The President was evidently of the opinion that the doubtful and contradictory construction of the Act as amended left the whole matter (as described by Mr. Niblack of Indiana when the Committee report was under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment. The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the Senate was indirect and evasive. That body had evidently sought to gratify the wishes of President Grant, on the one hand, and to preserve some semblance of its power over appointments, on the other. It was freely predicted at the time that so long as the Senate and the President were in political harmony nothing would be heard of the Tenure-of-office Act, but that when the political interests of the Executive should come in conflict with those of the Senate there would be a renewal of the trouble which had characterized the relations of President Johnson and the Senate, and which led to the original Tenure-of-office Act with its positive assertion of senatorial power over the whole question of appointment and removal.
William Pitt Fessenden took part in the first session of Congress under the Presidency of General Grant. It was his last public service. On the eighth day of the following September (1869) he died at his residence in Portland, Maine, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was one of the many victims of that strange malady which, breaking out with virulence at the National Hotel in Washington on the eve of Mr. Buchanan's inauguration (1856-57), destroyed many lives. Its deadly poison undermined the constitutions of some who apparently recovered health. Of these Mr. Fessenden was one. He regained the vigor that carried him through those critical years of senatorial work on which his fame chiefly rests; yet he always felt that he had been irreparably injured by the insidious attack. The irritability and impatience which he occasionally displayed in public and in private came undoubtedly from suffering which he bore with heroic endurance through the years when his public burdens were heaviest.
—His death was announced by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who delivered an appreciate eulogy upon his character and public service. Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate. "All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr. Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate—powers which he commanded so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed as the Olympic wheel caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot be remembered now." This reference was well understood. Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Sumner were never cordial. Members of the same party, supporters of the same general measures, with perfect appreciation and with profound respect each for the other, it seemed as impossible to unite them cordially, as in earlier days it was to unite Adams and Hamilton in the ranks of the Federalists.
—Mr. Fessenden had maintained a brilliant reputation for a long period. When Mr. Webster, at the height of his senatorial fame, made his celebrated tour through the Middle and Western States in 1837, he selected Mr. Fessenden, a young man of thirty, as his traveling companion,—selected him for his brilliancy, when he had choice of the brilliancy of all New England. Mr. Garrett Davis, a senator from Kentucky, in his eulogy of Mr. Fessenden, referred to Mr. Webster's visit to that State, and described the warm greeting which Mr. Fessenden received, the deep impression made upon him by Mr. Clay's hospitality at Ashland, and the impression which the young man made upon Mr. Clay, with whom he thenceforward became a marked favorite. Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden met not long after as members of the House in the Twenty-seventh Congress (under Harrison and Tyler). "Mr. Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank, honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of passion and of fire."
—His eulogies in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin, long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own. —"A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead frame of William Pitt Fessenden."
[(1) A few extracts from Mr. Bayard's speech of July 9, 1863, at Dover, Del., will exhibit his spirit of disloyalty to the Union of the States. Mr. Bayard said,—
"And is such a war necessary for the peace and happiness of the United States? For half a century we have lived at peace with Great Britain, with her Canadian possession upon our Northern border. Upon the South, Mexico holds her government with no threats of trouble to us or our citizens. Why, then, may not two American confederacies exist side by side without conflict, each emulating the other in the progress of civilization? The coterminous kingdoms of Europe offer many examples of similar peace and prosperity. With such a sickening alternative as civil war, why should not the experiment at least be made? It is this question we are to pass upon to-day." . . .
"If peace will restore and secure these blessings to the people of the United States, even though a number of their former associates have gone off under a new and independent organization, in the name of Heaven let us raise our voice for it! Shall this earnest cry for peace be stifled at the bidding of a host of fanatical and cowardly editors, aided by an army of greedy contractors and public leeches, stimulating an ignorant mob to denounce and attack us as traitors and secessionists?" . . .
"You and I are citizens of Delaware. To her laws and government we owe allegiance. Through our state we owe allegiance to the Federal Government, of which she is a member. But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his constitutional and legal control. A palpable infraction of our written charter of government by our rulers, justifies disobedience upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are entitled to loyal compliance."
{But who, as Mr. Webster had asked Mr. Hayne thirty years before, was to judge of "the palpable infraction of our written charter of government?" Was it the Judicial department of that government? Or was it Mr. Bayard and his disloyal associates in Delaware to whom he was addressing words of hostility to the National Administration and of infidelity to the Union of the States? It is significant that Mr. Bayard acknowledged allegiance to the National Government only as he owed it through the State. This was the rank heresy upon which the leaders of the Southern rebellion sought their justification.}]