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

The course pursued in Tennessee afforded a significant index to Mr. Johnson's conception of what was deemed necessary to prepare a State that had been in rebellion, for its full rehabilitation as a member of the Federal Union. His position was rendered still more pronounced and positive by his declarations in the remarkable speech delivered by him when he took the oath of office as Vice-President: "Before I conclude this brief Inaugural address in the presence of this audience, . . . I desire to proclaim that Tennessee, whose representative I have been, is free. She has bent the tyrant's rod, she has broken the yoke of slavery, she stands to-day redeemed. She waited not for the exercise of power by Congress; it was her own act; and she is now as loyal, Mr. Attorney-General, as the State from which you come. It is the doctrine of the Federal Constitution that no State can go out of this Union. Thank God, Tennessee has never been out of the Union! It is true the operations of her government were for a time interrupted; there was an interregnum; but she is in the Union, and I am her representative. This day (March 4, 1865) she elects her Governor and her Legislature, which will be convened on the first Monday of April, and her senators and representatives will soon mingle with those of her sister States; and who shall gainsay it, for the Constitution provides that to every State shall be guaranteed a Republican form of government."

The very positive declaration by Mr. Johnson that "Tennessee has never been out of the Union" indicated the side he would take in a pending controversy which was waxing warm between the disputants. Whether the act of Secession was void ab initio and really left the State still a member of the Union, or whether it did, however wrongfully, carry the State out of the Union as claimed by those engaged in the Rebellion, was one of the purely abstract political questions concerning which men will argue without ceasing,—reaching no conclusion because there is no conclusion to be reached. Both propositions were at the time affirmed and denied with all the earnestness, indeed with all the temper, which distinguished the mediæval theologians upon points of doctrine once regarded as essential to salvation, but the very meaning of which is scarcely comprehended by modern ecclesiastics. With his mental acumen and with his never-failing common sense, Mr. Lincoln declined to take part in the discussion. In his last public speech he treated this question with admirable perspicuity, and with his wonted felicity of homely illustration: "I have been shown what is supposed to be an able letter," said he, "in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. . . . It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret to learn that as it appears to me, that question has not been and is not a practically material one, and that any discussion of it could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing friends. As yet, whatever it may become, the question is bad as the basis of a controversy—a merely pernicious abstraction. We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the Government is to get them back into their proper practical relation. I believe it is easier to do this without deciding or even considering whether those States have ever been out of the Union. The States finding themselves once more at home, it would seem immaterial to me to inquire whether they had ever been abroad."

The essential difference between the upholders and the opponents of this theory was not shown in the practical treatment proposed for the States which had been in rebellion. It was in truth a difference only in degree. The stoutest defenders of the dogma that the States had not been out of the Union did not propose to permit the re-organization of their local governments except upon conditions prescribed by the National authority, and did not assert the rightfulness of their claims to representation in the Senate and House until the prescribed conditions were complied with. Those who protested against the dogma did not assert the right to keep the States out of the Union, but only claimed an unrestricted power to exact as the prerequisite of re-admission such conditions as might be deemed essential to the public safety—especially such as would most surely prevent another rebellion against National authority. The two schools in short marked the dividing line between the radical and the conservative. Perhaps another feature might still more clearly indicate the difference between the two. The conservatives thought the process of reconstruction could be accomplished under the sole authority and direction of the Executive Department of the Government, while the radicals held it to be a matter for the exclusive determination of Congress, affirming that the President's right of intervention was limited to approval or veto of the bills which Congress should send to him, and to the execution of all laws which should be constitutionally enacted.

An extra session of Congress seemed specially desirable at the time, and had one been summoned by the President, many of the troubles which subsequently resulted might have been averted. The propriety of ordering an earlier assemblage of the Thirty-ninth Congress than that already provided by the Constitution had been discussed to a very considerable extent among the members of the Thirty-eighth, as its final adjournment (March 3, 1865) approached. The rebellion seemed tottering to its fall, and it was the belief of many of the leading men both of the Senate and the House, that it might be a special advantage if Congress should be in session when the final surrender of the Confederate forces should be made. But the prevailing opinion was in favor of leaving the matter to Mr. Lincoln's discretion. It was felt by the members that if the situation should demand the presence of Congress, Mr. Lincoln would promptly issue his proclamation, and if the situation should not demand it, the presence of Congress might prove hurtful, and would certainly not be helpful. The calamity of Mr. Lincoln's death had never entered into the public mind, and therefore no provision was made with any view of its remotest possibility.

Mr. Johnson, however, is scarcely to be blamed for not calling an extra session of Congress. Aside from his confidence in his own power to deal with the problems before him, he shared, no doubt, in the general dislike which Presidents in recent years have shown for extra sessions. Indeed, to the Executive Department of the Government, Congress, even in its regular sessions, is a guest whose coming is not welcomed with half the heartiness with which its departure is speeded. But an extra session, especially at the beginning of an Administration, is looked upon with almost superstitious aversion, and is always to be avoided if possible. It was remembered that all the woes of the elder Adams' Administration, all the intrigues which the choleric President fancied that Hamilton was carrying on against him in connection with our French difficulties, had their origin in the extra session of May, 1797. It was remembered also that the unpopularity which attached to the Presidency of Mr. Madison was connected with the two extra sessions which his timid Administration was perhaps too ready to assemble. So deeply was the hostility to extra sessions implanted in the minds of political leaders by the misfortunes of Adams and Madison that another was not called for a quarter of a century. In September, 1837, Mr. Van Buren inaugurated the ill-fortune of his Administration by assembling Congress three months in advance of its regular session. John Tyler in turn never recovered from the dissensions and disasters of the extra session of May, 1841,—though it was precipitated upon him by a call issued by President Harrison. All those extra sessions except the one in Mr. Van Buren's Administration had been held in May, and even in his case the proclamation summoning Congress was issued in May. No wonder, therefore, that ill-luck came to be associated with that month. When the necessity of assembling Congress was forced upon Mr. Lincoln by the firing on Sumter, Mr. Seward warned him that in any event he must not have the session begin in May. It must be confessed therefore that the precedents were sufficiently alarming to influence Mr. Johnson against an extra session. Nor was there any popular demand for it because the President's policy had not as yet portended trouble or strife in the ranks of the Republican party.

CHAPTER IV.

Declining to seek the advice of Congress in the embarrassments of his position, President Johnson necessarily subjected himself to the counsel and influence of his Cabinet. He had inherited from Mr. Lincoln an organization of the Executive Department which, with the possible exception of Mr. Seward, was personally agreeable to him and politically trusted by him. He dreaded the effect of changing it, and declined upon his accession to make room for some eminent men who by long personal association and by identity of views on public questions would naturally be selected as his advisers. He had not forgotten the experience and the fate of the chief magistrates who like himself had been promoted from the Vice-Presidency. He instinctively wished to avoid their mistakes and to leave behind him an administration which should not in after years be remembered for its faults, its blunders, its misfortunes.

The Federal Government had existed fifty-two years before it encountered the calamity of a President's death. The effect which such an event would produce upon the personnel of the Government and upon the partisan aspects of the Administration was not therefore known prior to 1841. The Vice-President in previous years had not always been on good terms with the President. In proportion to his rank there was no officer of the Government who exercised so little influence. His most honorable function—that of presiding over the Senate—was purely ceremonial, and carried with it no attribute of power except in those rare cases when the vote of the Senate was tied—a contingency more apt to embarrass than to promote his political interests. He was, of course, neither sought nor feared by the crowds who besieged the President. He was therefore not unnaturally thrown into a sort of antagonism with the Administration—an antagonism sure to be stimulated by the coterie who, disappointed in efforts to secure favor with the President, were disposed to take refuge in the Cave of Adullam, where from chagrin and sheer vexation the Vice-President had too frequently been found. The class of disappointed men who gathered around the Vice-President held a political relation not unlike that of the class who in England have on several occasions formed the Prince of Wales' party—composed of malcontents of the opposition, who were on the worst possible terms with the Ministry.

John Tyler, as President Johnson well knew from personal observation, began his Executive career with an apparent intention of following in the footsteps of the lamented Harrison, to which course he had been indeed been enjoined by the dying President in words of the most solemn import. Tyler gave assurances to his Cabinet that he desired them to retain their places. But the suggestion—which he was too ready to adopt—was soon made, that he would earn no personal fame by submissively continuing in the pathway marked out by another. With this uneasiness implanted in his mind, it was impossible that he should retain a Cabinet in whose original selection he had no part, and whose presence was the symbol of a political subordination which constantly fretted him. A cause of difference was soon found; difference led to irritation, irritation to open quarrel, and quarrel ended in a dissolution of the Cabinet five months after Mr. Tyler's accession to the Executive chair. The dispute was then transferred to his party, and grew more angry day by day until Tyler was driven for political shelter and support to the Democratic Party, which had opposed his election.

Mr. Fillmore had not been on good terms with General Taylor's Administration, and when he succeeded to the Presidency he made haste to part with the illustrious Cabinet he found in power. He accepted their resignations at once, and selected heads of departments personally agreeable to himself and in political harmony with his views. He did not desert his party, but he passed over from the anti-slavery to the pro-slavery wing, defeated the policy of his predecessor, secured the enactment of the Fugitive-slave Law, and neutralized all efforts to prohibit the introduction of slavery in the Territories. In this course Mr. Fillmore had the support of the great leaders of the party, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, but he disregarded the young Whigs who under the lead of Mr. Seward were proclaiming a new political dispensation in harmony with the advancing public opinion of the world. Mr. Fillmore did not leave his party, but he failed to retain the respect and confidence of the great mass of Northern Whigs; and his administration came to an end in coldness and gloom for himself, and with the defeat, and practically the destruction, of the party which had chosen him to his high place four years before. His faithlessness to General Scott gave to the Democratic candidate an almost unparalleled victory. Scott encountered defeat. Fillmore barely escaped dishonor.