American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

We are told, too, rather a novel thing, that if we do not take these laws, we are not to have the appropriations. I believe it has been announced in both branches of Congress, I suppose on the authority of the democratic caucus, that if we do not take these bills as they are planned, we shall not have any of the appropriations that go with them. The honorable Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Hereford] told it to us on Friday; the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] told it to us last session; the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] told it to us at the same time, and I am not permitted to speak of the legions who told us so in the other House. They say all these appropriations are to be refused—not merely the Army appropriation, for they do not stop at that. Look for a moment at the legislative bill that came from the democratic caucus. Here is an appropriation in it for defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court and the circuit and district courts of the United States, including the District of Columbia, &c., $2,800,000: “Provided”—provided what?

That the following sections of the Revised Statutes relating to elections—going on to recite them—be repealed.

That is, you will pass an appropriation for the support of the judiciary of the United States only on condition of this repeal. We often speak of this government being divided between three great departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—co-ordinate, independent, equal. The legislative, under the control of a democratic caucus, now steps forward and says, “We offer to the Executive this bill, and if he does not sign it, we are going to starve the judiciary.” That is carrying the thing a little further than I have ever known. We do not merely propose to starve the Executive if he will not sign the bill, but we propose to starve the judiciary that has had nothing whatever to do with the question. That has been boldly avowed on this floor; that has been boldly avowed in the other House; that has been boldly avowed in democratic papers throughout the country.

And you propose not merely to starve the judiciary but you propose that you will not appropriate a solitary dollar to take care of this Capitol. The men who take care of this great amount of public property are provided for in that bill. You say they shall not have any pay if the President will not agree to change the election laws. There is the public printing that goes on for the enlightenment of the whole country and for printing the public documents of every one of the Departments. You say they shall not have a dollar for public printing unless the President agrees to repeal these laws.

There is the Congressional Library that has become the pride of the whole American people for its magnificent growth and extent. You say it shall not have one dollar to take care of it, much less add a new book, unless the President signs these bills. There is the Department of State that we think throughout the history of the Government has been a great pride to this country for the ability with which it has conducted our foreign affairs; it is also to be starved. You say we shall not have any intercourse with foreign nations, not a dollar shall be appropriated therefor unless the President signs these bills. There is the Light-House Board that provides for the beacons and the warnings on seventeen thousand miles of sea and gulf and lake coast.

You say those lights shall all go out and not a dollar shall be appropriated for the board if the President does not sign these bills. There are the mints of the United States at Philadelphia, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, coining silver and coining gold—not a dollar shall be appropriated for them if the President does not sign these bills. There is the Patent Office, the patents issued which embody the invention of the country—not a dollar for them. The Pension Bureau shall cease its operations unless these bills are signed and patriotic soldiers may starve. The Agricultural Bureau, the Post Office Department, every one of the great executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by the throat, highwayman-style, collared on the highway, commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the democratic congressional caucus. That is what it is; simply that. No committee of this Congress in either branch has ever recommended that legislation—not one. Simply a democratic caucus has done it.

Of course this is new. We are learning something every day. I think you may search the records of the Federal Government in vain; it will take some one much more industrious in that search than I have ever been, and much more observant than I have ever been, to find any possible parallel or any possible suggestion in our past history of any such thing. Most of the Senators who sit in this Chamber can remember some vetoes by Presidents that shook this country to its centre with excitement. The veto of the national-bank bill by Jackson in 1832, remembered by the oldest in this Chamber; the veto of the national-bank bill in 1841 by Tyler, remembered by those not the oldest, shook this country with a political excitement which up to that time had scarcely a parallel; and it was believed, whether rightfully or wrongfully is no matter, it was believed by those who advocated those financial measures at the time, that they were of the very last importance to the well-being and prosperity of the people of the Union. That was believed by the great and shining lights of that day. It was believed by that man of imperial character and imperious will, the great Senator from Kentucky. It was believed by Mr. Webster, the greatest of New England Senators. When Jackson vetoed the one or Tyler vetoed the other, did you ever hear a suggestion that those bank charters should be put on appropriation bills or that there should not be a dollar to run the Government until they were signed? So far from it that, in 1841, when temper was at its height; when the whig party, in addition to losing their great measure, lost it under the sting and the irritation of what they believed was a desertion by the President whom they had chosen; and when Mr. Clay, goaded by all these considerations, rose to debate the question in the Senate, he repelled the suggestion of William C. Rives, of Virginia, who attempted to make upon him the point that he had indulged in some threat involving the independence of the Executive. Mr. Clay rose to his full height and thus responded:

“I said nothing whatever of any obligation on the part of the President to conform his judgment to the opinions of the Senate and the House of Representatives, although the Senator argued as if I had, and persevered in so arguing after repeated correction. I said no such thing. I know and I respect the perfect independence of each department, acting within its proper sphere, of the other departments.”

A leading democrat, an eloquent man, a man who has courage and frankness and many good qualities, has boasted publicly that the democracy are in power for the first time in eighteen years, and they do not intend to stop until they have wiped out every vestige of every war measure. Well, “forewarned is forearmed,” and you begin appropriately on a measure that has the signature of Abraham Lincoln. I think the picture is a striking one when you hear these words from a man who was then in arms against the Government of the United States, doing his best to destroy it, exerting every power given him in a bloody and terrible rebellion against the authority of the United States and when Abraham Lincoln was marching at the same time to his martyrdom in its defense! Strange times have fallen upon us that those of us who had the great honor to be associated in higher or lower degree with Mr. Lincoln in the administration of the Government should live to hear men in public life and on the floors of Congress, fresh from the battle-fields of the rebellion, threatening the people of the United States that the democratic party, in power for the first time in eighteen years, proposes not to stay its hand until every vestige of the war measures has been wiped out! the late vice-president of the confederacy boasted—perhaps I had better say stated—that for sixty out of the seventy-two years preceding the outbreak of the rebellion, from the foundation of the Government, the South, though in a minority, had by combining with what he termed the anti-centralists in the North ruled the country; and in 1866 the same gentleman indicated in a speech, I think before the Legislature of Georgia, that by a return to Congress the South might repeat the experiment with the same successful result. I read that speech at the time; but I little thought I should live to see so near a fulfillment of its prediction. I see here to-day two great measures emanating, as I have said, not from a committee of either House, but from a democratic caucus in which the South has an overwhelming majority, two-thirds in the House, and out of forty-two Senators on the other side of this Chamber professing the democratic faith thirty are from the South—twenty-three, a positive and pronounced majority, having themselves been participants in the war against the Union either in military or civil station. So that as a matter of fact, plainly deducible from counting your fingers, the legislation of this country to-day, shaped and fashioned in a democratic caucus where the confederates of the South hold the majority, is the realization of Mr. Stephens’ prophecy. And very appropriately the House under that control and the Senate under that control, embodying thus the entire legislative powers of the Government, deriving its political strength from the South, elected from the South, say to the President of the United States, at the head of the Executive Department of the Government, elected as he was from the North—elected by the whole people, but elected as a Northern man; elected on Republican principles, elected in opposition to the party that controls both branches of Congress to-day—they naturally say, “You shall not exercise your constitutional power to veto a bill.”

Some gentleman may rise and say, “Do you call it revolution to put an amendment on an appropriation bill?” Of course not. There have been a great many amendments put on appropriation bills, some mischievous and some harmless; but I call it the audacity of revolution for any Senator or Representative, or any caucus of Senators or Representatives, to get together and say, “We will have this legislation or we will stop the great departments of the Government.” That is revolutionary. I do not think it will amount to revolution; my opinion is it will not. I think that is a revolution that will not go around; I think that is a revolution which will not revolve; I think that is a revolution whose wheel will not turn; but it is a revolution if persisted in, and if not persisted in, it must be backed out from with ignominy. The democratic party in Congress have put themselves exactly in this position to-day, that if they go forward in the announced programme, they march to revolution. I think they will, in the end, go back in an ignominious retreat. That is my judgment.