History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

Since, however, the bill did not propose any "plan of reörganizing State governments in the late rebel States," Mr. Lawrence read amendments which he desired to introduce at the proper time, providing that the laws of the District of Columbia, "not locally inapplicable," should be in force in the rebel territory and that the United States courts should have jurisdiction.

Mr. Hise declared this a "stupid, cruel, unwise, and unconstitutional measure." "If I had not been prepared," said he, "by other measures hitherto adopted and others hitherto introduced into this House, I should not have been less startled at the introduction of this than if I had received the sudden intelligence that the ten States enumerated in this bill had been sunk by some great convulsion of nature and submerged under an oceanic deluge."

"This is not, strictly speaking, a measure of reconstruction," said Mr. Ingersoll, "but a measure looking simply to the enforcement of order. It seems to me clear, then, that, not only under the laws of war and under the laws of nations, but under the express authority of the Constitution itself, Congress possesses the rightful authority to establish military governments, as proposed by the bill under consideration."

Referring to Mr. Le Blond's anticipated war, Mr. Ingersoll said: "I desire to ask the gentleman where he is going to get his soldiers to make war upon the Government and the Congress of the United States? You will hardly find them in the rebel States. They have had enough of war; they have been thoroughly whipped, and do not desire to be whipped again. You will not get them from the loyal people of the Northern or Southern States. If you get any at all, you may drum up a few recruits from the Democratic ranks, but in the present weak and shattered condition of that party you would hardly be able to raise a very formidable army, and I tell the gentleman if the party decreases in the same ratio in the coming year as it has in the last, the whole party together would not form a respectable corps d'armée."

"How about the bread and butter brigade?" interposed a member.

"I did not think of that heroic and patriotic band," replied Mr. Ingersoll, "but I do not apprehend much danger from that source; it would be a bloodless conflict; we would have no use either for the sword or musket; all that would be necessary to make a conquest over them would be found in the commissary department. Order out the bread and butter and peace would be restored."

Mr. Shanklin warned the House of the danger of establishing military governments in the South. "You may be in the plenitude of power to-day," he said, in conclusion, "and you may be ousted to-morrow. And I hope, if you do not cease these outrages upon the people of the country, such as you propose here, such as are attempting to be inflicted by your Freedmen's Bureau and your Civil Rights Bills, that the time will not be long before that army which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] seemed to think could not be raised—an army armed with ballots, and not with bayonet—will march to the polls and hurl the advocates of this and its kindred measures out of their places, and fill them with men who appreciate more highly and justly the rights of citizens and of freemen, with statesmen whose minds can grasp our whole country and its rights and its wants, and whose hearts are in sympathy with the noble, the brave, and the just, whether they live in the sunny South or the ice-bound regions of the North."

"I hail this measure," said Mr. Thayer, "as interrupting this baleful calm, which, if not disturbed by a proper exercise of legislative power upon this subject, may be succeeded by disaster and collision. It furnishes at least an initial point from which we can start in the consideration and adjustment of the great question of reconstruction. I regard this as a measure which lays the grasp of Congress upon this great question—a grasp which is to hold on to it until it shall be finally settled. I regard it as a measure which is to take that great question out of that sea of embarrassment and sluggish inactivity in which, through the course which the President has thought proper to pursue, it now rests."

"For our neglect," said Mr. Harding, of Illinois, "to exert the military power of the Government, we are responsible for the blood and suffering which disgrace this republic. Let us go back, then, or rather let us come up to where we were before, and exercise jurisdiction over the territory conquered from the rebels, which jurisdiction the President has given up to those rebels, to the great suffering and injury of the Government and of loyal people."

"Let it be remembered all the time," said Mr. Shellabarger, "that your country has a right to its life, and that the powers of your Government are given for its preservation. Let it be remembered that one portion of your republic has fallen into a state of rebellion, and is still in a state of war against your Government, and that the powers of the Government are to be exercised for the purposes of the protection and the defense of the loyal, and the disloyal too, in that part of the republic; and that, for the purpose of that defense, you are authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and to exercise such extraordinary powers as are necessary to the preservation of the great life of the nation. Let these things be remembered; and then let it also be remembered that the law-making power of the Government not only controls the President, but controls the purposes and the ends and the objects of war, and, of course, the movements of the armies that are to be employed in war. Let these things be remembered, and it seems to me that all the difficulties with which it is sought to surround this measure will at once disappear."