Chapter II: Part 2

Quite early in the session frequent requests in writing began to issue from the different committees of the Senate to which these nominations were referred, directed to the heads of the several departments having supervision of the offices to which the nominations related, asking the reasons for the suspension of officers whose places it was proposed to fill by means of the nominations submitted, and for all papers on file in their departments which showed the reasons for such suspensions. These requests foreshadowed what the senatorial construction of the law of 1869 might be, and indicated that the Senate, notwithstanding constitutional limitations, and even in the face of the repeal of the statutory provision giving it the right to pass upon suspensions by the President, was still inclined to insist, directly or indirectly, upon that right. These requests, as I have said, emanated from committees of the Senate, and were addressed to the heads of departments. As long as such requests were made by committees I had no opportunity to discuss the questions growing out of such requests with the Senate itself, or to make known directly to that body the position on this subject which I felt bound to assert. Therefore the replies made to committees by the different heads of departments stated that by direction of the President they declined furnishing the reasons and papers so requested, on the ground that the public interest would not be thereby promoted, or on the ground that such reasons and papers related to a purely executive act. Whatever language was used in these replies, they conveyed the information that the President had directed a denial of the requests made, because in his opinion the Senate could have no proper concern with the information sought to be obtained.

It may not be amiss to mention here that while this was the position assumed by the Executive in relation to suspensions, all the information of any description in the possession of the Executive or in any of the departments, which would aid in determining the character and fitness of those nominated in place of suspended officials, was cheerfully and promptly furnished to the Senate or its committees when requested.

In considering the requests made for the transmission of the reasons for suspensions, and the papers relating thereto, I could not avoid the conviction that a compliance with such requests would be to that extent a failure to protect and defend the Constitution, as well as a wrong to the great office I held in trust for the people, and which I was bound to transmit unimpaired to my successors; nor could I be unmindful of a tendency in some quarters to encroach upon executive functions, or of the eagerness with which executive concession would be seized upon as establishing precedent.

The nominations sent to the Senate remained neglected in the committees to which they had been referred; the requests of the committees for reasons and papers touching suspensions were still refused, and it became daily more apparent that a sharp contest was impending. In this condition of affairs it was plainly intimated by members of the majority in the Senate that if all charges against suspended officials were abandoned and their suspensions based entirely upon the ground that the spoils belonged to the victors, confirmations would follow. This, of course, from my standpoint, would have been untruthful and dishonest; but the suggestion indicated that in the minds of some Senators, at least, there was a determination to gain a partizan advantage by discrediting the professions of the President, who, for the time, represented the party they opposed. This manifestly could be thoroughly done by inducing him to turn his back upon the pledges he had made, and to admit, for the sake of peace, that his action arose solely from a desire to put his party friends in place.

Up to this stage of the controversy, not one of the many requests made for the reasons of suspensions or for the papers relating to them had been sent from the Senate itself; nor had any of them been addressed to the President. It may seem not only strange that, in the existing circumstances, the Senate should have so long kept in the background, but more strange that the Executive, constituting a coördinate branch of the Government, and having such exclusive concern in the pending differences, should have been so completely ignored. I cannot think it uncharitable to suggest in explanation that as long as these requests and refusals were confined to Senate committees and heads of departments, a public communication stating the position of the President in the controversy would probably be avoided; and that, as was subsequently made more apparent, there was an intent, in addressing requests to the heads of departments, to lay a foundation for the contention that not only the Senate but its committees had a right to control these heads of departments as against the President in matters relating to executive duty.

On the 17th of July, 1885, during the recess of the Senate, one George M. Duskin was suspended from the office of District Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, and John D. Burnett was designated as his successor. The latter at once took possession of the office, and entered upon the discharge of its duties; and on the 14th of December, 1885, the Senate having in the meantime convened in regular session, the nomination of Burnett was sent to that body for confirmation. This nomination, pursuant to the rules and customs of the Senate, was referred to its Committee on the Judiciary. On the 26th of December, that committee then having the nomination under consideration, one of its members addressed a communication to the Attorney-General of the United States, requesting him, “on behalf of the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate and by its direction,” to send to such member of the committee all papers and information in the possession of the Department of Justice touching the nomination of Burnett, “also all papers and information touching the suspension and proposed removal from office of George M. Duskin.” On the 11th of January, 1886, the Attorney-General responded to this request in these terms:

The Attorney-General states that he sends herewith all papers,
etc., touching the nomination referred to; and in reference to
the papers touching the suspension of Duskin from office, he
has as yet received no direction from the President in relation
to their transmission.

At this point it seems to have been decided for the first time that the Senate itself should enter upon the scene as interrogator. It was not determined, however, to invite the President to answer this new interrogator, either for the protection and defense of his high office or in self-vindication. It appears to have been also decided at this time to give another form to the effort the Senate itself was to undertake to secure the “papers and information” which its Committee had been unable to secure. In pursuance of this plan the following resolution was adopted by the Senate in executive session on the 25th of January, 1886:

Resolved, That the Attorney-General of the United States be,
and he hereby is, directed to transmit to the Senate copies of
all documents and papers that have been filed in the Department
of Justice since the 1st day of January, a.d. 1885, in relation
to the conduct of the office of District Attorney of the United
States for the Southern District of Alabama.

The language of this resolution is more adroit than ingenuous. While appearing reasonable and fair upon its face, and presenting no indication that it in any way related to a case of suspension, it quickly assumes its real complexion when examined in the light of its surroundings. The requests previously made on behalf of Senate committees had ripened into a “demand” by the Senate itself. Herein is found support for the suggestion I have made, that from the beginning there might have been an intent on the part of the Senate to claim that the heads of departments, who are members of the President’s Cabinet and his trusted associates and advisers, owed greater obedience to the Senate than to their executive chief in affairs which he and they regarded as exclusively within executive functions. As to the real meaning and purpose of the resolution, a glance at its accompanying conditions and the incidents preceding it makes manifest the insufficiency of its disguise. This resolution was adopted by the Senate in executive session, where the entire senatorial business done is the consideration of treaties and the confirmation of nominations for office. At the time of its adoption Duskin had been suspended for more than six months, his successor had for that length of time been in actual possession of the office, and this successor’s nomination was then before the Senate in executive session for confirmation. The demand was for copies of documents and papers in relation to the conduct of the office filed since January 1, 1885, thus covering a period of incumbency almost equally divided between the suspended officer and the person nominated to succeed him. The documents and papers demanded could not have been of any possible use to the Senate in executive session, except as they had a bearing either upon the suspension of the one or the nomination of the other. But as we have already seen, the Attorney-General had previously sent to a committee of the Senate all the papers he had in his custody in any way relating to the nomination and the fitness of the nominee, whether such papers had reference to the conduct of the office or otherwise. Excluding, therefore, such documents and papers embraced in the demand as related to the pending nomination, and which had already been transmitted, it was plain that there was nothing left with the Attorney-General that could be included in the demand of the Senate in its executive session except what had reference to the conduct of the previous incumbent and his suspension. It is important to recall in this connection the fact that this subtle demand of the Senate for papers relating “to the conduct of the office” followed closely upon a failure to obtain “all papers and information” touching said suspension, in response to a plain and blunt request specifying precisely what was desired.

IV

I have referred to these matters because it seems to me they indicate the animus and intent which characterized the first stages of a discussion that involved the rights and functions of the Executive branch of the Government. It was perfectly apparent that the issue was between the President and the Senate, and that the question constituting that issue was whether or not the Executive was invested with the right and power to suspend officials without the interference of the Senate or any accountability to that body for the reasons of his action. It was also manifest if it was desired to deal with this issue directly and fairly, disembarrassed by any finesse for position, it could at any time have been easily done, if only one of the many requests for reasons for suspensions, which were sent by committees of the Senate to heads of departments, had been sent by the Senate itself to the President.

Within three days after the passage by the Senate, in executive session, of the resolution directing the Attorney-General to transmit to that body the documents and papers on file relating to the management and conduct of the office from which Mr. Duskin had been removed, and to which Mr. Burnett had been nominated, the Attorney-General replied thereto as follows:

In response to the said resolution, the President of the
United States directs me to say that the papers that were in
this department relating to the fitness of John D. Burnett,
recently nominated to said office, having already been sent
to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the papers and
documents which are mentioned in the said resolution, and still
remaining in the custody of this department, having exclusive
reference to the suspension by the President of George M.
Duskin, the late incumbent of the office of District Attorney
for the Southern District of Alabama, it is not considered that
the public interests will be promoted by a compliance with said
resolution and the transmission of the papers and documents
therein mentioned to the Senate in executive session.

This response of the Attorney-General was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Early in February, 1886, a majority of the committee made a report to the Senate, in which it seems to have been claimed that all papers--whatever may be their personal, private, or confidential character--if placed on file, or, in other words, if deposited in the office of the head of a department, became thereupon official papers, and that the Senate had therefore a right to their transmittal when they had reference to the conduct of a suspended official, and when that body had under advisement the confirmation of his proposed successor. Much stress was laid upon the professions made by the President of his adherence to Civil Service reform methods, and it was broadly hinted that, in the face of six hundred and forty-three suspensions from office, these professions could hardly be sincere. Instances were cited in which papers and information had been demanded and furnished in previous administrations, and these were claimed to be precedents in favor of the position assumed by the majority of the committee. Almost at the outset of the report it was declared:

The important question, then, is whether it is within the
constitutional competence of either House of Congress to have
access to the official papers and documents in the various
public offices of the United States, created by laws enacted by
themselves.

In conclusion, the majority recommended the adoption by the Senate of the following resolutions:

Resolved, That the Senate hereby expresses its condemnation of
the refusal of the Attorney-General, under whatever influence,
to send to the Senate copies of papers called for by its
resolution of the 25th of January and set forth in the report
of the Committee on the Judiciary, as in violation of his
official duty and subversive of the fundamental principles of
the Government, and of a good administration thereof.

Resolved, That it is under these circumstances the duty of the
Senate to refuse its advice and consent to proposed removals of
officers, the documents and papers in reference to the supposed
official or personal misconduct of whom are withheld by the
Executive or any head of a department when deemed necessary by
the Senate and called for in considering the matter.

Resolved, That the provision of Section 1754 of the Revised
Statutes, declaring that persons honorably discharged from the
military or naval service by reason of disability resulting
from wounds or sickness incurred in the line of duty shall be
preferred for appointment to civil offices provided they are
found to possess the business capacity necessary for the proper
discharge of the duties of such offices, ought to be faithfully
and fully put in execution, and that to remove or to propose
to remove any such soldier whose faithfulness, competency, and
character are above reproach, and to give place to another who
has not rendered such service, is a violation of the spirit
of the law and of the practical gratitude the people and
the Government of the United States owe to the defenders of
constitutional liberty and the integrity of the Government.

The first of these resolutions contains charges which, if true, should clearly furnish grounds for the impeachment of the Attorney-General--if not the President under whose “influence” he concededly refused to submit the papers demanded by the Senate. A public officer whose acts are “in violation of his official duty and subversive of the fundamental principles of the Government, and of a good administration thereof,” can scarcely add anything to his predicament of guilt.

The second resolution has the merit of honesty in confessing that the intent and object of the demand upon the Attorney-General was to secure the demanded papers and documents for the purpose of passing upon the President’s reasons for suspension. Beyond this, the declaration it contains, that it was the “duty of the Senate to refuse its advice and consent to proposed removals of officers” when the papers and documents relating to their “supposed official or personal misconduct” were withheld, certainly obliged the Senate, if the resolution should be adopted, and if the good faith of that body in the controversy should be assumed, to reject or ignore all nominations made to succeed suspended officers unless the documents and papers upon which the suspension was based were furnished and the Senate was thus given an opportunity to review and reverse or confirm the President’s executive act, resting, by the very terms of existing law, “in his discretion.”

The third resolution is grandly phrased, and its sentiment is patriotic, noble, and inspiriting. Inasmuch, however, as the removal of veteran soldiers from office did not seem to assume any considerable prominence in the arraignment of the administration, the object of the resolution is slightly obscure, unless, as was not unusual in those days, the cause of the old soldier was impressed into the service of the controversy for purposes of general utility.

A minority report was subsequently submitted, signed by all the Democratic members of the committee, in which the allegations of the majority report were sharply controverted. It was therein positively asserted that no instance could be found in the practice of the Government whose similarity in its essential features entitled it to citation as an authoritative precedent; and that neither the Constitution nor the existing law afforded any justification for the action of the Senate in the promises.

These two reports, of course, furnished abundant points of controversy. About the time of their submission, moreover, another document was addressed to the Senate, which, whatever else may be said of it, seems to have contributed considerably to the spirit and animation of the discussion that ensued. This was a message from the President, in which his position concerning the matter in dispute was defined. In this communication the complete and absolute responsibility of the President for all suspensions and the fact that the Executive had been afforded no opportunity to speak for himself was stated in the following terms:

Though these suspensions are my executive acts based upon
considerations addressed to me alone, and for which I am wholly
responsible, I have had no invitation from the Senate to
state the position which I have felt constrained to assume in
relation to the same, or to interpret for myself my acts and
motives in the premises. In this condition of affairs I have
forborne addressing the Senate upon the subject, lest I might
be accused of thrusting myself unbidden upon the attention of
that body.

This statement was accompanied by the expression of a hope that the misapprehension of the Executive position, indicated in the majority report just presented and published, might excuse his then submitting a communication. He commented upon the statement in the report that “the important question, then, is whether it is within the constitutional competence of either House of Congress to have access to the official papers and documents in the various public offices of the United States, created by laws enacted by themselves,” by suggesting that though public officials of the United States might be created by laws enacted by the two Houses of Congress, this fact did not necessarily subject their offices to congressional control, but, on the contrary, that “these instrumentalities were created for the benefit of the people, and to answer the general purposes of government under the Constitution and the laws; and that they are unencumbered by any lien in favor of either branch of Congress growing out of their construction, and unembarrassed by any obligation to the Senate as the price of their creation.” While not conceding that the Senate had in any case the right to review Executive action in suspending officials, the President disclaimed any intention to withhold official papers and documents when requested; and as to such papers and documents, he expressed his willingness, because they were official, to continue, as he had theretofore done in all cases, to lay them before the Senate without inquiry as to the use to be made of them, and relying upon the Senate for their legitimate utilization. The proposition was expressly denied, however, that papers and documents inherently private or confidential, addressed to the President or a head of department, having reference to an act so entirely executive in its nature as the suspension of an official, and which was by the Constitution as well as by existing law placed within the discretion of the President, were changed in their nature and instantly became official when placed for convenience or for other reasons in the custody of a public department. The contention of the President was thus stated:

There is no mysterious power of transmutation in departmental
custody, nor is there magic in the undefined and sacred
solemnity of departmental files. If the presence of these
papers in the public office is a stumbling-block in the way of
the performance of senatorial duty, it can be easily removed.

The Senate’s purposes were characterized in the message as follows:

The requests and demands which by the score have for nearly
three months been presented to the different departments of
the Government, whatever may be their form, have but one
complexion. They assume the right of the Senate to sit in
judgment upon the exercise of my exclusive discretion and
Executive function, for which I am solely responsible to the
people from whom I have so lately received the sacred trust of
office. My oath to support and defend the Constitution, my duty
to the people who have chosen me to execute the powers of their
great office and not relinquish them, and my duty to the chief
magistracy which I must preserve unimpaired in all its dignity
and vigor, compel me to refuse compliance with these demands.

This was immediately supplemented by the following concession of the independent and unlimited power of the Senate in the matter of confirmation:

To the end that the service may be improved, the Senate is
invited to the fullest scrutiny of the persons submitted to
them for public office, in recognition of the constitutional
power of that body to advise and consent to their appointment.
I shall continue, as I have thus far done, to furnish, at the
request of the confirming body, all the information I possess
touching the fitness of the nominees placed before them for
their action, both when they are proposed to fill vacancies
and to take the place of suspended officials. Upon a refusal
to confirm, I shall not assume the right to ask the reasons
for the action of the Senate nor question its determination. I
cannot think that anything more is required to secure worthy
incumbents in public office than a careful and independent
discharge of our respective duties within their well-defined
limits.

As it was hardly concealed that by no means the least important senatorial purpose in the pending controversy was to discredit the Civil Service reform pledges and professions of the Executive, this issue was thus distinctly invited at the close of the message:

Every pledge I have made by which I have placed a limitation
upon my exercise of executive power has been faithfully
redeemed. Of course the pretense is not put forth that no
mistakes have been committed; but not a suspension has been
made except it appeared to my satisfaction that the public
welfare would be promoted thereby. Many applications for
suspension have been denied, and an adherence to the rule laid
down to govern my action as to such suspensions has caused
much irritation and impatience on the part of those who have
insisted upon more changes in the offices.

The pledges I have made were made to the people, and to them I
am responsible for the manner in which they have been redeemed.
I am not responsible to the Senate, and I am unwilling to
submit my actions and official conduct to them for judgment.

There are no grounds for an allegation that the fear of being
found false to my professions influences me in declining to
submit to the demands of the Senate. I have not constantly
refused to suspend officials and thus incurred the displeasure
of political friends, and yet wilfully broken faith with the
people, for the sake of being false to them.

Neither the discontent of party friends nor the allurements,
constantly offered, of confirmation of appointees conditioned
upon the avowal that suspensions have been made on party
grounds alone, nor the threat proposed in the resolutions now
before the Senate that no confirmation will be made unless
the demands of that body be complied with, are sufficient to
discourage or deter me from following in the way which I am
convinced leads to better government for the people.

The temper and disposition of the Senate may be correctly judged, I think, from the remarks made upon the presentation of this message by the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and the acknowledged leader of the majority. On a formal motion that the message be printed and lie upon the table, he moved as an amendment that it be referred to the committee of which he was chairman, and said:

I merely wish to remark, in moving to refer this document to
the Committee on the Judiciary, that it very vividly brought to
my mind the communications of King Charles I to the Parliament,
telling them what, in conducting their affairs, they ought to
do and ought not to do; and I think I am safe in saying that
it is the first time in the history of the republican United
States that any President of the United States has undertaken
to interfere with the deliberations of either House of Congress
on questions pending before them, otherwise than by messages
on the state of the Union which the Constitution commands him
to make from time to time. This message is devoted simply to
a question for the Senate itself, in regard to itself, that
it has under consideration. That is its singularity. I think
it will strike reflecting people in this country as somewhat
extraordinary--if in this day of reform anything at all can be
thought extraordinary.

King Charles I fared badly at the hands of the Parliament; but it was most reassuring to know that, after all said and done, the Senate of the United States was not a bloodthirsty body, and that the chairman of its Committee on the Judiciary was one of the most courteous and amiable of men--at least when outside of the Senate.

The debate upon the questions presented by the report and resolutions recommended by the majority of the committee, and by the minority report and the presidential message, occupied almost exclusively the sessions of the Senate for over two weeks. More than twenty-five Senators participated, and the discussion covered such a wide range of argument that all considerations relevant to the subject, and some not clearly related to it, seem to have been presented. At the close of the debate, the resolution condemning the Attorney-General for withholding the papers and documents which the Senate had demanded was passed by thirty-two votes in the affirmative and twenty-five in the negative; the next resolution, declaring it to be the duty of the Senate to refuse its advice and consent to proposed removals of officers when papers and documents in reference to their alleged misconduct were withheld, was adopted by a majority of only a single vote; and the proclamation contained in the third resolution, setting forth the obligations of the Government and its people to the veterans of the civil war, was unanimously approved, except for one dissenting voice.

The controversy thus closed arose from the professed anxiety of the majority in the Senate to guard the interests of an official who was suspended from office in July, 1885, and who was still claimed to be in a condition of suspension. In point of fact, however, that official’s term of office expired by limitation on the 20th of December, 1885--before the demand for papers and documents relating to his conduct in office was made, before the resolutions and reports of the Committee on the Judiciary were presented, and before the commencement of the long discussion in defense of the right of a suspended incumbent. This situation escaped notice in Executive quarters, because the appointee to succeed the suspended officer having been actually installed and in the discharge of the duties of the position for more than six months, and his nomination having been sent to the Senate very soon after the beginning of its session, the situation or duration of the former incumbent’s term was not kept in mind. The expiration of his term was, however, distinctly alleged in the Senate on the second day of the discussion, and by the first speaker in opposition to the majority report. The question of suspension or removal was therefore eliminated from the case and the discussion as related to the person suspended continued as a sort of post-mortem proceeding. Shortly after the resolutions of the committee were passed, the same person who superseded the suspended and defunct officer was again nominated to succeed him by reason of the expiration of his term; and this nomination was confirmed.

At last, after stormy weather, Duskin, the suspended, and Burnett, his successor, were at rest. The earnest contention that beat about their names ceased, and no shout of triumph disturbed the supervening quiet.

V

I have thus attempted, after fourteen years of absolute calm, to recount the prominent details of the strife; and I hope that interest in the subject is still sufficient to justify me in a further brief reference to some features of the dispute and certain incidents that followed it, which may aid to a better appreciation of its true character and motive.

Of the elaborate speeches made in support of the resolutions and the committee’s majority report, seven dealt more or less prominently with the President’s Civil Service reform professions and his pledges against the removal of officials on purely partizan grounds. It seems to have been assumed that these pledges had been violated. At any rate, without any evidence worthy of the name, charges of such violation ranged all the way from genteel insinuation to savage accusation. Senators who would have stoutly refused to vote for the spoils system broadly intimated or openly declared that if suspensions had been made confessedly on partizan grounds they would have interposed no opposition. The majority seem to have especially admired and applauded the antics of one of their number, who, in intervals of lurid and indiscriminate vituperation, gleefully mingled ridicule for Civil Service reform with praise of the forbidding genius of partizan spoils. In view of these deliverances and as bearing upon their relevancy, as well as indicating their purpose, let me again suggest that the issue involved in the discussion as selected by the majority of the Committee on the Judiciary, and distinctly declared in their report, was whether, as a matter of right, or, as the report expresses it, as within “constitutional competence,” either House of Congress should “have access to the official papers and documents in the various public offices of the United States, created by laws enacted by themselves.” It will be readily seen that if the question was one of senatorial right, the President’s Civil Service reform pledges had no honest or legitimate place in the discussion.

The debate and the adoption of the resolutions reported by the committee caused no surrender of the Executive position. Nevertheless, confirmations of those nominated in place of suspended officers soon began, and I cannot recall any further embarrassment or difficulty on that score. I ought to add, however, that in many cases, at least, these confirmations were accompanied by reports from the committee to which they had been referred, stating that the late incumbent had been suspended for “political reasons,” or on account of “offensive partizanship,” or for a like reason, differently expressed, and that nothing was alleged against them affecting their personal character. If the terms thus used by the committee in designating causes for suspension mean that the persons suspended were guilty of offensive partizanship or political offenses, as distinguished from personal offenses and moral or official delinquencies, I am satisfied with the statement. And here it occurs to me to suggest that if offenses and moral or official delinquencies, not partizan in their nature, had existed, they would have been subjects for official inspection and report, and such reports, being official documents, would have been submitted to the committee or to the Senate, according to custom, and would have told their own story and excluded committee comment.

It is worth recalling, when referring to committee reports on nomination, that they belong to the executive business of the Senate, and are, therefore, among the secrets of that body. Those I have mentioned, nevertheless, were by special order made public, and published in the proceedings of the Senate in open session. This extraordinary, if not unprecedented, action, following long after the conclusion of the dispute, easily interprets its own intent, and removes all covering from a design to accomplish partizan advantage. The declaration of the resolutions that it was the duty of the Senate “to refuse its advice and consent to the proposed removal of officers” when the papers and documents relating to their supposed misconduct were withheld, was abandoned, and the irrevocable removal of such officers by confirmation of their successors was entered upon, with or without the much-desired papers and documents, and was supplemented by the publication of committee reports, from which the secrecy of the executive session had been removed, to the end that, pursuant to a fixed determination, an unfavorable senatorial interpretation might be publicly given to the President’s action in making suspensions.

I desire to call attention to one other incident connected with the occurrences already narrated. On the 14th of December, 1885,--prior to the first request or demand upon any executive department relating to suspensions, and of course before any controversy upon the subject arose,--a bill was introduced in the Senate by one of the most distinguished and able members of the majority in that body, and also a member of its Committee on the Judiciary, for the total and complete repeal of the law of 1869, which, it will be remembered, furnished the basis for the contention we have considered. This repealing bill was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where it slumbered until the 21st of June, 1886,--nearly three months after the close of the contention,--when it was returned to the Senate with a favorable report, the chairman of the committee alone dissenting. When the bill was presented for discussion, the Senator who introduced it explained its object as follows:

This bill repeals what is left of what is called the Tenure of
Office act, passed under the administration of Andrew Johnson,
and as a part of the contest with that President. It leaves
the law as it was from the beginning of the Government until
that time, and it repeals the provision which authorizes the
suspension of civil officers and requires the submission of
that suspension to the Senate.

On a later day, in discussing the bill, he said, after referring to the early date of its introduction:

It did not seem to me to be quite becoming to ask the Senate to
deal with this general question while the question which arose
between the President and the Senate as to the interpretation
and administration of the existing law was pending. I thought
as a party man that I had hardly the right to interfere with
the matter which was under the special charge of my honorable
friend from Vermont, by challenging a debate upon the general
subject from a different point of view. This question has
subsided and is past, and it seems to me now proper to ask the
Senate to vote upon the question whether it will return to the
ancient policy of the Government, to the rule of public conduct
which existed from 1789 until 1867, and which has practically
existed, notwithstanding the condition of the statute-book,
since the accession to power of General Grant on the 4th of
March, 1869.

The personnel of the committee which reported favorably upon this repealing bill had not been changed since all the members of it politically affiliating with the majority in the Senate joined in recommending the accusatory report and resolutions, which, when adopted, after sharp and irritating discussion, caused the question between the President and the Senate, in the language of the introducer of the repealing bill, to “subside.”

This repealing act passed the Senate on the 17th of December, 1886, by thirty affirmative votes against twenty-two in the negative. A short time afterward it passed in the House of Representatives by a majority of one hundred and five.

Thus was an unpleasant controversy happily followed by an expurgation of the last pretense of statutory sanction to an encroachment upon constitutional Executive prerogatives, and thus was a time-honored interpretation of the Constitution restored to us. The President, freed from the Senate’s claim of tutelage, became again the independent agent of the people, representing a coördinate branch of their Government, charged with responsibilities which, under his oath, he ought not to avoid or divide with others, and invested with powers, not to be surrendered, but to be used, under the guidance of patriotic intention and an unclouded conscience.

THE GOVERNMENT IN THE CHICAGO STRIKE OF 1894

I

The President inaugurated on the fourth day of March, 1893, and those associated with him as Cabinet officials, encountered, during their term of executive duty, unusual and especially perplexing difficulties. The members of that administration who still survive, in recalling the events of this laborious service, cannot fail to fix upon the years 1894 and 1895 as the most troublous and anxious of their incumbency. During those years unhappy currency complications compelled executive resort to heroic treatment for the preservation of our nation’s financial integrity, and forced upon the administration a constant, unrelenting struggle for sound money; a long and persistent executive effort to accomplish beneficent and satisfactory tariff reform so nearly miscarried as to bring depression and disappointment to the verge of discouragement; and it was at the close of the year 1895 that executive insistence upon the Monroe Doctrine culminated in a situation that gave birth to solemn thoughts of war. Without attempting to complete the list of troubles and embarrassments that beset the administration during these luckless years, I have reserved for separate and more detailed treatment one of its incidents not yet mentioned, which immensely increased executive anxiety and foreboded the most calamitous and far-reaching consequences.

In the last days of June, 1894, a very determined and ugly labor disturbance broke out in the city of Chicago. Almost in a night it grew to full proportions of malevolence and danger. Rioting and violence were its early accompaniments; and it spread so swiftly that within a few days it had reached nearly the entire Western and Southwestern sections of our country. Railroad transportation was especially involved in its attacks. The carriage of United States mails was interrupted, interstate commerce was obstructed, and railroad property was riotously destroyed.

This disturbance is often called “The Chicago Strike.” It is true that its beginning was in that city; and the headquarters of those who inaugurated it and directed its operations were located there; but the name thus given to it is an entire misnomer so far as it applies to the scope and reach of the trouble. Railroad operations were more or less affected in twenty-seven States and Territories; and in all these the interposition of the general Government was to a greater or less extent invoked.

This wide-spread trouble had its inception in a strike by the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company, a corporation located and doing business at the town of Pullman, which is within the limits of the city of Chicago. This company was a manufacturing corporation--or at least it was not a railroad corporation. Its main object was the operation and running of sleeping- and parlor-cars upon railroads under written contracts; but its charter contemplated the manufacture of cars as well; and soon after its incorporation it began the manufacture of its own cars and, subsequently, the manufacture of cars for the general market.

The strike on the part of the employees of this company began on the eleventh day of May, 1894, and was provoked by a reduction of wages.

The American Railway Union was organized in the summer of 1893. It was professedly an association of all the different classes of railway employees. In its scope and intent it was the most compact and effective organization of the kind ever attempted. Its purpose was a thorough unification of defensive and offensive effort among railway employees under one central direction, and the creation of a combination embracing all such employees, which should make the grievances of any section of its membership a common cause. Those prominent in this project estimated that various other organizations of railroad employees then existing had a membership of 102,000 in the United States and neighboring countries; and they claimed that these brotherhoods, because of divided councils and for other reasons, were ineffective, and that nearly 1,000,000 railroad employees still remained unorganized.

The wonderful growth of this new combination is made apparent by the fact that between the month of August, 1893, and the time it became involved in the Pullman strike, in June, 1894, it had enrolled nearly 150,000 members.

The employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company could not on any reasonable and consistent theory be regarded as eligible to membership in an organization devoted to the interests of railway employees; and yet, during the months of March, April, and May, 1894, it appears that nearly 4000 of these employees were enrolled in the American Railway Union.

This, to say the least of it, was an exceedingly unfortunate proceeding, since it created a situation which implicated in a comparatively insignificant quarrel between the managers of an industrial establishment and their workmen the large army of the Railway Union. It was the membership of these workmen in the Railway Union, and the union’s consequent assumption of their quarrel, that gave it the proportions of a tremendous disturbance, paralyzing the most important business interests, obstructing the functions of the Government, and disturbing social peace and order....

No injury to the property of the Pullman Palace Car Company was done or attempted while the strike was confined to its employees; and during that time very little disorder of any kind occurred.

It so happened, however, that in June, 1894, after the strike at Pullman had continued for about one month, a regular stated convention of the American Railway Union was held in the city of Chicago, which was attended by delegates from local branches of the organization in different States, as well as by representatives of its members among the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company. At this convention the trouble at Pullman was considered, and after earnest efforts on the part of the Railway Union to bring about a settlement, a resolution was, on the twenty-second day of June, passed by the convention, declaring that unless the Pullman Palace Car Company should adjust the grievances of its employees before noon of the twenty-sixth day of June, the members of the American Railway Union would, after that date, refuse to handle Pullman cars and equipment.

The twenty-sixth day of June arrived without any change in the attitude of the parties to the Pullman controversy; and thereupon the order made by the American Railway Union forbidding the handling of Pullman cars, became operative throughout its entire membership.

At this time the Pullman Palace Car Company was furnishing drawing-room and sleeping-car accommodations to the traveling public under contracts with numerous railway companies, and was covering by this service about one hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of railway, or approximately three fourths of all the railroad mileage of the country. The same railroad companies which had contracted to use these Pullman cars upon their lines had contracts with the United States Government for the carriage of mails, and were, of course, also largely engaged in interstate commerce. It need hardly be said that, of necessity, the trains on which the mails were carried and which served the purpose of interstate commerce were, very generally, those to which the Pullman cars were also attached.

The president of the Railway Union was one Eugene V. Debs. In a sworn statement afterward made he gave the following description of the results of the interference of the union in the Pullman dispute:

The employees, obedient to the order of the convention, at
once, on the 26th, refused to haul Pullman cars. The switchmen,
in the first place, refused to attach a Pullman car to a train,
and that is where the trouble began; and then, when a switchman
would be discharged for that, they would all simultaneously
quit, as they had agreed to do. One department after another
was involved until the Illinois Central was practically
paralyzed, and the Rock Island and other roads in their turn.
Up to the first day of July, or after the strike had been in
progress five days, the railway managers, as we believe, were
completely defeated. Their immediate resources were exhausted,
their properties were paralyzed, and they were unable to
operate their trains. Our men were intact at every point, firm,
quiet, and yet determined, and no sign of violence or disorder
anywhere. That was the condition on the thirtieth day of June
and the first day of July.

The officers of the Railway Union from their headquarters in the city of Chicago gave directions for the maintenance and management of the strike, which were quickly transmitted to distant railroad points and were there promptly executed. As early as the 28th of June, two days after the beginning of the strike ordered by the Railway Union at Chicago, information was received at Washington from the Post-Office Department that on the Southern Pacific System, between Portland and San Francisco, Ogden and San Francisco, and Los Angeles and San Francisco, the mails were completely obstructed, and that the strikers refused to permit trains to which Pullman cars were attached to run over the lines mentioned. Thereupon Attorney-General Olney immediately sent the following telegraphic despatch to the United States district attorneys in the State of California:

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1894.

See that the passage of regular trains, carrying United States
mails in the usual and ordinary way, as contemplated by the
act of Congress and directed by the Postmaster-General, is not
obstructed. Procure warrants or any other available process
from United States courts against any and all persons engaged
in such obstructions, and direct the marshal to execute the
same by such number of deputies or such posse as may be
necessary.

On the same day, and during a number of days immediately following, complaints of a similar character, sometimes accompanied by charges of forcible seizure of trains and other violent disorders, poured in upon the Attorney-General from all parts of the West and Southwest. These complaints came from post-office officials, from United States marshals and district attorneys, from railroad managers, and from other officials and private citizens. In all cases of substantial representation of interference with the carriage of mails, a despatch identical with that already quoted was sent by the Attorney-General to the United States district attorneys in the disturbed localities; and this was supplemented, whenever necessary, by such other prompt action as the different emergencies required.

I shall not enter upon an enumeration of all the disorders and violence, the defiance of law and authority, and the obstructions of national functions and duties, which occurred in many localities as a consequence of this labor contention, thus tremendously reinforced and completely under way. It is my especial purpose to review the action taken by the Government for the maintenance of its own authority and the protection of the interests intrusted to its keeping, so far as they were endangered by this disturbance; and I do not intend to specifically deal with the incidents of the strike except in so far as a reference to them may be necessary to show conditions which not only justified but actually obliged the Government to resort to stern and unusual measures in the assertion of its prerogatives.

Inasmuch, therefore, as the city of Chicago was the birthplace of the disturbance and the home of its activities, and because it was the field of its most pronounced and malign manifestations, as well as the place of its final extinction, I shall meet the needs of my subject if I supplement what has been already said by a recital of events occurring at this central point. In doing this, I shall liberally embody documents, orders, instructions, and reports which I hope will not prove tiresome, since they supply the facts I desire to present, at first hand and more impressively than they could be presented by any words of mine.

Owing to the enforced relationship of Chicago to the strike which started within its borders, and because of its importance as a center of railway traffic, Government officials at Washington were not surprised by the early and persistent complaints of mail and interstate commerce obstructions which reached them from that city. It was from the first anticipated that this would be the seat of the most serious complications, and the place where the strong arm of the law would be most needed. In these circumstances it would have been a criminal neglect of duty if those charged with the protection of governmental agencies and the enforcement of orderly obedience and submission to Federal authority, had been remiss in preparations for any emergency in that quarter.

On the thirtieth day of June the district attorney at Chicago reported by telegraph that mail trains in the suburbs of Chicago were, on the previous night, stopped by strikers, that an engine had been cut off and disabled, and that conditions were growing more and more likely to culminate in the stoppage of all trains; and he recommended that the marshal be authorized to employ a force of special deputies who should be placed on trains to protect mails and detect the parties guilty of such interference. In reply to this despatch Attorney-General Olney on the same day authorized the marshal to employ additional deputies as suggested, and designated Edwin Walker, an able and prominent attorney in Chicago, as special counsel for the Government, to assist the district attorney in any legal proceedings that might be instituted. He also notified the district attorney of the steps thus taken, and enjoined upon him that “action ought to be prompt and vigorous,” and also directed him to confer with the special counsel who had been employed. In a letter of the same date addressed to this special counsel, the Attorney-General, in making suggestions concerning legal proceedings, wrote: “It has seemed to me that if the rights of the United States were vigorously asserted in Chicago, the origin and center of the demonstration, the result would be to make it a failure everywhere else, and to prevent its spread over the entire country”; and in that connection he indicated that it might be advisable, instead of relying entirely upon warrants issued under criminal statutes against persons actually guilty of the offense of obstructing United States mails, to apply to the courts for injunctions which would restrain and prevent any attempt to commit such offense. This suggestion contemplated the inauguration of legal proceedings in a regular and usual way to restrain those prominently concerned in the interference with the mails and the obstruction of interstate commerce, basing such proceedings on the proposition that, under the Constitution and laws, these subjects were in the exclusive care of the Government of the United States, and that for their protection the Federal courts were competent under general principles of law to intervene by injunction; and on the further ground that under an act of Congress, passed July 2, 1890, conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States were declared to be illegal, and the circuit courts of the United States were therein expressly given jurisdiction to prevent and restrain such conspiracies.

On the first day of July the district attorney reported to the Attorney-General that he was preparing a bill of complaint to be presented to the court the next day, on an application for an injunction. He further reported that very little mail and no freight was moving, that the marshal was using all his force to prevent riots and the obstruction of tracks, and that this force was clearly inadequate. On the same day the marshal reported that the situation was desperate, that he had sworn in over four hundred deputies, that many more would be required to protect mail trains, and that he expected great trouble the next day. He further expressed the opinion that one hundred riot guns were needed.