No further action was taken on the question of their admission, but on March 3, 1865, Chairman Dawes by unanimous consent reported from the Committee of Elections a resolution that there be paid to each of the Louisiana claimants for compensation, expenses and mileage the sum of $2,000 and a like amount to T. M. Jacks, J. M. Johnson and A. A. C. Rogers, claimants from Arkansas.
The House, however, was not nearly so unanimous as its committee. Mr. Washburne remarked that Congress, by allowing at the last session the sum of $1,500 to one gentleman who claimed a seat, had fixed a sort of rule in such cases. That amount he would, probably, not object to paying to the present applicants; but if large payments, such as the compensation proposed by the resolution, were made to men coming to the Capitol it was feared they might not soon stop.
Representative Johnson, of Pennsylvania, believed that regardless of their right to seats they should be compensated because they had been encouraged to come; they appeared at the Capitol, he asserted, with an honest expectation of getting seats, and in an honest effort to restore popular government to their States.
Mr. Dawes declared that they came not as adventurers but under what they supposed was the policy of the General Government; hence the favorable recommendation of the committee. When he demanded the previous question, Representative Brandegee moved to lay the resolution on the table. Thaddeus Stevens asked to strike out the words “claimants for seats.” To this the Massachusetts member offered no objection. “I do not want to recognize the idea,” added Stevens, “that anybody on earth thinks that these men are entitled to seats.”[[399]] This request, however, was denied, and the resolution was then adopted.
It was during their three months’ sojourn in Washington that one of the claimants, A. P. Field, committed an assault upon Representative William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, whom he regarded as the chief obstacle to their admission. This occurrence, which took place on February 20 at the Willard Hotel, was due, no doubt, to the artificial excitement of the Louisiana claimant, but was without influence upon the action of the House.[[400]]
The General Assembly of Louisiana, as previously related, had chosen Charles Smith and R. King Cutler as United States Senators. With the Representatives-elect these gentlemen also appeared in Washington as claimants for seats. On December 7, two days after Congress assembled, the president pro tempore presented certain proceedings of the Louisiana Legislature declaratory of the election of Smith and Cutler. The papers, it was announced, would lie on the table unless otherwise ordered. Just as Henry Winter Davis had done in the House, Senator Wade offered a memorial from Louisiana citizens remonstrating against their admission, and also against the reception of any electoral vote from that State. On his motion it was agreed that all documents pertaining to the subject be printed. On the following day, December 8, the credentials as well as the remonstrance were referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Senator Trumbull on February 17 succeeding made a report from his committee, and offered a joint resolution relative to the credentials of Smith and Cutler. At the request of Charles Sumner the resolution was read at length and was as follows:
That the United States do hereby recognize the government of the State of Louisiana, inaugurated under and by the convention which assembled on the 6th day of April, A. D., 1864, at the city of New Orleans, as the legitimate government of the said State, and entitled to the guarantees and all other rights of a State government under the Constitution of the United States.[[401]]
This resolution was limited to Louisiana because the facts, while in many respects similar, were not identical with those in the case of Arkansas. Besides, when the subject first came up in committee the Arkansas case had not been presented, though it arose before Louisiana had been disposed of. Trumbull believed it the intention of the committee to act immediately upon Arkansas when the case of Louisiana had been considered.[[402]]
Sumner moved, February 23, to strike out all of the joint resolution except the enacting clause, and to substitute the following: