had elevated him to power. At least twice before, in the history of the Federal Government, it had been demonstrated that a President. who for any cause runs counter to the views and wishes of the party that elected him is doomed to disappointment, and is fortunate if he escape disgrace. Mr. Johnson had drunk the cup of humiliation to its dregs, and the remaining energies of his life seemed now devoted. to the punishment, or at least the denunciation, of those who had obstructed and defeated his policies while President. Revenge is always an ignoble motive, pardonable, if at all, when inspired by the hot blood of youth, but to be regarded as not only lamentable but pitiable in men who approach threescore and ten. The extra session closed on the 24th of March. Mr. Johnson did not live to resume his seat. On the last day of the ensuing July (1875) he died peacefully at his home in East Tennessee among friends who had watched his progress from poverty and illiteracy to the highest position in the Republic. He was in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

The annual message of the President contained no reference to the condition of the South. The stringent and persistent prosecution in the United States courts of members of the organized bands of Ku-Klux had tended to dissolve that organization and to restrain its members from the commission of such outrages as had distinguished the earlier period of their existence. There was hope in the minds of sanguine people of the North that an era of peace and harmony had begun in the South, which would be characterized by a fair recognition of the rights of all the population, that free suffrage would be protected, that the hand of violence would be stayed, and that the Centennial year would find every State of the Republic in the enjoyment of material prosperity, of the fair administration of the law, of the enforcement of equal rights.

No body of men rejoiced over this prospect more heartily than Republican senators and representatives, for if it should prove true they would have cause of gratulation both as patriots and partisans. The complete pacification of the country on the basis of equal and exact justice was the leading desire of all right-minded men, and the free suffrage which this implied would give to the Republicans the opportunity for a fair trial of strength in the advocacy of their principles before the Southern people. The picture was one which would

well adorn the great National anniversary so near at hand, but many men feared that it was a picture only and not a reality.

An occasion arose four weeks after the delivery of the President's message, to test the real feelings of the House concerning the Southern question. Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania introduced a bill removing the political disabilities from every person in the United States. Since the broad Act of Amnesty in 1872, which excepted only a few classes from its operation, a considerable number of Southern gentlemen had been relieved upon individual application; but the mass of those excepted were still under the disability. The disposition of the Republicans was to grant without hesitation an amnesty almost universal, the exceptions, with a majority of the party probably, being limited to three persons, Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, and Jacob Thompson. Mr. Randall brought his bill to a vote on the 10th of January, 1876. By the Constitution it required a vote of two-thirds, but fell short of the number, the ayes being 175, the noes 97. The negative vote was wholly Republican; while the affirmative vote included all the Democratic members together with a small number of Republicans.

Mr. Blaine moved to amend by excepting Jefferson Davis from the benefits of the bill. The situation was peculiar. Upon a direct vote, if the amendment were submitted, very few Republicans could be found who would include Mr. Davis by name in the amnesty; and there was a large number of Democrats who wished to be saved from the embarrassment implied in such a procedure. They appreciated the difference between voting for a bill of general amnesty which included Jefferson Davis without name, and voting for an amendment which named him and him only for restoration to eligibility to any office under the Government of the United States. No punishment was inflicted upon Mr. Davis; no confiscation of his property was attempted or desired; Congress did not wish to deny him the right of suffrage. He was simply deprived of the right to aspire to the honors of the Republic. The Democrats being a majority of the House could prevent the amendment of the bill, and the Republicans being more than one-third could prevent the passage of the bill. It was a singular case of playing at parliamentary cross-purposes, and afforded the ground, as it proved in the end, for a prolonged and somewhat exciting discussion.

The reason assigned for excepting Jefferson Davis was not that he had been a rebel, for rebels were restored by thousands; not that

he had been in Congress, for Southern Congressmen were restored by scores if not by hundreds; not that he had been the chief of the revolutionary government, for that would only be a difference of degree in an offense in which all had shared. The point of objection was that Mr. Davis, with the supreme power of the Confederacy in his hands, both military and civil, had permitted extraordinary cruelties to be inflicted upon prisoners of war. He was held to be legally and morally responsible, in that, being able to prevent the horrors of Andersonville prison, he did not prevent them.

The debate took a somewhat wide range, engaging Mr. Blaine and General Garfield as the leading participants on the Republican side, and Benjamin H. Hill, Mr. Randall, and Mr. Cox on the Democratic side. Upon a second effort to pass the bill with an amendment requiring an oath of loyalty as a prerequisite to removal of disabilities, it failed to secure the necessary two-thirds, the ayes being 184, the noes 97. All that the Republicans demanded was a vote on the exclusion of Jefferson Davis, and this was steadily refused. Many gentlemen of the South are still under disability because of the parliamentary tactics pursued by the Democratic party of the House of Representatives at that time. If a vote had been allowed on Jefferson Davis, his name would have been rejected, and the bill, which included even Robert Toombs and Jacob Thompson, would have been passed without delay. If Mr. Davis thought that he was ungenerously treated by the Republicans, he must have found ample compensation in the conduct of both Southern and Northern Democrats, who kept seven hundred prominent supporters of the rebellion under disability for the simple and only reason that the Ex-President of the Confederacy could not share in the clemency.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PUBLIC CREDIT. - FIRST LAW ENACTED under President Grant. - DemocraTIC OPPOSITION. THURMAN, Garrett Davis, BAYARD. PRESIDENT GRANT'S FIRST

MESSAGE. FUNDING BILLS DISCUSSED.-ACTION OF BOTH HOUSES. - DebateS. FURTHER REDUCTION OF Revenue. -PREMIUM ON GOLD.-MEETING OF FORTYSECOND CONGRESS. — FINANCIAL DEBATES. - FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1873.- FORTYTHIRD CONGRESS MEETS. — PRESIDENT GRANT'S POSITION. — ABOLITION OF MOIETIES. -SPECIE PAYMENTS.-RESUMPTION ACT. - SPECIAL Message of THE PRESIDENT. - ADMISSION OF COLORADO.-DEATH OF SPEAKER KERE. — SAMUEL J. RANDALL HIS SUCCESSOR.

HE course of President Grant's Administration in regard to the Finances had proved in all respects successful. The first bill which received his signature was the Act "to strengthen the public. credit," approved March 18, 1869. It pledged the Government to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations, notes, and bonds, except those where the law authorizing the issue stipulated that payment might be made in "lawful money," which simply meant legal-tender notes. The demand for this declaratory Act arose from a desire to undo the evil which had been caused by the resolution of the Democratic party in the preceding Presidential election in favor of paying all public debts in paper, except where coin was specifically named in the law. The position of each party was therefore precisely the reverse of the other: the Republicans held the normal law of payment of Government obligations to be in coin, unless payment in paper money had been previously agreed upon; the Democrats held that all Government obligations might be discharged in paper, unless payment in coin had been previously agreed upon. This was the division line in the Presidential canvass of 1868, and it was the division line among parties in the Forty-first Congress. In the House, where the Act had been reported by General Schenck, the vote on its passage was 98 ayes to 47 noes. No Democrat voted in the affirmative. A few Republicans, under the lead of General Butler, voted in the negative.

When the Act was reported to the Senate, Mr. Thurman offered an amendment declaring that "nothing in this Act shall apply to the obligations commonly called Five-twenty bonds." This would reserve three-fourths of the bonded debt from the operation of the law, and would effectually defeat its object. Every Democrat in the Senate who voted on the question, voted in favor of Mr. Thurman's amendment. Mr. Morton of Indiana and one or two other Republican. senators voted with the Democrats, but the amendment was defeated by a decisive vote.

-Mr. Garrett Davis offered an amendment, "that the just and equitable measure of the obligation of the United States upon their outstanding bonds, is the value at the time in gold and silver coin of the paper currency advanced and paid to the Government on those bonds." Mr. Davis argued earnestly in favor of his amendment. He declared it to be "robbery and iniquity for this Congress to make the people of the United States pay nearly $900,000,000 more than by law and equity they are bound to pay."

-Mr. Bayard seconded the arguments of Mr. Davis. "Suppose, instead of issuing paper money," said Mr. Bayard, "it had pleased Congress to order a debasement of our National coinage. Suppose twenty-five per cent more of alloy or worthless metal had been interjected into our currency, and with that base coinage men had come forward to buy your bonds, what would be thought of the man who, when the day of payment of those bonds arrived, should say, 'I gave you lead, or lead in certain proportions; but for all the worthless metal I handed you, you must give me back pure gold'? Whether he was more maddened or more dishonest would be the only question arising in men's minds." Mr. Bayard used this analogy to illustrate the wrong of paying the bonds of the Government in coin, and expressed the belief that the debasing of the coinage would have been "far more Constitutional and right than the power which Congress exercised when they issued paper money."

When President Grant sent his first annual message to Congress (December, 1869), the National debt, less cash in the Treasury, amounted to $2,453,559,735, the cash being $194,674,947. The aggregate obligations bearing interest in coin had risen to $2,107,938,000; while the three per cent certificates and the Navy pension-fund, which alone carried interest in currency, amounted to $61,195,000. The debt bearing no interest, composed of old demand-notes, legaltenders, fractional currency, and certificates for gold deposited, had