Still one step further. All parties agree that this cannot be done by mere unauthorized congregations of the people, but that the time, place and manner must be prescribed by some department of the Government, according to the argument of Mr. Webster and the spirit of the decision of the Supreme Court in Luther vs. Borden, 7 Howard, page 1.
Yet another step in the series of propositions. All parties agree that as Congress was not in session at the close of the rebellion, the President, as Commander-in-Chief, was bound to take possession of the conquered country and establish such government as was necessary.
Thus far all is harmonious; but now the divergence begins. At the commencement of the present session of Congress three-fourths of both Houses held that when the people of the States are “deprived of all civil government,” and when, therefore, it becomes necessary to prescribe the time, place, and manner in and by which they shall organize themselves again into States while the President may take temporary measures, yet only the law-making power of the Government is competent to the full accomplishment of the task. In other words, that only Congress can enable citizens of the United States to create States. I have said that at the commencement of the session three-fourths of both houses held this opinion. The proportion is smaller now, and by a judicious use of executive patronage it may become still smaller; but the truth of the proposition will not be affected if every Representative and Senator should be manipulated into denying it.
On the other hand, the remaining fourth, composed of the supple Democracy and its accessions, maintain that this State-creating power is vested in the President alone, and that he has already exercised it.
The holy horror with which our opponents affect to contemplate the doctrine of destruction of States is that much political hypocrisy. Every man who asks the recognition of the existing local governments in the South thereby commits himself to that doctrine. The only possible claim that can be set up in favor of the existing governments is based upon the theory that the old ones have been destroyed. The present organizations sprang up at the bidding of the President after the conquest among a people who, he said, had been “deprived of all civil government.”
If the President’s “experiment” had resulted in organizing the southern communities in loyal hands, the majority in Congress would have found no difficulty in indorsing it and giving it the necessary efficiency by legislative enactment.
In this case, too, the President never would have denied the power of Congress in the premises. He never would have set up the theory that the citizens of the United States, through their representatives, are not to be consulted when those who have once broken faith with them ask to have the compact renewed.
Our opponents have no love for the President. They called him a usurper and a tyrant in Tennessee. They ridiculed him as a negro “Moses.” They tried to kill him, and failing that, they accused him of being privy to the murder of his predecessor. But when his “experiment” at reconstruction was found to result in favor of their friends, the rebels, then they hung themselves about his neck like so many mill-stones, and tried to damn him to eternal infamy by indorsing his policy. Will they succeed? Will he shake them off, or go down with them?
But let us suffer these discordant elements to settle their own terms of combinations as best they may. The final result cannot be doubtful.
If ten righteous men were needed to save Sodom, even Andrew Johnson will find it impossible to save the Democratic party.