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Holman, of Indiana, having objected to its second reading, that body was brought to a direct vote on its rejection, which stood, yeas 55, nays 76, the Democratic opposition voting unanimously against any consideration of the question. On the 15th of June, the resolution was directly voted on, and rejected for want of the requisite two-thirds vote the yeas being 95, and the nays 66. Mr. Ashley, of Ohio, having voted in the negative, with a view to secure a reconsideration of the vote at the next session, entered a motion to that effect on the same day. Thus a great measure of vital consequence to the nation for all time, was defeated by the Democratic opposition, still unwilling to cut loose from the doomed institution, and still apparently hopeful of renewing a Southern bondage which had been so long the basis of their political power. On the other hand, the Republican Union party had adopted this measure in its platform, as a vital issue of the time, and supported it with entire unanimity in both branches of Congress. President Lincoln himself had already given his hearty approval to this method for the utter and final extinction of slavery wherever the jurisdiction of the United States extends.

The time had now come when the odious legislation for returning to bondage the slaves who had asserted their natural right to freedom by escaping into free territory, should cease to have a place among the laws of a free republic. Various attempts had been made to this end, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, during this and the previous sessions of Congress, without final effect, until, on the 13th of June, 1864, Mr. Morris, cf New York, from the Committee on the Judiciary, reported an act repealing the fugitive slave act of 1850, and the third and fourth sections of that of 1793. This repealing act passed by nearly a strict party vote-yeas 86, nays 60—the Administration members, save Mr. Smithers, of Delaware, voting unitedly for the repeal, and the Opposition members, except Mr. Griswold, of New York, voting in the negative. This bill passed the Senate on the 22d day of June, and received the approval of the Executive on the 28th.

The Bureau of National Currency, in the Treasury Depart

ment, was created at this session, and Hon. Hugh McCulloch, of Indiana, appointed to the office of Comptroller of the Currency. In the War Department, the Bureau of Military Justice was established, at the head of which Hon. Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, was appointed, as Judge Advocate General, with the rank of brigadier-general. An additional loan of $400,000,000 was authorized; the enrollment act was materially modified, by repealing the commutation clause (releasing any drafted man on the payment of three hundred dollars), and otherwise rendering it more efficient; important amendments were made in the pension laws; and acts were passed for the punishment of guerrillas, for increasing the efficiency of the navy, and in aid of the proposed international telegraph by British and Russian America to Asia.

In his annual message, with the accompanying proclamation of amnesty, President Lincoln had, somewhat at length and in detail, given his views as to the best means of restoring practical relations between the insurrectionary States and the National Government. These views were in accord with those hitherto acted upon, and approved by every branch of the Government, although, coupled as they were with proffers of amnesty, they were extended to embrace particular suggestions. not before presented. The methods of reorganization proposed were recommendations merely, properly guarded, and the purpose of prescribing any invariable rule of action in the premises, was distinctly disavowed. As already seen,* the President, in this proclamation of amnesty with certain conditions, was not only exercising the prerogative belonging to the pardoning power conferred on him by the Constitution, but was also carrying out the formally expressed will of Congress. Early in the session (December 15, 1863), Mr. Davis, of Maryland, moved the reference of so much of the President's message as related to this subject to a committee of nine, which was agreed to, the mover being appointed chairman. On the 4th of May following, a bill and preamble were reported by Mr. Davis, embodying a fixed and elaborate plan of "reconstruction." It provided for the appointment of a Provisional * Ante page 459

Governor by the President, in each State declared to be in rebellion, to serve until a State government should have been organized and recognized by the National Government. On the suppression of military resistance to the authority of the United States in any such State, an enrollment of white male citizens was to be made, and a convention was to be called, when a majority of them should have taken the oath of allegiance, to act upon the reëstablishment of a State government. All persons having held any office in the Rebel service, civil or military, State or Confederate, and all those having voluntarily borne arms in such service, were to be prohibited from voting for or being elected as delegates to the State convention. The convention was required, by the bill, to insert in the new constitution to be framed by it, provisions (1st) disfranchising those who have "held or exercised any civil or military office (except offices merely ministerial, and military offices below a colonel), State or Confederate, under the usurping power; (2d), prohibiting slavery; and (3d), repudiating all debts created by or under sanction of "the usurping power," "State or Confederate." The State government thus created was to be recognized by the President, after obtaining the assent of Congress, and only after such recognition, the State to be represented in Congress, and in the electoral college. Slavery was further formally declared to be abolished in all the States in question, with remedies and penalties to give this declaration effect. Those Rebels holding any civil or military office, with the conditions above stated, after this bill should become a law, were declared not to be citizens of the United States.

This bill passed the House on the day it was reported, yeas 74, nays 66. Among the latter were several Administration members. The preamble, giving a key-note to the spirit and purpose of the bill, was in these words:

WHEREAS, The so-called Confederate States are a public enemy, waging an unjust war, whose injustice is so glaring that they have no right to claim the mitigation of the extreme rights of war which are accorded by modern usage to an enemy who has a right to consider the war a just one; and whereas, none of the States which, by a regularly recorded majority of

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its citizens, have joined the so-called Southern Confederacy, can be considered and treated as entitled to be represented in Congress, or to take any part in the political government of the Union.

This was rejected, ayes 57, nays 75.

In the Senate, on the 1st of July, Mr. Brown, of Missouri, moved the following substitute for the entire bill which was carried, yeas 20, nays 13:

That when the inhabitants of any State have been declared in a state of insurrection against the United States, by proclamation of the President, by force and virtue of the act entitled "An act to provide for the collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes," approved July 13, 1861, they shall be, and are hereby declared to be, incapable of casting any vote for electors of President or Vice President of the United States, or of electing Senators or Representatives in Congress, until said insurrection in said State is suppressed or abandoned, and said inhabitants have returned to their obedience to the Government of the United States, nor until such return to obedience shall be declared by proclamation of the President, issued by virtue of an act of Congress, hereafter to be passed, authorizing the same.

The bill having been returned to the House, as thus amended, the amendment was non-concurred in. The Senate ultimately receded from its amendment, yeas 18, nays 14, thus concurring in the passage of the bill as it first came from the House. It is manifest, from the action taken on this bill, that it was not unobjectionable to the majority of the Senate, and that, on free discussion of its prominent details, it could not certainly command a majority in the House on a full vote. That it could ever have received a two-thirds vote in both houses, had it been returned by the Executive with objections, probably its most zealous supporter never imagined. It so happened that the bill, passed just at the close of the session, only reached the President about an hour before the actual adjournment, when numerous other bills were awaiting his signature, allowing him hardly time to even read it with care, much less to prepare a veto message. Much of it he fully approved. Other parts he thought seriously objectionable. Committed, too, as he

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already had been, publicly, to the recognition of the new State governments of Louisiana and Arkansas, he could not, in good faith, repudiate his promises to the people of those States, as would have been done by approving the Davis bill. Only a dictatorial and factious spirit could call in question the President's unrestricted right to withhold his signature, or the purity of the motive which led him to do so. Not less evidently was it proper for him to publish the bill, with a statement of his reasons for the course he had taken, and to give it a place with his own suggestions made in the amnesty proclamation, reserving his former action in regard to Louisiana and Arkansas, and declining to make compliance with the terms of this bill indispensable in any case. He had long before appointed military governors in Tennessee and North Carolina. The power to do so clearly belonged to him, as Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. But it was questionable, to say the least, whether Congress could constitutionally exercise any "provisional" local jurisdiction in the States, as proposed.

On the 8th of July, 1864, President Lincoln issued the following proclamation, on the subject, accompanied by the Davis Reconstruction bill:

WHEREAS, At the late session, Congress passed a bill "to guarantee to certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed:

AND WHEREAS, The said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the sine die adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him:

AND WHEREAS, The said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known, that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared, by a formal approval of this bill, to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration; and, while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and governments already

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