body else; and it matters not to me whether victory or defeat attends our arms, if, when the war is over, it does not leave us a constitutional government. We are at war for that; and I hope we shall make every sacrifice that is necessary to sustain it. That being our object, our end, and our aim, I would not now, while the enemy is in the field, and while the contingencies of battle are pending, and the issues of life or death are suspended upon the result, impede or hinder those who are charged with the execution of the laws by inquiries which are not vital to the government. I do not look upon this as so, because I believe it is one that belongs to the judiciary to examine and settle; and if anybody has made an attempt to apply that remedy and has failed, it will be time enough then to look to some ulterior course.

"1

Thus did a member of an independent branch of the government surrender his will to the keeping of another branch. But if a man like Hale was so easily torn from his antecedents and his principles, and hurried along with the crowd, what could be expected of the less resolute and less principled, those selfseekers who make up the mass of politicians? One can easily see how a man of strong will, like Stevens, could bide his time and wait until the rest of the irresolute crowd had caught up with him, and then smile at their efforts to outdo him.

In 1861, Stevens, superior to the gloom and consternation with which the disaster of Bull Run had enveloped the Capitol, had retorted to Diven with a sneer: “I thought the time had come when the laws of war were to govern our action; when constitutions,

1 December 8, 1862: Cong. Globe, 28.

action? "1 This born leader of revolution had not to look long nor far for support in his radicalism. During the debate in the Senate, on the Confiscation bill,2 Mr. Morrill, of Maine, gravely pronounced an opinion which cannot be passed by unnoticed, and which was designed to have the effect of a judicial opinion upon the powers of Congress. After noting that the nation was in a state of general internal hostility, and that it possessed the power of self-defence, he proceeded to inquire in what department of the government this power was lodged. Sustained by the Constitution, and by the interpretation put upon it by the Supreme Court, in Brown v. The United States, he had no difficulty in asserting that it lay in Congress and nowhere else: the Executive was merely "Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy." He went on to say: "In the contingency of actual hostilities the nation assumes a new and extraordinary character, involving new relations and conferring new rights, imposing extraordinary obligations on the citizens, and subjecting them to extraordinary penalties. There is, then, no limit on the power of Congress; but it is invested with the absolute powers of war, the civil functions of the Government are, for the time being, in abeyance when in conflict, and all state and national authority subordinated to the extreme authority of Congress, as the supreme power, in the peril 1 August 2, 1861: Cong. Globe, 414.

2 February 25, 1862: Cong. Globe, 942, et seq.

8 Article I. sect. 8.

4 1 Cranch.

of external or internal hostilities. The ordinary provisions of the Constitution peculiar to a state of peace, and all laws and municipal regulations, must yield to the force of martial law as resolved by Congress."

The significance of this claim of absolute power in Congress cannot be overrated. It must be borne in mind that the object of the bill under discussion was the confiscation of the property of rebels, particularly of slaves, who on the instant would be set free; but, to confine our observation to the object set forth in the bill, it provided for the confiscation of the real and personal property of those in rebellion. When it is considered that there is no clause in the Constitution expressly conferring this power, it follows that such power could not be exercised unless it was implied by the Constitution. This Senator Howard undertook to attribute to one of the objects of the Constitution enumerated in the preamble, to "insure domestic tranquillity," and the attempts to find a justification for the measure were divers and different. Morrill was not of a tentative disposition: he would not accuse himself in excusing himself; he appealed to the clause in the Constitution which imposed upon Congress the duty of declaring and maintaining war, and he claimed everything, all power, absolute power in Congress, as the shortest way of enabling the radicals to attain their end.

The consequences of this doctrine of the centralization of all power, state and federal, in Congress during a period of "general internal hostility," were far reaching. If once Congress could maintain the position that civil war had centred irresponsible power in that body, subordinating the other branches of

omnipotent, could it unite upon one single plan of action. Already the bold utterances of the radical leadership indicated with sufficient certainty by whom this one plan of action would be supplied. At any rate, a vigorous and self-centred policy of the legislature, sitting as a Committee of Safety as well as a Congress, would find little annoyance from the cautious policy of a President who had inaugurated his administration by saying: "In view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all of the states." The expanding radicalism of the Republican party chafed at the restrictions which the Constitution had placed around it: but turn where one would, the Constitution still blocked the way. Stevens saw this, and pushed the Constitution aside; but he was too wise to claim centralization of all powers in Congress before the time for doing so had

come.

Sumner saw it, and ignoring the Constitution, cried, "Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. Do not fail to seize it!" Morrill saw it, but relying on the investiture of Congress with declaration and maintenance of war, went farther than them all it was for Congress to centralize in itself all powers, to subordinate "all state and national authority to the extreme authority of Congress, as the supreme power." This was revolutionary, but then any path that lay over a prostrate Constitution was revolutionary, and this path had already been taken.

CHAPTER XIII.

PLANS OF RECONSTRUCTION.

The Emancipation Proclamation - The Amnesty Proclamation and Presidential Plan of Reconstruction - The Congressional Plan of Reconstruction and debate thereon in the House of Representatives.

DURING the year 1862,1 President Lincoln, who still clung to the notion of compensated emancipation of slaves, had sent a message to Congress, recommending the adoption of a joint resolution giving pecuniary aid to any slave state that might adopt the gradual abolition of slavery. On May ninth, he issued a proclamation countermanding an order of General Hunter by which the slaves in his department had been declared free; and, on July twelfth, he had addressed an appeal to the representatives from the Border States, to sustain him in his efforts towards gradual and compensated emancipation.2 Whether the disappointing response to this appeal convinced the

1 March 6, 1862. "I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution, which shall be substantially as follows: Resolved, That the United States ought to coöperate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." This resolution passed the Senate and the House. McPherson's Hist. Rebellion, 209, 210. See also Message of December 1, 1862 : id., 221. Slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia by act of Congress, April 16, 1862. Id., 211, 212.

2 McPherson's Hist. Rebellion, 213 et seq.