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SERIES TWENTY-ONE

LECTURES ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN TO ONE HUNDRED

AND TWENTY-SIX

The Development of Governmental Departments and Governmental Activities in Regulating Commerce and Industry, 1865-1916

118. The National Legislature

119. The National Executive Departments

120. The Judiciary

121. The Formation and Adoption of State Constitutions

122. Activities of the National Government in Regulating Commerce and In

dustry

123. State and Local Government Activity in Regulating Commerce and

Industry

124. History of Internal Improvements

125. The Conservation of Natural Resources

126. Civil Service Reform

THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER I.

1865-1912.

THE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE.

Meagreness of Southern representation in Congress in the Civil War period

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The great statesmen of that period - The subsequent lowering of the Congressional standard - A new era of Congressional leadership - Important issues raised by the Civil War - Changes in Congressional procedure — Recent popular distrust of legislation and the consequent increase of executive responsibility.

D

URING the Civil War Congress

sat with incomplete membership owing to the defection of the Southern States. Three new States were admitted to the Union and the Thirty-ninth Congress, which convened in December of 1865, was still without Southern representation and predominantly Union in sentiment and Republican in political party complexion. In the Fortieth Congress some of the recent disloyal States were again represented, and in the Forty-first Congress all were again in the Union, but not with so large a representation as before the Civil

War.

The Civil War had brought into the field of public life a few men who in natural ability and statesmanlike achievements were fully equal to the average of those who had preceded them. None could compare with the greatest men of the past - Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Henry

Clay, James Madison, John Marshall, and others of their class. The constitutional struggle that ended with the beginning of the Civil War had developed statesmen as no other public question could. There were strong men in that period, but few great men, measured by the highest standard of greatness in the past.

After the close of the war came a period in which the average of individual ability in Congress was decidedly lower than it had been for a generation. One need not travel far to discover the reason. While war develops the highest sentiments of patriotism and sacrifice, it also affords opportunity for self-seeking and mediocrity. Naturally Congress reflected this condition in the Nation at large. From the South none of those who had been leaders in the antebellum days returned to Washington. Many of them were dead and, in the course of events, others had been re

moved from the field of active or even passive influence on public affairs. In their places, both in the Senate and the House, sat men of inferior ability - mostly politicians of the hour, fruits of carpet-bag government. Subsequently, after the South had become politically rehabilitated, the character of the Congressional representatives of the section reached a much higher standard.

In the North, too, the effect of the war was seen in the appearance in the National halls of legislation of many who had come into prominence through loyalty as soldiers rather than from special fitness as legislators. Before the end of the century, however, came a decided change in this respect. The war heroes had for the most part left the scene of active life; the war issues had been settled; entirely new issues had arisen; and men who were giving attention to the new economic, social and industrial questions of the hour figured among legislative leaders. In the years closely following the Civil War such men as James G. Blaine, George F. Hoar, Thomas F. Bayard, Thomas A. Hendricks, William M. Evarts, John Sherman and a few others, were types of the statesmen of the period who were second to none of the past. In latter times Thomas B. Reed and Joseph G. Cannon, Speakers of the House, again sustained the best reputation for Congressional statesmanship.

During the war and long after, legislation naturally dealt mostly with

questions raised by that conflict. The political and social reconstruction of the South; questions of suffrage arising from the sudden addition of an untrained and uneducated mass of negro voters; the liquidation of the enormous war debt; the resumption of specie payments - these were some of the problems which pressed for immediate solution displacing in Congressional debate and in public attention the great constitutional questions of the preceding half-century. Later, with the coming of the Twentieth century, still newer issues, raised by the changed character of National life, came to the fore. In the last decades of the old century the new issues were largely economic. Left over from the olden time, the tariff stood almost alone as an unsettled question that had vexed the people and their representatives for a century. Questions of transportation and industry assumed paramount importance, and, during the two decades following 1890, legislation on these matters occupied by far the greater part of the time and attention of the National legislature.

Procedure in the Senate has not changed much in a hundred years. The Senate is still the dignified, selfrestrained body it was in the beginning. In the first Senate seven of the rules of procedure related to the personal deportment of members during the session. No such rules are now in effect, yet the general bearing of the Senators nowadays does not seem to

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