Fernando Wood said that Mexico had a republican form of government, and that Texas came into the Union without changing the character of her government except to substitute a governor for President and to change the titles of some officials. Every Southern State possessed the same form of government which it did before secession. If, he asserted, they were then republican in form, “they are so now.” The Confederate constitution had all the elements of republicanism. The bill provided that hereafter none of the States in rebellion should hold slaves. It did not leave to the people the right to regulate their domestic institutions. Is it republicanism to take from the people this privilege? “To impose upon them a form of government of your own making, under the pretext of this bill, would be the worst kind of tyranny, whatever the provisions of your constitution might be.”[[326]]
He defended himself against serious charges of General Schenck, whom he criticised severely. These accusations, however, were reiterated by Hon. William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, who at this point rose to speak on the merits of the bill.
The proposed measure did not meet his unqualified approval. It lacked some of the amendments suggested by Mr. Stevens. “I should like to see his distinct declaration,” said Congressman Kelley, “that ‘The Confederate States are a public enemy, waging an unjust war, whose injustice is so glaring that they have no right to claim the mitigation of the extreme rights of war which are accorded by modern usage to an enemy who has the right to consider the war a just one.’” He would like to see the bill of Mr. Davis provide also for the exclusion from Congress of all those States that seceded, and every part of them.
As more immediately important, however, he would prefer to see included in the measure the proposition of Mr. Stevens respecting amendments of the Constitution; he denied the immortality of a State. It has its beginning, its transitions and may have its end. “A State may be killed, a State may commit suicide. An act of God, by destroying its inhabitants, might extinguish a State. A State could be conquered and held by some strong and hostile power. The political people of each of those States have overthrown the State. Through its corporate power each State destroyed its corporate life, and no one of them exists.” He also denied that a State could transfer to any foreign power territory within the jurisdiction of the United States. The Supreme Court had decided that the Southern States were alien enemies and entitled to only the rights of such.[[327]]
The message of the President, Representative S. S. Cox believed, “should be welcomed, not so much for what it is as for what it pretends to be. It is his first adventure beyond the line of force into the field of conciliation....
“To test the genuineness of this amnesty: five months have gone, but we see no signs of thousands of Southern citizens rushing to embrace this amnesty. Indeed, it is conceded that the rebellion is now more formidable than ever.” There was no genuine movement toward the restoration of the seceded States. He would not take the oath of allegiance and swear support of the negro policies. How could Southern men be expected to take the oath? Its terms provoked or irritated them still more. The structure, he declared, was built on the Emancipation Proclamation.
The bill of Mr. Davis had the same defects. That, too, was based upon the one tenth system and the policy of forced emancipation. “In some of its features,” he said, “it is an improvement upon the rickety establishment proposed by the President.
“... The emancipation act of the gentleman [Lincoln] can never be reconciled with the normal control of the States over their domestic institutions, so all oaths to sustain the same are oaths to subvert the old governments, Federal and State.... The President’s plan, therefore, whether intended or not, is an oath to encourage treason, and the plan of the gentleman from Maryland is a plan to consummate revolution.
“... If his [the President’s] plan of making one tenth rule in the States should succeed, then he will have ready at hand the electoral votes of Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, and other States. He began this business in Florida the other day, and the blood which flowed at Olustee is the result of this scheme of personal ambition!