Pine to Potomac

by E. K. Cressey

“Never, in the legislative history of Maine, has there been such an opportunity for a forensic effort as was presented in the House of Representatives on Friday afternoon, at the close of the seven hours’ speech of Hon. A. P. Gould on the national resolutions. The expectation of the legislature was that Hon. James G. Blaine would speak in defense of the principles and the measures by which the Federal government will be able to crush the Rebellion and restore the Republic to that true and certain basis on which it was originally established. Mr. Blaine’s speech occupied two hours, and was fully equal to the anticipations of the unconditional friends of the government. From beginning to close it was crowded with arguments and salient facts, interspersed with due proportion of wit, satire, invective and telling hits against the doctrines and positions of his opponent. It showed, with great clearness and strength, that the power of confiscating the slaves of rebels belongs to congress, and to no other power. It adhered firmly to the long-recognized principle that the safety of the Republic is the supreme law, before which every pecuniary interest must give way, and advancing in this broad highway, so clearly defined by the highest authorities of international law, and so luminous with the best light of history, the speaker made a complete overthrow of the sophistry and disloyalty of those who plead the defences of the constitution for the security of traitors, as against the necessities of the Republic. The speech was brilliantly eloquent, conclusive in argument, and in all essential particulars was a success which cannot fail to add to the reputation of the author.”

We give some extracts from the speech of Mr. Blaine:—

“The first hour of the seven which the gentleman from Thomaston has consumed I shall pass over with scarcely a comment. It was addressed almost exclusively, and in violation of parliamentary rules, to personal matters between himself and a distinguished citizen from the same section, lately the gubernatorial candidate of the Democratic party, and now representing the county of Knox in the other branch of the legislature....

“I shall best make myself understood, and perhaps most intelligibly respond to the argument of the gentleman from Thomaston, by discussing the question in its two phases: first, as to the power of congress to adopt the measures conceived in the pending resolutions; and, secondly, as to the expediency of adopting them. And, at the very outset, I find between the gentleman from Thomaston and myself a most radical difference as to the ‘war-power’ of the constitution; its origin, its extent, and the authority which shall determine its actions, direct its operation, and fix its limit. He contends, and he spent some four or five hours in attempting to prove, that the war-power in this Government is lodged wholly in the executive, and in describing his almost endless authority, he piled Ossa on Pelion until he had made the president, under the war-power, perfectly despotic, with all prerogatives and privileges concentrated in his own person, and then to end the tragedy with a farce, with uplifted hands he reverently thanked God that Abraham Lincoln was not an ambitious villain (like some of his Democratic predecessors, I presume), to use this power, trample on the liberties of the nation, erect a throne for himself, and thus add another to the list of usurpers that have disfigured the world’s history.

“I dissent from these conclusions of the gentleman. I read the Federal constitution differently. I read in the most frequent and suggestive section of that immortal chart, that certain ‘powers’ are declared to belong to congress. I read therein that ‘congress shall have power’ among other large grants of authority, ‘to provide for the common defence’; that it shall have power ‘to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water’; that it shall have power ‘to raise and support armies’; to ‘provide and maintain a navy’; and ‘to make rules for the government of the land and naval forces.’ And as though these were not sufficiently broad and general, the section concludes in its eighteenth subdivision by declaring that congress shall have power ‘to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.’ Mark that,—‘in any department or officer thereof!’...

“At the origin of our government, Mr. Chairman, the people were jealous of their liberties; they gave power guardedly and grudgingly to their rulers; they were hostile above all things to what is termed the one-man power; and you cannot but observe with what peculiar care they provided against the abuse of the ‘war-power.’ For, after giving to congress the power ‘to declare war,’ and ‘to raise and support armies,’ they added in the constitution these remarkable and emphatic words,—‘but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years,’ which is precisely the period for which the representatives in the popular branch are chosen. Thus, sir, this power was not given to congress simply, but in effect it was given to the house of representatives; the people placing it where they could lay their hands directly upon it at every biennial election, and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the principle or policy of any war....

“The other point at issue has reference to the relations that now exist between the Government of the United States and the so-called Confederate States. The gentleman from Thomaston has quoted the treason clause of the constitution, and has elaborately argued that the armed rebels in the South have still the full right to the protection of property guaranteed therein, and that any confiscation of their property or estates by any other process than is there laid down would be unconstitutional. I am endeavoring to state the position of the gentleman with entire candor, as I desire to meet his argument throughout in that spirit. I maintain, sir, in opposition to this view, that we derive the right to confiscate the property and liberate the slaves of rebels from a totally different source. I maintain that to-day we are in a state of civil war,—civil war, too, of the most gigantic proportions. And I think it will strike this House as a singular and most significant confession of the unsoundness of the gentleman’s argument, that to sustain his positions, he had to deny that we are engaged in civil war at all. He stated, much to the amusement of the House, I think, that it was not a civil war because Jeff. Davis was not seeking to wrest the presidential chair from Abraham Lincoln, but simply to carry off a portion of the Union, in order to form a separate government. Pray, sir, is not Abraham Lincoln the rightful president of the whole country and of all the states, and is it not interfering as much with his constitutional prerogative to dispute his authority in Georgia or Louisiana as it would be to dispute it in Maine or Pennsylvania?

“To assume the ground of the gentleman from Thomaston, with its legitimate sequences, is practically to give up the contest. Yet he tells you, and he certainly repeated it a score of times, that you cannot deprive these rebels of their property, except ‘by due process of law,’ and at the same time he confesses that within the rebel territory it is impossible to serve any precept or enforce any verdict. He at the same time declares that we have not belligerent rights because the contest is not a civil war. Pray, what kind of a war is it? The gentleman acknowledges that the rebels are traitors, and if so, that they must be engaged in some kind of war, because the constitution declares that ‘treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them.’ It is therefore war on their side. It must also be war on ours, and if so, what kind of war?”

[Mr. Gould rose and said that he would define it as domestic war.]

[Mr. Blaine, resuming.] “Domestic war! That’s it! Well, Mr. Chairman, we shall learn something before this discussion is over. Domestic war! I have heard of domestic woolens, domestic sheetings, and domestic felicity, but a ‘domestic war’ is something entirely new under the sun. All the writers of international law that I have ever read, speak of two kinds of war,—foreign and civil. Vattel will, I suppose, have a new edition, with annotations by Gould, in which ‘domestic war’ will be defined and illustrated as a contest not quite foreign, not quite civil, but one in which the rebellious party has at one and the same time all the rights of peaceful citizens and all the immunities of alien enemies—for that is precisely what the gentleman by his argument claims for the Southern secessionists.”