164 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the jurisdiction and power of the Government, 

 of the United States follow our flag or our 

 army into a foreign country, and Congress 

 may make rules and regulations for the gov- 

 ernment of the army of the United States in a 

 foreign country as well as in our own, and it is 

 the duty of the President to execute them. It 

 is true that, in the absence of rules and regu- 

 lations prescribed by Congress, the President 

 may make such regulations as are absolutely 

 necessary for the government of the army 

 wherever it is, but it is only as a part of his 

 duty to execute the general laws. If Congress 

 chooses to step in and prescribe the mode and 

 manner in which these powers shall be exer- 

 cised, he is bound by his oath to observe such 

 rules and regulations. I conclude, therefore, 

 that as Congress has declared eleven States to 

 be in a state of insurrection, as it is necessary 

 now to pass some plan or law by which these 

 States may be restored to their old place in 

 the Union, Congress has the undoubted legis- 

 lative power to prescribe the terms, conditions, 

 and tests by which their loyalty and obedience 

 to the law may be adjudged. 



"But, Mr. President and I say it with 

 great deference to the committee who reported 

 it I do not believe the bare assertion of this 

 power tends to promote the object stated by 

 the resolution itself. The object, of this reso- 

 lution is stated to be to close agitation upon a 

 question which seems likely to disturb the ac- 

 tion of the Government, as well as to quiet the 

 uncertainty which is agitating the minds of the 

 people of the eleven States which have been 

 declared to be in a state of insurrection. If 

 this resolution would tend to promote these 

 great objects, I would vote for it much more 

 cheerfully than I will ; but I regard it as a 

 mere straw in a storm, thrown in at an inop- 

 portune moment ; the mere assertion of a naked 

 right which has never yet been disputed, and 

 never can be successfully ; a mere assertion of 

 a right that we have over and over again as- 

 serted. The only doubt I ever had about the 

 resolution was the wisdom of introducing it 

 and passing it under the previous question in 

 one House at a moment when there was undue 

 or unusual excitement in the public mind. My 

 idea is that the true way to assert this power is 

 to exercise it, and that it was only necessary 

 for Congress to exercise that power in order to 

 meet all these complicated difficulties. This 

 resolution does not provide for the contin- 

 gencies that have happened. Let me state the 

 case. Suppose the two Houses of Congress 

 cannot agree upon a plan of reconstruction, as 

 it is very obvious we shall have difficulty in 

 doing. Opposition here is already developed 

 to the constitutional amendment as part of the 

 plan agreed upon, in quarters at least to me un- 

 expected, and it is very doubtful whether we 

 can agree by the requisite rsjajority upon this 

 leading idea of a change of the Constitution. 

 Suppose the two Houses of Congress cannot 

 agree with each othor, what then ? Must these 



eleven States stand in their present isolated 

 condition beyond the pale of civil law until 

 the two Houses can agree upon some propo- 

 sition ? 



" Mr. President , in my judgment the real 

 difficulty in this whole matter has been the un- 

 fortunate failure of the executive and legis- 

 lative branches of the Government to agree 

 upon a plan of reconstruction. If at the last 

 session we had provided a law, reasonable in 

 itself, proper in its provisions, by which these 

 States might have been guided in their efforts 

 to come back into the Union, that would have 

 been an end of this controversy ; but unfortu- 

 nately (and I am not here either to arraign the 

 living or the dead) there was a failure to agree. 

 Earlier in this war, during the Thirty-seventh 

 Congress, a gentleman now in his grave, and 

 whose eulogy was so fitly pronounced the other 

 day in the House of Representatives by his col- 

 league here, Henry Winter Davis, prepared a 

 bill to meet this exigencv. He was not then a 

 member of Congress. He brought that bill to 

 me. It was a bill to guarantee to each State a 

 republican form of government. The provisions 

 of the bill pointed out a plan by which these 

 States, then declared by Congress to be in a 

 state of insurrection, might, when that insur- 

 rection was subdued or abandoned, come back 

 freely and voluntarily into the Union. It pro- 

 vided for representation ; it provided for the 

 election of a convention and a Legislature, and 

 the election of Senators and members of Con- 

 gress. It was a complete guaranty to the peo- 

 ple within the States upon certain conditions 

 to come back into the Union. The provisions 

 and tests by which to judge when the state of 

 insurrection had ceased and determined were 

 prescribed. I introduced that bill here at the 

 request of Mr. Davis. It was referred to the 

 Judiciary Committee. It was not acted upon 

 by them. I suppose they thought it premature. 

 Afterward Mr. Davis came into the Thirty- 

 eighth Congress as a member of the House of 

 Representatives. Among the first acts per- 

 formed by him after taking his seat was the 

 introduction of this same bill, framed by him 

 and introduced by me into the Senate, in the 

 House of Representatives. It was introduced 

 by him on the 15th December, 1863. It was 

 debated in the House of Representatives and 

 passed by a very decided vote, and it was sent 

 to the Senate. It was reported to the Senate 

 favorably ; but in place of it was substituted 

 the proposition I have already read, offered by 

 the Senator from Missouri, which was adopted 

 in the Senate. It was sent back to the House ; 

 a committee of conference was appointed, and 

 the result was the reporting to the Senate and 

 the House of what was called the "Wade and 

 Davis bill. That bill was debated and finally 

 passed upon the report of the Committee of 

 Conference. It went to the President ; he did 

 not approve it. 



" He then goes on and gives his reasons foi 

 not approving this plan ; nor does he entirelj 



