370 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



was the appointing power, and the Continental 

 Congress was competent to impose any condi- 

 tions, limitations, and restraints it chose to 

 do, and it did impose them ; so did the Con- 

 gress under the old Articles of Confederation. 

 And it was the continued and repeated blun- 

 dering and bungling of military operations 

 when controlled and governed by Congress that 

 influenced the convention to ignore the doc- 

 trine, and separate forever the direction of the 

 army from the control of Congress. It was the 

 very authority upon which the Senator relies 

 to sustain his doctrine that led to a change 

 of the doctrine, and the clothing of the 

 President of the United States with all the au- 

 thority of commander-in-chief. Now, sir, the 

 Constitution, and not Congress, is the appoint- 

 ing power of the commander-in-chief of the 

 army and navy of the United States, and he is 

 subject to all the restraints that the Constitu- 

 tion imposes upon him, and he is subject to 

 none others. Congress can impose no restraint 

 upon any power that is necessary to the execu- 

 tion of the office with which the Constitution 

 clothes him. 



" The gentleman, however, attributes to me 

 a denial of all control by Congress over the 

 army, or the commander-in-chief. I am per- 

 fectly willing to stand by my sentiments as 

 I have myself uttered them. I am not willing 

 to have attributed to me absurdities that I 

 never entertained and never expressed, wheth- 

 er they result from a misunderstanding or 

 from a misrepresentation of what I did 

 say. I certainly do not intend to intimate that 

 the Senator makes any wilful misrepresenta- 

 tions of my views ; but they are upon record ; 

 I am willing to abide by them, defend them ; 

 but I am not willing to undertake the defence 

 of all the absurdities that he suggests in inter- 

 rogatories to me. I do not deny the control of 

 Congress, and never have denied the control 

 of Congress over the armies of the United 

 States to the extent that the Constitution gives 

 it control. I admit all the control which the 

 Constitution has given ; that is, Congress has 

 power to raise armies and support armies. 

 Congress may refuse to raise armies ; it may 

 refuse to support armies ; it may disband armies 

 after they are raised, and to that extent it can 

 control the commander-in-chief, and to no other 

 extent than the extent that the Constitution 

 has authorized it to control him." 



The debate was further continued in the Sen- 

 ate with much feeling among the members in 

 favor of a confiscation bill. Mr. Cowan, of 

 Pennsylvania, thus described the proceedings : 

 " I came here with the firm conviction that it 

 was the duty as well as the policy of the Re- 

 publican party, the majority upon this floor, to 

 take by the hand every loyal man who came 

 from a Southern State, to forget any differences 

 that we might have had before the territorial 

 question of slavery (which was really settled 

 by the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presiden- 

 cy), to let that all be past and bygone, and all, 



unitedly, as brothers, stand together, shoulder 

 to shoulder, in order to suppress this rebellion. 

 Could we have done this earnestly and heartily, 

 confining our legislation solely to such laws as 

 were necessary to raise and support our armies 

 in the field, we should, in my judgment, have 

 saved life and treasure, and we should have 

 been nearer the end than we are to-day. But 

 what has been the course of the school to which 

 I have alluded? "Why, sir, hardly a day has 

 elapsed here that some measure was not intro- 

 duced relating to slavery, and which was cal- 

 culated to irritate, to wound, and to alienate 

 those loyal and willing friends from us. How 

 is it now ? The gulf which separates the loyal 

 men from the border States and the ultra 

 school of the Republican party, is nearly as 

 wide on this floor as that which separated the 

 secessionists and the Republicans of former 

 times. Mr. President, is that the way to sup- 

 press the rebellion ? Never, never. Do the 

 Senators from the Slave States say you are 

 making friends for them by your projects of 

 emancipation and confiscation, and all that kind 

 of thing? They will tell you, and have told 

 you, one and all, that instead of so doing, you 

 are weakening them at home, and multiplying 

 enemies against the Republic. Let the Senator 

 from Minnesota go home and count his dead 

 and he has not one for every twenty that I 

 have and let him ask himself whether this 

 unrelenting bitterness toward a whole people 

 because they happen to live in Slave States, 

 whether this fierce denunciation of that whole 

 people at all times, and upon all occasions, 

 without regard to their loyalty or disloyalty, 

 whether the measures insisted upon here daily, 

 and which were obnoxious to them, whether 

 all that can be reconciled with an honest and 

 sincere desire to put down this rebellion? I 

 hope he may be satisfied with his answer ; but 

 if I were in his case, thinking as I do, I could 

 not." 



The bill from the House, which had been 

 under consideration, was now amended by sub- 

 stituting the bill reported by the Special Com- 

 mittee of the Senate, by the following vote : 



YEAS. Messrs. Anthony, Browning, Clark, Colla- 

 mer, Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Foot, 

 Foster, Harlan, Harris, Henderson, Howe, Nesmith, 

 Rice, Simmons, Stark, Ten Eyck, and Willey 21. 



NATS. Messrs. Chandler, Grimes, Hale, Howard, 

 King, Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, Merrill, Pome- 

 roy, Sherman, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, 

 Wilmot, Wilson of Missouri, and Wright 17. 



The bill from the House was drawn upon the 

 principle that the confederates were belliger- 

 ents, and could be proceeded against by_ all 

 those measures which can be resorted to in a 

 state of war. Those Senators who supported 

 this bill also maintained the principle that Con- 

 gress alone had the right to direct and control 

 the war, and that the President was subject to 

 their instructions. The key to these views is 

 found in the fact that these Senators considered 

 the immediate emancipation of the slaves the 

 most important of all measures, and by this 



