252 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



master-builders in this House bids fair to be- 

 come the head of the corner. Then the Con- 

 stitution was not altogether repudiated as the 

 foundation of our legislation ; now revolution- 

 ary opinions and plans override it as a thing of 

 the past. Not many are there in this Congress, 

 and fewer there will be in the next, I fear, to 

 do reverence to the Constitution and obey its 

 commands. 



"Early in the last session of Congress this 

 House, on a resolution of the gentleman 

 from Maryland (Mr. Henry Winter Davis), au- 

 thorized the appointment of a special commit- 

 tee of nine, called the committee on the rebel- 

 lious States, to consider and report by bill upon 

 the subject of the reconstruction of States. The 

 ostensible or declared purpose of the committee 

 was to carry out the constitutional guarantee 

 of republican government to States in which 

 such governments had been usurped or over- 

 thrown. 



" The President, by his amnesty proclama- 

 tion of December 8, 1863, accompanying his 

 annual message to Congress of that date, with 

 characteristic oblivion of the true character and 

 limitations of his executive powers, had assum- 

 ed to take the subject of reconstruction pretty 

 much into his own hands. He had assumed to 

 amplify the power to pardon offenders against 

 the laws into a power to reconstruct States, to 

 dictate State constitutions, and to determine 

 the conditions upon which a sovereign State of 

 the Union should or should not be recognized 

 and protected as a State in the Union. This 

 portion of the President's message was referred 

 to the special committee I have alluded to. 

 The amnesty proclamation, like its forerunners, 

 the proclamation of September 22, 1862, and 

 January 1, 1863, was an unprecedented and 

 startling assertion of executive power, and 

 I feel well assured, sir, for I have too high an 

 opinion of their intelligence and patriotism to 

 believe otherwise, that it did not meet the ap- 

 proval of the leading minds of the friends of the 

 Administration in this House. The gentleman 

 from Pennsylvania (Mr. Stevens), whose ability 

 and experience entitle him to speak as an oracle 

 of his party on this floor, declared in his speech 

 of 22d January, 1864, that the President's plan 

 of reconstruction, as stated in the amnesty proc- 

 lamation, ' is wholly outside of and unknown to 

 the Constitution,' and found its justification 

 only in the war power and in the theory of 

 military conquest. ' It proposed to treat the 

 rebel territory as a conqueror alone would treat 

 it.' To the principle of the plan, that is, the 

 right to treat the Southern people as a foreign 

 and conquered people, the gentleman from 

 Pennsylvania assented (for that was a favorite 

 theory of his own), but to the details he did not 

 agree ; and I doubt not that one object of the 

 gentleman from Pennsylvania, as well as the 

 gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Davis), in con- 

 jointly moving the resolution for a special com- 

 mittee, was to take from the usurping hand of 

 the Executive and to exercise through Congress 



the legislation that might be deemed necessary 

 to restore the relations of the Southern States 

 to the Federal Government. 



"Mr. Speaker, the love of power, like the 

 love of fame, 



" Howe'er concealed by art, 

 Reigns more or less in every human heart." 



" It is not an idle passion in the breast of the 

 constitutional President of the United States. 

 It is there, restless, active, aggressive, and 

 grows by what it feeds on. 



" The President as the anther of the emanci- 

 pation proclamation, on which (though not 

 original with him and forced on him by press- 

 ure) he had planted his hope of historic fame, 

 was determined by the work of his own hand 

 to carry it out to its logical results. He had 

 formed his plan of reconstruction, he had pro- 

 claimed it to the world, and in the same spirit 

 in which he adhered to his plans of military 

 campaigns, though baffled and butchered Union 

 armies, ' driven like bullocks into the slaughter- 

 pen,' attested his unwisdom, he would admit 

 no rival near his throne to share his honors as 

 the great emancipator. Therefore without wait- 

 ing for the legislative action of Congress, which 

 was clearly contemplated by the terms of the 

 resolution appointing the special committee of 

 nine, the President moved straight forward to 

 his purpose of reorganizing Louisiana, Arkan- 

 sas, and I nay say Florida, in his own way. 

 Whether the sagacious mind of the President 

 was even at that early period of the Presidential 

 campaign ;c oking forward to the possible contin- 

 gency of the need of electoral votes from those 

 three States and others he might reconstruct, I 

 will not undertake to say. I leave that ques- 

 tion to gentlemen who know the President 

 better than I do ; but, sir, my charities are not 

 large for a public magistrate whose public ca- 

 reer has been marked by the grossest incon- 

 sistencies of principle, and by usurpations of 

 power that have time and again remorselessly 

 and without apology or atonement stricken 

 down the liberties of innocent men, and almost 

 blotted out constitutional limitations so plain 

 that he who runs might read and understand." 



"Pending the progress of the military mani- 

 pulation of a portion of Louisiana, comprising 

 mainly, in votes if not in territorial area, the 

 city of New Orleans, into a reconstructed State 

 according to the President's plan, the bill of the 

 last session, commonly known as the reconstruc- 

 tion bill, and identical in title and similar in its 

 general purposes to the bill now before the 

 House, was reported from the committee on the 

 rebellious States debated, passed on the 4th 

 day of May lasf^sent to the Senate, debated 

 and amended there, and finally adopted as it 

 passed the House on the 2d July last, and sent 

 to the President for approval. It was not ap- 

 proved by him, for the reasons stated in his 

 proclamation of the 8th July last. 



"The President's objections to the bill may 

 be summed up in three points : First. His un- 

 willingness ' to be inflexibly committed to any 



