Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

"Section 3. All legislation other than such as refers exclusively to the appropriation of money in any appropriation act of Congress shall be void, except such as may prescribe the terms or conditions upon which the money thereby appropriated shall be paid or received." —Con. Record, Vol. vii., Part III., p. 2576.

The adoption of this amendment would have relieved Congress of much work; have given claimants at all times a speedy and certain remedy for the disposition of their claims and at the same time secured protection to the government against unfounded claims. A statute of limitations could have put a rest old and often trumped-up claims, still constantly being brought before Congress. It is impossible for Congress to make a statute of limitations for its own guidance.(10) It never will obey a law against its own action.

In the Forty-sixth Congress there were many contested election cases, growing out of frauds and crimes at elections, especially in the South. The purpose of the dominant race South to overthrow the rule of the blacks or their friends was then manifest in the conduct of elections. The colored voter was soon, by coercion and fraud, practically deprived of his franchise. The plan of stuffing ballot-boxes with tissue ballots (printed often on tissue paper about an inch long and less in width) was in vogue in some districts. The judge or clerk of the election would, when the ballot-box was opened, shake from his sleeve into the box hundreds of these tickets. In these districts voters were encouraged to vote, but the tissue ballot was mainly counted to the number of the actual voters; those remaining were burned. The party in the majority in the House, however, generally voted in its men, regardless of the facts.

As early as June 7, 1878, I proposed to amend the postal laws so as to extend the free-delivery letter-carrier system to post offices having a gross revenue of $20,000. This amendment subsequently became a law, and gave many cities the carrier system. Prior to this, population alone was the test for establishing such offices.

I opposed the indiscriminate distribution of the remaining $10,000,000 of the $15,500,000 paid by Great Britain, as adjudged by the Geneva Arbitration, for indemnity for losses occasioned by Confederate cruisers which went to sea during the Rebellion from English ports with the connivance or through the negligence of the British Government. I insisted in a speech (December 17, 1878) that the fund should be distributed in payment of claims allowed by the arbitrators in making the award, or retained by the government as general indemnity. Many of the losers whose claims were taken into account in making the award could not be proper claimants to the fund, as they had been fully paid by marine insurance companies. It was insisted by some members that the companies had no equitable right to be subrogated to the rights of the claimants who were thus paid, because the companies had charged war-premiums, and hence did not deserve reimbursement.(11)

The Forty-sixth Congress will long be memorable in the history of our country. It was Democratic in both branches, for the first time since the war.

The previous Congress (House Democratic) adjourned March 4, 1879, without having performed its constitutional duty of appropriating the money necessary to carry on,. for the coming fiscal year, the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of the government, and for the pay of the army. The avowed purpose of this failure was to coerce a Republican President to withhold his veto and approve bills prohibiting the use of troops "to keep the peace at the polls on election days"; taking from the President his power to enforce all laws, even to the suppression of rebellion, except on the motion first taken by State authorities; repealing all election laws which secured the right, through supervisors of elections and special deputy marshals, to have free, fair elections for electors and members of Congress; and also that made it a crime for an officer of the army to suppress riots or disorder or to preserve the peace at elections.

The President called the Forty-sixth Congress in extra session, March 18, 1879, to make the necessary appropriations. The effort was at once made, through riders to appropriation bills and by separate bills, to enact the laws mentioned. Excitement ran high. For the first time in the history of the United States (perhaps in the history of any government) it was announced by a party in control of its law-making power, and consequently responsible for the proper conduct and support of the government, that unless the Executive would consent to legislation not by him deemed wise or just, there should not be provided means for maintaining the several departments of the government—that the government should be "starved to death." In vain were precedents sought for in the history of England for such suicidal policy. The debate in both branches of Congress ran high, and there was much apprehension felt by the people. Mr. Blackburn of Kentucky, speaking for his party, said:

"For the first time in eighteen years past the Democracy are back in power in both branches of this Legislature, and she proposes to signallize her return to power; she proposes to celebrate her recovery of her long-lost heritage by tearing off these degrading badges of servitude and destroying the machinery of a corrupt and partisan legislation. We do not intend to stop until we have stricken the last vestige of your war measures from the statute- book, which, like these, were born of the passions incident to civil strife and looked to the abridgment of the liberty of the citizen."

Others threatened to refuse to vote appropriations until the "Capitol crumbled into dust" unless the legislation demanded was passed. President Hayes' veto alone prevented the legislation. It is not here proposed to give a history of the struggle, fraught with so much danger to the Republic, but only to call attention to it. The contest lasted for months.