31 cars on account of color"; 30 he supported the bills for incorporation of the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth, and of the National Association for the Relief of Colored Women and Children; 32 but he voted, also, under one of the bills relating to the organization and efficiency of the Army, for a provision limiting the commissions of colored officers to company rank, and to companies composed exclusively of persons of African descent.33 A more original piece of work which Wilmot helped to mold after it came from the House was the “Act giving aid to the State of Missouri, for the Purpose of Securing the Abolishment of Slavery in said State." Its interest lay in that it was the first constructive attempt to carry out, in legislative form, a policy advocated by the President early in the preceding session, and quickly reëchoed by some of the States. Michigan passed resolutions in its approval. Maryland sought assistance in accord with its principle. Lincoln was so earnestly convinced of the expediency of such a plan that, on July 14, 1862, three days before the adjournment of the second session, he had sent a special message with a draft of a bill "to compensate any State which may abolish slavery within its limits," recommending that it be passed substantially as presented.34 In spite of this very concrete reminder, Congress did nothing toward a comprehensive plan, or a general act; but in the third session it ventured on a tentative approach toward certain special cases. Three bills were introduced, one in favor of West Virginia (which died in committee), and two (one in the Senate and one in the House) in behalf of Missouri. The Senate bill, after its second reading, was referred, adversely reported, and indefinitely postponed. The House bill, after a somewhat turbulent course, and much modification, was passed, February 12. Wilmot was one of the 23 senators 30 Senate Journal, p. 355. 32 Senate Journal, pp. 222, 223. 81 Senate Journal, p. 353. 34 Senate Journal, p. 837. 35 who voted for it. There were 18 opposed, including the whole southern group. In its final form, it provided that whenever the President had satisfactory evidence of Missouri's adoption of an emancipation law, gradual or immediate, he should prepare and deliver to the governor of the State 5 per cent 30-year bonds of the United States to pay for the liberated slaves at a rate not exceeding $200 each, in the average, and to an aggregate in no case exceeding $20,000,000, and limited to $10,000,000 unless the law provided for complete emancipation by, or before, July 4, 1865, and exclusion of slavery thereafter forever. Wilmot voted steadily for the bill, with an apparent disposition to avoid extremes in either direction in its terms. He was for Sumner's amendment reducing the allowance per slave from an original $300 to $200, but against another of Sumner's moves-to insist that the emancipation be immediate rather than gradual. He voted against Henderson's proposal to limit the bond issue strictly to $10,000,000, but also against Wilson's to raise the maximum to $25,000,000. He voted nay on Dixon's amendment extending the time limit beyond July 4, 1865, and Powell's restriction that none of the bond issue should be used to pay for salaries, machinery of emancipation, or colonization of the liberated slaves.30 But after all, it was labor lost. Conference with the House was not had, nor agreement reached, and the bill remained incomplete and unsigned. The Thirty-seventh Congress left this question with nothing more tangible than the joint resolution passed, April 2, 1862, that Congress ought to coöperate with, affording pecuniary aid to, any State which might adopt the gradual abolishment of slavery. In view of coming events, which had not yet begun to cast their shadows, there is a curious interest in Wilmot's attitude toward a bill effecting changes in the United States Court of Claims-amending, in other words, the act of February 24, 35 Senate Journal, Thirty-seventh Congress, 3rd session p. 24436 Senate Journal, pp. 175, 215, 217, 219, 241-244. 37 1855, by which that court had been created. He voted, first, for an amendment which substituted, for the pending measure, a brief, simple and complete repeal of the former law-in short, abolished the Court of Claims altogether. That failing, he voted for a provision that any claim against the United States might be brought and heard in any United States district or circuit court, simply transferring the business of the Court of Claims to these other tribunals.88 This also failed, and he next voted against adding two more justices to the Claims bench; 39 but they were added. Finally, he voted against the passage of the bill. Nevertheless, it passed, and he was destined to be one of the appointees to the position whose creation or continuance he had so consistently resisted. 40 A statement handed down from one brief chronicler to another runs to the effect that Wilmot's failing health made his service in the Senate scarcely more than perfunctory, and prevented his renomination. The official record gathered in the preceding chapters disposes of the first part of that statement. Judge Wilmot continued, in fact, to render distinguished service on the bench for some years afterwards. Indeed, in April, 1866, he was accepted as a good risk by the Equitable Life Assurance Society; the medical examination did not show any defect in his physical condition nor any history of serious previous illness. Even as late as June, 1866, he was assured in a note from the agent of the New York Life Insurance Company, to which he had also applied, that "his examination was very satisfactory" and that the policy had been made out and mailed to him." Nevertheless, as Mrs. Overton wrote in a letter already quoted, "his irregular habits (of eating and drinking) and the excitement incident to political life no doubt undermined his health"; or even more probably, there may have been some lesion not readily discoverable by the diagnostic methods of the day that caused both the 87 Senate Journal, p. 130. 89 Senate Journal, p. 133. 38 Senate Journal, p. 132. 40 Senate Journal, p. 134. 41 Letter now in the possession of Wm. M. Spalding, Esq., Towanda, Pa. He abnormal appetite and the comparatively early decline. came, as his sister suggested in the same letter, of a shortlived family, at least on his mother's side, and he aged prematurely; but the final break was more rapid that most of the accounts would indicate. As to the failure to receive the indorsement of a second term, Col. A. K. McClure gives a wholly different explanation.42 He says Wilmot would have been the unanimous choice of the republican senatorial caucus, in 1863, if he could have been elected. By that time, however, the democrats had secured a majority of one on joint ballot. Cameron, who had meantime retired from Lincoln's Cabinet under pressure, had been given the Russian mission and had relinquished that in turn to seek reëntry into the Senate, was represented by his friends as able to secure one or two democratic votes, and as being the only republican who could possibly be elected. "His resultant nomination and the contest that followed led to an eruption that not only prevented any democratic support but deprived him of a solid republican support, and Buckalew was elected." Wilmot, however, was not destined to leave Washington. March 7, 1863, President Lincoln commissioned him as a judge of the newly created (or, as it was styled, "reorganized") Court of Claims. 42 Lincoln and Men of War Times, p. 137. CHAPTER XXXIX THE COURT OF CLAIMS THE appointment to the Court of Claims by which Wilmot took his seat made him a member of that Bench from the time of its reorganization under the act of 1863, when it was for the first time created an actual court, empowered to find and to give judgment finally in matters of fact, and in matters of law subject only to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Prior to that date, as the Court existed under the act of 1855, it was in fact only a sort of advisory commission, whose function was to investigate, and whose findings and recommendations must all be reported to Congress for action. Wilmot was thus a member of the Court of Claims during the important and interesting period of its organization and the establishment of its rules of practice and the prescription of the regulations under which appeals from its decisions might be taken to the Supreme Court. As constituted at that time, the Claims Bench was made up of Joseph Casey, Chief Justice, and Edward Loring, James Hughes, David Wilmot and Ebenezer Peck, judges. Hughes resigned, December, 1864, and was succeeded by Charles C. Nott. The sittings of the court during the earlier years of its existence were held in a room in the center of the Capitol, under the library; Wilmot's residence throughout the whole term of service on the Claims Bench was at Mrs. Carter's, No. 4 North A Street. In the first case recorded in the reports of the new tribunal (Gordon's case) it is noted that "Wilmot, J., not having heard the argument, does not take part in the decision," which was against the claimant. The first case in which he appears to have 1 Presented at the December term of the Supreme Court, 1865. |