History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

Mr. Johnson opposed the resolution in a protracted speech in which he reviewed the entire subject of reconstruction. Of the condition and rights of the Southern States he said: "They are as much States as they were when the insurrection was inaugurated, and their relation to their sister States, and their consequent relation to the Government of the United States, is the same relation in which they stood to both when the insurrection was inaugurated. That would seem to follow logically as a necessary result, and if that is a necessary result, does it not also follow that they are entitled to representation in this chamber? Whether they can present persons who can take their seats, because they have individually committed crimes against the United States is another question; but I speak now of the right itself."

Mr. Johnson argued that holding secession sentiments a few years ago was no evidence of present disloyalty, and cited in proof of this proposition a newspaper article purporting to give secession resolutions drawn up by Mr. Wade, and passed at a meeting held at Cleveland in 1859, which was presided over by Joshua E. Giddings.

This called forth an answer from Mr. Wade, who said: "The Senator from Maryland called me in question for having been present at a meeting which he affirmed was held in Cleveland some seven years ago by persons called 'Sons of Liberty,' and he alleged that I there consented to certain resolutions that were passed which favored the doctrine of secession, and that I was chairman of the committee which reported them. Sir, the charge is a total forgery so far as I am concerned. I never was at any such meeting of the Sons of Liberty or any other sons. I never uttered such a sentiment in my life; I am not one of those who have or have had much association with gentlemen holding to secession principles. My associations have all been the other way. During the war that secession made my counsels were against it. I was for war to the death against the principle of secession, while many other gentlemen in my eye were either participants in or apologists for that sentiment. I am perfectly aware that a war is made—and I am willing to meet it anywhere—upon what are called Radicals of the country, and I am one of them. In olden times I was here in the Senate called an Abolitionist, but they have changed the name since. They have all got to be Abolitionists now, and they have changed my name to 'Radical.'

"Mr. President, in the history of mankind, so far as I have read or know it, there never has been a time when parties were so organized on radical principles of justice and right. The party with whom I act appeal to no expediency, to none of your political policies; we dig down to the granite of eternal truth, and there we stand, and they who assail us have to assail the great principles of the Almighty, for our principles are chained to his throne, and are as indestructible as the Almighty himself. I want no warfare with any body; but if you will make war upon such principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for you. You can not prevail.

"I have been in these political warfares for a long time; I claim to be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when there were not five men with me to support me, and then I rose here and told those who were inveighing like demons against the principles that they called abolitionism, that I was an Abolitionist. To-day you are all Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by compulsion. I have wondered a great deal why men did not learn more about these things than they seem to do. Our principles are assailed now with just the same virulence that they used to be when we were in a small minority. I do not hold that they have triumphed thus far because of any superior capacity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that we, from the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of the people and conquered the predominant party of this country which had stood completely dominating the whole nation for more than forty years? Why is it that we have conquered you, and now are triumphant here in this Senate and almost by two-thirds in both branches, with the whole nation at our backs? What miracle has wrought this change? None other than the great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and right are destined among the American people to succeed, and the gates of hell can not prevail against them, although they are trying at this particular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.]

On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan first claimed the attention of the Senate in a speech two hours in length. He argued "that for any guilty part taken by the people in the late war, that the sufferings and losses they endured in that war were the natural and sufficient punishment; that after it they remain purged, and ought to be reädmitted to all their constitutional rights at once. That it is due to the dignity of the United States as a great nation, if she punishes the actual traitors who incited the rebellion, that it be done solemnly and according to the strictest form of law, in open courts, where the prisoners may have counsel and witnesses, so that they may make their defense, if they have any. That according to the Constitution and laws all the States are still in the Union; that secession ordinances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the other; that they are neither dead by forfeiture or felo de se, but are now in full and perfect existence, with all their municipal machinery in full play. That the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen to amend the Constitution is fundamental and revolutionary, and destructive of the freedom of the States and the liberties of the people; that it is a threat to deprive them of their rights by compelling them either to admit negroes to the right of suffrage or to give up a share of their representation, which is theirs by law and the last amendment to the Constitution. That the resolution now before us from the same committee is also revolutionary and destructive, being an attempt to suspend the Constitution and laws in regard to representation in Congress over eleven States of the Union until Congress shall see fit to restore them. It is a declaration on the part of the members of the present House and Senate, that having the means of keeping these States from being represented here, they are going to do so as long as they please; that no one of these measures can be justified as a punishment for the rebellion; that the Constitution forbids them as bills of pains and penalties, and as ex post facto in their character."

Mr. Garret Davis, in the course of a speech in opposition to the resolution, suggested a summary solution of the present difficulties: "There is," said he, "a provision in the Constitution which requires the President to communicate to the two houses of Congress information as to the state of the Union, and to recommend to them such measures "as he shall deem proper and expedient. What does this necessarily impose upon him? He has to ascertain what men compose the two houses of Congress. It is his right, it is his constitutional function, to ascertain who constitute the two houses of Congress. The members of the Senate who are in favor of the admission of the Southern Senators could get into a conclave with those Southern Senators any day, and they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The President of the United States has the constitutional option—it is his function, it his power, it is his right—and I would advise him to exercise it, to ascertain, where there are two different bodies of men both claiming to be the Senate, which is the true Senate. If the Southern members and those who are for admitting them to their seats constitute a majority of the whole Senate, the President has a right—and, by the Eternal! he ought to exercise that right forthwith, to-morrow, or any day—to recognize the Opposition in this body and the Southern members, the majority of the whole body, as the true Senate. And then what would become of you gentlemen? Oh, if the lion of the Hermitage, and that great statesman, the sage of Ashland, were here in the seat of power, how soon would they settle this question! They would say to, and they would inspire those to whom they spoke, 'You Southern men are kept out of your seats by violence, by revolution, against the Constitution, against right; the Union is dissolved, the Government is brought to an end by keeping the Senators from eleven States out of their seats when the Constitution expressly states that every State shall have two Senators.'

"There is no plainer principle of constitutional law than that the President has the right to ascertain and decide what body of men is the Senate and what the House of Representatives when there are two bodies of men claiming to be each. It is his right to do so, and the people of America will sustain him in the noble and manly and patriotic performance of his duty in determining the identity of the true House. It ought to have been done at the beginning of this session. When a petty clerk took upon himself to read the list of the Representatives of the people of the United States, and to keep the Representatives of eleven States out of their seats, the Constitution guaranteeing to them those seats for the benefit of their constituents and country, that subordinate never ought to have been tolerated for one day in the perpetration of so great an outrage. Whenever Andrew Johnson chooses to exercise his high function, his constitutional right of saying to the Southern Senators, 'Get together with the Democrats and the Conservatives of the Senate, and if you constitute a majority, I will recognize you as the Senate of the United States,' what then will become of you gentlemen? You will quietly come in and form a part of that Senate."

Mr. Doolittle opposed the passage of the resolution. Referring to the plan proposed by Mr. Davis, he said: "If such a thing should happen—which God in his mercy, I hope, will always prevent—that the Senate should be divided, and one portion should go into one room, and another into another, each claiming to be the Senate, I suppose the House of Representatives could direct its clerk to go to one body and not go to the other, and I do not know but the President of the United States would have the power, in case of such a division, to send his private secretary with messages to one body and not send them to the other. Perhaps that might occur; but it is one of those cases that are not to be supposed or to be tolerated."

Mr. Wilson advocated the resolution: "The nation," said he, "is divided into two classes; that the one class imperiously demands the immediate and unconditional admission into these halls of legislation of the rebellious States, rebel end foremost; that the other class seeks their admission into Congress, at an early day, loyal end foremost. He would hear, too, the blended voices of unrepentant rebels and rebel sympathizers and apologists mingling in full chorus, not for the restoration of a broken Union, for the unity and indivisibility of the republic has been assured on bloody fields of victory, but for the restoration to these vacant chairs of the 'natural leaders' of the South."