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 Act re-admitting Arkansas to the right of representation was followed immediately by one of the same general scope with respect to the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. The same fundamental condition already cited as imposed on Arkansas was imposed on all these States, and the further condition was exacted from Georgia that certain provisions in her Constitution should be a solemn Act of her Legislature be declared null and void. The provision to be thus annulled related to the collection of debts, and their spirit and intent may be inferred from the opening declaration that "no court in the State shall have jurisdiction to try or determine any suit against any resident of this State upon any contract or agreement made or implied prior to the first day of June, 1865, or upon any contract made in renewal of any debt existing prior to the date named." The provision as the Georgia convention had framed it would have wrought great injury to a large number of creditors in the North. It was a complete outlawry of thousands of dollars legally and equitably due to honest creditors, and Georgia was compelled to agree to its nullification before her senators and representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress.

The bills admitting these States to representation did not secure Executive approval. On the 20th of June (1868) the President sent a message to the House of Representatives with his objections to the Arkansas bill. "The approval of this bill," said he, "would be an admission on the part of the Executive that the Act for the more efficient government of the rebel States, passed March 2, 1867, and the Act supplementary thereto, were proper and constitutional. My opinion however in reference to these measures has undergone no change, but on the contrary has been strengthened by the results which have attended their execution." He then proceeded to state his objections as he had so often done before, with no variation of argument, without the production of new facts.—Five days later, on the 25th of June, the President communicated his objections to the bill admitting the other Southern States to representation. He had apparently become fatigued with the reiteration of his arguments, and he frankly stated that he would not "undertake at this time to re-open the discussion upon the grave Constitutional question involved in the Reconstruction Acts." He declared that "the bill assumed authority over the States which has never been delegated to Congress," and "imposes conditions which are in derogation of equal rights." The vetoes did not evoke long debate in either House, and both bills were promptly passed over the objections of the President by a party vote, amounting indeed to more than three to one in both Senate and House.

In the arguments which the President had found such frequent occasion to submit, he quietly ignored the facts of secession, the crime of rebellion, the ruthless sundering of Constitutional bonds which these States had attempted. He took no note of the immense losses both of life and property which they had inflicted upon the Nation, and gave no consideration to the suffering which they had causelessly brought upon the people. If the President's logic should be accepted as indicting the true measure of Constitutional obligation imposed on the different members of the Union, then any State might rebel at any time, seize and destroy the National property, levy war, form alliances with hostile nations, and thus subject the Republic to great peril and great outlay, her citizens to murder and to pillage. If the rebellious State be finally subdued, the National Government must not attach the slightest condition to her re-admission to the Union; must not impose discipline or even administer reproof. The fact that the rebellion fails is the full warrant for its guilty authors to be at once repossessed of all the rights and all the privileges which in the frenzy of anger and disobedience they had thrown away. Such was in effect the argument of the President throughout the Reconstruction contest; such was the demand of the leaders of the Rebellion; such was the concession which the Democratic party constantly urged in Congress, through the press, and in all the channels through which its great power was exerted.

The position of the Republicans was steadily the opposite of that described. They held that the States which had rushed into a rebellion so wicked, so causeless, and so destructive, should not be allowed to resume their places of authority in the Union except under such conditions as would guard, so far as human foresight could avail, against the outbreak of another insurrection. They should return to the Union on precisely the same terms as those on which the loyal States held their places; they should have the same privileges and be subjected to the same conditions. As slavery had been the chief inciting cause of disunion, slavery should die. As the vicious theory of State-rights had been constantly at enmity with the true spirit of Nationality, the Organic Law of the Republic should be so amended that no standing-room for the heresy would be left. As the basis of representation in the Constitution has always given the slave States an advantage, these States, now that slavery was abolished, should not be permitted to oppress the negro population and use them merely for an enlarged Congressional power to the white men who had precipitated the rebellion. As the war to maintain Union and Liberty had cost a vast treasure and sacrificed countless lives, the States that had forced the bloody contest should agree by solemn amendment to the Constitution that the National debt and the pension to the soldier should be secured. Those conditions—applying to all the States alike, to the loyal and the disloyal in the same measure—must be honorably agreed to by the States that had gone into Disunion before they should be permitted to resume and enjoy the blessings of Union. History and the just judgment of mankind will vindicate the wisdom and the righteousness of the Republican policy, and that vindication will always carry with it the condemnation of Andrew Johnson.

The long contest over Reconstruction, so far as it involved the re-admission of the States to representation, was practically ended. Eight of the eleven Confederate States, at the close of June 1868, had their senators and representatives in Congress. Three—Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas—were prevented by self-imposed obstacles from enjoying the same privilege until after President Johnson had retired from office. Of the representatives on the floor of the Fortieth Congress from the eight states lately in rebellion, only two were Democrats. The senators were unanimously Republican. Of the aggregate number about one-half were natives of the South. The war upon the "Carpet-bagger" had not yet reached the era of savage atrocity, but the indignation pervading the governing classes of the South, as they were termed, was poured forth in unstinted measure upon the heads of all native Southerners who consented to accept offices conferred by negro votes. It was evident that the admission of the States to representation was to be taken as the signal for a new contest in the South—embittered in its character and sanguinary in its results. The men who had been foremost in plunging their States into the vortex of rebellion were determined to rule them—their determination being of that type which disregards the restraint of law and considers that the end justifies the means.

With all the advantages of old association and in numberless instances of kindly relation with the colored race, the former masters showed themselves singularly deficient in the tact and management necessary to win the negroes and bind them closely to their interest, in the new conditions which emancipation had created. Of the evil results that flowed from the contest now about to ensue—a contest that had many elements of provocation and of wrong on both sides—one of the most remarkable features was the complete control which the white men from the North, entire strangers to the negro, to his habits and to his prejudices, so readily obtained over him. The late slave-masters did not adapt themselves to the new situation. They gave way to repining and regretting, to sulking and to anger, to resentment and revenge, and thereby lost a great opportunity for binding together the two races in those ties of sympathy and confidence which must be maintained as an indispensable condition of prosperity, or even of domestic order and the reign of law, in the Southern States. The lack of moral courage among the physically brave men of the South has already been indicated and illustrated. It was something of this same defect that held back the slave-masters from the condescension, as they esteemed it, of establishing any relation whatever with the negro in his new condition of freedom. Such action was frowned upon by the public opinion of this class throughout the South, and for lack of bold leadership at the critical period, for lack of that consideration which in many subsequent instances has been lavished upon the colored man, the current of fatal prejudice was set strongly against the old master in the mind of his former slave. Events, as they developed in the stirring and sorrowful years that followed, were but a continual proof of that form of original blunder on the part of the Southern whites, which in affairs of civil administration is worse than a crime.

In excuse, or at least in explanation, of this unfortunate blunder on the part of Southern men, the obstinacy and wrong-headed course of President Johnson must be pleaded. It was his causeless, voluntary, unpardonable quarrel with his party which misled Southern men at the time when they most needed lessons of wisdom and moderation. The different result which we may well conceive might have followed in the South under the considerate and kindly spirit which Mr. Lincoln would have brought to the problem, gives us by contrast some faint appreciation of the enormity of Johnson's conduct and of the evil effects flowing from it. At the very moment when the President should have stood as a generous mediator, calming the irritation of the South —an irritation inevitably incident to defeat—and restraining somewhat, at least in the manner of preferring them, the demands and requirements which the Government in its hour of victory was justified in making, Johnson committed the grievous fault of espousing the Southern cause and quarreling with the party which had confided to him the power he was abusing.

Under the patronage and protection of the President, Southern men would have been more or less than human if they had not grown arrogant and defiant towards the men of the North. The chivalric sympathy which always moves the magnanimous in their treatment of a fallen foe, was therefore drowned in the indignation to which Northern men were naturally moved by provocations as unexpected as they were extraordinary. Stimulated by the protection of the President and encouraged by his contumacious quarrel with Congress, the South was driven from one unwise step to another, until the entire situation became hopelessly entangled, and every movement affected by anger and passion;—the North resolving more and more to insist on the fruits of victory, the South resolving more and more to act as though they had conquered in the contest. It was not unnatural, under the anxieties and discouragements of the crisis, that the South should have clung to Mr. Johnson for protection; but in the calm review which the lapse of twenty years affords, the most ardent Southern partisan must see that the President's policy was at enmity with the interest and happiness of his section.

It is not to be forgotten, however, that Mr. Johnson's course was marked by the inherent qualities of his mind. He had two signal defects, either of which would impair his fitness for Executive duty; united they rendered him incapable of efficient administration:—he was conceited and he was obstinate. Conceit without obstinacy may be overcome by the advice of judicious counselors; united with obstinacy it carries its possessor beyond the bounds of prudence, almost beyond the control of reason. Obstinacy united with good judgment is softened into the virtue of firmness. It has often been said that self-made men, as they are termed, are necessarily conceited. Like all aphorisms, this must be taken with numberless exceptions, but it was singularly applicable to Johnson, who was in all respects a self-made man. His great career was never absent from his thoughts, and he was always looking at himself as he fancied he would appear in history. He came to regard himself as the hero upon a remarkable stage of action, and naturally made the reflection that if he could have had in his early years the advantages which so many possess without improving, he would have made strides in life which would have left him without rivals. It would be impossible to gain a full and correct apprehension of Mr. Johnson's character without taking into account these qualities —qualities which were both the remote and immediate cause of his extraordinary career as Chief Magistrate.

The earlier Presidents, filled with the spirit of the convention that formed the Constitution, were extremely careful in the use of the veto-power. In eight years Washington used it but twice. Neither John Adams nor Thomas Jefferson used it even once. Madison resorted to it three times, Monroe only once, John Quincy Adams in not a single instance. Under the first six Presidents, the veto-power had been used but six times in all; unless there should be included some private bills sent back for correction and not in any sense furnishing matter of contest between parties. The country had thus been educated by the sages of the era of the Constitution in the belief that only an extraordinary occasion justified a resort to what, in the popular dislike of its character, had received the name of "the one-man power." President Jackson, therefore, surprised the country and shocked conservative citizens by his frequent employment of this great prerogative. During his term he thwarted the wish and the expressed resolve of Congress no less than eleven times on measures of great public consequence. Seven of these vetoes were of the kind which, during his Presidency, received the name of "pocket-vetoes."