American Eloquence Volume IV Part 5

OF MARYLAND. (BORN 1817, DIED 1865.)

ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE FIRST REPUBLICAN THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 22, 1864.

MR. SPEAKER:

The bill which I am directed by the committee on the rebellious States to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government in States whose governments have been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions as will secure not only civil government to the people of the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder; of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their const.i.tutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation. * * * It is ent.i.tled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion, and the relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion toward the United States; not less of those who think that the rebellion has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the protection of the Const.i.tution, and that Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them as conquered enemies, than of that other cla.s.s who think that they have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though incapable of exercising political privileges under the Const.i.tution, but that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Const.i.tution to guarantee republican governments in the States, and that this is the proper time and the proper mode of exercising it. It is also ent.i.tled to the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of the House who honestly and deliberately express their judgment that slavery is dead. To them it puts the question whether it is not advisable to bury it out of sight, that its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our propriety. * * *

What is the nature of this case with which we have to deal, the evil we must remedy, the danger we must avert? In other words, what is that monster of political wrong which is called secession? It is not, Mr.

Speaker, domestic violence, within the meaning of that clause of the Const.i.tution, for the violence was the act of the people of those States through their governments, and was the offspring of their free and unforced will. It is not invasion, in the meaning of the Const.i.tution, for no State has been invaded against the will of the government of the State by any power except the United States marching to overthrow the usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, the act of the people of the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act.

And therefore it must be either a legal revolution, which makes them independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection of governments which do not recognize the Const.i.tution of the United States, which the Const.i.tution does not recognize, and, therefore, not republican governments of the States in rebellion. The latter is the view which all parties take of it. I do not understand that any gentleman on the other side of the House says that any rebel government which does not recognize the Const.i.tution of the United States, and which is not recognized by Congress, is a State government within the meaning of the Const.i.tution. Still less can it be said that there is a State government, republican or unrepublican, in the State of Tennessee, where there is no government of any kind, no civil authority, no organized form of administration except that represented by the flag of the United States, obeying the will and under the orders of the military officer in command. * * *

Those that are here represented are the only governments existing within the limits of the United States. Those that are not here represented are not governments of the States, republican under the Const.i.tution. And if they be not, then they are military usurpations, inaugurated as the permanent governments of the States, contrary to the supreme law of the land, arrayed in arms against the Government of the United States; and it is the duty, the first and highest duty, of the government to suppress and expel them. Congress must either expel or recognize and support them. If it do not guarantee them, it is bound to expel them; and they who are not ready to suppress are bound to recognize them.

We are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of the authority of the State governments. When that shall have been accomplished, there will be no form of State authority in existence which Congress can recognize. Our success will be the overthrow of all sent balance of government in the rebel States. The Government of the United States is then in fact the only government existing in those States, and it is there charged to guarantee them republican governments.

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaranteeing a republican government confer under such circ.u.mstances upon Congress? What right does it give?

What laws may it pa.s.s? What objects may it accomplish? What conditions may it insist upon, and what judgment may it exercise in determining what it will do? The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right to pa.s.s all laws necessary and proper to guarantee. The duty of guaranteeing means the duty to accomplish the result. It means that the republican government shall exist. It means that every opposition to republican government shall be put down. It means that every thing inconsistent with the permanent continuance of republican government shall be weeded out. It places in the hands of Congress to say what is and what is not, with all the light of experience and all the lessons of the past, inconsistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance of republican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy is radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and enduring peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of republican government, and it have the manliness to say so, there is no power, judicial or executive, in the United States that can even question this judgment but the people; and they can do it only by sending other Representatives here to undo our work. The very language of the Const.i.tution, and the necessary logic of the case, involve that consequence. The denial of the right of secession means that all the territory of the United States shall remain under the jurisdiction of the Const.i.tution. If there can be no State government which does not recognize the Const.i.tution, and which the authorities of the United States do not recognize, then there are these alternatives, and these only: the rebel States must be governed by Congress till they submit and form a State government under the Const.i.tution; or Congress must recognize State governments which do not recognize either Congress or the Const.i.tution of the United States; or there must be an entire absence of all government in the rebel States--and that is anarchy.

To recognize a government which does not recognize the Const.i.tution is absurd, for a government is not a const.i.tution; and the recognition of a State government means the acknowledgment of men as governors and legislators and judges, actually invested with power to make laws, to judge of crimes, to convict the citizens of other States, to demand the surrender of fugitives from justice, to arm and command the militia, to require the United States to repress all opposition to its authority, and to protect it against invasion--against our own armies; whose Senators and Representatives are ent.i.tled to seats in Congress, and whose electoral votes must be counted in the election of the President of a government which they disown and defy. To accept the alternative of anarchy as the const.i.tutional condition of a State is to a.s.sert the failure of the Const.i.tution and the end of republican government. Until, therefore, Congress recognize a State government, organized under its auspices, there is no government in the rebel States except the authority of Congress. * * * When military opposition shall have been suppressed, not merely paralyzed, driven into a corner, pushed back, but gone, the horrid vision of civil war vanished from the South, then call upon the people to reorganize in their own way, subject to the conditions that we think essential to our permanent peace, and to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion--a republican government in the form that the people of the United States can agree to.

Now, for that purpose there are three modes indicated. One is to remove the cause of the war by an alteration of the Const.i.tution of the United States, prohibiting slavery everywhere within its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of the matter, and should consecrate the nation's triumph. But there are thirty-four States; three fourths of them would be twenty-six. I believe there are twenty-five States represented in this Congress; so that we on that basis can-not change the Const.i.tution.

It is, therefore,a condition precedent in that view of the case that more States shall have governments organized within them. If it be a.s.sumed that the basis of calculation shall be three fourths of the States now represented in Congress, I agree to that construction of the Const.i.tution. * * *

But, under any circ.u.mstances, even upon that basis it will be difficult to find three fourths of the States, with New Jersey, or Kentucky, or Maryland, or Delaware, or other States that might be mentioned, opposed to it, under existing auspices, to adopt such a clause of the Const.i.tution after we shall have agreed to it. If adopted it still leaves all laws necessary to the ascertainment of the will of the people, and all restrictions on the return to power of the leaders of the rebellion, wholly unprovided for. The amendment of the Const.i.tution meets my hearty approval, but it is not a remedy for the evils we must deal with.

The next plan is that inaugurated by the President of the United States, in the proclamation of the 8th December (1863), called the amnesty proclamation. That proposes no guardians.h.i.+p of the United States over the reorganization of the governments, no law to prescribe who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see that the law is faithfully executed, no supervising authority to control and judge of the election. But if in any manner by the toleration of martial law, lately proclaimed the fundamental law, under the dictation of any military authority, or under the prescription of a provost marshal, something in the form of a government shall be presented, represented to rest on the votes of one tenth of the population, the President will recognize that, provided it does not contravene the proclamation of freedom and the laws of Congress; and to secure that an oath is exacted. There is no guaranty of law to watch over the organization of that government. It may be recognized by the military power, and not recognized by the civil power, so that it would have a doubtful existence, half civil and half military, neither a temporary government by law of Congress nor a State government, something as unknown to the Const.i.tution as the rebel government that refuses to recognize it. The only prescription is that it shall not contravene the provisions of the proclamation. Sir, if that proclamation be valid, then we are relieved from all trouble on that score. But if that proclamation be not valid, then the oath to support it is without legal sanction, for the President can ask no man to bind himself by an oath to support an unfounded proclamation or an unconst.i.tutional law even for a moment, still less after it shall have been declared void by the Supreme Court of the United States. * * *

By the bill we propose to preclude the judicial question by the solution of a political question. How so? By the paramount power of Congress to reorganize governments in those States, to impose such conditions as it thinks necessary to secure the permanence of republican government, to refuse to recognize any governments there which do not prohibit slavery forever. Ay, gentlemen, take the responsibility to say in the face of those who clamor for the speedy recognition of governments tolerating slavery, that the safety of the people of the United States is the supreme law; that their will is the supreme rule of law, and that we are authorized to p.r.o.nounce their will on this subject. Take the responsibility to say that we will revise the judgments of our ancestors; that we have experience written in blood which they had not; that we find now what they darkly doubted, that slavery is really, radically inconsistent with the permanence of republican governments; and that being charged by the supreme law of the land on our conscience and judgment to guarantee, that is to continue, maintain and enforce, if it exist, to inst.i.tute and restore, when overthrown, republican government throughout the broad limits of the republic, we will weed out every element of their policy which we think incompatible with its permanence and endurance. The purpose of the bill is to preclude the judicial question of the validity and effect of the President's proclamation by the decision of the political authority in reorganizing the State governments. It makes the rule of decision the provisions of the State const.i.tution, which, when recognized by Congress, can be questioned in no court; and it adds to the authority of the proclamation the sanction of Congress. If gentlemen say that the Const.i.tution does not bear that construction, we will go before the people of the United States on that question, and by their judgment we will abide.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON,

OF OHIO. (BORN 1825, DIED 1889.)

ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 4, 1864.

The gentleman [Mr. H. W. Davis] maintains two propositions, which lie at the very basis of his views on this subject. He has explained them to the House, and enforced them on other occasions. He maintains that, by reason of their secession, the seceded States and their citizens "have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though incapable of exercising political privileges under the Const.i.tution, but that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Const.i.tution to guarantee republican government in the States, and that this is the proper time and the proper mode of exercising it." This act of revolution on the part of the seceding States has evoked the most extraordinary theories upon the relations of the States to the Federal Government. This theory of the gentleman is one of them.

The ratification of the Const.i.tution by Virginia established the relation between herself and the Federal Government; it created the link between her and all the States; it announced her a.s.sumption of the duties, her t.i.tle to the rights, of the confederating States; it proclaimed her interest in, her power over, her obedience to, the common agent of all the States. If Virginia had never ordained that ratification, she would have been an independent State; the Const.i.tution would have been as perfect and the union between the ratifying States would have been as complete as they now are. Virginia repeals that ordinance, annuls that bond of union, breaks that link of confederation.

She repeals but a single law, repeals it by the action of a sovereign convention, leaves her const.i.tution, her laws, her political and social polity untouched. And the gentleman from Maryland tells us that the effect of this repeal is not to destroy the vigor of that law, but to subvert the State government, and to render the citizens "incapable of exercising political privileges"; that the Union remains, but that one party to it has thereby lost its corporate existence, and the other has advanced to the control and government of it.

Sir, this cannot be. Gentlemen must not palter in a double sense. These acts of secession are either valid or invalid. If they are valid, they separated the State from the Union. If they are invalid, they are void; they have no effect; the State officers who act upon them are rebels to the Federal Government; the States are not destroyed; their const.i.tutions are not abrogated; their officers are committing illegal acts, for which they are liable to punishment; the States have never left the Union, but, as soon as their officers shall perform their duties or other officers shall a.s.sume their places, will again perform the duties imposed, and enjoy the privileges conferred, by the Federal compact, and this not by virtue of a new ratification of the Const.i.tution, nor a new admission by the Federal Government, but by virtue of the original ratification, and the constant, uninterrupted maintenance of position in the Federal Union since that date.

Acts of secession are not invalid to destroy the Union, and valid to destroy the State governments and the political privileges of their citizens. We have heard much of the twofold relations which citizens of the seceded States may hold to the Federal Government--that they may be at once belligerents and rebellious citizens. I believe there are some judicial decisions to that effect. Sir, it is impossible. The Federal Government may possibly have the right to elect in which relation it will deal with them; it cannot deal at one and the same time in inconsistent relations. Belligerents, being captured, are ent.i.tled to be treated as prisoners of war; rebellious citizens are liable to be hanged. The private property of belligerents, according to the rules of modern war, shall not be taken without compensation; the property of rebellious citizens is liable to confiscation. Belligerents are not amenable to the local criminal law, nor to the jurisdiction of the courts which administer it; rebellious citizens are, and the officers are bound to enforce the law and exact the penalty of its infraction.

The seceded States are either in the Union or out of it. If in the Union, their const.i.tutions are untouched, their State governments are maintained, their citizens are ent.i.tled to all political rights, except so far as they may be deprived of them by the criminal law which they have infracted.

This seems incomprehensible to the gentleman from Maryland. In his view, the whole State government centres in the men who administer it, so that, when they administer it unwisely, or put it in antagonism to the Federal Government, the State government is dissolved, the State const.i.tution is abrogated, and the State is left, in fact and in form, _de jure_ and _de facto_, in anarchy, except so far as the Federal Government may rightfully intervene. * * * I submit that these gentlemen do not see with their usual clearness of vision. If, by a plague or other visitation of G.o.d, every officer of a State government should at the same moment die, so that not a single person clothed with official power should remain, would the State government be destroyed? Not at all. For the moment it would not be administered; but as soon as officers were elected, and a.s.sumed their respective duties, it would be instantly in full force and vigor.

If these States are out of the Union, their State governments are still in force, unless otherwise changed; their citizens are to the Federal Government as foreigners, and it has in relation to them the same rights, and none other, as it had in relation to British subjects in the war of 1812, or to the Mexicans in 1846. Whatever may be the true relation of the seceding States, the Federal Government derives no power in relation to them or their citizens from the provision of the Const.i.tution now under consideration, but, in the one case, derives all its power from the duty of enforcing the "supreme law of the land," and in the other, from the power "to declare war."

The second proposition of the gentleman from Maryland is this--I use his language: "That clause vests in the Congress of the United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited political jurisdiction, paramount over courts, subject only to the judgment of the people of the United States, embracing within its scope every legislative measure necessary and proper to make it effectual; and what is necessary and proper the Const.i.tution refers in the first place to our judgment, subject to no revision but that of the people."

The gentleman states his case too strongly. The duty imposed on Congress is doubtless important, but Congress has no right to use a means of performing it forbidden by the Const.i.tution, no matter how necessary or proper it might be thought to be. But, sir, this doctrine is monstrous.

It has no foundation in the Const.i.tution. It subjects all the States to the will of Congress; it places their inst.i.tutions at the feet of Congress. It creates in Congress an absolute, unqualified despotism. It a.s.serts the power of Congress in changing the State governments to be "plenary, supreme, unlimited," "subject only to revision by the people of the United States." The rights of the people of the State are nothing; their will is nothing. Congress first decides; the people of the whole Union revise. My own State of Ohio is liable at any moment to be called in question for her const.i.tution. She does not permit negroes to vote. If this doctrine be true, Congress may decide that this exclusion is anti-republican, and by force of arms abrogate that const.i.tution and set up another, permitting negroes to vote. From that decision of Congress there is no appeal to the people of Ohio, but only to the people of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts and Wisconsin, at the election of representatives, and, if a majority cannot be elected to reverse the decision, the people of Ohio must submit. Woe be to the day when that doctrine shall be established, for from its centralized despotism we will appeal to the sword!

Sir, the rights of the States were the foundation corners of the confederation. The Const.i.tution recognized them, maintained them, provided for their perpetuation. Our fathers thought them the safeguard of our liberties. They have proved so. They have reconciled liberty with empire; they have reconciled the freedom of the individual with the increase of our magnificent domain. They are the test, the touchstone, the security of our liberties. This bill, and the avowed doctrine of its supporters, sweeps them all instantly away. It subst.i.tutes despotism for self-government--despotism the more severe because vested in a numerous Congress elected by a people who may not feel the exercise of its power.

It subverts the government, destroys the confederation, and erects a tyranny on the ruins of republican governments. It creates unity--it destroys liberty; it maintains integrity of territory, but destroys the rights of the citizen.

THADDEUS STEVENS,

OF PENNSYLVANIA. (BORN 1792, DIED 1868.)

ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE RADICAL REPUBLICAN THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 18, 1865.

A candid examination of the power and proper principles of reconstruction can be offensive to no one, and may possibly be profitable by exciting inquiry. One of the suggestions of the message which we are now considering has special reference to this. Perhaps it is the principle most interesting to the people at this time. The President a.s.sumes, what no one doubts, that the late rebel States have lost their const.i.tutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of representation in Congress, except by permission of the Government. It matters but little, with this admission, whether you call them States out of the Union, and now conquered territories, or a.s.sert that because the Const.i.tution forbids them to do what they did do, that they are therefore only dead as to all national and political action, and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. In other words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead carca.s.ses lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it requires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State government and send representatives to Congress. n.o.body, I believe, pretends that with their old const.i.tutions and frames of government they can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Const.i.tution. They have torn their const.i.tutional States into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men cannot raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their own existence "as it was." Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Const.i.tution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the Commander-in-Chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law.

There is fortunately no difficulty in solving the question. There are two provisions in the Const.i.tution, under one of which the case must fall. The fourth article says:

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union."

In my judgment this is the controlling provision in this case.

Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two acknowledged belligerents severed their original compacts, and broke all the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new States or remain as conquered provinces. Congress--the Senate and House of Representatives, with the concurrence of the President--is the only power that can act in the matter. But suppose, as some dreaming theorists imagine, that these States have never been out of the Union, but have only destroyed their State governments so as to be incapable of political action; then the fourth section of the fourth article applies, which says:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government."

Who is the United States? Not the judiciary; not the President; but the sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives in Congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. It means the political Government--the concurrent action of both branches of Congress and the Executive. The separate action of each amounts to nothing, either in admitting new States or guaranteeing republican governments to lapsed or outlawed States. Whence springs the preposterous idea that either the President, or the Senate, or the House of Representatives, acting separately, can determine the right of States to send members or Senators to the Congress of the Union?

To prove that they are and for four years have been out of the Union for all legal purposes, and, being now conquered, subject to the absolute disposal of Congress, I will suggest a few ideas and adduce a few authorities. If the so-called "confederate States of America" were an independent belligerent, and were so acknowledged by the United States and by Europe, or had a.s.sumed and maintained an att.i.tude which ent.i.tled them to be considered and treated as a belligerent, then, during such time, they were precisely in the condition of a foreign nation with whom we were at war; nor need their independence as a nation be acknowledged by us to produce that effect.

After such clear and repeated decisions it is something worse than ridiculous to hear men of respectable standing attempting to nullify the law of nations, and declare the Supreme Court of the United States in error, because, as the Const.i.tution forbids it, the States could not go out of the Union in fact. A respectable gentleman was lately reciting this argument, when he suddenly stopped and said, "Did you hear of that atrocious murder committed in our town? A rebel deliberately murdered a Government official." The person addressed said, "I think you are mistaken." "How so? I saw it myself." "You are wrong, no murder was or could be committed, for the law forbids it."

The theory that the rebel States, for four years a separate power and without representation in Congress, were all the time here in the Union, is a good deal less ingenious and respectable than the metaphysics of Berkeley, which proved that neither the world nor any human being was in existence. If this theory were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven; but its effect is deeply injurious to the stability of the nation. I cannot doubt that the late confederate States are out of the Union to all intents and purposes for which the conqueror may choose so to consider them.

But suppose these powerful but now subdued belligerents, instead of being out of the Union, are merely destroyed, and are now lying about, a dead corpse, or with animation so suspended as to be incapable of action, and wholly unable to heal themselves by any unaided movements of their own. Then they may fall under the provision of the Const.i.tution, which says "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government." Under that power, can the judiciary, or the President, or the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, or the Senate or House of Representatives, acting separately, restore them to life and readmit them into the Union? I insist that if each acted separately, though the action of each was identical with all the others, it would amount to nothing. Nothing but the joint action of the two Houses of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do it.