CHAPTER I FIRST STEPS IN RECONSTRUCTION THE war ended. The Thirteenth Amendment had passed Congress and had been submitted to the States for their action. The Southern States through their Legislatures, convened under President Johnson's scheme of reconstruction, had ratified the amendment and elected to Congress Senators and Representatives who had applied for admission to their seats. There had already appeared a divergence in the views of the Executive and Legislative departments, both as to the terms of reconstruction and as to which of these departments had the constitutional power to prescribe these terms. The President had followed the plan and adopted the constitutional views of his predecessor, Mr. Lincoln, which would have reconstruction as the result of Executive action. Congress insisted on their jurisdiction in the matter. Early in the first session of the thirty-ninth Congress a concurrent resolution was passed by the Senate and the House, by which a mutual pledge was given that neither House would admit representatives of the Southern people or of the States, except in pursuance of the joint action of both. A joint committee on reconstruction was organized, to which all propositions looking to reconstruction of the Southern States were to be referred. Then came from members of the dominant party numerous propositions looking to reconstruction. It is wholly unnecessary to set out all these propositions, except to say that they all looked to a diminution of the political power of the Southern States. As universal emancipation had already been accomplished by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, it was clear that under the Constitution as it then stood there would be a large increase in the political power of the Southern States, both in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College; the three-fifths representation of slaves had failed for want of subjects to operate on, and in lieu of it had come a full representation of all persons of African descent. There were those who desired by national action to confer on persons of African descent the elective franchise, but they were in a small minority. But there seemed to be no dissent to the proposition that if they were not allowed to vote in the Southern States,-that if they were disfranchised in the South as they were in nearly all the Northern States,it would be unjust to admit them as elements of political power in the Southern States where they resided in large numbers. The effort was to effect this diminution without at the same time recognizing by national law the unfitness of the freedmen for the discharge of political duties. A representative proposition is that offered by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, as an amendment to the Constitution. It was offered on April 27, 1866. It contained the following provisions: I. Prohibition against the United States or any State making payment for emancipated slaves, or of any debt contracted in aid of the rebellion. 2. Following the Constitution as to apportionment of Representatives in Congress according to population, it provided that when in any State the elective franchise is denied to any male citizen of the United States above twenty-one years of age, for any cause except for insurrection or rebellion against the United States, there should be a reduction in the basis of representation of such State in the proportion that such male citizens so excluded bear to the whole number of males in the State over twenty-one years of age. Section two of the bill provided that whenever any one of the insurrectionary States should ratify the above provisions, Senators and Representatives should be admitted from such States as if they had been elected from States that had never been in insurrection. Many propositions of similar import to amend the Constitution, propositions that were designed to reduce the representation of the Southern States if Negroes were excluded from voting, were presented in both Houses,-by Messrs. Sumner, Dixon, and Grimes in the Senate, and by Messrs. Schenck, Thaddeus Stevens, Broomall, and Pike in the House. On January 22, 1866, Mr. Stevens, from the joint committee on reconstruction, reported favorably House Bill No. 51, apportioning representatives and direct taxes according to population; but with a proviso that if suffrage be denied or abridged in any State on account of race, color, and so on, then such race should be excluded from the basis of representation of such State. On reporting this bill, Mr. Stevens said: "There are twenty-two States whose Legislatures are now in session, some of which will adjourn within two or three weeks. It is very desirable, if this amendment is to be adopted, that it should go forth to be acted upon by the Legislatures now in session. . . . It does not deny to the States the right to regulate the elective franchise as they please; but it does say to a State: If you exclude from the right of suffrage Frenchmen, Irishmen, or any particular class of people, none of that class of persons shall be counted in fixing your representation in this House. You may allow them to vote or not, as you please; but if you do allow them to vote, they will be counted and represented here; while, if you do not allow them to vote, no one shall be authorized to represent them here.'" 1 Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, said that the Judiciary Committee of the House had had the same subject under consideration, and had, after careful consideration, reached the same conclusion. It is thus seen that these two great committees after careful consideration, separate from and independent of each other, had reached the conclusion that the right to control and regulate suffrage was to remain with each State, but if any State should restrict it on account of race or color, then such restriction should operate to diminish pro tanto the political power of the State in Congress and in the Electoral College. The idea that the regulation of suffrage to any extent should be assumed by the General Government was expressly repudiated. The proposition was to diminish the political power of the Southern States unless they provided for Negro suffrage. He Mr. Conkling made this view very evident in the remarks he submitted in favor of the report of the committee. argued that unless the report of the committee was made a Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st Session, Part I, p. 351. 1 |