POWER OF THE SENATE TO IMPRISON RECUSANT WITNESSES.
Speeches in the Senate, May 18 and 27, 1871.
May 18, 1871, Z. L. White and H. J. Ramsdell, newspaper correspondents, having been taken into custody by order of the Senate, for refusing to disclose, on the requisition of a committee appointed to investigate the matter, the source whence a copy of the Treaty of Washington had been obtained which they had communicated for publication while under consideration in Executive Session, and Mr. White, whose case was first presented, on arraignment at the bar of the Senate persisting in his refusal, a resolution was thereupon offered for his commitment to the common jail until he should answer. Mr. Sumner immediately moved an amendment substituting for the common jail the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, remarking;—
In support of that amendment I will say that the only precedent we have in our history known to me for this case is that of Nugent,[105] and he was committed to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. It appears from the newspapers of the time that there was a perpetual menace, as the excitement increased, that the custody should be changed to the common jail; but it does not appear that it was so changed. He continued for some two months in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. We all know, also, that after the Impeachment Trial a witness was taken into custody; but it was simply the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House.[106]
There is one other precedent to which I ought to allude, and it will be for the Senate to say whether they will follow it. It is the resolution of the Senate in the spring of 1860, on the motion of Mr. Mason, chairman of the committee raised especially to persecute the supposed associates of John Brown, and taking one of them into custody, bringing him into this Chamber, propounding to him certain interrogatories which he refused to answer. Mr. Mason finally brought forward a resolution that he should be committed to the common jail.[107] That, Sir, is the precedent which it is now proposed to follow. The Senate will consider whether they will follow the lead of Mr. Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, Chairman of the Harper’s Ferry Investigating Committee, and afterward a Rebel, in committing a citizen to the common jail, or whether they will follow the better precedent of the Senate at a better day and under better auspices.
On this motion I ask for the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered, with the result, for the amendment, Yeas 31, Nays 27.
A second resolution, containing a provision for the continuance of the Committee, with a view to holding the witness in custody after the close of the session until he should answer as required, which Mr. Sumner denounced as contrary to all parliamentary precedent, prevailed against a motion to strike out this part by Yeas 20, Nays 30.
Corresponding resolutions were subsequently adopted in the case of Mr. Ramsdell, who had likewise persisted in refusing to answer.