Chapter XXII: The Military Reconstruction Act (1)

Proposition by Mr. Stevens -- "Piratical Governments" not to
be Recognized -- The Military Feature Introduced -- Mr.
Schofield's Dog -- The Only Hope of Mr. Hise -- Conversation
Concerning the Reconstruction Committee -- Censure of a
Member -- A Military Bill Reported -- War Predicted -- The
"Blaine Amendment" -- Bill Passes the House -- In the Senate
-- Proposition to Amend -- Mr. Mcdougall Desires Liberty of
Speech -- Mr. Doolittle Pleads for the Life of the Republic
-- Mr. Sherman's Amendment -- Passage in the Senate --
Discussion and Non-concurrence in the House -- The Senate
Unyielding -- Qualified Concurrence of the House -- The Veto
-- "The Funeral of the Nation" -- The Act -- Supplementary
Legislation.

Soon after the passage of the bill extending the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, Congress was occupied in devising and discussing a practical and efficient measure for the reconstruction of the rebel States. The germ of the great "Act for the more efficient government of the rebel States" is to be found in the previous session of Congress in a proposition made by Mr. Stevens on the 28th of May "to enable the States lately in rebellion to regain their privileges in the Union."

The Constitutional Amendment had been eliminated in the Senate of features which Mr. Stevens regarded as of great importance. There was an indisposition on the part of the House to declaring by an act of Congress that the rebel States should be restored on the sole condition of their accepting and ratifying the Constitutional Amendment. The bill proposed by Mr. Stevens was designed by its author as a plan of restoration to take the place of the proposition which accompanied the Constitutional Amendment. This bill recognized the _de facto_ State governments at the South as valid "for municipal purposes." It required the President to issue a proclamation within six months calling conventions to form legitimate State constitutions, which should be ratified by the people. All male citizens above twenty-one years of age should be voters, and should be eligible to membership in these constitutional conventions. All persons who held office under the "government called the Confederate States of America," or swore allegiance thereto, were declared to have forfeited their citizenship, and were required to be naturalized as foreigners before being allowed to vote. All citizens should be placed upon an equal footing in the reörganized States.

On the 28th of July, the last day of the session, Mr. Stevens brought this bill to the notice of the House, without demanding any action upon it. He made a solemn and affecting appeal to the House, and insisted upon it as the great duty of Congress to give all loyal men, white and black, the means of self-protection. "In this, perhaps my final action," said he, "on this great question, upon careful review, I can see nothing in my political course, especially in regard to human freedom, which I could wish to have expurged or changed."

On the 19th of December, 1866, a few days after the reässembling of Congress for the second session, Mr. Stevens called up his bill for the purpose of amending it and putting it in proper shape for the consideration of Congress after the holidays.

On the 3d of January, 1867, Mr. Stevens addressed the House in favor of his plan of reconstruction. "This bill," said he, "is designed to enable loyal men, so far as I could discriminate them in these States, to form governments which shall be in loyal hands, and may protect them from outrages."

As an amendment to this bill, Mr. Ashley, chairman of the Committee on Territories, offered a substitute which was intended to establish provisional governments in the rebel States.

Mr. Pike brought in review before the House three modes of dealing with the rebel States which had been proposed for the consideration and decision of Congress. The first was the immediate admission of the States into a full participation in the Government, treating them as if they had never been in rebellion. The second was "the let-alone policy, which would merely refuse them representation until they had adopted the constitutional amendments." The third mode was "the immediate action by Congress in superseding the governments of those States set up by the President in 1865, and establishing in their place governments founded upon loyalty and universal suffrage." The policy last mentioned was advocated by Mr. Pike. "It has got to be time for action," said he, "if we are to fulfill the reasonable expectations of the country during the life of this Congress."

On the 7th of January Mr. Stevens proposed to amend his bill by inserting a provision that no person should be disfranchised as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they were every day whipping negroes for trivial offenses. He had heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every adult negro they knew of.

On the 8th of January a speech was made by Mr. Broomall advocating the passage of the bill before the House. "Can the negro in the South preserve his civil rights without political ones?" he asked. "Let the convention riot of New Orleans answer; let the terrible three days in Memphis answer. In the latter city three hundred negroes, who had periled their lives in the service of their country, and still wore its uniform, were compelled to look on while the officers of the law, elected by white men, set their dwellings in flames and fired upon their wives and children as they escaped from the doors and windows. Their churches and school-houses were burned because they were their churches and school-houses. Yet no arrest, no conviction, no punishment awaits the perpetrators of these deeds, who walk in open day and boast of their enormities, because, forsooth, this is a white man's Government."

On the 16th of January the discussion was resumed. Mr. Paine first addressed the House. He opposed the second section of the bill, which recognized the _de facto_ governments of the rebel States as valid for municipal purposes. "I am surprised," said he, "that the gentleman from Pennsylvania should be ready, voluntarily, to assume this burden of responsibility for the anarchy of murder, robbery, and arson which reigns in these so-called _de facto_ governments. He may be able to get this fearful burden upon his back; but if he does, I warn him of the danger that the sands of his life will all run out before he will be able to shake it off. He will have these piratical governments on his hands voluntarily recognized as valid for municipal purposes until duly altered. He will have gratuitously become a copartner in the guilt which hitherto has rested upon the souls of Andrew Johnson and his Northern and Southern satellites, but which thenceforth will rest on his soul also until he can contrive duly to alter these governments. And so it will happen that the great Union party to which he belongs, and to which I belong, will become implicated, for how long a time God only knows, in this unspeakable iniquity which daily and hourly cries to Heaven from every rood of rebel soil for vengeance on these monsters."

Mr. Bingham moved to refer the two bills--that of Mr. Stevens and that of Mr. Ashley--to the Committee on Reconstruction. He opposed these bills as "a substantial denial of the right of the great people who saved this republic by arms to save it by fundamental law." He advocated the propriety of making the proposed Constitutional Amendment the basis of reconstruction. It had already received the ratification of the Legislatures representing not less than twelve millions of the people of this nation. The fact that all the rebel States which had considered the amendment in their Legislatures had rejected it did not invalidate this mode of reconstruction. "Those insurrectionary States," said he, "have no power whatever as States of this Union, and can not lawfully restrain, for a single moment, that great body of freemen who cover this continent from ocean to ocean, now organized States of the Union and represented here, in their fixed purpose and undoubted legal right to incorporate the amendment into the Constitution of the United States."

Mr. Bingham maintained that Congress has the power, without restriction by the Executive or the Supreme Court, to "propose amendments to the Constitutions, and to decide finally the question of the ratification thereof, as well as to legislate for the nation." "I look upon both these bills," said Mr. Bingham, "as a manifest departure from the spirit and intent of our Constitutional Amendment. I look upon it as an attempt to take away from the people of the States lately in rebellion that protection which you have attempted to secure to them by your Constitutional Amendment."

Mr. Dawson, in a speech of an hour's duration, maintained the doctrine, which he announced as that which had given shape to presidential policy, "that the attempt at secession having been suppressed by the physical power of the Government, the States, whose authority was usurped by the parties to the movement, have never, at any time, been out of the Union; and that having once expressed their acquiescence in the result of the contest and renewed their allegiance to the Union, they are, at the same time, restored to all the rights and duties of the adhering States."

On the other hand, the policy of Congress, in the opinion of Mr. Dawson, was "a shameless outrage upon justice and every conservative principle,"--a "usurpation of Federal powers and a violation of State rights."

Mr. Maynard gave expression to his opinions by asking the significant question, "Whether the men who went into the rebellion did not by connecting themselves with a foreign government, by every act of which they were capable, denude themselves of their citizenship--whether they are not to be held and taken by this Government now as men denuded of their citizenship, having no rights as citizens except such as the legislative power of this Government may choose to confer upon them? In other words, is not the question on our part one of enfranchisement, not of disfranchisement?"

On the 17th of January, Mr. Baker addressed the House in favor of referring the pending bill to the Committee on Reconstruction. He was opposed to the use of the term "Government," without qualification or restriction, as applied to the lately revolted States. He opposed the second section, as causing the _de facto_ governments to become valid for municipal purposes long before the scheme of reconstruction contemplated by the bill is effectuated. "To recognize them in advance," said he, "would be to incur the danger of further embarrassing the whole subject by the illogical consequences of our own illogical procedure."

At this stage Mr. Stevens arose and modified his substitute by withdrawing the second section, which contained the provision objected to by Mr. Baker as well as by his "ardent friend" Mr. Paine. Mr. Baker objected to that feature of the bill which provided that none should be deprived of the right to vote as a punishment for any crime save insurrection or treason. "The penitentiaries of these States," said he, "might disgorge their inmates upon the polls under the operation of this bill."

Mr. Grinnell was opposed to sending the question to the Committee on Reconstruction. He did not think it the most modest proposition in the world for Mr. Bingham to urge the reference to his committee of a great question which, the House generally desired to consider. "Let us have no delay," said he, "no recommitment, rather the earliest action upon this bill, as the requirement of the people who have saved the country, what the suffering implore, what justice demands, and what I believe God will approve."

"It is to my mind most clear," said Mr. Donnelly, in a speech upon the pending question, "that slavery having ceased to exist, the slaves became citizens; being citizens they are a part of the people, and being a part of the people no organization deserves a moment's consideration at our hands which attempts to ignore them."

Of the Southern States as under rebel rule, Mr. Donnelly remarked: "The whites are to make the laws, execute the laws, interpret the laws, and write the history of their own deeds; but below them; under them, there is to be a vast population--a majority of the whole people--seething and writhing in a condition of suffering, darkness, and wretchedness unparalleled in the world. And this is to be an American State! This is to be a component part of the great, humane, Christian republic of the world."

"It is hard," said Mr. Eldridge, in a speech against the bill, "sad to stand silently by and see the republic overthrown. It is indeed appalling to those accustomed from early childhood to revere and love the Constitution, to feel that it is in the keeping of those having the power and determination to destroy it. With the passage of this bill must die every hope and vestige of the government of the Constitution. It is indeed the final breaking up and dissolution of the union of the States by the usurpation and revolutionary act of Congress."

"Your work of restoration," said Mr. Warner, "will never commence until the Congress of the United States assumes to be one of the departments of the General Government. It will never commence until you have declared, in the language of the Supreme Court, that the Executive, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, 'can not exercise a civil function.'"

"In less than two brief years of office," said Mr. Warner, speaking of the President, "he has exercised more questionable powers, assumed more doubtful constitutional functions, obliterated more constitutional barriers, and interposed more corrupt schemes to the expression of the popular sentiment or will of the people than all other Executives since the existence of the Government."

Mr. Spalding feared that the bill, should it become a law, would be found defective in not affording any protection to that loyal class of the inhabitants of those communities upon whom the elective franchise was conferred. "These colored men," said he, "who are now recognized by the Government as possessing the rights of freemen, are to be in jeopardy of being shot down like so many dogs when they attempt to visit the polls." He then offered an amendment, which was accepted by Mr. Stevens, by which a section was added to the bill suspending the writ of _habeas corpus_ in the ten rebel States, and placing them under martial law until they should be admitted to representation in Congress under the provisions of the bill. In this section thus introduced may be seen the origin of that feature which, in an enlarged and extended form, gave character to the important measure ultimately adopted by Congress, which is popularly known as the "Military Reconstruction Bill."

The discussion was continued by Mr. Koontz. "It is a solemn, imperative duty," said he, "that this nation owes to its colored people to protect them against their own and the nation's foes. It would be a burning, lasting disgrace to the nation were it to hand them over to their enemies. I know of no way in which this protection can be better given than by extending to them the elective franchise. Place the ballot in the hands of the black man and you give him that which insures him respect as well as protection."

Mr. Scofield maintained that the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment by three-fourths of the loyal States was all that was necessary. "Twenty-three of the twenty-six States elected Legislatures instructed to adopt it. Very soon these twenty-three States, having a population in 1860 of twenty-one million five hundred thousand, and not less than twenty-seven millions now, will send to a perfidious Secretary the official evidence of the people's will. Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky alone give a negative answer. Who, then, stands in the way? One old man who is charged by law with the duty of proclaiming the adoption of the amendment, but who has determined to incorporate into the Union the _debris_ of the late Confederacy--he stands in the way."

"The Secretary is clever in work of this kind. An English nobleman was at one time exhibiting his kennel to an American friend, and passing by many of his showiest bloods, they came upon one that seemed nearly used up. 'This,' said the nobleman, 'is the most valuable animal in the pack, although he is old, lame, blind, and deaf.' 'How is that?' inquired the visitor. The nobleman explained: 'His education was good, to begin with, and his wonderful sense of smell is still unimpaired. We only take him out to catch the scent, and put the puppies on the track, and then return him to the kennel.' Do not suppose that I intend any comparison between the Secretary of State and that veteran hunter. Such a comparison would be neither dignified nor truthful, because the Englishman went on to say, 'I have owned that dog for thirteen years, and, hard as he looks, he never bit the hand that fed him nor barked on a false trail.'"

The laughter and applause which followed, were checked by the Speaker's gavel, which Mr. Schofield mistook for a notice to quit. "Has my time expired?" asked he. "It has not," replied the Speaker. "The Chair called you to order," said Mr. Stevens, in his seat, "for doing injustice to the dog."

Mr. Ward, who next addressed the House, presented a novel theory of the rebel war. "The people of the South," said he, "did not make war upon our republican form of government, nor seek to destroy it; they only sought to make two republics out of one. They are now, and have been all the time, as much attached to our system of free republican government as those who abuse them for disloyalty."

Mr. Ward presented his view of the state of things which would result from the passage of the pending bill. "These negro judges," said he, "will sit and hold this election backed by the United States army. That is rather an elevated position for the new-made freedman; the _habeas corpus_ suspended, martial law proclaimed, the army at the back of the negro conducting an election to reconstruct States."

Mr. Plants addressed the House in favor of the pending bill. Of the reception given by the rebels to the proposed constitutional amendment, he said: "They have not only refused to accept the more than generous terms proposed, but have rejected them with contumely, and with the haughty and insulting bravado of assumed superiority demand that the nation shall submit to such terms as they shall dictate."

Mr. Miller, while advocating the pending measure, favored its reference to the Committee on Reconstruction. He gave a detailed account of the Constitutional Amendment, and its progress toward ratification among the Legislatures. He showed that the progress of reconstruction was delayed through fault of the rebels themselves. "It is not the desire of the great Republican party," said he, "to retard the restoration of those ten States to full political rights, but on the contrary they are anxious for a speedy adjustment, in order to secure adequate protection to all classes and conditions of men residing therein, and at the same time afford ample security to the United States Government against any future refractory course that might be pursued on the part of those States."

On the 21st of January the discussion was resumed by Mr. Kerr in a speech against the bill. He quoted extensively from judicial decisions and opinions to show that the rebel States were still entitled to their original rights in the Union. "The undisguised and most unrighteous purpose of all this kind of legislation," said he, "is to usurp powers over those States that can find no warrant except in the fierce will of the dominant party in this Congress. It is alike at war with every principle of good and free government, and with the highest dictates of humanity and national fraternity."

Mr. Higby was in favor of the pending bill, and opposed its reference to the Committee on Reconstruction. He preferred that it should be retained in the House, where it could be changed, matured, and finally passed. He contended that the rebel States should not come into the Union under any milder conditions than those imposed upon Territories recently passed upon in Congress. "Impartial suffrage," said he, "is required of each of those Territories as a condition precedent to their becoming States; and shall South Carolina, upon this basis of reconstruction, become a part of this Union upon different terms and principles entirely from those implied by the votes we have just given?"

Mr. Trimble denounced the pending legislation in violent terms. "By this act," said he, "you dissolve their connection with the Government of the United States, blot them out of existence as freemen, and degrade them to the condition of negro commonwealths. We have this monstrous proposition: to declare martial law in ten States of this Union; and in making this declaration, we, in my judgment, step upon the mangled ruins of the Constitution; for the Constitution plainly gives this power neither to the executive nor the legislative department of the Government."

Mr. Dodge, although a Republican, and in favor of "protecting the best interests of the colored man," could not vote for either of the propositions before the House. "The result of the passage of this bill," said he, "if it shall become operative, will be to disfranchise nearly the entire white population of the Southern States, and at the same time enfranchise the colored people and give them the virtual control in the proposed organization of the new State governments."

Mr. Dodge was particularly opposed to the military feature proposed by Mr. Spalding. "This is not likely," said he, "in the nature of things, to bring about an early reörganization of the South. The commercial, the manufacturing, and the agricultural interests of this country, as they look at this matter, will see in it a continuance of taxation necessary to support this military array sent to these ten States."

"This bill, if executed," said Mr. Hise, in the course of a speech against the measure, "will in effect establish corrupt and despotic local governments for all those States, and place in all the offices the most ignorant, degraded, and corrupt portion of their population, who would rule and ruin without honesty or skill the actual property-holders and native inhabitants, making insecure life, liberty, and property, and still holding those States in their Federal relations subject to the most rapacious, fierce, and unrelenting despotism that ever existed, that of a vindictive and hostile party majority of a Congress in which they have no voice or representation, and by which irresponsible majority they would be mercilessly oppressed for that very reason; and this will be continued, I fear, until the country shall again be precipitated into civil war."

Since the "beneficent conservative power" of the President was overcome by two-thirds of Congress, Mr. Hise could see safety for the nation in but one direction. "Our only hope," said he, "of the preservation of a free government is in the judicial department of the government, and in the decisions of the Supreme Court pronouncing your acts unconstitutional and void."

Mr. Raymond preferred the Constitutional Amendment as the basis of reconstruction, and blamed the party in power for abandoning that policy. "Last year," said he, "that man was untrue to his party obligations who did not stand by it; this year the man is declared to be faithless to his party who does."

Having spoken at considerable length against the pending measure, Mr. Raymond said: "For these reasons, sir, reasons of policy and of authority, I do not think we ought to pass this bill. I do not believe it would be at all effective in securing the objects at which we aim, or that it would conduce in the slightest degree to promote peace and secure equal rights among the people upon whom it is to take effect. And I can not help believing that it contains provisions directly at war with specific and peremptory prohibitions of the Constitution."

Mr. Raymond defended the Secretary of State against the accusations of Mr. Schofield. Mr. Seward was not "a perfidious old man," but one "venerable, not more for age than for the signal services to his country and the cause of freedom every-where, by which his long and laborious life, devoted wholly, from early manhood, to the public service, has been made illustrious." The Secretary of State acted under law. If Congress expected him to act under the theory that three-fourths of the loyal States were sufficient for the ratification of the Constitutional Amendment, they should pass a law to that effect.

"The man," said Mr. Shellabarger, "who is now the acting President of the United States, once said to me, in speaking of a bill like the one now before the House, that it was a measure to dissolve the Union. That proposition has been so often repeated by members upon the other side of this hall, that I have thought the House would probably pardon me if I should attempt to condense into a few sentences a suggestion or two in regard to that declaration, repeated so often and worn out so thoroughly as it is."

Mr. Shellabarger maintained the right of governments to withhold from those who discard all the obligations pertaining to their citizenship the powers and rights which come alone from performing these obligations. "This identical principle," said he, "was asserted at the origin of your Government in the legislation of every one of the States of the Confederation; was repeated and reënacted by three, at least, of the first Congresses under the Constitution, and has been virtually reënacted by being kept in force by every subsequent Congress which ever met under the Constitution."

"I see such diversity of opinion on this side of the House," said Mr. Stevens, "upon any question of reconstruction, that, if I do not change my mind, I shall to-morrow relieve the House from any question upon the merits of this bill by moving to lay it on the table."

On the 26th of January the discussion was renewed. Mr. Ross, considering the argument on the constitutionality of the measure exhausted, endeavored to show that the bill was "in clear conflict with the action of the party in power during the entire progress of the war, and in conflict with the clearly-expressed opinions of the Executive of the nation, the Supreme Court, and the Congress of the United States."

Mr. Ashley withdrew his amendment to Mr. Stevens' bill that the House might, in Committee of the Whole, have an opportunity to perfect the bill so as to send it to the Senate within two or three days.

"I ask the gentleman," said Mr. Conkling, "to state his objection to having a subject like this committed to a committee which has now no work upon its hands, and which has a right to report at any time."

"The Committee on Reconstruction," replied Mr. Ashley, "have held no meetings during this entire session up to this hour. Several bills proposed by gentlemen have been referred to that committee during this session, upon which they have taken no action. If the committee ever gets together again--which I doubt, as it is a large committee, composed of both branches of Congress--I have but little hope of their being able to agree. The chairman of the committee on the part of the Senate, as is well known, is absorbed in his efforts to perfect the financial measures of the country, and I fear that if this bill goes to that committee it will go to its grave, and that it will not, during the life of the Thirty-ninth Congress, see the light. If I were opposed to these bills, I would vote to send them to that committee as sending them to their tomb."

"There is no difficulty," responded Mr. Conkling, "in having prompt consideration of any thing which may be sent to the committee. It was created originally solely to deal with this subject. It was, at first, broken into four sub-committees, that the work of gathering evidence might be more advantageously and speedily carried on. It became one committee, usually working together, only during a few weeks immediately preceding the bringing forward of its ultimate propositions. It would not be decorous for me to praise the committee or the work it did, but I may say with propriety that if it ever was a good committee, if it ever should have been created and composed as it was, it is a good committee now--better than it ever was before; better, because more familiar with this subject, because its members, having now become acquainted with each other's views, and having become accustomed to act with each other, and having studied the whole subject committed to them, can proceed with much more hope of good results than ever before. Having a right to report at any time, and being led, on the part of this House, by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], I see no reason why it can not consider and digest wisely and promptly whatever may be referred to it and make report."

"We are now considering a report from that very committee," said Mr. Stevens. "That committee made a report, and I have offered a substitute for the bill which they reported. If the gentleman thinks the report of that committee is best, then let him vote against my substitute. But why send this subject back again to the committee? The gentleman knows as well as I do how many different opinions there are in that committee; some of us believe in one thing, and some of us in another; some of us are very critical, and some of us are not. The idea that we can consider any thing in that committee, constituted as it is, in less than a fortnight, it seems to me is wholly out of the question; and as we have only about some twenty working days in which to mature this bill in both branches of Congress, if we send this subject to that committee and let it take its time to consider it, and then have it reported here and considered again, I certainly need not say to gentlemen that that would be an end of the matter, at least for this session."

"The gentleman from Pennsylvania concurred in that report," replied Mr. Conkling. "He had his full share in molding it and making it precisely what it was. He supported it then; now he offers a substitute for it. Why? Because the time which has elapsed since then, and the events which have transpired, have modified, he thinks, the exigencies of the case. Is not that as applicable to the judgment of the committee as to his own? Is it not proper that it should have the opportunity of acting for once in the light of all the facts and circumstances as they are to day?"

"Two or three bills on this subject," said Mr. Stevens, "have been referred during this session to that committee. Why has not the committee acted on them?"

"If I were the chairman of the committee on the part of this House," replied Mr. Conkling, "I should be able to answer that question, because then I could tell why I had not called the committee together. But as I am only a subordinate member of the committee, whose business it is to come when I am called, and never to call others, I am entirely unable to give the information for which the gentleman inquires."

"If I could have any assurance," said Mr. Ashley, "that this committee would be able to report promptly a bill upon which this House could probably agree, I would not hesitate a single moment to vote for the reference of this measure to that committee; but, believing that they will be unable to agree, I shall vote against a recommitment."

In describing the character of the opposition arrayed against the Congressional plan of reconstruction, Mr. Ashley used the following emphatic language: "Why, sir, the assumption, the brazen-faced assumption of men who during the entire war were in open or secret alliance with the rebels, coming here now and joining hands with the apostate at the other end of the avenue, who is the leader, the recognized leader of a counter-revolution--a negative rebellion, as I said awhile ago--passes comprehension."

"If intended to apply to us," said Mr. Winfield, speaking for the Democratic members, "it is a base and unfounded slander."

"So far as I am concerned, it is a base lie," said Mr. Hunter. For using these words, "condemned by gentlemen every-where, as well as by parliamentary law," the House passed a vote of censure on Mr. Hunter, and he was required to go forward and receive a public reprimand from the Speaker.

On the 28th of January, the House having resumed the consideration of the bill to restore to the rebel States their full political rights, Mr. Julian expressed his belief that the time had come for action, and that having the great subject before them, they should proceed earnestly, and with little delay, to mature some measure which would meet the demand of the people. "Let us tolerate no further procrastination," said he; "and while we justly hold the President responsible for the trouble and mal-administration which now curse the South and disturb the peace of the country, let us remember that the national odium already perpetually linked with the name of Andrew Johnson will be shared by us if we fail in the great duty which is now brought to our doors."

Mr. Julian differed with many others in his opinion of the real wants of the rebel States. "What these regions need," said he, "above all things, is not an easy and quick return to their forfeited rights in the Union, but _government_, the strong arm of power, outstretched from the central authority here in Washington, making it safe for the freedmen of the South, safe for her loyal white men, safe for emigrants from the Old World and from the Northern States to go and dwell there; safe for Northern capital and labor, Northern energy and enterprise, and Northern ideas to set up their habitation in peace, and thus found a Christian civilization and a living democracy amid the ruins of the past."

"It would seem," said Mr. Cullom, "that the men who have been struggling so hard to destroy this country were and still are the instruments, however wicked, by which we are driven to give the black man justice, whether we will or no.

"By the unholy persistence of rebels slavery was at last overthrown. Their contempt of the Constitutional Amendment, now before the country, will place in the hands of every colored man of the South the ballot."

The bill before the House was referred to the Committee on Reconstruction by a vote of eighty-eight to sixty-five.

On the 4th of February, Mr. Williams, of Oregon, introduced into the Senate "A bill to provide for the more efficient government of the insurrectionary States," which was referred to the Committee on Reconstruction.

This bill, having been considered by the Committee, was adopted by them, and was reported by their chairman to the House, on the 6th of February, in the following form:

"_Whereas_, the pretended State Governments of the late
so-called Confederate States of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana,
Florida, Texas, and Arkansas were set up without the
authority of Congress and without the sanction of the
people; and _whereas_ said pretended governments afford no
adequate protection for life or property, but countenance
and encourage lawlessness and crime; and _whereas_ it is
necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in
said so-called States until loyal and Republican State
Governments can be legally established: Therefore,

"_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That
said so-called States shall be divided into military
districts and made subject to the military authority of the
United States, as hereinafter prescribed; and for that
purpose Virgina shall constitute the first district, North
Carolina and South Carolina the second district, Georgia,
Alabama, and Florida the third district, Mississippi and
Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the
fifth district.

"SEC. 2. _And be it further enacted_, That it shall be the
duty of the General of the army to assign to the command of
each of said districts an officer of the regular army not
below the rank of brigadier general, and to detail a
sufficient force to enable such officer to perform his
duties and enforce his authority within the district to
which he is assigned.

"SEC. 3. _And be it further enacted_, That it shall be the
duty of each officer assigned, as aforesaid, to protect all
persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress
insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or
cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and
criminals; and to this end he may allow civil tribunals to
take jurisdiction of and to try offenders, or when in his
judgment it may be necessary for the trial of offenders he
shall have power to organize military commissions or
tribunals for that purpose, any thing in the constitution
and laws of the so-called States to the contrary
notwithstanding; and all legislative or judicial proceedings
or processes to prevent the trial or proceedings of such
tribunals, and all interference by said pretended State
governments with the exercise of military authority under
this act shall be void and of no effect.

"SEC. 4. _And be it further enacted_, That courts and
judicial officers of the United States shall not issue writs
of _habeas corpus_ in behalf of persons in military custody
unless some commissioned officer on duty in the district
wherein the person is detained shall indorse upon said
petition a statement certifying upon honor that he has
knowledge or information as to the cause and circumstances
of the alleged detention, and that he believes the same to
be rightful; and further, that he believes that the indorsed
petition is preferred in good faith and in furtherance of
justice, and not to hinder or delay the punishment of crime.
All persons put under military arrest, by virtue of this
act, shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel
or unusual punishment shall be inflicted.

"SEC. 5. _And be it further enacted_, That no sentence of
any military commission or tribunal hereby authorized,
affecting the life or liberty of any person, shall be
executed until it is approved by the officer in command of
the district; and the laws and regulations for the
government of the army shall not be affected by this act,
except in so far as they conflict with its provisions."

Mr. Stevens, having been remonstrated with by a Democratic member for expressing a wish to bring the question to vote without a prolonged debate, replied: "I am very willing that the debate which has been going on here for three weeks shall all be read over by the gentleman whenever he can take time to read it." "On behalf of the American people," said the same member, "I ask more time for debate." "I will see what the American people think of it in the morning. If they are generally for a prolongation of the debate, of course I will go with them. But I will wait until then, in order to ascertain what the people want."

On the following day, February 7th, Mr. Stevens introduced the discussion with a brief speech. "This bill provides," said he, that "the ten disorganized States shall be divided into five military districts, and that the commander of the army shall take charge of them through his lieutenants as governors, or you may call them commandants if you choose, not below the grade of brigadiers, who shall have the general supervision of the peace, quiet, and the protection of the people, loyal and disloyal, who reside within those precincts; and that to do so he may use, as the law of nations would authorize him to do, the legal tribunals where-ever he may deem them competent; but they are to be considered of no validity _per se_, of no intrinsic force, no force in consequence of their origin, the question being wholly within the power of the conqueror, and to remain until that conqueror shall permanently supply their place with something else. I will say, in brief, that is the whole bill. It does not need much examination. One night's rest after its reading is enough to digest it."

"Of all the various plans," said Mr. Brandegee, "which have been discussed in this hall for the past two years, to my mind it seems the plainest, the most appropriate, the freest from constitutional objection, and the best calculated to accomplish the master aims of reconstruction.

"It begins the work of reconstruction at the right end, and employs the right tools for its accomplishment. It begins at the point where Grant left off the work, at Appomattox Court-house, and it holds those revolted communities in the grasp of war until the rebellion shall have laid down its spirit, as two years ago it formally laid down its arms."

Mr. Le Blond characterized the Committee on Reconstruction as "the maelstrom committee, which swallows up every thing that is good and gives out every thing that is evil."

"There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech, "but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on the part of the American people to defend themselves.

"I do not desire war; but as one American citizen, I do prefer war to cowardly submission and total destruction of the fundamental principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, nothing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded upon the bloody battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the American people again."

"Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, "that in this Congress we can find men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the right of trial by jury, the great privilege of _habeas corpus_; men who are willing to reverse the axiom that the military should be subordinate to the civil power, and to establish the abhorred doctrine resisted by the brave and free men of every age, that the military should be superior to the civil authority?"

"It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, "that the change proposed to be made by this bill in the management of the Southern States is so violent as gentlemen on the other side would have us suppose. They seem to believe that now the people of those States govern themselves; but the truth is, since the suppression of the rebellion, that is, since the surrender of the rebel armies in 1865, the government of those States have been virtually in the hands of the President of the United States.

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States from the people to the officers of the army, but only from the President to those officers."

Mr. Farnsworth, who next addressed the House, gave numerous authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated by rebels upon Union soldiers and citizens. "It is no longer a question of doubt," said he, "it can not be denied that the loyal men, the Union soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized and disloyal States are not protected. They are murdered with impunity; they are despoiled of their goods and their property; they are banished, scattered, driven from the country."

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic language. "You will carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at all to be compared."

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. "Free government," said he, "brought him from a poor boy to as great a man as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washington and will yet receive it. He will not submit to have the citadel of liberty invaded and destroyed without using the civil and military powers to prevent it. He will maintain the Constitution, sir, even to the spilling of blood."

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord with his theory by substituting the phrase "the said States" for the words "so-called States." He also proposed some limitation of the extent to which the _habeas corpus_ should be suspended. "When these men," said he, "shall have fulfilled their obligations" and when the great people themselves shall have put, by their own rightful authority, into the fundamental law the sublime decree, the nation's will, that no State shall deny to any mortal man the equal protection of the laws--not of the laws of South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State, and above all, sir, of the great law, the Constitution of our own country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to Oregon, and from Maine to Florida--then, sir, by assenting thereto those States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, I labor and for that I strive."

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, "is to be left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the color of authority they exercise under illegal but _de facto_ State governments to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them any protection against murder and all the wrongs that rebels can inflict on loyal men, we can not, dare not refuse to pass this bill."

Since, however, the bill did not propose any "plan of reörganizing State governments in the late rebel States," Mr. Lawrence read amendments which he desired to introduce at the proper time, providing that the laws of the District of Columbia, "not locally inapplicable," should be in force in the rebel territory and that the United States courts should have jurisdiction.

Mr. Hise declared this a "stupid, cruel, unwise, and unconstitutional measure." "If I had not been prepared," said he, "by other measures hitherto adopted and others hitherto introduced into this House, I should not have been less startled at the introduction of this than if I had received the sudden intelligence that the ten States enumerated in this bill had been sunk by some great convulsion of nature and submerged under an oceanic deluge."

"This is not, strictly speaking, a measure of reconstruction," said Mr. Ingersoll, "but a measure looking simply to the enforcement of order. It seems to me clear, then, that, not only under the laws of war and under the laws of nations, but under the express authority of the Constitution itself, Congress possesses the rightful authority to establish military governments, as proposed by the bill under consideration."

Referring to Mr. Le Blond's anticipated war, Mr. Ingersoll said: "I desire to ask the gentleman where he is going to get his soldiers to make war upon the Government and the Congress of the United States? You will hardly find them in the rebel States. They have had enough of war; they have been thoroughly whipped, and do not desire to be whipped again. You will not get them from the loyal people of the Northern or Southern States. If you get any at all, you may drum up a few recruits from the Democratic ranks, but in the present weak and shattered condition of that party you would hardly be able to raise a very formidable army, and I tell the gentleman if the party decreases in the same ratio in the coming year as it has in the last, the whole party together would not form a respectable _corps d'armée_."

"How about the bread and butter brigade?" interposed a member.

"I did not think of that heroic and patriotic band," replied Mr. Ingersoll, "but I do not apprehend much danger from that source; it would be a bloodless conflict; we would have no use either for the sword or musket; all that would be necessary to make a conquest over them would be found in the commissary department. Order out the bread and butter and peace would be restored."

Mr. Shanklin warned the House of the danger of establishing military governments in the South. "You may be in the plenitude of power to-day," he said, in conclusion, "and you may be ousted to-morrow. And I hope, if you do not cease these outrages upon the people of the country, such as you propose here, such as are attempting to be inflicted by your Freedmen's Bureau and your Civil Rights Bills, that the time will not be long before that army which the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] seemed to think could not be raised--an army armed with ballots, and not with bayonet--will march to the polls and hurl the advocates of this and its kindred measures out of their places, and fill them with men who appreciate more highly and justly the rights of citizens and of freemen, with statesmen whose minds can grasp our whole country and its rights and its wants, and whose hearts are in sympathy with the noble, the brave, and the just, whether they live in the sunny South or the ice-bound regions of the North."

"I hail this measure," said Mr. Thayer, "as interrupting this baleful calm, which, if not disturbed by a proper exercise of legislative power upon this subject, may be succeeded by disaster and collision. It furnishes at least an initial point from which we can start in the consideration and adjustment of the great question of reconstruction. I regard this as a measure which lays the grasp of Congress upon this great question--a grasp which is to hold on to it until it shall be finally settled. I regard it as a measure which is to take that great question out of that sea of embarrassment and sluggish inactivity in which, through the course which the President has thought proper to pursue, it now rests."

"For our neglect," said Mr. Harding, of Illinois, "to exert the military power of the Government, we are responsible for the blood and suffering which disgrace this republic. Let us go back, then, or rather let us come up to where we were before, and exercise jurisdiction over the territory conquered from the rebels, which jurisdiction the President has given up to those rebels, to the great suffering and injury of the Government and of loyal people."

"Let it be remembered all the time," said Mr. Shellabarger, "that your country has a right to its life, and that the powers of your Government are given for its preservation. Let it be remembered that one portion of your republic has fallen into a state of rebellion, and is still in a state of war against your Government, and that the powers of the Government are to be exercised for the purposes of the protection and the defense of the loyal, and the disloyal too, in that part of the republic; and that, for the purpose of that defense, you are authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_, and to exercise such extraordinary powers as are necessary to the preservation of the great life of the nation. Let these things be remembered; and then let it also be remembered that the law-making power of the Government not only controls the President, but controls the purposes and the ends and the objects of war, and, of course, the movements of the armies that are to be employed in war. Let these things be remembered, and it seems to me that all the difficulties with which it is sought to surround this measure will at once disappear."

"What carried our elections overwhelmingly?" asked Mr. Hotchkiss. "It was the story of the Southern refugees told to the people of the North and the West. They told us they demanded protection. They enlisted the sympathy of Northern soldiers by telling that the very guerrillas who hung upon the skirts of our army during the war were now murdering Southern soldiers who fought on the Union side, and murdering peaceful citizens, murdering black men who were our allies. We promised the people if we were indorsed we would come back here and protect them, and yet not a step has been taken."