A cheer burst from his colleagues, and the roll-call proceeded.
When Stockton’s name was reached he sprang to his feet, voted for himself, and made a second tie!
With blank faces they turned to the leader, who ordered Charles Sumner to move that the Senator from New Jersey be not allowed to answer his name on an issue involving his own seat.
It was carried. Again the roll was called, and Stockton expelled by a majority of one.
In the moment of ominous silence which followed, a yellow woman of sleek animal beauty leaned far over the gallery rail and laughed aloud.
The passage of each act of the Revolutionary programme over the veto of the President was now but a matter of form. The act to degrade his office by forcing him to keep a cabinet officer who daily insulted him, the Civil Rights Bill, and the Freedman’s Bureau Bill followed in rapid succession.
Stoneman’s crowning Reconstruction Act was passed, two years after the war had closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting the names of ten great Southern States from its roll, and dividing their territory into five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.
When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied by a message whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest page of the Nation’s life.
Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read its burning words:
“The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the place of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it as bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of acting on the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises.