The chances of politics often carry men into the Presidential Chair, into Cabinets, and with later and demoralizing frequency into Senate seats; but chance never makes a Commoner, and Thaddeus Stevens was throughout the war, and up to the hour of his death, recognized as the great Commoner of the Northern people. He led in every House battle, and a more unflinching party leader was never known to parliamentary bodies. Limp and infirm, he was not liable to personal assault, even in days when such assaults were common; but when on one occasion his fiery tongue had so exasperated the Southerners in Congress as to make them show their knives and pistols, he stepped out into the aisle, and facing, bid them defiance. He was a Radical of the Radicals, and constantly contended that the government—the better to preserve itself—could travel outside of the Constitution. What cannot be said of any other man in history, can be said of Thaddeus Stevens. When he lay dead, carried thus from Washington to his home in Lancaster, with all of his people knowing that he was dead, he was, on the day following the arrival of his corpse, and within a few squares of his residence, unanimously renominated by the Republicans for Congress. If more poetic and less practical sections or lands than the North had such a hero, hallowed by such an incident, both the name and the incident would travel down the ages in song and story.[[20]]
The “rising” man in the 37th Congress was Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, elected Speaker of the 38th, and subsequently Vice-President. A great parliamentarian, he was gifted with rare eloquence, and with a kind which won friends without offending enemies—something too rare to last. In the House were also Justin S. Morrill, the author of the Tariff Bill which supplied the “sinews of war,” Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, then “the man of Statistics” and the “watch-dog of the treasury.” Roscoe Conkling was then the admitted leader of the New York delegation, as he was the admitted mental superior of any other in subsequent terms in the Senate, up to the time of his resignation in 1881. Reuben E. Fenton, his factional opponent, was also there. Ohio was strongly represented in both parties—Pendleton, Cox and Vallandigham on the side of the Democrats; Bingham and Ashley on the part of the Republicans. Illinois showed four prominent anti-Lecompton supporters of the administration—Douglas in the Senate; Logan, McClernand and Richardson in the House; while prominent among the Republicans were Lovejoy (an original Abolitionist), Washburne, a candidate for the Presidential nomination in 1880—Kellogg and Arnold. John F. Potter was one of the prominent Wisconsin men, who had won additional fame by accepting the challenge to duel of Roger A. Pryor of Virginia, and naming the American rifle as the weapon. Fortunately the duel did not come off. Pennsylvania had then, as she still has, Judge Kelley of Philadelphia, chairman of Ways and Means in the 46th Congress; also Edward McPherson, frequently since Clerk of the House, temporary President of the Cincinnati Convention, whose decision overthrew the unit rule, and author of several valuable political works, some of which we freely quote in this history. John Hickman, subsequently a Republican, but one of the earliest of the anti-Lecompton Democrats, was an admitted leader, a man of rare force and eloquence. So radical did he become that he refused to support the re-election of Lincoln. He was succeeded by John M. Broomall, who made several fine speeches in favor of the constitutional amendments touching slavery and civil rights. Here also were James Campbell, Hendricks B. Wright, John Covode, James K. Morehead, and Speaker Grow—the father of the Homestead Bill, which will be found in Book V., giving the Existing Political Laws.
At this session Senator Trumbull of Illinois, renewed the agitation of the slavery question, by reporting from the Judiciary Committee of which he was Chairman, a bill to confiscate all property and free all slaves used for insurrectionary purposes.[[21]] Breckinridge fought the bill, as indeed he did all bills coming from the Republicans, and said if passed it would eventuate in “the loosening of all bonds.” Among the facts stated in support of the measure was this, that the Confederates had at Bull Run used the negroes and slaves against the Union army—a statement never well established. The bill passed the Senate by 33 to 6, and on the 3d of August passed the House, though several Republicans there voted against it, fearing a too rapid advance would prejudice the Union cause. Indeed this fear was entertained by Lincoln when he recommended
COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION
in the second session of the 37th Congress, which recommendation excited official discussion almost up to the time the emancipation proclamation was issued as a war necessity. The idea of compensated emancipation originated with or was first formulated by James B. McKean of New York, who on Feb. 11th, 1861, at the 2d session of the 36th Congress, introduced the following resolution:
Whereas, The “Gulf States” have assumed to secede from the Union, and it is deemed important to prevent the “border slave States” from following their example; and whereas it is believed that those who are inflexibly opposed to any measure of compromise or concession that involves, or may involve, a sacrifice of principle or the extension of slavery, would nevertheless cheerfully concur in any lawful measure for the emancipation of the slaves: Therefore,
Resolved, That the select committee of five be instructed to inquire whether, by the consent of the people, or of the State governments, or by compensating the slaveholders, it be practicable for the General Government to procure the emancipation of the slaves in some, or all, of the “border States;” and if so, to report a bill for that purpose.
Lincoln was so strongly impressed with the fact, in the earlier struggles of the war, that great good would follow compensated emancipation, that on March 2d, 1862, he sent a special message to the 2d session of the 37th Congress, in which he said:
“I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honorable bodies, which shall be substantially as follows:
Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.