CHAPTER IX.

CONTEST BETWEEN PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.-POINTS OF DIFFERENCE. - WHAT CONGRESS INSISTED ON.-REQUIRED DEFINITION OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. — POLITICAL DISABILITIES. -THE PUBLIC CREDIT. - PROTECTION OF NATIONAL PENSIONS. REPUDIATION OF REBEL DEBT. - POSSIBLE PAYMENT FOR SLAVES. -APPREHENSIONS OF CAPITALISTS.-DANGER HANGING OVER NATIONAL TREASURY. · AMENDMENTS TO THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. SHOULD REBEL STATES PARTICIPATE. MR. SEWARD'S VIEW.- MR. THADDEUS STEVENS'S VIEW. - PROCEEDINGS OF RECONSTRUCTION COMMITTEE. - PROPOSED BASES OF REPRESENTATION. AMENDMENT PROPOSED BY MR. SPALDING. BY MR. BLAINE. BY MR. CONKLING.- -SPEECH BY MR. JENCKES OF RHODE ISLAND. - BY MR. BAKER AND MR. INGERSOLL OF ILLINOIS.-BY MR. SHELLABARGER. - BY MR. PIKE OF MAINE. MR. SCHENCK'S AMENDMENT.-HOUSE ADOPTS AMENDMENT. — OPPOSED IN THE SENATE. LONG SPEECH OF MR. SUMNER. ― REPLY OF MR. FESSENDEN. - SPEECH OF SENATOR HENDERSON. HIS RADICAL PROPOSITION. SENATE DEFEATS HOUSE AMENDMENT. - NEW PROPOSITION FROM THE RECONSTRUCTION COMMITTEE. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION PROPOSED. — ITS ORIGINAL FORM. -DEBATE IN THE HOUSE. - PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE. LONG DEBATE. SPEECHES BY MR. HOWARD, MR. HENDRICKS, MR. SHERMAN, MR. REVERDY JOHNSON, MR. DOOLITTLE. FINAL ADOPTION OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT BY BOTH BRANCHES. NOTIFICATION TO THE STATES JUNE 16.-PROMPT ADOPTION BY TENNESSEE. - TENNESSEE RE-ADMITTED TO REPRESENTATION. -ACTION OF SENATE AND HOUSE THEREON. REASONS ASSIGNED FOR PASSING THE BILL.PRESIDENT APPROVES THe Bill, but DISAPPROVES THE REASONS FOR ITS PASSAGE. -HIS INGENUOUS CENSURE OF CONGRESS. ADJOURNMENT OF CONGRESS. - IMPENDING POLITICAL CONTEST. - STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESIDent and Congress.

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THE controversies between the President and Congress, thus far

have since been huo

as the Reconstruction measures. Those were yet to come. The establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau was at best designed to be a temporary charity; and the Civil Rights Bill, while growing out of changes effected by the war, was applicable alike to all conditions and to all times. The province of the Special Committee on Reconstruction was to devise and perfect those measures which should secure the fruits of the Union victory, by prescribing the essential grounds upon which the revolted States should be re-admitted to representation in Congress. The principal objects aimed at were at

least four in number. That which most largely engaged popular attention at the outset was the increased representation which the South was to secure by the manumission of the negroes. In the original Constitution only three-fifths of the slaves were permitted to be enumerated in the basis of apportionment. Two-fifths were now added and an increase of political power to the South appeared probable as the somewhat startling result of the civil struggle. There was an obvious injustice in giving to the white men of the South the right to elect representatives in Congress apportioned to their section by reason of the four and a half millions of negroes, who were enumerated in the census but not allowed to exercise any political power. By permitting this, a Confederate soldier who fought to destroy the Union would be endowed with a larger power of control in the National Government than the loyal soldier who fought to maintain the Union. To allow this to be accomplished and permanently incorporated in the working of the Government would be a mere mockery of justice, the utter subversion of fair play between man and man.

Another subject deeply engaging Northern thought was the definition of American citizenship. There was a strong desire to place it on such substantial foundation as should prevent the possibility of sinister interpretation by the Judiciary, and guard it at the same time against different constructions in different States. This was an omission in the original Constitution so grave an omission, indeed, that the guarantee entitling citizens of each State to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States, was in many cases ignored, often indeed defied and destroyed. If we were now to have a broader nationality as the result of our civil struggle, it was apparent to the mass of men, as well as to the publicist and statesman, that citizenship should be placed on unquestionable ground on ground so plain that the humblest man who should inherit its protection would comprehend the extent and significance of his title.

A third point had taken possession of the popular mind, quickened and intensified as it was by the conflict between the President and Congress. The President, as already stated, had by the lavish use of the pardoning power signalized his change on the subject of Reconstruction. Many of the worst offenders in the Confederate cause had received Executive clemency. Not only had the general mass of rebels been pardoned by the amnesty proclamation of May 29th, but many thousands of the classes excepted in that instrument

had afterwards received special pardons from the President. The crime of treason, which they had committed, was thus condoned, and the Executive pardon could be pleaded against any indictment or any attempt to punish by process of law. If there should be no provision to the contrary, these pardoned men would thus become as eligible to all the honors and emoluments of the Republic as though they had not for four years been using their utmost efforts to destroy its existence. It was therefore the general expectation of the people that by some law, either statute or organic, the political privileges of these men, so far as the right to hold office was involved, should be restricted, and that, without contravening the full force and effect of the President's pardon, they might justly be deprived of all right to receive the honors of the Nation and of the State. From the crime of rebellion they had been freed by the President, but it was expected that Congress would clearly define the difference between pardoning a rebel for treason to his country and endowing him with the right to enjoy the honors and emoluments of office.

Other subjects had entered into the public apprehension and were brought prominently to the attention of Congress, and by Congress referred to the Reconstruction Committee. There was a fear that if, by a political convulsion, the Confederates of the South should unite with the Democratic opponents of the war in the North and thus obtain control of the Government, they might, at least by some indirect process if not directly, impair the public obligations of the United States incurred in suppressing the Rebellion. They feared that the large bounties already paid to Union soldiers, and the genercus pensions already provided or which might afterwards be provided, for those who had been maimed or for the orphan and the widow of those who had fallen, might, in the advent of the same adverse political power in the Government, be objected to, unless at the same time a similar concession should be granted to the misled and deceived masses of the South, who had with reckless daring been forced into the service of the ill-starred Confederacy. It was therefore expected that Congress would, so far as organic law could attain that end, guard the sacredness of the public debt and the equal sacredness of the National pensions, and that to do this effectively it should be provided that no recognition should ever be made, either by the National Government or by any State Governments, of debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion.

Still another subject was considered to be of grave consequence.

Preventive measures of the most stringent character were demanded against a threatened danger to the National credit. With the single exception of land, which is the basis of all property, the South had lost the largest aggregate investment held in one form in the entire country. The money value of Southern slaves, reckoned at current prices, was larger when the war broke out than the money value of railroads or of manufacturing establishments in the United States. For the defense of this great interest the war had been avowedly undertaken. Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that the ambitious and conspiring politicians of the South had assumed the danger to this vast investment as the pretext for destroying the Government; and they had met with the fate so solemnly foretold in Sacred Writ, - they had drawn the sword and perished by the sword. As the one grand consummation of the struggle, the institution of slavery had disappeared. It was probable, nay, it was certainly to be expected, that in the destruction of so large an investment great suffering would come to many who had not participated in the Rebellion; to many indeed who had opposed it. That remuneration for losses

should be asked was apparently inevitable.

Men of financial skill and experience saw that if such a contingent liability should overhang the National Treasury the public credit might be fatally impaired. The acknowledged and imperative indebtedness of the Government was already enormous; contingencies yet to be encountered would undoubtedly increase it, and its weight would press heavily upon the people until a firmly re-established credit should enable the Government to lower the rate of interest upon its bonds. So long as the Government was compelled to pay its interest in coin, while the business of the country was conducted upon the basis of suspended paper, the burden upon the people would be great. It would be vastly increased in imagination (and imagination is rapidly transformed to reality in the tremulous balance which decides the standard of public credit) if the Nation should not be able to define with absolute precision the metes and bounds of its aggregate obligation. Hence the imperious necessity of excluding all possibility of the payment of from two to three thousand millions of dollars to the slave-holders of the South. If that were not accomplished, the burden would be so great that the Nation. which had survived the shock of arms might be engulfed in the manifold calamities of bankruptcy.

The magnitude of the reforms for which the popular desire was

unmistakable, may in some degree be measured by the fact that they involved the necessity of radical changes in, and important additions to, the Federal Constitution. It was frankly acknowledged that if the President's plan of Reconstruction should be followed, involving the instant admission of senators and representatives from the revolted States, these Constitutional changes could not be effected, because the party desiring them would no longer control two-thirds of both Senate and House. Mr. Seward, in his persuasive mode of presenting his views, had urged as a matter of justice that legislation affecting the Southern States should be open to the participation of representatives from those States; but Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who had as keen an intellect as Mr. Seward and a more trenchant style, declared that view to involve an absurdity. He avowed his belief that there was no greater propriety in admitting Southern senators and representatives to take part in considering the financial adjustments and legislative safeguards rendered necessary by their crime, than it would have been to admit the Confederate generals to the camp of the Union Army when measures were under consideration for the overthrow of the Rebellion.

The great mass of Republicans in Congress maintained that it was not only common justice but common sense to define, without interposition or advice from the South, the conditions upon which the insurrectionary States should be re-clothed with the panoply of National power. "In no body of English laws," said Mr. Stevens, in an animated conversation in the House, "have I ever found a provision which authorizes the criminal to sit in judgment when the extent of his crime and its proper punishment were under consideration." The argument, therefore, which Mr. Seward had made with such strength for the President was, in the judgment of the great majority of Northern people, altogether ill-founded. By the caustic sentence of Mr. Stevens it had been totally overthrown. The average judgment approved the sharply defined and stringent policy of Congress as set forth by Mr. Stevens, rather than the policy so comprehensively embodied and so skillfully advocated by Mr. Seward on behalf of the Administration. Whatever may have been the temptations presented by the apparent magnanimity and broad charity of Mr. Seward's line of procedure, they were more than answered by the instincts of justice and by the sense of safety embodied in the plan of Reconstruction announced and about to be pursued by Congress.