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Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2

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Title: Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2

Author: George S. Boutwell


        
Release date: December 14, 2006 [eBook #20109]
                Most recently updated: September 21, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF SIXTY YEARS IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS, VOL. 2 ***




Transcriber's note:

  Footnotes are at the end of the chapter.

  A few commas have been moved or added for clarity.

  Obsolete spellings of place names have been retained; personal names
  and obvious typographical errors have been corrected.


REMINISCENCES
OF
SIXTY YEARS IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS
VOLUME II


Reminiscences of
Sixty Years
in Public Affairs
by George S. Boutwell
Governor of Massachusetts, 1851-1852
Representative in Congress, 1863-1869
Secretary of the Treasury, 1869-1873
Senator from Massachusetts, 1873-1877
etc., etc.,

Volume Two

New York
McClure, Phillips & Co.
Mcmii


_Copyright, 1902, by_
McClure, Phillips & Co.

_Published May, 1902.  N._


CONTENTS

 XXVIII  Service in Congress
   XXIX  Incidents in the Civil War
    XXX  The Amendments to the Constitution
   XXXI  Investigations Following the Civil War
  XXXII  Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
 XXXIII  The Treasury Department in 1869
  XXXIV  The Mint Bill and the "Crime of 1873"
   XXXV  Black Friday--September 24, 1869
  XXXVI  An Historic Sale of United States Bonds in England
 XXXVII  General Grant's Administration
XXXVIII  General Grant as a Statesman
  XXXIX  Reminiscences of Public Men
     XL  Blaine and Conkling and the Republican Convention of 1880
    XLI  From 1875 to 1895
   XLII  The Last of the Ocean Slave Traders
  XLIII  Mr. Lincoln as an Historical Personage
   XLIV  Speech on Columbus
    XLV  Imperialism as a Public Policy
  INDEX


REMINISCENCES
OF
SIXTY YEARS IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS
VOLUME II


XXVIII
SERVICE IN CONGRESS

My election to Congress in 1862 was contested by Judge Benjamin F.
Thomas, who was then a Republican member from the Norfolk district.
The re-districting of the State brought Thomas and Train into the same
district.  I was nominated by the Republican Convention, and Thomas
then became the candidate of the "People's Party," and at the election
he was supported by the Democrats.  His course in the Thirty-seventh
Congress on the various projects for compromise had alienated many
Republicans, and it had brought to him the support of many Democrats.
My active radicalism had alienated the conservative Republicans.  As a
consequence, my majority reached only about 1,400 while in the
subsequent elections, 1864-'66-'68 the majorities ranged from five to
seven thousand.


Among the new members who were elected to the Thirty-eighth Congress
and who attained distinction subsequently, were Garfield, Blaine and
Allison.  Wilson, of Iowa, had been in the Thirty-seventh Congress and
Henry Winter Davis had been a member at an earlier period.  Mr.
Conkling was a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was
defeated by his townsman Francis Kernan under the influence of the
reactionary wave which moved over the North in 1862.  At that time Mr.
Lincoln had lost ground with the people.  The war had not been
prosecuted successfully, the expenses were enormous, taxes were heavy,
multitudes of families were in grief, and the prospects of peace
through victory were very dim.  The Democrats in the House became
confident and aggressive.

Alexander Long, of Ohio, made a speech so tainted with sympathy for
the rebels that Speaker Colfax came down from the chair and moved a
resolution of censure.  Harris, of Maryland, in the debate upon the
resolution, made a speech much more offensive than that of Long.  As a
consequence, the censure was applied to both gentlemen and as a further
consequence, the friends of the South became more guarded in
expressions of sympathy.  It is true also, that there were many
Democrats who did not sympathize with Harris, Long, and Pendleton.
Voorhees of Indiana was also an active sympathizer with the South.  I
recollect that in the Thirty-eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress he made a
violent attack upon Mr. Lincoln, and the Republican Party.  The House
was in committee, and I was in the chair.  Consequently I listened
attentively to the speech.  It was carefully prepared and modeled
apparently upon Junius and Burke--a model which time has destroyed.

Of the members of the House during the war period, Henry Winter Davis
was the most accomplished speaker.  Mr. Davis' head was a study.  In
front it was not only intellectual, it was classical--a model for an
artist.  The back of his head was that of a prize fighter, and he
combined the scholar and gentleman with the pugilist.  His courage was
constitutional and he was ready to make good his position whether by
argument or by blows.  His speeches in the delivery were very
attractive.  His best speech, as I recall his efforts, was a speech in
defense of Admiral Dupont.  That speech involved an attack upon the
Navy Department.  Alexander H. Rice, of Massachusetts, was the chairman
of the Naval Committee.  He appeared for the Navy Department in an able
defence.  Mr. Rice's abilities were not of the highest order, but his
style was polished, and he was thoroughly equipped for the defence.  He
had the Navy Department behind him, and a department usually has a
plausible reason or excuse for anything that it does.

An estimate of Mr. Davis' style as a writer and his quality as an
orator may be gained from a speech entitled:--"Reasons for Refusing to
Part Company with the South," which he delivered in February, 1861,
and in which he set forth the condition of the country as it then
appeared to him.  These extracts give some support to the opinion
entertained by many that Mr. Davis was the leading political orator
of the Civil War period:

"We are at the end of the insane revel of partisan license, which, for
thirty years, has, in the United States, worn the mask of government.
We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death.  The
nations of the world look anxiously to see if the people, ere they
tread that measure, will come to themselves.

"Yet in the early youth of our national life we are already exhausted
by premature excesses.  The corruption of our political maxims has
relaxed the tone of public morals and degraded the public authorities
from terror to the accomplices of evil-doers.  Platforms for fools--
plunder for thieves--offices for service--power for ambition--unity in
these essentials--diversity in the immaterial matters of policy and
legislation--charity for every frailty--the voice of the people is the
voice of God--these maxims have sunk into the public mind; have
presided at the administration of public affairs, have almost effaced
the very idea of public duty.  The Government under their disastrous
influence has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic and
useful legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent, along
the barren ravine of party and sectional strife.  It has been shorn of
every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of authority and power.

"The consequence of this demoralization is that States, without regard
to the Federal Government, assume to stand face to face and wage their
own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties, to impute to each
other every wrong, to insist that individual States shall remedy every
grievance, and they denounce failure to do so as cause of civil war
between States; and as if the Constitution were silent and dead and
the power of the Union utterly inadequate to keep the peace between
them, unconstitutional commissioners flit from State to State, or
assemble at the national capital to counsel peace or instigate war.
Sir, these are the causes which lie at the bottom of the present
dangers.  These causes which have rendered them possible and made them
serious, must be removed before they can ever be permanently cured.
They shake the fabric of our National Government.  It is to this
fearful demoralization of the Government and the people that we must
ascribe the disastrous defections which now perplex us with the fear of
change in all that constituted our greatness.  The operation of the
Government has been withdrawn from the great public interests, in order
that competing parties might not be embarrassed in the struggle for
power by diversities of opinion upon questions of policy; and the
public mind, in that struggle, has been exclusively turned on the
slavery question, which no interest required to be touched by any
department of this Government.  On that subject there are widely
marked diversities of opinion and interest in the different portions of
the Confederacy, with few mediating influences to soften the
collision.  In the struggle for party power, the two great regions of
the country have been brought face to face upon the most dangerous of
all subjects of agitation.  The authority of the Government was relaxed
just when its power was about to be assailed; and the people,
emancipated from every control and their passions inflamed by the
fierce struggle for the Presidency, were the easy prey of revolutionary
audacity.

"Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election of the
chief magistrate of the United States, in which the whole body of the
people of every State competed with zeal for the prize, without any new
event intervening, without any new grievances alleged, without any new
measures having been made, we have seen, in the short course of one
month, a small proportion of the population of six States transcend the
bounds at a single leap at once of the State and the national
constitutions; usurp the extraordinary prerogative of repealing the
supreme law of the land; exclude the great mass of their fellow-
citizens from the protection of the Constitution; declare themselves
emancipated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to
be supreme over them and over their laws; arrogate to themselves all
the prerogatives of independent power; rescind the acts of cession of
the public property; occupy the public offices; seize the fortresses
of the United States confided to the faith of the people among whom
they were placed; embezzle the public arms concentrated there for the
defence of the United States; array thousands of men in arms against
the United States; and actually wage war on the Union by besieging
two of their fortresses and firing on a vessel bearing, under the flag
of the United States, reinforcements and provisions for one of them.
The very boundaries of right and wrong seem obliterated when we see a
Cabinet minister engaged for months in deliberately changing the
distribution of public arms to places in the hands of those about to
resist our public authority, so as to place within their grasp means
of waging war against the United States greater than they ever used
against a foreign foe; and another Cabinet minister, still holding his
commission under the authority of the United States, still a
confidential adviser of the President, and bound by his oath to
support the Constitution of the United States, himself a commissioner
from his own State to another of the United States for the purpose of
organizing and extending another part of the same great scheme of
rebellion; and the doom of the Republic seems sealed when the
President, surrounded by such ministers, permits, without rebuke, the
Government to be betrayed, neglects the solemn warning of the first
solider of the age, till almost every fort is a prey to domestic
treason, and accepts assurances of peace in his time at the expense of
leaving the national honor unguarded.  His message gives aid and
comfort to the enemies of the Union, by avowing his inability to
maintain its integrity; and, paralyzed and stupefied, he stands amid
the crash of the falling Republic, still muttering, 'Not in my time,
not in my time; after me the deluge!'"

Soon after Mr. Colfax's election as speaker of the Thirty-eighth
Congress, I met him in a restaurant.  He expressed surprise that he had
not heard from me in regard to a place upon a committee.  I said that
the subject did not occupy my thoughts--that I had work enough whether
I was upon a committee or not.  He expressed himself as disturbed by
the fact that he could not give me as good a place as he wished to
give me.  I tried to relieve his mind upon that point.  In all my
legislative experience I never made any suggestion as to committee
work.  Mr. Colfax placed me upon the Judiciary Committee, which, in the
end, was the best place to which I could have been assigned.

Mr. Colfax was made of consequence in the country by the newspapers,
and he was ruined by his timidity.  If he had admitted that he was an
owner of stock in the Credit Mobilier Company, not much could have
been made against him.  His denials and explanations, which were either
false or disingenuous, and his final admission of a fact which implied
that he had been in the receipt of a quarterly payment from a post-
office contractor, completed his ruin.  There was a time when the
country over-estimated his ability.  He was a genial, kindly man, with
social qualities and an abundance of information in reference to men
in the United States and to recent and passing politics.  He had
newspaper knowledge and aptitude for gathering what may be called
information as distinguished from learning.  He was a victim to two
passions or purposes in life, that are in a degree inconsistent--public
life and money-making.  Instances there have been of success, but I
have never known a case where a public man has not suffered in
reputation by the knowledge that he had accumulated a fortune while he
was engaged in the public service.  As a speaker of the House, Colfax
was agreeable and popular, but he lacked in discipline.  His rule was
lax, and there can be no doubt that from the commencement of his
administration there had been a decline in what may be termed the
morale of the House.  Something of its reputation for dignity and
decorum had been lost.

A young man from New York, Mr. Chanler, made a speech in the Thirty-
eighth or Thirty-ninth Congress, which seemed to favor the
Confederacy.  This phase of his speech was due to the fact that he
was a transcendental State Rights advocate.  He did not believe in
secession, as a wise and proper policy, but he did believe in the
right of a State to consult itself as to its continuance in the Union.
Chanler was not a strong man and he owed his election, probably, to his
connection with the Astor family.  He failed to make the political
distinction clear to the mind of the House and he was followed by
General Schenck in a severe speech.  Chanler explained and asserted
that he was not secessionist--that he was for the Union--that he had
served with the New York Seventh--and that he had made a tender to
General Dix of service on his staff, but that he had not received a
reply from General Dix.

Thereupon S. S. Cox, who then represented a district in Ohio, made a
jocose reply to Schenck and a like defence of Chanler and ended with
the remark that he hoped his "colleague regretted having been guilty
of a groundless attack upon a solider of the Republic."  I went over to
Cox to congratulate him upon his defence of Chanler, and in reply Cox
said:  "The funniest part of it is that Chanler took it all in earnest
and came to my seat and thanked me for my speech."

Cox had no malice in his nature and there was always a doubt whether he
had any sincerity in his politics.  He had no sympathy with the
rebellion, and, generally, he voted appropriations for the army and
the navy.  He was sincere in his personal friendships, and his
friendships were not upon party lines.  In his political action he
seemed more anxious to annoy his opponents than to extinguish them.
His speeches were short, pointed, and entertaining.  He was a favorite
with the House, but his influence upon its action was very slight.
Those who acquire and retain power are the earnest and persistent men.
When Cox had made his speech and expended his jokes he was content.
The fate of a measure did not much disturb or even concern him.

Cox was party to an affair in the House which illustrated the
characteristics of Thaddeus Stevens, or "Old Thad," as he was called.
Late in the war, or soon after its close, Mr. Stevens introduced a
bill to appropriate $800,000 to reimburse the State of Pennsylvania for
expenses incurred in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Appropriations, of which
Stevens was chairman.  Without much delay and before the holidays,
Stevens reported the bill.  There was some debate, in which my
colleague, Mr. Dawes, took part against the bill.  Finally the House
postponed the bill till after the holidays.  During the recess I
examined the question by making inquiries at the War and Treasury
departments, where I found that authority existed for reimbursing
States for all expenditures actually made and for the payment of all
troops that had been mustered into the service.  Thus the real purpose
of the bill was apparent.  During the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns
bodies of troops had been organized for defence and expenses had been
incurred by towns and counties, but no actual service had been
performed.  It was intended by the appropriation to provide for the
payment of these expenses.  I prepared a brief and gave it to Mr.
Dawes, who used it in the debate.  When it became apparent that the
bill would be lost, Cox rose and moved to insert after the word
Pennsylvania, the words Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana,
Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and the Territory of New Mexico.
Also to strike out $800,000 and insert ten million dollars.  These
amendments brought to the support of the measure the members from all
those States, and the bill was passed.  The Senate never acted upon
it.  I was indignant at the action of the House, and I said to Stevens,
whose seat was near to mine:  _"This is the most outrageous thing that
I have seen on the floor of the House."_  Stevens doubled his fist but
not in anger, shook it in my face and said:  "You rascal, if you had
allowed me to have my rights I should not have been compelled to make
a corrupt bargain in order to get them."   Thus he admitted his
arrangement with Cox and the character of it, and laid the
responsibility upon me.

Mr. Stevens was a tyrant in his rule as leader of the House.  He was at
once able, bold and unscrupulous.  He was an anti-slavery man, a friend
to temperance and an earnest supporter of the public school system, and
he would not have hesitated to promote those objects by arrangements
with friends or enemies.  He was unselfish in personal matters, but his
public policy regarded the State of Pennsylvania, and the Republican
Party.  The more experienced members of the House avoided controversy
with Stevens.  First and last many a new member was extinguished by his
sarcastic thrusts.  As for himself no one could terrorize him.  I
recall an occasion near the close of a session, when, as it was
important to get a bill out of the Committee of the Whole, he remained
upon his feet or upon his one foot and assailed every member who
proposed an amendment.  Sometimes his remarks were personal and
sometimes they were aimed at the member's State.  In a few minutes he
cowed the House, and secured the adoption of his motion for the
committee to rise and report the bill to the House.

He must have been a very good lawyer.  The impeachment article which
received the best support was from his pen.  He possessed wit,
sarcasm and irony in every form.  In public all these weapons were
poisoned, but in private he was usually genial.  On one occasion
Judge Olin of New York was speaking and in his excitement he walked
down and up the aisle passing Stevens' seat.  At length Stevens said:
"Olin, do you expect to get mileage for this speech?"

During the controversy with Andrew Johnson, Thayer, of Pennsylvania,
became excited upon a matter of no consequence, denounced the report of
a committee, and in the course of his remarks said:  "They ask us to
go it blind."  Judge Hale, of New York, with an innocent expression,
said he would like to have the gentleman from Pennsylvania inform the
House as to the meaning of the phrase "go it blind."  Stevens said at
once:  "It means following Raymond."  The pertinency of the hit was in
the circumstance that Raymond was supporting Johnson, and that Hale was
following Raymond, not from conviction but for the reason that they
had been classmates in college.

Robert S. Hale was a man of large ability and a successful lawyer.
During his term in Congress he was a prominent candidate for a seat
upon the bench of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York.  At
a critical moment he appeared in the House in the role of a reformer
and proceeded to arraign members for their action in regard to the
measure known as the "salary grab."  The debate showed that Hale was
involved in the business to such an extent that he lost his standing
in the House and imperiled his chance of obtaining a seat upon the
bench of the Court of Appeals.

The bill for the increase of the salaries of public officers was a
proper bill with the single exception that it should have been
prospective as to the members of Congress.  It added $2,500 to the
annual salary of the Congressman or $5,000 for a term.  The temptation
to give the benefit of the increase to the members of the then
existing House was too strong for their judgment and virtue.  When,
however, the indignation of the people was manifested, more than a
majority of the members of each House sought refuge in a variety of
subterfuges.  Some neglected to collect the increase, others who had
received the added sum, returned it to the Treasury upon a variety of
pretexts.  Some endowed schools or libraries, and a minority received
what the laws allowed them and upon an assertion of their right to
receive it.  Outside of the criminal classes there has but seldom been
a more melancholy exhibition of the weakness of human nature.  The
members seemed not to realize that the wrong was in the votes for
which those members were alone responsible who had sustained the bill,
and that the acceptance of the salary which the law allowed was not
only a right but a duty.  At the end those members who took the
salary and defended their acts enjoyed the larger share of public
respect.  Indeed, not one of the shufflers gained anything by the
course that he had pursued.  The public reasoned, and reasoned justly,
that they would have kept the money if they had dared to do so.

Similar conduct ruined many of the members of Congress who were
beneficiaries of the Credit Mobilier scheme.  Mr. Samuel Hooper was a
large holder of the stock, but being a man of fortune the public
accepted that fact as a defence against the suggestion that the stock
had been placed in his hands for the purpose of influencing his
action as a member of Congress.  With others the case was different.
Many were poor men.  They had paid no money for the stock.  Mr. Ames
made the subscriptions, carried the stocks, and turned over the profits
to those who had paid nothing and risked nothing.  When the
investigation was threatened, many of those who were involved ran to
shelter under a variety of excuses and some of them hoped to escape by
the aid of falsehood which ripened into perjury when the investigation
was made.  A few admitted ownership and asserted their right to
ownership.  Those men escaped with but little loss of prestige.  Of the
others, some retained their hold upon public office and some were
advanced to higher places, but they carried always the smell of the
smoke of corruption upon their garments.

Judge Hale defended Mr. Colfax, but at the end his condition was worse
than at the beginning.

There is something of error in our public policy.  With a few
exceptions, the salaries of public officers are too low--in many cases
they are meager.  This fact furnishes a pretext for efforts to make
money while in the public service.  All these efforts are adverse to
the public interests and often the proceedings are tainted with
corruption.  A member of Congress ought to receive $7,500 and a
Cabinet officer cannot live in a manner corresponding to his station
upon less than $15,000.  Adequate salaries would not prevent
speculation on the part of public officers, but they could not offer
as an excuse for their acts the meager salaries allowed by the
government.  From the "salary grab" bill there were two good results.
The President's salary was increased to $50,000 and the justices of
the Supreme Court received $10,000 instead of $6,000 per annum.  It has
not been any part of my purpose in what I have said in favor of an
increase of salaries to furnish means for campaign expenses by
candidates either before or after nominations have been made.

If the statements are trustworthy that have been made publicly in
recent years the conclusion cannot be avoided that money is used
in elections for corrupt purposes--sometimes to secure nominations
and sometimes to secure elections, when nominations have been made.
There are proper uses for money in political contests, but candidates
should not be required to make contributions in return for support.
If the statements now made frequently and boldly, are truthful
statements, then we are moving towards a condition of affairs when the
offices of government will be divided between rich men and men who
seek office for the purpose of becoming rich.  A general condition
cannot be proved by the experiences of individuals, but the
experiences of individuals may indicate a general condition.  I cannot
doubt that an unwholesome change in the use of money in elections has
taken place in the last fifty years.  A gentleman now living (1901),
who was a member of the National Committee of the Democratic Party in
the year 1856 is my authority for the statement that the total sum of
money at the command of the committee in the campaign for Mr.
Buchanan was less than twenty-five thousand dollars.

I mention my own experience and in the belief that it was not
exceptional.  From 1840 to 1850 I was the candidate of the Democratic
Party of Groton for representative of the town in the general court.
The party in the town met its moderate expenses by voluntary
contributions.  I contributed with others, but never upon the ground
that I was a candidate.  We paid our local expenses.  We paid nothing
for expenses elsewhere, and we did not receive anything from outside
sources.  In 1844-'46 and 1848 I was the candidate of the Democratic
Party for the National House of Representatives.  I canvassed the
district at my own charge.  I did not make any contribution to any one
for any purpose, and I did not receive financial aid from any source.
The subject was never mentioned to me or by me in conversation or
correspondence with any one.  Again, I may say the subject was not
mentioned in my canvass for the office of Governor in the years 1849-
1850 and 1851.

In 1862 I became the candidate of the Republican Party for a seat in
Congress.  After my nomination the District Committee asked me for a
contribution of one hundred dollars.  I met their request.  The request
was repeated and answered in 1864, 1866 and 1868.  On one occasion I
received a return of forty-two dollars with a statement that the full
amount of my contribution had not been expended.

While General Butler was in the army, Mr. James Brooks, a member from
the city of New York, charged him, in an elaborate speech, with having
taken about fifty thousand dollars from a bank in New Orleans, and
appropriated the same to his own use.  General Butler was then at
Willard's Hotel.  That evening I called upon Butler, and said to him
that if he had any answer to the charge, I would reply the next day.
I had secured the floor through Mr. Stevens, who moved the adjournment
upon a private understanding that he would yield to me in case I
wished to reply.  As Butler lived in my district and as I was ignorant
of the facts, I avoided taking the floor lest an expectation should be
created which I could not meet.  However, I found Butler entirely
prepared for the contest.  From his letter books he read to me the
correspondence with the Treasury Department, from which it appeared
that the money had been turned over to the department, for which
Butler had the proper receipts.  The money had been seized upon the
ground that it was the property of the Confederacy and was in the bank
awaiting an opportunity to be transferred.  The morning following, I
called upon Butler and obtained copies of the correspondence that had
been prepared the preceding night.  I rode to the Capitol with Butler
and on the way we prepared the letters in chronological order.  Having
obtained the floor through Mr. Stevens I made the answer which
consisted chiefly of the letters.  It was so conclusive that the
subject was never again mentioned in the House of Representatives.  On
that occasion Butler's habit of making and keeping a full record of his
doings served to release him from very serious charges, and so speedily
that the charges did not obtain a lodgment in the public mind.

Upon another occasion Brooks made an attack upon Secretary Chase and
charged various offences upon S. M. Clark, then the chief of the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing.  Some of the charges were personal,
and some of them official.  I called upon the Secretary at his house,
as I was on my way home from the Capitol, and gave him a statement of
the charges made by Brooks.  He seemed ignorant of the whole matter,
and upon my suggestion that he should ask Clark for his explanation or
defence he hesitated, and then asked me to call upon Clark for his
answer.  This I declined and there the matter ended.  There never was
any reply to Brooks.  In the end it may have been as well, for the
charges are forgotten, and they are not likely to be brought out of the
musty volumes of debates.  Mr. Chase's lack of resolution gave me an
unfavorable impression of his ability for administrative affairs.

Samuel J. Randall first entered Congress in 1862.  Mr. Randall's
resources were limited.  He was not bred to any profession, and he was
not a man of learning in any direction.  I cannot imagine that he had
a taste for study at any kind of investigation aside from politics.
By long experience he became familiar with parliamentary proceedings,
and from the same source he acquired a knowledge of the business of
the Government.  He had one essential quality of leadership--a strong
will.  Moreover, he was destitute, apparently, of moral perceptions in
public affairs.  Not that he was corrupt, but as between the Government
and its citizens the demands of what is called justice seemed to have
no effect upon him.  He did not hesitate to delay the payment of a just
claim in order that the appropriation might be kept within the limits
that he had fixed.  This, not on the ground that the claim ought not be
paid, but for the reason that the payment at the time would disarrange
the balance sheet.  A striking instance of his policy was exhibited in
his treatment of the land-owners whose lands were condemned and taken
for the reservoir at the end of Seventh Street, Washington, D. C.  The
values were fixed by a commission and by juries under the law, and when
the time for an appropriation came, Mr. Randall provided for fifty per
cent. and carried the remainder over to the next year.  The claimants
were entitled to full payment, but one half was withheld for twelve
months without interest and that while dead funds were lying in the
Treasury.


XXIX
INCIDENTS IN THE CIVIL WAR

THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION

When the Proclamation of Emancipation, of January 1, 1863, was issued,
the closing sentence attracted universal attention, and in every part
of the world encomiums were pronounced upon it.  The words are these:
"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty
God."  Following the appearance of the Proclamation, and stimulated,
possibly, by the reception given to the sentence quoted, there appeared
claimants for the verbal authorship of the passage, or for suggestions
which led to its writing by Mr. Lincoln.

A claim for exact authorship was set up for Mr. Chase, and claims for
suggestions in the nature of exact authorship were made in behalf of
Mr. Seward and in behalf of Mr. Sumner.

The sentence quoted was furnished by Mr. Chase, after a very material
alteration by the President.  He introduced the words, _"warranted by
the Constitution upon military necessity,"_ in place of the phrase,
_"and of duty demanded by the circumstances of the country,"_ as
written by Mr. Chase.

The main credit for the introduction of the fortunate phrase is due to
Secretary Chase.  President Lincoln placed the act upon a legal basis,
justifying it in law and in history.  The sentence is what we might
have expected from the head and heart of the man who wrote the final
sentence of the first inaugural address:  "The mystic chords of
memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will
be, by the better angels of our nature."  Mr. Lincoln had genius for
the work of composition, and the poetic quality was strong and it was
often exhibited in his speeches and writings.  The omission of the
sentence in question would so mar the Proclamation that it would cease
to represent Mr. Lincoln.  Thus he became under great obligations to
Mr. Chase.

It was not in the nature of Mr. Lincoln to close a state paper, which
he could not but have realized was to take a place by the side of the
Declaration of Independence, with a bald statement that the freedmen
would be received "into the armed service of the United States to
garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man
vessels of all sorts in said service."

In the month of October, 1863, the ladies of Chicago made a request of
Mr. Lincoln for "the original" of his "proclamation of freedom," the
same to be disposed of "for the benefit of the soldiers."  The letter
in their behalf was written by Mr. Arnold, who was then a member of
Congress.  Improvidently, I think we may say, Mr. Lincoln yielded to
their request for the original draft of the Proclamation to be sold
for the benefit of the fair.  Its transmission was accompanied by a
letter, written by Mr. Lincoln.

"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
"WASHINGTON,
"_October_ 26, 1863.

_"Ladies having in charge The North Western Fair for the Sanitary
  Commission, Chicago, Ill._

"According to the request made in your behalf, the original draft of
the Emancipation Proclamation is herewith enclosed.  The formal words
at the top and at the conclusion, except the signature, you perceive,
are not in my handwriting.  They were written at the State Department,
by whom I know not.  The printed part was cut from a copy of the
preliminary Proclamation and pasted on merely to save writing.

"I have some desire to retain the paper, but if it shall contribute
to the relief of the soldiers, that would be better.

"Your obt. servt.,
"A. LINCOLN."

In technical strictness the original Proclamation was of the archives
of the Department of State when the signature of the President and
Secretary of State had been affixed thereto, and its transfer by Mr.
Lincoln was an act not within his competency as President, or as the
author of the Proclamation.

This point, however, is wholly speculative, but the country and
posterity will be interested in the fate of the original of a document
which is as immortal as the Declaration of Independence.  The
Proclamation was sold to the Honorable Thomas B. Bryan of Chicago for
the sum of three thousand dollars and it was then presented by him to
the Soldiers' Home of Chicago, of which he was then President.  That
position he still retains.  The document was deposited in the rooms of
the Chicago Historical Society, where it was destroyed in the great
fire of 1871.

Fortunately the managers of the fair had secured the preparation of
_fac simile_ copies of the Proclamation.  These were sold in large
numbers, and thus many thousands of dollars were added to the receipts
of the fair.

The managers of the Soldiers' Home were offered twenty-five thousand
dollars for the original Proclamation.*  The offer came from a
showman who expected to reimburse himself by the exhibition of the
paper.

The original now on the files of the State Department is not in the
handwriting of Mr. Lincoln and it has therefore no value derived from
Mr. Lincoln's personality.

When I entered upon this inquiry, which has resulted in the preparation
of this paper, I was ignorant of the fact that the original
Proclamation had been destroyed, and it was my purpose to secure its
return to the archives of the Department of State.  That is now
impossible.  Its destruction has given value to the _fac simile_
copies.  Many thousands of them are in the possession of citizens of
the United States, and they will be preserved and transmitted as
souvenirs of the greatest act of the most illustrious American of this
century.

In the early autumn of 1864 a meeting was held in Faneuil Hall in
honor of the capture of Atlanta by the army under General Sherman, and
the battle in Mobile Bay under the lead of Admiral Farragut.  Strange
as the fact may now appear, those historical events were not accepted
with satisfaction by all the citizens of Boston.  The leading
Democratic papers gave that kind of advice that may be found, usually,
in the columns of hostile journals, when passing events are unfriendly,
or when there is an adverse trend of public opinion.  Hard words should
not be used and nothing should be said of a partisan character.  Such
was the advice, and a large body of men assembled who were opposed to
partisan speeches.  They were known as the McClellan Club of the
North End of Boston and they were sufficient in numbers, when standing,
to fill the main floor in front of the rostrum, which at that time was
not provided with seats.  The meeting was called by Republicans and it
was conducted under the auspices of Republicans.  Governor Andrew was
to preside and Governor Everett, with others, had been invited to
speak.  Governor Andrew was not blessed with a commanding voice and it
was drowned or smothered by the hisses, cheers and cat-call cries of
the hostile audience in front of him.  The efforts of the sympathetic
audience in the galleries were of no avail.  Mr. Everett's letter was
then read, but not a sentence of it was understood by any person in the
assembly.  Next came Mr. Sennott, an Irishman, a lawyer, and a man of
large learning in knowledge and attainments not adapted to general use.
He had then but recently abandoned the Democratic Party, but there was
a stain upon his reputation, traceable to the fact that in the year
1859 he had volunteered to aid in the legal defence of John Brown at
Harper's Ferry.  The city of Boston could not have offered a person
less acceptable to the crowd in front of the speaker.  Mr. Sennott's
voice was weak and of the art of using what power he possessed he had
no knowledge.  His speech was not heard by anyone in the assembly.
By the arrangement I was to follow Mr. Sennott.  I had had some
experience with hostile audiences, and in the year 1862 I had been
interrupted in a country town of Massachusetts by stones thrown
through the windows of a hall in which I was speaking upon the war and
the administration.

As I sat upon the platform I studied my audience and I resolved upon my
course.  I had one fixed resolution--I should get a hearing or I should
spend the night in the hall.  Something of the character of my
reception and the results reached may be gained from the report of the
Boston _Journal_, and I copy the report without alteration, premising
however that some minutes passed before I secured a quiet hearing.

SPEECH ON THE CHICAGO RESOLUTION

_Fellow Citizens:_ It depends very much upon what we believe as to the
future of this country and the rights of the people, whether we rejoice
or mourn in consequence of the events in Mobile Bay and before Atlanta.
If it was true on the 30th day of last month that the people of this
country ought to take immediate efforts for the cessation of
hostilities, then, gentlemen, we have cause to mourn rather than to
rejoice.  I understand that there were some people in this country,
who, before the 30th of August, since this was opened, had not, as an
aggregate body of men, expressed their opinions in reference to this
war, who then declared that it ought to cease.  (A voice--"They're
few.")  I observed in a newspaper published in this city two
observations within the last two days.  One was that they were afraid
hard names would be used; and the other was that there was some
apprehension that this meeting to-night would have some political
aspect or influence.  (Voices--"No!  No!")  I thought it likely
enough that it would (laughter and applause) because I observed in the
newspapers that it was called to express congratulations over the
events which had taken place in Mobile Bay and before Atlanta, and I
thought that I had observed that those events had rather a political
effect.  (Renewed laughter.)  Therefore I did not see exactly how it
was possible that men should assemble together to rejoice over events
having a political aspect without the meeting and the rejoicing having
a political aspect also.  Well, now, gentlemen, I haven't come here
with any design that, so far as I am concerned, it shall have anything
but a political aspect.  ("Good" and applause.)  These times are too
serious for the acceptance of any suggestion that hard names are not
to be called if hard names are deserved.  (Voices--"That is it!")  The
question is not whether the meeting shall have a political influence,
but whether it is necessary to the salvation of the country that it
shall have a political influence.  (Applause.)  Well, gentlemen, I
observed while the person who last occupied the platform was speaking
certain indications, which I thought were a slight deviation from the
much talked-of right of free speech.  (Laughter, and a voice--"Hit 'em
again.")  Now, then, I am going to read a resolution adopted at
Chicago.  I am going to make two propositions in reference to it.  I am
then going to ask whether this assembly assents to or rejects those
propositions.  If there is any man in this assembly who denies or
doubts those propositions, if I have the consent of the honored
chairman of this meeting to ten minutes of time in which I can engage
the ear of the assembly, I surrender it to that man, that he may have
the opportunity upon this platform to refute, if he can, the
propositions which I lay down.  (Applause.)  Now the second resolution
of this platform is in these words--

(At this point there was considerable disturbance in the rear of the
hall, created by one individual, and several voices cried out--"Free
speech!"  "Out with him!")

Mr. Boutwell continued:  He will be more useful to the country if he
remain here.  If he goes away there is no chance for his conversion to
the truth: if he remain here he may be saved.  (Laughter.)  "The vilest
sinner may return, While the lamp holds out to burn."  (Renewed laughter
and applause.)  I hope gentlemen who favor free speech will listen
attentively to this resolution:

_"Resolved,_ That this convention does explicitly declare as the sense
of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore
the Union by the experiment of war, during which under pretence of
military necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the
Constitution has been disregarded in every part and public liberty and
private rights alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the
country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty and the public
welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of
hostilities with a view to an ultimate convention of all the States, or
other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable
moment peace may be restored on the basis of a Federal Union of the
States."

(The resolution was greeted with a feeble clapping of hands, a slight
attempt at cheers in the rear of the hall, and a storm of hisses.  Mr.
Boutwell continued:)

If there are any gentlemen here who approve this resolution, I hope
they will have the opportunity to cheer.  (About half a dozen persons
commenced to cheer, but abandoned it on hearing their own voices,
when a voice exclaiming "These are the Copperheads," caused loud
laughter.  The speaker proceeded:)

Now then, gentlemen, the two propositions I lay down are these, and if
any one of those gentlemen who indulged in the luxury of a cheer just
now chooses to come upon this platform, I fulfill my pledge:  The first
is that this resolution, so far as known, meets the approval of the
rebels in arms against this government.  (Voices--"That's so," and
cheers.)  The second is that this resolution meets the approval of all
the men in the North who sympathize with the cause of this rebellion
and desire its success.  (Repeated cheers and "That's it.")  Now, then,
if there is any one who would deny the truth of these propositions, let
him, with the leave of the chair, take ten minutes upon this platform.
(Some confusion ensued, several voices shouting "Make room for George
Lunt," "Where's Lunt?" etc., etc., etc.  No one appearing, Mr. Boutwell
continued:)  If there is nobody to refute these propositions, I take it
for granted that they meet the general assent of this vast assembly.
(cries of "Good" and cheers); and, if so, isn't this the time, when a
great convention professing to represent a portion of the American
people in time of war, not having spoken since hostilities commenced,
frame a leading resolution so as to meet the assent and approval of
the enemies of the Republic--isn't this the time, when such things are
done, for men who have a faith in the country and a belief in its right
to exist, to declare the reasons of that belief?  (Voices--"Yes.")  Now
I propose to discuss that resolution in some degree.  First, it
proposes a cessation of hostilities.  I have heard the word armistice
mentioned to-night.  The declaration of that resolution is not for an
armistice.  An armistice, according to its general acceptation and
use, implies a suspension of hostilities upon the expectation and
condition that they are to be resumed; and if hostilities are not to
be resumed then a cessation of hostilities is an abandonment of the
Government.  It is treason.  (Voices--"That's so," and loud and
continued cheers.)  I declare here that the proposition for a
cessation of hostilities is moral and political treason (voices--
"Good"); and, further, every man who knowingly and after investigation,
and upon his judgment favors a cessation of hostilities, is a traitor.
(Loud cheers.)  The issue, gentlemen, is no longer upon the tented
field.  No danger there to the cause of the Union.  The soldiers are
true to the flag and they will fight on and march on until the last
rebel has fallen to the dust or laid down his arms.  The soldiers are
true, but the cause of the Union is in peril at home (voices--"That's
where it is"), where secret organizations are mustering their forces
and gathering in material of war for which there can be no possible use
except to revolutionize this country through the fearful experience of
civil war.  (A voice--"Shame on them.")  O how I long for some
knowledge of the English language so that I may select a word or a
phrase which shall fully express the enormity of this treason!  (Voices
--"Hang them."  "String them up.")

The rebels of the South have some cause.  They believe in the
institution of slavery,--they have been educated under its influence.
They thought it in peril.  They made war with some pretence on their
part for a reason for war, but what excuse, what palliation is there
for those men in the North, who, regardless of liberty, of justice, and
of humanity, ally themselves, openly some and secretly others, with the
enemies of the Republic?  Spare, spare, your anathemas, gentlemen.  Do
not longer employ the harsh language which you can command in
denunciation of Southern traitors.  They of the North who give aid and
comfort to the enemy deserve to monopolize in the application all the
harsh words and phrases of the English language.  (Applause.)
Cessation of hostilities--what follows?  Dissolution of the Union
inevitably.  Will not Jefferson Davis and his associates understand
that when we have ceased to make war, when our armies become
demoralized, public sentiment relaxed, when they have had opportunity
to gather up the materials for prosecuting this contest, that we
cannot renew the contest with any reasonable hope of success.
Therefore, if you abandon this contest now, it is separation--that is
what is meant, and nothing else can follow.  But suppose that what
some gentlemen desire could be accomplished,--a reconstruction of the
Union by diplomatic relations inaugurated between this Government and
Jefferson Davis'--suppose the South should return--what follows?  When
you have permitted Jefferson Davis and his associates to come back and
take their places in the government of this country, do you not see
that with the help of a small number of representatives from the North
whose services they are sure to command, they will assume the war debt
of the South.  When you have assumed that debt, and taken the
obligation to pay it, these men of the South will treat the obligation
lightly, and upon the first pretext will renew secession and will
march straight out of the Union, and you, with your embarrassed
finance, will find yourselves unable to institute military proceedings
for their subjugation.  Therefore I say that by the reconstruction
some men desire you render secession certain, bankruptcy throughout
the North certain.  The repudiation of the Public Debt is not a matter
of expectation or fear, it is a matter of certainty, if you assent to
any reconstruction of this Union through the instrumentality of
Jefferson Davis and his associates.  You must either drive them into
exile or exterminate them.  Break down the military power of the
people, and exterminate or exile their leaders, and bring up men at
the South in favor of the Union--there is no other way of security to
yourselves.  (Cheers.)  Now, then, are you prepared to cease
hostilities with the expectation of negotiations with Jefferson Davis
for the dissolution of the Union or for its restoration? (Voices--
"No!")  Either course is alike fatal to you, for the war must go on
until peace is conquered.  (Loud cheers and voices--"That's so.")  On
the one side they offer you as negotiators Franklin Pierce, perhaps,
and A. H. Stephens; on the other, possibly one of the Seymours, either
of Connecticut or New York, Wise of Virginia, Vallandingham of Ohio,
and Soule of Louisiana.  The only negotiators, gentlemen, to be
trusted as long as the war continued or there is a rebel in arms--the
only negotiators are Grant upon one line and Sherman upon the other.
(Tremendous cheers.)

A Voice--"You have left out Mr. Harris of Maryland."

Mr. Boutwell--"According to the reports, etc., we have had from
Chicago, he conducts negotiations upon his own account."

Voice--"How are you, Mr. Harris?"

Mr. Boutwell--"What does the cessation of hostilities mean?  It means
that the blockade is to be removed, and the South be allowed to
furnish itself with materials and munitions of war.  What does that
mean on the land?  What does it mean on the sea?  That you are to furl
your flag at Fortress Monroe on the Petersburg line; that you are to
remove your gunboats from the Mississippi River; that you are to
abandon Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip at its mouth; that you are to
undo the work which the gallant Farragut has already done in Mobile
Bay, and so along the coast and upon the line from the Atlantic beyond
the Mississippi River.  You, people of the North, who have been
victorious upon the whole through three years of war--you are to
disgrace your ancestry--you are to render yourselves infamous in all
future time, by furling your flag and submitting anew to rebel
authority upon this continent.  Are you prepared for it?  (Voices--
"No!" "never!")  I ask these men here, who cheered the resolution
adopted at Chicago, whether they, men of Massachusetts, and in Faneuil
Hall, will say, one of them, with his face to the patriots of the
Revolution--will say that he asks for peace through any craven spirit
that is within him?  Is there a man among them all, from whatsoever
quarter of this city, renowned in history--is there a man of them all
who will stand here and say he is for the cessation of hostilities?  If
so, let him speak, and let him, if he dare, come upon this platform and
face his patriotic fellow-citizens.  (A call was made for cheers for
McClellan in the rear of the hall, but nobody seemed disposed to
respond.  The speaker continued.)  I am willing a cheer should be given
for any man who has been in the service of the country, however little
he may have done.  Is there any man in Faneuil Hall for peace? (Voices
--"No!")  I intended, so far as was in my power, to give to this
meeting a political aspect (voices--"Good!") in favor of the country
and against traitors.  (Cheers.)  If there are no peace men in this
assembly, then that object, as far as we are concerned, is
accomplished.  (Prolonged cheering.)

MR. CHASE AND THE CHIEF JUSTICESHIP

Upon the death of Chief Justice Taney the general public favored the
appointment of Mr. Chase as his successor.  In that view I concurred,
but I had heard Mr. Chase make so many unjust criticisms upon Mr.
Lincoln that I resolved to say nothing.  I was willing to have Mr.
Chase appointed, but I was not willing to ask the President to confer
so great a place upon a man who had been so unjust to him.  When the
nomination had been made, I said to Mr. Lincoln that I was very glad
that he had decided to appoint Mr. Chase.  He then said:  "There are
three reasons in favor of his appointment, and one very strong reason
against it.  First, he occupies the largest place in the public mind
in connection with the office, then we wish for a Chief Justice who
will sustain what has been done in regard to emancipation and the legal
tenders.  We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should and he
should answer us, we should despise him for it.  Therefore we must take
a man whose opinions are known.  But there is one very strong reason
against his appointment.  He is a candidate for the Presidency, and if
he does not give up that idea it will be very bad for him and very bad
for me."  At that time Mr. Lincoln had been re-elected to the
Presidency.

Mr. Chase continued to be a candidate for the Presidency.  He abandoned
the Republican Party in 1868 and as Chief Justice he abandoned his own
policy or the policy that he had adopted in regard to the legal tender
currency.

It was said that Mr. Sumner, who was very earnest for Chase's
appointment, gave strong pledges to Mr. Lincoln that Mr. Chase would
abandon his ambition for the Presidency.

RIGHTS OF STATES

In 1864 I introduced a series of resolutions in the House of
Representatives in the form of a Declaration of Opinion in regard to
the legal status of the States in rebellion.  At that time the country
and Congress had no doubt of our ability to crush the rebellion, and
the public mind was occupied with various theories of reconstruction.

The resolutions had been already adopted by the National Union League.
I prepared them at the instance of Governor Claflin and their
adoption by the League had made the policy known to a large body of
active Republicans.  I did not seek to secure their adoption by the
House of Representatives.  The resolutions were in this form:

_"Resolved,_ That the Committee on the Rebellious States be instructed
to consider and report upon the expediency of recommending to this
House the adoption of the following

_Declaration of Opinions:_

"In view of the present condition of the country, and especially in
regard to the recent signal successes of the national arms promising
a speedy overthrow of the rebellion, this House makes the following
declaration of opinion concerning the institution of slavery in the
States and parts of States engaged in the rebellion, and embraced in
the proclamation of emancipation issued by the President on the first
day of January, A. D. 1863: and also concerning the relations now
subsisting between the people of such States and parts of States on
the one side, and the American Union on the other.

_"It is therefore declared_ (as the opinion of the House of
Representatives), that the institution of slavery was the cause of the
present rebellion, and that the destruction of slavery in the
rebellious States is an efficient means of weakening the power of the
rebels; that the President's proclamation whereby all persons
heretofore held as slaves in such States and parts of States have been
declared free, has had the effect to increase the power of the Union,
and to diminish the power of its enemies; that the freedom of such
persons was desirable and just in itself, and an efficient means by
which the Government was to be maintained, and its authority re-
established in all the territory and over all the people within the
legal jurisdiction of the United States; that it is the duty of the
Government and of loyal men everywhere to do what may be practicable
for the enforcement of the proclamation, in order to secure in fact,
as well as by the forms of law, the extinction of slavery in such
States and parts of States; and, finally, that it is the paramount
duty of the Government and of all loyal men to labor for the
restoration of the American Union upon the basis of freedom.

_"And this House does further declare,_ That a State can exist or cease
to exist only by the will of the people within its limits, and that it
cannot be created or destroyed by the external force or opinion of
other States, or even by the judgment or action of the nation itself;
that a State, when created by the will of its people, can become a
member of the American Union only by its own organized action and the
concurrent action of the existing National Government, that, when a
State has been admitted to the Union, no vote, resolution, ordinance,
or proceeding on its part, however formal in character or vigorously
sustained, can deprive the National Government of the legal
jurisdiction and sovereignty over the territory and people of such
State which existed previous to the act of admission, or which were
acquired thereby; that the effect of the so-called acts, resolutions
and ordinances of secession adopted by the eleven States engaged in
the present rebellion is, and can only be, to destroy those political
organizations as States, while the legal and constitutional
jurisdiction and authority of the National Government over the people
and territory remain unimpaired; that these several communities can be
organized into States only by the will of the loyal people, expressed
freely and in the absence of all coercion; that States so organized can
become States of the American Union only when they shall have applied
for admission, and their admission shall have been authorized by the
existing National Government; that, when a people have organized a
State upon basis of allegiance to the Union and applied for admission,
the character of the institutions of such proposed State may constitute
a sufficient justification for granting or rejecting such application;
and, inasmuch as experience has shown that the existence of human
slavery is incompatible with a republican form of government, in the
several States or in the United States, and inconsistent with the
peace, prosperity and unity of the nation, it is the duty of the people
and of all men in authority, to resist the admission of slave States
wherever organized within the jurisdiction of the National Government."

The logical consequence of these positions was that upon the conquest
of the States engaged in the rebellion the National Government could
govern the people as seemed expedient and readmit them into the Union
at such times and upon such terms as the Government should dictate.
They antagonized the doctrine then accepted by many Republicans--
"Once a State always a State"--a doctrine that would have transferred
the government at once into the hands of the men who had been engaged
in an effort to destroy it.

Mr. Sumner was wiser in this respect.  His theory that the
rebellious States should be reduced to a Territorial condition was in
harmony with the views that were embodied in the resolutions.  At the
time, however, they did not receive the support of all the members of
the Republican Party.

Mr. Stevens maintained the doctrine that the rebel States were
conquered States and wholly subject to the power of the conqueror.
In his view their previous condition as States in the Union had no
value.  But Mr. Stevens was never troubled by the absence of logic or
argument.  In the case of the rebel States he intended to assert power
enough to meet the exigency and he was free of all fear as to the
judgement of posterity.  When he had formed a purpose he looked only
to the end.  If he could command the adequate means he left all
questions of logic and ethics to other minds and to future times.

Others maintained that the theory that the States were in a Territorial
condition or that they had ceased to exist as States, was an admission
of the doctrine of secession.  Mr. Lincoln in his last public address
cut clear of all theories and resolved the situation into a simple
statement of a fact to which all were compelled to assent:  "We all
agree, that the seceded States so-called, are out of their proper
practical relations with the Union."  On this basis Congress finally
acted, but during the process and progress of reconstruction the
military authority was absolute, and local and individual powers were
completely subordinated to the authority of the General Government.

COUNTING THE ELECTORAL VOTES

In 1865 and 1869, questions were raised when the electoral votes were
counted, that gave rise to debates in the House of Representatives and
on one occasion subsequently in the Senate.  In the House, Francis
Thomas of Maryland and Samuel Shellabarger of Ohio took part.  Both
were able men.  Thomas had the qualities of an orator but he spoke so
infrequently that his power was not generally appreciated.  On that
occasion he spoke exceedingly well, but the attendance was small, an
evening session having been assigned for debate upon that subject.
Mr. Shellabarger was logical and effective but he was destitute of
imagination utterly.  At the bar since his retirement from politics he
has enjoyed a large practice, but, unfortunately, as it appears to me,
he has preserved the style of speaking which he acquired upon the
stump and in Congress.  A skillful speaker must adapt himself to the
circumstance and to his audience.  A stump speech, a speech in the
House of Representatives, a speech in the Senate, an argument to a
court, an argument to a jury, should each be framed on a model of its
own.  Neither style will answer for any other.  The degree of variance
may not be considerable and with a well disciplined person the change
may not be apparent.  Mr. Webster adapted himself to every audience,
but the changes were slight.  Yet there were changes.  He was not over
solemn in the Supreme Court, and he was never boisterous when he
addressed the multitude.

As far as I recollect my positions and arguments in the debates upon
the counting of the electoral votes, I now discard all I said then.
My present conclusion is that upon a reasonable construction of the
Constitution there is no occasion for legislation or for an amendment
to the fundamental law.  The Vice-President or the President of the
Senate is the president of the convention.  He carries into the chair
the ordinary powers of a presiding officer.  He rules upon all
questions that arise.  He may and should rule upon the various
certificates that are sent up by the several States.  If, in any case,
his ruling is objected to, the two Houses separate, and each House
votes upon the question:--"Shall the ruling of the Chair stand, etc."
If the Houses divide, the ruling is sustained.  The president and one
House are a majority.  The decision is in accordance with our system of
government.  The suggestion that the president or that the Houses may
act under the influence of personal or political prejudice, may, with
equal force, be urged against any scheme that can be devised.  The
counting of the electoral votes must be left in the hands of men, and
the Constitution has given us all the security that can be had that the
decision will be honestly made.  The president of the convention and
the members of the Houses are bound by oath as solemnly as are the
judicial tribunals of the country.  A judge is only a man, and he is
subject to like infirmities with other men.  It is a wise feature of
our system that the courts have no voice in the political department
of our Government.  The presidential office should never be in the
control of the judicial branch of the Government.

[* Letter of the Honorable Thomas B. Bryan.]


XXX
THE AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION

I had no part in the preparation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, nor any part in its passage through the House other than
to give my vote in its favor.  The Amendment resolution was passed by
the Thirty-eighth Congress at its last session and by the aid of
Democrats.  The elections of 1864 had resulted in a two-thirds majority
and it was therefore certain that the resolution would be agreed to by
the next House.  Hence there was less inducement for the Democrats to
resist its passage by the Thirty-eighth Congress.  A small number of
Democrats favored the measure.  English of Connecticut and Ganson of
New York were of the number.  There were others also whose names I do
not recall.  At the time of the contest a rumor was abroad that James
M. Ashley, of Ohio, was engaged in making arrangements with certain
Democrats to absent themselves from the House when the vote was taken.
Several were absent--some were reported in ill health.  Mr. Ashley was
deeply interested in the passage of the resolution and it was believed
that he made pledges which no one but the President could keep.  Such
was the exigency for the passage of the resolution that the means were
not subjected to any rigid rule of ethics.

The Fourteenth Amendment had its origin in a joint committee of fifteen
of which Mr. Fessenden of Maine was chairman.  A record of its
proceedings was kept which was printed recently by order of the
Senate.  From that report it appears that I proposed an amendment for
conferring the right to vote upon the freedmen of the State of
Tennessee.  As far as I know that was the first time the proposition
was made in connection with the proceedings of Congress.  The
committee did not concur in the proposition.  Indeed the time had not
come for decisive action in that direction.  The motion was made in
the committee the 19th day of February, 1866, when the admission of
the State of Tennessee into the Union was under consideration.  The
motion was in these words:  "Said State shall make no distinction in
the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race or color."
The motion was lost by the following vote:

Yeas:  Howard, Stevens, Washburne, Morrill, Boutwell.
Nays:  Harris, Williams, Grider, Bingham, Conkling, Rogers.
Absent:  Fessenden, Grimes, Johnson, Blow.

The 16th day of April Senator Stewart, of Nevada, came before the
committee in support of a similar proposition that he had introduced
in the Senate April 7.

In January, 1866, a bill was under discussion in the House of
Representatives for the establishment of a government in the District
of Columbia.  Mr. Hale of New York moved amendments by which the right
of suffrage by negroes would be limited to those who could read and
write, to those who had performed service in the army or navy or who
possessed property qualifications.  The amendment was defeated.  My
views were thus stated in one of the very small number of my speeches
that have had immediate influence upon an audience or an assembly:

"I am opposed to the instructions moved by the gentleman from New
York, because I see in them no advantage to anybody, and I apprehend
from their adoption much evil to the country.  It should be borne in
mind, that, when we emancipated the black people we not only relieved
ourselves from the institution of slavery, we not only conferred upon
them their freedom, but we did more; we recognized their manhood,
which, by the old Constitution and the general policy and usage of the
country, had been, from the organization of the Government until the
Emancipation Proclamation, denied to all the enslaved colored people.
As a consequence of the recognition of their manhood, certain results
follow, in accordance with the principles of the Government; and they
who believe in this Government are, by necessity, forced to accept
those results as a consequence of the policy of emancipation which they
have inaugurated, and for which they are responsible.

"But to say now, having given freedom to the blacks, that they shall
not enjoy the essential rights and privileges of men, is to abandon
the principle of the Proclamation of Emancipation, and tacitly to admit
that the whole emancipation policy is erroneous.

* * * "What are the qualifications suggested?  They are three.  First
and most attractive, service in the army or navy of the United States.
I shall have occasion to say, if I discuss, as I hope to discuss, the
nature and origin of the right of voting, that there is not the least
possible connection between service in the army and navy and the
exercise of the elective franchise,--none whatever.  These men have
performed service, and I am for dealing justly with them because they
have performed service.  But I am more anxious to deal justly by them
because they are men.  And when it is remembered, that, for months and
almost for years after the opening of the rebellion, we refused to
accept the services of colored persons in the armies of the country,
it is with ill grace that we now decline to allow the vote of any man
because he has not performed that service.

"The second is the property qualification.  I hope it is not necessary
in this day and this hour of the Republic to argue anywhere that a
property qualification is not only unjust in itself, but that it is
odious to the people of the country to a degree which cannot be
expressed.  Everywhere, I believe, for half a century, it has been
repudiated by the people.  Does anybody contemplate such a
qualification to the elective franchise, in the case of black people
or white?

"And next, reading and writing, or reading as a qualification, is
demanded; and an appeal is made to the example of Massachusetts.  I
wish gentlemen who now appeal to Massachusetts would often appeal to
her in other matters where I can more conscientiously approve her
policy.  But it is a different proposition in Massachusetts as a
practical measure.

"When, ten years ago, this qualification was imposed upon the citizens
of Massachusetts, it excluded no person who was then a voter.  For two
centuries, we have had in Massachusetts a system of public instruction,
open to the children of the whole people without money and without
price.  Therefore all the people there had had opportunities for
education.  Why should the example of such a State be quoted to
justify refusing suffrage to men who have been denied the privilege
of education, and whom it has been a crime to teach?

* * * "The negro has everywhere the same right to vote as the white
man, and I maintain still further, that, when you proceed one step
from this line, you admit that your government is a failure.  What is
the essential quality of monarchical and aristocratic governments?
Simply that by conventionalities, by arrangements of conventions, some
persons have been deprived of the right of voting.  We have attempted
to set up and maintain a government upon the doctrine of the equality
of men, the universal right of all men, to participate in the
government.  In accordance with that theory, we must accept the ballot
upon the principle of equality.  It is enjoyed by the learned and un-
learned, the wise and the ignorant, the virtuous and the vicious.

"The great experiment is going on.  If, before the war, any man in
this country was disposed to undervalue a government thus conducted, he
should have learned by this time the wisdom and strength of a
government which embraces and embodies the judgment and the will of the
whole people.  If the negroes of the South, four million strong, had
been endowed with the elective franchise, and had united with the
white people of that region in the work of rebellion, your armies would
have been powerless to subdue that rebellion, and you would to-day have
seen your territory limited by the Potomac and the Ohio.

* * * "We are to answer for our treatment of the colored people of this
country; and it will prove in the end impracticable to secure to men
of color civil rights, unless the persons who claim those rights are
fortified by the political right of voting.  With the right of voting,
everything that a man ought to have or enjoy of civil rights comes to
him.  Without the right to vote he is secure in nothing.  I cannot
consent, after all the guards and safeguards which may be prepared for
the defence of the colored men in the enjoyment of their rights,--I
cannot consent that they shall be deprived of the right to protect
themselves.  One hundred and eighty-six thousand of them have been in
the army of the United States.  They have stood in the places of our
sons and brothers and friends.  Many of them have fallen in the defence
of the country.  They have earned the right to share in the government;
and, if you deny them the elective franchise, I know not how they are
to be protected.  Otherwise you furnish the protection which is given
to the lamb when he is commended to the wolf.

"There is an ancient history that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took
refuge in the chief Assembly of Athens, in the bosom of a member of
that illustrious body, and that the senator in anger hurled it
violently from him.  It fell to the ground dead; and such was the
horror and indignation of that ancient but not Christianized body,--
men living in the light of nature, of reason,--that they immediately
expelled the brutal Areopagite from his seat, and from the association
of humane legislators.

"What will be said of us, not by Christian, but by heathen nations
even, if, after accepting the blood and sacrifices of these men, we
hurl them from us, and allow them to become the victims of those who
have tyrannized over them for centuries?  I know of no crime that
exceeds this; I know of none that is its parallel; and, if this country
is true to itself, it will rise in the majesty of its strength, and
maintain a policy, here and everywhere, by which the right of the
colored people shall be secure through their own power,--in peace,
the ballot; in war, the bayonet.

"It is a maxim of another language, which we may well apply to
ourselves, that, where the voting-register ends, the military roster of
rebellion begins; and, if you leave these four million people to the
care and custody of the men who have inaugurated and carried on this
rebellion, then you treasure up, for untold years, the elements of
social and civil war, which must not only desolate and paralyze the
South, but shake this government to its very foundation."


It was impossible in 1866 to go farther than the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment.  That amendment was prepared in form by Senators
Conkling and Williams and myself.  We were a select committee on
Tennessee.  The propositions were not ours, but we gave form to the
amendment.  The part relating to "privileges and immunities" came from
Mr. Bingham of Ohio.  Its euphony and indefiniteness of meaning were
a charm to him.  When the measure came before the Senate Mr. Sumner
opposed its passage and alleged that we proposed to barter the right
of the negroes to vote for diminished representation on the part of
the old slave States in the House and in the electoral college; while
in truth the loss of representation was imposed as a penalty upon any
State that should deprive any class of its adult male citizens of the
right to vote.  Upon this allegation of Mr. Sumner the resolution was
defeated in the Senate.  There were then in that body a number of
Republicans from the old slave States and over them Mr. Sumner had
large influence.  The defeat of the amendment was followed by bitter
criticisms by the Republican press and by Republicans.  These
criticisms affected Mr. Sumner deeply and he then devoted himself to
the preparation of an amendment which he could approve.  While he was
engaged in that work I called upon him and he read seventeen drafts of
a proposition not one of which was entirely satisfactory to himself,
and not one of which would have been accepted by Congress or the
country.  The difficulty was in the situation.  Upon the return of the
seceded States their representation would be increased nearly forty
votes in the House and in the electoral colleges while the voting force
would remain in the white population.  The injustice of such a
condition was apparent, and there were only two possible remedies.
One was to extend the franchise to the blacks.  The country--the loyal
States--were not then ready for the measure.  The alternative was to
cut off the representation from States that denied the elective
franchise to any class of adult male citizens.  Finally Mr. Sumner was
compelled to accept the alternative.  Some change of phraseology was
made, and Mr. Sumner gave a reluctant vote for the resolution.

Aside from the debates on the constitutional amendment there were
serious difficulties among Republicans in regard to the exercise of the
right of suffrage by the negroes.

Previous to the year 1868 there was a majority of Republicans who would
have imposed a qualification, some of service in the army or navy,
some of property and some of education.  It was with great difficulty
that the scheme of limitation was resisted in regard to the District
of Columbia.  As to the Democrats they could always be counted upon to
aid in any measure which tended to keep the negroes in a subordinate
condition.  This of the majority--there was always a minority, usually
a small one, who were ready to aid in the elevation of the negro when
his emancipation had been accomplished.  I do not recall the name of
one man who favored emancipation as a policy and adhered to the
Democratic Party.  When a man reached the conclusion that the negroes
should be free, he could not do otherwise than join the Republican
Party.  At the time of the admission of Tennessee, July, 1866, there
were only twelve men in the House of Representatives who insisted upon
securing to the negro the right to vote.  A larger number favored the
scheme, but they yielded to the claim of that State to be admitted
without conditions.  At that time the power of the President was not
impaired seriously, and his wishes were heeded by many.  There was
also an understanding that the State would concede the right upon terms
not unreasonable.

Next to the restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery the
recognition of universal suffrage is the most important result of the
war.  It has its evils but they are incidental, and their influence is
limited to times and places, while the advantages are universal and
enduring.  Universal suffrage is security for universal education.  It
is security against chronic hostility to the Government and security
against the manifestation of a revolutionary spirit among the people.
They realize that with frequent elections, the evils of administration
may be corrected speedily.  By a similar though slower process the
fundamental law may be changed.  Hence it is in this country until
recently there was no difference of opinion as to the wisdom of the
system of government under which we are living.  The existing diversity
of opinion will soon disappear.  If suffrage were limited there would
be a body of discontented people ready to seize upon any pretext that
promised a change.  In the present condition of our system the only
danger is due to the forcible or fraudulent withholding of the right
from those who are entitled to enjoy it.  This condition of things
must soon end.  The safety of a state is yet further secured by
frequent elections.  The project to extend the Presidential term is
full of danger.  If the term were six or ten years the presence of an
offensive or dangerous man in the office would provoke a revolution, or
cause disturbances only less disastrous to business and to social and
domestic comfort.  In the little republic of Hayti there have been not
less than seventeen revolutions in the hundred years of its existence
and they were due in a large degree to the fact that the Presidential
term is seven years.

The various propositions submitted to the House of Representatives for
securing the right to vote to all the male adult citizens of the United
States were referred to the Judiciary Committee of which I was a
member.  Among them was one submitted by myself.  In the committee they
were referred to a sub-committee consisting of myself, Mr. Churchill
of New York, and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin.  Mr. Eldridge as a
Democrat was opposed to the measure, and he took no interest in
preparing the form of an amendment.  Churchill and myself were fellow-
boarders and we prepared and agreed to an amendment in substance that
which was adopted finally and which in form was almost the same.  When
I reported the amendment to the committee not one word was said either
in criticism or commendation, nor was there a call for a second
reading.  After a moment's delay Mr. Wilson, the chairman, said:--"If
there is no objection Mr. Boutwell will report the amendment to the
House."  There was no objection and at the earliest opportunity I made
the report--that is, I reported the resolution for amending the
Constitution.  Mr. Wilson made a speech which I have not since read,
but which made an impression upon my mind that he was opposed to the
measure, or at least had doubts about the wisdom of urging the
amendment upon Congress and the country.

The resolution passed the House as it was reported by the committee.
When it was taken up in the Senate Mr. Sumner, who was opposed to the
resolution, assailed it with an amendment that would have been fatal if
his lead had been followed by the two Houses.  He proposed to insert
after the words "to vote" the words "or hold office."  At that time he
was a recognized leader upon all matters relating to the negro race,
and his standing with that race was such that the Republican senators
from the slave States were obedient to his wishes.  His amendment was
adopted by the Senate.  In presence of the fact that Mr. Sumner was
opposed to any amendment of the Constitution upon the subject and he
proposed to rely upon a statute, it is difficult to explain his conduct
upon any other theory than that he intended to defeat the measure
either in Congress or in the States.  He had claimed when the
Fourteenth Amendment was pending that a joint resolution would furnish
an adequate remedy and protection.  His proposition was in these
words:  "There shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly
invested with peculiar privileges and powers and there shall be no
denial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race
anywhere within the limits of the United States or the jurisdiction
thereof: but all persons therein shall be equal before the law, whether
in the court room or at the ballot-box.  And this statute made in
pursuance of the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land,
anything in the constitution or laws of any State notwithstanding."
This resolution is a sad impeachment of Mr. Sumner's quality as a
lawyer and it is an equally sad impeachment of his sense or of his
integrity as a man that he was willing to risk the rights of five
million persons upon a statute whose language was rhetorical and
indefinite, a statute which might be repealed and which was quite
certain to be pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Upon the return of the resolution and amendment to the House, my own
position was an embarrassing one.  I was counted as a radical and in
favor of securing to the negro race every right to which the white race
was entitled.  My opposition to the Senate amendment seemed to place
me in a light inconsistent with my former professions.  However, I met
the difficulty by an argument in which I maintained that the right
to vote carried with it the right to hold office.  That in the United
States there were only a few exceptions, and those were exceptions
under the Constitution.

Finally, the House, by a reduced vote refused to concur with the
amendment of the Senate.  It was at this crisis that Wendell Phillips
wrote an article in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ over his own name in
which he said in substance and in words, that the House proposition was
adequate and that it ought to be accepted by the Senate.  His name and
opinion settled the controversy.  The Southern Republicans deserted
Mr. Sumner feeling that the opinion of Phillips was a sufficient
shield.  A slight change of phraseology was made and the proposition of
the House became the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

I wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Mr. Phillips in the opinion
that he had saved the amendment.  At that time the prejudice against
negroes for office was very strong in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and in
varying degrees the prejudice extended over the whole North.

The enjoyment of the right to vote has not been fully secured to the
negro race, but no one has appeared to deny his right to hold office.
Indeed, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has
placed him in office, both by election and appointment.  Thus has
experience shown the folly of Mr. Sumner's amendment.

That Mr. Sumner should have been willing to risk the rights of the
whole negro race upon a statute whose constitutionality would have
been questioned upon good ground, and which might have been repealed,
is a marvel which no one not acquainted with Mr. Sumner can
comprehend.  First of all, though he was learned, he was not a lawyer.
He was impractical in the affairs of government to a degree that is
incomprehensible even to those who knew him.  He was in the Senate
twenty-three years and the only mark that he left upon the statutes is
an amendment to the law relating to naturalization by which Mongolians
are excluded from citizenship.  The object of his amendment was to
save negroes from the exclusive features of the statute which was
designed to apply only to the Chinese.  His amendment made plain what
the committee had designed to secure.  He was a great figure in the
war against slavery and as a great figure in that war he should ever
remain.

The Fourteenth Amendment saved the country from a series of calamities
that might have been more disastrous even than the Civil War.  The
South might, under the Fourteenth Amendment, grant to the negroes the
right to vote but upon conditions wholly impracticable and thus have
secured their full representation in Congress at the same time that the
voting power was retained in the hands of the white race.  Or they
might have denied to the negro race the right to vote and submitted to
a loss of representation.  Such a policy would have given the whole
country over to contention and possibly in the end, to civil war.  The
discontented and oppressed negroes, increasing in numbers and wealth,
would have demanded their rights ultimately, even by the threat of
force, or by the use of force they would have secured their rights.  In
the North there would have been a large body of the people, only less
than the whole body, who would have sympathized with the negroes and
who, in an exigency would have rendered them material aid.  The Dorr
War in Rhode Island and the struggles in Kansas, are instances of the
danger of attempting to found society or to maintain social order upon
an unjust or an unequal system for the distribution of political power.
It is true that at this time (1901) the operation of the Fifteenth
Amendment has been defeated and consequently the governments of States
and the Government of the United States have become usurpations, in
that they have been in the hands of a minority of men.  Nevertheless
the influence of the amendment is felt by all, and the time is not
distant when it will be accepted by all.  Thus our Government will be
made to rest upon the wisest and safest foundation yet devised by
man:  The Equality of Men in the States, and the Equality of States in
the Union.

Mr. Sumner opposed the amendment and he declined to vote upon the
passage of the resolution.  Wendell Phillips saved it in the Senate.
General Grant, more than anyone else secured its ratification by the
people.  I append a copy of my letter to Mr. Phillips:

WASHINGTON, _March_ 13, 1870.
MY DEAR SIR:--

This letter will recall to your mind the circumstance that when the
Fifteenth Amendment was suspended between the two houses you published
an editorial in the _Standard_ in favor of the House proposition.  Can
you send me that article?  It may not be known to you that that article
saved the amendment.  A little of the secret history was thus.  Various
propositions were offered in the House--among them one of my own--and
all were referred to the Judiciary Committee.

In the Judiciary Committee, upon my motion the various resolutions for
amending the Constitution in that particular were referred to a sub-
committee consisting of myself, Churchill of New York and Eldridge of
Wisconsin.  Churchill and myself were living at the same house and
conferred together several times.  Eldridge took no interest in the
matter and never joined us--perhaps he was not invited.  After an
examination of all the plans I wrote that proposed amendment which was
passed by the House and is in substance and almost in language the
amendment as adopted.

With the concurrence of Mr. Churchill I reported it to the committee
and without one word of criticism and as far as I could judge without
any particular consideration I was directed to report it to the House.
In the House it encountered considerable opposition and Mr. Wilson,
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, made a speech which was a great
surprise to me, though directed chiefly to the bill which I had also
reported by direction of the Judiciary Committee giving at once the
right of suffrage to negroes in all national elections and for members
of the Legislature.  This I thought necessary to secure the passage of
the amendment through the State Legislatures.  However, the resolution
was finally passed by the House.  In the Senate it met with great
opposition because it omitted to secure in terms the right to hold
office.  This point had been raised in the House where I had
successfully met the proposition by the statement and an argument in
support of the statement that the right to vote as a matter of fact and
in law carries with it the right to hold office.  In the Senate, Mr.
Sumner, supported by all the Southern Republicans and a part of the
Northern Republicans succeeded in substituting a new resolution
securing in terms the right to hold office.  Upon the return of the
Resolution to the House I was obliged to take what appeared a
conservative position and resist the proposition to concur with the
Senate upon the ground that the change was unnecessary and that its
adoption threatened the loss of the measure in doubtful States as Ohio,
Indiana, West Virginia and others.  The House adhered to its position,
yet with such weakness of purpose on the part of many who sustained me,
as indicated that they would not withstand another assault.  The
struggle was then renewed in the Senate and with every indication that
the Senate would insist upon its amendment.  It was then that your
article appeared.  Its influence was immediate and potential.  Men
thought that if you the extremest radical could accept the House
proposition they might safely do the same.  Had the Senate adhered one
of two things would have happened, either the House would have seceded
or the amendment would have failed.

Had the House concurred I fear we should have failed to carry several
States which have since ratified it.

Upon reflection I think as at the time I thought that your voice saved
the Fifteenth Amendment.

I am very truly,
GEO. S. BOUTWELL.

WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
Boston.

P. S.  This letter is not for the public use in so far as names are
mentioned, and of course, not for publication.
G. S. B.

The article of Mr. Phillips became so important in its influence upon
the final action of the Senate that I reproduce it in justice to Mr.
Phillips and as a further record of an historical event.

"We see the action of the Senate touching the Constitutional
Amendment with great anxiety.  The House had passed a simple measure,
one covering all the ground that people are ready to occupy.  It
answered completely the lesson of the war.  Its simplicity gave it all
the chance that exists for any form of amendment being ratified.

"Why was it not left in that shape?  Leaving out of sight the manifest
risk of attempting too much, the very fact of the little time left
before the session closes, was warning enough to clutch at anything
satisfactory and to run no risk of possible disagreement between the
Houses.  We wait further knowledge before indulging any conjectures as
to the motive for this strange course of the Senate; before even
suspecting that it grew out of any concealed hate toward the whole
measure and was indeed a trick to defeat it.  Whoever, in either House,
gratifies some personal whim to the extent of defeating or even
postponing this measure will incur the gravest responsibility.  We
exhort every man who professes himself a friend of liberty to drop all
undue attachment to any form of words and to co-operate, heartily,
earnestly, with the great body of the members in carrying through as
promptly as possible, any form which included the substance of a
constitutional protection to the votes and right to office of the
colored race.  That is the work of the hour.  That is the lesson the
war has burned in on the brain and conscience of the Nation.

"To include with this, 'Nationality, education, creed,' etc., is utter
lack of common sense.  Such a total forgetfulness of the commonest
political prudence as makes it hard to credit the good intentions of
the proposers.

"Our disappointment is the greater because we had reason to believe
that the Senators who have this matter in charge, would be the last
men to forget themselves at such a crisis.  They have been timidly
'practical,' ludicrously tied up to precedents, when, in times past we
have urged them to some act which seemed likely to jeopard party.  Then
Sir Oracle was never more sententious, more full of 'wise saws and
modern instances,' than they.  The inch they were willing to move ahead
was hardly visible to the naked eye.  How they lectured us on the 'too
fast' and 'too far' policy!  Now in an emergency which calls for the
most delicate handling, they tear up not one admitted abuse, but
include in the grasp half a dozen obstinate prejudices, which no logic
of events has loosened.  For the first time in our lives we beseech
them to be a little more _politicians_--and a little less _reformers_--
as those functions are usually understood."

Under the date of March 18, 1869, I received from Mr. Phillips a letter
in acknowledgment of my letter of thanks and commendation, in these
words:

"DEAR SIR:--

"Thank you for the intimation in your letter.  I am glad if any words
of mine helped get rid of the too prompt action at that time.  I
think it was of the greatest importance to act at once."

The public mind seems to be misled in regard to the scope and legal
value of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.  The amendments were
in the nature of grants of power to the National Government, and in a
corresponding degree they were limitations of the powers of the States,
but the grants of power to the nation were also subject to limitations.
Until the ratification of the amendments the States had full power to
extend the right of suffrage, or to restrict its enjoyment with the
freedom that they possessed when the Treaty of Peace of 1783 had been
signed, and when the Constitution had not been framed and ratified.

All limitations of the right of suffrage by male inhabitants of
twenty-one years of age, must fall under the control of the Fourteenth
or Fifteenth Amendments.

If in any State the right to vote shall be "denied or abridged on
account of race, color or previous condition of servitude," the
statutes may be annulled by a decision of the Supreme Court.  Neither
the people of the United States in their political sovereignty, nor
the political branch of the Government in its representative capacity
can exert any direct influence upon the decision of the questions that
may arise.  The questions that may arise will be judicial questions,
and they will fall under the decision of the judicial tribunals.  Hence
there has never been a time when it was the duty or when it was in the
power or within the scope of the duty of the executive branch of the
National Government to take official notice of the legislation in some
of the former slave States, which is designed manifestly to limit the
voting power of the negro population in those States.

If such legislation does not fall under the Fifteenth Amendment it will
be subject to the penalty imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment,--a
proportionate loss of representative power in the House of
Representatives and in the Electoral Colleges.

As one of the three remaining members of the Committee on the
Judiciary, and as one of the three remaining members of the Committee
on Reconstruction, I wish to say, without any reservation whatever,
that the amendments are accomplishing and are destined to accomplish
all that was expected by the committees that were charged with the
duty of providing for the protection of the rights of the freedmen.

They were relived from the disparaging distinctions that came into
existence with the system of slavery.  They were placed upon an
equality with other citizens and in the forms of law all
discriminations affecting unfavorably the right of suffrage must
apply equally to all citizens.  The injustice and unwisdom of the
restrictive legislation in which the Southern States are indulging,
are subject of concern for the whole country, but the negro populations
have no ground for the complaint that their rights have been neglected
by the General Government.

This, however, is true:  The negro population, in common with all
others, has ground for just and continuing complaint against the
legislation of Congress by which a portion of the inhabitants of the
Hawaiian Islands have been denationalized on account of race or color,
or on account of a condition of mental or physical inferiority.

The process of reasoning by which the legislation of the States of the
South is condemned, by those who uphold the legislation in regard to
Hawaii involves a question in political ethics which for the moment I
am not able to answer in a manner satisfactory to myself.


XXXI
INVESTIGATIONS FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR

In the years 1865, '66 and '67 three important subjects of inquiry were
placed in the hands of committees of which I was a member.

The Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by
resolutions adopted respectively the 9th and 30th days of April, 1866,
was directed "to inquire into the nature of the evidence implicating
Jefferson Davis and others in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln."

James M. Ashley of Ohio introduced a resolution for the impeachment of
President Johnson, and on the 7th day of January, 1867, the House
authorized the Committee on the Judiciary "to inquire into the official
conduct of Andrew Johnson, Vice-President of the United States,
discharging the powers and duties of President of the United States,"
etc.

By a resolution of the two Houses of Congress passed the 12th and 13th
of December, 1865, a joint committee was created under instructions to
"inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called
Confederate States of America and report whether they or any of them
are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress."

William Pitt Fessenden was chairman on the part of the Senate and
Thaddeus Stevens was chairman of the part of the House.  Upon the
death of Mr. Stevens I succeeded to his place.  The testimony taken
in these cases fills three huge volumes.  No inconsiderable part of the
testimony was taken by myself, and I was but seldom absent from the
meetings of the committees.

JOHN WILKES BOOTH

In no other situation in life is the character of a man more fully and
truthfully brought into view than when he is placed upon the witness-
stand and subjected to an examination by counsel or others who aim to
support opposite opinions and to reach adverse results.  The committees
that conducted the investigations were composed of men who entertained
opposite views in regard to the reconstruction of the government and in
regard to the impeachment of President Johnson.  There was also a
difference of opinion upon the question of the responsibility of the
Confederate authorities for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.  As a
consequence of this diversity of opinion the witnesses were subjected
to the equivalent of a cross-examination in a court of justice.  Some
of the impressions of men that I received in the many hearings, and
some of the opinions I formed, are recorded here.

In each branch of these comprehensive inquiries there may be found
something in the nature of evidence that may appear to have a bearing
upon the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.  It is my purpose in these
paragraphs to bring in to view the testimony which relates directly to
John Wilkes Booth, the most conspicuous and without question the chief
criminal in the tragedy of the assassination of President Lincoln, and
the attempt upon the life of Mr. Seward.

The first step in the proceedings which culminated in the murder was
the deposit at Surrattsville (a place about five miles from Washington,
and owned by the Surratt family) of a carbine, two bottles of whiskey,
a small coil of rope, a field glass, a monkey wrench, and some other
articles.

The house was kept by a man named Lloyd, and neither the character of
the house nor that of the keeper could bear a rigid test in ethics.
The deposit was made about the first of March by John H. Surratt,
Atzerodt and David E. Herold, all of whom were afterwards implicated
in the crime.  The articles were received and secreted by Lloyd, but
only after objections by him, as appears from his testimony.  Lloyd
connected Mrs. Surratt with the crime by these facts as related by
him.  She called upon Lloyd the Tuesday preceding the fatal Friday
and gave him this message:  "She told me to have them ready (speaking
of the shooting-iron) that they would be called for or wanted soon,
I have forgotten which."

Mrs. Surratt made a second call the afternoon preceding the murder,
when this conversation took place, as stated by Lloyd:  "When I drove
up in my buggy to the back yard Mrs. Surratt came out to meet me.  She
handed me a package, and told me as well as I remember to get the guns
or those things--I really forget now which, though my impression is
that guns was the expression she made use of--and a couple of bottles
of whisky and give them to whoever should call for them that night."

That night, after the murder, Booth and Herold called, and took the
carbine and drank of the whisky.  In these facts there is a basis for
a reasonable theory.  The theory is this.  Previous to the fall of
Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army the Confederate authorities
set on foot a scheme for the capture and abduction of Mr. Lincoln.
The articles deposited, including the rope and the monkey wrench,
might be useful had Mr. Lincoln been abducted, but when the crime
became murder the rope and wrench were neglected.

This view derives support from two directions.  In Booth's diary is
this entry.  "April 13-14 Friday.  The Ides.  Until to-day nothing was
ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs.  For six months
we had worked to capture.  But our cause being almost lost something
decisive and great must be done.  But its failure was owing to others
who did not strike for their country with a heart."

Colonel Baker, a detective, testified that when he was in Canada,
engaged in negotiations for the purchase of letters that had passed
between the Confederate authorities at Richmond and Clay, Tucker,
Thompson and others, he read a letter from Jefferson Davis to Jacob
Thompson dated March 8, 1865, in which was this expression:  "The
consummation of the act that would have done more to have ended this
terrible strife, being delayed, has probably ruined our cause."

The scheme for the abduction of Mr. Lincoln was a wild scheme, born of
desperation, and its success would have worked only evil to the
Confederacy.  The purpose of the North would have been strengthened,
the public feeling would have been embittered and the friendship of
England and of the Continental states would have been suppressed.
When Lee had surrendered, when Davis was fleeing from Richmond, when
Benjamin was preparing to leave the country, the leaders of the
Confederacy could not have entertained a project for the capture of
Mr. Lincoln, nor of any injury to him whatever.  Their opposition to
Mr. Lincoln was not tainted with personal hostility.  One fact remains;
the persons who had knowledge of the project to abduct Mr. Lincoln and
who were engaged in it at Washington, were implicated in the final
crime.

If Booth's diary can be accepted as a faithful representation of his
mental condition it will appear that he had on that fatal Friday
submitted himself to the influence of three strong passions.  He had
accepted the South as his country, and he had come to look upon Mr.
Lincoln as a tyrant and as its enemy.  Hence he was influenced with
hatred for Mr. Lincoln.  Finally he had become maddened by an ambition
to rival, or to excel Brutus.  The influence of his possession is to
be seen in the entries in his diary in the days following the 14th of
April:

"I can never repent it, though we hated to kill.  Our country owed all
our troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his
punishment.

"The country is not what it was.  This forced union is not what I have
loved.  I have not desired to outlive my country. . . . After being
hunted like a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased
by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving with
every man's hand against me, I am here in despair.  And why?  For doing
what Brutus was honored for--what made Tell a hero.  And yet I for
striking down a greater tyrant than they ever knew, am looked upon as
a common cut-throat.  My action was purer than either of theirs.  One
hoped to be great.  The other had not only his country's, but his own
wrongs to avenge.  I knew no private wrong.  I struck for my country
and that alone.  A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and
prayed for the end, and yet now behold the cold hand they extend to me.

"God cannot pardon me if I have done wrong, yet I cannot see my wrong
except in serving a degenerate people.  The little, the very little I
left behind to clear my name, the Government will not allow to be
printed.  So ends all.  For my country I have given up all that makes
life sweet and holy, brought misery upon my family, and am sure there
is no pardon for me in Heaven since man so condemns me.

"I do not repent of the blow I struck.  I may before my God but not to
man.  I think I have done well.  Thought I am abandoned with the curse
of Cain upon me, when if the world knew my heart that one blow would
have made me great, though I did desire no greatness."

Finally, he writes:

"I bless the entire world.  Have never hated or wronged anyone.  This
last was not a wrong unless God deems it so; and it is with him to
damn or bless me."

These extracts from Booth's diary reveal the influences that controlled
him in the great tragedy in which he became the principal actor.


The death of Booth was only a lesser tragedy than the death of Mr.
Lincoln.

Following the murder and escape of Booth a small military force was
organized hastily under the direction and command of Colonel Lafayette
C. Baker, a detective in the service of the War Department.  The force
consisted of about thirty men chiefly convalescents from the army
hospitals in Washington.  Colonel Everton G. Conger was in command of
the expedition, and his testimony contains a clear account of what
transpired at Garrett's Farm, where Booth was captured and shot.
Conger reached Garrett's Farm on the night of the 25th of April, or the
early morning of the 26th.  The men were posted around the tobacco shed
in which Booth and Herold were secreted and their surrender was
demanded by Conger.  Booth refused to surrender and tendered, as a
counter proposition, a personal contest with the entire force.  Herold
surrendered.  Upon Booth's persistent refusal to surrender, a fire was
lighted in a corner of the building.  Booth then came forward with his
carbine in his hand and engaged in a conversation with Lieut. L. Byron
Baker.  While so engaged a musket was fired from the opposite side of
the shed and Booth fell, wounded fatally in the neck, at or near the
spot where Mr. Lincoln had been struck.  Conger had given orders to the
men not to shoot under any circumstances.  The examination disclosed
the fact that the shot was fired by a sergeant, named Boston Corbett.
When Colonel Conger asked Corbett why he shot without orders Corbett
saluted the colonel and said:  "Colonel, Providence directed me."
Thus the parallel runs.  Booth claimed that he was the instrument of
the Almighty in the assassination of Lincoln, and Boston Corbett
claimed that he acted under the direction of Providence when he shot
Booth.

Booth was shot at about three o'clock in the morning of April 26, and
he died at fifteen minutes past seven.  During that time he was
conscious for about three fourths of an hour.  He asked whether a
person called Jett had betrayed him.  His only other intelligible
remark was this:

"Tell my mother I died for my country."

During the afternoon preceding the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, Booth
met John Matthews a brother actor, and requested him to hand a letter
to Mr. Coyle, of the _National Intelligencer,_ the next morning.
Mathews had a part in the play at Ford's Theater.  When the shot was
fired and Mathews was changing his dress to leave the theater, he
discovered the letter, which for the time he had forgotten.  When he
reached his rooms he opened the letter.  It contained an avowal of
Booth's purpose to murder the President, and he named three of his
associates.  Booth referred to a plan that had failed, and he then
added:  "The moment has at length arrived when my plans must be
changed."  These statements were made by Mathews from recollection.
Mathews destroyed the letter under the influence of the apprehension
that its possession would work his ruin.

The records seem to warrant certain conclusions:

1.  That the Confederate authorities at Richmond made a plan for the
capture of Mr. Lincoln, and that Booth, Mrs. Surratt and others--who
were implicated finally in the murder--were concerned in the project
to abduct the President and to hold him a hostage.

2.  That the undertaking failed.

3.  That following Lee's surrender and the downfall of the Confederacy,
Booth originated the plan to murder the President, under the influence
of the motives and reasons that are set forth in his diary and in the
letter to Mr. Coyle.

4.  His influence over the persons who were involved in the conspiracy
to abduct Mr. Lincoln, was so great that he was able to command their
aid in the commission of the final crime.

When the investigations were concluded there remained in the possession
of the Committee on the Judiciary a quantity of papers, affidavits,
letters and memoranda of no value as evidence.  These were placed
within a sealed package.  The package was deposited with the clerk of
the House of Representatives.  The preservation of the papers may have
been an error.  They should have been destroyed by the committee.  Some
doubts were expressed however as to the authority of the committee.
Further investigations were suggested as not impossible.  I am the only
person living who has knowledge of the papers.  They are now in the
possession of the House of Representatives.  It is not in the public
interest that the papers should become the possession of the public.

MR. LINCOLN AND THE ATTACK ON FORT SUMTER

The testimony of John Minor Botts of Virginia, given before the Joint
Committee on Reconstruction, February 18, 1866, presents Mr. Lincoln as
a diplomatist at the outset of his experience as President.

Mr. Botts had been a leading member of the Whig Party and he was a
Union man from the beginning of the contest to the end of the war.  As
the work of secession was advancing in the Gulf States Mr. Lincoln
became anxious for the fate of the border States and especially for
Virginia and Kentucky, which promised to serve as barriers to the
aggressive movements of the South in case of war.  Mr. Botts came to
Washington at the request of Mr. Lincoln in the early days of April,
1861, and they were together and in private conversation during the
evening of the 7th of April from seven to eleven o'clock.  In the
conversation of that evening the President gave Mr. Botts an account
of the steps that he had taken to prevent a collision in the harbor
of Charleston.

Mr. Summers and Mr. Baldwin of Virginia had been delegates in the Peace
Congress and they had been counted among the Union men of the State.
Soon after the inauguration the President was informed that the small
garrison in Fort Sumter was nearly destitute of provisions and that
an attempt to add to the supply would be resisted.  The President,
Mr. Summers and Mr. Botts had served together as Whigs in the Thirtieth
Congress and the President invited Mr. Summers by letter and by special
messenger to a conference in Washington.  To this invitation no
answer was given by Mr. Summers until the 5th of April, when Mr.
Baldwin appeared and said that he had come upon the request of Mr.
Summers.  Mr. Lincoln said at once:  "Ah!  Mr. Baldwin, why did you
not come sooner?  I have been expecting you gentlemen to come to me
for more than a week past.  I had a most important proposition to make
to you.  I am afraid you have come too late.  However, I will make the
proposition now.  We have in Fort Sumter with Major Anderson about
eighty men and I learn from Major Anderson that his provisions are
nearly exhausted . . . I have not only written to Governor Pickens, but
I have sent a special messenger to say that if he will allow Major
Anderson to obtain his marketing at the Charleston market, or, if he
objects to allowing our people to land at Charleston, if he will have
it sent to him, then I will make no effort to provision the fort, but,
that if he does not do that, I will not permit these people to starve,
and that I shall send provisions down,--and that if fires on that
vessel he will fire upon an unarmed vessel, loaded with nothing but
bread but I shall at the same time send a fleet along with her, with
instructions not to enter the harbor of Charleston unless the vessel
is fired into; and if she is, then the fleet is to enter the harbor
and protect her.  Now, Mr. Baldwin, that fleet is now lying in the
harbor of New York and will be ready to sail this afternoon at five
o'clock, and although I fear it is almost too late, yet I will submit
anyway the proposition which I intended for Mr. Summers.  Your
convention in Richmond, Mr. Baldwin, has been sitting now nearly two
months and all they have done has been to shake the rod over my head.
You have recently taken a vote in the Virginia Convention, on the right
of secession, which was rejected by ninety to forty-five, a majority
of two thirds, showing the strength of the Union Party in that
convention; and, if you will go back to Richmond and get that Union
majority to adjourn and go home without passing the ordinance of
secession, so anxious am I for the preservation of the peace of this
country and to save Virginia and the other States from going out, that
I will take the responsibility of evacuating Fort Sumter, and take the
chance of negotiating with the cotton States, which have already gone
out."

This quotation is from the testimony of Mr. Botts and there cannot be
better evidence of the facts existing in the first days of April, nor
a more trustworthy statement of the position of Mr. Lincoln in regard
to the secession movement.  At that time the Virginia Convention had
rejected a proposed ordinance of secession by a vote of ninety to
forty-five, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Lincoln had hopes that
his proposition might calm the temper and change the purposes of the
secessionists in that State if he did not change the schemes of
Governor Pickens, of which, indeed, the prospect was only slight.

In his Inaugural Address, and in all his other public utterances, Mr.
Lincoln sought to place the responsibility of war upon the seceding
States.  At a later day Mr. Lincoln, in a conversation with Senator
Sumner and myself, expressed regret that he had neglected to station
troops in Virginia in advance of the occupation of the vicinity of
Alexandria by the Confederates, a course of action to which he had
been urged by Mr. Chase and others.

Mr. Lincoln's proposition for the relief of Fort Sumter was rejected
by Mr. Baldwin, as was the proposition for the adjournment of the
convention, _sine die_.

When Mr. Botts appeared the time had passed when arrangements could
have been made for the relief of Sumter and the adjournment of the
convention.  Although the situation may not have been realized at the
time it was not the less true that Mr. Botts and the small number
of Union men in Virginia were powerless in presence of the movement
in favor of secession under the lead of Tyler, Seddon and others.

The political side of Mr. Lincoln's character is seen in the fact that
he enjoined secrecy upon Mr. Botts.  He may have been unwilling to
allow his supporters in the North to know how far he had gone in the
line of conciliation.  In the conversation with Mr. Baldwin, Mr.
Lincoln had given an assurance that upon the acceptance of his two
propositions he would evacuate Fort Sumter.  When Mr. Lincoln made
these facts known to Mr. Botts at the evening interview, Mr. Botts
said;  "Will you authorize me to make that proposition to the Union
men of the convention?  I will take a steamboat to-morrow morning,
and have a meeting of the Union men to-morrow night, I will guarantee
with my head, that they will adopt your proposition."  In reply, Mr.
Lincoln said:  "It is too late.  The fleet has sailed."  In truth it
was too late for the acceptance of the propositions in Virginia.  The
Union men were powerless, and the secessionists were dominant in
affairs and already vindictive.  The charge that Mr. Seward gave a
promise that Sumter would be abandoned, may or it may not have been
true, but there can be no ground for doubting the statement made by
Mr. Botts in regard to the terms tendered by Mr. Lincoln, and which
were rejected by Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. Baldwin admitted the interview with Mr. Lincoln, and the nature of
it as herein given, to Mr. John F. Lewis, who was a Union man and a
member of the convention that adopted the Ordinance of Secession by
a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five.

Of the three witnesses, Baldwin, Botts and Lewis, Mr. Baldwin was the
first witness who was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction.
At that time the committee had no knowledge of the conversation
between Mr. Baldwin and President Lincoln.  Speaking, apparently, under
the influence of the criticisms of Botts and Lewis of his rejection of
Mr. Lincoln's propositions, Baldwin introduced the subject with the
remark:  "I had a good deal of interesting conversation with him (that
is with Mr. Lincoln) that evening.  I was about to state that I have
reason to believe that Mr. Lincoln himself had given an account of
this conversation which has been understood--but I am sure
_mis_understood--by the persons with whom he talked, as giving the
representation of it, that he had offered to me, that if the Virginia
Convention would adjourn _sine die_ he would withdraw the troops from
Sumner and _Pickens_."  As there was no occasion in the conversation
between Lincoln and Baldwin for a reference to Fort Pickens, and as the
President did not mention _Fort Pickens_ in the account of the
conversation that he gave to Mr. Botts, the denial of Mr. Baldwin may
fall under one of the forms of falsehood mentioned by Shakespeare.

The evidence is conclusive to this point:  That at an interview at the
Executive Mansion, April 5, 1861, between President Lincoln and Colonel
John B. Baldwin, then a member of the Virginia Convention that finally
adopted the Ordinance of Secession, President Lincoln assured Mr.
Baldwin that he would evacuate Fort Sumter if the fort could be
provisioned and the Virginia Convention would adjourn _sine die_.

Colonel Baldwin's voluntary and qualified denial is of no value in
presence of President Lincoln's report of the interview as given by
Mr. Botts and in presence of the testimony that Mr. Baldwin did not
deny the truthfulness of Mr. Botts' limited statement, when it was
asserted by Mr. Botts in the presence of Lewis.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS AND HIS STATE-RIGHTS DOCTRINES

Upon the death of Mr. Calhoun the task of maintaining the extreme
doctrine of State Rights, as that doctrine had been taught by Mr.
Calhoun fell upon Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens.  That
doctrine was carried to its practical results in the ordinances of
secession as they were adopted by the respective States under the lead
of Mr. Davis.

If Mr. Stephens advised against secession, the advice given was not due
to any doubt of the right of a State to secede from the Union, but to
doubts of the wisdom of the undertaking.

In form of proceedings Mr. Stephens was examined by the Committee on
the Judiciary, the 11th and 12th days of April, 1866, but in fact I was
the only member of the committee who was present, and I conducted the
examination in my own way, and without help or hindrance from others.

It was the opinion of Governor Clifford of Massachusetts, that the
examination of Mr. Stephens gave the best exposition of the doctrine
of State Rights that had been made.  I was then ignorant of the fact,
that in the convention of 1787 the form of the Preamble to the
Constitution was so changed as to justify the opinion, if not to
warrant the conclusion that the State-Rights doctrines had been
considered and abandoned.  In two plans of a constitution, one
submitted by Mr. Randolph, and one by Mr. Charles Pinckney, and in
the original draft of the Constitution as reported by Mr. Rutledge,
the source of authority was laid in the respective States, which were
named.  This form was adhered to in the Rutledge report, which was made
August 6, 1787.  On the 12th of September the Committee on Style
reported the Preamble which opens thus:  _"We the people of the United
States, etc."_  This change seems not to have been known to Mr.
Webster, nor have I noticed a reference to it in any of the speeches
that were made in the period of the active controversy on the
doctrine of State Rights.

Mr. Stephens was a clear-headed and uncompromising expositor and
defender of the doctrine of State Rights as the doctrine was accepted
by General Lee and by the inhabitants generally of the slave States.

Mr. Stephens did not disguise his opinions:  "When the State seceded
against my judgment and vote, I thought my ultimate allegiance was due
to her, and I prepared to cast my fortunes and destinies with hers and
her people rather than take any other course, even though it might
lead to my sacrifice and her ruin."

When he was asked for his reason for accepting the office of vice-
president in the Confederacy, he said:  "My sole object was to do all
the good I could in preserving and perpetuating the principles of
liberty as established under the Constitution of the United States."
Mr. Stephens advanced to his position by conclusively logical
processes.  Standing upon the ground of Mr. Lincoln and the Republican
Party, he assumed that, inasmuch as the States in rebellion had never
been out of the Union, they had had the opportunity at all times during
the war of withdrawing from the contest and resuming their places in
the Senate and House as though nothing had occurred of which the
existing government could take notice.

If, however, there were to be terms of adjustment, then those terms
must have a "continental basis founded upon the principles of mutual
convenience and reciprocal advantage, and the recognition of the
separate sovereignty of the States."  He was ready for a conference or
convention of all the States, but he did not admit the right of the
successful party to dictate terms to the States that had been in
rebellion.  He expressed the personal, individual opinion, that tax
laws passed in the absence of representatives from the seceded States
would be unconstitutional.  It was the opinion of Mr. Stephens that
the people of Georgia by a large majority thought that the State was
entitled to representation in the national Congress and without any
conditions.

When he was invited to consider the alternative of universal suffrage
or a loss of representation as a condition precedent to the
restoration of the State, he said with confidence that neither branch
of the alternative would be accepted.  "If Georgia is a State in the
Union her people feel that she is entitled to representation without
conditions imposed by Congress; and if she is not a State in the Union
then she could not be admitted as an equal with the others if her
admission were trammeled with conditions that did not apply to all the
rest alike."

It had been his expectation, and in his opinion such had been the
expectation of the people generally that the State would assume its
place in the Union whenever the cause of the Confederacy should be
abandoned.

Such were the results of the State-Rights doctrines as announced by
the most intellectual of the Southern leaders in the war of the
Rebellion.  In the opinion of Mr. Stephens a State could retire from
the Union either for purposes of peace or of war and return at will,
and all without loss of place or power.

At the close of his examination he made this declaration:  "My
convictions on the original abstract question have undergone no change."

As a sequel to the doctrines of Mr. Stephens, I mention the history of
Andrew J. Lewis.  When the Legislature of Massachusetts assembled in
January, 1851, Lewis took a seat in the House as the Democratic member
from the town of Sandisfield.  He acted with the Coalitionists, and he
voted for Mr. Sumner as United States Senator.  Lewis was returned for
the year 1852, and in General Pierce's administration he held an office
in the Boston Customs House.

Upon the fall of Port Hudson I received a letter from General Banks.
In that letter he mentioned the fact that Lewis was among the
prisoners, holding the office of captain in a South Carolina regiment.
His account of himself was this:  "I was born in South Carolina.  When
my State seceded I thought I must go too, and so I left Massachusetts
and returned to South Carolina."

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

General Grant's examination during the investigation embraced a variety
of topics and the report is a volume of not less than twenty thousand
words.  His testimony is marked by the qualities for which he was known
both on the civil and military side of his career.  These qualities
were clearness of thought, accuracy and readiness of memory, directness
of expression and the absence of remarks in the nature of exaggeration
or embellishment.  The character of the man and the history of events
may gain something from an examination of his testimony upon three
important points to which it related:  the opinion of President Lincoln
in regard to the reconstruction of the government; the opinion of
President Johnson upon the same subject, and his own view of the
rights of General Lee and of the army under his command that had
surrendered at Appomattox.

When President Johnson entered upon the work of reconstructing the
government of North Carolina it was claimed that he was giving form
and effect to the plan which President Lincoln had accepted as a wise
policy.

There was some foundation for the claim as appears from the testimony
of General Grant, Mr. Seward, Mr. Stanton, and others, but there is no
ground for the claim that Mr. Lincoln had matured a plan or had
accepted any scheme of reconstruction at the hands of any one.  In an
exigency, as in the case of the resignation of General Hooker, he
could act immediately, but time and thought, and discussion with
others were accepted as valuable aids, whenever there was not a
pressure for instant action.

General Grant was examined in July, 1867, and the opening was conducted
by Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin.  It related to the parole granted to
General Lee and his army.  The nature of the questions led General
Grant to make this remark:  "I will state here, that I am not quite
certain whether I am being tried, or who is being tried, by the
questions asked."

General Grant may have thought that Mr. Eldridge was endeavoring to
secure from him an admission that he had exceeded his authority in the
terms of the parole granted to General Lee.  General Grant was able to
state the terms with exactness and within his powers as commander of
the conquering army.  He claimed that General Lee surrendered his
army "in consideration of the fact that they were to be exempt from
trial so long as they conformed to the obligations which they had
taken."  President Johnson claimed that the leaders should be tried.
This position he abandoned previous to July, 1867.  Of an interview
with President Johnson, General Grant made this statement:

"He insisted on it that the leaders must be punished, and wanted to
know, when the time would come when those persons could be tried.  I
told him when they violated their parole."  In the opinion of General
Grant the terms of the parole did not include Jefferson Davis, as he
had been captured.

In the early part of the controversy President Johnson insisted that
General Lee should be tried for treason.  That purpose on the part of
the President was resisted by General Grant.  His position, in his own
language, was this:

"I insisted on it that General Lee would not have surrendered his army
and given up all their arms if he had supposed that after surrender, he
was going to be tried for treason and hanged.  I thought we got a very
good equivalent for the lives of a few leaders in getting all those
arms and getting themselves under control bound by the oaths to obey
the laws.  That was the consideration, which I insisted upon, we had
received."

General Grant added:

"Afterwards he got to agreeing with me on that subject."

On the question of political rights as involved in the surrender and in
the parole, General Grant said:

"I never claimed that the parole gave those prisoners any political
right whatever.  I thought that that was a matter entirely with
Congress, over which I had no control, that simply as general-in-chief
commanding the army, I had a right to stipulate for the surrender on
terms which protected their lives.  The parole gave them protection and
exemption from punishment for all offences not in violation of the
rules of civilized warfare."

The point of difference between General Grant and President Johnson in
regard to the parole is very clear from General Grant's answers to
questions by Mr. Thomas and Mr. Eldridge.

"You have stated your opinion as to the rights and privileges of
General Lee and his soldiers; do you mean that to include any political
rights?"

"I have explained that I did not."

"Was there any difference of opinion on that point between yourself and
President Johnson at any time?"

"On that point there was no difference of opinion; but there was as to
whether the parole gave them any privileges or rights . . . He claiming
that the time must come when they would be tried and punished, and I
claiming that that time could not come except by a violation of their
parole."

Grant claimed also that the army that had surrendered to Sherman came
under the same rules.

These quotations give General Grant's standing as an interpreter of
public law and as a leader capable of applying the rules and principles
of public law to practical affairs.  His training at West Point may
have given him a knowledge of principles and his good sense enabled him
to apply the principles in the terms that he dictated at Appomattox.

General Grant's natural qualities were such that with training he might
have succeeded in great causes involving principles, but he was not
adapted to the ordinary business of a county-court lawyer.

It is quite certain from the testimony of General Grant that Mr.
Lincoln had had in mind a scheme for the organization of the States
that had been in rebellion and that Mr. Johnson's proclamation for the
government of North Carolina was not a wide departure from that
scheme.

General Grant was present at two meetings of the Cabinet in Mr.
Lincoln's time, when a proclamation was read and considered.  In the
language of General Grant, "after the assassination it continued right
along and I was there with Mr. Johnson."  General Grant's interest was
directed to two points:  First, that civil government should be set up
but subject to the final action of Congress, and second, that the
parole should not be infringed.  He states his position thus:

"I was always ready to originate matters pertaining to the army, but I
was never willing to originate matters pertaining to the civil
government of the United States.  When I was asked my opinion about
what had been done I was willing to give it.  I originated no plans and
suggested no plans for civil government."

The examination by Mr. Eldridge was in the nature of cross-examination
and for the purpose of gaining an admission from General Grant that he
had advised or sanctioned President Johnson's plan of reconstruction.
Hence General Grant's declarations that his part was limited to the
military side of the measure and that in his view the entire plan was
subject to Congressional action.

General Grant's testimony is explicit upon these points:  He advised
President Johnson to grant a pardon to General Lee and a pardon to
General Johnston.  He was especially urgent in favor of a pardon to
General Johnston in consideration of his speech to his army at the time
of the surrender.  He advised against the proclamation of amnesty upon
the ground that the act was then premature.

General Grant's testimony adds strength to the statement that President
Johnson contemplated the recognition of a Congress composed of
Democratic members from the North and of the representatives from the
States that had been organized under the President's proclamation.

"I have heard him say--and I think I have heard him say it twice in his
speeches--that if the North carried the election by members enough to
give them, with the Southern members, a majority why would they not be
the Congress of the United States?"

In answer to this question:  "Have you heard him make a remark
kindred to that elsewhere?" General Grant said:

"Yes, I have heard him say that aside from his speeches, in
conversation.  I cannot say just when."

The North Carolina proclamation was read at an informal meeting at
which only Grant and Stanton were with the President.  General Grant
did not criticise the paper.  He said of it:  "It was a civil matter
and although I was anxious to have something done I did not intend to
dictate any plan.  I looked upon it simply as a temporary measure to
establish a sort of government until Congress should meet and settle
the whole question and that it did not make much difference how it was
done so there was a form of government there. . . . I don't suppose
that there were any persons engaged in that consultation who thought
of what was being done at that time as being lasting--any longer than
Congress would meet and either ratify that or establish some other
form of government."

General Grant understood that the North Carolina proclamation was in
substance the paper which had been considered by Mr. Lincoln, but
General Grant said also, that Mr. Lincoln's plan was "temporary, to be
either confirmed, or a new government set up by Congress."

General Grant's testimony upon one point is supported by the testimony
of Mr. Seward and the testimony of Mr. Stanton.  They agree that Mr.
Johnson's plan of reconstruction was in substance the plan that Mr.
Lincoln had had under consideration.  Mr. Stanton regarded the plan as
temporary.

If President Johnson intended to enforce the plan upon the country he
concealed his purpose when the North Carolina proclamation was under
consideration.

In the month of October, 1866, the police commissioners of the city of
Baltimore were engaged in the work of registering voters for the
November elections, and the authorities were engaged in the work of
registering the voters in all parts of the State of Maryland.  It was
claimed that many thousands who had been engaged in the rebellion and
who were excluded under a provision of the Constitution had been
registered by the connivance of the authorities and especially by the
police commissioners of Baltimore.  There were rumors of secret,
hostile organizations, there were threats of disturbance, and Governor
Swann became alarmed.

President Johnson became alarmed also and under date of October 25 he
wrote a letter to General Grant in which these paragraphs may be found:

"From recent development serious troubles are apprehended from a
conflict of authority between the executive of the State of Maryland
and the police commissioners of the city of Baltimore." . . . "I
therefore request that you inform me of the number of Federal troops at
present stationed in the city of Baltimore and vicinity."

General Grant informed the President on the 27th, that the number of
available and efficient troops was 1,550.  Thereupon, on the first day
of November the President issued the following instruction to Secretary
Stanton:

"In view of the prevalence in various portions of the country of a
revolutionary and turbulent disposition which might at any moment
assume insurrectionary proportions and lead to serious disorders, and
of the duty of the government to be at all times prepared to act with
decision and effect this force is not deemed adequate for the
protection and security of the seat of government."

Secretary Stanton referred the President's letter to General Grant with
instructions "to take such measures as in his judgment are proper and
within his power to carry into operation the within directions of the
President."

Under this order six or eight companies in New York and on the way to
join regiments in the South were detained at Fort McHenry, and a
regiment in Washington was under orders to be ready to move upon notice.

On the second day of November the President qualified his demands in a
letter to Secretary Stanton and limited the expression of anxiety to
the city of Baltimore.  It is certain that General Grant and Secretary
Stanton did not share the President's apprehensions and the day of
election passed without serious disturbance.

In the Philadelphia _Ledger_ of October 12, 1866, there appeared a
series of questions which were accompanied by the statement or the
suggestion that the President had submitted them to the Attorney-
General for an official opinion.  The questions related to the
constitutional validity of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and upon the
ground that all the States were not represented although hostilities
had ceased.

From the testimony of Henry M. Flint, a newspaper correspondent, it
appears that the President had no knowledge of the questions until
after the publications in the _Ledger_.  Flint's account of the affair
may be thus summarized.  For himself and without conference with the
President, he reached the conclusion that the Thirty-ninth Congress was
an illegal body and he had reached the conclusion also that the
President entertained the same opinion.  Thereupon he assumed that the
President would take the opinion of the Attorney-General.  Having
advanced thus far, he next proceeded to write the questions that he
imagined the President would prepare and submit to the Attorney-General.

These questions he transmitted to a brother correspondent in New York
--Mr. F. A. Abbott--under cover of a letter which was not produced.
Flint gave the substance of his letter to Abbott in these words:

"These questions are supposed or believed to have submitted by the
President to the Attorney-General."  Speaking of Abbott, Flint said:
"I knew he was connected with several newspapers and I had no doubt
when I sent these questions that they would appear in some paper in
some shape. . . . The object I had in view in writing these questions
and in sending them to Mr. Abbott was that they might appear before the
public, and that the public mind might be directed to that point, and
that the newspapers particularly might be led to express their
sentiments upon the questions involved in it."

When the publication "had given rise to considerable discussion" in the
language of Flint, "I thought," he says, "I ought to go the President
and tell him what part of the despatch was mine and what connection I
had had with the publication of it."

Of his interview with the President, he gives this report:  "He showed
me an article, which I think, appeared the day after the questions were
published, in the _Daily News_ of Philadelphia, which took pretty
nearly the same ground my questions would indicate. . . . He spoke of
it rather approvingly."

Flint adds:  "I had remarked to him:  'Mr. Johnson, it seemed to me
that it would be by no means remarkable that you should prepare such
questions as bear upon a subject which I know must have occupied your
mind as it has the public mind.'  I forget what reply he made; it was
a sort of affirmative response or assent."

Whatever may have been the origin of Flint's questions, their
appearance in the manner indicated is an instance of volunteer service
not often paralleled in the rough contests of life.  Without any
effort on his own part the President gained knowledge of a public
sentiment upon the question of the legality of the Thirty-ninth
Congress--a question in which he had much interest in the autumn of
1866.

The project to increase the army around Washington and the project
to proclaim the Thirty-ninth Congress an illegal body may have had an
intimate connection with the project to send General Grant on a mission
to Mexico and to place General Sherman in command at Washington, a
project of which I have spoken in another place.

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

General Robert E. Lee was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction
the 17th day of February, 1866.

The inquiries related to the state of public sentiment in the South,
and especially in Virginia with regard to secession, to the treatment
of the negroes, to the public debts of the United States, and of the
Confederacy, and to the treatment of Northern soldiers in Southern
prisons.

General Lee was then in good health and in personal appearance he
commended himself without delay.  He was large in frame, compactly
built, and he was furnished with all the flesh and muscle that could be
useful to a man who was passing the middle period of life.  The
elasticity of spirits, the vigor of mind and body that are the wealth
of a successful man at sixty were wanting in General Lee.  His
appearance commanded respect and it excited the sympathy even of those
who had condemned his abandonment of the Union in 1861.

The examination gave evidence of integrity and of entire freedom from
duplicity.  Freedom from duplicity was a controlling feature in General
Grant's character and in that attribute of greatness Grant and Lee may
have been equals.

General Lee was free to disclose his own opinions, but he was cautious
in his statements when questioned as to the opinions and purposes of
the men and States that had been in the Rebellion.  He was careful to
say at the beginning of the examination that he had no communication
with politicians and that he did not read the papers.  What he said of
the South assumed that the people were in poverty and were so dejected
that they had no plans for the future, nor any hopes of restoration to
wealth, happiness and power in the affairs of the country.  His
testimony as a whole might justify the opinion that there would be no
serious resistance to any form of government that might be set up.  He
favored the governments which President Johnson had organized and he
expressed the opinion that they were acceptable to the people
generally.  A comprehensive statement was this:

"I do not know of a single person who either feels or contemplates
any resistance to the government of the United States, or, indeed any
opposition to it."  He gave this assurance to the committee:  "The
people entirely acquiesce in the government of the United States and
are for co-operating with President Johnson in his policy."

The payment of the public debt had not been a topic of discussion in
his presence, but the people were disposed to pay such taxes as were
imposed and they were struggling to get money for that purpose.

He was of the opinion that the people made no distinction between the
Confederate debt and the debt of the United States--that they were
disposed to pay both debts, and would pay both if they had the power.
For himself, however, he had no expectation that the indebtedness of
the Confederacy would ever be paid.

General Lee manifested a kindly spirit for the freedmen, but he was
unwilling to accept them as citizens endowed with the right of
suffrage.  Of the feeling in Virginia, General Lee said:  "Every one
with whom I associate expresses kind feelings toward the freedmen.
They wish to see them get on in the world, and especially to take up
some occupation for a living."

He rejected the suggestion that there was anywhere within the State
any combinations having in view, "the disturbance of the peace, or any
improper or unlawful acts."  He characterized the negroes as "an
amiable, social race, who look more to the present than to their
future condition."

In answer to the question whether the South would support the
government in case of a war with France or England, General Lee was
distinctly reserved:  "I cannot speak with any certainty on that
point.  I do not know how far they might be actuated by their feelings.
I have nothing whatever to base an opinion upon.  So far as I know
they contemplate nothing of the kind now.  What may happen in the
future I cannot say."  He then added this remark:  "Those people in
Virginia with whom I associate express a hope that the country may not
be led into war."

As to an alliance during the war he said that he knew nothing of the
policy of the Confederate government:  "I had no hand or part of it,"
was his remark.  It was his opinion during the war that an alliance
with a foreign country was desirable, and he had assumed that the
authorities were of the same opinion.  His ideas were those of
General Grant, and he avoided responsibility for the measures of the
government on the civil side.

With kind feelings for the colored people of Virginia General Lee
favored the substitution of a white class of laborers, if an exchange
could be made, of which however, he had neither plan nor hope.  Nor
could he give any assurance that Northern men would be received upon
terms of equality and friendship, if they avowed the opinions that
then prevailed generally in the North:  "The manner in which they
would be received would depend entirely upon the individuals themselves
--they might make themselves obnoxious, as you can understand," was the
statement of General Lee.  His testimony as a whole indicated an
opinion that it was more important to secure capital for business, than
it was to rid the State of the negro laborer.  In his opinion, most of
the blacks were willing to work for their former masters, but they were
unwilling to make engagements for a year, a form of engagement which
the farmers and planters preferred, that they might be sure of help
when it would be most needed.  The negroes may have been influenced by
one or both of two reasons.  Their unthrifty habits--the outcome of
slavery--or an apprehension that a formal engagement for a year was a
kind of bondage that might lead to a renewal of the old system.

When General Lee was pressed by Senator Howard as to the feeling in the
South in regard to the National Government, he said:  "I believe that
they will perform all the duties that they are required to perform.  I
think that is the general feeling. . . . I do not know that there is
any deep-seated dislike.  I think it is probable that there may be
some animosity still existing among some of the people of the South.
. . . They were disappointed at the result of the war."

General Lee was of the opinion that a Southern jury would not find an
accused guilty of treason for participation in the war.  Indeed his
doctrine of State Rights excused the citizen and placed the sole
responsibility on the State.  Of the common sentiment in the South he
said:  "So far as I know, they will look upon the action of the State,
in withdrawing itself from the government of the United States, as
carrying the individuals of the State along with it; that the State
was responsible for the act, not the individual."  This was the
framework of his own defence.  Speaking of the advocates of secession,
he said:  "The ordinance of secession, or those acts of a State which
recognized a condition of war between the State and the General
Government, stood as their justification for their bearing arms against
the Government of the United States.  They considered the act of the
State as legitimate.  That they were merely using the reserved right,
which they had a right to do."

From these views General Lee was led to a specific statement of his
own position:

Question:  "State, if you please, what your own personal views on that
question were?"

Answer:  "That was my view; that the act of Virginia in withdrawing
herself from the United States carried me along as a citizen of
Virginia, and that her laws and her acts were binding on me.'

Question:  "And that you felt to be your justification in taking the
course you did?"

Answer:  "Yes, sir."

In the course of the examination General Lee expressed the opinion that
the "trouble was brought about by the politicians of the country."

General Lee disclaimed all responsibility for the care and treatment of
prisoners of war.  He had always favored a free exchange of prisoners,
knowing that the proper means for the care and comfort of prisoners
could not be furnished in the Confederacy.  He thought that the
hardships and neglects had been exaggerated.  As to himself, he had
never had any control over prisoners, except as they were captured on
the field of battle.  He sent his prisoners to Richmond where they came
under the command of the provost-marshal-general.  His orders to
surgeons on the field were to treat all the wounded alike.

In the examinations that were made by the committee I read a large
number of reports of surgeons connected with the prisons and hospitals
and I may say that in all cases they exhibited humanity and in many
cases specific means of relief for the sufferings of the soldiers were
recommended.  Their reports were forwarded from officer to officer, but
in a large majority of cases the reports were neglected.

In a letter written by General Lee to his sister a few days before he
abandoned the service of the United States, he expressed the opinion
that there was no sufficient cause for the rebellion.  This opinion, in
connection with his opinion that the rebellion was the work of
politicians demonstrates the power which the doctrine of State Rights
had obtained over a man of experience and of admitted ability.  Upon
his own admission, he subordinated his conduct to the action of his
State, and in disregard of his personal obligation through his oath of
office.  If he had followed his own judgment as to what was wise and
proper he would have remained in his place as an officer in the army of
the United States.

If in 1861 an officer of the army had entertained the opinion that the
North was in the wrong and that the South was in the right, it could be
claimed, fairly, that that officer might forswear his obligations to
the old Government and accept service in the Confederacy.

Moral obliquity is not to be assumed in the case of General Lee.  His
pecuniary and professional interests must have invited him to remain
in the army.  General Scott, a Virginian, was at the head of the army,
and General Scott was his friend.  His promotion was certain, and
important commands were probable.  His large estates in the vicinity of
the city of Washington were exposed to the ravages of war if not to
confiscation.  These sacrifices, some certain, and others probable were
present when he left Washington and entered into the service of the
Confederacy under the superior authority of the State of Virginia in
disregard of his own opinion, and in disregard, not to say violation,
of his oath as a soldier who had sworn to support the Constitution of
the United States.  General Lee was unable to say whether he had
taken an oath to support the Confederate States.  He could not recall
the fact of taking the oath, but he said he should have taken the oath
if it had been tendered to him.

The full report of the testimony of General Lee should appear in any
complete biography of the man.  It reveals his character, explains the
leading influences to which he was subjected, and it sheds light upon
the state of public opinion in the South at the end of the contest in
arms.

General Scott and General George H. Thomas were Virginians, but they
acted in defiance of the State-Rights doctrines of the South.  In
April, 1861, General Scott gave me an account of the efforts that had
been made to induce him to follow the fortunes of Virginia, and he
spoke with a voice of emotion of his veneration for the flag, and of
his attachment to the Union.

GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS

Of the soldiers of the Northern army in the war of the Rebellion,
General George H. Thomas takes rank next after the first three--Grant,
Sherman and Sheridan.  When Grant became President and Sherman was
general of the army the President was unwilling to appear to neglect
either Sheridan or Thomas.  With high appreciation of Thomas as a
soldier, the President gave higher rank to Sheridan.  He said to me
that he placed Sheridan above every other officer of the war.  He gave
Sheridan credit for two supreme qualities--great care in his plans and
great vigor in execution.

Yet, although the President acted upon a sound basis of opinion, the
choice left a painful impression upon his memory.

General Thomas and General Lee were alike in personal appearance, and
they resembled each other in their mental characteristics.  In one
important particular they differed--General Thomas had no respect for
State-Rights doctrines.  He was a native of Virginia, but there was no
indication in his testimony, nor were there rumors, that he had ever
hesitated in his course when the rebellion opened.

General Thomas was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction January
29, and February 2, 1866.  He was then in command of the Military
Division of the Tennessee which included the States of Kentucky,
Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  It was the main object of
the committee to obtain information as to the public sentiment touching
the treatment of the negroes and the re-establishment of civil
government in the States that had been in rebellion.  The Union
sentiment was stronger in Tennessee than in any other State of the
Confederacy.  The inhabitants of the mountainous districts of eastern
and middle Tennessee had been loyal from the opening of the contest in
1860 and 1860.  Yet in 1866 General Thomas advised the committee that
it would "not be safe to remove the national troops from Tennessee, or
to withdraw martial law; or to restore the writ of habeas corpus to
its full extent."  At that time the peace of eastern Tennessee was
disturbed by family feuds and personal quarrels, the outcome of
political differences.  In west Tennessee and in portions of middle
Tennessee there was a deep seated hostility to Union men, and
especially to Southern men who had served in the Union army.

General Thomas said of them:  "They are more unfriendly to Union men
natives of the State of Tennessee or of the South, who have been in
the Union army, than they are to men of Northern birth."

At that time the contract system of labor had been introduced, and the
contracts were regarded as binding both by whites and blacks.

General Thomas advised the admission of Tennessee into the Union as a
State, and his advice was acted upon favorably by its admission in the
summer of that year.  His recommendations were based upon the facts
that Tennessee had "repudiated the rebel debt, had abolished slavery,
had adopted the Constitutional amendment upon that subject, had passed
a franchise law prohibiting from voting every man who had been
engaged in the rebellion" and had "passed a law allowing negroes to
testify."

His opinion of the four other States of his command was not as
favorable.  "I have received communications from various persons in the
South that there was an understanding among the rebels and perhaps
organizations formed or forming, for the purpose of gaining as many
advantages for themselves as possible; and I have heard it also
intimated that these men are very anxious and would do all in their
power to involve the United States in a foreign war, so that if a
favorable opportunity should occur, they might then again turn against
the United States."

At the end of his first examination he gave this opinion as the result
of his experience:

Question:  "In what could those advantages consist in breaking up the
government?"

Answer:  "They would wish to be recognized as citizens of the United
States, with the same rights they had before the war."

Question:  "How can they do that?  By wishing us in a war with England
or France, in which they would take part against us?"

Answer:  "In that event their desire is to establish the Southern
Confederacy.  They have not yet given up their desire for a separate
government, and if they have an opportunity to strike for it again they
will do so."

When asked what he knew of secret organizations he said that he had
received several communications to that effect but the parties were
unwilling to have their names made public.  He added:  "The persons
communicating with me are reliable and truthful and I believe their
statements are correct in the main.

"The nature and object of the organizations," he said, "are the
embarrassment of the Government of the United States in the proper
administration of the affairs of the county, and if possible, to
repudiate the national debt, or to gain such an ascendency in Congress
as to make provision for the assumption by Congress of the debt
incurred by the rebel government; also, in case the United States
Government can be involved in a foreign war to watch their opportunity
and take advantage of the first that comes to strike for the
independence of the States lately in rebellion."

These extracts from the testimony of General Thomas are a fair
exposition of the condition of public sentiment in the Confederate
States with the exception in a degree of the border States.  It is
apparent also that General Thomas had not the degree of confidence in
the good purposes of those who had been in the rebellion that was
entertained by Northern officers including Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.

As the loyal men of the South were greater sufferers from the war,
their hostility was more intense against those who were responsible
for the war.

If we cannot say that Thomas was a great soldier in the large use of
the phrase, it can be said that he was a good soldier and that without
qualifying words.  He should live in history as a true patriot and a
man of the highest integrity.

SECRETARY STANTON

Of the men who occupied places in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, no one was
more free from just criticism affecting unfavorably the value of his
public services than Secretary Stanton.

Of those who were nearest to him, no one ever received the impression
from his acts or his conversation that he thought of the Presidency
as a possibility under any circumstances.  Seward, Chase and Bates had
been candidates at Chicago in 1860, and whatever may have been the
fact in regard to Seward and Bates, it is quite certain that ambition
for the Presidency never lost its hold upon Mr. Chase, even when he
became Chief Justice of the United States.

Coupled with the absence of ambition, or perhaps in a degree incident
to the absence of ambition, Mr. Stanton was the possessor of courage
for all the emergencies of the place that he occupied--a courage that
was always available, whether in its exercise the wishes of individuals
or the fortunes of the country were involved.

It was understood by those who frequented the War Office in the gloomy
days of 1862 and '63 that a card signed "A. L." would not always
command full respect from Secretary Stanton.  He was a believer in the
rigid principles of the army, and although he was a humane man he
smothered or subdued his sympathy for heart-broken mothers whose sons
had deserted the cause of the country, in his determination to save
the country through the strictest enforcement of the rules and
regulations of the army.  Mr. Lincoln, in his abounding good nature,
could not resist the appeals of disconsolate wives and heart-stricken
mothers, and it was often Mr. Stanton's fortune to resist such appeals
even when supported by the President's card in the form of a request
which in ordinary times and upon ordinary men would be treated as an
order.

Hence there may have been a foundation for the report that an
unsuccessful user of one of the President's cards returned to the
President for a reinforcement of the order.  The President insisted
upon a full report of the Secretary's answer.  The applicant repeated
the Secretary's remark, which was not complimentary to the President's
good sense.  The President hesitated, and then declined to renew the
order, saying:  "Stanton is generally right."

Mr. Stanton's testimony was taken February 11, 1867, and on subsequent
days.  The record of the text and the accompanying documents cover more
than two hundred printed pages.  The evidence was taken by the
Committee on the Judiciary, and it had special reference to the charges
that had been made against President Johnson.  At that time, the
separation between Mr. Stanton and the President had become
irreconcilable, but there are no indications of hostility in the
answers given by the Secretary.  Indeed, he assumed, without reserve,
full responsibility for acts that had been charged on the President by
others.

During the war the railroads that fell within our lines were
appropriated to the use of the United States, and heavy outlays had
been made upon some of them for repairs and improvements.  In many
cases expenses had been incurred, that in the hands of the corporation
would not have been chargeable to a construction account.  In a
majority of cases, if not in all, the roads had been surrendered
without compensation, and the rolling stock had been transferred for
very slight consideration.

Mr. Stanton assumed the responsibility of the policy, upon the ground
that it was important to the South and to the country that the channels
of commerce should be made available without delay and that the army
could not be used wisely in commercial traffic.  As the President was
interested in one of the railroads that received a large benefit by the
restoration of its property much improved, he was relieved of all
responsibility for a policy that had been much condemned.

Through the testimony of Secretary Stanton the committee was enabled
to find the origin and to trace with a degree of accuracy the history
of President Johnson's plan of reconstruction.  At a time not many days
prior to Mr. Lincoln's death, Secretary Stanton prepared an order which
contained a _projet_ for the government of the States that had been in
rebellion.  The paper was submitted to President Lincoln and it was
considered by him in a cabinet meeting that was held during the day
preceding the night of the assassination.

As this paper became the basis for the proclamations for the government
of the States that had been in rebellion, its history, as given by
Mr. Stanton, is worthy of exact report in his own words:

"On the last day of Mr. Lincoln's life, there was a Cabinet meeting, at
which General Grant, and all the members of the Cabinet, except Mr.
Seward, were present.  General Grant at that time made a report of the
condition of the country, as he conceived it to be, and as it would be
on the surrender of Johnston's army, which was regarded as absolutely
certain.  The subject of reconstruction was talked of at considerable
length.  Shortly previous to that time I had myself, with a view of
putting into a practicable form the means of overcoming what seemed to
be a difficulty in the mind of Mr. Lincoln, as to the mode of
reconstruction, prepared a rough draft of a form or mode by which the
authority and laws of the United States should be re-established, and
governments reorganized in the rebel States under the Federal
authority, without any necessity whatever for the intervention of
rebel organizations or rebel aid.

In the course of that consultation Mr. Lincoln alluded to the paper,
went into his room, brought it out, and asked me to read it, which I
did, and explained my ideas in regard to it.  There was one point which
I had left open; that was as to who should constitute the electors in
the respective States . . . I left a blank upon that subject to be
considered.  There was at that time nothing adopted about it, and no
opinions expressed; it was only a _projet_."

At the request of Mr. Lincoln and the Cabinet, the order was printed
and a copy was given to each member, and a copy was given to Mr.
Johnson when he had become President.

The plan was further considered in Mr. Johnson's Cabinet, and some
alterations were made.  The point of chief difference related to the
elective franchise--whether it should be extended to the negro race.

Mr. Stanton said:  "There was a difference of opinion upon that
subject.  The President expressed his views very clearly and
distinctly.  I expressed my views, and other members of the Cabinet
expressed their views.  The objection of the President to throwing
the franchise open to the colored people appeared to be fixed, and I
think every member of the Cabinet assented to the arrangement as it
was specified in the proclamation relative to North Carolina.  After
that I do not remember that the subject was ever again discussed in
the Cabinet."

Thus from Mr. Stanton's testimony we gather the important facts as to
the origin of a measure which became the subject of bitter controversy
between President Johnson and the Republican Party.  The framework of
the North Carolina proclamation was furnished by Mr. Stanton.  When
alterations had been made the proclamation was agreed to by the
Cabinet but without a declaration or even an understanding upon the
point which, without much delay, became the vital point:  was the
policy of government that was announced in the proclamation a permanent
policy or was it a temporary expedient, a substitute for military
government, and subject to the approval or disapproval of Congress?

General Grant was of the opinion that the organizations which the
President set up in the States were temporary and that they were
subject to the action of Congress.

Mr. Stanton's opinion is expressed carefully, in his own words:  "My
opinion is, that the whole subject of reconstruction and the relation
of the State to the Federal Government is subject to the controlling
power of Congress; and while I believe that the President and his
Cabinet were not violating any law, but were faithfully performing
their duty in endeavoring to organize provisional governments in
those States, I supposed then, and still suppose, that the final
validity of such organizations would rest with the law-making power of
the government."

In an official letter, dated January 8, 1866, Secretary Stanton gave
his reasons for the payment of the salaries of the provisional
governors:  "The payments were made from the appropriation of army
contingencies because the duties performed by the parties were regarded
of a temporary character ancillary to the withdrawal of military force,
and to take the place of the armed forces in the respective States."

On the other hand the President chose to treat the governments that had
been set up as permanent governments and beyond the control of
Congress.  On this point, the contest between President Johnson and the
Republican Party was made up.  It ended in an appeal to the people, who
rendered a judgment against _the President_ by a two-thirds majority.
The testimony of Secretary Seward, and official papers that were issued
by the Department of State in the year 1865, may warrant the conclusion
that President Johnson was not then prepared to treat the new state
organizations as final and binding upon Congress and the country.

Under date of July 8, 1865, Secretary Seward said, in an official
letter to Governor Holden of North Carolina:  "It is understood here
that besides cotton which has been taken by the Secretary of the
Treasury under Act of Congress there were quantities of resin, and
other articles, as well as funds, lying about in different places in
the State and not reduced into possession by United States officers as
insurgent property.  The President is of the opinion that you can
appropriate these for the inevitable and indispensable expenses of the
civil government of the State during the continuance of the provisional
government."

On the 14th day of November, 1865, Mr. McCulloch authorized Mr. Worth,
acting as treasurer in North Carolina, to use the fragments of rebel
property that might be gathered to defray the expenses of the
provisional government of the State.

In answer to a question put to Secretary Seward, he said:  "I do not
remember that any provisional governor held a military office, except
Mr. Johnson."

In the further examination of Mr. Seward, May 16, 1867, he indicated
his concurrence with President Johnson in this remark:  "The object was
to proceed with the work of the restoration of the Union as speedily
and effectively and wisely as possible, having no reference as to
whether Congress would be in session or not."

This question was put to Mr. Seward:

"Did not he (the President) urge these parties to be prepared to be at
the doors of Congress by the time of its next meeting?"

The answer was:  "Very likely he did.  I do not know of the fact.  I
know that I was very anxious that these States should be represented
in Congress, and that he was equally so, that they should be provided
with representatives who could be admitted."

The policy of the administration, July 24, 1865, is set forth in a
despatch from Secretary Seward to Governor Sharkey, of Mississippi (he
is addressed as Provisional Governor):  "The President sees no occasion
to interfere with General Slocum's proceedings.  The government of the
State will be provisional only until the civil authorities shall be
restored with the approval of Congress."

Upon the united testimony of General Grant, Secretary Stanton and
Secretary Seward, it may be claimed fairly that the governments that
were set up under proclamations of the President were treated in the
beginning as provisional governments and subject to the final judgment
of Congress.

In 1866, when the rupture between Congress and the President had taken
form, the President with the support of Mr. Seward announced the
doctrine that the governments which had been set up were valid
governments, and that claimants for seats in Congress from those who
could prove their loyalty were entitled to admission.

Thus was a foundation laid for the impeachment of President Johnson by
the House of Representatives, and his trial by the Senate.


XXXII
IMPEACHMENT OF ANDREW JOHNSON

The nomination of Andrew Johnson to the Vice-Presidency in 1864, by the
Republican Party, was a repetition of the error committed by the Whig
Party in 1840, in the nomination of John Tyler for the same office.

In each case the nomination was due to an attempt to secure the support
of a body of men who were not in accord in all essential particulars
with the party making the nomination.

John Tyler was opposed to the administration of Mr. Van Buren, but he
was opposed also to a national bank, which was then an accepted idea
and an assured public policy of the Whig Party.  Hence, it happened
that when Mr. Tyler came to the Presidency, he resisted the attempt of
Congress to establish a national bank, and by the exercise of the veto-
power, on two occasions, he defeated the measure.  This controversy
caused the overthrow of the Whig Party, and it ended the contest in
behalf of a United States bank.

In the case of John Tyler and in the case of Andrew Johnson there was
an application, in dangerous excess, of a policy that prevails in all
national conventions.  When the nomination of a candidate for the
Presidency has been secured, the dominant wing of the party turns to
the minority with a tender of the Vice-Presidency.  In 1880, when the
nomination of General Garfield had been made, the selection of a
candidate for the Vice-Presidency was tendered to the supporters of
General Grant, and it was declined by more than one person.

Mr. Johnson never identified himself with the Republican Party; and
neither in June, 1864, nor at any other period of his life, had the
Republican Party a right to treat him as an associate member.  He was,
in fact, what he often proclaimed himself to be--a Jacksonian Democrat.
He was a Southern Union Democrat.  He was an opponent, and a bitter
opponent, of the project for the dissolution of the Union, and a
vindictive enemy of those who threatened its destruction.

His speeches in the Senate in the Thirty-sixth and the Thirty-seventh
Congress were read and much approved throughout the North, and they
prepared the way for the acceptance of his nomination as a candidate
of the Republican Party in 1864.

Mr. Johnson was an earnest supporter of the Crittenden Compromise.
That measure originated in the House of Representatives.  It was
defeated in the Senate by seven votes and six votes of the seven came
from the South.  The provisions of the bill were far away from the
ideals of Republicans generally, although the measure was sustained
by members of the party.  By that scheme the Fugitive Slave Law was
made less offensive in two particulars, but the United States was to
pay for fugitives from slavery whenever a marshal failed to perform his
duty.  As an important limitation of the powers of Congress, the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was to be dependent
upon the consent of the States of Maryland and Virginia.

Mr. Johnson gave voice to his indignation when he spoke of the Southern
men whose votes contributed to the defeat of the Crittenden Compromise.
"Who, then," said he, "has brought these evils upon the country?  Whose
fault is it?  Who is responsible for it?  With the help we had from the
other side of the chamber, if all those on this side had been true to
the Constitution and faithful to their constituents, and had acted with
fidelity to the country, the amendment of the Senator from New
Hampshire could have been voted down.  Whose fault was it?  Who did it?
Southern traitors, as was said in the speech of the Senator from
California.  They did it.  They wanted no compromise."

These extracts show the style of speech in which Mr. Johnson indulged,
and they prove beyond question that in the winter of 1861 he had no
sympathy with the Republican Party of 1856 and 1860.  These facts
explain, and in some measure they palliate, the peculiarities of his
career, which provoked criticism and an adverse popular judgment when
he came to the Presidency.  Nor is there evidence within my knowledge
that he ever denied the right of secession.  However that may have
been, he disapproved of the exercise of the right at all stages of the
contest.

In the Thirty-sixth Congress Mr. Johnson proposed amendments to the
Constitution which gave him consideration in the North.  By his
proposition the Fugitive Slave Law was to be repealed, and in its place
the respective States were to return fugitives or to pay the value of
those that might be retained.

Slavery was to be abolished in the District of Columbia with the
consent of Maryland and upon payment of the full value of the slaves
emancipated.  The Territories were to be divided between freedom and
slavery.  His scheme contemplated other changes not connected
necessarily with the system of slavery.  Of these I mention the
election of President, Vice-President, Senators, and Judges of the
Supreme Court by the people, coupled with a limitation of the terms of
judges to twelve years.

The Crittenden Resolution contained these declarations of facts and
policy:

1.  The present deplorable war has been forced upon the country by the
disunionists of the Southern States.

2.  Congress has no purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of
overthrowing or interfering with the established rights of those States.

Upon a motion to include disunionists in the North under the first
charge, Mr. Johnson voted in the negative with Sumner, Wilson, Wade,
and other Republicans.

This brief survey of Mr. Johnson's Congressional career at the opening
of the war may indicate the characteristics of his mind in controversy
and debate, and furnish means for comprehending his actions in the
troublous period of his administration.

Some conclusions are deducible from this survey.  First of all it is
to be said that he never assumed to be a member of the Republican
Party.  Next, I do not find evidence which will justify the statement
that he was a disbeliever in the right of a State to secede from the
Union.  It is manifest that he was not an advocate of the doctrine of
political equality as it came to be taught by the leaders of the
Republican Party.  When he became President, he was an opponent of
negro suffrage.

This record, though not concealed, was not understood by the members
of the convention that placed him in nomination for the second office
in the country.

This analysis prepares the way for an extract from the testimony of Mr.
Stanley Matthews, who was afterwards a justice of the Supreme Court,
and who was examined by the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives when engaged in investigating the doings of the
President previous to his impeachment.  Mr. Johnson was appointed
Military Governor of Tennessee the third day of March, 1862.  Colonel
Matthews was provost-marshal at Nashville, where Johnson resided during
his term as Governor.  In that term Matthews and Johnson became
acquainted.  When Johnson was on his way to Washington to take the oath
of office, he stopped at the Burnet House in Cincinnati.  Matthews
called upon him.  Matthews had been a Democrat until the troubles in
Kansas.  In the conversation at the Burnet House Mr. Johnson made these
remarks, after some personal matters had been disposed of.  I quote
from the testimony of Judge Matthews:

"I inquired as to the state of public feeling on political matters in
Tennessee at that time.  He remarked that very great changes had
taken place since I had been there, that many of those who at first
were the best Union men had turned to be the worst rebels, and that
many of those who had originally been the worst rebels were now the
best Union men.  I expressed surprise and regret at what he said in
reference to the matter.

"We were sitting near each other on the sofa.  He then turned to me and
said, 'You and I were old Democrats.'  I said, 'Yes.'  He then said,
_'I will tell you what it is, if the country is ever to be saved, it is
to be done through the old Democratic Party.'_

"I do not know whether I made any reply to that, or, if I did, what it
was; and immediately afterwards I took my leave."

The larger part of this quotation is only important as leading up to
the phrase that is emphasized, and which may throw light upon Mr.
Johnson's policy and conduct when he came to the Presidency.

This conversation occurred in the month of February, 1865, and it must
be accepted as evidence, quite conclusive, that Mr. Johnson was then
opposed to the policy of the Republican Party, whose honors he had
accepted.  In a party sense Mr. Johnson was not a Republican: he was a
Union Democrat.  He was opposed to the dissolution of the Union, but
not necessarily upon the ground that the Union had a supreme right to
exist in defiance of what is called "State sovereignty."  This with
the Republican Party was a fundamental principle.  Under the influence
of the principles of the old Democratic Party Mr. Johnson advanced to
the Vice-Presidency, and while under the influence of the same idea he
became President.

When the Republican Party came to power, the State of Maryland, that
portion of Virginia now known as West Virginia, the State of Kentucky,
and the State of Missouri were largely under the influence of
sympathizers with the eleven seceding States of the South.  It was
necessary in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri to maintain the
ascendency of the National Government by the exhibition of physical
force, and in some instances by its actual exercise.  Mr. Lincoln's
policy in regard to the question of slavery was controlled, up to the
month of July, 1862, by the purpose to conciliate Union slave-holders
in the States mentioned.  Of his measures I refer to the proposition
to transfer the free negroes to Central America, for which an
appropriation of $25,000 was made by Congress.  Next, Congress passed
an act for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia upon
the payment of three hundred dollars for each slave emancipated.

Without representing in his history or in his person the slave-holding
interests of the South, Mr. Johnson was yet a Southern man with Union
sentiments.  The impression was received therefrom that his influence
would be considerable in restraining, if not in conciliating slave-
holders in what were called the "border States."  These facts tended
to his nomination for the Vice-Presidency.  I have no means for
forming an opinion that is trustworthy as to the position of Mr.
Lincoln in reference to the nomination of Mr. Johnson.  His nomination
may justify the impression that the Republican Party was in doubt as to
its ability to re-elect Mr. Lincoln in 1864.  From the month of July,
1862, to the nomination in 1864, I had frequent interviews with Mr.
Lincoln, and I can only say that, during the period when the result of
the election was a subject of thought, he gave no intimation in the
conversations that I had with him that the element of doubt as to the
result existed in his mind.

From what has been said, the inference may be drawn that Mr. Johnson
came to the Vice-Presidency in the absence of any considerable degree
of confidence on the part of the Republican Party, although there were
no manifestations of serious doubt as to his fitness for the place, or
as to his fidelity to the principles of the party.

The incidents of the inauguration of Mr. Johnson in the Senate Chamber,
and especially his speech on the occasion, which was directed,
apparently, to the diplomatic corps, excited apprehensions in those
who were present, and the confidence of the country was diminished
materially concerning his qualifications for the office to which he had
been elected.  Without delay these apprehensions circulated widely, and
they were deepened in the public mind by the assassination of Mr.
Lincoln and the elevation of Mr. Johnson to the Presidency.

The public confidence received a further serious shock by his
proclamation of May 29, 1865, for the organization of a State
government in North Carolina.  That proclamation contained provisions
in harmony with what has been set forth in this paper concerning the
political principles of Mr. Johnson.  First of all, he limited the
franchise to persons "qualified as prescribed by the constitution and
laws of the State of North Carolina in force immediately before the
20th day of May, 1861, the date of the so-called Ordinance of
Secession."  This provision was a limitation of the suffrage, and it
excluded necessarily the negro population of the State.  It was also a
recognition of the right of the State to reappear as a State in the
Union.  It was, indeed, an early assertion of the phrase which
afterwards became controlling with many persons--"Once a State, always
a State."  He further recognized the right of the State to reappear as
a State in the organization and powers of the convention which was to
be called under the proclamation.  As to that he said:  "The convention
when convened, or the legislature which may be thereafter assembled,
will prescribe the qualification of electors and the eligibility of
persons to hold office under the constitution and laws of the State,
a power the people of the several States composing the Union have
rightfully exercised from the origin of the Government to the present
time."  There were further instructions given in the proclamation as to
the duties of various officers of the United States to aid Governor
Holden, who, by the same proclamation, was appointed "Provisional
Governor of the State of North Carolina."

Upon the publication of this proclamation I was so much disturbed that
I proceeded at once to Washington, but without any definite idea as to
what could be done to arrest the step which seemed to me a dangerous
step towards the re-organization of the Government upon an unsound
basis.  At that time I had had no conversation with Mr. Johnson, either
before or after he came to the Presidency, upon any subject whatever.
The interview which I secured upon that visit was the sole personal
interview that ever occurred between us.  I called upon Senator Morrill
of Vermont, and together we made a visit to the President.  I spoke of
the features of the proclamation that seemed to be objectionable.  He
said that "the measure was tentative" only, and that until the
experiment had been tried no other proclamation would be issued.  Upon
that I said in substance that the Republican Party might accept the
proclamation as an experiment, but that it was contrary to the ideas
of the party, and that a continuance of the policy would work a
disruption of the party.  He assured us that nothing further would be
done until the experiment had been tested.  With that assurance we left
the Executive Mansion.

On the 13th day of June, 1865, a similar proclamation was issued in
reference to the State of Mississippi, and on the 17th of June,
corresponding proclamations were issued in reference to the States of
Georgia, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida.  In each State a
person was named as Provisional Governor.  This action led to a
division of the party and to its subsequent reorganization against the
President's policy.

In his letter of acceptance of the nomination made by the Union
Convention, Mr. Johnson endorsed, without reserve, the platform that
had been adopted.  The declarations of the platform did not contain a
reference to the reorganization of the Government in the event of the
success of the Union arms.  The declarations were enumerated in this
order:  the Union was to be maintained; the war was to be prosecuted
upon the basis of an unconditional surrender of the rebels; and
slavery, as the cause of the war, was to be abolished.  The added
resolutions related to the services of the soldiers and sailors, and to
the policy of Abraham Lincoln as President.  It was further declared
that the public credit should be maintained, that there should be a
vigorous and just system of taxes, and that the people would view with
"extreme jealousy," and as enemies to the peace and independence of
the country, the efforts of any power to obtain new footholds for
monarchical government on this continent.  Such being the character of
the platform, it cannot be said that Mr. Johnson challenged its
declarations in the policy on which he entered for the reorganization
of the Government.  In Mr. Johnson's letter of acceptance he preserved
his relations to the Democrats by the use of this phrase:  "I cannot
forego the opportunity of saying to my old friends of the Democratic
Party proper, with whom I have so long and pleasantly been associated,
that the hour has come when that great party can justly indicate its
devotion to the Democratic policy in measures of expediency."

The controversy with Mr. Johnson had its origin in the difference of
opinion as to the nature of the Government.  That difference led him to
the conclusion that the rebellion had not worked any change in the
legal relations of the seceding States to the National Government.  His
motto was this:  "Once a State, always a State," whatever might be its
conduct either of peace or war.  There were, however, differences of
opinion among those who adhered to the Republican Party.  Mr. Stevens,
who was a recognized, if not the recognized, leader of the Republican
Party, advocated the doctrine that the eleven States were to be treated
as enemy's territory, and to be governed upon whatever system might be
acceptable to the States that had remained true to the Union.  Mr.
Sumner maintained the doctrine that the eleven States were Territories,
and that they were to be subject to the General Government until
Congress should admit the several Territories as State organizations.
The fourth day of May, 1864, I presented a series of resolutions in
the House of Representatives, in which I asserted this doctrine:  The
communities that have been in rebellion can be organized into States
only by the will of the loyal people expressed freely and in the
absence of all coercion; that States so organized can become States of
the American Union only when they shall have applied for admission and
their admission shall have been authorized by the existing National
Government.  A small number of persons who were identified with the
Republican Party sustained the policy of Mr. Johnson.  Others were of
the opinion that the eleven States were out of their proper relation to
the Union, as was declared by Mr. Lincoln in his last speech, and that
they could become members of the American Union only by the organized
action of each, and the concurrent action of the existing National
Government.  The Government was reorganized without any distinct
declaration upon the question whether the States that had been in
rebellion were to be treated as enemy's territory, or as Territories
according to the usage of former times.  The difference of opinion was
a vital one with Mr. Johnson.  Whatever view may be taken of his moral
qualities, it is to be said that he was not deficient in intellectual
ability, that his courage passed far beyond the line of obstinacy, and
that from the first to last he was prepared to resist the claims of
the large majority of the Republican Party.  The issue began with his
proclamation of May, 1865, and the contest continued to the end of his
term.  The nature of the issue explains the character and violence of
his speeches, especially that of the twenty-second day of February,
1866, when he spoke of Congress as a "body hanging on the verge of the
Government."

In the many speeches which he delivered in his trip through the West,
he made distinct charges against Congress.  He was accompanied by Mr.
Seward, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, and some others.  In a speech
at Cleveland, Ohio, he said, among other things, "I have called upon
your Congress, which has tried to break up the Government."  Again, in
the same speech he said, "I tell you my countrymen, that although the
powers of Thad Stevens and his gang were by, they could not turn me
from my purpose.  There is no power that can turn me, except you and
the God who put me into existence."  He charged, also, that Congress
had taken great pains to poison their constituents against him.  "What
had Congress done?  Had they done anything to restore the Union in
those States?  No; on the contrary, they had done everything to prevent
it."

In a speech made at St. Louis, Missouri, September 8, 1866, Mr. Johnson
discussed the riot at New Orleans.*  In that speech he said, "If you
will take up the riot in New Orleans, and trace it back to its source,
or its immediate cause, you will find out who was responsible for the
blood that was shed there.  If you will take up the riot at New
Orleans and trace it back to the radical Congress, you will find that
the riot at New Orleans was substantially planned."  After some
further observations, he says:  "Yes, you will find that another
rebellion was commenced, having its origin in the radical Congress."

These extracts from Mr. Johnson's speeches should be considered in
connection with his proclamations of May, June, and July, 1865.  They
are conclusive to this point:  that he had determined to reconstruct
the Government upon the basis of the return of the States that had been
engaged in the rebellion without the imposition of any conditions
whatsoever, except such as he had imposed upon them in his
proclamations.  In fine, that the Government was to be re-established
without the authority or even the assent of the Congress of the United
States.  In his proclamations he made provision for the framing of
constitutions in the respective States, their ratification by the
people, excluding all those who were not voters in April, 1861, and for
the election of Senators and Representatives to the Congress of the
United States without the assent of the Representatives of the existing
States.

When I arrived in Washington to attend the meeting of Congress at the
December session, 1866, I received a note from Mr. Stanton asking me to
meet him at the War Office with as little delay as might be
practicable.  When I called at the War Office, he beckoned me to retire
to his private room, where he soon met me.  He then said that he had
been more disturbed by the condition of affairs in the preceding weeks
and months than he had been at any time during the war.  He gave me to
understand that orders had been issued to the army of which neither he
nor General Grant had any knowledge.  He further gave me to understand
also that he apprehended an attempt by the President to re-organize the
Government by the assembling of a Congress in which the members from
the seceding States and the Democratic members from the North might
obtain control through the aid of the Executive.  He then said that he
thought it necessary that some act should be passed by which the power
of the President might be limited.  Under his dictation, and after such
consultation as seemed to be required, I drafted amendments to the
Appropriation Bill for the Support of the Army, which contained the
following provisions:  The headquarters of the General of the Army were
fixed at Washington, where he was to remain unless transferred to duty
elsewhere by his own consent or by the consent of the Senate.  Next, it
was made a misdemeanor for the President to transmit orders to any
officer of the army except through the General of the Army.  It was
also made a misdemeanor for any officer to obey orders issued in any
other way than through the General of the Army, knowing that the same
had been so issued.  These provisions were taken by me to Mr. Stevens,
the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations.  After some
explanation, the measure was accepted by the committee and incorporated
in the Army Appropriation Bill.  The bill was approved by the President
the second day of March, 1867.  His approval was accompanied by a
protest on his part that the provision was unconstitutional, and by the
statement that he approved the bill only because it was necessary for
the support of the army.

At the time of my interview with Mr. Stanton, I was not informed fully
as to the events that had transpired in the preceding months, nor can
I say now that everything which had transpired of importance was then
known to Mr. Stanton.  The statement that I am now to make was derived
from conversations with General Grant.  At a time previous to the
December session of 1866, the President said to General Grant, "I may
wish to send you on a mission to Mexico."  General Grant replied, "It
may not be convenient for me to go to Mexico."  Little, if anything,
further was said between the President and General Grant.  At a
subsequent time General Grant was invited to a Cabinet meeting.  At
that meeting Mr. Sew

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