I am against the resolution. In my opinion, Congress ought not to adjourn and go home without at least some provision for return to our post. As often as I think of this question, I am met by two controlling facts. I speak now of facts which stare us in the face.
You must not forget that the President is a bad man, the author of incalculable woe to his country, and especially to that part which, being most tried by war, most needed kindly care. Search history, and I am sure you will find no elected ruler who, during the same short time, has done so much mischief to his country. He stands alone in bad eminence. Nobody in ancient or modern times can be his parallel. Alone in the evil he has done, he is also alone in the maudlin and frantic manner he has adopted. Look at his acts, and read his speeches. This is enough.
Such is the fact. And now I ask, Can Congress quietly vote to go home and leave such a man without hindrance? These scenes are historic. His conduct is historic. Permit me to remind you that your course with regard to him will be historic. It can never be forgotten, if you keep your seats and meet the usurper face to face,—as it can never be forgotten, if, leaving your seats, you let him remain master to do as he pleases. Most of all, he covets your absence. Do not indulge him.
Then comes the other controlling fact. There is at this moment a numerous population, counted by millions,—call it, if you please, eight millions,—looking to Congress for protection. Of this large population, all the loyal people stretch out their hands to Congress. They ask you to stay. They know by instinct that so long as you remain in your seats they are not without protection. They have suffered through the President, who, when they needed bread, has given them a stone, and when they needed peace, has given them strife. They have seen him offer encouragement to Rebels, and even set the Rebellion on its legs. Their souls have been wrung as they beheld fellow-citizens brutally sacrificed, whose only crime was that they loved the Union. Sometimes the sacrifice was on a small scale, and sometimes by wholesale. Witness Memphis; witness New Orleans; ay, Sir, witness the whole broad country from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.
With a Presidential usurper menacing the Republic, and with a large population, counted by millions, looking to Congress for protection, I dare not vote to go home. It is my duty to stay here. I am sure that our presence here will be an encouragement and a comfort to loyal people throughout these troubled States. They will feel that they are not left alone with their deadly enemy. Home is always tempting. It is pleasant to escape from care. But duty is more than home or any escape from care. As often as I think of these temptations, I feel their insignificance by the side of solemn obligations. There is the President: he must be watched and opposed. There is an oppressed people: it must be protected. But this cannot be done without effort on the part of Congress. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Never was there more need for this vigilance than now.
An admirable and most suggestive engraving has been placed on our tables to-day, in “Harper’s Weekly,”[102] where President Johnson is represented as a Roman emperor presiding in the amphitheatre with imperatorial pomp, and surrounded by trusty counsellors, among whom it is easy to distinguish the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, looking with complacency at the butchery below. The victims are black, and their sacrifice, as gladiators, makes a “Roman holiday.” Beneath the picture is written, “Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum—Massacre of the Innocents at New Orleans, July 30, 1866.” This inscription tells the terrible story. The bloody scene is before you. The massacre proceeds under patronage of the President. His Presidential nod is law. At his will blood spurts and men bite the dust. But this is only a single scene in one place. Wherever in the Rebel States there is a truly loyal citizen, loving the Union, there is a victim who may be called to suffer at any moment from the distempered spirit which now rules. I speak according to the evidence. This whole country is an “Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum,” where the victims are counted by the thousand. To my mind, there is no duty more urgent than to guard against this despot, and be ready to throw the shield of Congress over loyal citizens whom he delivers to sacrifice.
The resolution of Mr. Trumbull was agreed to,—Yeas 29, Nays 16.
March 25th, on motion of Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, the resolution was returned from the House of Representatives for reconsideration. Meanwhile the House adopted the following resolution, which was laid before the Senate:—
“That the Senate and House of Representatives do hereby each give consent to the other that each House of Congress shall adjourn the present session from the hour of twelve o’clock, meridian, on Thursday next, the 28th day of March instant, to assemble again on the first Wednesday of May, the first Wednesday of June, the first Wednesday of September, and the first Wednesday of November, of this year, unless the President of the Senate pro tempore and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall by joint proclamation, to be issued by them ten days before either of the times herein fixed for assembling, declare that there is no occasion for the meeting of Congress at such time.”
On motion of Mr. Fessenden, this resolution was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.