Zachariah Chandler: An Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services

by Unknown

5. With the further point that the recognition of this de facto government by the United States in the exchange of prisoners, in the acceptance of terms of surrender, in the observance of flags of truce, and in correspondence of various kinds, amounted to such a recognition of the existence of a government with which it was at war, as must prevent the United States from claiming that participation therein was treason.

These were the chief points which General Butler thought the defense would set up, and in his brief he grouped a powerful array of precedents and decisions upon which the prosecution could rest its case and meet these objections. During the early stages of this work, Mr. Chandler, General Butler and others, who firmly held that stern punishment should be meted out to a few conspicuous rebels—not in a spirit of vengeance, but from a belief that salutary results would follow if it should be established as a historical fact that in the United States treason is a high crime whose penalty is death—were constantly anxious lest the President should by some violent act or word destroy the moral effect of their position. In public he said repeatedly at this time that "the penalties of the law must be in a stern and inflexible manner executed upon conscious, intelligent and influential traitors," but his private utterances far outstripped this language, and were often scarcely less than bloodthirsty. Mr. Chandler, on one occasion, came away from the White House greatly disturbed by Mr. Johnson's disposition to treat this subject with mere anger, and characteristically said to Senator Wade and Mr. Hamlin, "Johnson has the nightmare, and it is important that he should be watched." General Butler's memorandum Mr. Chandler heartily approved as clear in scope, just in spirit, and certain to prove effective in operation, but, by the time it was fully completed, a great change had taken place in the disposition of the President. In April he was in favor of hanging every body; in June he was opposed to hanging any one. He finally ignored entirely the memorandum which General Butler had drawn up at his request, and decided that Davis should be tried by the civil authorities at Richmond, where his crimes had been committed. As a result the arch-rebel was allowed to remain in prison at Fortress Monroe for nearly two years, because of the lack of a civil court competent to take jurisdiction of his case. In 1866 he was indicted and arraigned, and in 1867 was admitted to bail; a year later a nolle prosequi was entered, and the case against him dismissed. Before this matter had reached its second stage even, Mr. Chandler had become convinced that Andrew Johnson had determined to desert the party which had elevated him to the vice-presidency, and with that knowledge ceased to act as his adviser and became one of the most active of his political enemies. The leniency of the course finally pursued toward Davis Mr. Chandler then and afterward regarded as a grave public mistake, and believed that the failure to enforce the death penalty where it was so thoroughly deserved was exceedingly unfortunate in its influence upon popular opinion, and did more than any other one cause to encourage the disloyal classes of the South in their plans for ultimately recapturing the political supremacy they had forfeited by rebellion.

Precisely the causes which led Andrew Johnson so quickly back into close fellowship with the men whom he had regarded as his inveterate enemies will never be known. It is probable that originally they were slight, but his temperament rapidly widened disagreement into irreconcilable hostility. His maudlin speech on Inauguration-day so incensed many of his supporters that the Republican senators, at a formal gathering, actually considered a proposition (urged by Mr. Sumner) to request him to resign the office he had disgraced. The conference decided against such a step, but Mr. Johnson heard of the movement, and regarded those who approved it with much bitterness; his hatred of them undoubtedly fed his growing dislike for the party of which they were influential leaders. Again, he was a thorough representative of the "poor whites" of the South. He felt their jealousy of the planting aristocracy which monopolized political power in his section, and this made him such a vigorous opponent of the secession conspiracy which that oligarchy organized and led. But he also shared in the prejudice of his own class against the negroes, and, when he saw the disposition of the Republicans to accord to the freedmen equal rights and privileges before the law, he refused to join in that movement and set doggedly about defeating such plans. Precisely how great Mr. Seward's influence over him was at this time is not clear, but it is certain that the change in his attitude toward Republicanism was simultaneous with the slow recovery of his Secretary of State from the blows of Payne's dagger. His combative obstinacy also made him fiercely resent the vigorous criticisms which his "policy" of reconstruction invited when first announced; Congress did not meet for months after his accession to the presidency, and its leaders were not in position to check his course, either by organized remonstrance or by legislative interposition; the rebels who had been denouncing him savagely were prompt to flatter his vanity and to offer promises of support; and, as a result, when the Thirty-ninth Congress met on December 4, 1865, the break between the President and the Republican party had passed beyond mending. Mr. Johnson entered at once upon that shameful course, which included the betrayal of those who had trusted him and the disgrace of his high office by lamentable public exhibitions of passion and boorishness, and which led to great and durable public injury by trebling the difficulties surrounding the delicate and important work of reconstructing the "Confederacy." Mr. Chandler's distrust of the President commenced with his change of tone in regard to the punishment of treason and with the first manifestation of his intention to assume full control of reconstruction and to practically restore the rebels to power in the subdued States. They had one stormy interview at the White House, in which Mr. Chandler, after touching upon the implicit character of his confidence in the President during their senatorial service, denounced his new course as a violation of his sacred pledges and a base surrender to traitors, and left him indignantly and forever. From that time he regarded Andrew Johnson as a public enemy, whose opportunities for evil were to be lessened by every possible lawful restriction. He did not oppose the efforts made by his more hopeful associates in December, 1865, to re-establish harmony between the Capitol and the White House, but he predicted their failure. All the legislation which diminished Johnson's power for harm he ardently supported. The bills to admit Nebraska and Colorado (the Colorado bill failed at this time) he was especially active in pushing, from a belief that it was important to increase the Republican ascendency in the Senate while there was an uncertainty as to how much strength the "Johnson men" proper (Senators Doolittle, Dixon, Norton, and Cowan) might develop. It was largely through Mr. Chandler's untiring exertions, also, that the Fortieth Senate elected Benjamin F. Wade as its President, and thus made him the acting Vice-President of the United States, a position of the very highest responsibility in the then critical state of national affairs.

Mr. Chandler aided in shaping and passing the reconstruction measures of 1866-'67-'68, not for the reason that they precisely embodied his ideas of the true method to be pursued, but because they presented a plan upon which the Republicans could be united, which was practicable, and which promised to reorganize the Southern States on the basis of the supremacy of the loyal elements in their population. When Andrew Johnson took the first step in unfolding his "policy" (by his general amnesty proclamation and by the appointment of a provisional governor for North Carolina, both acts bearing the date of May 29, 1865) the "Confederacy" had ceased to exist, its chieftain was a captive, its armies were prisoners of war on parole, its capacity for resistance had been consumed in the furnace of battle, but its bitterness still glowed and the prejudices and ambitions which gave it being were undestroyed. The amnesty proclamation relieved, with a few exceptions, those who bore arms against the government and the most virulent supporters of rebellion who remained at home from all pains and penalties on the sole condition that they should subscribe to an oath of future loyalty. The provisional government proclamations permitted all persons thus amnestied, who were voters according to laws of the States previous to the rebellion, to elect delegates to conventions to amend the local constitutions and restore the States to their "constitutional relations with the federal government." By this process the loyal colored men of the South were denied the right to participate in the work of reconstruction and the entire machinery of reorganization was placed in the control of men whose hands were yet red with Union blood. Their discretion was only hampered by three conditions, compliance with which was made essential to the presidential approval of their work. They were required to annul the secession ordinances, to formally recognize the abolition of slavery, and to repudiate all debts created to promote rebellion. Beyond this, the disloyal classes of the South were left in undisputed mastery of the situation. The control of the insurgent States, and of the lives and fortunes of the loyalists, white and black, were surrendered absolutely to the men who but a few weeks before had been wrecked in the catastrophe which overwhelmed the rebellion. That they were prompt to improve this unexpected, undeserved and mistaken leniency need not be said. Their use of their new power was both presumptuous and intolerant. In elections, which proscribed Union men as unworthy of trust, conventions were chosen which accepted ungraciously the mere fact of emancipation, and which repudiated the rebel debts only under repeated presidential compulsion. State governments were then organized, which placed men whose disloyalty had been conspicuous in responsible positions, and which sent unamnestied leaders of the rebellion in the field and in council to Washington as claimants of Congressional seats. The State legislation which followed embodied in shameful laws the unquenched diabolism of the slave power. In statutory phraseology these enactments declared, "politically and socially this is a white man's government," and, impudently asserting that Congress was without any power over the matter, the men who had, in form, admitted the death of slavery proceeded to establish peonage in its stead. No body of laws adopted by any civilized nation in this century has equaled in studied injustice and cruelty those by which the "Johnson governments" of 1865 and 1866 sought to prevent the freedmen from rising from the level of admitted and hopeless inferiority, and to convince the blacks that in ceasing to be slaves they had only become serfs. Colored people were denied the right to acquire or dispose of public property. It was made a crime for a negro to enter a plantation without the consent of its owner or agent. Freedmen were declared vagrants, and punished as such for preaching the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church. Colored men failing to pay capitation tax were declared vagrants and the sale of their services was permitted as a penalty. Black persons were prohibited from renting or leasing lands except in incorporated towns or villages. Their owning or bearing arms was declared to be a violation of the peace. For a negro to break a labor contract was made an offense punishable by imprisonment. Colored laborers on farms were prohibited from selling poultry or farm products, and it was made a misdemeanor to purchase from them. This class was also denied the right of forming part of the militia, and it was made an offense for any freedman to enter a religious or other assembly of whites, or go with them into any rail car or public conveyance. White persons "usually associating themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes" were also declared to be vagrants in the eye of the law. The colored people were prohibited from practicing any art, trade or business except husbandry, without special license from the courts. And most infamous of all were the statutes for the compulsory apprenticeship of colored children with or without the consent of parents, which practically re-established over the next generation of the freed people slavery with the whipping-post and overseer's lash. One State by joint resolution tendered thanks to Jefferson Davis "for the noble and patriotic manner in which he conducted the affairs of our government while President of the Confederacy," and other resolutions were adopted declaring that "nothing more is required for the restoration of law and order but the withdrawal of federal bayonets." [The fell spirit and tendency of the reaction which was thus revealed found still more significant expression in the revolting butchery in and around the Mechanic's Institute of New Orleans on the 30th of July, 1866.] Some of these infamous measures were adopted in all the insurrectionary States, others in only some of them, but without exception the new Southern governments which Andrew Johnson's "policy" created were founded upon the traditions of the slave system and the memories of "the lost cause." The objection that the President had, in thus taking the work of reconstruction into his own hands, usurped authority devolved upon Congress by the constitution, was a strong one, but it received but little popular attention. Anger at the results of that "policy" obscured the mere disapproval of its methods. When it was seen that the rebellion had merely changed its theater of action, and that what it lost on the battle-field it proposed to secure by legislation, there was but one opinion among the masses of the people who had heartily supported the war and were sincerely anxious to preserve its fruits. Their emphatic demand was that the illegal and reactionary governments set up by the President should be overturned, and the South reconstructed in the interests of loyalty and liberty. Congress, as part of its stubborn contest with Andrew Johnson, undertook this work. It refused to recognize the pretended State governments or to admit their Congressmen. It divided the territory of the conquered States into five military districts, and placed it under the control of the army until a juster system of reconstruction could be applied. It then provided that in the calling of conventions to frame new constitutions colored men should be permitted to vote; that those revised instruments must confer the elective franchise upon all loyal colored people and all whites not disfranchised for rebellion; that the work of the conventions must be submitted to the colored and white people not disfranchised for approval; that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the national constitution must be ratified; and that the State constitutions so adopted must be submitted to and accepted by Congress. Upon this general plan the South was reconstructed, not without much friction, not wholly to the satisfaction of the men who marked out this course of procedure, but with the faith (or at least the trust) on their part that it would restore that section to the Union with genuinely free institutions, that it would protect the emancipated slave in his rights, and that it would substitute for disloyal communities States controlled by those whose interests and traditions lay with the national cause. The reconstruction laws were not vengeful in character; the aim of the men who passed them was not retaliation, not even retribution except in so far as the application of mild penalties to treason might increase the security of the future. To prevent a repetition of the terrible struggle which had just closed was the aim; that a political system had been devised, which both recognized human rights, and by its natural operations would exclude from political power the men who had plunged the country into civil war, was the hope. Within ten years the scheme failed utterly, and what it was designed to prevent had been accomplished upon its ruins. No body of laws can maintain itself in the face of organized murder and terrorism which authority refuses to either punish or prevent.

The reconstruction measures, while they commanded Mr. Chandler's general assent, were laxer in details than he would have made them. He felt, as Thaddeus Stevens said, that much that they ought to have contained was "defeated by the united forces of self-righteous Republicans and unrighteous Copperheads," but held that the bills which were passed deserved support as a whole on the ground that it was not wise to "throw away a great good because it is not perfect." Schuyler Colfax closed one of his speeches upon this subject as follows: "Loyalty must govern what loyalty preserved." Mr. Chandler complimented him warmly and said, "You got it all into one sentence," and that doctrine and the belief in equal rights for citizens of every color guided his share of the work upon all measures affecting reconstruction. His chief regret was that the process of this reorganization was not prolonged until the loyal sentiment of the South had become strong enough and intelligent enough to maintain itself. If his wishes had prevailed, the provisional governing of that section would have been continued until the education of the blacks, the death of the rebel leaders, and the extinguishment by time of the prejudices and animosities of the war had accomplished such a wholesome revolution in sentiment throughout that section as would in itself have been a loyal and durable reconstruction. As this was not possible, he spared no effort to make successful the experiment which was attempted; if others had been as resolute and faithful as he, it would not have failed. He did not share in the disposition of so many Republicans to abandon what had been just commenced because of the imperfection of its first fruits. He stood manfully for the maintenance by Northern opinion and by the aid of the United States of the loyal State governments of the South, not claiming they were faultless, but because they were based on justice and were far better than that which would take their place if they fell. When they were assailed by assassination, by massacre, and by systematic terrorizing, he believed that it was the duty of the general government to use all its authority and all its force to protect its citizens in their rights and to prevent the harvesting by unpunished traitors of the fruits of atrocities as brutal and bloody as Saint Bartholomew. The policy of political murder triumphed finally at the South, not through any weakness of such men as he, nor through any failure upon his part to denounce that vast crime. He labored strenuously to kindle Northern opinion into such a flame of just wrath as would have made impossible that victory of organized brutality.

Mr. Chandler, was often described by political opponents as "the relentless enemy of the South;" nothing was farther from the fact. That small minority of the Southern people, who ruled that section with oligarchical power before and during the war, who organized and led the rebellion, and who have now regained supremacy by outrage and murder, he always distrusted and attacked. But the great majority of the people of the South—the blacks whom those men rob of their rights and the whites whom they mislead—he profoundly pitied, and their cause he espoused. For them he demanded equal rights before the law, a free ballot box, the common school, and an opportunity to prove their manhood. Those who resisted a policy so just and civilizing he was quick to denounce in unstinted terms, and upon them he did not waste conciliation. They—not "the South"—found him the inappeasable, but still "the avowed, the erect, the manly foe."

In the elections of 1866 the issues were chiefly those connected with reconstruction, and Mr. Chandler as usual spoke in his own and other Western States, exposing the malign results of Mr. Johnson's "policy" and in advocacy of the Congressional plan and the Fourteenth Amendment. The general tenor of his speeches will appear from this extract from an address delivered at Detroit, at the close of the political campaign:

These perjured traitors are permitted to live here, but we say to them they can never again hold office unless Congress by a two-thirds vote shall remove the disability; why, a man who has committed perjury alone, right here in Michigan, you would not allow to testify before a justice of the peace in the most petty case. But we forget the perjury of the rebels which would send them to the State prison, we forget the hanging which follows treason, and say to them simply, that for the future they can never hold office. Personally I am not in favor of the last clause of this section which gives Congress the power to remove this disability by a two-thirds vote. I would have let this race of perjured traitors die out, out of office, and educate the rising generation to loyalty. But it is in the amendment and I advocate its adoption as it is.

Often during the progress of the obstinate struggle between Andrew Johnson and Congress his attempts to evade law and his encroachments upon the powers vested in the legislative branch of the government led to the serious consideration in the House of Representatives of the question of impeachment. Several resolutions ordering the preferring of charges against him at the bar of the Senate were presented without action, but on the 7th of January, 1867, the Hon. J. M. Ashley of Ohio offered a preamble, beginning, "I do impeach Andrew Johnson, Vice-President and acting President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I charge him with usurpation of power and violation of law in that he has corruptly used the appointing power; ... corruptly used the pardoning power; ... corruptly used the veto power; ... corruptly disposed of public property; ... and corruptly interfered in elections." With this preamble was a resolution referring the charges to the Judiciary Committee to inquire if the President had been guilty of acts which were "calculated to overthrow, subvert or corrupt the government." By a vote of 108 yeas to 39 nays this reference was ordered, but no report was made until November 25, 1867, and then a resolution of impeachment was submitted by Mr. Boutwell in behalf of the majority of the committee. On December 7, this resolution was rejected by a vote of 57 to 108. Encouraged by this result Mr. Johnson, who had suspended Edwin M. Stanton from the Secretaryship of War during the Congressional recess of 1867, and whose action had been disapproved by the Senate under the Tenure of Civil Office act, undertook to force Mr. Stanton out by a second suspension on February 21, 1868, accompanied by an order appointing Gen. Lorenzo Thomas Secretary ad interim. Mr. Stanton declined to acknowledge the President's power to take this step, refused to give place to General Thomas, and for many days and nights remained in constant occupation of the department offices. The House of Representatives at once arraigned the President before the Senate for this attempted violation of the Tenure of Office act, and his trial followed. Chief Justice Chase presided; the proceedings lasted from February 25 until May 26, 1868; and in the end Mr. Johnson was acquitted, exactly the number of Republican Senators necessary to defeat conviction voting with the Democratic minority. These proceedings Mr. Chandler watched with the liveliest interest, and the failure of the impeachment was one of the most bitter disappointments of his political career. He sincerely believed that Johnson's course fully merited a verdict of "guilty," and he felt that the great difficulties surrounding the problem of the loyal reconstruction of the South would disappear if the executive department of the government was administered with the Jacksonian vigor and patriotism of Benjamin F. Wade. Mr. Stanton's refusal to permit the President to displace him without the consent of the Senate he endorsed with the utmost heartiness, and, while the Secretary remained in his office to prevent its seizure by Mr. Johnson's ad interim appointee, Mr. Chandler spent night after night with him, and did all that was possible to strengthen his resolution and to lighten his voluntary confinement. On one occasion, when there were signs of an intention on the part of the claimant to use force, Mr. Chandler, General Logan, and a few others gathered together about a hundred trusty men, who occupied the basement of the department, and there did garrison duty until the danger was past. During Johnson's trial Mr. Chandler was not forgetful of his position as a judge, and was an attentive listener to the evidence and the arguments before and in the court of impeachment. He was restive under the length of the proceedings, however, and did advise the managers on the part of the House to push the case along as rapidly as possible, urging that the public interest required the ending of the general suspense. He felt then, and said afterward, that the delay was used to effect combinations with, and apply pressure to, individual Senators, which would induce them to favor acquittal. That this was done he never doubted, and he repeatedly denounced in the strongest terms, both in public and private, the action of the seven Republicans (Senators Fessenden, Trumbull, Grimes, Henderson, Fowler, Ross and Van Winkle) who voted "not guilty" with the Democrats and the "Johnson men." He was especially indignant at the course of Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull, and on several occasions in after years came into sharp personal collision with them during the Senate debates. The final failure of the impeachment movement he felt as a blow. One who knew him well has said: "He believed that republican government was at stake and impeachment a necessity. Never was there a time when he came so near despairing of the republic as at that event."

The Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses remained in nearly continuous session for over three years "watching the White House." Outside of the exciting political topics which received so large a share of their attention, they were compelled to deal with important financial, commercial and material questions affecting vitally the general interest. The currency and public debt demanded simplification; the tax system was to be changed from a war to a peace footing; the commercial wrecks of many years called for a bankrupt law; bounties were to be equalized, pensions provided, and war claims adjusted on wise bases; neglected internal improvements clamored for renovation and extension; the ocean commerce required national care; and innumerable minor interests, long neglected under the stress of civil war, needed instant attention. Mr. Chandler worked with characteristic energy and practical wisdom in all these branches of legislative activity, and rendered public services of varied and permanent usefulness.