Part 13

And much more in a worse vein.

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Mr. Conness, of California, adopted another style:--

“And my idea of the great Senator from Massachusetts (by which name I am very proud to call him, and which is so well deserved) is, that he is never so great as when he rises and speaks in behalf of generosity, of humanity, when he exhibits to us the intellect and the affections in that happy commingling that is the sweetest and the most beautiful rule of human life and action.”

Mr. Yates, of Illinois, bore his testimony:--

“I almost feel that the Senator from Massachusetts is a barbarian [_laughter_] of the highest order, in attacking this young lady.”

Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, said:--

“I have the highest respect for the opinions of my friend from Massachusetts upon all classical subjects, and particularly upon those which relate to most of the fine arts; but in statuary I propose to follow the lead of my honorable friend from Ohio [Mr. WADE], who I think is infinitely superior.” [_Laughter._]

On the other hand, Mr. Howard, of Michigan, said:--

“I know, perhaps, as much of the ability of the young lady to whom it is proposed to give this job as most members of this body. I have met her frequently, as other members of this body have done; and surely she has shown no lack of that peculiar talent known commonly as ‘lobbying,’ in pressing forward her enterprise and bringing it to the attention of Senators.”

The statue was made. Mr. Delano, Secretary of the Interior, in a communication addressed to the Vice-President, January 10, 1871, reports: “The statue in marble has been completed to my entire satisfaction, and I have this day instructed the architect of the Capitol to take charge of it.”[58] The feelings of artists found expression in words of Hiram Powers, the eminent American sculptor, at Florence, which appeared in the New York _Evening Post_:--

“I suppose that you, as well as all other well-wishers for art in our country, have been mortified, if not really disgusted, at the success of the Vinnie Ream statue of our glorious old Lincoln. An additional five thousand dollars paid for this caricature! ---- ---- was bad enough; but this last act of Congress, in favor of a female lobby member, who has no more talent for art than the carver of weeping-willows on tombstones, really fills the mind of the genuine student of art (who thinks that years of profound study of art as a science are necessary) with despair.”

THE ONE MAN POWER _vs._ CONGRESS.

THE PRESENT SITUATION.

ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE ANNUAL LECTURES OF THE PARKER FRATERNITY, AT THE MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, OCTOBER 2, 1866.

ADDRESS.

MR. PRESIDENT,--More than a year has passed since I last had the honor of addressing my fellow-citizens of Massachusetts. I then dwelt on what seemed the proper policy towards the States recently in rebellion,--insisting that it was our duty, while renouncing Indemnity for the past, to obtain at least Security for the future; and this security, I maintained, could be found only in exclusion of ex-Rebels from political power, and in irreversible guaranties especially applicable to the national creditor and the national freedman.[59] During intervening months, the country has been agitated by this question, which was perplexed by unexpected difference between the President and Congress. The President insists upon installing ex-Rebels in political power, and sets at nought the claim of guaranties and the idea of security for the future, while he denies to Congress any control over the question, taking it all to himself. Congress asserts control, and endeavors to exclude ex-Rebels from political power and establish guaranties, to the end that there may be security for the future. Meanwhile the States recently in rebellion, with the exception of Tennessee, are without representation. Thus stands the case.

The two parties are the President, on the one side, and the people of the United States in Congress assembled, on the other side,--the first representing the Executive, the second representing the Legislative. It is _The One Man Power_ vs. _Congress_. Of course, each performs its part in the government; but until now it has always been supposed that the legislative gave law to the executive, and not that the executive gave law to the legislative. This irrational assumption becomes more astonishing, when it is considered that the actual President, besides being the creature of circumstance, is inferior in ability and character, while the House of Representatives is eminent in both respects. A President who has already sunk below any other President, even James Buchanan, madly undertakes to rule a House of Representatives which there is reason to believe is the best that has sat since the formation of the Constitution. Looking at the two parties, we are tempted to exclaim, Such a President dictating to such a Congress! It was said of Gustavus Adolphus, that he drilled the Diet of Sweden to vote or be silent at the word of command; but Andrew Johnson is not Gustavus Adolphus, and the American Congress is not the Diet of Sweden.

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The question at issue is one of the vastest ever presented for practical decision, involving the name and weal of the Republic at home and abroad. It is not a military question; it is a question of statesmanship. We are to secure by counsel what was won by war. Failure now will make the war itself a failure; surrender now will undo all our victories. Let the President prevail, and straightway the plighted faith of the Republic will be broken,--the national creditor and the national freedman will be sacrificed,--the Rebellion itself will flaunt its insulting power,--the whole country, in length and breadth, will be disturbed,--and the Rebel region will be handed over to misrule and anarchy. Let Congress prevail, and all this will be reversed: the plighted faith of the Republic will be preserved; the national creditor and the national freedman will be protected; the Rebellion itself will be trampled out forever; the whole country, in length and breadth, will be at peace; and the Rebel region, no longer harassed by controversy and degraded by injustice, will enjoy the richest fruits of security and reconciliation. To labor for this cause may well tempt the young and rejoice the old.

And now, to-day, I again protest against any present admission of ex-Rebels to the great partnership of this Republic, and I renew the claim of irreversible guaranties, especially applicable to the national creditor and the national freedman,--insisting now, as I did a year ago, that it is our duty, while renouncing Indemnity for the past, to obtain at least Security for the future. At the close of a terrible war, wasting our treasure, murdering our fellow-citizens, filling the land with funerals, maiming and wounding multitudes whom Death had spared, and breaking up the very foundations of peace, our first duty is to provide safeguards for the future. This can be only by provisions, sure, fundamental, and irrepealable, fixing forever the results of the war, the obligations of the Government, and the equal rights of all. Such is the suggestion of common prudence and of self-defence, as well as of common honesty. To this end we must make haste slowly. States which precipitated themselves out of Congress must not be permitted to precipitate themselves back. They must not enter the Halls they treasonably deserted, until we have every reasonable assurance of future good conduct. We must not admit them, and then repent our folly. The verses in which the satirist renders the quaint conceit of the old Parliamentary orator, verses revived by Mr. Webster, and on another occasion used by myself, furnish the key to our duty:--

“I hear a lion in the lobby roar: Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door, And keep him there? or shall we let him in, To try if we can turn him out again?”[60]

I am against letting the monster in, until he is no longer terrible in mouth or paw.

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But, while holding this ground of prudence, I desire to disclaim every sentiment of vengeance or punishment, and also every thought of delay or procrastination. Here I do not yield to the President, or to any other person. Nobody more anxious than I to see this chasm closed forever.

There is a long way and a short way. There is a long time and a short time. If there be any whose policy is for the longest way or for the longest time, I am not of the number. I am for the shortest way, and also for the shortest time. And I object to the interference of the President, because, whether intentionally or unintentionally, he interposes delay and keeps the chasm open. More than all others, the President, by officious assumptions, has lengthened the way and lengthened the time. Of this there can be no doubt.

From all quarters we learn that after the surrender of Lee the Rebels were ready for any terms, if they could escape with life. They were vanquished, and they knew it. The Rebellion was crushed, and they knew it. They hardly expected to save a small fraction of property. They did not expect to save political power. They were too sensible not to see that participants in rebellion could not pass at once into the copartnership of government. They made up their minds to exclusion. They were submissive. There was nothing they would not do, _even to the extent of enfranchising the freedmen and providing for them homesteads_. Had the National Government taken advantage of this plastic condition, it might have stamped Equal Rights upon the whole people, as upon molten wax, while it fixed the immutable conditions of permanent peace. The question of Reconstruction would have been settled before it arose. It is sad to think that this was not done. Perhaps in all history there is no instance of such an opportunity lost. Truly should our country say in penitential supplication, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”

Do not take this on my authority. Listen to those on the spot, who have seen with their own eyes. A brave officer of our army writes from Alabama:--

“I believe the mass of the people could have been easily controlled, if none of the excepted classes had received pardon. These classes did not expect anything more than life, and even feared for that. Let me condense the whole subject. At the surrender, the South could have been moulded at will; but it is now as stiff-necked and rebellious as ever.”

In the same vein another officer testifies from Texas:--

“There is one thing, however, that is making against the speedy return of quietness, not only in this State, but throughout the entire South, _and that is the Reconstruction policy of President Johnson_. It is doing more to unsettle this country than people who are not practical observers of its workings have any idea of. Before this policy was made known, the people were prepared to accept anything. They expected to be treated as rebels,--their leaders being punished, and the property of others confiscated. But the moment it was made known, all their assurance returned. Rebels have again become arrogant and exacting; Treason stalks through the land unabashed.”

This testimony might be multiplied indefinitely. From city and country, from highway and by-way, there is but one voice. When, therefore, the President, in opprobrious terms, complains of Congress as interposing delay, I reply to him: “No, Sir, it is you, who, by unexpected and most perverse assumption, have put off the glad day of security and reconciliation, so much longed for. It is you who have inaugurated anew that malignant sectionalism, which, so long as it exists, will keep the Union divided in fact, if not in name. Sir, you are the Disunionist.”

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Glance, if you please, at that Presidential policy--so constantly called “my policy”--now so vehemently pressed upon the country, and you will find that it pivots on at least two alarming blunders, as can be easily seen: _first_, in setting up the One Man Power as the source of jurisdiction over this great question; and, _secondly_, in using the One Man Power for the restoration of Rebels to place and influence, so that good Unionists, whether white or black, are rejected, and the Rebellion itself is revived in the new governments. Each of these assumptions is an enormous blunder. You see that I use a mild term to characterize such a double-headed usurpation.

* * * * *

Pray, Sir, where in the Constitution do you find any sanction of the One Man Power as source of this extraordinary jurisdiction? I had always supposed that the President was the Executive,--bound to see the laws faithfully executed, but not empowered to make laws. The Constitution expressly says: “The Executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” But the Legislative power is elsewhere. According to the Constitution, “All Legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” And yet the President has assumed legislative power, even to the extent of making laws and constitutions for States. You all know, that, at the close of the war, when the Rebel States were without lawful governments, he assumed to supply them. In this business of Reconstruction he assumed to determine who should vote, and also to affix conditions for adoption by the conventions. Look, if you please, at the character of this assumption. The President, from the Executive Mansion at Washington, reaches his long executive arm into certain States and dictates constitutions. Surely here is nothing executive; it is not even military. It is legislative, pure and simple, and nothing else. It is an attempt by the One Man Power to do what can be done only by the legislative branch of Government. And yet the President, perversely absorbing to himself all power over the reconstruction of the Rebel States, insists that Congress must accept his work without addition or subtraction. He can impose conditions: Congress cannot. He can determine who shall vote: Congress cannot. His jurisdiction is not only complete, but exclusive. If all this be so, then has our President a most extraordinary power, never before dreamed of. He may exclaim, with Louis the Fourteenth, “The State, it is I,” while, like this magnificent king, he sacrifices the innocent, and repeats that fatal crime, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His whole “policy” is “revocation” of all that has been promised and all we have a right to expect.

Here it is well to note a distinction, not without importance in the issue between the President and Congress. Nobody doubts that the President may, during war, govern any conquered territory as commander-in-chief, and for this purpose detail any military officer as military governor. But it is one thing to govern a State temporarily by military power, and quite another thing to create a constitution for a State which shall continue _when the military power has expired_. The former is a military act, and belongs to the President; the latter is a civil act, and belongs to Congress. On this distinction I stand; and this is not the first time that I have asserted it. Of course, governments set up in this illegitimate way are necessarily illegitimate, except so far as they acquire validity from time or subsequent recognition. It needs no learned Chief Justice of North Carolina solemnly to declare this. It is manifest from the nature of the case.

But this illegitimacy becomes still more manifest, when it is known that the constitutions which the President orders and tries to cram upon Congress have never been submitted to popular vote. Each is the naked offspring of an illegitimate convention called into being by the President, in the exercise of illegitimate power.

There is another provision of the Constitution, by which, according to a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, this question is referred to Congress, and not to the President. I refer to the provision that “_the United States_ shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” On these words Chief Justice Taney, speaking for the Supreme Court, has adjudged, that “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State; for, as _the United States_ guaranty to each State a republican government, _Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State_, before it can determine whether it is republican or not”; and that “unquestionably a military government established as the permanent government of the State would not be a republican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to overthrow it.”[61] But the President sets at nought this commanding text, reinforced by the positive judgment of the Supreme Court, and claims this extraordinary power for himself, to the exclusion of Congress. He is “the United States.” In him the Republic is manifest. He can do all; Congress nothing.

And now the whole country is summoned by the President to recognize State governments created by constitutions thus illegitimate in origin and character. Without considering if they contain the proper elements of security for the future, or if they are republican in form, and without any inquiry into the validity of their adoption,--nay, in the very face of testimony showing that they contain no elements of security for the future, that they are not republican in form, and that they have never been adopted by the loyal people,--we are commanded to accept them; and when we hesitate, the President, himself leading the outcry, assails us with angry vituperation, blunted, it must be confessed, by coarseness without precedent and without bound. It is well that such a cause has such an advocate.

Thus setting up the One Man Power as a source of jurisdiction, the President has committed a blunder of Constitutional Law, proceeding from an immense egotism, in which the little pronoun “I” plays a gigantic part. It is “_I_” vs. _The People of the United States in Congress assembled_. On this unnatural blunder I might say more; but I have said enough. My present purpose is accomplished, if I make you see it clearly.

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The other blunder is of a different character. It is giving present power to ex-Rebels, at the expense of constant Unionists, white or black, and employing them in the work of Reconstruction, so that the new governments continue to represent the Rebellion. This same blunder, when committed by one of the heroes of the war, was promptly overruled by the President himself; but Andrew Johnson now does what Sherman was not allowed to do. The blunder is strange and unaccountable.

Here the evidence is constant and cumulative. It begins with his proclamation for the reconstruction of North Carolina. Holden was appointed Provisional Governor,--an officer unknown to law, and for whom there was no provision,--although it was notorious that he had been a member of the Convention which adopted the Act of Secession, and that he signed it. Then came Perry, Provisional Governor of South Carolina, who, besides holding a judicial station under the Rebel Government, was one of its Commissioners of Impressments. I have a Rebel newspaper containing one of his advertisements in the latter character. There also was Parsons, Provisional Governor of Alabama, who in 1863 introduced into the Legislature of that State formal resolutions tendering to Jefferson Davis “hearty thanks for his good labors in the cause of our common country, together with the assurance of continued support,”--and afterwards, in 1864, denounced our national debt, exclaiming in the Legislature: “Does any sane man suppose we will consent to pay their [the United States] war debt, contracted in sending armies and navies to burn our towns and cities, to lay waste our country,--whose soldiers have robbed and murdered our peaceful inhabitants?” Such were the agents appointed by the President to institute loyal governments. But this selection becomes more strange and unaccountable, when it is considered that all this was done in defiance of law.

There is a recent enactment of Congress requiring that no person shall be appointed to any office of the United States, unless such office has been created by law.[62] And there is another enactment of Congress, providing that all officers, civil or military, before entering upon their official duties or receiving any salary or compensation, shall take an oath declaring that they have held no office under the Rebellion or given any aid thereto.[63] In face of these enactments, which are sufficiently explicit, the President began his work of Reconstruction by appointing civilians to an office absolutely unknown to law, when besides they could not take the required oath of office; and to complete the disregard of Congress, he fixed their salary, and paid it out of the funds of the War Department.

Of course such proceeding was an instant encouragement and license to all ex-Rebels, no matter how much blood was on their hands. Rebellion was at a premium. It was easy to see, that, if these men were good enough to be governors of States, in defiance of Congress, all others in the same political predicament would be good enough for inferior offices. And it was so. From top to bottom these States were organized by men who had been warring on their country. Ex-Rebels were appointed by the governors or chosen by the people everywhere. Ex-Rebels sat in Conventions and in Legislatures. Ex-Rebels became judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, and everything else,--while the faithful Unionist, white or black, was rejected. As with Cordelia, his love was “according to his bond, nor more nor less”; but all this was of no avail. How often during the war have I pleaded for such patriots, and urged to every effort for their redemption!--and now, when our arms have prevailed, it is they who are cast down, while the enemies of the Republic are exalted. The pirate Semmes returns from his ocean cruise to be chosen Probate Judge,--leaping from the deck of the Ship Alabama to the judicial bench of the State Alabama. In New Orleans the Rebel mayor at the surrender to the national flag is once more mayor, and employs his regained power in the terrible massacre which rises in judgment against the Presidential policy. Persons are returned to Congress whose service in the Rebellion makes it impossible for them to take the oath of office,--as in the case of Georgia, which selects as Senators Herschel V. Johnson, a Senator of the Rebel Congress, and Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Rebellion. These are instances; but from these learn all.