“Resolved, That William M. Fishback and Elisha Baxter are not entitled to seats as Senators from the State of Arkansas.”
1864, June 29—The resolution of the Committee on the Judiciary was adopted—yeas 27, nays 6.
President Lincoln was known to favor the immediate admission of Arkansas and Louisiana, but the refusal of the Senate to admit the Arkansas Senators raised an issue which partially divided the Republicans in both Houses, some of whom favored forcible reconstruction through the aid of Military Governors and the machinery of new State governments, while others opposed. The views of those opposed to the President’s policy are well stated in a paper signed by Benjamin F. Wade and Henry Winter Davis, published in the New York Tribune, August 5th, 1864. From this we take the more pithy extracts:
The President, by preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of the rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition.
If those votes turn the balance in his favor, is it to be supposed that his competitor, defeated by such means, will acquiesce?
If the rebel majority assert their supremacy in those States, and send votes which elect an enemy of the Government, will we not repel his claims?
And is not civil war for the Presidency inaugurated by the votes of rebel States?
Seriously impressed with these dangers, Congress, “the proper constitutional authority,” formally declared that there are no State governments in the rebel States, and provided for their erection at a proper time; and both the Senate and the House of Representatives rejected the Senators and Representatives chosen under the authority of what the President calls the free constitution and government of Arkansas.
The President’s proclamation “holds for naught” this judgment, and discards the authority of the Supreme Court, and strides headlong toward the anarchy his proclamation of the 8th of December inaugurated.
If electors for President be allowed to be chosen in either of those States, a sinister light will be cast on the motives which induced the President to “hold for naught” the will of Congress rather than his government in Louisiana and Arkansas.