Mr. Blaine moved to amend by excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefits of the bill. The situation was peculiar. Upon a direct vote, if the amendment were submitted, very few Republicans could be found who would include Mr. Davis by name in the amnesty; and there was a large number of Democrats who wished to be saved from the embarrassment implied in such a procedure. They appreciated the difference between voting for a bill of general amnesty which included Jefferson Davis without name, and voting for an amendment which named him and him only for restoration to eligibility to any office under the Government of the United States. No punishment was inflicted upon Mr. Davis; no confiscation of his property was attempted or desired; Congress did not wish to deny him the right of suffrage. He was simply deprived of the right to aspire to the honors of the Republic. The Democrats being a majority of the House could prevent the amendment of the bill, and the Republicans being more than one-third could prevent the passage of the bill. It was a singular case of playing at parliamentary cross-purposes, and afforded the ground, as it proved in the end, for a prolonged and somewhat exciting discussion.
The reason assigned for excepting Jefferson Davis was not that he had been a rebel, for rebels were restored by thousands; not that he had been in Congress, for Southern Congressmen were restored by scores if not by hundreds; not that he had been the chief of the revolutionary government, for that would only be a difference of degree in an offense in which all had shared. The point of objection was that Mr. Davis, with the supreme power of the Confederacy in his hands, both military and civil, had permitted extraordinary cruelties to be inflicted upon prisoners of war. He was held to be legally and morally responsible, in that, being able to prevent the horrors of Andersonville prison, he did not prevent them.
The debate took a somewhat wide range, engaging Mr. Blaine and General Garfield as the leading participants on the Republican side, and Benjamin H. Hill, Mr. Randall, and Mr. Cox on the Democratic side. Upon a second effort to pass the bill with an amendment requiring an oath of loyalty as a prerequisite to removal of disabilities, it failed to secure the necessary two-thirds, the ayes being 184, the noes 97. All that the Republicans demanded was a vote on the exclusion of Jefferson Davis, and this was steadily refused. Many gentlemen of the South are still under disability because of the parliamentary tactics pursued by the Democratic party of the House of Representatives at that time. If a vote had been allowed on Jefferson Davis, his name would have been rejected, and the bill, which included even Robert Toombs and Jacob Thompson, would have been passed without delay. If Mr. Davis though that he was ungenerously treated by the Republicans, he must have found ample compensation in the conduct of both Southern and Northern Democrats, who kept seven hundred prominent supporters of the rebellion under disability for the simple and only reason that the Ex-President of the Confederacy could not share in the clemency.
[(1) In the history of the Federal Government only one administration (that of Franklin Pierce) has completed its full term without a single change in the Cabinet announced at its beginning. The following are the members of General Grant's Cabinet, the changes in which were in the aggregate more numerous than in the Cabinet of any of his predecessors:—
Secretaries of State.—Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton Fish.
Secretaries of the Treasury.—George S. Boutwell, William A.
Richardson, Benjamin H. Bristow, Lot M. Morrill.
Secretaries of War.—John A. Rawlins, William W. Belknap, Alphonso
Taft, James Donald Cameron.
Secretaries of the Navy.—Adolph E. Borie, George M. Robeson.
Postmasters-General.—John A. J. Creswell, James W. Marshall, Marshall
Jewell, James N. Tyner.
Attorneys-General.—E. Rockwood Hoar, Amos T. Akerman, George H.
Williams, Edwards Pierrepont, Alphonso Taft.
Secretaries of the Interior.—Jacob D. Cox, Columbus Delano, Zachariah
Chandler.
By this it will be seen that twenty-four Cabinet officers served under General Grant. But his number does not include Alexander T. Stewart, who though confirmed did not enter upon his duties as Secretary of the Treasury; or General Sherman, who was Secretary of War ad interim; or Eugene Hale, who was appointed Postmaster-General, but never entered upon service. Mr. Taft is counted only once, though he served in two Departments.]
[(2) Pennsylvanians have filled the Clerkship of the House for forty years in all. The best known, besides Mr. McPherson, are Matthew St. Clair Clarke, Walter S. Franklin and John W. Forney.]
CHAPTER XXIV.
The course of President Grant's Administration in regard to the Finances had proved in all respects successful. The first bill which received his signature was the Act "to strengthen the public credit," approved March 18, 1869. It pledged the Government to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations, notes, and bonds, except those where the law authorizing the issue stipulated that payment might be made in "lawful money," which simply meant legal-tender notes. The demand for this declaratory Act arose from a desire to undo the evil which had been caused by the resolution of the Democratic party in the preceding Presidential election in favor of paying all public debts in paper, except where coin was specifically named in the law. The position of each party was therefore precisely the reverse of the other: the Republicans held the normal law of payment of Government obligations to be in coin, unless payment in paper money had previously been agreed upon; the Democrats held that all Government obligations might be discharged in paper, unless payment in coin had previously been agreed upon. This was the division line in the Presidential canvass of 1868, and it was the division line among parties in the Forty-first Congress. In the House, where the Act had been reported by General Schenck, the vote on its passage was 98 ayes to 47 noes. No Democrat voted in the affirmative. A few Republicans, under the lead of General Butler, voted in the negative.
When the Act was reported to the Senate, Mr. Thurman offered an amendment declaring that "nothing in this Act shall apply to the obligations commonly called Five-twenty bonds." This would reserve three-fourths of the bonded debt from the operation of the law, and would effectively defeat its object. Every Democrat in the Senate who voted on the question, voted in favor of Mr. Thurman's amendment. Mr. Morton of Indiana and one or two other Republican senators voted with the Democrats, but the amendment was defeated by a decisive vote.