The fact that the Administration lost ground in the elections in consequence of the emancipation policy served for a time to promote unity of feeling among the members when Congress convened in December. The shock occasioned by the measure when first announced had done its work. The timid, who had doubted the necessity and legality of the act, and feared its consequences, recovered their equipoise, and a reaction followed which strengthened the President in public confidence. But the radical extremists, especially the advocates of Congressional supremacy, began in the course of the winter to reassert their own peculiar ideas and their intention of having a more extreme policy pursued by the Government.
Thaddeus Stevens embraced an early opportunity to declare his extreme views, which were radically and totally antagonistic to those of the President. But Stevens, whose ability and acquirements as a politician, and whose skill and experience as a party tactician were unsurpassed if not unequalled in either branch of Congress, made no open, hostile demonstration toward the President. He restricted himself to contemptuous expressions in private conversation against the Executive policy and general management of affairs. Without an attack on the President, whom he personally liked, the Administration was sneered at as weak and inefficient, of which little could be expected until a more aggressive and scathing policy was adopted. His personal intercourse with members and his talents and eloquence on the floor of the House gave him influence with the representatives on ordinary occasions, but his ultra radical and revolutionary ideas caused the calm and considerate to distrust and disclaim his opinions and his leadership. It was not until a later period, and under another Executive, less affable but not less honest and sincere than Mr. Lincoln, that the suggestions of Stevens were much regarded. When his disciples and adherents became more partisan and numerous, they, in order to give him power and consequence and reconcile their constituents, denominated him the "Great Commoner."
If his political hopes and party schemes had been sometimes successful, his reverses and disappointments had been much greater. Many and severe trials during an active, embittered, and often unscrupulous partisan experience, had tempered his enthusiasm if they had not brought him wisdom. Defeats can hardly be said to have made him misanthropic; but having little philosophy in his composition, he vented his spleen when there was occasion on his opponents in ironical remarks that made him dreaded, and which were often more effective than arguments; but his sagacity and knowledge of men taught him that a hostile and open conflict with a chief magistrate whose honesty even he respected, and whose patriotism the people so generally regarded, would be not only unavailing, but to himself positively injurious. He therefore conformed to circumstances; and while opposed to the tolerant policy of the Administration toward the rebels and the rebel States, he had the tact and address, with his wit and humor, to preserve pleasant social intercourse and friendly personal relations with the President, who well understood his traits and purpose, but avoided any conflict with him.
For the first five or six weeks of the third session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, Stevens improved his time in free and sarcastic remarks on the reconstruction policy of the Government, which he characterized as puerile and feeble, and at length, on the 8th of January, he gave utterance to his feelings, maintaining that "with regard to all the Southern States in rebellion, the Constitution has no binding influence or application." He averred that "in his opinion they were not members of the Union"; that "the ordinances of secession took them out of the Union"; that he "would levy a tax wherever he could upon these conquered provinces"; said he "would not only collect the tax, but he would, as a necessary war measure, take every particle of property, real and personal, life estate and reversion, of every disloyal man, and sell it for the benefit of the nation in carrying on this war."
Several members of Congress hastened to deny that these sentiments and purposes were those of the Republican party; this Mr. Stevens admitted. He said "a very mild denial from the pleasant gentleman from New York [Mr. Olin], and the somewhat softened and modified repudiation of the gentleman from Indiana" (Mr. Colfax), would, he hoped, satisfy the sensitive gentlemen in regard to him, and he "desired to say he did not speak the sentiments of this side of the House as a party."; that "for the last fifteen years he [Stevens] had always been ahead of the party in these matters, but he had never been so far ahead but that the members of the party had overtaken and gone ahead; and they would again overtake him and go with him before the infamous and bloody rebellion was ended." "They will find that they must treat those States, now outside of the Union, as conquered provinces, and settle them with new men, and drive the present rebels as exiles from this country." "Nothing but extermination, or exile, or starvation, will ever induce them to surrender to the Government."
Not very consistent or logical in his policy and views, this subsequently Radical leader proposed to treat the Southern people sometimes as foreigners and at other times as rebel citizens; in either case he would tax, starve, and exile them—make provinces of their States, and overturn their old established governments. Few, comparatively, of the Republicans were at that time prepared to follow Stevens or adopt his vindictive and arbitrary measures. Shocked at his propositions, the "Great Commoner" had at that day few acknowledged adherents. When in vindication of his scheme it was asked upon what ground the collection of taxes could be enforced in the Southern States, Judge Thomas, one of the ablest and clearest minds of the Massachusetts delegation, said, "Upon this ground, that the authority of this Government at this time is as valid over those States as it was before the acts of secession were passed; upon the ground that every act of secession passed by those States is utterly null and void; upon the ground that every act legally null and void cannot acquire force because armed rebellion is behind it, seeking to uphold it; upon the ground that the Constitution makes us not a mere confederacy, but a nation; upon the ground that the provisions of that Constitution strike through the State government and reach directly, not intermediately, the subjects. Subjects of whom? Of the nation—of the United States." "Who ever heard, as a matter of public law, that the authority of a government over its rebellious subjects was lost until that revolution was successful—was a fact accomplished?"
Shortly after the capture of New Orleans and the establishment of Federal authority over Louisiana, two of the Congressional districts of that State elected representatives to Congress. The admission or non-admission of these representatives involved the question of the political condition of the Southern States and people in the Federal Union, and the whole principle, in fact, of restoration and reconstruction.
The subject was long and deliberately considered and fully discussed in Congress. The committee on elections reported in favor of their admission, and Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, the chairman, stated that "more than ordinary importance is attached to the consideration of this subject. It is not simply whether two gentlemen shall be permitted to occupy seats in this House. The question whether they shall be admitted involves the principles touching the present state of the country to which the attention of the House has more than once been called." He said, "The question now comes up, whether any reason exists that requires any departure from the rules and principles which have been adopted." "An adherence to these principles is vitally important in settling the question, how there is to be a restoration of this Union when this war shall be drawn to a close."
The subject of admitting these representatives and the principles of a restoration of the Union which their admission involved, was debated with earnestness for several days, and finally decided, on the 17th of February, in favor of admitting them, by a vote of ninety-two in the affirmative to forty-four in the negative.
An analysis of this vote, in view of the proceedings, acts, and votes of many of the same members a few years subsequently, after Mr. Lincoln's death, presents some curious and interesting facts. It was not a strictly party vote. Among those who then favored the Administration policy of restoration were Colfax, Dawes, Delano, Fenton, Fisher of Delaware, Wm, Kellogg, J. S. Morrill of Vermont, Governor A. H. Rice of Massachusetts, Shellabarger, and others who opposed the restoration policy of President Lincoln after his death and the accession of President Johnson.