History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

On the 7th of January Mr. Stevens proposed to amend his bill by inserting a provision that no person should be disfranchised as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they were every day whipping negroes for trivial offenses. He had heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every adult negro they knew of.

On the 8th of January a speech was made by Mr. Broomall advocating the passage of the bill before the House. "Can the negro in the South preserve his civil rights without political ones?" he asked. "Let the convention riot of New Orleans answer; let the terrible three days in Memphis answer. In the latter city three hundred negroes, who had periled their lives in the service of their country, and still wore its uniform, were compelled to look on while the officers of the law, elected by white men, set their dwellings in flames and fired upon their wives and children as they escaped from the doors and windows. Their churches and school-houses were burned because they were their churches and school-houses. Yet no arrest, no conviction, no punishment awaits the perpetrators of these deeds, who walk in open day and boast of their enormities, because, forsooth, this is a white man's Government."

On the 16th of January the discussion was resumed. Mr. Paine first addressed the House. He opposed the second section of the bill, which recognized the de facto governments of the rebel States as valid for municipal purposes. "I am surprised," said he, "that the gentleman from Pennsylvania should be ready, voluntarily, to assume this burden of responsibility for the anarchy of murder, robbery, and arson which reigns in these so-called de facto governments. He may be able to get this fearful burden upon his back; but if he does, I warn him of the danger that the sands of his life will all run out before he will be able to shake it off. He will have these piratical governments on his hands voluntarily recognized as valid for municipal purposes until duly altered. He will have gratuitously become a copartner in the guilt which hitherto has rested upon the souls of Andrew Johnson and his Northern and Southern satellites, but which thenceforth will rest on his soul also until he can contrive duly to alter these governments. And so it will happen that the great Union party to which he belongs, and to which I belong, will become implicated, for how long a time God only knows, in this unspeakable iniquity which daily and hourly cries to Heaven from every rood of rebel soil for vengeance on these monsters."

Mr. Bingham moved to refer the two bills—that of Mr. Stevens and that of Mr. Ashley—to the Committee on Reconstruction. He opposed these bills as "a substantial denial of the right of the great people who saved this republic by arms to save it by fundamental law." He advocated the propriety of making the proposed Constitutional Amendment the basis of reconstruction. It had already received the ratification of the Legislatures representing not less than twelve millions of the people of this nation. The fact that all the rebel States which had considered the amendment in their Legislatures had rejected it did not invalidate this mode of reconstruction. "Those insurrectionary States," said he, "have no power whatever as States of this Union, and can not lawfully restrain, for a single moment, that great body of freemen who cover this continent from ocean to ocean, now organized States of the Union and represented here, in their fixed purpose and undoubted legal right to incorporate the amendment into the Constitution of the United States."

Mr. Bingham maintained that Congress has the power, without restriction by the Executive or the Supreme Court, to "propose amendments to the Constitutions, and to decide finally the question of the ratification thereof, as well as to legislate for the nation." "I look upon both these bills," said Mr. Bingham, "as a manifest departure from the spirit and intent of our Constitutional Amendment. I look upon it as an attempt to take away from the people of the States lately in rebellion that protection which you have attempted to secure to them by your Constitutional Amendment."

Mr. Dawson, in a speech of an hour's duration, maintained the doctrine, which he announced as that which had given shape to presidential policy, "that the attempt at secession having been suppressed by the physical power of the Government, the States, whose authority was usurped by the parties to the movement, have never, at any time, been out of the Union; and that having once expressed their acquiescence in the result of the contest and renewed their allegiance to the Union, they are, at the same time, restored to all the rights and duties of the adhering States."

On the other hand, the policy of Congress, in the opinion of Mr. Dawson, was "a shameless outrage upon justice and every conservative principle,"—a "usurpation of Federal powers and a violation of State rights."

Mr. Maynard gave expression to his opinions by asking the significant question, "Whether the men who went into the rebellion did not by connecting themselves with a foreign government, by every act of which they were capable, denude themselves of their citizenship—whether they are not to be held and taken by this Government now as men denuded of their citizenship, having no rights as citizens except such as the legislative power of this Government may choose to confer upon them? In other words, is not the question on our part one of enfranchisement, not of disfranchisement?"

On the 17th of January, Mr. Baker addressed the House in favor of referring the pending bill to the Committee on Reconstruction. He was opposed to the use of the term "Government," without qualification or restriction, as applied to the lately revolted States. He opposed the second section, as causing the de facto governments to become valid for municipal purposes long before the scheme of reconstruction contemplated by the bill is effectuated. "To recognize them in advance," said he, "would be to incur the danger of further embarrassing the whole subject by the illogical consequences of our own illogical procedure."

At this stage Mr. Stevens arose and modified his substitute by withdrawing the second section, which contained the provision objected to by Mr. Baker as well as by his "ardent friend" Mr. Paine. Mr. Baker objected to that feature of the bill which provided that none should be deprived of the right to vote as a punishment for any crime save insurrection or treason. "The penitentiaries of these States," said he, "might disgorge their inmates upon the polls under the operation of this bill."