INDESTRUCTIBLE STATES AND UNION.

353 obedience by conquest, even, although he were disposed to question that proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true." The doctrine of Lincoln and Seward was not subjugation nor conquest, but the assertion and restoration of the Federal authority in every seceding state.

There might be a national agreement without states; but there could be no Union without states to unite. All the states must have existence. It was the secessionist only, who asserted that "the Union is a purely voluntary connection, founded on the revocable assent of the several states." Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln said to Mr. Adams, in regard to the seceding states: "You will . . . all the while remember that these states are now, as they always heretofore have been, and notwithstanding their temporary self-delusion they must always continue to be, equal and honored members of this Federal Union; and that their citizens, throughout all political misunderstandings and alienations, still are, and always must be, our kindred and countrymen." There can be no such thing as disloyalty to the Union and at the same time loyalty to a state. The converse is also true. "All public officers, as well as all citizens," said Mr. Seward, "owe not only allegiance to the Union, but allegiance also to the states in which they reside." There can be no conflict between the state and Federal allegiance of the citizen. The two allegiances constitute but one whole fealty and faith. This is the Democratic doctrine also. That party never faltered in the assertion or in the acceptance of all its logical conclusions. But how long did the Republican party adhere to it? Mr. Lincoln, in the last days of his life-time, and Mr. Seward after him, were sadly in the minority in their states rights views.

The states must ever exist. bringing mortality upon all.

Not one could suicide or die, without Such mortality can come solely, either by

overpowering force, or a voluntary abandonment by all the states of the exist ing Federal compact. "No new state shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state," so say the people of the United States in their Constitution. How can this decree be repealed? Only by revolution. True, it is possible to suppose a voluntary abandonment by the people of their present form of government. But would not that be revolution? This possibility is foreign to any argument that admits the excellence of our present form of government. Mr. Howe was arguing from the Constitution, hence his ridicule of states rights could only reflect upon his own argument. Speaking from the Constitution, the question may be asked: Must Massachusetts always be a state of the Union? She must. No new state can be formed or erected within her jurisdiction. She must always be and be known as "Massachusetts." We will never be without that commonwealth. She is one of the old states. It is "new states" that can come into the Union, not old states, for they cannot get out of the Union.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DOCTRINE OF STATE VITALITY.

A TEST OF POSITIONS IN DEBATE-SENATOR JOHNSON TRIUMPHANTLY ANSWERS SENATOR HOWE -THE SENATOR IN THE ARENA WITH THE LOGICAL RAPIER -THE SOCRATIC METHOD OF JOHNSON-HOWE'S COOL PARRIES AND JOHNSON'S KEENER THRUSTS - THE SCENE IN THE SENATE COMPARED WITH THE WARREN HASTINGS TRIAL- -THE IMMORTALITY OF THE STATES - SECESSION ORDINANCES VOID-NOT WAR, BUT INSURRECTION - THE FEELING SOUTH-WAS PROBATION NECESSARY? - NORTHERN APPREHENSIONS WAR RESULTS SAFE - NEGRO ENFRANCHISEMENT – THE BALLOT INEVITABLE – PARTISANSHIP PILLORIED· THE CONSTITUTION AS THE PALLADIUM OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH.

T

HE author has, in the preceding chapters, set forth the views, respectively, of the two great political parties in regard to the policy of the war for the Union. In the Second Decade of this volume, the issues growing out of that war in regard to the relations of the victorious to the vanquished states, constitute the great theme for debate and congressional settlement. For the purpose of enabling the reader to get a clear understanding of the positions taken by the same parties in regard to those issues, the author has selected one debate in the Senate between distinguished representatives of the two parties. A few extracts from it, and a few comments on the arguments, will be sufficient for that purpose. The leading contestants in this debate, after which there were so many similitudes, were two Senators of very different types. The Senator from Wisconsin, Timothy O. Howe, was a man of the New England style. He was born in Livermore, Maine, and was an admirable judge — less advocate than judge. He was slow in speech and almost melancholy in manner. He seemed to be fatigued at the end of every sentence. He was of the same class of the genus homo as William H. Seward and Simon Cameron. He was tall and thin, pallid as death, and immobile in his restful and unimpassioned habitudes. How unlike the sturdy and fervid Marylander, Reverdy Johnson, who so triumphantly replied to his dialectics. The willowy, dilatory mode of the one was in contrast with the sturdy robustness of the

other. The voice of Senator Howe was not resonant. He spoke as if he were
exhausted. Reverdy Johnson's elocution, albeit trained in the solemn hush
and reclusiveness of the Supreme Court, was loud, orotund, and defiant.
What a venerable English form the latter had; what a peculiar eye, which in
after years became sightless; what an expressive mouth and form. His por-
trait in the Attorney-General's office is quite unlike the original, except
in a certain artistic repose.
The writer remembers these Senators with a
social pleasure, derived from a knowledge of their remarkable and genial
qualities. Other men have been more praised than Timothy O. Howe,
- the Postmaster-General under President Hayes; but other men never
deserved more encomium than he from his side in this great argument. But
when the Maryland Senator brought his interrogative skill into the arena,
his rapier pierced the heart of the contention at every thrust. The parry-
ing of the Wisconsin Senator was adroit, but the cunning of fence and the
courage of conviction of the Marylander were resistless.

To complete the surroundings of such a momentous contest, one would
wish for the picturesque pencil of Macaulay. There is no equal for graphic
style of that scene in the High Court of Parliament, when the peers sat in the
great hall of William Rufus "to try an Englishman for tyranny over the
holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude!"
True, no such garniture of traditions had gathered about the new Senate
Chamber. There was no military or civic pomp; no avenues lined with
grenadiers; no peers robed in velvet and ermine; no judges in the vest-
ments of state, or earl-marshals and princely personages, resplendent with
golden cordons and knightly orders. Our freshly-decorated Senate Chamber
was not hung with scarlet. Its colored lights from the ceiling shed a
garish, not a dim religious radiance upon the prevailing drab of the walls.
From the galleries, in eager interest, leaned forward forms of female grace,
companies of soldiers in undress uniforms, and citizens who served in the
departments. Here and there, mingling in the crowded audience, were seen
colored men,
- their heads crisp with Numidian curl, "but dazed with the
recondite issue and scene!" Fox and Sheridan,- the British Demosthenes
and Hyperides; Burke and Windham; and supreme above all, Hastings
himself, give human interest to the picture which glows in Macaulay's page.
But here in our Senate House, the fate, the condition, the contumacy, and
the so-called crime of many republics is in grand inquest. The writer clearly
recalls the scene of that eleventh of January, one and twenty years ago.
Members of the House of Representatives, since eminent at home and
abroad, flock to the Senate to hear Senator Johnson reply to the superb
speech made the day before by the Wisconsin Senator; and of which the
essence of its argument has been given in the preceding chapter. The
prayer is offered; the journal is read; petitions, reports, bills, and a dull
debate about assessors are listened to impatiently. Some words from Senator

-

Ray

Haye

Anthony are heard, and remarks from Sumner, Fessenden, Trumbull, Doolittle, Grimes, and others about the Paris Exposition; and then a vote is had on the latter. Now, a sharp rap is heard from the president pro tempore, Lafayette Foster. He calls up the great problem of the provisional governments and of the vitality of the states. The reporters sharpen their pencils, and the Senators settle themselves in their chairs. They are all intent to catch each syllable. Upon the left of the chair sit the few Democrats remaining in this august body. Observe the keen, intellectual, close-shaven face of Buckalew, of Pennsylvania; the suave expression which marks the handsome countenance of Hendricks, of Indiana; the unmistakable pioneer and reckless air of Nesmith, of Oregon; the small but defiant figure of Garrett Davis, of Kentucky; the debonair Stockton, of New Jersey; and the solid solemnity of Guthrie, of Kentucky. These are about all of the regulars of the old party present. They constitute about one-tenth of the seated Senators. But what new Senators are these, now anxiously waiting to hear the accents of the grand Marylander? Doolittle, Gratz Brown, Dixon, Cowan, and Trumbull, all rare and accomplished in debate, soon to become giants of those fierce and fervent days of discussion. They are ready to accept the new situation, as champions of Andrew Johnson's administration, for the unimpaired energy of statehood.

What an array upon the other side! Chandler, Lot Morrill, Poland, Nye, Pomeroy, Sprague, Williams, Yates, Ramsay, Henderson, Wilson, Fessenden, and Sumner, like Jove " above them all, by his great looks, and power imperial." Others there are, who are inconsiderable as dust, in the balances of debate. The Lanes of Indiana and Kansas, — genii of that day of weird Western politics,— McDougall, of California, and Saulsbury, of Delaware, twin relics of that hour of excitement, - these are absent. Rough Ben Wade and courtly John Sherman soon come in, and Ohio, through them, gives heed to the utterances of the logical and leading member of the reconstruction committee.

There are many debates on these reccnstruction questions. Many might be chosen to bring out the salient points, but they would not answer the author's purpose as well as this one. They cover thousands of pages of the legislative records. They evince patriotism and partisanship, loyalty and learning, enthusiasm and eloquence. Indeed, never were contests between embattled armies more thrilling than these debates in the legislative arena. Throughout, whether in the House or the Senate, two lines of argument, determined by opposite views of constitutional construction, are faithfully pursued, one line by the orators of one party, the other by the orators of the other party. The Democrats are always upholding the Constitution as a grant of limited powers, with indestructible, reserved rights remaining in the states and people of the Union. The Republicans are holding, in effect, the same doctrine for a time of peace; but another one for

PARTY POSITIONS ON RECONSTRUCTION.

357 a time of insurrection. In the latter condition, the Republicans would suspend the constitutional provisions, and make them inoperative at the will of the National Legislature. Both parties are undoubtedly acting with unfaltering loyalty to the Union; and neither is, at any time, entirely free from the dangerous spirit of partisanship. Naturally this spirit most exhibits itself in the dominant party, when the war has ceased with the defeat of secession. Power is never willingly surrendered.

The debate between Senators Howe and Johnson was conducted entirely as upon a constitutional question. Mr. Johnson's reply was a masterly elucidation. It set forth the Democratic doctrine respecting the constitutional status of the states that had attempted to secede from the Union. He commenced by defining the Republican position, as follows:

"I understand the honorable member from Wisconsin to say that the effect of the hostilities which we have been carrying on to suppress the insurrection in certain of the states where it has prevailed for some four years, is to extinguish altogether the states as such, and to reduce the territory of which those states were composed at the time when the insurrection broke out to the condition of territories, and to subject the people of those states to be governed under that clause of the Constitution which gives to Congress the power to govern the territories, or upon the ground that they may have been conquered by the United States, and that the power to govern is to be implied from the right of conquest when the conquest is completed.” To this Mr. Howe replied: "If the honorable Senator is simply stating what he understands to be the effect of my argument, I cannot object to it; but if he understood me to say that the purpose for which we prosecuted this war was to extinguish those states, he misunderstood me."

Mr. JOHNSON: "I have not so stated. I did not understand the honorable member as saying that the purpose for which the war was prosecuted, but that the result of the prosecution of the war, was to reduce those states to the condition of territories. It is to that proposition —"

Mr. Howe: "If the honorable Senator will pardon me for one moment, my position was not that the result of the prosecution of the war was to reduce the states to territories, but that they assumed the legal character of territories by reason of their own acts, independent of the war. stroyed the state organizations, not we.".

Mr. JOHNSON: "I so understood you."

They de

Mr. HOWE: "And the effect of the war was simply to reduce them to obedience to the United States, to be governed by such instrumentalities as the Constitution has provided."

Mr. JOHNSON: "I am sure I have not misapprehended the Senator. It would have been very difficult for any one to misapprehend him, for he was exceedingly lucid in everything he said. It may be possible that I may fail to explain what I understand to have been his propositions, and if I should