“I would have the Government of the United States do nothing that it has not the power under the Constitution to do, because I believe that the Government of the United States is a Government of limited powers. I believe it to be its duty under the grant of power in the Constitution to guaranty the existence of a preëxisting republican government. That government existed in South Carolina; the people have not determined, at least before this war they had not determined, to have any other than a republican form of government. We had recognized that government as a republican form of government by the recognition of the State in all its departments and the admission of all its national representatives. It is made the duty of the Government of the United States, not of Congress; and I desire to call the attention of the Senator to that, because it bears upon his assumption for Congress of power which does not belong to the Executive. It is not alone the duty of Congress to guaranty a republican form of government to the people of the several States; the extent of that guarantee is not limited alone to the means which Congress may employ; but the words of the Constitution are ‘the United States shall guaranty.’ Hence every department of the Government is equally bound; and Congress being the legislative branch of course participates to a greater extent in the discharge of that duty.”
After a discussion with Mr. Clark, Carlile proceeded in his argument: “But, sir, the Senator from Ohio says the Union is to be preserved. So say I. Upon what principle are these States to come back into the Union? The people, says the Senator from Ohio, will meet you with that inquiry. Sir, when was ever such an inquiry suggested to the brain of any loyal man in this Union? When was such an inquiry ever put? Never until after a policy different from that which characterized the commencement of this struggle was entered upon by the party in power. All said the Union was to be restored; all accepted the struggle as the use of the military power of the Government in the restoration of the Union. What Union? The Union of the Constitution. The Union into which new States are to be admitted. It is not into ‘a Union’ but into ‘this Union’ that the States are admitted. What Union? The Union of the Constitution, none other; and he who seeks to preserve the Union can only do it by an observance of the Constitution and of the constitutional means to restore it, not reconstruct it.
“... In this Union, created by this Constitution, of limited and delegated powers, all prescribed and written in the instrument, you propose to exercise your legislative power by usurping the rights and liberties of the people, a power which all the people you represent could not use or could not exert without the destruction of the Union which the Constitution formed. There is no power in this Government, there is no power in the parties to this Government, there is no power in all the States of this Union to prescribe a constitution for the little State of Rhode Island. If every other State in the Union, the adhering as well as the rebellious States, if every man, woman, and child in them were to meet and prescribe a constitution for the people of Rhode Island, they would have no power or authority to do so under the Union; and tell me where the people’s representatives derive the power to do that which all the people in their collective capacity, save the small minority which constitutes that State, cannot do?”[[335]]
Mr. Carlile emphasized the fact that the bill under consideration was not a war measure. In a running argument with several Senators he showed both a ready and comprehensive knowledge of the Constitution and made some telling points against the bill as well as against the radical tendencies in Congress. His speech was, perhaps, the very ablest delivered by any Senator in opposition to the proposed measure. At its conclusion Mr. Brown’s amendment was agreed to.
An amendment offered by Charles Sumner to enact the Emancipation Proclamation into a law was rejected by a vote of 21 to 11. The Massachusetts statesman did not wish, he said, to see the edict of freedom “left to float on a Presidential proclamation.”[[336]]
The bill concerning States in insurrection against the United States then passed the Senate by 26 yeas to 3 nays.[[337]] When the vote was taken 20 Senators were absent. On the succeeding day, July 2, 1864, a message announced the disagreement of the House to the Senate amendment and requested a committee of conference. A subsequent motion of Mr. Wade that the Senate recede from its amendment and agree to the bill of the House was carried after some discussion by a vote of 18 to 14, thus passing the bill on the same day.[[338]] The names of Doolittle, Henderson, Ten Eyck and Trumbull voting with the Democrats in opposition foreshadowed that division in the Republican ranks which afterwards occurred.
The history of this famous bill from the moment of its passage by Congress until the publication a week later of the President’s proclamation concerning it is best related in the Life of Mr. Lincoln by his private secretaries, Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. These writers possessed an unusual opportunity for ascertaining the sentiments of the President upon nearly every question of public interest.
“Congress,” says the diary of Mr. Hay, “was to adjourn at noon on the Fourth of July; the President was in his room at the Capitol signing bills, which were laid before him as they were brought from the two Houses. When this important bill was placed before him he laid it aside and went on with the other work of the moment. Several prominent members entered in a state of intense anxiety over the fate of the bill. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Boutwell, while their nervousness was evident, refrained from any comment. Zachariah Chandler, who was unabashed in any mortal presence, roundly asked the President if he intended to sign the bill. The President replied: ‘This bill has been placed before me a few moments before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way.’ ‘If it is vetoed,’ cried Mr. Chandler, ‘it will damage us fearfully in the Northwest. The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed States.’ Mr. Lincoln said: ‘That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act.’ ‘It is no more than you have done yourself,’ said the Senator. The President answered: ‘I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress.’ Mr. Chandler, expressing his deep chagrin, went out, and the President, addressing the members of the Cabinet who were seated with him, said: ‘I do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict what we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the States.’ Mr. Fessenden expressed his entire agreement with this view. ‘I have even had my doubts,’ he said, ‘as to the constitutional efficacy of your own decree of emancipation, in those cases where it has not been carried into effect by the actual advance of the army.’
“The President said: ‘This bill and the position of these gentlemen seem to me, in asserting that the insurrectionary States are no longer in the Union, to make the fatal admission that States, whenever they please, may of their own motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Now we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced. If that be true, I am not President; these gentlemen are not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid that question ever since it first began to be mooted, and thus to avoid confusion and disturbance in our own councils. It was to obviate this question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the Senate and failed in the House. I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends as to whether certain States have been in or out of the Union during the war—a merely metaphysical question, and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion.’
“Although every member of the Cabinet agreed with the President, when, a few minutes later, he entered his carriage to go home, he foresaw the importance of the step he had resolved to take and its possibly disastrous consequences to himself. When some one said to him that the threats made by the extreme radicals had no foundation, and that people would not bolt their ticket on a question of metaphysics, he answered: ‘If they choose to make a point upon this, I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly to me. At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right. I must keep some standard or principle fixed within myself.’”[[339]]