History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

Mr. Sherman thought it would be better and wiser to allow this matter to lie over for a few days. He thought it best not to press this "declaration of political opinion" while the public mind and Senators themselves were more or less affected by surrounding circumstances. "I think," said he, "that we ought not to postpone all the important business now pending in Congress for the purpose of getting into a political wrangle with the President."

Mr. Fessenden replied: "The Senator from Ohio says we are getting up a political wrangle with the President of the United States. When the President of the United States tells Congress that it is transcending its proper limits of authority, that it has nothing to do in the way of judgment upon the great question of reconstructing the rebel States, and Congress assumes to express its own sense upon that question, I think it is hardly a proper term to apply to such a state of things. I am not aware that there has been any effort anywhere to get up a political wrangle or engage in a political wrangle with the President. Certainly I have not. No man has ever heard me speak of him except in terms of respect, in my place here and elsewhere.

"I am not sensible myself of any excitement that would prevent my speaking upon this question precisely in the style which I deem it deserves. I am not carried away by passion. I have reflected, and I am ready to express my opinion upon the great question at issue; and the Senator will allow me to say that, in my judgment, the sooner the judgment of Congress is expressed, the better.

"He talks about important business to be done by this Congress. Sir, is there any thing more important than to settle the question whether the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States have or have not something to say in relation to the condition of the late Confederate States, and whether it is proper to admit Senators and Representatives from them? If the President is right in his assumption—for the assumption is a very clear one—that we have nothing to say, we ought to admit these men at once, if they come here with proper credentials, and not keep them waiting outside the door."

Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that transpired yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not to have had some influence upon him, and I think it as well to allow the influence of those events to pass away. I do not wish now myself, nor do I wish any Senator here, to reply to what was said yesterday by the President of the United States. I would prefer that the Senate of the United States, the only legislative body which can deliberate fully and freely without any limitation on the right of debate, should deliberate, reflect, and act calmly after the excitement of the events of the last two or three days has passed off."

Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked: "If there be passion and excitement in the country at this present time, I do not hold myself as an individual responsible for any share of it; and I am here to say that if I know myself—and if I do not know myself nobody about me knows me—I am as competent to consider this particular question to-day as I was the day before yesterday or last week, and, so far as my judgment informs me, quite as competent to consider it as I expect to be next week or the week after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate of the nation, or by the lowest and the last magistrate of the nation."

The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider the concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, which had already passed the House of Representatives.

Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of considerable length. He presented extracts from the President's speech of the day before, in which he had arrayed himself against the right of Congress to decide whether a rebel State is in condition to be represented.

Mr. Fessenden considered the pending resolution as "transcending in importance the question of the amendment of the Constitution, which had been under discussion for several days." He deemed the resolution necessary now, "in order that Congress may assert distinctly its own rights and its own powers; in order that there may be no mistake anywhere, in the mind of the Executive or in the minds of the people of this country; that Congress, under the circumstances of this case, with this attempted limitation of its powers with regard to its own organization, is prepared to say to the Executive and to the country, respectfully but firmly, over this subject they have, and they mean to exercise, the most full and plenary jurisdiction. We will judge for ourselves, not only upon credentials and the character of men and the position of men, but upon the position of the States which sent those men here. In other words, to use the language of the President again, when the question is to be decided, whether they obey the Constitution, whether they have a fitting constitution of their own, whether they are loyal, whether they are prepared to obey the laws as a preliminary, as the President says it is, to their admission, we will say whether those preliminary requirements have been complied with, and not he, and nobody but ourselves."

Mr. Fessenden made an extended argument on the subject of reconstruction, affirming that while the people of the rebel States had not passed from under the jurisdiction of the United States Government, yet having no existence as States with rights in the Union and rights to representation in Congress. "My judgment is," said he, "that we hold the power over the whole subject in our hands, that it is our duty to hold it in our hands, and to regard it as a matter of the most intense interest to the whole people, involving the good of the whole people, calling for our most careful consideration, and to be adjudged without passion, without temper, without any of that feeling which may be supposed to have arisen out of the unexampled state of things through which we have passed."