do I wish any Senator here, to reply to what was said yesterday by the President of the United States. I would prefer that the Senate of the United States, the only legislative body which can deliberate fully and freely without any limitation on the right of debate, should deliberate, reflect, and act calmly after the excitement of the events of the last two or three days has passed off."

Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked: "If there be passion and excitement in the country at this present time, I do not hold myself as an individual responsible for any share of it; and I am here to say that if I know myself—and if I do not know myself nobody about me knows me—I am as competent to consider this particular question to-day as I was the day before yesterday or last week, and, so far as my judgment informs me, quite as competent to consider it as I expect to be next week or the week after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate of the nation, or by the lowest and the last magistrate of the nation."

The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider the concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, which had already passed the House of Representatives.

Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of considerable length. He presented extracts from the President's speech of the day before, in which he had arrayed himself against the right of Congress to decide whether a rebel State is in condition to be represented.

Mr. Fessenden considered the pending resolution as "transcending in importance the question of the amendment of the Constitution, which had been under discussion for several days." He deemed the resolution necessary now, "in order that Congress may assert distinctly its own rights and its own powers; in order that there may be no mistake anywhere, in the mind of the Executive or in the minds of the people of this country; that Congress, under the circumstances of this case, with this attempted limitation of its powers with regard to its own organization, is prepared to say to the Executive and to the country, respectfully but firmly, over this subject they have, and they mean to exercise, the most full and plenary jurisdiction. We will judge for ourselves, not only upon credentials and the character of men and the position of men, but upon the position of the States which sent those men here. In other words, to use the language of the President again, when the question is to be decided, whether they obey the Constitution, whether they have a fitting constitution of their own, whether they are loyal, whether they are prepared to obey the laws as a preliminary, as the President says it is, to their admission, we will say whether those preliminary requirements have been complied with, and not he, and nobody but ourselves."

Mr. Fessenden made an extended argument on the subject of reconstruction, affirming that while the people of the rebel States had not passed from under the jurisdiction of the United States Government, yet having no existence as States with rights in the Union and rights to representation in Congress. "My judgment is," said he, "that we hold the power over the whole subject in our hands, that it is our duty to hold it in our hands, and to regard it as a matter of the most intense interest to the whole people, involving the good of the whole people, calling for our most careful consideration, and to be adjudged without passion, without temper, without any of that feeling which may be supposed to have arisen out of the unexampled state of things through which we have passed."

On the 26th of February, Mr. Sherman addressed the Senate on the pending concurrent resolution. He approved the principle but doubted the expediency of now reäffirming it. "I regard it," said he, "as a mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inopportune moment; the mere assertion of a naked right which has never yet been disputed, and never can be successfully; a mere assertion of a right that we have over and over again asserted. My idea is that the true way to assert this power is to exercise it, and that it was only necessary for Congress to exercise that power in order to meet all these complicated difficulties."

Mr. Sherman regarded the President's speech as humiliating and unworthy of his high office. A part of the speech he characterized as "the product of resentment, hatched by anger and passion, and hurled, without reflection, at those he believed wished to badger and insult him."

Mr. Sherman favored the prompt restoration of Tennessee. "I think our first duty," said he, "is at once to prepare a mode and manner by which she may be admitted into the Union upon such terms and conditions as will make her way back the way of pleasantness and peace."

Of the general question of reconstruction he said: "If I had any power in arranging a plan, I would mark the line as broad and deep between the loyal people who stood at our side and the rebels who fought against us as between heaven and hell."

"How can you do it?" asked Mr. Howard.

"Whenever loyal men," replied Mr. Sherman, "present a State organization, complying with such terms and conditions and tests of loyalty as you may prescribe, and will send here loyal Representatives, I would admit them; and whenever rebels send or come here, I would reject them."

"I fear the storm," said Mr. Sherman, near the conclusion of his speech. "I fear struggles and contentions in these eleven States, unless there is some mode by which the local power of those States may be put in loyal hands, and by which their voices may be heard here in council and in command, in deliberation and debate, as of old. They will come back here shorn of their undue political power, humbled in their pride, with a consciousness that one man bred under free institutions is as good, at least, as a man bred under slave institutions. I want to see the loyal people in the South, if they are few, trusted; if they are many, give them power. Prescribe your conditions, but let them come back into the Union upon such terms as you may prescribe. Open the door for them. I hope we may see harmony restored in this great Union of ours; that all these States and all these Territories may be here in council for the common good, and that at as speedy a moment as is consistent with the public safety."

Mr. Dixon addressed the Senate in opposition to the concurrent resolution, and in favor of the policy of the President. "It is my belief," said he, "that what is known as the policy of the President for the restoration of the late seceded States in this Government is the correct policy. I believe it is the only safe policy." Having been requested to state that policy, Mr. Dixon said: "It contemplates a careful, cautious, discriminating admission of a loyal representation from loyal States and districts in the appropriate House of Congress, by the separate action of each, every case to be considered by itself and decided on its own merits. It recognizes the right of every loyal State and district to be represented by loyal men in Congress. It draws the true line of distinction between traitors and true men. It furnishes to the States lately in rebellion the strongest possible inducement to loyalty and fidelity to the Government. It 'makes treason odious,' by showing that while the traitor and the rebel are excluded from Congress, the loyal and the faithful are cordially received. It recognizes and rewards loyalty wherever it is found, and distinguishes, as it ought, between a Horace Maynard and a Jefferson Davis."

Of the purpose expressed in this resolution to "close agitation," Mr. Dixon said: "The vast business interests of this country are eagerly intent on this question. The people of this country are mutually attracted, the North and the South, and they must sooner or later act together. Whatever Congress may do, this question will not cease to be agitated. Adjourn, if you see fit, without settling this question; leave it as it is; admit no member from Tennessee; and when you go through the States next fall which hold their elections for Congress, see whether agitation has ceased. Sir, a word of caution may not be unfit on that subject."

Mr. Dixon maintained that the Senate would surrender its independence by resolving that Senators should not be admitted from rebel States until Congress should have declared them entitled to such representation. "Upon the question of credentials," said he, "this whole question is before the Senate; and it is for us to consider on that question whether the member presenting himself here for admission is a traitor or whether he is true to his country."

"Suppose," said Mr. Trumbull, "that in a time of peace the Legislature of Tennessee is disloyal, and swears allegiance to the Emperor Maximilian, does the Senator deny the authority of Congress to inquire into the character of that Legislature?"

"I do," replied Mr. Dixon. "It is for the Senate, and not for Congress, to make the inquiry if a Senator from Tennessee in the supposed case presents himself."

Mr. Trumbull said: "He denies the authority of Congress to decide whether the constituency is traitorous or loyal!"

"That is another point," said Mr. Dixon.

"That is the very one I put," said Mr. Trumbull. "If all the members of the Legislature of Tennessee swear allegiance to the Emperor Maximilian, and send a Senator here, I want to know if Congress has a right to inquire into the character of that Legislature?"

"I will answer that by asking another question," said Mr. Dixon. "Suppose that was the case, that the Emperor Maximilian had entire control of the State of Tennessee, and a person claiming a right so to do should come here and offer himself as a member of the Senate, and should be received here; that, in judging of the qualifications, returns, and elections of the member, the Senate decided that he was a Senator, has Congress any thing to do with the question? I ask him if the House of Representatives can interfere? Is there an appeal to Congress or any other tribunal? I ask him if that man is not a Senator in spite of the world?"

"If," replied Mr. Trumbull, "the Senator means to ask me if the Senate has not the physical power to admit any body, elected or not, I admit they have the same right to do it that twelve jurymen would have, against the sworn and uncontradicted testimony of a hundred witnesses, to bring in a verdict directly against the evidence and perjure themselves. I suppose we have the physical power to commit perjury here, when we have sworn to support the Constitution. We might admit a man here from Pennsylvania Avenue, elected by nobody, as a member of this Senate; but we would commit perjury in doing it, and have no right to do it."

Mr. Trumbull made an extended reply, which assumed somewhat the form of a conversation, in which Mr. Dixon and other Senators participated. Mr. Trumbull claimed that it required the concurrent action of both houses of Congress to recognize any government in States where rebellion had overthrown it.

On the 28th of February, the concurrent resolution still pending, Mr. Nye, of Nevada, advocated its passage. He opposed the present admission of any member from the seceding States. "We are told," said he, "by the apologists of these men who are being elected on their merits as rebels, to the exclusion of Union men, that 'we must not expect too much of them.' I fully accede to this idea. A class that during its whole political life has aimed at a monopoly of wealth, a monopoly of labor, and a monopoly of political power; that engaged in the attempt at revolution in order to establish more fully and to perpetuate such monopoly; that, failing in this, has become more bitter by disappointment, should have time; and, sir, I am decidedly in favor of giving them all the time necessary for the most substantial improvement. I would say to these men, 'Go home! Go back and labor as industriously to disabuse the minds of your constituencies as you labored to mislead and impose upon them. Tell them that the Union Government always was and never can be any thing else than a just Government. Tell them that the Constitution has become the acknowledged sovereign, and that it presides in both houses of Congress. Inform them, while you are about it, that the rebel sympathizers and apologists in the North can do them no good; that they are acting as much out of time and propriety now as they did in the time of the war, when their encouragement only prolonged the conflict and added to Southern disaster. You may say to your constituencies that the majority in Congress is very tenacious on the subject of the Union war debt; that it is determined to keep faith with the national creditors; that it is bent on adopting and throwing around it all the safeguards and precautions possible; and that your admission just now, and your alliance with Northern sympathizers, would not be propitious in raising the value of our public securities. While you are conferring with your constituents, you may as well repeat to them the common political axiom that Representatives are elected to represent their constituents, and that it is not believed at the seat of Government that a disloyal constituency would make such a mistake as to send loyal Representatives to Congress. In short, you may as well say to your people that, as Congress represents the loyalty of the nation, South as well as North, and has much important work on hand, some of it requiring a two-thirds majority, it is not deemed wholly prudent to part with that majority out of mere comity to men from whom no assistance could be expected. Finally, by way of closing the suggestive instructions, you may give your constituents to understand that, as you went out of Congress rebel end foremost, you will not probably get into those vacant seats over yonder except that you come back Union end foremost."

Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, held opinions of the pending question different from those maintained by his colleague. He thought "the power to suspend the right of a State to representation might imply a dangerous power, and might imply a right to suspend it for any reason that Congress might see fit. The power to suspend the right of a State to be represented might hereafter be a terrible precedent." "There is no provision in the Constitution," said Mr. Stewart, "conferring such a power upon Congress. No authority of the kind is expressed in that instrument, nor can I find any place where it is implied." In another portion of his speech, which was very long, and occupied part of the session of the succeeding day, Mr. Stewart remarked: "In the darkest time of the rebellion, I deny that the right to represent Tennessee in this hall by those who were loyal ever was for a moment suspended, but their power to obey the law, their power to represent it was prevented by treason. They were overpowered, and they were denied the right of representation, not by Congress, not by the Government. This war was to maintain for them that right which rebellion had sought to take away from them, and had for a time suspended the harmonious relations of the State to the General Government; and it will be too much to admit that this Government has ever been in such a fix that the people thereof were really not entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and because they were denied it this war was brought on, this war was prosecuted."

Mr. Johnson opposed the resolution in a protracted speech in which he reviewed the entire subject of reconstruction. Of the condition and rights of the Southern States he said: "They are as much States as they were when the insurrection was inaugurated, and their relation to their sister States, and their consequent relation to the Government of the United States, is the same relation in which they stood to both when the insurrection was inaugurated. That would seem to follow logically as a necessary result, and if that is a necessary result, does it not also follow that they are entitled to representation in this chamber? Whether they can present persons who can take their seats, because they have individually committed crimes against the United States is another question; but I speak now of the right itself."

Mr. Johnson argued that holding secession sentiments a few years ago was no evidence of present disloyalty, and cited in proof of this proposition a newspaper article purporting to give secession resolutions drawn up by Mr. Wade, and passed at a meeting held at Cleveland in 1859, which was presided over by Joshua E. Giddings.

This called forth an answer from Mr. Wade, who said: "The Senator from Maryland called me in question for having been present at a meeting which he affirmed was held in Cleveland some seven years ago by persons called 'Sons of Liberty,' and he alleged that I there consented to certain resolutions that were passed which favored the doctrine of secession, and that I was chairman of the committee which reported them. Sir, the charge is a total forgery so far as I am concerned. I never was at any such meeting of the Sons of Liberty or any other sons. I never uttered such a sentiment in my life; I am not one of those who have or have had much association with gentlemen holding to secession principles. My associations have all been the other way. During the war that secession made my counsels were against it. I was for war to the death against the principle of secession, while many other gentlemen in my eye were either participants in or apologists for that sentiment. I am perfectly aware that a war is made—and I am willing to meet it anywhere—upon what are called Radicals of the country, and I am one of them. In olden times I was here in the Senate called an Abolitionist, but they have changed the name since. They have all got to be Abolitionists now, and they have changed my name to 'Radical.'

"Mr. President, in the history of mankind, so far as I have read or know it, there never has been a time when parties were so organized on radical principles of justice and right. The party with whom I act appeal to no expediency, to none of your political policies; we dig down to the granite of eternal truth, and there we stand, and they who assail us have to assail the great principles of the Almighty, for our principles are chained to his throne, and are as indestructible as the Almighty himself. I want no warfare with any body; but if you will make war upon such principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for you. You can not prevail.

"I have been in these political warfares for a long time; I claim to be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when there were not five men with me to support me, and then I rose here and told those who were inveighing like demons against the principles that they called abolitionism, that I was an Abolitionist. To-day you are all Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by compulsion. I have wondered a great deal why men did not learn more about these things than they seem to do. Our principles are assailed now with just the same virulence that they used to be when we were in a small minority. I do not hold that they have triumphed thus far because of any superior capacity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that we, from the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of the people and conquered the predominant party of this country which had stood completely dominating the whole nation for more than forty years? Why is it that we have conquered you, and now are triumphant here in this Senate and almost by two-thirds in both branches, with the whole nation at our backs? What miracle has wrought this change? None other than the great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and right are destined among the American people to succeed, and the gates of hell can not prevail against them, although they are trying at this particular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.]

On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan first claimed the attention of the Senate in a speech two hours in length. He argued "that for any guilty part taken by the people in the late war, that the sufferings and losses they endured in that war were the natural and sufficient punishment; that after it they remain purged, and ought to be reädmitted to all their constitutional rights at once. That it is due to the dignity of the United States as a great nation, if she punishes the actual traitors who incited the rebellion, that it be done solemnly and according to the strictest form of law, in open courts, where the prisoners may have counsel and witnesses, so that they may make their defense, if they have any. That according to the Constitution and laws all the States are still in the Union; that secession ordinances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the other; that they are neither dead by forfeiture or felo de se, but are now in full and perfect existence, with all their municipal machinery in full play. That the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen to amend the Constitution is fundamental and revolutionary, and destructive of the freedom of the States and the liberties of the people; that it is a threat to deprive them of their rights by compelling them either to admit negroes to the right of suffrage or to give up a share of their representation, which is theirs by law and the last amendment to the Constitution. That the resolution now before us from the same committee is also revolutionary and destructive, being an attempt to suspend the Constitution and laws in regard to representation in Congress over eleven States of the Union until Congress shall see fit to restore them. It is a declaration on the part of the members of the present House and Senate, that having the means of keeping these States from being represented here, they are going to do so as long as they please; that no one of these measures can be justified as a punishment for the rebellion; that the Constitution forbids them as bills of pains and penalties, and as ex post facto in their character."

Mr. Garret Davis, in the course of a speech in opposition to the resolution, suggested a summary solution of the present difficulties: "There is," said he, "a provision in the Constitution which requires the President to communicate to the two houses of Congress information as to the state of the Union, and to recommend to them such measures "as he shall deem proper and expedient. What does this necessarily impose upon him? He has to ascertain what men compose the two houses of Congress. It is his right, it is his constitutional function, to ascertain who constitute the two houses of Congress. The members of the Senate who are in favor of the admission of the Southern Senators could get into a conclave with those Southern Senators any day, and they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The President of the United States has the constitutional option—it is his function, it his power, it is his right—and I would advise him to exercise it, to ascertain, where there are two different bodies of men both claiming to be the Senate, which is the true Senate. If the Southern members and those who are for admitting them to their seats constitute a majority of the whole Senate, the President has a right—and, by the Eternal! he ought to exercise that right forthwith, to-morrow, or any day—to recognize the Opposition in this body and the Southern members, the majority of the whole body, as the true Senate. And then what would become of you gentlemen? Oh, if the lion of the Hermitage, and that great statesman, the sage of Ashland, were here in the seat of power, how soon would they settle this question! They would say to, and they would inspire those to whom they spoke, 'You Southern men are kept out of your seats by violence, by revolution, against the Constitution, against right; the Union is dissolved, the Government is brought to an end by keeping the Senators from eleven States out of their seats when the Constitution expressly states that every State shall have two Senators.'

"There is no plainer principle of constitutional law than that the President has the right to ascertain and decide what body of men is the Senate and what the House of Representatives when there are two bodies of men claiming to be each. It is his right to do so, and the people of America will sustain him in the noble and manly and patriotic performance of his duty in determining the identity of the true House. It ought to have been done at the beginning of this session. When a petty clerk took upon himself to read the list of the Representatives of the people of the United States, and to keep the Representatives of eleven States out of their seats, the Constitution guaranteeing to them those seats for the benefit of their constituents and country, that subordinate never ought to have been tolerated for one day in the perpetration of so great an outrage. Whenever Andrew Johnson chooses to exercise his high function, his constitutional right of saying to the Southern Senators, 'Get together with the Democrats and the Conservatives of the Senate, and if you constitute a majority, I will recognize you as the Senate of the United States,' what then will become of you gentlemen? You will quietly come in and form a part of that Senate."

Mr. Doolittle opposed the passage of the resolution. Referring to the plan proposed by Mr. Davis, he said: "If such a thing should happen—which God in his mercy, I hope, will always prevent—that the Senate should be divided, and one portion should go into one room, and another into another, each claiming to be the Senate, I suppose the House of Representatives could direct its clerk to go to one body and not go to the other, and I do not know but the President of the United States would have the power, in case of such a division, to send his private secretary with messages to one body and not send them to the other. Perhaps that might occur; but it is one of those cases that are not to be supposed or to be tolerated."

Mr. Wilson advocated the resolution: "The nation," said he, "is divided into two classes; that the one class imperiously demands the immediate and unconditional admission into these halls of legislation of the rebellious States, rebel end foremost; that the other class seeks their admission into Congress, at an early day, loyal end foremost. He would hear, too, the blended voices of unrepentant rebels and rebel sympathizers and apologists mingling in full chorus, not for the restoration of a broken Union, for the unity and indivisibility of the republic has been assured on bloody fields of victory, but for the restoration to these vacant chairs of the 'natural leaders' of the South."

Referring to Mr. Davis' programme for the President's interference with the Senate, Mr. Wilson said: "Sir, there was a time when a Senator who should have said what we have recently heard on this floor would have sunk into his seat under the withering rebuke of his associates. No Senator or Representative has a right to tell us what the Executive will do. The President acts upon his own responsibility. We are Senators, this is the Senate of the United States, and it becomes us to maintain the rights and the dignity of the Senate of the United States. The people demand that their Senators and Representatives shall enact the needed measures to restore, at the earliest possible day, the complete practical relations of the seceded States to the National Government, and protect the rights and liberties of all the people, without regard to color, race, or descent."

Mr. Fessenden, having the resolution in charge, made a second speech, in which he answered objections which had been urged, and defended the Committee of Fifteen against imputations of a disposition to delay the work of reconstruction.

Mr. McDougal took occasion to say a few words against the resolution. He said: "I would not dare to vote for this proposition, because I have some regard for the great Judge who lives above. The question pending now, as practically useless as it will be as rule, is yet mischievous. It is in the way of teaching bad precedents, false law, unsound loyalty. These things are like the worms that eat into the majestic oaks which are used to build vessels to ride the sea, and decay their strength, so that they fall down and make wrecks of navies."

Mr. Hendricks had moved to amend the resolution by inserting the words "inhabitants of" after the word "States." This amendment was rejected. The Senate then proceeded to take the vote on the concurrent resolution, which was passed—yeas, 29; nays, 18.

Thus the opinion of Congress was established, by a large majority, that the two houses should act conjointly upon the whole question of the representation of States, and that this question was entirely independent, of the Executive.