He spoke for the adoption of Trumbull’s resolution and, in doing so, traveled some of the ground gone over by Henderson. The government of Louisiana, Mr. Clark believed, belonged to the Union people. He was not aware that any definite number of persons was required to constitute a State, nor did he understand how the majority by going into rebellion could take away the rights of the loyal minority.
The guaranty of a republican form of government was made, he asserted, to meet precisely such a case as had arisen in Louisiana. In this view it became the duty of Congress to protect the government established by the minority.[415]
Mr. Pomeroy, speaking to the principle of Sumner’s amendment, declared that he would vote against all measures that looked like Congressional interference with the right to vote in the States. Saulsbury interrupted him to inquire what he would have done had the President, or his Secretary of War, sent armed soldiers to the polls and imposed a test upon voters as was done in Delaware, where Democrats were chased into swamps and compelled in the night time to lie out in the snow. Pomeroy’s only reply to this was to relate his own experience under Democratic supremacy in the early days of Kansas. He resumed his remarks on Louisiana, but these had been anticipated by the speakers who preceded him. In conclusion he asserted that there were two reasons for recognizing Arkansas where there was but one in favor of Louisiana.[416]
The Delaware Senator did not fail to call attention to Pomeroy’s evasion, and said he was glad to observe a change in the spirit of some of his Republican friends. “I think,” he said, “they begin to scent the danger in the distance; that they begin to see that if a Government of law is to be destroyed, and power is to be concentrated in Executive hands, or in the hands of Executive agents, there is an end of liberty in this country. I hail the dawn, therefore, of a better day.”[417]
Mr. Henderson again entered into the discussion, and in the course of his remarks drew from Senator Sumner this remarkable statement concerning Louisiana: “It is in and it is not. [Laughter.] The territory is in; but as yet there is no State government that is in.” In this discussion Sumner asserted also that when the bill of his friend Senator Wade was before Congress no one questioned its constitutionality though it proposed to interfere in the suffrage and to impose a condition upon States at the time of their reconstruction. Pomeroy dissented from the doctrine that Congress could reconstruct the insurgent States, and maintained that the only question then was whether they would recognize what the people of Louisiana had done.
Reverdy Johnson pointed out to Sumner the great increase of representation in Congress which the South would acquire by an extension of the suffrage to negroes. The three fifths provision, he said, would be done away with, and he made the further observation that for years to come the entire colored vote of that section would be in the hands of a few white men. He urged recognition of both Louisiana and Arkansas, so that the constitutional amendment would become binding, for unless ratified by three fourths of all the States it would be open to doubt.
The session was drawing rapidly toward its close; it was late in the evening of February 25, and the resolution under discussion was too important to be passed without due consideration. These circumstances offered Mr. Wade, who vehemently opposed the measure, a decent pretext for demanding the “yeas” and “nays” on his motion to postpone the subject till the first Monday of December following, 1865.
Before a vote was reached on this motion, however, Powell spoke again at considerable length. In addition to his former arguments, many of which were repeated, he said that “all the loyal Union men in the State of Louisiana who refused, like supple menials and slaves, to crouch beneath the iron military power of General Banks, and take that oath were excluded from voting,” and he added, “I believe to-day there are more men of that description in Louisiana than voted to ratify this constitution.”
When asked by Mr. Henderson whether he had heard of any objection to it on the part of the loyal men of Louisiana, Powell answered that Thomas J. Durant and thirty-one others, distinguished, leading, loyal men of that State, had made earnest and powerful protest against it, and remonstrated against the admission to Congress of Senators and Representatives from Louisiana. They were also opposed to counting her electoral vote. Mr. Durant, he believed, was the first district-attorney appointed in Louisiana by the present Executive. Henderson insinuated by an inquiry that Durant was himself a candidate for office at that election and took the oath prescribed. Powell not being informed on these points, the matter was left in doubt.
The Kentucky Senator took this opportunity to characterize the manner of General Banks in his statement before the Judiciary Committee as that of a “swift witness, to make a case that he thought would cause Louisiana to be admitted.” He also called upon some advocate of the resolution to explain a support of the present measure after voting a few days before for the resolution declaring that the electoral vote of Louisiana should not be counted. If Louisiana was then a legitimate government, why, he asked, was she not entitled to cast her electoral vote? He did not then believe it a legitimate government and so opposed the counting of her electoral vote; but the Senator from Maryland [Mr. Johnson] and the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Henderson], who then voted with him, now supported the resolution.[418]
Wade’s motion to postpone further consideration of the joint resolution till the first Monday of December was defeated by a vote of 17 to 12.[419]
In the course of the discussions to postpone Sumner said that he would regard its passage as a national calamity. It would be the political Bull Run of that Administration, sacrificing, as it would, a great cause and the great destinies of this Republic. When Trumbull taxed him with intent to postpone discussion by dilatory motions the Massachusetts Senator admitted his opposition and declared that to defeat the measure he would employ any weapon in the arsenal of parliamentary warfare.
The friends of the Administration endeavored to press their adversaries to take final action on the resolution. The earnestness of the two factions provoked rather sharp censure of Sumner and the few Republicans who acted with him and were attempting by dilatory motions to fatigue the Senate into a postponement. Doolittle was especially severe on them, and particularly on Sumner, who replied with much asperity. He was supported by Howard and Chandler, while Trumbull, Foster and Doolittle undertook a defence of the resolution and its advocates. This wrangling appears to have delighted the Democratic members. Mr. Hendricks, indeed, made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction.
“The discordant elements of the Republican party are exhibiting themselves here,” said the Indiana Senator, “and I venture the prophecy that a like exhibition will be witnessed over the country within a very few years. But four years ago, at the Chicago Convention, when Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency a solemn pledge was made to the people of this country that that party, when it came into power, would not undertake to interfere with the institutions of the States. As soon as the disturbed condition of the country gave the pretext for it, the undertaking was commenced; and now, when, in the judgment of some, it has been accomplished, there comes up the grave question, what is to be done, and what is to be the political condition of the four million negroes when they are set free? And upon that question the real strife of to-night has been witnessed. That is the subject and it need not be disguised. It is growing out of the discordant elements of the party that now governs the country.”[420]
Trumbull, in reply to an inquiry of Senator Wade, said that he had voted against receiving the electoral vote of Louisiana because it had not been recognized. Now he proposed to put it in a condition where it could cast electoral votes, and do all other acts belonging to a State.
To this Wade replied that “If the President of the United States, operating through his major-generals, can initiate a State government, and can bring it here and force us, compel us, to receive as associates on this floor these mere mockeries, these men of straw who represent nobody, your Republic is at an end.
“Sir, I have heard a great deal about this pretended election in Louisiana that did not come from Major-General Banks, and I pronounce the proceeding a mockery. It is not pretended that there could be drummed up from the riffraff of New Orleans and sent into the vicinity under the mandate of a Major-General more than about six thousand votes, where over fifty thousand were formerly polled.
“Talk not to me of your ten per cent. principle. A more absurd, monarchical, and anti-American principle was never announced on God’s earth——“[421]
At this point Senator Sherman, of Ohio, interposed to obtain consideration for a revenue measure which he had in charge, whereupon his colleague changed somewhat the declamation against the resolution to a denunciation of its advocates, especially Trumbull, upon whom he retorted the charge of retarding legitimate business. Howard resented the charge of radical factiousness and denounced Trumbull with considerable warmth. Sherman suggested that enough had been said on both sides, and in the lighter skirmishing of the breathing-spell which followed, Mr. Sprague, of Rhode Island, hitherto a silent spectator of these exciting scenes, declared that he held in his possession a paper indicating the names of the members of the Louisiana Legislature, and it showed that twenty-five, or twenty-seven or thirty of those gentlemen who constituted that assembly were officeholders of the Federal Government, or the government of the State, which, he said, was the same thing.[422]
While Sherman’s measure and Trumbull’s resolution were competing for priority of consideration Sumner remarked that during the preceding summer, 1864, he had met a distinguished gentleman just returned from Louisiana; he had been present at some of the sittings of the convention, having been in New Orleans in discharge of important public duties. This gentleman, added Sumner, said compendiously that the convention was “nothing but a stupendous hoax.”
When Reverdy Johnson inquired the name of Sumner’s informant, Senator Grimes replied that he could furnish a large number of names of persons present in New Orleans when the convention was held, and added: “If the Senate will give a committee I will undertake to prove and I will prove that the voters whose votes were polled in the outlying parishes at Thibodeaux and Placquemines, and other places, were carried in army transports to those places where they polled the votes, being discharged soldiers and persons belonging in New Orleans, and were brought back to New Orleans, and were not residents of the places where they purported to vote.”[423]
Sumner, immediately after the uncontroverted statement of Mr. Grimes, added, with more energy than elegance: “The pretended State government in Louisiana is utterly indefensible whether you look at its origin or its character. To describe it, I must use plain language. It is a mere seven-months’ abortion, begotten by the bayonet in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste, and born before its time, rickety, unformed, unfinished—whose continued existence will be a burden, a reproach, and a wrong. That is the whole case; and yet the Senator from Illinois now presses it upon the Senate at this moment to the exclusion of the important public business of the country.”[424]
The urgency of the army and navy appropriation bills prevented for the time further consideration of the Louisiana question. The subject, however, was again brought before the Senate on March 2, 1865, by Mr. Doolittle, who had received and had been requested to file with the secretary of the Senate a certificate, under seal of the State of Louisiana, of the election of Michael Hahn as a Senator of the United States from the State of Louisiana for six years from March 4, 1865. Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, opposed its reception. Doolittle’s motion to have it laid on the table and filed was, however, agreed to.
Only two days of the session remained; in the temper of the Senate it was impossible that the resolution could pass at that time, and the House had not yet taken it up for discussion. In these circumstances the measure was abandoned, though very reluctantly, by its champions.