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 session lasted until the thirtieth day of March, and though Congress had then completed all the business pressing upon its attention the Republican leaders would not permit an adjournment sine die. They decided to meet again in midsummer. The same necessity that had induced them to convene in March persuaded them that the President should not be allowed to have control of events for eight months without the supervision of the legislative branch of the Government. It was resolved therefore that Congress should meet on Wednesday, July 3d. The vigilance and determination evinced by this action did not prove useless or go unrewarded. Only a few weeks after Congress had taken its recess the danger anticipated by the Republican leaders, from hostile interpretation of the Reconstruction Acts by the Attorney-General, was made fully apparent. On the 24th of May and the 12th of June Mr. Stanbery gave two opinions to the President, which in many respects neutralized the force both of the original and supplementary acts of Reconstruction. His adverse views were elaborately and skilfully presented, and tended to embarrass the military commanders of the Southern districts in the administration of law, and to hinder the registration of voters and the holding of elections for constitutional conventions. Republican leaders therefore felt not only justified in the precautions they had taken to keep the power of Congress alive, but esteemed it peculiarly fortunate that they could so promptly prevent the evil effects which might otherwise flow from the unfriendly constructions of the Attorney-General. The principal business of the July session was to provide a second supplementary Act which effectually remedied all the objections and obstructions which Mr. Stanbery's acute legal knowledge had suggested. The bill passed both branches by the 13th of July and reached the President on the 14th—meeting at his hands the same fate that its predecessors had incurred. On the 19th he vetoed it—rehearsing the objections he had repeatedly stated on the same issues.

The President complained that within less than a year Congress had attempted to strip the Executive Department of the Government of some of its essential powers. "The military commander," said he, "is, as to the power of appointment, made to take the place of the President, and the General of the Army the place of the Senate, and any attempt on the part of the President to assert his own Constitutional power may, under pretense of law, be met by official insubordination. It is to be feared that these military officers, looking to the authority given by these laws, rather than to the letter of the Constitution, will recognize no authority but the commander of the district or the General of the Army. . . . If there were no other objection than this to the proposed legislation it would be sufficient. While I hold the chief executive authority of the United States, while the obligations rests upon me to see that all laws are faithfully executed, I can never willingly surrender that trust or the powers given for its execution. I can never give my assent to be made responsible for the faithful execution of laws, and at the same time surrender that trust and the powers which accompany it to any other executive officer, high or low, or to any number of executive officers."

Many of those who kept closest watch of the controversy between the President and Congress saw in the foregoing words something ominous. In their apprehensions of evil they construed it as a threat that the President would exercise his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy with which he was fully invested by the Constitution, to change the assignment of military officers at will. Should he stubbornly or capriciously assert this power he might seriously embarrass the entire administration of the Reconstruction Acts in the approaching registrations and elections in the Southern States. A change of officers at a single point might frustrate all the preparations for the reconstruction of a State, and a general change might produce chaos in the South and possibly develop a spirit of violence of which no man could measure the effect. The President's words made a deep impression on Congress. Mr. Boutwell saw in them a deadly intent "which provokes and demands the exercise of the highest and gravest duty of this House"—meaning that the President should be impeached. Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania taunted Mr. Boutwell with the declaration that all the talk of impeachment was "mere bluster;" while Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, though believing that Mr. Johnson deserved impeachment, considered it "a vain and futile thing." "There are," said he, "unseen agencies at work, invisible powers operating everywhere in the country, which will protect a man like Johnson when called upon." Debate, however, was very brief, and the House passed the bill over the veto by ayes 108, noes 25. In the Senate there was no discussion whatever on the President's message, that body being content to pass the bill against his objections by 30 ayes to 6 noes.

The Senate and the House were both ready to adjourn on the 20th of July, but Mr. Sumner, Mr. Howard of Michigan, and others of the most radical type in both branches, desired that Congress might remain in session for the summer and autumn, or at least have such short vacations as would practically amount to a continuous session. Their object was to keep constant watch of the course of the Administration and be at all times ready to neutralize its evil purpose. Aside from the great personal inconvenience which this would occasion to many members, the judgment of the majority was against so radical a step. The more conservative members of the Republican party feared that a continuous session of Congress would seriously increase the uneasiness and excitement in the country by creating the impression that the Senate and House were sitting as a committee of public safety, in the apprehension of a civil revolution. The reply of those who opposed the adjournment was that the condition of public affairs did actually tend to revolution, and that instead of fanning the popular excitement by remaining in session, Congress would be thus most wisely allaying the fears which had entered the minds of so large a number of the people. But this argument did not prevail, and the conservative view secured a majority in both Houses. The vote in the Senate however was very close, there being only one more Republican in the affirmative that in the negative, leaving to Democratic votes, really, the decision of the question. A very inconvenient compromise was made by an adjournment to the 21st of November—only a fortnight before Congress would convene in regular annual session on the first Monday of December. No good reason was assigned for so extraordinary a step, and no benefit resulted from it.

The Reconstruction Acts, both original and supplementary, were now in full operation throughout the South. The President did not interpose serious objection to the assignment of the Army officers whose names were suggested by General Grant, and the ten insurrectionary States not yet re-admitted to representation were remanded to military government with apparent quiet and order. General Schofield was directed to take charge of the district of Virginia; General Sickles was placed in command of the district of North Carolina and South Carolina; General John Pope was assigned to the district of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida; General Ord to the district of Mississippi and Arkansas; and General Sheridan to the district of Louisiana and Texas. These assignments were made with due promptness after the enactment of the laws, and the several commanders at once proceeded to their novel and responsible duties.(1)

Under the enlargements of suffrage in the direction of loyalty, and its restrictions in the direction of disloyalty, the Southern States once more turned their attention to the question of Reconstruction. They saw, as the law intended them to see, that military government would exist until the loyal inhabitants of those States should present themselves before Congress with a constitution adapted to the changed circumstances resulting from the war, and to the necessities superinduced by the abolition of slavery. The Southern men who had defiantly rejected the Fourteenth Amendment, and had with confidence relied upon the power of President Johnson to vindicate their position, now discovered their mistake, and were reluctantly but completely convinced that the only road to representation in Congress for their States was through submission to the conditions imposed by the Acts of Reconstruction,—conditions far more exacting than those which had been required by the preceding Congress and which they had so unwisely refused to accept.

The assignments of Army officers to the Southern districts were made early in the spring of 1867. From that time onward it was hoped that the preservation of order would be secured in the South, and that the rights of all classes would be adequately protected. But notwithstanding the anticipation of this desirable result, there was throughout the summer and autumn of 1867 a feeling of great anxiety concerning the condition of the Southern States,—a constant apprehension that some outbreak similar to that in New Orleans the preceding year might lead to deplorable consequences, among the least of which would be the postponement of the organization of State governments. The cause of this solicitude among Northern people was the novel experiment in the South of allowing loyal men regardless of race or color to share in the suffrage and to participate in the administration of the Government. Under any less authoritative mandate than that which is conveyed in a military order with the requisite force behind it, the Southern communities would never have accepted or submitted to the conditions thus imposed. But the sympathy which their condition under other circumstances might have evoked in the North, was stifled by the pertinent consideration that they had refused other forms of Reconstruction, and had wilfully drawn upon themselves all that was unwelcome in the one now about to be enforced. It was to be noted moreover that the feature which was most unwelcome —impartial suffrage—was the one especially founded upon justice, abstract as well as practical.

Conventions were held successively in all the States, the elections being conducted in good order, while every man entitled to vote was fully secured in his suffrage. The conventions were duly assembled, constitutions formed, submitted in due time, and approved by popular vote. State governments were promptly organized under these organic laws, Legislatures were elected, and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in each of the States with as hearty a unanimity as in the preceding winter it has been rejected by the same communities. The proceedings were approximately uniform in all the States, and the constitutions, with such minor differences and adaptations as circumstances required, were in all essential points the same. All were ordained in the spirit of liberty, all prohibited the existence of any form of slavery, and all heartily recognized the supreme sovereignty of the National Government as having been indisputably established by the overthrow of the Rebellion which was undertaken to confirm the adverse theory of State-rights.

These proceedings in the South were in full progress when the second or long session of the Fortieth Congress began, on the first Monday of December, 1867. While President Johnson had not interposed any obstructions to the working of the Reconstruction Act which had not been effectively cured by the two supplementary Acts, he had neither concealed nor abated his utter hostility to the policy of Congress,—a form of hostility that grew in rancor in proportion as he had been thwarted and rendered powerless by the enactment of the laws over his veto. When Congress came together he seemed to have gathered all his strength for a final assault upon its Reconstruction work and for a final vindication of his own policy. His message was laden with every form of attack which ingenuity could devise to throw discredit upon Congress, and if possible to affright the people by the dismal consequences destined in his judgment to follow the flagrant violation of the Constitution which he saw in the Reconstruction policy. He appealed to the people on the ground of patriotism, public safety, and personal interest. He pictured anew the advantage and the grandeur of having the old Union fully restored; he warned the people of the danger of sowing the seeds of another rebellion by allowing continued maltreatment of the Southern people; and he appealed to the commercial and financial interests of the country by pointing out how every form of property was endangered by the chaotic conditions of affairs to which, in his belief, the policy of Congress was steadily tending. Beyond these considerations he endeavored to arouse among the people all possible prejudice against negro suffrage. He declared that "of all the dangers which our Nation has yet encountered, none are equal to those which must result from the success of the effort now making to Africanize the half of our country." "We must not," said he, "delude ourselves. It will require a strong standing army, and probably more than two hundred millions per annum, to maintain the supremacy of negro governments after they are established,—a sum thus thrown away which would, if properly used, form a sinking-fund large enough to pay the whole National debt in less than fifteen years."

The argument of the President however was not merely a twice-told tale. It had been repeated many times and though never more artfully stated than now, it fell upon unlistening ears, making no impression whatever upon Congress and very little upon the country. The process of Reconstruction went on, and its first fruit was the presentation of a constitution from Arkansas, framed in exact accordance with the requirements prescribed by Congress, and accompanied by proof that the State had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. A bill was introduced in the House by Mr. Stevens, on the 7th of May (1868), to admit the State of Arkansas to representation in Congress. The question of Reconstruction had been debated so elaborately and for so long a period of time that there was little disposition now to open the subject afresh, and with far less resistance than had been anticipated the Arkansas bill was passed in both branches, and the State declared entitled to all those rights in the Union which she, with her sisters in rebellion, had so flippantly thrown aside in 1861. A fundamental condition was attached to the admission, declaring "that the Constitution of Arkansas shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote, who are entitled to vote by the Constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State."