Twenty Years of Congress Volume Ii Part 12

"SECT. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."]

CHAPTER X.

The hostility of the President to all measures which the Republican party deemed necessary for the proper reconstruction of the Southern States, had made a deep impression upon certain members of his Cabinet, and before midsummer it was known that a crisis was impeding. On the 11th of July Mr. William Dennison, the Postmaster-general, tendered his resignation, alleging as the chief cause the difference of opinion between himself and the President in regard to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution. He had for some months felt that it would be impossible for him to co-operate with the President, and the relations between them were no longer cordial, if they were not indeed positively hostile. Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, the first a.s.sistant Postmaster-general, was an outspoken supporter of the measures of the Administration, and was using every effort to prejudice Mr. Johnson's mind against Mr. Dennison, whom he was ambitious to succeed. Mr. Dennison felt that he was seriously compromising his position at home by remaining in the Cabinet, though he had been urged to that course by some zealous opponents of the Administration, who desired, as long as possible, to restrain the President from using the patronage of the Government in aid of his policy. Mr. Randall was promptly nominated as Mr. Dennison's successor and proved, in all respects, a faithful follower of his chief.

A week later Mr. James Speed resigned his post as Attorney-general. He had been regarded as very conservative on all pending issues relating to Reconstruction, but he now saw plainly that the President was inevitably drifting, not only to extreme views on the issue presented, but to an evident alliance with the Democratic party and perhaps a return to its ranks. Against this course Mr. Speed revolted. His inheritance of Whig principles, his anti-slavery convictions, his personal a.s.sociations, all forbade his following the President in his desertion of the Republican party. He saw his duty, and promptly retired from a position which he felt that he could not hold with personal consistency and honor. His successor was Henry Stanbery of Ohio, a lawyer of high reputation and a gentleman of unsullied character. He belonged to that a.s.sociation of old Whigs who, in their extreme conservatism on the slavery question, had been driven to a practical union with the Democratic party.

A few days after Mr. Speed's resignation Mr. James Harlan retired from the Interior Department. He would have broken his relations with the President long before, but for the same cause that had detained Mr.

Dennison. He was extremely reluctant to surrender the large patronage of the Interior Department to the control of a successor who would undoubtedly use it to promote the Reconstruction policy of the President, just as Mr. Randall would use the patronage of the Post-office Department. Mr. Harlan had therefore remained in the Cabinet as long as was consistent with his personal dignity, for the purpose of protecting the Republican principles which the President and he were alike pledged to uphold. He was succeeded by Mr. Orville H. Browning of Illinois, who had been a devoted friend of Mr. Lincoln, and had done much to secure his nomination at Chicago. He had served for two years in the Senate after the death of Mr. Douglas, and but for the immediate control over his course by President Lincoln would have been a co-laborer with those who were hostile to the mode in which the war was prosecuted.

His faith in Mr. Lincoln, his great admiration for his talents and his strong personal attachment to him, had for the time maintained Mr. Browning in loyalty to the Republican party; but with the restraining influence of the great President gone, Mr. Browning, by reason of his prejudices not less than his convictions, at once affiliated and co-operated with the Democratic party. He was a man of fair ability and of honorable intentions, but always narrow in his views of public policy. Any thing that could possibly be considered radical inevitably encountered his hostility.

The political campaign of 1866 was one of greater excitement than had ever been witnessed in this country, except in the election of a President. The chief interest was in choosing members of the House of Representatives for the Fortieth Congress, and in controlling the Legislatures which were to choose senators of the United States and pa.s.s upon the Fourteenth Amendment. In elections of this character, even in periods of deepest interest, the demonstrations of popular feeling are confined to the respective States, but in this instance there were no less than four National Convention, three of them, at least, of imposing magnitude and exerting great influence on popular action.

The first was called by the friends of President Johnson to meet in Philadelphia on the 14th of August. The object was to effect a complete consolidation of the Administration Republicans and the Democratic party, under the claim that they were the true conservators of the Union, and that the ma.s.s of the Republican party, in opposing President Johnson, were endangering the stability of the Government.

A large majority of the delegates composing the convention were well-known Democrats, and they were re-enforced by some prominent Republicans, who had left their party and followed the personal fortunes of President Johnson. The most conspicuous of these were Montgomery Blair (who for some years had been acting with the Republicans), Thurlow Weed, Marshall O. Roberts, Henry J. Raymond, John A. Dix and Robert S. Hale in New York, Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania, James R. Doolittle and Alexander W. Randall of Wisconsin, O. H. Browning of Illinois, and James Dixon of Connecticut. The Democrats were not only overwhelmingly in the majority, but they had a very large representation of the leaders of the party in several States. So considerable a proportion of the whole number were men who had been noticeably active as opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, that the convention was popularly described as a gathering of malignant copperheads, who, during the war, could not have a.s.sembled in the city where they were now hospitably received, without creating a riot. Among the most conspicuous and most offensive of this latter cla.s.s,--those who had especially distinguished themselves for the bitterness, and in some cases for the vulgarity, of their personal a.s.saults upon Mr. Lincoln,--were Mr. Vallandingham of Ohio, Fernando Wood, Benjamin Wood and James Brooks of New York, Edmund Burke and John G. Sinclair of New Hamps.h.i.+re, Edward J. Phelps of Vermont, George W.

Woodward, Francis W. Hughes and James Campbell of Pennsylvania, and R. B. Carmichael of Maryland. Among the leading Democrats, less noted for virulent utterances against the President, were Samuel J. Tilden, Dean Richmond and Sanford E. Church of New York, John P. Stockton and Joel Parker of New Jersey, David R. Porter, William Bigler and Asa Packer of Pennsylvania, James E. English of Connecticut, Robert C.

Winthrop and Josiah G. Abbott of Ma.s.sachusetts, William Beach Lawrence of Rhode Island, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland.

Mr. Vallandingham's partic.i.p.ation in the proceedings was met with objection. He had not spoken more violently and offensively against President Lincoln and against the conduct of the war than some other members of the convention, but his course had been so notorious and had been rendered so odious by his punishment, both in being sent beyond the rebel lines and afterwards in being defeated for governor of his State by more than one hundred thousand majority, that many of the delegates were not content to sit with him,--a sentiment which Mr.

Vallandingham is said to have considered one of mawkish sentimentality, but one to which he deferred by quietly withdrawing from all partic.i.p.ation in the proceedings. It was believed, and indeed openly a.s.serted, at the time, that if he had chosen to remain the attempt to eject him by resolution, as was threatened, would have led to a practical dissolution of the convention.

The work of the convention was embodied in a long series of resolutions reported by Mr. Cowan of Pennsylvania, and an address prepared and read by Mr. Henry J. Raymond. Both the resolutions and the address simply emphasized the issue already presented to the country by the antagonistic att.i.tude of the President and Congress. In the resolutions, in the address, and in all the speeches, the one refrain was the right of every State to representation in Congress. The convention challenged the right of Congress to deny representation to a State, for a single day after the war was ended and submission to the National authority had been proclaimed throughout the area of the Rebellion. In every form in which the argument could be presented, they disputed the right of power to attach any condition whatever to the re-admission of the rebel States to a free partic.i.p.ation in the proceedings of Congress. One of the resolutions declared that "representation in the Congress of the United States or in the Electoral College is a right recognized by the Const.i.tution as abiding in every State and as a duty imposed upon its people, fundamental in its nature and essential to the exercise of our republican inst.i.tutions; and neither Congress nor the General Government has any authority or power to deny the right to any State, or withhold its enjoyment under the Const.i.tution from the people thereof; and we call upon the people of the United States to elect to Congress, as members thereof, none but men who admit this fundamental right of representation and who will receive to seats in Congress their loyal representatives from every State in allegiance to the United States."

This sentiment was embodied in many forms in Mr. Raymond's address, was, in fact, the one fundamental article in the creed of the Administration and the Democratic party, and afforded the common ground for their political co-operation.

Mr. Raymond undoubtedly marred the general effect of his address by carrying his argument to an extreme point. "It is alleged," said he, "that the condition of the Southern States and people is not such as renders safe their re-admission to a share in the government of the country, that they are still disloyal in sentiment and purpose, and that neither the honor, the credit, nor the interest of the Nation would be safe if they were re-admitted to a share in its counsels."

Mr. Raymond maintained, even if the truth of this premise were granted, that it was sufficient to reply that "we have no right, for such reasons, to deny to any portion of the States or people rights expressly conferred upon them by the Const.i.tution of the United States, and we have no right to distrust the purpose or the ability of the people of the Union to protect and defend, under all contingencies and by whatever means may be required, its honor and its welfare."

This a.s.sertion of the right of the Southern States to take part at once and peremptorily in the legislation of a country they had sought to ruin, was not conceded by the people of the loyal States. They did not require any refinement of argument to convince them that men who attempt to destroy a Government should not be permitted at once to share in its administration. They believed that the Congress of the United States would be guilty of a great wrong if it should unconditionally surrender its power to the men who demanded admission to peaceful control of the National only because they had failed to disrupt it by war. Mr. Raymond's personal friends and admirers, who were not confined to any one party, were amazed at the recklessness of his position. He did violence to sound logic by claiming more than was necessary to his argument, and he seriously injured his reputation for political shrewdness by attempting to enforce a policy which grated on the sensibilities and aroused the prejudices of the vast majority of those who had filled the ranks of the Union Army.

Great advantage was expected by the President's supporters from the fact that the convention, as they averred, was so truly "National"--having delegates from every State of the Union. This feature was presented as in hurtful contrast with Republican conventions, whose members came almost entirely from the loyal States. A striking spectacle was attempted by having members from Northern and Southern States enter the great wigwam (which had been specially prepared for the meetings of the convention) arm in arm. To intensify the effect Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina headed the procession, General Couch and ex-Speaker Orr typifying in this display the thorough cordiality of Unionist and Confederate in the return of peace and amicable relations. The danger of all such exhibitions is that they may be made a subject of ridicule. This did not escape. The "wigwam" was parodied by the political wits of the Republican party as "Noah's Ark,"

into which there went, as described in Genesis, "_in two and two,_"

"_of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth._" The humor which this comparison evoked was of a kind especially adapted to the stump and was used most effectively. Indeed the President's supporters, long before the canva.s.s closed, heartily regretted that they had ever resorted to dramatic scenes as a method of promoting a political cause.

The convention of the President's supporters was followed a fortnight later (September 3rd) in the same city--Philadelphia--by a still more imposing a.s.semblage called by the loyalists of the South, who, desiring to explain their exact situation to co-operating friends, invited delegations from the Northern States to meet them. Prominent Republicans from every loyal Commonwealth responded in full force to these men who were endeavoring to reconstruct their States on an enduring basis of Const.i.tutional liberty. Pennsylvania sent a generous delegation as hosts to those who were to enjoy the hospitalities of the State. Governor Curtin haded the list.

a.s.sociated with him were General Geary, already named as his successor, General Simon Cameron, at that time a private citizen, Colonel John W. Forney, then editor of the _Philadelphia Press_, and representatives from every Congressional district in the State. Other States responded with equal cordiality. Senators Morgan and Harris, Horace Greeley, and John Jacob Astor, came from New York. Ma.s.sachusetts sent her governor, her senators, and all her living ex-governors. It became, indeed, the fas.h.i.+on for the New-England States to send governors and ex-governors, and every State was represented in this way. New Jersey did likewise. The Western States were fully represented by their ablest and most zealous men. Two future Presidents were on the delegation from Ohio, with General Schenck and Stanley Matthews and the influential German editor Frederick Ha.s.saurek. Oliver P. Morton came from Indiana, Lyman Trumbull from Illinois, Fairchild and Howe from Wisconsin, Zachariah Chandler and Carl Schurz (then editor of the _Detroit Post_) from Michigan. The border slave States sent strong men. N. B. Smithers came from Delaware; Senator Creswell, Francis Thomas, and C. C. Fulton of the _Baltimore American_, from Maryland; Governor Boreman, A. W. Campbell and Nathan Goff from West Virginia; Robert J. Breckenridge accompanied ex-Attorney-general Speed from Kentucky; while Missouri sent Governor Fletcher, sustained by an able delegation, of whom Van Horn, Finkelnburg and Louis Gottschalk were prominent members. A number of business men, headed by E. W. Fox, came from St. Louis.

Many of the Southern States were somewhat scantily represented. It was not safe in certain sections of the South to hold a convention for the selection of delegates, and yet one or more appeared from every one of the lately rebellious States. Thomas J. Durant and H. C. Warmoth came from Louisiana; D. H. Bingham and M. J. Safford from Alabama; G. W.

Ashburn from Georgia; and Governor A. J. Hamilton, Lorenzo Sherwood and George W. Paschal from Texas. Albion W. Tourgee, who has since won a brilliant reputation in literature, came from North Carolina with a strong delegation; J. W. Field and H. W. Davis from Mississippi.

Virginia and Tennessee, of the original Confederacy, sent a large number of good men. From the former came John Minor Botts, George W.

Somers, Lucius H. Chandler, Daniel H. Hoge, Lewis McKenzie, James M.

Stewart, and some hundred and fifty others; the latter was represented by Governor Brownlow, Joseph S. Fowler, Samuel Arnell, A. W. Hawkins, Thomas H. Benton, General John Eaton, Barbour Lewis, and many others whose loyalty had been tested by many forms of personal peril.

These names give a fair indication of the character and weight of the convention. It was intended to be, and was, a representative body of true Union men, of the men who had borne persecution for Loyalty's sake, of the men who, having aided in achieving great victory, were resolved that it should not fail to bear its legitimate fruits. The delegates from all the States first a.s.sembled in Independence Square, and after a meeting of congratulation, marked by great enthusiasm, proceeded to form into two conventions,--one containing the loyalists who had called the convention, and the other the Northern delegates who had met to welcome them. Of the Southern Convention Mr. Thomas J.

Durant of Louisiana was selected as temporary chairman, and Honorable James Speed of Kentucky as permanent chairman; and of the Northern Convention Governor Curtis of Pennsylvania was both temporary and permanent chairman. The motive for thus separating was to leave the Southern loyalists entirely untrammeled in their proceedings, in order that their voice might have greater weight in the country than if it were apparently directed by a large majority of Northern men a.s.sembling in the same body with them.

The Northern Convention concluded its proceedings on the third day with a ma.s.s-meeting larger than any that had ever a.s.sembled in Philadelphia.

The Southern Convention remained in session full five days. The interest was sustained from beginning to end, and besides the delegates present, a vast a.s.semblage of people thronged the streets of Philadelphia during all the sessions of the conventions. In an off year, as partisans call it, there had never been seen so great excitement, enthusiasm and earnestness in any political a.s.semblage.

Mr. Durant called the Southern Convention to order with the same gavel that had been used in the Secession Convention in South Carolina.

Governor Hamilton of Texas, who presented it for the occasion, reminded his audience that the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, and that it seemed a poetic retribution that a convention of Southern loyalists should be called to order with the same instrument that had rapped the South into disunion and anarchy.

On taking the chair as permanent president of the Southern Convention, Mr. Speed spoke of the Administration, of which for the past few months he had been a reluctant member, with a freedom which, during his connection with it, would have been improper if not impossible. He described the late convention in this place as one with which "we could not act." "Why was that convention here? It was here in part because the great cry came up from the white man of the South,--My Const.i.tutional and my natural rights are denied me; and then the cry came up from the black man of the South--My Const.i.tutional and my natural rights are denied me. These complaints are utterly antagonistic, the one to the other; and this convention is called to say which is right. Upon that question, if upon the truth as you feel it, speak the truth as you know it, speak the truth as you love permanent peace, as you may hope to establish the inst.i.tutions of this Government so that our children and our children's children shall enjoy a peace that we have not known. . . . The convention to which I have referred, as I read its history, came here to simply record in abject submission the commands of one man. That convention did his commands.

The loyal Congress of the United States had refused to do his commands; and whenever you have a Congress that does not resolutely and firmly refuse, as the present Congress has done, to merely act as the recording secretary of the tyrant at the White House, American liberty is gone forever."

Mr. Speed's language was a complete revelation, more emphatic than had yet been made, of the great differences which had prevailed in the Cabinet of the President with respect to his policy; and his words naturally created a sensation, not alone in the convention, but throughout the country. The fact of his identification with the President, in the closest official intercourse, ever since his accession, added vastly to the weight of Mr. Speed's address and gave to it an influence which he had not, perhaps, antic.i.p.ated when he delivered it. This influence was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the author of the speech was a native and citizen of the South. It was a stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Northern Republicans to find a man from the South taking advanced ground that possibly involved peril to himself before the angry contest should be finally settled.

--The address agreed upon in the Southern Convention was in the form of an appeal "from the loyal men of the South to their fellow-citizens of the United States." It declared that the representatives of eight millions of American citizens "appeal for protection and justice to their friends and brothers in the States that have been spared the cruelties of the Rebellion and the direct horrors of civil war."

"Having," said the address, "lost our champion, we return to you who can make presidents and punish traitors. Our last hope, under G.o.d, is in the unity and firmness of the States that elected Abraham Lincoln and defeated Jefferson Davis."

--"We cannot better define at once our wrongs and our wants than by declaring, that since Andrew Johnson affiliated with his early slanderers and our constant enemies, his hand has been laid heavily upon every earnest loyalist of the South."

--"History, the just judgment of the present and the certain confirmation of the future, invites and commands us to declare, that after neglecting his own remedies for restoring the Union, Andrew Johnson has resorted to the weapons of traitors to bruise and beat down patriots."

--"After declaring that none but the loyal should govern the reconstructed South, he has practiced upon the maxim that none but traitors shall rule."

--"In the South he has removed the proved and trusted patriot from office, and selected the unqualified and convicted traitor."

--"After brave men, who had fought the great battle for the union, had been nominated for positions, their names were recalled and avowed rebels subst.i.tuted."

--"Every original Unionist in the South, who stands fast to Andrew Johnson's covenants from 1861 to 1865, has been ostracized."

--"He has corrupted the local courts by offering premiums for the defiance of the laws of Congress, and by openly discouraging the observance of the oath against treason."

--"While refusing to punish one single conspicuous traitor, though great numbers have earned the penalty of death, more than one thousand devoted Union soldiers have been murdered in cold blood since the surrender of Lee, and in no cases have their a.s.sa.s.sins been brought to judgment."

--"He has pardoned some of the worst rebel criminals, North and South, including some who have taken human life under circ.u.mstances of unparalleled atrocity."

--"While declaring against the injustice of leaving eleven States unrepresented, he has refused to authorize the liberal plan of Congress, simply because they have recognized the loyal majority and refused to perpetuate the traitor minority."

--"In every State south of Mason and Dixon's line his policy has wrought the most deplorable consequences,--social, moral, and political."

Upon these indictments a powerful address was based, giving argument, ill.u.s.tration, fact and indisputable conclusion. The address was framed by Senator Creswell of Maryland, and the style and tone were beyond praise. It was received with great applause in the convention, was adopted with unanimity, and created a profound influence upon the public opinion of the North. It was the deliberate, well-conceived and clearly stated opinion of thoughtful and responsible men, was never disproved, was practically unanswered, and its serious accusations were in effect admitted by the South. The one objective point proclaimed in the address, repeated in the resolutions, echoed and re-echoed by every speaker, both in the Northern and Southern Conventions, was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was evidently the unalterable determination of the Republicans to make that the leading feature of the campaign, to enforce it in every party convention, to urge it through the press, to present it on the stump, to proclaim it through every authorized exponent of public opinion.

They were determined that the Democratic party of the North should not be allowed to ignore it or in any way to evade it. It was to be the s.h.i.+bboleth of the Republican canva.s.s, and the rank and file in every loyal State were engaged in its presentation and its exposition.

The friends of the Administration, feeling the disadvantage under which they labored by an apparent combination of all the earnest supporters of the war for the Union against them, sought to create a re-action in their favor by calling a soldiers' convention to meet at Cleveland, on the 17th of September. A considerable number of respectable officers responded to the summons; but relatively the demonstration was weak, ineffective and in the end hurtful to the Administration. The venerable General Wool of the regular army, the oldest major-general in the United States at the time, was made president of the convention and his selection was significant of the proceedings. He had been all his life a solider and nothing but a soldier. He was a major of infantry in the war of 1812 and had been in continuous service thereafter. He denounced the Abolitionists after the manner that had been the custom in the regular army prior to the war. He thought the convention had been called to protest against another war which he was sure the Abolitionists were determined to force on the county. "Another civil war is foreshadowed," said he, "unless the freedmen are placed on an equality with their previous masters. If this cannot be accomplished, radical partisans, with a raging thirst for blood and plunder, are again ready to invade the Southern States and lay waste the country not already desolated, with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other. These revengeful partisans would leave their country a howling wilderness for the want of more victims to gratify their insatiable cruelty. . . . Let there be peace! Yet there are those among us who are not sufficiently satiated with blood and plunder, and cry for more war." General Wool would have been severely criticised if it had not been remembered that for nearly sixty years he had been a faithful soldier and had loyally followed the flag of the Union in three wars.

Many members of the convention were outspoken Democrats and their presence, therefore, did not indicate and division in the Republican ranks,--the objective point to which all the efforts of the Administration were steadily addressed. Conspicuous representatives of this cla.s.s were Generals John A. McClernand of Illinois, J. W.

Denver of California, Willis A. Gorman of Minnesota, James B. Steedman of Ohio. The delegates who had been Republicans were all of the most conservative type, and it is believed that every one of them became permanently identified with the Democratic party. The most prominent of these were General Thomas Ewing of Kansas, Governor Bramlette and General Rousseau of Kentucky, and Honorable Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio.

General Gordon Granger and General George A. Custer of the regular army were very active in organizing the convention. It was evident that the number of soldiers present was small; and the convention really failed in its princ.i.p.al aim, which was to strengthen the President in the loyal States.

A telegram, expressing sympathy with its proceedings, was received by the convention from a number of Confederate officers who were gathered at Memphis. But it was unfortunate that General N. B. Forrest was a conspicuous signer; still more unfortunate that the convention pa.s.sed a resolution of thanks to Forrest and his rebel a.s.sociates for the "magnanimity and kindness" of their message. Forrest's name was especially odious in the North for his alleged guilty partic.i.p.ation in the ma.s.sacre at Fort Pillow. All other circ.u.mstances united did not condemn the convention in Northern opinion so deeply as this incident.

Further investigation of the Fort Pillow affair has in some degree ameliorated the feeling against General Forrest, but at that time his name among the soldiers of the Union was as bitterly execrated as was that of the Master of Stair among the Macdonalds of Glencoe, or of Haynau, at a later day, among the patriots of Hungary.

The only noteworthy speech in the convention was delivered by General Thomas Ewing. It was able, but extreme in its hostility to the policy of Congress. He and Mr. Browning were law-partners at the time of Mr. Johnson's accession to the Presidency. Both had supported Mr.

Lincoln, and both now resolved to oppose the Republican party. General Ewing's loss was regretted by a large number of friends. He had inherited talent and capacity of a high order, was rapidly rising in his profession, and seemed destined to an inviting political career in the party to which he had belonged from its first organization. In supporting the policy of President Johnson he made a large sacrifice,--large enough certainly to free his action from the slightest suspicion of any other motive than conviction of duty. General Ewing has since adhered steadily to the Democratic party.

The fourth of the National Conventions which this remarkable year witnessed, was that of the citizen soldiers and sailors, held at Pittsburg on the 25th and 26th of September. Nine out of ten, perhaps even a larger proportion, of those who had defended the Union with arms, were hostile to the President's policy. As soon therefore as it was attempted to secure a political advantage for the Administration by calling the Cleveland Convention, the great ma.s.s of Union soldiers demanded that a convention be held in which their true position might be proclaimed. The response was overwhelming both in numbers and enthusiasm. Pittsburg was literally overrun. In addition to the large number of regimental and company officers who had done their duty in the service, there was an immense outpouring of privates. It was said that not less than twenty-five thousand who had served in the ranks of the Union army were present. A private soldier, L. Edwin Dudley, was chosen temporary president, and a majority of the prominent officers of the convention were privates and non-commissioned officers. Mr.

Dudley was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Was.h.i.+ngton, and being refused a leave of absence for two days to attend the convention, he promptly resigned his place and joined his brethren at Pittsburg. The incident of the resignation strikingly ill.u.s.trates the depth of feeling which the contest between the President and Congress had developed among the soldiery of the Union.