History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

As a reason for introducing this measure, Mr. Lane, of Kansas, remarked: "I have been laboring for months to harmonize the President of the United States with the majority on the floor of Congress. I thought yesterday that there was a hope of securing such a result. It did seem that some of the members of this body were disposed to harmonize with the President. I proposed to go very far yesterday to secure that harmony. But while pursuing this course, we were awakened by one of the most vindictive assaults ever made upon any official, by either friend or opponent, from the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade]—an assault upon my personal friend, a man who for two years sat side by side with me here, whom I learned to respect and admire for his pluck, his ability, and integrity, and to love for his manly virtues; a man whom I originally selected as the candidate of the Republican party for the second office within the gift of that party; a man whom I urged on the Republican convention at Baltimore as their candidate; a man whose election I did my utmost to secure against the efforts of the Senator from Ohio. In the most critical moment of that political campaign, an assault was made on our presidential candidate in the same spirit evinced by him yesterday in his attack upon the President. I defended the candidate of the Republican party against that assault, and I defend the President of the Republican party against the assault of yesterday.

"'A despot!' 'A dictator!' In what? In seeking to reconstruct the rebellious States in violation of the wishes of the Congress of the United States? When Mr. Johnson took his seat in the presidential chair, I ask you, sir, what had Congress done? The people of the United States had done this: Mr. Lincoln had marked out the policy of reconstruction, since adopted by Mr. Johnson, and the people of the United States, the party to which the Senator from Ohio and myself belong, indorsed by triumphant majorities that very reconstruction policy. A despot for proposing, in violation of the wishes of the Congress of the United States, to reconstruct the insurrectionary States upon the theory expressed in that joint resolution annulling the ordinances of secession, ratifying the amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, repudiating the Confederate debt, indorsing the national debt, and extending suffrage to all colored men who can read the Constitution of the United States and sign their names, and to all colored men owning and paying taxes upon $250 worth of property!

"Mr. President, I am not as conversant with the constituency of the Senator from Ohio as he is, but I venture the assertion that outside of New England there is not a single Northern State in this Union but will by a majority vote to indorse the policy of reconstruction advised by President Johnson and expressed in that joint resolution. You can not carry before the people of this country suffrage to the unqualified black man. You can not find a State in this Union outside of New England, in my judgment, that will indorse that policy. Restrict it to a qualification clause, as the President of the United States recommends, and you can carry the Republican Union party every-where, and with unanimity.

"The President of the United States 'a despot' for exercising a constitutional right in vetoing a bill passed by Congress! Mr. President, had the Senator from Ohio occupied the position which is occupied by President Johnson, in my judgment, he would have vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. 'A despot!' What is the exercise of the veto power? It amounts merely to a vote to reconsider, with the lights given in his reasons for the veto. When before has the exercise of a constitutional right justified a political friend of the President of the United States in denouncing that President as a despot and a dictator? He has been and is now, in my judgment, as anxious to harmonize the difficulties in the Union party as any Senator upon this floor. If he was met in the same spirit, that party would be reunited and this Union would be restored. His advances are met by insult; his advances are met by denunciation from the leader of the Republican party upon this floor in language without a parallel. Mr. President, so far as I am concerned, I propose to-day and hereafter to take my position alongside the President of the Republican party, and stand there unflinchingly so long as he remains faithful to the principles of that party, defending him against the Senator from Ohio as I defended his predecessor against the same Senator."

Mr. Lane then expressed his desire that his proposition should lie upon the table and be printed. An order having been entered to that effect, Mr. Wade addressed the Senate. He remarked: "It is said I made an attack on the President of the United States. As a Senator upon this floor, I care no more about the opinions of the President of the United States than I do about those of any respectable Senator upon this floor, or any Senator on this floor. Who is your President, that every man must bow to his opinion? Why, sir, we all know him; he is no stranger to this body. We have measured him; we know his height, his depth, his length, his breadth, his capacity, and all about him. Do you set him up as a paragon and declare here on the floor of this Senate that you are going to make us all bow down before him? Is that the idea? You [to Mr. Lane, of Kansas,] are going to be his apologist and defender in whatever he may propose to do! Is that the understanding of the Senator from Kansas?

"I do not believe that his constituents will be quite satisfied with so broad a declaration, that he is to wear any man's collar, and follow him wherever he may go. Did I use harsh language toward the President yesterday? All that I said I stand by to-day and forever. What was the question upon which I made those observations, and what has been the opinion of the President heretofore? what has been his action since? Here are three million people, our friends, friends to the Government, who generously came forward in its difficulty, and helped us throughout the war, sacrificed their blood and their lives to maintain the issue on our side, and who were faithful beyond all men that were ever faithful before, to us during the whole of the difficulty, every-where assisting our brave soldiers in the field, laying down their lives to maintain our principles, and ministering in every way to the misfortunes of our brave men whenever they fell into the hands of those worse than savages with whom we were warring; and now these men are laboring, are under one of the most frightful despotisms that ever settled down upon the heads of mankind. Three million people are exposed to the outrages, the insolence, the murder of those worse than savages, their former masters, murdered as we hear every day, oppressed every-where, their rights taken away, their manhood trampled under foot; and Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, endeavors to extend to them some little protection, and how are we met here? Every attempt of your Moses has been to trample them down worse, and to throw every obstruction in the way of any relief that could be proposed by Congress. He has from all appearances become their inveterate and relentless foe, making violent war upon any member of Congress who dares raise his voice or give his vote in favor of any measure having for its object the amelioration of the condition of these poor people. Talk to me about the President being their friend! When did it ever happen before that a great measure of relief to suffering humanity on as broad a scale as this was met by the stern veto of the President of the United States, and without being able when he undertakes to make his obstruction to our measures to designate a single clause of the Constitution that he pretends has been violated.

"Yesterday what was the issue? I was charged with great cruelty on this floor, because I was unwilling to wait for recruits to be brought in here for the purpose of overthrowing the ground we had taken upon this important question whether these poor people shall have relief or not. Now, I wish to say that I am willing to extend courtesy to our old associates on this floor under other circumstances; but when you extend this kind of courtesy to them, the result is death and destruction to three million people, trampled under the feet of their former masters. My courtesy is extended to those poor men, and I would not wait a moment that their enemies may be brought in here in order to prevent our doing any thing for their relief, joining with the President, who is determined, if we may judge by his acts, that no measure having for its object any relief shall be extended to them.

"Did you hear the fact stated here the other day, that bills were drawn with a view to escape the anathemas of your President, and were exhibited to him, and he asked 'if he had any objection to them to look them over well, because if we can, consistent with the object aimed at, make them clear of any objection you may have, we will do it?'

"I said, sir, that he seemed to have meditated a controversy with Congress from the beginning, and he has. He has treated our majorities as hostile to the people; two thirds of both branches of Congress have been treated by him as mere factionists, disunionists, enemies to the country, bent upon its destruction, bargaining with the enemy to destroy the Government. This is the way the President has treated Congress, and every bill they have passed, which promised any relief to the men whom we are bound to protect, has been trampled under the Executive heel; and even when members of this body did what I say they ought not to have done—for I do not approve of my brother Trumbull's going up to the President, when he has a measure pending here as a Senator, to ask the President, in the first place, whether he will approve of it or not; even when he was asked if he objected to this measure, and made no objection, he still undertakes to veto it.

"If Congress should recede from the position they have taken to claim jurisdiction over this great question of reädmitting these States, from that hour they surrender all the power that the Constitution places in their hands and that they were sworn to support, and they are the mere slaves of an accidental Executive; of a man who formerly associated with us upon this floor; who was no more infallible than the rest of us poor mortals; and yet the moment, by death or accident, he is placed in the executive chair, it would seem as if some Senators believed him to be endowed with superhuman wisdom, and ought to be invested with all the powers of this Government; that Congress ought to get on their knees before him, and take his insults and his dictation without resentment and without even an attempt to resist. Some States may send such instrumentalities here, but God knows some will not; and I pity those that do, for they would hold their freedom on a very uncertain tenure.