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 narrow escape of the measure again created great uneasiness, not only among the Republicans in Congress but throughout the country. One or two more defections would imperil Republican control of the Senate. The loyalty of every member to his party was therefore scanned with closest observation. Rumors, gossip, inventions of all kinds were set afloat in the public press,—hinting first at one man and then at another among the Republican senators as likely to weaken, as about going over to the Administration, as having just had a confidential interview with Mr. Seward, as dining the evening before with the President, or as being concerned in some matter of even less consequence. When public interest is heightened the imagination of the people is stimulated, until trifles light as air have fatal significance in one direction or the other. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1866 (the tentative period, as it may be called, in fixing the relations of the President and Congress) this suggestion of doubt, this latent apprehension, continued, and was not indeed wholly removed until the political lines were definitely drawn by the elections for representatives to Congress in the ensuing autumn.

The situation in all its bearings was one of peculiar embarrassment, beset with extraordinary difficulties to those who directed the proceedings of Congress. In reviewing the events of that day, whatever may be thought respecting their wisdom and expediency, candid men of all parties will concede that the Republican leaders exhibited great determination of purpose, remarkable steadiness of nerve and unflagging devotion to principle. They were absolutely without precedent to guide them in the exigencies and emergencies of the situation. It was well said at the time that the framers of the Constitution in 1787 were not confronted with difficulties so grave or surrounded with problems so complex and unproved, as were the leaders of Congress during the period of Reconstruction. The framers of the Constitution met for one purpose, upon which all were agreed. They had only to reconcile differences of detail and to adjust the jealousies of local interest; but in 1866 Congress was called upon to exclude the President practically from all share in the law-making power, and to charge him on his oath of duty to faithfully execute laws, against which he had constantly entered his solemn protest, not only as inexpedient but as unconstitutional. Perhaps a man of more desperate resolution than Mr. Johnson might have used his Executive power more effectively against Congress, but he must have done so at the expense of his fidelity to sworn obligations. The practical deduction as to the working of our Governmental machinery, from the whole experience of that troublous era, is that two-thirds of each House, united and stimulated to one end, can practically neutralize the Executive power of the Government and lay down its policy in defiance of the efforts and the opposition of the President.

The defection of Senator Lane of Kansas from the ranks of the most radical Republicans caused great surprise to the country. He had been so closely identified with all the tragic events in the prolonged struggle to keep slavery out of Kansas, that he was considered to be an irreconcilable foe to the party that tolerated or in any way apologized for its existence. The position he had taken in voting against the Civil Rights Bill worried and fretted him. He keenly felt his separation from the sympathy of such men as Sumner, Chandler, Wade, and the whole host who had nobly fought the battle of Kansas in the halls of Congress. He felt still more keenly the general and somewhat indignant disapproval of his action, freely expressed by the great mass of his constituents. One of his intimate friends said that on the very day of his vote he received a telegram warning him that if he voted against the bill it would be the mistake of his life. The telegram reached him after the roll had been called. He said excitedly, "The mistake has been made. I would give all I possess if it were undone." He was still further disturbed by imputations upon his integrity in connection with some transactions of the Indian Bureau—imputations which were pronounced baseless by the two senators from Indiana (Thomas A. Hendricks and Henry S. Lane), one a political opponent and the other a political friend, who had impartially examined all the facts. But under the mortification caused by parting with old political associates, and the humiliation to which he was subjected by groundless imputations upon his character, his mind gave way and on the 11th of July, 1866 he committed suicide.

General Lane was a native of Indiana, son of a reputable lawyer, Amos Lane, who was a representative in Congress during the Administrations of Jackson and Van Buren. He thus inherited Democracy of the most aggressive type. He was a man of violent passions and marked courage. He commanded a regiment of Indiana volunteers at the battle of Buena Vista, and in 1852 was elected a member of the House of Representatives. He was a warm supporter of Douglas and voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He immediately afterwards emigrated to Kansas, as he said, "to see fair play under the doctrine of popular sovereignty." His career thenceforward formed a large part of the history of Kansas. He contributed perhaps as largely as any other one man to the victory of the Free-State policy, and became as violent in his hostility to the Democratic party as he had formerly been in its advocacy. When his State was admitted to the Union in 1861 he was rewarded with the honor of being one of her first senators in Congress. His course in the Senate, until the time of his defection, had been specially marked for its aggressiveness in support of the war and the destruction of the institution of slavery. He was profoundly attached to Mr. Lincoln and had received many marks of his friendship. The motive for his strange course under President Johnson was never clearly disclosed. He was in the full vigor of life when he closed it with his own hands, being a few weeks beyond his fifty-first birthday.

The Administration of Mr. Johnson had, before the death of Mr. Lane, been unhappily associated in the popular mind with another suicide. A few days before the assembling of Congress Mr. Preston King, collector of the port of New York, had drowned himself in the Hudson River by leaping from a ferry-boat. He had been for more than twenty years an intimate friend of Mr. Johnson and held, as already narrated, a confidential relation to him at the time of his accession to the Presidency. He had been especially influential in the National Republican Convention of 1864 in securing for Mr. Johnson the nomination for the Vice-Presidency. The original disagreement with Mr. Seward was generally ascribed to the influence of Mr. King upon the President, but when, with Mr. Seward in the Cabinet, Mr. King was appointed collector of customs for the port of New York, it was understood to mean that a perfect reconciliation had taken place between all the Republican factions in his State. The change in the President's position was a complete surprise to Mr. King and left him in a peculiarly embarrassing situation. He was essentially a radical man in all his political views, and the evident tendency of the President towards extreme conservatism on the question of reconstruction was a keen distress to him. He was at a loss to determine his course of action. If he should resign his position it would be the proclamation of hostility to one to whom he was deeply attached. If he should remain in office he feared it might be at the expense of forfeiting the good will of the tens of thousands of New-York Republicans who had always reposed the utmost confidence in his fidelity to principle, and who had rewarded him with the highest honors in their power to bestow. He had not desired the collectorship, and consented to accept it only from his sincere friendship for the President and from his earnest desire to harmonize the Republican party in New York and bring its full strength to the support of the Administration. The office had given him no pleasure. It had indeed brought him nothing but care and anxiety. The applications for place were numerous and perplexing, the daily routine of duty was onerous and exacting, and his pecuniary responsibility to the Government, much exaggerated by his worried mind, constantly alarmed him. Mr. King found himself therefore so situated that, whichever way he turned, he faced embarrassment in his career, and as he imagined, disaster to his reputation. In the conflicting emotions incident to his entangled position, his brain was fevered, and his intellect became disordered. From the anguish which his sensitive nature could not endure, he sought relief in the grave.

Mr. King was born in 1806 at Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, New York, which throughout his life continued to be his home. He became prominent in political affairs, while still a young man, as a zealous supporter of President Jackson in whose interest he edited a paper. He attached himself to that strong school of New-York Democrats of whom Silas Wright was the acknowledged leader. After conspicuous service in the New-York Legislature, he entered Congress in 1845 and remained until 1851. When the South demanded the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise Mr. King followed his personal convictions, broke from his Democratic associations and aided in the organization of the Republican party. He adhered steadily to the fortunes of the new party and brought with him a strong popular support—the large Republican majorities in Northern New York being originally due in no small degree to his personal influence and earnest efforts.

CHAPTER IX.

The controversies between the President and Congress, thus far narrated, did not involve what have since been specifically known as the Reconstruction measures. Those were yet to come. The establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau was at best designed to be a temporary charity; and the Civil Rights Bill, while growing out of changes effected by the war, was applicable alike to all conditions and to all times. The province of the Special Committee on Reconstruction was to devise and perfect those measures which should secure the fruits of the Union victory, by prescribing the essential grounds upon which the revolted States should be re-admitted to representation in Congress. The principal objects aimed at were at least four in number. That which most largely engaged popular attention at the outset was the increased representation which the South was to secure by the manumission of the negroes. In the original Constitution only three-fifths of the slaves were permitted to be enumerated in the basis of apportionment. Two-fifths were now added and an increase of political power to the South appeared probably as the somewhat startling result of the civil struggle. There was an obvious injustice in giving to the white men of the South the right to elect representatives in Congress apportioned to their section by reason of the four and a half million of negroes, who were enumerated in the census but not allowed to exercise any political power. By permitting this, a Confederate soldier who fought to destroy the Union would be endowed with a larger power of control in the National Government than the loyal soldier who fought to maintain the Union. To allow this to be accomplished would be a mere mockery of justice, the utter subversion of fair play between man and man.

Another subject deeply engaging Northern thought was the definition of American citizenship. There was a strong desire to place it on such substantial foundation as should prevent the possibility of sinister interpretation by the Judiciary, and guard it at the same time against different constructions in different States. This was an omission in the original Constitution—so grave an omission, indeed, that the guarantee entitling citizens of each State to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States, was in many cases ignored, often indeed defied and destroyed. If we were now to have a broader nationality as the result of our civil struggle, it was apparent to the mass of men, as well as to the publicist and statesman, that citizenship should be placed on unquestionable ground—on ground so plain that the humblest man who should inherit its protections would comprehend the extent and significance of his title.

A third point had taken possession of the popular mind, quickened and intensified as it was by the conflict between the President and Congress. The President, as already stated, had by the lavish use of the pardoning power signalized his change on the subject of Reconstruction. Many of the worst offenders in the Confederate cause had received Executive clemency. Not only had the general mass of rebels been pardoned by the amnesty proclamation of May 29th, but many thousands of the classes excepted in that instrument had afterwards received special pardons from the President. The crime of treason, which they had committed, was thus condoned, and the Executive pardon could be pleaded against any indictment or any attempt to punish by process of law. If there should be no provision to the contrary, these pardoned men would thus become as eligible to all the honors and emoluments of the Republic as though they had not for four years been using their utmost efforts to destroy its existence. It was therefore the general expectation of the people that by some law, either statute or organic, the political privileges of these men, so far as the right to hold office was involved, should be restricted, and that, without contravening the full force and effect of the President's pardon, they might justly be deprived of all right to receive the honors of the Nation and of the State. From the crime of rebellion they had been freed by the President, but it was expected that Congress would clearly define the difference between pardoning a rebel for treason to his county and endowing him with the right to enjoy the honors and emoluments of office.