Precisely what number of voters would be called a constituency Mr. Field had not been informed. In the portion of his Congressional District included in St. Bernard and Placquemines parishes there were only 2,400 electors, and the President’s plan required only one tenth of the number of votes cast in 1860. Though the election of November 2 preceded the Executive proclamation, that fact should not make it void. The electors in New Orleans were not free to express a choice, and even if it had been otherwise the vote in the First District must have been greatly diminished since 1860, for he was assured by two paymasters that 7,000 men had been recruited there for the Union army.
Some members admitted that the national Government had not given sufficient protection to Union men in Louisiana, and therefore should not now take advantage of that neglect to also deprive them of representation in Congress. These believed that if Mr. Field had received a majority of the votes in his district any informality in the election should be overlooked, for the right to representation in Congress grows out of the Constitution, and regulations governing such elections are matters of mere convenience. The fact that no State organization existed there did not create a legal impediment, and it was no objection that Louisiana had not been redistricted, for the additional member was not imposed as a burden but as a right which she was free to exercise or not; besides, the greater representation includes the less.
Notwithstanding these considerations, and strong, though not universal, testimony to the claimant’s loyalty, he was denied admission, February 9, 1864, by a vote of 85 to 48.[[85]] His case, however, was not exactly similar to that of Messrs. Hahn and Flanders, as stated by one Representative, for they had received, in the circumstances, a comparatively large vote.
To this end came the movement of the planters designed primarily to counteract that inaugurated by the Free State Committee, which also, as we shall see, was soon at variance with the military authorities. Important changes had occurred in the shifting politics of his State before the House had taken final action in the case of Mr. Field; these will be briefly related.
Military necessity had led the President to issue, December 8, 1863, his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction proposing, though not rigidly insisting upon, a plan for reinaugurating State governments wherever there existed such a loyal nucleus as could effectively assist in overthrowing the rebellion. In discussing the affairs of Tennessee that plan has been quoted at such length as to require no further mention in this place.[[86]]
General Banks on January 8, 1864, announced his intention of ordering an election of State officers. He was urged at this point by the Free State Committee to allow their election to go on, but he refused to yield even under pressure of an immense public meeting favorable to their object.[[87]] Without his coöperation their plan was doomed to failure, and when entreaties did not avail to move him they promptly inveighed against his methods and his motives in the columns of The National Intelligencer at Washington. In a letter dated New Orleans, January 9, 1864, a correspondent writes:
President Lincoln has started a Missouri case in Louisiana, and has made Banks our master; and Banks is another Schofield, only worse than he. Our mass meeting last evening was a complete success; but its object will be defeated by Banks, who, under orders direct from the President, declares his purpose to order an election for a convention; thus playing into the hands of Cottman, Riddle, and Fields, and their crew. The Union men—the true Union men—are thunderstruck by the course of the President in this matter.
We were not informed of the President’s orders to General Banks until the hour of the meeting last night, and the meeting was not informed at all. General Shepley, who is generally liked, and who has done all he could to promote the free State cause, and to organize a free State government, will resign, and the election ordered by Banks will be purely at military dictation, and will be so regarded.
The correspondent does not know the secret springs of all these acts of the President, but thinks he has probably been deceived by base and interested men. “Banks,” he believes, “has the unchanged confidence of Mr. Lincoln.” The writer concludes by asking whether it is not possible to get the President to countermand his orders to Banks immediately, “and let the people manage matters as they have begun to do?”[[88]] To prove that no line of policy would be acceptable to the Free State Committee Mr. Field, in his remarks before the House, read in full the communication from which these excerpts are taken.
To comprehend clearly the nature of the controversy which so suddenly arose between the Free State General Committee and the Federal commander in Louisiana it may be necessary to explain with some detail the precise attitude of that organization relative to the question at issue between the adverse parties. In discussing the respective merits of the State constitutions of 1852 and 1861 the organ of the Free State men says: