Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

This bill was passed on the last day of the session, July 4, 1864. It was commonly regarded as a rebuke to the course of the President in proceeding with the grave and momentous task of reconstruction without waiting the action or invoking the counsel of Congress. Some of the more radical members of both Houses considered the action of the President as beyond his constitutional power, and they were very positive and peremptory in condemning it. But Mr. Lincoln, with his habitual caution and wise foresight, had specially avoided any form of guaranty, or even suggestion to the States whose reconstruction he was countenancing and aiding, that their senators and representatives would be admitted to seats in Congress. Admission to membership he took care to advise them was a discretion lodged solely in the respective Houses. What he had done was in his own judgment clearly within his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Union, and was thus obviously and solely an Executive act.

Mr. Lincoln was not therefore in the humor to be rebuked by Congress. Though the least pretentious of men, he had an abounding self-respect and a full appreciation of the dignity and power of his office. He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective departments of the Government, and he was not willing that his judgment should be revised or his course censured, however indirectly, by a co-ordinate branch of the Government. He therefore declined to sign the bill. He did not veto it but let it quietly die. Four days after the session had closed, he issued a proclamation in which he treated the bill merely as the expression of an opinion by Congress as to the plan of Reconstruction—"which plan," he remarked, "it is thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration."

The President further stated in his proclamation that he had "already propounded one plan of restoration," and that he was "unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration," and also "unprepared to declare that the Free-State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Louisiana and Arkansas shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort;" and also "unprepared to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States"—though "sincerely hoping at the same time that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in all the States might be adopted." While with these objections Mr. Lincoln could not approve the bill, he concluded his proclamation in these words: "Nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in this bill as one very proper for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall be prepared to give executive aid and assistance to any such people so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and Laws of the United States—in which cases military governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill."

It must be frankly admitted that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its aspects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of Republican members of Congress, and violent opposition from the more radical members of both Houses. If Congress had been in session at the time, a very rancorous hostility would have been developed against the President. Fortunately the senators and representatives had returned to their States and districts before the proclamation was issued, and they found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support. No contest was raised, therefore, by the great majority of those who had sustained the bill which the President had refused to approve. The pending struggle for the Presidency demanded harmony, and by common consent agitation on the question was abandoned. Two of the ablest, most fearless, most resolute men then in public life—Senator Wade of Ohio, and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland—were exceptions to the general rule of acquiescence. They were respectively the chairmen in Senate and House of the "Committees on the Rebellious States," and were primarily and especially responsible for the bill which the President criticized in his proclamation. They united over their own signatures in a public "Protest" against the action of Mr. Lincoln. The paper was prepared by Mr. Davis, which of itself was guaranty that it would be able, caustic, and unqualified. Mr. Wade was known to be a man of extraordinary courage, both physical and moral. To these qualities Mr. Davis added a highly cultivated mind and a style of writing which in political controversy has rarely been surpassed—a style at once severe, effective, and popular.

The "Protest" embodied a sharp contrast between the President's plan of Reconstruction in his proclamation of December 8 (1863), and that contained in the bill presented by Congress for his approval. "The bill," said Messrs. Wade and Davis, "requires a majority of the voters to establish a State government, the proclamation is satisfied with one-tenth; the bill requires one oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains voters by registering, the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the bill governs the rebel States by law equalizing all before it, the proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military governors and provost marshals; the bill forbids electors for President (in the rebel States), the proclamation with the defeat of the bill threatens us with civil war for the exclusion of such votes."

The criticisms of the President's course closed with the language of stern admonition if not indeed of absolute menace. The act of the President was denounced as "rash and fatal," and as "a blow at the friends of the Administration, at the rights of humanity, and at the principles of Republican government." The President was warned that the support of the Republican party was "of a cause and not of a man," that the "authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected," that the "whole body of Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him or rash and unconstitutional legislation," that he must "confine himself to his Executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws;" that he "must suppress armed rebellion by arms and leave political re-organization to Congress."

No political result followed the publication of this remarkable paper save that it probably defeated the renomination of Mr. Davis for Congress. The Democrats were of course hostile to it in spirit and in letter, and the leading Republicans saw in it the seeds of a controversy between the President and Congress which might rapidly grow into dangerous proportions. The very strength of the paper was, by one of the paradoxes that frequently recur in public affairs, its special weakness. It was so powerful an arraignment of the President that of necessity it rallied his friends to his support with that intense form of energy which springs from the instinct of self-preservation. It was at once seen and profoundly realized by the great majority of the loyal people that even if the President had fallen into an error, no result could possibly flow from adhering to it that would prove half so perilous to the Union cause as would dissension and division in the ranks of those who were relied upon to keep the Government in the control of an Administration, devoted heart and soul to the preservation of the Union. It was, they thought, safer to follow Mr. Lincoln who had all the power in his hands than to follow Messrs. Wade and Davis who had no power in their hands.

When Congress convened in December (1864), Mr. Lincoln, who had meanwhile been re-elected to the Presidency, studiously refrained from any reference in his annual message to the controversy over his proclamation. With the intuitive sagacity and caution which never failed him, he did not touch upon the question of reconstruction. He had foreseen that the unhappy differences with which the close of the previous session of Congress had been marked might be renewed, and thence lead the party into warring factions if he should again attempt to urge his own views. This was undoubtedly a disappointment to those who had regarded the controversy with the President as only postponed till the assembling of Congress, and who were impatiently awaiting its renewal. The assumed views of the President were antagonized later in the session by the passage of a joint resolution "declaring certain States not entitled to representation in the electoral college." This was done to cut off the electoral votes (should any such votes be returned) of Louisiana and Arkansas, satirically referred to by the opponents of the Administration policy as Mr. Lincoln's "ten per cent States"—in allusion to the permission given to one-tenth of the population to organize a State government.

The passage of this joint resolution, to which great importance was attached by the critics of the President, was met by Mr. Lincoln in a spirit and with a tact which deprived its authors of all sense of triumph. In a brief special message (February 8, 1865) the President declared that he had "signed the joint resolution in defence to the view of Congress implied in its passage and presentation." In his own view, however, the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution, "have complete power to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it is not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct the power by a veto, as would be the case if his action were at all essential to the matter." The President further informed Congress that "he disclaims all right on the part of the Executive to interfere in any way in the matter of canvassing or counting the electoral votes, and he also disclaims that by signing said resolution he has expressed any opinion of the recitals of the preamble or any judgement of his own upon the subject of the resolution."

The message was indeed throughout a sarcastic reflection upon the action of Congress. It was as if the President had said, "You have passed a resolution making certain declarations which nobody controverts: you have claimed certain powers which nobody denies. If I should sign your resolution without explanation, it might imply my right to veto it, and thereby take from you your undoubted Constitutional power. You are really guilty of weakening your own prerogatives under the Constitution by asking me to assent to their existence. If you intended your resolution as a reflection on my policy of reconstruction, you might have spared yourself the trouble, for that policy never contemplated the slightest violation of the rights and prerogatives of Congress." The message throughout was a singularly apt illustration of that keen perception and abounding common sense which made Mr. Lincoln so formidable an antagonist in every controversy political and official in which he became involved. His triumph was complete both in the estimation of Congress and of the people.