intent that had governed the enactment, just as they admitted the partisan intent that now led to the practical repeal. Casting off all political disguises and personal pretenses, the simple truth remains that the Tenure-of-office Law was enacted lest President Johnson should remove Republican office-holders too rapidly; and it was practically repealed lest President Grant should not remove Democratic office-holders rapidly enough. While President Grant did not find himself in the least degree embarrassed by the Tenure-of-office Act as amended, he did not surrender his hostility to its existence in any form whatever. In his first annual message (nine months after the legislation just narrated) he earnestly recommended its total repeal. "It could not," said the President, "have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution, when providing that appointments made by the President should receive the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against the will of the President. The law is inconsistent with a faithful and efficient administration of the Government. What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason? How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them?" The President was evidently of opinion that the doubtful and contradictory constructions of the Act as amended left the whole matter (as described by Mr. Niblack of Indiana when the Conference report was under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment. The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the Senate was indirect and evasive. That body had evidently sought to gratify the wishes of President Grant, on the one hand, and to preserve some semblance of its power over appointments, on the other. It was freely predicted at the time that so long as the Senate and the President were in political harmony nothing would be heard of the Tenure-of-office Act, but that when the political interests of the Executive should come in conflict with those of the Senate there would be a renewal of the trouble which had characterized the relations of President Johnson and the Senate, and which led to the original Tenure-of-office Act with its positive assertion of senatorial power over the whole question of appointment and removal. William Pitt Fessenden took part in the first session of Congress under the Presidency of General Grant. It was his last public service. On the eighth day of the following September (1869) he died at his residence in Portland, Maine, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was one of the many victims of that strange malady which, breaking out with virulence at the National Hotel in Washington on the eve of Mr. Buchanan's inauguration (1856-57), destroyed many lives. Its deadly poison undermined the constitutions of some who apparently recovered health. Of these Mr. Fessenden was one. He regained the vigor that carried him through those critical years of senatorial work on which his fame chiefly rests; yet he always felt that he had been irreparably injured by the insidious attack. The irritability and impatience which he occasionally displayed in public and in private came undoubtedly from sufferings which he bore with heroic endurance through the years when his public burdens were heaviest. His death was announced by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who delivered an appreciative eulogy upon his character and public service. Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate."All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr. Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate - powers which he commanded so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed as the Olympic wheel caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot be remembered now." This reference was well understood. Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Sumner were never cordial. Members of the same party, supporters of the same general measures, with perfect appreciation and with profound respect each for the other, it seemed as impossible to unite them cordially, as in earlier days it was to unite Adams and Hamilton in the ranks of the Federalists. - Mr. Fessenden had maintained a brilliant reputation for a long period. When Mr. Webster, at the height of his senatorial fame, made his celebrated tour through the Middle and Western States in 1837, he selected Mr. Fessenden, a young man of thirty, as his trav - eling companion, selected him for his brilliancy, when he had choice of the brilliancy of all New England. Mr. Garrett Davis, a senator from Kentucky, in his eulogy of Mr. Fessenden, referred to Mr. Webster's visit to that State, and described the warm greeting which Mr. Fessenden received, the deep impression made upon him by Mr. Clay's hospitality at Ashland, and the impression which the young man made upon Mr. Clay, with whom he thenceforward became a marked favorite. Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden met not long after as members of the House in the Twenty-seventh Congress (under Harrison and Tyler). "Mr. Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank, honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of passion and of fire." - His eulogists in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin, long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own. — “A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead form of William Pitt Fessenden." PUBLIC. CHAPTER XIX. EVENTS OF INTEREST.-IN DIPLOMACY AND RECONSTRUCTION. -THE DOMINICAN REANNEXATION TREATY. - DEFEATED BY SENATE. PRESIDENT GRANT RENEWS THE EFFORT.COMMISSION SENT TO SAN DOMINGO.-THEIR REPORT.— OPPOSITION OF MR. SUMNER. THE PRESIDENT AND MR. SUMNER. - RECONSTRUCTION MEASURES COMPLETED. - VIRGINIA, MISSISSIPPI AND TEXAS. - RE-ADMITTED TO REPRESENTATION. - PECULIAR CASE OF GEORGIA. - HER RECONSTRUCTION POSTPONED. LAST STATE RE-ADMITTED TO REPRESENTATION. FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT. - ADOPTED. — PROCLAIMED MARCH 30, 1870. — PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE-COURSE OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.-HOSTILITY TO RECONSTRUCTED GOVERNMENTS. - DETERMINATION TO BREAK THEM DOWN. MILITARY INTERPOSITION OF THE GOVERNMENT. -KU-KLUX-KLANS. — VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH.- LEGISLATION TO PREVENT IT. — DIFFICULT TASK.-MOTIVE INSPIRING THE SOUTH.-CARPET-BAG IMMIGRATION. — COTTON-REARING ORIGINAL MOTIVE. - POLITICAL CONSEQUENCE. DISABILITIES IN THE SOUTH. CAUSE THEREOF. RESPONSIBILITY Of Southern STATES.-ORIGINAL MISTAKE OF THE SOUTH. THE AIMS OF THE North. HE chief interest in the events of General Grant's first term a was divided between questions of a diplomatic character and those arising from the condition of the South after Reconstruction had been completed. The first issue that enlisted popular attention was in regard to the annexation of the Dominican Republic. It was the earliest decisive step of General Grant's policy that attracted the observation of the people. The negotiation was opened on the request of the authorities of San Domingo, and it began about three months after the President's inauguration. In July General O. E. Babcock, one of the President's private secretaries, was dispatched to San Domingo upon an errand of which the public knew nothing. He bore a letter of instructions from Secretary Fish, apparently limiting the mission to an inquiry into the condition, prospects, and resources of the Island. From its tenor the negotiation of a treaty was not at that time anticipated by the State Department. General Babcock's mission finally resulted however in a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of Dominica, and a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana, -separately negotiated and both concluded on the 29th of Novem ber, 1869. The territory included in the Dominican Republic is the eastern portion of the Island of San Domingo, originally known as Hispaniola. It embraces perhaps two-thirds of the whole. The western part forms the Republic of Hayti. With the exception of Cuba, the island is the largest of the West India group. The total area is about 28,000 square miles, equivalent to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island combined. - President Grant placed extravagant estimates upon the value of the territory which he supposed was now acquired under the Babcock treaties. In his message to Congress he expressed the belief that the island would yield to the United States all the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other tropical products which the country would consume. "The production of our supply of these articles," said the President, "will cut off more than $100,000,000 of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports." "With such a picture," he added, "it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished. With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizens traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of precious metals in this country, it is not easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished." He maintained that "the acquisition of San Domingo will furnish our citizens with the necessaries of every-day life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a rapid stride towards that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of our citizens entitle this country to assume among nations." Earnest as General Grant was in his argument, deeply as his personal feelings were enlisted in the issue, thoroughly as his Administration was committed to the treaty, the Senate on the 30th of June (1870), to his utter surprise, rejected it. The vote was a tie, 28 to 28, as was afterwards disclosed in debate in open Senate. Though the votes of two-thirds of the senators were required to confirm the treaty President Grant was not discouraged. He returned to the subject six months later, in his annual message of December, and discussed the question afresh with apparently renewed confidence in the expediency of the acquisition. "I now firmly believe," he said, "that the moment it is known that the United States have entirely abandoned the project of accepting as part of its own territory the Island of San Domingo, a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana, and a large commercial city will spring up, to which we will be tributary without receiving cor |