Page images
PDF
EPUB

the hazard of being misunderstood on this point. The Executive approval was given by me to the resolution mentioned, and it is now by a closer attention and a fuller knowledge of facts that I feel constrained to recommend a reconsideration of the subject.

A. LINCOLN.

A resolution extending the payment of bounties, in accordance with this recommendation, to the first of April, was at once reported by the Military Committee of the Senate, and passed by both Houses of Congress.

The volunteering, however, did not appear to supply mẹn with sufficient rapidity, and on the 1st of February, 1864, the President made the following order :

Executive MaNSION, February 1, 1864.

Ordered, that a draft for five hundred thousand men, to serve for three years or during the war, be made on the 10th day of March next, for the military service of the United States, crediting and deducting therefrom so many as may have been enlisted or drafted into the service prior to the 1st day of March, and not heretofore credited.

(Signed)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

The effect of this order was not only to stimulate enlistments, but also to induce a general application of all credits that could possibly be made, to reduce the quotas of the different districts, and many of them, before the time came round, were enabled to announce themselves entirely out of the draft. Partly on this account, doubtless, before the 10th of March came the draft was indefinitely postponed, and on the 15th of March another order was made calling for the additional number of two hundred thousand men, "in order to supply the force required to be drafted for the navy, and to provide an adequate reserve force for all contingencies." The various districts were required to fill their quotas by the 15th of April, and it was announced that where they had not done so, a draft would be commenced as soon after that date as practicable.

Some persons holding positions as consuls of foreign powers having claimed to be exempt from the draft on that ground, the following order was made on the subject on the 19th of May, 1864, the immediate occasion of it

being such a claim on the part of a Mr. Hunt, a Consul of Belgium, at St. Louis :-

It is officially announced by the State Department that citizens of the United States holding commissions and recognized as Consuls of foreign powers, are not by law exempt from military service if drafted:

Therefore the mere enrolment of a citizen holding a foreign consulate will not be held to vacate his commission, but if he shall be drafted his exequatur will be revoked unless he shall have previously resigned in order that another consul may be received.

An exequatur bearing date the 3d day of May, 1858, having been issued to Charles Hunt, a citizen of the United States, recognizing him as a Consul of Belgium for St. Louis, Missouri, and declaring him free to exercise and enjoy such functions, powers, and privileges as are allowed to the consuls of the most favored nations in the United States, and the said Hunt having sought to screen himself from his military duty to his country, in consequence of thus being invested with the consular functions of a foreign power in the United States, it is deemed advisable that the said Charles Hunt should no longer be permitted to continue in the exercise of said functions, powers, and privileges.

These are therefore to declare that I no longer recognize the said Hunt as Consul of Belgium, for St. Louis, Missouri, and will not permit him to exercise or enjoy any of the functions, powers, or privileges allowed to consuls of that nation, and that I do hereby wholly revoke and annul the said exequatur heretofore given, and do declare the same to be absolutely null and void from this day forward.

In testimony whereof, I have caused these letters to be made patent, and the seal of the United States of America to be hereunto affixed. Given under my hand at Washington, this 19th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1864, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-eighth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Recruiting under the order of March 15th continued to progress, but not with sufficient rapidity. On the 23d of April, the Governors of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio tendered to the Government a force of one hundred thousand men from those States, to serve for one hundred days. The proposition was accepted, and on recommendation of the Secretary of War, Congress voted twenty-five million dollars to defray the expensesthe resolution being passed without debate, and by almost unanimous consent.

CHAPTER XVI.

MOVEMENTS TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTION

STATE GOVERNMENTS IN LOUISIANA AND ARKANSAS.---Difference of VIEWS BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.-THE REBELLION AND LABOR.— THE PRESIDENT ON BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATIONS.-ADVANCING ACTION CONCERING THE NEGRO RACE.-FREE STATE CONSTITUTIONS.

THE proclamation which accompanied the Annual Message of the President for 1864 embodied the first suggestions of the Administration on the important subject of reconstructing the Governments of those States which had joined in the secession movement. The matter had been canvassed somewhat extensively by the public press, and by prominent politicians, in anticipation of the overthrow of the rebellion, and the view taken of the subject had been determined, to a very considerable extent, by the sentiments and opinions of the different parties as to the object and purpose of the war The supporters of the Administration did not all hold precisely the same ground on this subject. As has already been seen, in the debates of the Congress of 1862-3, a considerable number of the friends of the Government, in both houses, maintained that, by the act of secession, the revolted States had put themselves outside the pale of the Constitution, and were henceforth to be regarded and treated, not as members of the Union, but as alien enemies: *-that their State organ

* President Lincoln's view of this position is stated in the following note addressed by him to the publishers of the North American Review, which contained an article upon his policy of administration :

"MESSES. CROSBY & NICHOLS :

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, January 18, 1964.

“GENTLEMEN :-The number for this month and year of the North American Review was duly received, and for which please accept my thanks. Of course I am not the most impartia! judge; yet, with due allowance for this, I venture to hope that the article entitled 'The Presi

izations and State boundaries had been expunged by their own act; and that they were to be readmitted to the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and to the privileges of the Union, only upon such terms and conditions as the Federal Government of the loyal States might prescribe. On the other hand, it was held that the acts of secession, passed by the several State Governments, were absolutely null and void, and that while the persons who passed them, and those who aided in giving them effect, by taking up arms against the United States, had rendered themselves liable individually to the penalties of treason, they had not, in any respect, changed the relations of their States, as such, to the Federal Government. The governments of those States had been for a time subverted; but they might at any time be re-established upon a republican basis, under the authority and protection of the United States. The proclamation proceeded, in the main, upon the latter theory. The President had the power, under the Constitution, and by specific legislation of Congress, to grant pardons upon such conditions as he might deem expedient. In the exercise of this power, President Lincoln released from legal penalties and restored to the rights of citizenship all, in each State, with

dent's Policy' will be of value to the country. I fear I am not worthy of all which is therein kindly said of me personally.

The sentence of twelve lines, commencing at the top of page 252, I could wish to be not exactly what it is. In what is there expressed, the writer has not correctly understood me. 1 have never had a theory that secession could absolve States or people from their obligations. Precisely the contrary is asserted in the inaugural address; and it was because of my belief in the continuation of those obligations that I was puzzled, for a time, as to denying the legai rights of those citizens who remained individually innocent of treason or rebellion. But I mear no more now than to merely call attention to this point.

"Yours respectfully,

The sentence referred to by Mr. Lincoln is as follows:

"A. LINCOLN."

"Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yot convinced of the danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade himself of Union majorities at the South, and carry on a war that was half peace, in the hope of a peace that would have been all war, while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave law, under some theory that secession, however it might absolve States from their obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under the Constitution, ard that slaveholders in rebellion had alone, among mortals, the privilege of having their cake and cating it at the same time,—the enemies of free government were striving to persuade the people that the war was an abolition crusade.... To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of inan, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the first duty of government."

certain specified exceptions, who should take and abide by a prescribed oath; and then he proclaimed his purpose to recognize them as the citizens of such State, and as alone competent to organize and carry on the local government; and he pledged the power of the General Government to protect such republican State Governments as they might establish, "against invasion, and against aomestic violence." By way of precaution against a usurpation of power by strangers, he insisted on the same qualifications for voting as had been required by the constitution and laws of the State previous to secession:and to provide against usurpation of power by an insignificant minority, he also required that the new government should be elected by at least one-tenth as many voters as had voted in the State at the Presidential election of 1860. In the oath which he imposed as essential to citizenship, the President required a pledge to sustain the Constitution of the United States, the laws of Congress, and the Executive proclamations and acts on the subject of slavery, so long and so far as the same should not be declared invalid and of no binding obligation by the Supreme Court of the United States. These were the foundations of the broad and substantial basis laid by the President for the restoration of the Union, and the re-establishment of loyal republican governments in the several seceded States.

Various indications in the Southern States had satisfied the President that the time had come when the work of reconstruction might safely and wisely be thus commenced. In Tennessee, where the rebels had never maintained any permanent foothold, but where the Government at Washington had found it necessary to commit the local authority to Andrew Johnson, as Provisional Governor, there had been a very strong party in favor of restoring the State to its former position as a member of the Federal Union. But in Louisiana the movements in the same direction had been earlier and more decided than in any other Southern State. The occupation of New Orleans. by the National forces, and the advent of General Butler

« PreviousContinue »