CONGRESS. (DAVIS AND SHERMAN.) 



235 



Feb. 2, Mr. Belinont, of New York, present- 

 ed the following resolution : 



Resolved. That the Secretary of State he requested 

 to forthwith inform the House, provided such commu- 

 nication be not deemed incompatible with the public 

 interest, whether or not any representations have been 

 either formally or informally made to this Government 

 by the British Government growing out of the use of 

 dynamite in London. If such representations have 

 been made in writing, then to transmit to the House 

 complete copies of all communications that have passed 

 between the two governments on the subject ; but if 

 the representations or communications have been ver- 

 bal, then a statement of their tenor and purport. 



These resolutions were all referred to the 

 Committee on Foreign Affairs, which at the 

 close of the session reported them back, with 

 a recommendation that they lie on the table. 



Mr. Dorsheimer, of New York, introduced 

 Jan. 26 a bill "to prevent and punish crimes 

 committed by means of explosive compounds," 

 which was referred to the Committee on the Ju- 

 diciary, and never came up for consideration in 

 the House. 



Davis and Sherman. Jan. 8, in the Senate, Mr. 

 Hawley, of Connecticut, presented the follow- 

 ing resolution: 



Resolved, That the President of the United States 

 be and he is hereby requested, if in his opinion it 

 be not incompatible with the public interest, to com- 

 municate to the Senate a historical statement concern- 

 ing the public policy of the Executive Department of 

 the Confederate States, during the late war of the re- 

 bellion, reported to have been lately filed in the War 

 Department by General William T. Sherman. 



The subject was debated Jan. 12 and 13. 

 The grounds of opposition to the adoption of 

 the resolution were stated by Mr. Vest, of Mis- 

 souri, among others: 



"I very much regret the introduction of this 

 resolution, not that as an ex-Confederate I have 

 the slightest objection to the largest amount 

 of publicity to the political history of the late 

 Confederate States, but I regret it for the 

 reason that it places the Senate of the United 

 States in the attitude of becoming indirectly 

 at least a party to a personal controversy in 

 the public papers of the country. The Senate 

 of the United States has over and over again 

 refused to make investigation even when a 

 member of this body rose and called attention 

 to libels upon him in the public press; but the 

 rale of the Senate has been, and I presume it 

 will be adhered to in the future, to remand 

 any Senator who has complaint of this sort 

 to the remedies furnished by the laws of the 

 country, and by an appeal to public opinion 

 through the same medium of communication 

 by which the libel was inflicted. 



u My feeling toward General Sherman is per- 

 sonally of the kindest description. He is my 

 constituent and I believe my personal friend ; 

 I have every reason to think so ; but it is simple 

 justice (and justice to a man of whom there may 

 be great diversity of opinion, but who is still 

 entitled to a fair and honest trial before this 

 or any other tribunal) to say that the passage 

 of this resolution commits the Senate of the 



United States, indirectly at least, to the sido 

 of this personal controversy, which belongs to 

 General Sherman and his friends. 



"Without going into the history of this mat- 

 ter, I state, what is known to the whole coun- 

 try, that in October last, at a meeting of Frank 

 P. Blair Post, No. 1, of the Grand Army of the 

 Kepublic, in the city of St. Louis, General Sher- 

 man stated that the late war, or the last war, 

 originated in a systematic conspiracy, and that 

 he had seen a letter, he is reported to have 

 said, from Mr. Davis to a gentleman once the 

 Governor of a Confederate State and now a 

 member of this body, which stated that Jeffer- 

 son Davis as President of the late Confederacy 

 had threatened to coerce any one of the South- 

 ern States which attempted to secede from the 

 Confederacy, thereby giving the lie to his ex- 

 pression of belief in State rights, and falsifying 

 the very issue upon which the Southern States 

 had gone into the war. 



"This statement was published and wide- 

 spread through the newspapers of the country. 

 Mr. Davis responded by stating that no such 

 letter had ever existed, and that he challenged 

 its production, and in the absence of that let- 

 ter he pronounced it a deliberate slander. The 

 issue was made up, and General Sherman pub- 

 licly avowed to all persons who approached 

 him that he proposed to make his answer to 

 Mr. Davis through the War Department at 

 Washington. That answer has been made. It 

 has been made in the shape of a letter not to a 

 member of this body and late the Governor of 

 a Confederate State, but a letter from Alexan- 

 der H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confed- 

 eracy, to Herschel V. Johnson, in which he 

 expressed his distrust and suspicion of Mr. Da- 

 vis and his ultimate designs in the war. An- 

 other one of these documents is a message sent 

 by Jefferson Davis to the Confederate Con- 

 gress, or to the Confederate Senate in secret 

 session, in which he recommended the suspen- 

 sion of the writ of habeas corpus. Both these 

 documents have been published in the public 

 press ; they are found in the New York papers 

 of yesterday, and the letter of Mr. Stephens to 

 Mr. Johnson is also found in the Washington 

 city papers of to-day* 



" Is it fair, is it right, is it manly now, -when 

 Mr. Davis can not be heard upon this floor un- 

 less it be through the mouth of some one who 

 chooses to espouse and advocate his side of this 

 controversy is it right now to use the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States and its instru- 

 mentalities in a personal controversy, no mat- 

 ter what may be its merits, no matter what 

 may be the position of the parties to it? 



" Sir, there can come no good from this in- 

 vestigation. Its only result will be I charge 

 it not as the object to arouse the bitter memo- 

 ries of the war. It will add nothing to the 

 political history of the Confederate States. 

 Jefferson Davis to-day is an old man, broken 

 in fortune and in health, and living among the 

 people who honor and love him. If the resolu- 



