Mr. Sumner. I am glad of it. That is the gain of a day. We were to adjourn to-day at twelve o’clock, and then again to-morrow at twelve o’clock, and now it is put off until Saturday. I cannot doubt that the Senate would do much better, if it put off the adjournment until next week. There is important business on your table, which ought to be considered.
Mr. Sumner then called attention to measures deserving consideration, and continued:—
Here is another measure, which I once characterized as an effort to cut the Gordian knot of the suffrage question. It is a bill introduced by myself to carry out various constitutional provisions securing political rights in all our States, precisely as we have already secured civil rights. The importance of this bill cannot be exaggerated. There is not a Senator who does not know the anxious condition of things in the neighboring State of Maryland for want of such a bill. Let Congress interfere under the National Constitution, and exercise a power clearly belonging to it, settling this whole suffrage question, so that it shall no longer agitate the politics of the States, no longer be the occasion of dissension, possibly of bloodshed, in Maryland or in Delaware, or of difference in Ohio. Let us settle the question before we return home.
When I rose, I had no purpose of calling attention to these measures. My special object was to express satisfaction that the Senate at last is disposed to harmonize with the other House on the important question of securing to Congress the power of meeting during the summer and autumn. That is a great point gained for the peace and welfare of the country. Without it you will leave the country a prey to the President; you will leave our Union friends throughout the South a sacrifice to the same malignant usurper.
The substitute proposed by Mr. Edmunds was agreed to,—Yeas 25, Nays 14. The House non-concurring, it was referred to a committee of conference.
March 29th, another resolution having been meanwhile adopted by the House, providing for an adjournment to the first Wednesday of June, and then, if a quorum of both Houses were not present, to the first Wednesday of September, and then, in the absence of a quorum, to the first Monday of December, Mr. Edmunds moved the following substitute:—
“The President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives are hereby directed to adjourn their respective Houses on Saturday, March 30, 1867, at twelve o’clock, meridian, to the first Wednesday of July, 1867, at noon, when the roll of each House shall be immediately called, and immediately thereafter the presiding officer of each House shall cause the presiding officer of the other House to be informed whether or not a quorum of its body has appeared; and thereupon, if a quorum of the two Houses respectively shall not have appeared upon such call of the rolls, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall immediately adjourn their respective Houses without day.”
Mr. Sumner said:—
I am against the amendment on two grounds: first, that it proposes to adjourn too soon; and, secondly, that it superfluously and unnecessarily makes a new difference with the House of Representatives. In the first place, it proposes to adjourn too soon,—that is, to-morrow at twelve o’clock. The business of the country will suffer by adjournment at that time. We are now in currents of business that recall the last days of regular sessions, or the rapids that precede a cataract. Senators are straggling for the floor, and perhaps are not always amiable, if they do not obtain it. We ought to give time for all this important business, so that there be no such unseemly struggle.