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CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE VICISSITUDES OF

AMNESTY.

THIS QUESTION - CARRIED

ONCE IN THE HOUSECOLORED VOTES FOR IT-GENERAL BUTLER'S BILL OF GRACE WITHOUT GRACE, AND PUNITORY PARDON — MILITARY REPRESSION AND CIVIL OPPRESSION-RANCOR CHERISHED. HOPES OF RECONCILIATION MOCKED — SPURIOUS SPIRIT OF AMNESTY MR. GREELEY'S NOMINATION-ITS CAUSESMR. LINCOLN'S PURPOSE OF MERCY-MR. BLAINE'S ACTION - THE PAGAN POLICIES OF REPUBLICANS-EXECUTIVE PARDONS AND THE AMNESTY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

A

MONG the first bills introduced for amnesty was one the author offered in Congress as early as 1869. In fact he generally had charge of matters of a kindred nature. His object in congressional

service was, since war could not be alleviated of its cruelties, to mitigate, in so far as it could be done, the proscriptive tendency which kept our people separated by a great chasm. In moments of unimpassioned patriotism the House indicated its preferences in the same direction. It may be said here that this bill came within two votes of passing the House of Representatives when it required a two-thirds vote. That majority included some colored members. In 1870, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, then a member from Massachusetts, introduced his bill for a general grace, amnesty, and oblivion. It was copied from an old English statute about the Scotch Rebellion. The writer characterized it from his seat as a bill for pains and penalties, with a meagre element of mercy; yet it was a step toward amnesty. It was grace which was grudged, amnesty which was exceptive, and oblivion brimful of memories. It was most ungracious grace. It was punitory pardon; it was a rushing and turbulent lethe. The author pleaded for mercy on the old and fraternal plan, and against eternizing proscription.

Another bill appeared in Congress as late as 1875, to prevent the subversion of state authority and to maintain the security of elections. It provided against the invasion of states. There were sections in it which prescribed penalties of fine and imprisonment, and authorized suspension of

habeas corpus. The appointment of Federal supervisors, and other measures intended to inaugurate force and suppress freedom a decade after the war was over, were also provided for. General Butler's bill had in it what the bill of 1875 had not; it had some liberality. Five years had not lessened the hatred of the Northern radical toward the Southern insurgent. General Butler's bill had a strange feature in it; oblivion for the agents and officers of the United States engaged in reconstruction! Amnesty for the conqueror!

The history of the United States, from the close of the war until 1876, was a history of military repression and civil oppression, which destroyed the old divisions of power. The complex nature of our Federal and local governments was ignored. There was a time in our emergencies when men in their extreme views cried out for imperial power. The writer never sat at the feet of such tuition. Sometimes they preferred military rule, and sometimes revolution. There were civil convulsions, as we have shown, in Louisiana and elsewhere. They were marked with blood and saturated with fraud. The many South were discontented. They were willing to be pinned to the Union even by an honest bayonet, held to it by the mailed hand, or shackled to it by an iron gyve, rather than to be controlled by such State governments as were established for many years after the war.

The aspiration for civil discipline and patriotic allegiance was chilled in the South. The feeling that allegiance led to protection, and that these were co-ordinate in essence and should be in practice, was forgotten. Had the bugles at Appomattox sounded merely a truce? It was hoped that the conditions of peace frankly tendered by General Grant would create a contented people, and would be observed; that all future griefs would be solaced; that magnanimity would conquer hatred; that scorn and revenge would have their anodyne, and that for uncounted decades there would be no interregnum in the serene dynasty of peace and love; that through the bleeding and distracted land, and over the scenes and graves, and over the sorrows of mourning, the lethean stream would gently flow. But what did "peace” bring to the South? Only the respite of despair. It was the sign and proof of death. It was lethe, except its sleep. It was all of death with its sting and without its repose. Homes were wasted; property was confiscated and destroyed; enterprises ruined; cities burned, and the whole country swathed in destruction. But after all, it was expected that amid these immeasurable calamities hates and griefs would not be perpetuated; that the new generation would not wear rancor in their hearts until their hair whitened; that they would not teach their children to perpetuate the hate of their fathers.

For ten years, the middle decade, the hopes of the patriotic were mocked. What a mockery! God had fixed his creatures in this fair land in habitations bound together by the same rivers, mountains, lakes, and skies. He had fixed in their hearts the ennobling principles of unity and peace. He had sent to the world the divine Prince of Peace, as an exemplar and Saviour.

THE CLEMENCY OF GRANT AND SHERMAN.

597

And yet, these benefactions were despised, they were turned by the passions and ambitions of men to shameful mockery. The great disasters which are enumerated in this history of excesses, both in reference to the war and reconstruction, were the result of a diabolical lack of conciliation.

Even yet, as the author pens these words, complete rehabilitation has not been accomplished. There are men yet living, exponents of large constituencies. who have not been restored to their citizenship. They are living under our laws and Constitution.

The amnesty doled out by Congress through many years was a petty, personal amnesty. It was not based on a general rule. It has never yet reached a principle. Such partial legislation was more objectionable than would have been a general bill with bad features. It offered a premium to hypocrisy.

During and after the election of 1868, there was an opportunity for improvement and liberality in the impulses and sentiment which were leading to the nomination of Horace Greeley. The writer has already said that he was a successful candidate for Congress against Mr. Greeley in New-York City, in 1870. Two years afterwards his opponent was nominated for Chief Magistrate by the Democratic convention. It was Republican discontent in regard to the condition of the South that brought about this remarkable result.

Grant's agreement with Lee, and Sherman's with Johnston had not been fully observed. Had they been observed, the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which forbade the insurgent leaders from holding Federal and state offices, would never have been passed. Had there been immediate representation from the South, according to General Grant's recommendation, the discontents, wrongs, and troubles of the South which continued so long, would not have existed. It is one of the marvels of history, that in a country like ours, political regeneration should have been so long delayed. The French, the Turks, the Germans, are better in this regard. With a public opinion, led by a vigilant and generous press, leaning toward measures of mercy, our course was more like the continuance of proscription than its discontinuance. The great radical anti-slavery party of 1860 had not the courage, wisdom, or magnanimity to pass measures of amnesty, and thus secure the best prize of war; - the contentment of a brave and conquered people. Even when the war was flagrant there seemed to be more generosity toward the South, in some respects, than after it was over.

When Mr. Orth, of Indiana, advocated his harsh measure of penalties against the innocent children of supposed guilty parents in the South, on the ground that philology was progressive; and when he urged that the Constitution, though not changed in terms, had been changed in meaning by the progress of our chaotic era, he found an element of clemency in President Lincoln's heart which said: 666 "Suffer little children to come unto me, and

forbid them not.'" That President vetoed the harsh bill of that Congress. It was vetoed upon the speech of the author opposing it.

When the amnesty bill of General Butler came up as the best possible of that day, as it was said in 1870, the writer examined it very critically. He debated it fiercely in the House. Its title did not properly express its intent. The title applied only to its first section. The second section was for the relief from litigation of those who committed abuses in suppressing the rebellion, as well as of those engaged in it. The third section contained clauses of exception. The title for the last section should have read: "A bill for special and general grace, amnesty, and oblivion of the Republican party in the destruction of the old and the reconstruction of the new governments, South." The bill excepted what General Butler called politicians from its favor, but that made its general title a solecism. It was the play of Hamlet, not only with Hamlet, but Polonius, king and queen, all but the players, left out. An amnesty bill with exceptions was no amnesty. A tender of redemption to a fallen world including even the chiefest of sinners, the Sauls of the rebellion of sin, was not the model of this kind of legislation. The offer of grace should have copied the eternal plan. All who believed and repented, and would be saved, should have been permitted to come and partake of the waters of amnesty freely. The tender would have been just as kind, if they did not come. It should have been free grace, instead of an act to perpetuate reprisals after surrender; it should have been balm and healing; not the opening of wounds afresh, but the pouring of oil on the wounds. The disqualifications by the test act, and the test oaths which it took so long to remedy and repeal, were not removed by the letter of this law nor by the spirit which inspired it. If there were any comprehensive effect to be given to the executive proclamations of pardon, then that bill, and others which followed it, were surely unconstitutional; for the proclamations of pardon, according to the best authorities, as Mr. Attorney-General Garland has demonstrated in a recent Opinion, covered with a veil all culpabilities. They placed those concerned in the same position as if their offenses had never been committed. The spirit of qualified amnesty then proposed, is the same spirit which is regnant to-day among many leading Republicans. But such was not the spirit which inspired their better element when Horace Greeley was nominated in 1868. The wisdom or the unwisdom of his nomination has been discussed. Although his election did not entirely bridge over the abyss, it tended to do it. It built the piers. His nomination was a protest against military rule and heathen retaliation. The Democratic party, in standing by him, stood upon the ancient rock of social order by which states are reconciled and people are made harmonious. The world has been cursed with military captains like Alva in the Netherlands and Turenne in the Palatinate. These were soldiers who made mercy the exception and devastation the rule. From such exasperating pol

MR. LINCOLN'S POLICY OF CHARITY.

599 icies we turn to the policy of Hoche in La Vendee, and of the first Napoleon after the French Revolution. All history is full of illustrations of civil conflict ending in a blessed opportunity of amnesty. Whether Christian, Hebraic, or Pagan, history glorifies them. They are born of a sentiment which has been honored by the best men of all ages. It was sung by Ossian : "Be thou a tide of many streams against the enemies of thy country, but as the gale that moves the grass to those who ask thine aid. My sword was never stained with the blood of the vanquished, and never pierced a fallen foe." It is a part of the nobility of human nature,—in fact, it is the highest philosophy of self-preservation, to be clement. It is not only noble, but it is the highest degree of nobility. In the tournament the discomfited Paladin, lowering his lance before his adversary, received a generous hand to lift him up. Cicero, while Rome was racked with civil war, summed up the duty of a patriot in an appeal to a new method of conquering. It was to fortify the Republic with kindness. Even Charles II. was restored because of his liberal proclamation at Breda. The best writers in our English tongue, from Sir Thomas Browne, the quaint Christian, to Edmund Burke, in his grand speech for conciliation with America, teach with more emphasis than Tennyson's lyric, the nobility of kindness and the simplicity of faith in human nature which is better than coronets. Was it not Sir Thomas Browne, who said amid the passions of civil war : "Answer not on the spur of fury, and be not prodigal or prodigious in revenge. Supererogate not in the worst sense and overdo not the necessities of evil. Humor not the injustice of revenge. Many there be, to whom a dead enemy smells well; and who find musk and amber in revenge. But the ferity of such minds holds no rule in retaliations, requiring too often a head for a tooth. If thou must needs have revenge on thine enemy, with a soft tongue break his bones, heap coals of fire on his head, and enjoy it. To forgive your enemies is a charming way of revenge, laying them at your feet and unto sorrow, shame and repentance, leaving them fast your friends and solicitously inclined to grateful retaliations. Common forcible ways make not an end of evil, and will have hatred and malice bind them. An enemy thus reconciled is little to be trusted, as wanting the foundations of love and charity, and but for a time restrained by disadvantage or disability."

With this spirit enshrined in our policies, and superadded to that ineffable grace from Galilee,—from the great Teacher and exemplar, - the very root, bloom, and fragrance of our polity and civilization would have grown immeasurably beyond all the figures of our senses or the dreams of imagination. Could Mr. Lincoln have pursued his policy of charity,-that policy which he defined when he declared, that having conquered the enemy with the army, we would now conquer them with magnanimity,—much of disadvantage and more of hatred would have been obviated in the last two decades of our history. The conduct of such leading Republicans as Mr. Blaine, of

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