audaciously demand seats upon this floor; it has clothed treason with the ermine on the bench of the ten revolted States; it has filled their halls of local legislation; it has armed treason with the sword of the law in ten of the States; it holds to-day the pen of the press, that weapon mightier than the sword; it desecrates the word of the Most High from all their pulpits; it hisses out curses against the Union from the sibilant tongues of its women and the prattling lips of its babes, and it scouts and throws back in your teeth the mild and merciful terms of reconstruction offered in the constitutional amendments of last session." 1

There were not, however, wanting those who pleaded for generosity and magnanimity toward the Southern people. To their suggestions Mr. Stevens said: "Generosity and benevolence are the noblest qualities of our nature, but when you squander them upon vagabonds and thieves you do that which can command no respect from any quarter. I desire to say what perhaps had better not be said, that gentlemen who are thus, by direction or indirection, defending the cause or palliating the conduct of these rebel traitors are making for themselves no good record with posterity. They, sir, who while preaching this doctrine are hugging and caressing those whose hands are red and whose garments are dripping in the blood of our and their murdered kindred, are covering themselves with indelible stains, which all the waters of the Nile cannot wash out." 2

This bill was also urged as a party measure, as the former bill had been. Mr. Garfield, on this subject, said: "But, sir, the hand of God has been visible in this work, leading us by degrees out of the blindness of our prejudices to see that the fortunes of the Republic and the safety of the party of liberty are inseparably bound up with the rights of the black man. At last our party must see that if it would preserve its political life, or if we would maintain the safety of the Republic, we must do justice to the humblest man in the nation, whether white or black. I thank God that to-day we have struck the rock; we have planted our feet upon the truth. Streams of light will gleam out from the luminous truth embodied in the legislation of this day. This is the ne plus ultra 1 Congressional Globe, 2d Session, 39th Congress, pp. 1076-7. 2 Ibid., p. 1214.

of reconstruction, and I hope we shall have the courage to go before our people everywhere with 'This or nothing' for our motto." 1

"This or nothing" refers to the bill for reconstruction in Louisiana. This bill passed the House of Representatives February 12, 1867, by yeas 113, nays 47.2

Its substantial provisions are:

1. That a provisional Government be established in Louisiana with a Governor and Council of nine to be appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. The Council had legislative power. These officers were irremovable except with the consent of the Senate. Laws passed by the Council were subject to be annulled by Congress.

2. The Governor and the Council and all other officers including members of the constitutional convention and members of the Legislature were to be entirely free from any participation in the rebellion, and were to take the iron-clad test oath prescribed by the act of Congress of July 2, 1862.

3. A legislature was to be elected on the first Tuesday in June, 1867.

4. The electors were to be male citizens of the United States, without distinction of color, and they were also to take said iron-clad oath with the following exception:

5. That persons who served as privates only in the Southern army might be electors if they would swear and prove before a United States Court by persons of undoubted loyalty that since March 4, 1864, they were really in favor of the Union, and had not since that time voluntarily done any act in favor of the rebellion. If acts were done in aid of the rebellion, then it was to be presumed that they were voluntary until proof was made to the contrary.

6. A convention was to be held under rules prescribed by the Secretary of War.

7. An army officer, not lower in rank than Brigadier General, was to be appointed military commander of the State, and he was to arrest and hold violators of the law until they were prosecuted by the civil authorities.

8. The militia of the State, to consist only of qualified electors, were to organize and be equipped as soon as prac1 Congressional Globe, 2d Session, 39th Congress, p. 1184. 2 Ibid., p. 1175.

ticable, and to be under the command of the military commander of the State.

9. The Constitution was to contain provisions for repudiating the rebel debt, and that no pension, compensation, gift, or gratuity shall be bestowed upon or paid by the State to any person by reason of anything done or suffered in aid of the rebellion, and these powers were to be irreversible and unchangeable by amendment.

IO. The Constitution was also to provide against any distinction in the rights of men on account of race or color. II. The Constitution was to be approved by a majority of the electors.

12. Until the State was admitted to representation in Congress, a delegate to Congress was to be elected having the power and right of a territorial delegate.1

This was the rock of truth on which Mr. Garfield said his party had placed its feet.

1

Congressional Globe, 2d Session, 39th Congress, pp. 1173-4.

CHAPTER III

THE BILL A MEASURE OF PUNISHMENT AND RUIN

As a further evidence of the temper and intent of this bill, it is proper to quote again what Mr. Garfield said: "If the Democratic party, with the President at its head, had, on any day since July last, advised the people of the South to accept the constitutional amendment and come in as Tennessee did, it would have been done. I have information from a source entirely reliable that a little more than a month ago [this was spoken on February 12, 1867] Alabama was on the eve of accepting the proposed amendment to the Constitution when a telegram from Washington dissuaded her from doing so and led her to rush upon her own ruin by rejecting it." 1

It has been seen that many members made the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Southern States the ground or the pretext for their support of this military bill. How little justice there was in this is manifest from a consideration of the circumstances. It was never offered to the Southern States up to that date as a condition of reconstruction. Congress had never prior to its rejection passed any act or resolution that indicated that the acceptance of this amendment by the Southern States was required, or even desired, as a step in the process of reconstruction. The bill which the Committee on Reconstruction had reported with the amendment, and which did contain a provision that acceptance of that amendment was a condition of reconstruction, was never passed, nor was any serious attempt made to pass it. It was suffered to die without action. This of itself was evidence to the Southern States that its enforced acceptance by them was not demanded. The amendment was, therefore, submitted to them, as it was to every other State, for their free and voluntary action, as was proper under the 1 Congressional Globe, 2d Session, 39th Congress, p. 1183.

Constitution of the United States. In the exercise of their judgment, they regarded it as some of the Northern States did. As has been shown, it contained provisions that were intended to be odious and even insulting, and they were not allowed the privilege of voting separately on its various provisions, ratifying a part and rejecting a part.

Again it was announced by many of the leaders of the dominant party, and among them Mr. Stevens and Mr. Blaine, that they had no power to ratify.

After their rejection of the amendment it was, as has been seen, a matter of serious dispute among the leading members of the dominant party whether there was an implication even from all the circumstances that it had been submitted to them as a condition of reconstruction. Such men as Mr. Stevens and Mr. Blaine insisted that no such submission had been made. Mr. Blaine himself, in explaining his amendment to the military bill, expressly stated that even by it there was no submission to them as parties capable of ratifying it. His amendment expressly affirmed that the constitutional amendment would become a part of the Constitution upon its ratification by three-fourths of the States then represented in Congress. That amendment, carefully omitting the constitutional word "ratification" applied by it to the other States, provided only for the assent of the Southern States and not ratification by them. The majority of the Republican speakers in the House agreed that the Southern States had no constitutional power to ratify the amendment. So that the submission of the amendment to the Southern States was not, if these views were correct, a constitutional act; nor would their action on it have the slightest constitutional validity. In short, the Southern States were complained of for not doing an act not authorized by the Constitution, in the judgment of those complaining, and not even required by Congress, and their refusal to do it was treated, as described by Mr. Garfield, as rushing upon their own ruin.

This complaint may justly be made of the action of the majority in Congress that when they discovered, as was developed in the debate on this bill, that there was a difference among their most distinguished members on the question whether or not such submission had been really made to the Southern States as a condition of reconstruction, it should