On the Southern question, in all its phases, Mr. Bayard has been proclaimed by his supporters as calm, considerate, and just. In truth he has gone as far as the most rancorous rebel leader of the South, touching the Reconstruction laws and the suffrage of the negro. In the Forty-second Congress, in an official report on the condition of the South, Mr. Bayard joined with the minority of the committee in the distinct avowal that negro suffrage would practically cease when the Republican party should be defeated. These are the exact words in which Mr. Bayard concurred: "But whenever that party (the Republican) shall go down, as go down it will at some time not long in the future, that will be the end of the political power of the negro among white men on this continent." When Mr. Bayard united with other Democrats in this declaration the right of the negro to vote had already been protected by an Amendment to the Constitution. His language was, therefore, a distinct threat to override the Constitution in order to strip the negro of the political power which the Constitution had conferred upon him. This threat was so serious and so lawless that it should have received more attention than was bestowed upon it when first put forth. It was not uncommon to hear brazen defiance of Constitutional obligations from Southern speakers addressing Southern audiences for mere sensational effect. But his was an announcement made in the Senate of the United States, not hastily and angrily in the excitement of debate, but with reflection and deliberation, in an official report which had been studied for months and subscribed to in writing by Mr. Bayard.

The common apprehension assigns to Mr. Bayard a high standing at the bar and positive rank as a man of culture. As a lawyer Mr. Bayard has doubtless cherished no ambition as he has attained no prominence, while in point of education he never enjoyed facilities beyond those of the common school or the private academy. Originally destined for mercantile life, he did not receive in his early years the benefit of liberal training; nor did his tastes lead him into any special personal pursuit of literature or science, or even into a close, careful study of the history of his own country,—a study which would have exempted his public career from some of his more notable mistakes.

For obvious reasons Mr. Bayard has acquired exceptional popularity in the South, and especially with Southern men in Congress. When those who participated in the Rebellion were freed from their disabilities and regained their old seats in the Senate and House, they found Mr. Bayard in position, and they naturally accepted him as a leader. It was fresh in the memory of these men that Mr. Bayard's friendship for them had been constant and unremitting; that even in the fatal folly and wrong of secession in 1861 they had his sympathy, to such an extent that he advocated in a public speech the policy of permitting them to separate peacefully from the Union. He spoke earnestly against the use of the National power to hold these States to their duty as members of a common government, and expressed the belief that it would be better to have two republics, than to have one strong enough to command respect for its laws and to enforce obedience at the cannon's mouth. The avowal of these opinions north of the National Capital was greater aid to the Southern conspirators than if Mr. Bayard had openly joined their councils or expended his valor in the ranks of their army.

It was evidently not deemed prudent by Mr. Bayard to repeat his disunion views. After Fort Lafayette, at Mr. Seward's command, had opened its doors to men who publicly expressed disloyal sentiments in the North, Mr. Bayard gave to the rebellion the benefit of his silence. The great struggle went on; myriads of patriots stepped to the ranks of the Union Army; the people were fired with love of country; from every loyal platform and every loyal pulpit rang out words of faith and hope for the cause and for its brave defenders. But Mr. Bayard's silence was unbroken even by the thunders of Gettysburg almost within sound of his home, or by the closing and complete triumph of the National arms. He had spoken words of sympathy and encouragement to the enemies of the Union. He never uttered a word of cheer for its friends.(1)

The organization of Governor Fenton's friends in New York, which had failed to secure him the nomination for Vice-President at the Chicago Convention, was strong enough to elect him to the Senate, even against so worthy a competitor as Governor Morgan, who had the advantage of being in the seat. It was a strong attestation of Mr. Fenton's strength in his own State.—William A. Buckingham, whose distinction as War Governor of Connecticut reached far beyond the limits of his State, was now promoted to a seat in the Senate.—Daniel D. Pratt, afterwards Commissioner of Internal Revenue, appeared from Indiana as the successor of Thomas A. Hendricks.—John Scott, whose father had been a representative in Congress, succeeded Mr. Buckalew as senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. Scott had taken little part in politics, and had been altogether devoted to his profession as a lawyer; but his service in the Senate was distinguished by intelligence and fidelity. No man wrought so effectively in exposing the condemnation of public opinion the evil work of the Ku-Klux organizations in the South. At the close of his term he returned to the practice of law, and was honored by the appointment of chief solicitor to one of the largest corporations in the world—the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.—Thomas C. McCreery took his seat as senator from Kentucky. Originally a lawyer, he had for many years devoted his attention to farming. He had acquired prominence in his party by carefully preparing and accurately committing to memory a political oration each year, which he delivered at the Democratic State Convention. He was an upright, good-natured man, with extreme Democratic views always amiably expressed.—John P. Stockton, who was deprived of his seat three years before under circumstances which seemed to impose a hardship upon him, now entered with undisputed credentials from New Jersey.

The senators first admitted from the reconstructed States were about equally divided between native Southerners and those who had gone from the North at the close of the war; but all were Republicans except one in Virginia and one in Georgia. John F. Lewis and John W. Johnston were natives of the state, belonging to old and influential families. The former was a Republican; the latter a Democrat.—In North Carolina, John Pool was an old Whig, prominent in the politics of his State before the war. Joseph C. Abbot was from New Hampshire, a Brigadier-General in the Union Army.—Thomas J. Robertson of South Carolina was a native of the State, and Frederick A. Sawyer was from Massachusetts, but had lived in the State since 1859.—Joshua Hill and Thomas M. Norwood of Georgia were both Southern men by birth. Mr. Hill was a representative in the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses, and when the State seceded refused to resign. He joined the Republican party after the war. Mr. Norwood entered the Senate as a Democrat.—Thomas W. Osborn and Abijah Gilbert, senators from Florida, were both from the North, the former a native of New Jersey, the latter of New York.—The senators from Alabama, Willard Warner and George E. Spencer, the former born in Ohio, the latter in New York, were both officers of the Union Army.—Hiram R. Revels and Adalbert Ames were the senators from Mississippi. The former was born in the South. The latter was born in Maine, was a graduate of West Point and became highly distinguished as an officer in the war.—John S. Harris and William Pitt Kellogg were senators from Louisiana. The former was a native of New York. The latter was born in Vermont, but had long resided in Illinois. He served in the Union Army with the rank of Colonel in the Donelson and Shiloh campaigns under General Grant.—The senators from Texas, Morgan C. Hamilton and J. W. Flanagan, were both natives of the State and long domiciled in Texas.—Of the Tennessee senators one was born in the South and one in the North.

The representation of the Southern States being complete in both Houses before the close of the first session of the Forty-first Congress, an impartial estimate could be made of the strength and capacity of the men who were opprobriously designated in the South either as Carpet-baggers or Scalawags. It was soon ascertained that the unstinted abuse heaped upon them as a class was unjust and often malicious. The large proportion, and notably those who remained in Congress beyond two years, were men of character and respectability, in many cases indeed of decided cleverness. But their misfortune was that they had assumed a responsibility which could be successfully discharged only by men of extraordinary endowments. If any considerable number of them had been gifted in a high degree as orators, they would have had great advantages among a people who rate mere eloquence above its true value. If any of them had been men of large fortune (invested in Southern property), and able to make lavish expenditure, they could have produced a deep impression upon a people more given to admiration of mere wealth than the people of the North. But of the entire list of Republican senators and representatives from the reconstructed States, there was not one who was regarded as exceptionally eloquent or exceptionally rich; and hence they were compelled to enter the contest without personal prestige, without adventitious aid of any kind. They were doomed to a hopeless struggle against the influence, the traditions, the hatred of a large majority of the white men of the South.

The Fifteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution, now pending and about to be adopted, would confirm the colored man's elective franchise and add the right of holding office. One of the senators just admitted from Mississippi in advance of the ratification of the amendment (Hiram R. Revels) was a colored man of respectable character and intelligence. He sat in the seat which Jefferson Davis had wrathfully deserted to take up arms against the Republic and become the ruler of a hostile government. Poetic justice, historic revenge, personal retribution were all complete when Mr. Revels' name was called on the roll of the Senate. But his presence, while demonstrating the extent to which the assertion of equal rights had been carried, served to increase and stimulate the Southern resistance to the whole system of Republican reconstruction. Those who anxiously and intelligently studied the political situation in the South could see how unequal the contest would be and how soon the men who organized the rebellion would again wield the political power of their States—wield it lawfully if they could, but unlawfully if they must; peaceably if that would suffice, but violently if violence in their judgment became necessary.

President Grant had scarcely taken a step in the duty of administration before he realized that as soon as the current session of Congress should terminate his hands would be completely tied, respecting the removal and appointment of Federal officers, by the Tenure-of-office Act. With his prompt and determined mode of procedure he caused it to be known to Republican senators and representatives that so long as the statute was in force he would simply stand still in the matter of appointments and permit the incumbents to remain in position, except where flagrant misconduct should call for suspension under the law. This position was startling to all those who were desirous of securing the appointment of political favorites, who in a party sense had earned their reward and were waiting to receive it. There was a general desire to remove the men whom President Johnson had forced into office before the restraining Act was passed. But General Grant was resolved that neither he nor the members of his Cabinet would go through the disagreeable and undignified process of filing reasons for suspending an officer, when in fact no reason existed aside from obnoxious political opinion. The Republican members of both branches quickly perceived that tying the hands of a hostile President like Andrew Johnson afforded more satisfaction than the same process applied to a friendly President like General Grant.

It was therefore determined by the Republicans to escape from their embarrassment, even at the expense of an inconsistency which could but prove humiliating to them. On the 9th of March, just five days after Andrew Johnson had left the Presidency, General Butler introduced in the morning hour of the House, a bill of two lines, absolutely repealing the Tenure-of-office Act, for a constructive violation of which he had ten months before urged the impeachment of President Johnson and his expulsion from office. The standing committees had not yet been announced; and therefore without reference or a moment's debate or consideration of the measure, General Butler demanded the previous question, which was sustained, and under a call of the ayes and noes, the bill was passed by 138 to 16. The small minority was composed of Republicans. The Democrats, who had solidly voted against the Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most loudly for Johnson's decapitation.

When the bill reached the Senate, there was a disposition on the part of some leading members of that body to pass it as promptly as it had been passed by the House. Mr. Morton urged that it be put on its passage without referring it; but the Senate was not prepared for such haste, and on motion of Mr. Trumbull, the Bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee. That Committee reported it without delay to the Senate, with an amendment in the form of a substitute. The House bill was a simple repeal in the fewest possible words. The Judiciary Committee now proposed that instead of an absolute repeal, the Tenure-of-office Act "be, and the same is, hereby suspended until the next session of Congress."

This was a lame and impotent conclusion, and did not commend the support or even the respect of the Senate. Mr. Thurman, a member of the committee that reported it, made haste to announce that he had not approved it. He treated the proposition for suspension as a practical confession that the Tenure-of-office Act "is to be enforced when it will have no practical effect, and is not to be enforced when it would have practical effect." The chief defenders of the proposition to suspend the Act were Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz. Mr. Edmunds, pressed by Mr. Grimes to furnish a good reason for suspending the Act, replied that "owing to the peculiar circumstances that have attended the last administration, it is desirable that there should be an immediate and general removal of the office-holders of the country as a rule; and as an agency of that removal, subject to our approval when we meet again in confirmation of their successors, these bad men being put out, we are willing to trust this Executive with that discretion."

Coming from a senator of the United States, this declaration was regarded as extraordinary. The "bad men" to whom Mr. Edmunds referred were the appointees of President Johnson, and every one of them had been confirmed by the Senate of the United States when the Republicans had more than two-thirds of the body. If these appointees were "bad men," why, it was pertinently and forcibly asked by the aggrieved, did not Mr. Edmunds submit proof of that fact to his Republican associates and procure their rejection? He knew, the accused men declared, as much about their character when their names were before the Senate, as he knew now when he sought, behind the protection of his privilege, to brand them with infamy. To permit them to be confirmed in the silence and confidence of an executive session, and then in open Senate, when their places were wanted for others, to describe them as "bad men," seemed to them a procedure not to be explained on the broad principles of statesmanship, or even on the common law of fair dealing.

Mr. Schurz was as anxious as Mr. Edmunds to give the President full power to remove the office-holders. He declared that he "would be the last man to hamper the President in the good work of cleaning out the Augean stable, which he is now about to undertake." He was sure that "the rings must be broken up," that "the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He eulogized President Grant as especially fit for the work. "We have," said he, "a President who is willing to do what we and the country desire him to do." Mr. Schurz expressed at the same time his "heartfelt concern" regarding a rumor that the President was very sensitive touching the proposition reported by the Judiciary Committee, and that "he will make no removals unless the civil-tenure bill be repealed instead of being suspended." Mr. Schurz was sure that "on all the great questions of policy the President and Congress heartily agree," and he condemned "the attempts made to sow the seeds of distrust and discord." It is somewhat amusing as well as instructive to recall that in a little more than two years from that time, when nearly all the appointees of President Johnson had been turned out of office, Mr. Schurz began work again at "the Augean stable," now locating it in the Grant administration, and demanding that it should be cleansed, that "the rings" should be broken up, that "the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He imputed to President Grant's administration even greater corruption than he had charged upon the administration of his predecessor, and from his ever-teeming storehouse lavished abuse with even a more generous hand upon the one that he had upon the other.

The amendment of the Judiciary Committee providing for a suspension of the law until Congress should meet again—a period of about eight months—was so objectionable that it won no substantial support from senators. There was something so baldly and shamelessly partisan in the proposition to suspend the Act just long enough to permit President Grant, without obstruction or encumbrance, to remove the Democrats whom President Johnson had appointed to office, that the common instinct of justice, and even of public decency, revolted. The Tenure- of-office Act was either right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient, Constitutional or unconstitutional, and it was easy to see that men could honestly differ as to its character in these respects. But it was impossible to comprehend how a candid legislator could maintain the Constitutionality and expediency of the Act, and then propose to suspend it for that specific period of General Grant's administration, when, if needed at all, it would be most needed. Within eight months next ensuing the President would probably make more removals and appointments than for the remainder of his term, and it was just for this period that Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz urged that the law be made inoperative,—inoperative in order that removals of Democratic office-holders for good cause, and for no cause except that they were Democrats, might in every way be expedited.

It was soon perceived that if the question before the Senate should be reduced to a choice between suspension of the Act or to total repeal, there was a danger that the majority would vote for repeal. To avert that result, Mr. Edmunds asked to withdraw the proposition, and it was accordingly recommitted to the Judiciary Committee on the 23d of March. On the next day Mr. Trumbull reported a substitute for the existing law, and the Senate, after brief discussion, agreed to it by ayes 37, noes 15. The amendment seemed to be ingeniously framed to destroy the original Act and yet appear to maintain it in another form. The senators apparently wished to gratify General Grant and promote their own purposes by rendering the removal of President Johnson's appointees easy, and at the same time avoid the inconsistency involved in the repeal of a law for whose enactment they had so strenuously contended only two years before.

The first modification of the original Act, as embodied in the Senate amendment, was to relieve the President altogether from the necessity of filing charges against an officer whom he desired to suspend. In the second place, all provisions of the original law authorizing the Senate to pass specific judgment on the propriety of the suspension and declaring that if the Senate did not approve the President's act the person suspended should "forthwith" resume his office, were now abandoned. The President was left at liberty to suspend any officer without assigning a cause, and to nominate his successor. If the nomination should be rejected, another might be made, and another, and another, until the Senate should confirm. If the Senate should stubbornly reject all the nominations and the session of Congress end without a confirmation, then, in that remote and highly improbably event, the suspended officer, according to the proposed law, should be restored to his place. The substance of the original Act was gone, but the Senate sought shelter from its record of inconsistency under the small shadow of this distant and hypothetical restoration of the suspended officer.

But the House would not consent that even the small shadow should remain. Representatives well knew that it was not agreeable to President Grant that any authority should be retained by the Senate whereby an obnoxious officer could in any event be kept in place against his wishes, and they were in hearty accord with him. The House had always been jealous of the power of the Senate over appointments to office, and but for the desire to punish President Johnson the representatives would never have consented to the Tenure-of-office Act. They were now determined, if possible, to strip the Senate of its great aggrandizement of power. The feeling of many members of the House was to sustain an amendment offered by General Logan directing that "all civil offices, except those of judges of the United-States courts, filled by appointment before the 4th of March, 1869, shall become vacant on the 30th of June, 1869." This would have been a wholesale removal beyond any scheme attempted since the organization of the Government; but it was not deemed wise even to bring it to a test, and the House contented itself with the rejection of the Senate amendments by a decisive vote.

The subject was then referred to a Conference Committee, consisting of Messrs. Trumbull, Edmunds, and Grimes of the Senate, and Messrs. Benjamin F. Butler, C. C. Washburn, and John A. Bingham of the House. The Bill reported by this committee to both Houses is the present law on the subject.(2) Mr. Trumbull, in making the report, gave this assurance to the Senate: "As the Committee of Conference report the bill, the suspended officer would go back at the end of the session unless somebody else was confirmed in the place." On the same day in the House, in answer to a pressing question from Mr. Hoar of Massachusetts, Mr. Bingham expressed the opinion that "no authority without the consent of the President can get a suspended officer back into the same office again." General Butler, another of the House conferees, said: "I am free to say that I think this amendment upon the question of removal and re-instatement of officers leaves the Tenure-of-office Act as though it had never been passed, so far as the power of the President over the Executive officers is concerned." It was certainly an extraordinary spectacle, without precedent or parallel, that the report of the conference should have one meaning assigned to it in the Senate, and a diametrically opposite meaning assigned to it in the House, and that these antagonistic meanings should be made on the same day, and put forth by the conferees whose names were attached to the report. Such a legislative proceeding cannot be too strongly characterized.

But the popular understanding among Democrats and Republicans alike was that the Tenure-of-office Act had been destroyed, and that Mr. Trumbull's technical construction of the amendment was made merely to cover the retreat of the Senate. By the new enactment, the provisions which had led to the dispute between President Johnson and Congress were practically extirpated; and thus a voluntary confession was recorded by both Senate and House that they had forced an issue with one Executive on an assumed question of right, which they would not attempt with his successor. The members of the present House who in the preceding Congress had voted to impeach the President, and the great mass of the senators who voted to convict him, now voted to blot out the identical clause of the Act under which they held the President to be deserving of removal for even venturing to act upon his own fair construction of its meaning. With all the plausible defenses that can be made for this contradictory course, the fact remains that the authors of the law precipitately fled from its enforcement the moment a President with whom they were in sympathy was installed in office. They thereby admitted the partisan intent that had governed the enactment, just as they admitted the partisan intent that now led to the practical repeal. Casting off all political disguises and personal pretenses, the simple truth remains that the Tenure-of-office Law was enacted lest President Johnson should remove Republican office-holders too rapidly; and it was practically repealed lest President Grant should not remove Democratic office-holders rapidly enough.

While President Grant did not find himself in the least degree embarrassed by the Tenure-of-office Act as amended, he did not surrender his hostility to its existence in any form whatever. In his first annual message (nine months after the legislation just narrated) he earnestly recommended its total repeal. "It could not," said the President, "have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution, when providing that appointments made by the President should receive the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against the will of the President. The law is inconsistent with a faithful and efficient administration of the Government. What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason? How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them?"

The President was evidently of the opinion that the doubtful and contradictory construction of the Act as amended left the whole matter (as described by Mr. Niblack of Indiana when the Committee report was under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment. The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the Senate was indirect and evasive. That body had evidently sought to gratify the wishes of President Grant, on the one hand, and to preserve some semblance of its power over appointments, on the other. It was freely predicted at the time that so long as the Senate and the President were in political harmony nothing would be heard of the Tenure-of-office Act, but that when the political interests of the Executive should come in conflict with those of the Senate there would be a renewal of the trouble which had characterized the relations of President Johnson and the Senate, and which led to the original Tenure-of-office Act with its positive assertion of senatorial power over the whole question of appointment and removal.

William Pitt Fessenden took part in the first session of Congress under the Presidency of General Grant. It was his last public service. On the eighth day of the following September (1869) he died at his residence in Portland, Maine, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was one of the many victims of that strange malady which, breaking out with virulence at the National Hotel in Washington on the eve of Mr. Buchanan's inauguration (1856-57), destroyed many lives. Its deadly poison undermined the constitutions of some who apparently recovered health. Of these Mr. Fessenden was one. He regained the vigor that carried him through those critical years of senatorial work on which his fame chiefly rests; yet he always felt that he had been irreparably injured by the insidious attack. The irritability and impatience which he occasionally displayed in public and in private came undoubtedly from suffering which he bore with heroic endurance through the years when his public burdens were heaviest.

—His death was announced by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who delivered an appreciate eulogy upon his character and public service. Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate. "All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr. Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate—powers which he commanded so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed as the Olympic wheel caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot be remembered now." This reference was well understood. Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Sumner were never cordial. Members of the same party, supporters of the same general measures, with perfect appreciation and with profound respect each for the other, it seemed as impossible to unite them cordially, as in earlier days it was to unite Adams and Hamilton in the ranks of the Federalists.

—Mr. Fessenden had maintained a brilliant reputation for a long period. When Mr. Webster, at the height of his senatorial fame, made his celebrated tour through the Middle and Western States in 1837, he selected Mr. Fessenden, a young man of thirty, as his traveling companion,—selected him for his brilliancy, when he had choice of the brilliancy of all New England. Mr. Garrett Davis, a senator from Kentucky, in his eulogy of Mr. Fessenden, referred to Mr. Webster's visit to that State, and described the warm greeting which Mr. Fessenden received, the deep impression made upon him by Mr. Clay's hospitality at Ashland, and the impression which the young man made upon Mr. Clay, with whom he thenceforward became a marked favorite. Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden met not long after as members of the House in the Twenty-seventh Congress (under Harrison and Tyler). "Mr. Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank, honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of passion and of fire."

—His eulogies in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin, long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own. —"A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead frame of William Pitt Fessenden."

[(1) A few extracts from Mr. Bayard's speech of July 9, 1863, at Dover, Del., will exhibit his spirit of disloyalty to the Union of the States. Mr. Bayard said,—

"And is such a war necessary for the peace and happiness of the United States? For half a century we have lived at peace with Great Britain, with her Canadian possession upon our Northern border. Upon the South, Mexico holds her government with no threats of trouble to us or our citizens. Why, then, may not two American confederacies exist side by side without conflict, each emulating the other in the progress of civilization? The coterminous kingdoms of Europe offer many examples of similar peace and prosperity. With such a sickening alternative as civil war, why should not the experiment at least be made? It is this question we are to pass upon to-day." . . .

"If peace will restore and secure these blessings to the people of the United States, even though a number of their former associates have gone off under a new and independent organization, in the name of Heaven let us raise our voice for it! Shall this earnest cry for peace be stifled at the bidding of a host of fanatical and cowardly editors, aided by an army of greedy contractors and public leeches, stimulating an ignorant mob to denounce and attack us as traitors and secessionists?" . . .

"You and I are citizens of Delaware. To her laws and government we owe allegiance. Through our state we owe allegiance to the Federal Government, of which she is a member. But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his constitutional and legal control. A palpable infraction of our written charter of government by our rulers, justifies disobedience upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are entitled to loyal compliance."

{But who, as Mr. Webster had asked Mr. Hayne thirty years before, was to judge of "the palpable infraction of our written charter of government?" Was it the Judicial department of that government? Or was it Mr. Bayard and his disloyal associates in Delaware to whom he was addressing words of hostility to the National Administration and of infidelity to the Union of the States? It is significant that Mr. Bayard acknowledged allegiance to the National Government only as he owed it through the State. This was the rank heresy upon which the leaders of the Southern rebellion sought their justification.}]

[(2) The full text of the Amendment to the Tenure-of-office Act will be found in Appendix B.]

CHAPTER XIX.

The chief interest in the events of General Grant's first term was divided between questions of a diplomatic character and those arising from the condition of the South after Reconstruction had been completed. The first issue that enlisted popular attention was in regard to the annexation of the Dominican Republic. It was the earliest decisive step of General Grant's policy that attracted the observation of the people. The negotiation was opened on the request of the authorities of San Domingo, and it began about three months after the President's inauguration. In July General O. E. Babcock, one of the President's private secretaries, was dispatched to San Domingo upon an errand of which the public knew nothing. He bore a letter of introduction from Secretary Fish, apparently limiting the mission to an inquiry into the conditions, prospects, and resources of the Island. From its tenor the negotiation of a treaty was not at that time anticipated by the State Department. General Babcock's mission finally resulted however in a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of Dominica, and a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana,—separately negotiated and both concluded on the 29th of November, 1869. The territory included in the Dominican Republic is the eastern portion of the Island of San Domingo, originally known as Hispaniola. It embraces perhaps two-thirds of the whole. The western part forms the Republic of Haiti. With the exception of Cuba, the island is the largest of the West India group. The total area is about 28,000 square miles,—equivalent to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island combined.

President Grant placed extravagant estimates upon the value of the Territory which he supposed was now acquired under the Babcock treaties. In his message to Congress he expressed the belief that the island would yield to the United States all the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other tropical products which the country would consume. "The production of our supply of these articles," said the President, "will cut off more than $100,000,000 of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports." "With such a picture," he added, "it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished. With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizen traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of precious metals in this country, it is not easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished." He maintained that "the acquisition of San Domingo will furnish our citizens with the necessities of every-day life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a rapid stride towards that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of our citizens entitle this country to assume among nations."

Earnest as General Grant was in his argument, deeply as his personal feelings were enlisted in the issue, thoroughly as his Administration was committed to the treaty, the Senate on the 30th of June (1870), to his utter surprise, rejected it. The vote was a tie, 28 to 28, as was afterwards disclosed in debate in open Senate. Though the votes of two-thirds of the senators were required to confirm the treaty President Grant was not discouraged. He returned to the subject six months later, in his annual message of December, and discussed the question afresh with apparently renewed confidence in the expediency of the acquisition. "I now firmly believe," he said, "that the moment it is known that the United States have entirely abandoned the project of accepting as part of its own territory the Island of San Domingo, a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana, and a large commercial city will spring up, to which we will be tributary without receiving responding benefits. Then will be seen the folly of our rejecting so great a prize. . . . So convinced am I of the advantages to flow from the acquisition of San Domingo, and of the great disadvantages, I might also say calamities, to flow from its non-acquisition, that I believe the subject has only to be investigated to be approved." He recommended that "by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the Executive be authorized to appoint a commission to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such commission."

The subject at once led to discussion in both branches of Congress, in which the hostility to the scheme on the part of some leading men assumed the tone of personal exasperation towards General Grant. So intense was the opposition that the President's friends in the Senate did not deem it prudent even to discuss the measure which he recommended. As the best that could be done, Mr. Morton of Indiana introduced a resolution empowering the President to appoint three Commissioners to proceed to San Domingo and make certain inquiries into the political condition of the island, and also into its agricultural and commercial value. The Commissioners were to have no compensation. Their expenses were to be paid, and a secretary was to be provided. Even in this mild shape the resolution was hotly opposed. It was finally adopted by the Senate, but when it reached the House that body refused to concur except with a proviso that "nothing in this resolution shall be held, understood, or construed as committing Congress to the policy of annexing San Domingo." The Senate concurred in the condition thus attached and the President approved it. It was plain that the President could not carry the annexation scheme; but he courted a searching investigation in order that the course he had pursued might be vindicated by the well-considered judgment of impartial men.

The President's selections for the Commission were wisely made. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Andrew D. White of New York, and Samuel G. Howe of Massachusetts, were men entitled to the highest respect, and their conclusions, based upon intelligent investigation, would exert large influence upon public opinion. The Commission at once visited the island (carried thither on a United-States vessel of war), made a thorough examination of all its resources, held conferences with its leading citizens, and concluded that the policy recommended by General Grant should be sustained. The Commissioners corroborated General Grant's assertion that the island could supply the United States with the sugar, coffee, and other tropical products needed for our consumption; and they upheld the President in his belief that the possession of the island by the United States would by the laws of trade make slave labor in the neighboring islands unprofitable, and render the whole slave and caste systems odious.

In communicating the report, the President made some remarks which had a personal bearing. "The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by the President," said he, "only indicates a difference of opinion among different departments of the Government, without touching the character or wounding the pride of either. But when such rejection takes place simultaneously with charges, openly made, of corruption on the part of the President, or of those employed by him, the case is different. Indeed, in such case the honor of the nation demands investigation. This has been accomplished by the report of the Commissioners, herewith transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of motive and action of those who represented the United States in the negotiation. And now my task is finished, and with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. My duty being done, yours begins, and I gladly hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the American people and of their representatives in Congress assembled."

The pointed remarks of the President were understood as referring to the speech made by Mr. Sumner when the resolution for the appointment of the Commission was pending before the Senate. Mr. Sumner had previously conceived a strong dislike to General Grant on account of some personal grievance, either fancied or real; and he debated the resolution in a spirit not at all justified by the subject itself. He spoke of it as "a measure of violence" and a "dance of blood." "In other days," said he, "to carry a project, a President has tried to change a committee: it was James Buchanan. Now we have been called this session to witness a similar endeavor by our President. He was not satisfied with the Committee on Foreign Relations, and wished it changed. He asked first for the removal of the chairman [Mr. Sumner himself]. Somebody told him that this would not be convenient. He then asked for the removal of the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz], and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote."

Mr. Sumner continued: "The negotiation for annexation began with a political jockey named Buenaventura Baez; and he had about his two other political jockeys, Casneau and Fabens. These three together, a precious copartnership, seduced into their firm a young officer of ours, who entitles himself aide-de-camp to the President of the United States. Together they got up what was entitled a protocol, in which the young officer, entitling himself aide-de-camp to the President, proceeded to make certain promises for the President. I desire to say that there is not one word showing that at the time this aide-de-camp, as he called himself, had any title of instructions to take this step. If he had, that title and that instruction have been withheld. No inquiry has been able to penetrate it. . . . I ask you," said he, addressing the Vice-President, "do you know any such officer in our government as 'aide-de-camp to his Excellency the President of the United States'? Does his name appear in the Constitution, in any statute, in the history of this country anywhere? If it does, then your information is much beyond mine. . . . However, he assumed a title; and it doubtless produced a great effect with Baez, Casneau, and Fabens, the three confederates. They were doubtless pleased with the distinction. It helped on the plan they were engineering. The young aide-de-camp pledged the President as follows: 'His Excellency, General Grant, President of the United States, promises privately to use all his influence, in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment.' Shall I read the rest of the document? It is somewhat of the same tenor. There are questions of money in it, cash down, all of which must have been particularly agreeable to the three confederates." At one stage of his bitter arraignment of the Administration Mr. Sumner besought the Vice-President (Mr. Colfax) "as a friend of General Grant to counsel him not to follow the examples of Franklin Pierce, of James Buchanan, and of Andrew Johnson."

After the delivery of this speech General Grant and Senator Sumner held no personal intercourse. Public opinion did not justify the course of Mr. Sumner. It was regarded as an exhibition of temper unworthy of his high position, and his speech was distinguished by a tone not proper to be employed towards the President of the United States. But he had not imputed, as General Grant assumed, any personal corruption to him. On the contrary he considered the questionable course of General Babcock to be without instruction. General Grant's reference in his message to Mr. Sumner's angry arraignment, a part of which is already quoted, closed with a mention of "acrimonious debates in Congress" and "unjust aspersions elsewhere." "No man," said he, "can hope to perform duties so delicate and responsible as appertain to the Presidential office without sometimes incurring the hostility of those who deem their opinions and wishes treated with insufficient consideration." This was a direct personal reference to Mr. Sumner, perfectly understood at that time. General Grant continued: "He who undertakes to conduct the affairs of a great government as a faithful public servant, if sustained by the approval of his own conscience, may rely with confidence upon the candor and intelligence of a free people, whose best interests he has striven to subserve, and can hear with patience the censure of disappointed men."

No further attempt was made by the President to urge the acquisition of San Domingo upon Congress. It was evident that neither the Senate nor House could be induced to approve the scheme, and the Administration was necessarily compelled to abandon it. But defeat did not change General Grant's view of the question. He held to his belief in its expediency and value with characteristic tenacity. In his last annual message to Congress (December, 1876), nearly six years after the controversy had closed, he recurred to the subject, to record once more his approval of it. "If my views," said he, "had been concurred in, the country would be in a more prosperous condition to-day, both politically and financially." He then proceeded to re-state the question, and to sustain it with the argument which he had presented to Congress in 1870 and 1871. His last words were: "I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it."

Though the Reconstruction measures were all perfected before General Grant's election to the Presidency, the necessary Acts prescribed by them had not been completed by all the States. The three which had not been admitted to representation, and had not taken part in the National election,—Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas,—had by the spring of 1870 fully complied with all the requirements, and were therefore admitted to all the privileges which had been accorded to the other States of the South. Virginia was admitted to representation in Congress by the Act of Jan. 26, Mississippi by the Act of Feb. 26, and Texas by the Act of March 30 (1870). It was their own fault, and not the design of the Government, that prevented these States from being included in the same bill with their associates in rebellion.

The reconstruction of Georgia, supposed to have been completed the preceding year by the admission of her representatives to the House, was taken up for review at the opening of the Forty-first Congress. Neither her senators nor representatives were permitted to be sworn, but their credentials were referred in each House to the Committee on Elections. In the judgment of the majority the conduct of Georgia justified this severe course. Her Legislature, after complying with every condition of reconstruction, took an extraordinary and unaccountable step. That body decided that colored men were not entitled to serve as legislators or to hold any office in Georgia. They were therefore expelled from their seats, while white men, not eligible to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment, were retained. The Fifteenth Amendment was then rejected by the Legislature, composed exclusively of white men. These facts were ascertained before the senators from Georgia were admitted to their seats, and before the Fifteenth Amendment had yet been ratified by the requisite number of States.

Congress took prompt cognizance of this condition of affairs, and passed another bill on the 16th of December (1869), declaring "that the exclusion of persons from the Legislature upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited." In order to make the prohibition effective, Georgia was required, before her senators and representatives could be seated, to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Legislature of Georgia was accordingly re-assembled, the colored members resumed their seats, and the Fifteenth Amendment was duly ratified on the 2d of February (1870). The conditions were considered by some prominent Republicans to be an assumption of power on the part of Congress, and were therefore opposed actively by Mr. Carpenter in the Senate and Mr. Bingham in the House; but the great body of the party insisted upon them, and the movement had the full sympathy of the President. The course pursued by Georgia made her the last State to be reconstructed. The final Act for her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress was passed on the 15th of July, 1870.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment had become in the minds of thinking men an essential link in the chain of reconstruction. The action of Georgia in expelling colored men from the Legislature after her reconstruction was supposed to be complete, roused the country to the knowledge of what was intended by the leading men of the South; and the positive action of Congress roused the leading men of the South to a knowledge of what was intended by Congress. On the 30th of March Secretary Fish issued a proclamation making known to the people of the United States that the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified by the Legislatures of thirty States and was therefore a part of the Constitution of the United States. New York, which had given her ratification when the Legislature was Republican, attempted at the succeeding session, with the Democratic party in power, to withdraw its recorded assent; but as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, action on the subject was held to be completed when the State officially announced it, and New York was numbered among the States which had ratified the Amendment. The only States opposing it were New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Oregon. At the time the Amendment was submitted, the Legislatures of these States were under the absolute control of the Democratic party. The hostility of that party to the Fifteenth Amendment was as rancorous as it had been to the Fourteenth. Not a single Democrat voted to ratify it in either branch of Congress, and the Democratic opposition in the State Legislatures throughout the Union was almost equally pronounced.(1)

This radical change in the Organic Law of the Republic was regarded by President Grant as so important, that he notified Congress of its official promulgation, by special message. He dwelt upon the character of the Amendment, and addressed words of counsel to both races. "I call the attention of the newly enfranchised race," said he, "to the importance of striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws, I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizens." He called upon Congress to promote popular education throughout the country by all the means within their Constitutional power, in order that universal suffrage might be based on universal intelligence.

In the same spirit that led to the message of the President, Congress proceeded to enact laws protecting the rights that were guaranteed under the new Constitutional Amendment. On the 31st of May (1870), two months after the Amendment was promulgated, an Act was passed "to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States in this Union." Eight months later, on the 28th of February, 1871, an additional Act on the same subject was passed. These statutes were designed to protect, as far as human law can protect, the right of every man in the United States to vote, and they were enacted with special care to arrest the dangers already developing in the South against free suffrage, and to prevent the dangers more ominously though more remotely menacing it. The Republican party was unanimous in support of these measures, while the Democratic party had nearly consolidated their votes against them. It was not often that the line of party was so strictly drawn as at this period and on issues of this character.

As the Reconstruction of each State was completed, the Military Government that was instituted in 1867 was withdrawn. The Southern people—at first proclaiming a sense of outrage at the presence of soldiers in time of peace—soon became content with the orderly, just, and fair administration which the commanding generals enforced. Many of the wisest men of the South would have been glad to continue the same form of government, until the passions engendered by the war had somewhat cooled and the new relations of the two races had become so amicably adjusted as to remove all danger of conflict between them. But the course of events did not suggest, and perhaps would not have permitted, an arrangement of this character; and hence the States were left, under the Constitution and laws of the Union, to shape their own destiny.

The presumption was that these States would be obedient to the Constitution and laws. But for this presumption, legislation would be but idle play, and a government of laws would degenerate at once into a government of force. In enacting the Reconstruction Laws Congress proceeded upon the basis of faith in Republican government, as defined so tersely by Mr. Lincoln—of the people, by the people, for the people. It had the additional assurance of the acceptance of the terms of Reconstruction by the lawful organizations of the Southern States. And if the presumption of obedience with respect to statute law be general, much stronger should it be with respect to organic law, upon which the entire structure of free government is founded. It was therefore logical for the National administration to assume, as Reconstruction was completed, that the harmonious working of the Federal government through all its members was formally re-established. It was a cause of great rejoicing that, after four years of bloody war and four years of laborious and careful Reconstruction, every State in the Union had regained its autonomy in the first year of General Grant's Presidency; and that the Government and the people of the Union were entitled to look forward to peaceful administration, to friendly intercourse, to the cultivation of kindly feeling, to the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The lenity with which the triumphant Union had treated the crime of rebellion—sacrificing no man's life, stripping no man of his property, depriving no man of his personal liberty—gave the Government the right to expect order and the reign of law in the South.

But it was soon disclosed that on the part of the large mass of those who had participated in the rebellion, properly speaking, indeed, on the part of the vast majority of the white men of the South, there was really no intention to acquiesce in the legislation of Congress, no purpose to abide by the Constitutional Amendment in good faith. A majority of the white people of the South adopted rather the creed of General Blair, whom they had supported for Vice-President, and regarded themselves justified in opposing, repudiating, and if possible destroying, the governments that had grown up under the protection of the Reconstruction Laws. The re-admission of their States to representation was taken by them only as the beginning of the war in which they would more freely wage conflict against that which was distasteful and, as they claimed, oppressive. It is not to be denied that they had the inherent right, inside of Constitutional limitations, to repeal the laws of their States, and even to change the Constitution itself, if they should do it by prescribed methods and by honest majorities, and should not, in the process, disturb the fundamental conditions upon which the General Government had assented to their re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. It was not, however, the purpose of the Southern Democrats to be fettered and embarrassed by any such exemplary restraints. By means lawful or unlawful they determined to uproot and overthrow the State governments that had been established in a spirit of loyalty to the Union. They were resolved that the negro should not be a political power in their local governments; that he should not, so far as their interposition could prevent it, exert any influence over elections, either State or national; and that his suffrage, if permitted to exist at all, should be only in the innocent form of a minority.

Seeing this determination, the National Government interposed its strong arm, and a detail of soldiers at the principal points throughout the South gave a certain protection to those whose rights were otherwise in danger of being utterly trodden down. It certainly has never been proved in a single instance that a legal voter in any Southern State was deprived of his right of suffrage by the presence of United-States troops in those states; but the issue was at once made by the Democratic party against the administration of President Grant, that free elections were impossible in the Southern states unless soldiers of the Regular Army were excluded; that their simple presence was a form of coercion absolutely inconsistent with Republican government. Many of them, as they now declared, had been willing to accept a Military government—as it had existed under Reconstruction; but they objected to the presence of troops in States where self-government had been conceded by Congress.

There was undoubtedly an instinctive reluctance among the people of all sections to permit the location of troops in the neighborhood of polling-places. It had happened that in the long-continued strife in Kansas, Republicans complained that the anti-slavery voters felt intimidated by the presence of troops of the Regular Army. The application was, therefore, readily made to the existing case; and it was not unnaturally or inaptly asked whether the presence of the military at the elections of a State of the Union was not even more offensive than their presence at the elections in a Territory of the Union, which was directly under the control of the National Government. On the abstract issue thus presented the Republicans were placed somewhat at a disadvantage; and yet every white man making the complaint knew that the influence of the troops was not to deprive him of a single right, but was to prevent him from depriving the colored man of all his rights.

Between the effort, therefore, of President Grant's administration to protect free suffrage in the South, and the protest of the Democratic party against protecting it by the military arm of the Government, a physical contest ensued in the Southern States and a political contest throughout the Union. It was perfectly understood, and openly proclaimed, in the South, that the withdrawal of the protection of the National Government from the States lately in rebellion meant the end of suffrage to the colored man, or at least such impairment of its force and influence as practically implied its total destruction. So bitter was the hostility to impartial suffrage, so determined were the men who had lately been in rebellion to concentrate all the political power of the Southern States in their own hands, that vicious organizations, of which the most notable were the Ku-Klux-Klans, were formed throughout the South for the express purpose of depriving the negro of the political rights conferred upon him by law. To effect this purpose they resorted to a series of outrages calculated to inspire the negroes with terror if they attempted to resist the will of white men.

In prosecuting their purposes these clans and organizations hesitated at no cruelty, were deterred by no considerations of law or of humanity. They rode by night, were disguised with masks, were armed as freebooters. They whipped, maimed, or murdered the victims of their wrath. White men who were co-operating with the colored population politically were visited with punishments of excessive cruelty. It was difficult to arrest the authors of these flagrant wrongs. Aside from their disguises, they were protected against inculpating testimony by the fear inspired in the minds of those who might be witnesses; and they were protected even by that portion of the white race who were not willing to join in their excesses. It was well said of the leading members of the clans, that "murder with them was an occupation, and perjury was a pastime." The white man who should give testimony against them did so at the risk of seeing his house burned, of being himself beaten with many stripes; and if the offender had been at all efficient in his hostility, he was, after torture, in many instances, doomed to death.

Congress did its utmost to strengthen the hands of the President in a contest with these desperate elements. By the Act of April 20, 1871, "to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" (commonly known as the Ku-Klux Act, or the Enforcement Act), the President was empowered to go to the extreme of suspending the writ of habeas corpus where peace and order could not otherwise be restored. Before acting under the provisions of that vigorous statute, General Grant gave warning to the Southern people by proclamation of May 3, 1871, that they might themselves, by good behavior, prevent the necessity of its enforcement. "Sensible," said the President, "of the responsibility imposed upon the Executive by the Act of Congress to which public attention is now called, and reluctant to call into exercise any of the extraordinary powers thereby conferred upon me, except in case of imperative necessity, I do, nevertheless, deem it my duty to make known that I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive, whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so, for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws." The extreme power of suspending the writ of habeas corpus now placed in the President's hands was limited in time, and would necessarily end, if not renewed, at the close of the next regular session of Congress.

But the task of enforcing obedience to laws, when obedience is not in the hearts of the people, is the most difficult undertaking ever imposed upon the governing power. If the South had been standing alone, if it had not been receiving daily words of encouragement, of aid, and of comfort, from the North, if it had not seen that the Democratic party in Congress was fighting its battle, it might have yielded to the prestige and power of the National Government. But the situation invited, urged, induced men, to persist. They clearly saw, as their co-operating friends in the North had seen long before, that a compact vote of all the Southern States could be used as the sure foundation of a formidable, and, as they hoped, irresistible political power. It was this hope which nerved their arms for every encounter: it was this prospect of domination that steadily encouraged them to continue a battle which must at times have seemed desperate indeed. As the Southern leaders of an earlier day had strenuously endeavored to maintain equality of membership in the Senate, so now their successors promised to themselves such solidification of their electoral vote, as would by its very force attract sufficient strength in the North to restore the South to a position of command in the National Government.

The instinctive hostility of the American people against the use of troops at elections was not the only weapon of offense which the Democratic party was able to use in this prolonged contest. As soon as the war had closed there was a considerable influx of Northern men in the States of the late Confederacy. The original motive which induced the migration was financial and speculative. A belief was prevalent in the North that great profit might be derived from the cotton-culture, and that with the assured sympathy of the colored men they would be able to command the requisite labor more readily than the old slave masters. As a mere business enterprise cotton-growing at that period, except in a very few instances, proved to be unprofitable. The complete disorganization of labor throughout the South, consequent upon emancipation, had embarrassed production and added largely to its cost. It would inevitably require time to build up a labor-system based on the new relation of the negro to the white race, and it was the misfortune of the Northern men to embark on their venture at the time of all others when it was least likely to prove remunerative. But these men, though pecuniarily unsuccessful, quickly formed relations of kindness and friendship with the negro race. They addressed them in different tone, treated them in a different manner, from that which they had been accustomed in the past to receive from the white race, and it was natural that a feeling of friendship should grow up between the liberated and those whom they regarded as liberators.

It was soon apparent that, under the protection of the National power and with the numerical superiority of the negroes in several States (certain Southern leaders being under political disabilities), it would be easy for the loyal white men to obtain control of the local governments. Out of these circumstances there came into political power the class of men known as "Carpet-baggers"—so described from the insulting presumption that the entire worldly estate of each one of the class was carried in a carpet-bag, enabling him to fly at any moment of danger from the State whose domestic policy he sought to control. The prospect of the success of the new movement induced a number of former rebels to join in it, and to them the epithet of "Scalawag" was applied. This combination was not without disadvantages to the negro. By as much as it gave strength to his political organization, it increased the hatred and desperation of the ruling element among the whites, and demonstrated that the negro could secure the rights conferred upon him by the Constitution and laws, only through violence and bloodshed.

Many of those denounced under the epithet of Carpet-bagger and Scalawag were honorable and true men; but a majority of these were unobtrusive and not brought strongly into popular view, while many of those who became entrusted with the power of State governments and found themselves unexpectedly in possession of great authority were not morally equal to its responsibility. The consequence was that some of the States had wretched governments, officered by bad men, who misled the negro and engaged in riotous corruption. Their transgressions were made so conspicuous that the Republican leaders of other Southern States, who were really trying to act their part worthily and honorably, were obscured from view, and did not obtain a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion. The government of South Carolina, under its series of Republican administrations, was of such character as brought shame upon the Republican party, exposed the negro voters to unmerited obloquy, and thus wrought for the cause of free government and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm. These Southern State governments proved a source of angry contention inside the Republican party in the North, and thus brought one more calamity to the negro, and gave one more advantage to the rebel element of the South that so persistently sought for his disfranchisement.

The hostility of Southern men to Carpet-bag rule was instinctive and irrepressible. The failure of the rebellion left its participants stripped of property, depressed in spirit, angry and unreconciled. Northern men appearing among them recalled in an offensive manner the power that had overcome and as they thought humiliated them,—recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new order of things, before they could subject themselves to the discipline of adversity, and gracefully accept the inevitable. Even the most decorous and considerate behavior on the part of these men would perhaps have failed to conciliate the Southern population. But while unable to do this, they could no doubt in due season have secured public confidence if they had administered the trusts confided to them with an eye single to the prosperity and happiness of the people over whom by a strange concurrence of circumstances they were empowered to rule. If these men had in all cases established as good and trustworthy governments in the South as they had been reared under in the North, they would have conferred upon all the reconstructed States a blessing which as prejudice wore away would have caused their names to be respected and honored. Their governments were however demoralized by the violent and murderous course of the clans organized to resist them. In the play between the two forces,—a government too weak to command respect; a native population too resentful to yield obedience,—a state of social disorder and political chaos resulted, which would in advance have seemed impossible among any people clothed with the right of self-government, and living under a Republic of vast power and prestige.

The Republicans lost in many of the Southern States a valuable support upon which they had counted with confidence. Union men whom no persecution could break and no blandishments could seduce, were to be found in the South at the outbreak of the rebellion. They were men who in a less conspicuous way held the same faith that inspired Andrew Johnson and William G. Brownlow during the war. It was the influence and example of this class of men which had contributed to the Union Army so large a number of white soldiers from the rebellious States,—numbering in the aggregate more than one hundred thousand men. Tennessee alone furnished at least thirty-five thousand white troops as brave as ever followed the flag. The Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, all furnished loyal men from their mountain districts; and beyond the Mississippi a valuable contingent came from Arkansas and Texas.

The men who had the courage to stand for the Union in time of war should not have separated from its friends in time of peace. If Reconstruction had been completed according to the first design, on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, these men would have remained solidly hostile to the Southern Democracy. But as the contest waxed warm, as negro suffrage became a prominent issue, many of them broke away from their associations and became the bitterest foes of the Republican party. They followed Andrew Johnson and partook of his spirit. But against all adverse influences, some of the truest and best of this class of Union men remained with the Republican party. If the whole number had proved steadfast, they would have formed the centre of a strong and growing influence in the South which in many localities would have been able—as in East Tennessee—to resist the combined rebel power of their respective communities. Under such protection the colored vote, intelligently directed and defended, could have resisted the violence which has practically deprived it of all influence. Every day affords fresh proof of the disasters which have resulted to the Republican party of the South from the loss of so large a proportion of the original Union men.

Perhaps the most serious charge brought against the Republican policy by Southern men, was that the negro was advanced to the right of suffrage, while a portion of the white population were placed under such political disabilities as prevented their voting. This allegation is often made, however, in a way that leads to erroneous impressions, because as matter of fact it was not the policy of Congress to deprive any man of the right of suffrage. Congress even left the voting franchise in full force with those who were under such political disabilities as forbade their holding office. It is true that in a certain election under the Reconstruction laws the voter was subjected to a test-oath, but this condition was imposed under what seemed to be a fair plea of necessity; for it was applied in the South only after the entire white population had refused to reconstruct their States on the basis first freely offered them, with no restriction on white suffrage, and even before the negro was empowered to vote. Fearing from this experience that any organization of a State under the auspices of Republican power might be voted down, Congress resorted to the expedient of confining the suffrage in the preliminary stage to shoe who had not rebelled, and who could therefore be firmly trusted to establish a loyal government.

While the National Government refrained from withholding the elective franchise from men who had fought to destroy the Union, there is no doubt that disabilities and exclusions were imposed upon large classes in certain States of the South. But perhaps even here there have been exaggeration and misunderstanding, for in some of the reconstructed States,—notably Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas,—there were no test-oaths and no exclusion from the right of suffrage by reason of participation in the rebellion; and yet hostility to the Reconstruction Acts, and personal wrongs and injuries to the colored men, were quite as marked in those States as in those where certain classes of citizens labored under the stigma of exclusion from the ballot. Possibly it might be said that exclusion, even in one State, was an odious discrimination which all who had taken part in the rebellion would, from a feeling of fellowship, resent and resist. But the truth remains, nevertheless, that in the Southern States in which no test-oaths were applied disturbance, disorder, and resistance to law were as frequent and flagrant as in those where suffrage had in some degree been qualified and restricted.

The original difficulty was the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment by the South—a difficulty that recurred not only at every subsequent step of reconstruction, but was even more plainly demonstrated after reconstruction was nominally complete. If that Amendment had been accepted by the Southern States as the basis of reconstruction, the suffrage of the colored man would have followed as a necessity and a boon to the South. It would have originated in popular demand, and the State authorities, instead of expending their power in resisting the decree of the Nation, would have upheld the same franchise with all the earnestness which the combined power of necessity and self-interest could inspire. It is difficult to compute the loss and the suffering endured by the South from the folly of rejecting a Constitutional Amendment, which they could have had with all its benefits, and which they were compelled afterwards to accept with all its burdens. This unhappy result to the South was the fruit of their unwise adherence to Andrew Johnson in a political battle which he was predestined to lose.

It was not unnatural that the unwise action on the part of the South should lead to unwise action of the part of the North; but it must be remembered that if mistakes were made in the system of reconstruction they were for a day only, while the objects sought were for all time. The misfortune was, that the mistakes blinded the eyes of many candid and patriotic men to the real merit of the struggle. It is not the first time in history where a great and noble purpose has been weakened and thwarted by prejudices aroused against the means used to effect it. The design was broad, patriotic, generous, and statesmanlike: the means to attain it aroused prejudices which created obstacles at every step and led to almost fatal embarrassment. The elevation of a race, the stamping out of the last vestige of caste, the obliteration of cruel wrongs, were the objects aimed at by the Republicans. If they remain unaccomplished, or only partially accomplished, no discredit can attach to the great political organization which entertained lofty conceptions of human rights, and projected complete measures for their realization. That prejudice should stand in the way of principle, that subsidiary issues should embarrass the attainment of great ends, that personal and partisan interests should for a time override the nobler instincts of philanthropy, must be regarded with regret, but not with discouragement.

[(1) The New Jersey Legislature of 1871 reversed the action of the previous year, and ratified the Amendment after it had been proclaimed by the Secretary of State as adopted. Ohio at first rejected the Amendment, but reversed her action in time to have her vote recorded among the States ratifying the Amendment. New York ratified the Amendment in 1869; the next year, under a Democratic majority, the Legislature attempted to withdraw the ratification; and in the year succeeding the Republicans re-affirmed it.]

CHAPTER XX.

The civil war closed with ill-feeling amounting to resentment towards England on the part of the loyal citizens of the United States. They believed that the Government of Great Britain, and especially the aristocratic and wealthy classes (whose influence in the kingdom is predominant), had desired the destruction of the Union and had connived at it so far as connivance was safe; they believed that great harm had been inflicted on the American marine by rebel cruisers built in English ship-yards and manned with English sailors; they believed that the war had been cruelly prolonged by the Confederate hope of British intervention,—a hope stimulated by the utterances of high officials of the British Government; they believed that her Majesty's Ministers would have been willing at any time to recognize the Southern Confederacy, if it could have been done without danger of a European conflict, the effect of which upon the interests of England could not be readily measured.

Their belief did not wait for legal proofs or written arguments, nor was it in any degree restrained by technicalities. The American people had followed the varying fortunes of the war with intense solicitude, and had made up their minds that the British Government throughout the contest had been unfriendly and offensive, manifestly violating at every step the fair and honorable duty of a neutral. They did not ground their conclusions upon any specially enunciated principles of international law; they did not seek to demonstrate, by quotations from accepted authorities, that England had failed in this or in that respect to perform her duty towards the American Government. They simply recognized that England's hand had been against us, concealed somewhat, and used indirectly, but still heavily against us. They left to the officers of their own Government the responsible task of stating the law and submitting the evidence when the proper time should come.

Perhaps the mass of the people in no other country keep so close a watch upon the progress of public events as is kept by the people of the United States. If the scholarship of the few is not so thorough as in certain European countries, the intelligence of the many is far beyond that of any other nation. The popular conclusions, therefore, touching the conduct of England, did not spring from imagination or from prejudice; nor were they the results of illogical inference. To the outside world the British Government is the British Parliament; and citizens of the United States knew that their country had been subjected in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons to every form of misrepresentation, to every insult which malice could invent, to every humiliation which insolence and arrogance could inflict. The most distant generation of Americans will never be able to read the Parliamentary reports from 1861 to 1865 without indignation. Discussions touching the condition of the United States occupied no small share of the time in both Houses, and in the House of Lords cordiality was never expressed for the Union. In the House of Commons the Government of the United States had sympathizing friends, eloquent defenders, though few in number. Bright, Forster, Cobden, and men of that class, spoke brave words in defense of the cause for which brave deeds were done by their kindred on this side of the Atlantic—a kindred always more eager to cherish gratitude than to nurture revenge.

But from the Government of England, terming itself Liberal, with Lord Palmerston at its head, Earl Russell as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Duke of Argyll as Lord Privy Seal, and Earl Granville as Lord President of the Council, not one friendly word was sent across the Atlantic. A formal neutrality was declared by Government officials, while its spirit was daily violated. If the Republic had been a dependency of Great Britain, like Canada or Australia, engaged in civil strife, it could not have been more steadily subjected to review, to criticism, and to the menace of discipline. The proclamations of President Lincoln, the decisions of Federal courts, the orders issued commanders of the Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading British statesmen, while the most ribald defamers of the United States met with cheers from a majority of the House of Commons, and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of a friendly Government without rebuke from the Ministerial benches.(1)

The notorious Mr. Roebuck, in a debate, March 14, 1864, upon the progress of the civil war, said: "The whole proceedings in this American war are a blot upon human nature; and when I am told that I should have sympathy for the Northern States of America, I turn in absolute disgust from their hypocrisy. If there is a sink of political iniquity, it is at Washington. They are corrupt; they are base; they are cowardly; they are cruel." This highly indecorous speech was made in the presence of members of the British Ministry. The Premier, Lord Palmerston, followed Mr. Roebuck on the floor, calling him his "honorable and learned friend," and offering neither rebuke nor objection to the words he had used. On the contrary, with jaunty recklessness he accused the American Government of secretly and cunningly recruiting its armies in Ireland, by inducing Irishmen to emigrate as laborers and "then to enlist in some Ohio regiment or other, and become soldiers with the chance of plunder, and God knows what besides."

Lord Robert Cecil, since known as the Marquis of Salisbury, and at present (1885) Premier of England, only a few months before Mr. Roebuck's disreputable speech, attacked the Judiciary of the United States, and told a story so remarkable that it needs no characterization. "American courts," said his lordship, "are not free from circumstances of suspicion attaching to them peculiarly. It might be that in old times judges sat on the American Bench who enjoyed world-wide reputation, but within the last two or three years the American tribunals have delivered their decisions under the pressure of fixed bayonets. The Supreme Court of America two years ago was applied to for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the American Constitution; but the Judges were unable to pronounce the judgment which their consciences would have prompted them to deliver, because the soldiers of President Lincoln, appearing at their doors in arms, so terrified them that they perverted the law to suit the design of the Executive." If his Lordship believed this groundless calumny, his ignorance concerning the United States would be subject of pity. If his Lordship did not believe it, the just accusation against him is too serious to be stated in these pages.

During the first year of the war Lord Robert Cecil had so frankly expressed his view of the situation and his belief in the gain to England which would result from the destruction of the American Union, that his extraordinary madness may at least be said to have had a method. He was already a prominent member of the party of which he is now the head, and really reflected their sentiment as to the advantage which would come to England if the rebellion should be successful and the Southern Confederacy established. They had witnessed the marvelous growth of the United States and had concluded that, already a powerful rival, the Republic would certainly be dangerous as an enemy. This view is discernible in the Tory speeches in Parliament and in the Tory press of England, and was the motive which inspired so many Englishmen to connive at the destruction of the American Union. They went to great length, even establishing an association to promote the cause of the rebellion, and to supply the Confederate Treasury with money. Lord Robert Cecil was one of the Vice-Presidents of the "Southern Independence Association" and a subscriber to the Confederate loan, as were also Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Gregory, and many other members of the British Parliament.(2)

The conduct of the Tories was not, however, a surprise to the American people. From the earliest period of our National existence we had received from that party constant demonstrations of unfriendliness; and where safe opportunity offered, insult was added. But of the Liberal party Americans had hoped, nay, had confidently expected, if not open demonstrations of sympathy, at least a neutrality which would deprive the Rebel leaders of any form of encouragement. When the first shadow of real danger to the Union appeared in 1860-61, there was instinctive gladness among loyal Americans that a Liberal ministry was in power in England, composed of men who would in no event permit their Government to be used in aid of a rebellion, whose first object was the destruction of a kindred nation, and whose subsequent policy looked to the perpetuation of human slavery. But the hope proved to be only the delusion of a day. Americans found the Palmerston Ministry in a hostile mood and ready to embarrass the Government of the Union by every course that might be taken with safety to the interests of England; and they at once recognized a vast increase of the force against which they must contend.

But there was one apprehension which constantly enforced a limitation upon the action of the British Government, and that was the danger that an open espousal of the cause of the Confederacy would be the signal for a European conflict. Russia was more than friendly to us: Germany had no interest in our destruction. Russia was hostile to England: Germany was hostile to France. Active intervention by England and France, so much talked of, might have caused an earlier dethronement of Napoleon III, and a struggle in the East which would have left England no military power to expend on this side of the Atlantic. The American citizen cannot so wholly or ignorantly deceive himself as to believe that the Palmerston Government, from any consideration of the duties of neutrality, from any sympathy with the anti-slavery aspect of the contest, or from any ennobling impulse whatever, refrained from formal recognition of the Southern Confederacy and the open espousal of its cause.

When the question of recognizing the Confederacy came before Parliament, it was withdrawn after discussion by request of Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He assured the House that "the main result of the American contest is not, humanly speaking, in any degree doubtful." He thought "there never was a war of more destructive, more deplorable, more hopeless character." The contest in his judgment was "a miserable one." "We do not," said he, "believe that the restoration of the American Union by force is attainable. I believe that the public opinion of this country is unanimous upon that subject. It is not, therefore, from indifference, it is not from any belief that this war is waged for any adequate or worthy object on the part of the North, that I would venture to deprecate in the strongest terms the adoption of the motion of the honorable and learned gentleman." The "honorable and learned gentleman" was Mr. Roebuck, already quoted; and his motion was for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent Nation. The argument which Mr. Gladstone brought against it was in effect that the Confederacy was sure to succeed without foreign intervention. The fruit when ripe would fall of itself, and hence there was no need of prematurely beating the tree. The platform speeches of Mr. Gladstone were still more offensive and unjust, but he need be held answerable only for official declarations.

The only friends of the United States in England at that trying period were to be found among the "middle classes," as they are termed, and among the laboring men. The "nobility and gentry," the bankers, the great merchants, the ship-builders, were in the main hostile to the Union,—wishing and waiting for the success of the Confederacy. The honorable exceptions to this general statement were so few in number that they could exert little influence on public opinion and still less upon the course of the Ministry. The philanthropy, the foresight, the insight of the realm were found among the humbler classes. In all parts of the kingdom the laboring men were on the side of the Union. Though they suffered from a cotton-famine, they knew by intuition that the founding of a slave empire in America would degrade labor everywhere; they knew that the triumph of the Union signified the equality of human rights and would add to the dignity and reward of labor. It would have been well for England's fame and for her prosperity if the statesmen at Westminster had shared the wisdom and the nobler instincts of the operatives of Lancashire.

When the National Government had finally triumphed over the rebellion despite the evil wishes and machinations of England, Parliament suddenly ceased to consider the condition of the United States as one of the regular orders of the day; and Lord Palmerston when inquiry was addressed to him whether any representations would be made in regard to the arrest of Jefferson Davis, curtly replied that it was not the intention of the Government in any respect to interfere with the internal affairs of the United States. The only expression now made in Parliament touching our policies, was one of solicitude lest our government should deal with the citizens of the Southern States in terms of severity. In June, 1865, two months after the war closed, two noble earls, Russell and Derby, took it upon themselves to advise the American Government against the indulgence of passion and revenge towards those who had engaged in the rebellion. Earl Derby thought that "the triumphant Government should seek not to exasperate the feelings of their former antagonists, which have already been too much embittered, but should endeavor by deeds of conciliation and of mercy to re-cement if possible a Union so nearly dissolved." Earl Russell expressed opinion that it was "most desirable that there should be no appearance of passion of the part of those who have the guidance of affairs in the American Union."

Kindly advice is never to be rudely repelled; but this was counsel which the American Government did not need. The war had closed without the execution of a single man who had borne arms against the Government, without imprisonment, without confiscation of property, without even depriving one rebel of his franchise as an elector. The advice of the noble earls, on the side of mercy, would have had more weight and influence, had weight and influence been needed, if their own Government, after every rebellion, however small or under however great provocation, had not uniformly followed its victory by the gibbet, by imprisonment, by transportation of the men who had taken up arms against intolerable oppression. If noble earls of England had scrutinized English policy, and advised their own Government as they now advised the Government of the United States, some heroic lives would have been spared to Ireland, and subjects in India would not have been doomed to a personal degradation which heightened the horror of impending death.

But while offensive surveillance of American affairs ceased in Parliament, offensive criticisms in the British Press continued throughout the period of Reconstruction, and our Government was held answerable for alleged wrongs and outrages against a conquered foe. Especial hostility was exhibited towards the Republican party, which had conducted the Government through the war and led it to its complete triumph. This party controlled Congress when it levied heavy protective duties and stimulated manufacturing in American as the basis of that financial strength which proved during the civil war a marvel to the world. Offended by the Protective policy of the United States, the British Press now denounced the measures proposed for the Reconstruction of the South. No censure was too harsh, no epithet too severe to apply to the policy and to the Republican party that stood sponsor for it. It might have surprised those English critics to learn that the opponents of the Reconstruction policy at home could find nothing to say of it so denunciatory or so concentrated in bitterness as that the National Government was trying to reduce the Southern States to the condition of Ireland. And thus while we were receiving from British oracles multiplied instructions as to the manner of dealing with the States that had attempted to break from their allegiance, those States knew that almost within sight of England's shores there could be found the worst governed, the most cruelly treated people within the circle of Christendom. The American mote could be plainly descried beyond the broad ocean, but the Irish beam was not visible across the narrow channel.