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SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
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 HOK JOHN SHERMAN, OF OHIO, 
 
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 KEPRESENTAira OF SOUTHERN STATES; 
 
 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 26, 1866. 
 
 WASHINaTON: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 
 
 186G. 
 
b^L^ 
 
REPRESENTATION OF SOUTHERN STATES. 
 
 The Senate having under consideration the con- 
 eurrent resolution of the House of Representatives 
 relative to the representation of certain States — 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN said: _ 
 
 Mr. President: The immediate question 
 before the Senate is upon the resolution of 
 the House of Representatives, passed on the 
 21st instant, declaring that no Senator or 
 Representative shall be admitted into either 
 branch of Congress from any of the eleven 
 States which have been declared to be in in- 
 surrection until Congress shall have declared 
 such State entitled to such representation. 
 This question, together with the reasons stated 
 in the resolution for its passage, the cir- 
 cumstances under which it is pi-essed in Con- 
 gress, and the many pending propositions of a 
 kindred character now on our table, induces me 
 to follow the example so often set in the Senate, 
 and to discuss all these kindred propositions now 
 while I have the floor. I shall do so as clearly 
 and as briefly as possible, in the order in which 
 they will probably present themselves for our 
 vote. And first as to this resolution. 
 
 If the meaning of the resolution is that as a 
 matter of convenience in the discharge of our 
 duties the Senators ^nd Representatives ought 
 to act in concert with each other in. legislating 
 upon and in discussing ail propositions affect- 
 ing the right of States to representation, surely 
 it is a reasonable proposition. We have already 
 acted in concert at the beginning of this ses- 
 sion by creating a joint committee as an organ 
 of both bodies to confer with each other and to 
 communicate to each House separately their 
 deliberations. We have often before recog- 
 nized the propriety of acting through joint 
 committees on questions of great importance, 
 ■when the concurrence of both Houses is needed, 
 and when a free conference will probably tend 
 to produce an agreement. Therefore, if this is 
 the purpose of this resolution, it is a very sim- 
 ple and plain one, and obviously defensible. 
 
 But, Mr. President, this resolution goes fur- 
 ther. It asserts, and it was intended to assert, 
 that with Congress, and with Congress alone, 
 rests the duty of defining when a State once 
 declared to be in insurrection shall be admit- 
 ted to representation in this and the other House 
 of Congress. This is a proposition of consti- 
 tutional law ; and on this point I am glad to say 
 that there has been no difference of opinion 
 among us until this session of Congress. This 
 question has been three times decided in the 
 Senate. It has been decided by the unanimous 
 report of our Judiciary Committee. It has not 
 been controverted in this body until within a 
 very few days, or until during the present ses- 
 sion of Congress. At the last session a unani- 
 mous report was made from the Judiciary Com- 
 mittee, composed of some of the ablest lawyers 
 in the Senate, in which this doctrine is, in my 
 judgment, more clearly and distinctly expressed 
 than in the resolution now before us. I can- 
 not see why any one who gave his deliberate 
 judgment to that proposition can oj^pose this. 
 The honorable Senator from Maine read a por- 
 tion of this report on Friday, but it will bear 
 repetition, and I will now read it: 
 
 "The persons in possession of the local authorities 
 in Louisiana having rebelled against the authority 
 of the United States, and her inhabitants having been 
 declared to be in a state of insurrection in pursuance 
 of a law passed by the two Houses of Congress, your 
 committee deem it improper for this body to ar'^it 
 to seats Senators from Louisiana, till by -ome joint 
 action of both Hoxisen there shall be some recognition of 
 an existing State government acting in harmony with 
 the Government of the United States and recognizing 
 its authority." 
 
 If this is law, how can any Senator vote 
 against the pending proposition unless it is for 
 reasons not involving the merits of that prop- 
 osition ? But this is not the only case, for I find 
 that this very question was made, and by a vote 
 of the Senate was definitely decided, and it was 
 
made so distinctly that no Senator could have 
 voted for the proposition I am now about to ' 
 read without understanding its full purport and 
 effect. 
 
 It will be remembered that a bill came to the 
 Senate, passed by the House of Representatives 
 guarantying to the seceded States a rei^ub- 
 lican form of government, commonly known as 
 the Wade and Davis bill. It was antagonized 
 here by various propositions, and among the 
 rest by a proposition offered by the honorable 
 Senator from Missouri, [Mr. Browx.]- That 
 bill contained many sections intended to pro- 
 vide a mode by which these eleven States might, 
 when the rebellion was suppressed within their 
 limits, be restored to their old places in the 
 Union. Theproposition offered by Mr. Brown, 
 as a substitute for the bill, I will now read ; and 
 I invite the attention of Senators to the distinct 
 assertion of the very doctrine that is proclaimed 
 in this resolution : 
 
 " That when the inhabitants of any State have been 
 declared in u state of insurrection against the United 
 States by proclamation of the President, by force and 
 virtue of the act entitled 'An act to provide for the 
 collection of duties on imports, and for other pur- 
 poses,' approved July 13, 1861, they shall be, and are 
 hereby declared to be, incapable of casting any vote 
 for electors of President or Vice President of the Uni- 
 ted States, or of electing Senators or Representatives 
 in Congress, until said insurrection in said State is 
 suppressed or abandoned, and said inhabitants have 
 returned to their obedience to the Government of the 
 United States" — 
 
 Then mark these worcjs — 
 
 "nor until such return to obedienee shall be declared 
 by proclamation of the President, issued by virtue of an 
 act of Congress, hereafter to be jiassed, authorizing the 
 same." 
 
 This proposition was introduced in antago- 
 nism to the proposition then before the Senate, 
 as a substitute for it, to cover the whole ground, 
 and I am told was framed by our fellow Sen- 
 ator now dead. Judge CoUamer. After debate 
 it was adopted as a substitute by the close vote 
 of 17 yeas to 16 nays. Among the yeas were 
 every Democratic member of this Senate and 
 some of the Republicans. All the nays were 
 Union Senators, friends of the original bill, 
 including many classed as radicals. I give the 
 vote in full : 
 
 "Yeas — Messrs. Brown, Carlile, Cowan, Davis, 
 Poolittle, Grimes, Henderson, Hendricks, Johnson, 
 L.aiit K,^ Indiana, McDougall, Powell, Richardson, 
 Riddle, Sau''ibury, Trumbull, and Van Winkle— 17. 
 
 " Nats— Messrs, Chandler, Clark, Conness, Hale, 
 Harlan, Lane, of Kansas, Morgan, Morrill, Pomeroy, 
 Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Sumner, Wade, Wilkin- 
 son, and Wilson — 16." 
 
 It may be said that these gentlemen voted for 
 this proposition for the purpose of defeating a 
 more offensive one ; and if the vote rested here 
 that would be a I'easonable explanation. But in 
 order to point the significance of this vote the 
 honorable Senator from Illinois, the chairman 
 
 of the Judiciary Committee, [Mr. Trumbull,]' 
 called attention to the importance of the ques- 
 tion and said he wanted a definite vote upon 
 this proposition by itself. He stated its im- 
 portance, the effect of the principle involved, 
 and asked for the yeas and nays on the passage 
 of the bill as amended, in order, as he said, to 
 ascertain the judgment of the Senate upon this 
 distinct proposition. The bill then contained 
 nothing but what I have read to you, and the 
 vote was taken by yeas and nays, and stood as 
 follows : 
 
 "Yeas— Messrs. Brown, Chandler, Conness, Doo- 
 little, Grimes, Harlan, Harris, Henderson, Johnson, 
 Lane of Indiana, Lane of Kansas, McDougal, Mor- 
 gan, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Riddle, Sherman, Sprague, 
 Sumner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, 
 Wilkinson, and Wilson — 26. 
 
 "Nats — Messrs Davis, Powell, and Saulsbury — 3." 
 
 So that by this deliberate vote, after debate, 
 after the attention of the Senate had been called 
 to the importance of the proposition by the ju- 
 dicial organ of this body, at a time when there 
 was no excitement and no party feeling here on 
 this proposition, the doctrine we are discussing 
 was asserted by an almost unanimous vote of the 
 Senate. It seems to me that with this declara- 
 tion of the opinion of the Senate before us, made 
 when it was not influenced by jiarty feeling or 
 party excitement, we ought not to doubt the 
 correctness of the pending resolution, not near 
 so strong in its tenor or language. It ought 
 not to be resisted by any one who thus com- 
 mitted the Senate to that proposition against a 
 measure that would have organized a system to 
 reconstruct the seceding States. 
 
 But, Mr. President, I need not depend upon 
 the vote of the Senate or upon the authorities, 
 because I think, if you test this proposition by 
 the simplest principles of constitutional law 
 there can appear no doubt that Congress has 
 the sole and exclusive power over this subject. 
 The Constitution of the United States gives to 
 the President of the United States no legisla- 
 tive power except as a part of the law-making 
 power. He is an executive officer, with no 
 legislative power except that which he exer- 
 cises in connection with us. The Constitution , 
 of the United States confers upon Congress not 
 only the power to raise and support armies, to 
 appropriate money therefor, and to provide and 
 maintain a navy, but — 
 
 "To make rules for the government and regulation 
 of the land and naval forces." 
 
 And among the residuary powers conferred 
 upon Congress is that important one — 
 
 "To make all laws which shall be necessary and 
 proper for carrying into execution the foregoing pow- 
 ers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution 
 in the Government of the United States, or in any 
 department or officer thereof." 
 
 Therefore, where a power is conferred upon 
 the President, and the legislative power is ne- 
 cessary in order to carry that power into effect, 
 
Congress alone possesses the power to arm the 
 Executive with the necessary authority to exe- 
 cute the Jaws. Upon Congress alone rests all 
 the residuary powers ; and therefore it is that 
 the power of Congress follows our flag wherever 
 it floats. Our flag may go round the world, to 
 South Amefica, to Italy, to China ; it may go 
 into any-foreign country as it did iu Mexico ; it 
 may go iuto the southern States subduing a 
 rebellion, and wherever it goes the legislative 
 power of Congress goes with it. It regulates 
 and governs the Army, and the President has 
 nothing to do but to execute the will of Con- 
 gress and the Constitution of the United States. 
 It seems, therefore, testing it by reason, that 
 this power must rest in Congress. The doc- 
 trine is very strongly stated by Story, in his 
 Commentaries on the Constitution, in very much 
 the language I have used ; and he says, in speak- 
 ing of the powers of Congress, that the juris- 
 diction and jDOwer 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 government 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 regulations prescribed 
 by Congress the President may make such reg- 
 ulations as are absolutely necessary for the gov- 
 ernment 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 pre- 
 scribe the mode and manner in which these 
 powers shall be exercised, he is bound by his 
 oath to observe such rules and regulations. I 
 conclude, therefore, that as Congress has de- 
 clared eleven States to be in a state of insur- 
 rection, as it is necessary now to pass some plan 
 or law iiy which these States may be restored 
 to their old place in the Union, Congress has 
 the undoubted legislative power to prescribe the 
 terms, conditions, and tests by which their loy- 
 alty and obedience to the law may be adjudged. 
 
 TENDENCY OP THIS RESOLUTION. 
 
 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 resolution 
 is stated to be to close agitation upon a question 
 which se€ms likely to disturb the action 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 inopportune 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 asserted. The only doubt I 
 
 ever had about the resolution was the wisdom 
 of introducing it and passing it under the pre- 
 vious 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 contingencies that have happened. Let 
 me state the case. Suppose the two Houses 
 of Congress cannot agree uj^on a plan of re- 
 construction, as it is very obvious we shall 
 have difficulty in doing. Opposition here is 
 already developed to the constitutional amend- 
 ment as part of the plan agreed upon, in quar- 
 ters at least to me unexpected, and it is very 
 doubtful whether we can agree by the requisite 
 majority upon this leading idea of a change of 
 the Constitution." Suppose the two Houses of 
 Congress cannot agree with each other, what 
 then? Must these eleven States stand in their 
 present isolated condition beyond the pale of 
 civil law imtil the two Houses can agree upon 
 some i:)roposition ? 
 
 Again, suppose that Congress will not agree 
 with the President, as actually occurred in the 
 passage of the Wade and Davis bill. We sent 
 to President Lincoln our plan of reconstruc- 
 tion. He declined to approve it. There was S, 
 difference between Congress and the President. 
 Up to this hour we never have exercised our 
 power to regulate the mode and manner of 
 bringing these States back into the Union. Sup- 
 pose this difference exists Isetween the various 
 departments of the law-making power and no 
 law should be passed on the subject, is it in- 
 tended by this resolution to assert that no rep- 
 resentatives from these eleven States shall come 
 back here, and that the power of each House to 
 judge of the elections, returns, and qualiflca- 
 tions of its own members shall not be exercised 
 until by force or in some other way we can be 
 compelled to agree? Must these States be de- 
 prived of all representation here until a forced 
 verdict is drawn out of Congress with the assent 
 of the President? Not at all. 
 
 I have no doubt of the power of Congress to 
 pass any law it can on the- subject, but I know 
 very well that if Congress fails to pass a law 
 after a reasonable time, either House can and 
 will exercise its undoubted power to admit Sen- 
 ators and Representatives on the floor of Con- 
 gress. If we fail to pass apian of reconstruc- 
 tion at the present session of Congress, this 
 resolution will not prevent either House of Con- 
 gress from hereafter exercising its undoubted 
 power to pass upon the claim of any one who 
 comes here at this bar demanding a seat as a 
 Senator of the United States. Therefore I say 
 that the measure proposed does not meet the 
 real difficulty in the case. What we want is a 
 plan of action by which these States may, upon 
 such terms and conditions as are consistent 
 
6 
 
 with the public safety, come back into this 
 Union. 
 
 THE WADE-DAVIS BILL. 
 
 Mr. President, in my judgment the real dif- 
 ficulty in this whole matter has been the unfor- 
 tunate failure of the executive and legislative 
 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 unfortunately (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 colleague here, 
 Henry Winter Davis, prepared a bill to meet 
 this exigency. He was not then a member of 
 Congress. He brought that bill to me. It was 
 a bill to guaranty to each State a republican 
 form of government. The provisions of the 
 bill poipted out a plan by which these States, 
 then declared by Congress to be in a state of 
 insurrection, might, when that insurrection was 
 subdued or abandoned, come back freely and 
 voluntarily into the Union. It provided for rep- 
 resentation ; it provided for the election of a 
 convention and a Legislature, and the election 
 of Senators and members of Congress. It was 
 a complete guarantee to the people within the 
 States upon certain gonditions 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 Com- 
 mittee. 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 performed 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 Decem- 
 ber, 18G3. It was debated in the House of 
 Representatives and passed by a very decided 
 vote, and it was sent to the Senate. Its his- 
 tory I have already in part stated. It was re- 
 pori.wJ to the Senate favorably ; but in place 
 of it was substituted the proposition I have 
 already read, offered by the Senator from Mis- 
 souri, 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 
 tiie report of the committee of conference. It 
 went to the President; he did not approve it. 
 I have before me a proclamation issued by the 
 
 President on the 8th of July, 1864, in which it 
 is recited : 
 
 " Wher.-as at the late session Congress passed a bill 
 to guara! ty to certain States, whose governments 
 have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form 
 ofgorernmont," a copy ofwhich is hereunto annexed; 
 and whereas the said bill was presented to the Pres- 
 ident of the United States for his approval less than 
 one hour before the sine die adjournment of said ses- 
 sion, and was not signed by him; and whereas the 
 said bill contains, among other things, a plan for re- 
 storing the States in rebellion to their proper practi- 
 cal relation in the Union, which plan expresses the 
 sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plas 
 it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their 
 consideration : 
 
 " Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of 
 the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make 
 known, that while I am (as I was in December last, 
 when by proclamation I propounded apian for resto- 
 ration) unprepared, by a formal approval of this bill, 
 to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of res- 
 toration; and while I am also unprepared to declare 
 that the free State constitutions and governments 
 already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Lou- 
 isiana shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby 
 repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who 
 have set up the same as to further effort, or to de- 
 clare a constitutional competency in Congress to 
 abolish slavery in States, but am at the sauie time 
 sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional 
 amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation 
 may be adopted." 
 
 , He then goes on and gives his reasons for 
 not approving this plan ; nor does he entirely 
 disapprove of it, but he said it was one of 
 numerous plans which might be adopted. 
 
 Mr. SUMNER. Will the Senator allow me 
 to interrupt him there? I will state that it so 
 happened that I had an interview with the late 
 President Lincoln immediately after the pub- 
 lication of that paper, and it was the subject 
 of vei-y minute and protracted conversation, in 
 the course of which, after discussing it in de- 
 tail, he expressed to me his regret that he had 
 not accepted the bill. 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. President, I think 
 every patriotic citizen of the United States will 
 express his regret, not so much that the Presi- 
 dent did not approve that bill, because I will 
 not condemn the President for declining to 
 sign it, but that Congress in connection with 
 the President did not agree upon some plan of 
 reconstruction by which these States might 
 have been guided, so that when the rebellion 
 was put down they might see in the form of 
 law some guide to lead them in the difficult 
 road to restoration. Who does not now see 
 that any law upon the subject would have 
 been better than the absence of all law? You 
 must remember that whatever fault there is in 
 this matter was in the law-making power of 
 Congress and the President combined. This 
 controversy was all over before the presiden- 
 tial election, and I think before the nomina- 
 tion of Andrew Johnson. And in presenting 
 
these facts I am bound here to say that the 
 paper issued by my colleague and Mr. Divis 
 in reply to the President's proclamation, did 
 not meet the sanction of the people, but was 
 generally condemned as introducing an un- 
 pleasant controvei'sy into the presidential can- 
 vass. - 
 
 Mr. LANE, of Kansas. Will the Senator 
 yield to me for a moment? I wish to propound 
 a question about the Wade and Davis bill. Did 
 not that bill provide for restricting the right of 
 suffrage in the seceded States to the whites? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. It did. I will come to 
 that after awhile, and will present that point 
 distinctly. I have given you now, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, the history of that bill. I repeat that the 
 declaration of my colleague was not approved 
 by the people. He himself, perhaps, will agree 
 with me that at that time it was generally re- 
 garded that the issue made by him before the 
 people was unfortunate, because we were then 
 in the midst of a presidential campaign. Cer- 
 t-ain it is that the public voice, so far as it could 
 be gathered from the newspapers and from 
 speeches and from various modes of express- 
 ing public opinion, was against the action of 
 these two gentlemen, who, as chairmen of the 
 respective committees of the two bodies, felt it 
 their duty to defend this bill. 
 
 Thus, by the disagreement which commenced 
 two years ago between Congress and the Pres- 
 ident, there was left no law upon the statute- 
 book to guide either the President or the people 
 of the southern States in their effort to get back 
 to the embraces of the old Union. I regard 
 that as a great misfortune. 
 
 PRESIDENT JOHNSON'3 PLAN. 
 
 Now, I will ask Senators this plain question, 
 whether we have a right now, having failed to 
 do our constitutional duty, to arraign Andrew 
 Johnson for following out a plan which in his 
 judgment he deemed the best, and especially 
 when that plan was the plan adopted by Mr. 
 •Lincoln, and which at least had the apparent 
 ratification of the people of the United States 
 in the election of Lincoln and Johnson. 
 
 After this effort made by Congress to provide 
 a plan of reconstruction, there was no effort 
 made subsequently, no bill was introduced on 
 the subject at the last session of Congress, no 
 further effort was made to harmonize the con- 
 flicting views of the President and Congress. 
 One whole session intervened after this veto, 
 as I may call it, of President Lincoln, and no 
 effort was made by Congress to reconcile this 
 conflict of views ; and when President Johnson 
 came suddenly, by the hand of an assassin, into 
 the presidential chair, what did he have before 
 him to guide his steps? The forces of the re- 
 bellion had been subdued ; all physical resist- 
 ance was soon after subdued ; the armies of 
 Lee and Johnston and all the other armies of 
 the rebels had been overwhelmed, and theSouth 
 lay at our power. Who doubts, theu, that if ' 
 
 there had been a law upon the statute-book by 
 which the people of the southern States could 
 have been, guided in their effort to come back 
 into the Union, they would have cheerfully fol- 
 lowed it, although the conditions had been 
 hard ? 
 
 In the absence of law, I ask you whether 
 President Lincoln and President Johnson did 
 not do substantially right when they adopted a 
 plan of their own and endeavored to carry it 
 into execution ? Although we may now find fault 
 with the terms and conditions that were im- 
 posed by them upon the southern States, yet 
 we must remember that the source of all power 
 in this country, the people of the United States, 
 in the election of these two men substantially 
 sanctioned the plan of Mr. Lincoln. Why, sir, 
 at the very time that Andrew Johnson was nom- 
 inated for the Vice Presidency he was in Ten- 
 nessee as military governor, executing the very 
 plan that he subsequently attempted to carry 
 out, and he was elected Vice President of the 
 United States when he was in the practical 
 execution of that plan. And now, before we 
 examine the steps taken by the President, and 
 fairly weigh the wisdom of his policy, we musk 
 determine the legal status of the seceding States. 
 
 STATES IN INSURRECTION. 
 
 What was the condition of these States ? I 
 shall not waste much time upon this point, 
 because mere theoretical ideas never appear to 
 me to have much force when we are legislating 
 on practical matters. They have been declared 
 to be States in insurrection, but States still. 
 The very resolution we have before us repeats 
 three times that they are States now. They are 
 referred to as States not entitled to representa- 
 tion. They are stated to be, 
 
 "The eleven States which have beon doolarod to ba 
 in insurrection." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "No Senator or Representative shall bo admitted 
 into either branch of Congress from any of said States 
 until Congress shall have declared such State entitled 
 to such representation." 
 
 I could show very many acts of Congress in 
 which they are referred to as States, but States 
 in insurrection. And there is no difference 
 between Congress and the President as to the 
 present condition of these States. The execu- 
 tive branch of the Government in all its de- 
 partments now treats them as States in rebel- 
 lion or in insurrection. Tennessee is the only 
 one of these States that has been proclaimed by 
 the President to be out of insurrection. He ia 
 now exercising power in all these States as 
 States in insurrection. He is suspending news- 
 papers, exercising arbitrary power, suspending 
 the writ of habeas corpus, treating them yet as 
 States in insurrection ; and in this view, as T 
 have stated, Congress concurs. 
 
 Now, what is the legal result of a State being 
 in insurrection? It was sufiSciently declared in 
 
8 
 
 the proposition I have already read, offered by 
 the Senator from Missouri. They have no right 
 while they are in insurrection to elect electors 
 to the Electoral College ; they have no right to 
 elect Senators and Representatives. In other 
 words, they lose all those powers, rights, and 
 privileges conferred upon them by the Consti- 
 tution of the United States. Having taken up 
 arms against the United States, they by that 
 act lose their constitutional powers within the 
 United vStates to govern and control our coun- 
 cils. They cannot engage in the election of a 
 President, or in the election of Senators or 
 ' members of Congress ; but they are still States, 
 and have been so regarded bj^ every branch and 
 every department of this Government. They 
 are States in insurrection, whose rights under 
 the Constitution are suspended until they cease 
 to be in insurrection. When that period arrives 
 is a question, in my judgment, which must be 
 determined by Congress, and not by the Pres- 
 ident, for the reason I have already stated ; but 
 it is clear that the first duty of Congress, under 
 these circumstances, is to provide a mode and 
 manner by which the condition of the States 
 may be tested, and they may come back, one 
 by one, each upon its own merits, upon com- 
 plying with such conditions as the public safety 
 demands. 
 
 WHAT THE PRESIDENT DID. 
 
 1 propose now to recall, very briefly, the steps 
 adoj^ted by President Johnson in his plan of 
 reconstruction. I do this for the purpose of 
 presenting to the Senate, in a condensed view, 
 the precise plan of reconstruction adopted by 
 him, so that we may see at a single glance the 
 present condition of these eleven States. V/hen 
 Mr. Johnson came into power he found the 
 rebellion substantially subdued. What did he 
 do ? His first act was to retain in his confi- 
 dence and in his councils every member of the 
 Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln, and so far as we 
 know every measure adopted by Andrew John- 
 son has had the approval and sanction of that 
 Cabinet. If there is any doubt upon any meas- 
 ure it is upon the recent veto message ; but up 
 to and including that message, so far as we 
 know — and in matters of this kind we cannot 
 rely upon street rumors — Andrew Johnson's 
 plan has met the approval of the Cabinet of 
 Abraham Lincoln. He has executed every 
 law passed by Congress upon every subject 
 whatever, and especially has he executed the 
 Freedmen's Bui'eaubill. He placed at the head 
 of that bureau General Howard, one of the most 
 fit and worthy men in the United States, to 
 conduct the delicate aftairs of that bureau, and 
 General Howard has never asked him for any 
 single act of authority, any single power that 
 was not freely granted by President Johnson. 
 The Freedmen's Bureau is also vmderthe con- 
 trol of Edwin M. Stanton. Every act passed 
 by Congress in any way bearing on this rebel- 
 lion the President has fairly and promptly ex- 
 
 ecuted. If there is any that he has failed to 
 execute I should thank any Senator to name it 
 to me for I do not now recall it. Not only that, 
 but he adopted the policy of President Lincoln 
 in hcec verba., as I shall show hereafter in 
 examining his proclamations, and he extended 
 and made more severe, as you may say, the pol- 
 icy adopted by Mr. Lincoln. Not only that, 
 but in carrying out his plans of reconstruction, 
 he adopted all the main features of the only bill 
 passed by Congress — the Wade and Davis bill. 
 I have the bill before me, but I have not time 
 to go into its details. My colleague, who re- 
 members the features of that bill, will know 
 that the general plan adopted by President J ohn- 
 son is the only plan that was ever adopted by 
 Congress. Let us look into President John- 
 son's plan a little more and see what it was. 
 His first proclamation was in reference to Vir- 
 ginia. In this proclamation, dated Executive 
 Chamber, May t), 1865, he provided: 
 
 "First. That all acts and proceedings of the politi- 
 cal, military, and civil organizations which have been 
 in a state of insurrection and rebellion within the 
 State of Virginia against the authority and laws of 
 the United States, and of which Jetferson Davis, John 
 Letcher, and William Smith were late the respective 
 chiefs, are declared null and void." 
 
 With a single stroke he swept away the whole 
 superstructure of the rebellion. Then he pro- 
 vides for the execution of all the powers of the 
 national Government within the rebel territory, 
 extending there our tax laws. Perhaps Pres- 
 ident Johnson ought to have thought a little 
 about these proclamations when he disputed 
 the power of Congress to tax the peopl'e of the 
 southern States. He was the first to extend 
 over those States the tax laws of the United 
 States, and appoint assessors and collectors of 
 internal revenue and collectors of customs in 
 the various jDorts. Then he provides : 
 
 " Ninth. That to carry into effect the guarantee of 
 the Federal Constitution of a republican form of gov- 
 ernment, and afford the advantage and security of 
 domestic laws, as well as to complete the reestablish- 
 mentof the authorityof the laws of the United States, 
 and the full and complete restoration of peace within 
 the limits aforesaid, Francis H. Peirpoint, Governor 
 of the State of Virginia, will be aided by the Federal 
 Government, so far as may be necessary, in the law- 
 ful measures which ho may take for the extension 
 and administration of the State government through- 
 out the geographical limits of said State." 
 
 That was the first element of his j^lan of re- 
 construction. The next was the amnesty proc- 
 lamation, issued on the 29th of May following. 
 In this proclamation he recites the jDrevious 
 proclamation of President Lincoln, and then 
 goes on: 
 
 "To the end, therefore, that the authority of the 
 Government of the United States may be restored, 
 and that peace, order, and freedom may be estab- 
 lished, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United 
 States, do proclaim and declare that I hereby grant 
 to all persons who have directly or indirectly par- 
 
ticipatedin the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter 
 excepted, amnesty and pardon, with restoration of all 
 rights of property, except as to slaves, and except in 
 cases where legal proceedings, under the laws of the 
 United States providing for the confiscation of prop- 
 erty of persons engaged in rebellion, have been in- 
 stituted," &c. 
 
 And then in the oath of amnesty he provides 
 that any person claiming the benefit of the 
 amnesty should swear that he will "abide by 
 and faitlifully support all laws and proclama- 
 tions which have been made during the exist- 
 ing rebellion with reference to the emancipa- 
 tion of slaves." Then he goes on and excepts 
 from the operation of this amnesty some four- 
 teen classes of persons, more than quadrupling 
 the exceptions of the previous proclamation of 
 Mr. Lincoln ; so that if there was any depart- 
 ure in this connection from the policy adopted 
 by Mr. Lincoln, it was a departure against the 
 rebels, and especially against those wealthy 
 rebels who gave life and soul and power to the 
 rebellion. 
 
 CONDITIONS IMPOSED BY HIM. 
 
 These were the agencies and organs under 
 which the plan of reconstruction was to go on. 
 Now I ask you, what conditions were imposed 
 on these people? First, the adoption of the 
 constitutional amendment. He was not willing 
 to leave the matter to their amnesty oath or to 
 the proclamation of President Lincoln, but he 
 demanded of them the incorporation in their 
 State constitutions of a prohibition of slavery, 
 and the adoption by their Legislatures of the 
 constitutional amendment so as to secure beyond 
 peradventure the abolition of slavery forever 
 and ever throughout the United States. This 
 he required in every order issued to the South, 
 and demanded it as a first and preliminaj-y con- 
 dition to any effort toward reconstruction. Next, 
 he demanded a repudiation of the rebel debt, 
 and a guarantee put into the constitutions of the 
 respective States that they never would under 
 any circumstances pay any portion of the rebel 
 debt. Next, he secured the enforcement of the 
 test oath so that every officer in the southern 
 States under the act of Congress was compelled 
 to take that oath ; or if he could not find officers 
 there to do it, he sent officers from the northern 
 States to do it, so that this law, the most objec- 
 tionable of any to the southern people was en- 
 forced in all instances at the South. It is true 
 he appointed some provisional governors who 
 could nottakethe test oath ; but why? Because 
 it was held that these provisional governors 
 were not oflicers under the law. They were not 
 officers whose commission was provided for by 
 law ; they were simply executive agents for the 
 time being to carry into execution the plan of 
 reconstruction ; andhe felt that if he could use 
 any of these people in the southern States for 
 the purpose of performing this temporary duty 
 he had a right to do it. It was not prohibited 
 by any law. The test oath only applied to offi- 
 
 cers of the United States who were provided for 
 by law. 
 
 Next, he enforced in every case full and 
 ample protection to the freedmen of the south- 
 ern States. As I said before, no case was ever 
 brought to his knowledge, so far as I can gather, 
 in which he did not do full and substantial jus- 
 tice. 
 
 Mr. MORRILL. Allow me to ask the Sen- 
 ator a question. Does he mean to say that the 
 President required it as a condition of resto- 
 ration that they should give protection to the 
 freedmen of the' South? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. I am merely speaking of 
 what the President did, and I say that so far 
 as I know he exercised and enforced every 
 power of the Government to protect the freed- 
 men of the southern States without exception. 
 As a matter of course he did not require it as 
 a condition to be inserted in their constitutions. 
 
 PARDONS. 
 
 I^t Now, what are the objections to this policy? 
 The first objection, that I have heard made 
 most commonly, and which I have made my- 
 self, is, that the President wag toQ liberal in 
 exercising the pardoning power. But when 
 we remember the fact that there were more 
 than five times as many included in his excep- 
 tions as were included in the exceptions to the 
 proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, and that the num- 
 ber of pardons in comparison with the whole 
 number of persons excepted is substantially 
 insignificant, and that we cannot know all the 
 circumstances which surrounded every particu- 
 lar case of pardon, it is hardly fair for us to 
 arraign the President of the United States. We 
 can limit his power to pardon in these cases. 
 The President of the United States has no 
 power to pardon under the Constitution of the 
 United States in cases like this. That power 
 is derived from the amnesty law which we 
 passed at an early period of the war. The 
 constitutional power to pardon given to him by 
 that instrument extends only to cases where 
 there had been a legal accusation by indictment 
 or affidavit, or to cases whSre a man had been 
 tried and convicted of a crime. That is the 
 kind of pardon contemplated by the Constitu- 
 tion, but the authority which we gave him by 
 law to extend pardon and amnesty to the rebels 
 is as broad as the insurrection itself We con- 
 ferred upon the President of the United States 
 the unlimited power df amnesty, and he has 
 exercised that power only to a very moderate 
 degree. 
 
 SUFFRAGE WITHOUT DISTINCTION OF COLOR. 
 
 But the princii^al objection that has been 
 made to his policy is that he did not extend his 
 invitation to all the loyal men of the southern 
 States, including the colored as well as the 
 white people. If I were now required to state 
 the leading objection made to the policy of the 
 President in this particular, I should use the 
 
1-0 
 
 language of an eminent statesman, and say that 
 when the President found before him an open 
 field, with no law of Congress to imjiede him, 
 with the power to dictate a policy in the South, 
 to impose conditions on it, he ought to have 
 ad.dressed his proclamation to every loyal man 
 above the age of twenty-one years. That would 
 be the plan of the Senator from Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. SUMNER. Every loyal man. 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. I mean every loyal man 
 of sound mind. Now, let us- look at that ques- 
 tion. In every one of the eleven seceded States, 
 before the rebellion, the negro was excluded 
 from the right of voting by their laws. It is 
 true the Senator from Massachusetts would say 
 these are all swept away. Admit that, but in 
 a majority of the northern States to this hour 
 there is a denial of the right of suffrage to the 
 colored population. In Ohio, Pennsvlvania, 
 and New York that right is limited, and these 
 three States contain one third of the people of 
 the United States. In a large majority of the 
 States, including the most populous, negro suf-« 
 frage is prohibited. And yet you ask President 
 Johnson, by a simple mandatory proclamation 
 or military order, to confer the franchise on a 
 class of people who are not only prohibited 
 from voting in the eleven southern States, but 
 in a majority of the northern States, and indeed 
 I think in all the States except six. 
 
 Further, it cannot be denied that the preju- 
 dice of the Army of the United States, who 
 were called upon to enforce this proclamation 
 within these States, was against negro suf- 
 frage. Whether that prejudice is wise or un- 
 wise, blinded or aided by the light of reason, I 
 shall not say. I never myself could see any 
 reason why, because a man was black, he 
 should not vote ; and yet. in making laws, as 
 the President was then doing, foj the govern- 
 ment of the community, you must regard the 
 prejudices, not only of the people among whom 
 the laws are to be executed, but the prejudices 
 of the Army and the people who are to execute 
 those laws, and no man can doubt but what at 
 that time there was a strong and powerful pre- 
 judice in the Arm^ and among all classes of 
 citizens against extending the right of suffrage 
 to negroes, especially down in the far South, 
 where the great body of the slaves were in 
 abject ignorance. 
 
 But that is not all, Mr. President. The 
 President of the United States was of the 
 opinion that he had no power to extend the 
 elective franchise to them, and therefore, in 
 judging of his plan of reconstruction, we must 
 give him at least a reasonable credit for hon- 
 esty of purpose. In his message he tells you 
 that this was the difficult subject which met him 
 in the way, and he gives you frankly the rea- 
 sons which induced liim to exclude the colored 
 population from the right to vote. He says : 
 
 "The relations of the General Government toward 
 the four million inhabitants whom the war has called 
 
 into freedom have engaged my most serious consid- 
 eration. On the propriety of attempting to make the 
 freedmcn electors by the proclamation of the Exec- 
 utive, I took for my counsel the Constitution itself, 
 the interpretations of that instrument by its authors 
 and their contemporaries, and recent legislation by 
 Congress. When, at the first movement toward 
 independence, the Congress of the United States in- 
 structed the several States to institute governments 
 of their own, they left each State to decide for itself 
 the conditions for the enjoyment of the elective 
 franchise." 
 
 After some further discussion he goes on to 
 say: 
 
 " So fixed was this reservation of power in the hab- 
 its of the people, and so unquestioned has been the 
 interpretation of the Constitution, that during the 
 civil war the late President never harbored the pur- 
 pose, certainly never avowed the purpose, of disre- 
 garding it; and in the acts of Congress during that 
 period, nothing can be found which, during the con- 
 tinuance of hostilities, much less after their close, 
 would have sanctioned any departure by the Execu- 
 tive from a policy which has so uniformly obtained. 
 
 "Moreover, a concession of the elective franchise 
 to the freedmen by act of the President of the United 
 States must have been extended to all colored men, 
 wherever found, and so must have established a 
 change of suffrage in the northern, middle, and west- 
 ern States not less than in the southern and south- 
 western. Such an act would have created a new class 
 of voters, and would have been an assumption of 
 power by the President which nothing in the Con- 
 stitution or laws of the United States would have 
 warranted." 
 
 And that is not all. We complain here that 
 the President has not exercised his power to 
 extend to freedmen the right of suffrage when 
 Congress never has done it. We have absolute 
 authority over this District, and until this ses- 
 sion the proposition was not seriously mooted 
 to extend the suffrage to the colored population. 
 Here, better than anywhere else in the Union, 
 they are fitted and entitled to suffrage, and yet 
 we never, in our legislative power for this Dis- 
 trict, where we have absolute power, complied 
 with that condition which has been asked of the 
 President of the United States. It is complained 
 that he did not extend the franchise to four mil- 
 lions in the southern States who are admitted to 
 be ignorant, having been slaves for life, who 
 are not prepared for liberty in its broadest and 
 fullest sense, who have yet to be educated for 
 the enjoj'raentof all the rights of freemen, when 
 we ourselves never have been willing to this 
 moment to confer the elective franchise upon 
 the intelligent colored population of this Dis- 
 trict. 
 
 So I think we have never conferred the right 
 to vote upon negroes in the Territories. My 
 colleague will know whether we have or not. 
 We never have. Here we have Territories 
 where we have the power to mold the incipient 
 form and ideas, and where our power is abso- 
 lute, and yet Congress has never prescribed as 
 a condition to their organization as Territories 
 
11 
 
 and to their admission as States the right of 
 negroes to vote. 
 
 And this is not all. In the only plan Con- 
 gress has ever proposed for the reconstruction 
 of the southern States, the Wade and Davis bill 
 to which I have referred so often, Coftgress did 
 not and would not make negro suffrage a part 
 of their plan. The effort was made to do so, 
 and it .was abandoned. By that bill the suf- 
 frage was conferred only upon white male loyal 
 citizens. And in the plan adopted by the Presi- 
 dent he adopted in this respect the very same 
 conditions for suffrage prescribed by Congress. 
 'Now, have we, as candid and honorable men, 
 the right to complain of the President because 
 he declined to extend suffrage to this most igno- 
 rant freed population when we have refused or 
 neglected to extend it to them or lo the negroes 
 of this District and to the colored men who may 
 go into the Territories ? No, sir ; whatever may 
 be our opinion of the theory or right of every 
 man to vote — and I do not dispute or contest 
 with honoi'able Senators upon that point — I say 
 with the President, that to ask of him to extend 
 to four millions of these people the right of suf- 
 frage when we have not the courage to extend 
 it to those within our control, when our States, 
 represented by us here on this floor have re- 
 fused to do it, is to make of him an unreason- 
 able demand, in which the people of the United 
 States will not sustain Congress. 
 
 What then was done by the President? He 
 fixed the qualiiicatjons of voters by several 
 proclamations addressed to different States. 
 Here is the qualification fixed in his procla- 
 mation in regard to North Carolina. He directs 
 the provisional governor to convene "a con- 
 vention composed of delegates to be chosen by 
 that portion of the people of said State who are 
 loyal to the United States, and no others." He 
 confined it to the loyal population, and then 
 
 went on : 
 
 / 
 
 " Provided, That in any election that may be here- 
 after held for choosing delegates to any State con- 
 vention, as aforesaid, no person shall be qualified as 
 an elector or shall be eligible as a member of such 
 convention unless he shall have previously taken and 
 subscribed to the oath of amnesty, as set forth in the 
 President's proclamation of May 29, 1865, and is a 
 voter qualified as prescribed by the constitution and 
 laws of the State of North Carolina, in force imme- 
 diately before the 20th day of May, A. D. 18G1, the 
 date of the so-called ordinance of secession." 
 
 Therefore he confined the right to vote to 
 loyal people who had taken the oath prescribed 
 by him, an oath which required them to re- 
 nounce all allegiance to the rebel authorities 
 and to obey and abide by and support all laws 
 and proclamations abolishing slavery, and no 
 others are allowed to vote under this jjrocla- 
 mation ; and tlien he adds : 
 
 " And none shall be allowed to vote who could not 
 vote under the law as it stood before the rebellion 
 commenced." 
 
 My honorable friend from Massachusetts, I 
 know, would have desired that that last clause 
 was omitted ; perhaps many others around me 
 would have preferred it ; but I have already said 
 sufficient upon that point. He confined the 
 right of voting to the loyal men who were enti- 
 tled to 'vote under the laws of that State before 
 the rebellion, and he denied his right in the 
 absence of law to confer upon the negro pop- 
 ulation of North Carolina the suffrage, espe- 
 cially when Congress and the people of the 
 southern States and the people of the northern 
 States have never yet shown their disposition to 
 extend the right of franchise within their own 
 limits. I say, whatever I may think about it 
 as a question of ethics, or as to the right, nat- 
 ural or artificial, political or civil, of the negro 
 to vote, yet to demand of the President of the 
 United States, under these circumstances, more 
 than he actually did, it seems to me is making 
 an unreasonable demand. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT AND THE FREED PEOPLE. 
 
 That he had no unkind feelings to the negroes 
 of the southern States is shown by many things. 
 I have here a Life which is made up mainly of 
 extracts from his SiDceches, and I could read 
 you expressions over and over again of kindli- 
 ness and friendsliip during the last summer to 
 this negro population. It is true, you cannot 
 expect Andrew Johnson, whose whole life has 
 been a struggle, who was born in a slave State, 
 who was reared in a slave State, who owned 
 slaves, you cannot expect him whom •you have 
 elected President of the United States to forget 
 and renounce all the prejudices of a lifetime. 
 You cannot expect him to stand on the high and 
 lofty pedestal of men who have contemplated 
 this subject at a distance and now proclaim laws 
 that are right within the light of their reason. 
 You must take the man with all the circum- 
 stances that surround him ; and I say, taking 
 him in that light, he has shown, in his various 
 speeches before he sent his message here, a 
 kindly feeling to the negro population of the 
 southern States. I would refer to one or two 
 of those simply to show the general tendency 
 of his feelings. On the 10th of October last 
 he made a speech to some colored regiments 
 who called to pay their respects to him at the 
 Executive Mansion, in which he said to them : 
 
 "You have been engaged in the effort to sustain 
 your country in the past, but the future is more im- 
 portant to you than the period in which you have just 
 been engaged. One great question has been settled 
 in this Government, and that is the question of sla- 
 very. The institution of slavery made war against 
 the United States, and the United States has lifted 
 its strong arm in vindication of the Government and 
 of free government, and on lifting that arm and ap- 
 pealing to the God of battles, it has been decided that 
 the institution of slavery must go down." 
 
 Then he follows with kind expressions, hop- 
 ing for their welfare and future prosperity. 
 Again, in his conversation with Mr. Stearns, of 
 
12 
 
 Massachusetts, an authentic report of which 
 was given under the sanction of the President : 
 
 " You could not have broaclied the subject of equal 
 suffrage at the North seven years ago ; and we must 
 remember that the changes at the South have been 
 more rapid, and that they have been obliged to ac- 
 cept more unpalatable truth than the North has. 
 We must give them time to digest a part ; for we can- 
 not expect such large affairs will be comprehended 
 and digested at once. We must give them time to 
 understand theirnew position. 
 
 "I have nothing to conceal in these matters, and 
 have no desire or willingness to take indirect courses 
 to obtain what we want. 
 
 "Our Government is a grand and lofty structure; in 
 searching for its foundation we find it rests on the 
 broad basis of popular rights. The elective franchise 
 is not a natural right, but a political right. I am op- 
 posed to giving the States too much power, and also 
 to a great consolidation of power in the central Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 "If I interfered with the vote in the rebel States, 
 to dictate that the negroes shall vote, I might do the 
 same thing for my own purposes in Pennsylvania. 
 Our only safety lies in allowing each State to control 
 the right of voting by its own laws, and we have the 
 power to control the rebel States if they go wrong. 
 If they rebel, we have the Army and can control them 
 by it, and if necessary by legislation also. If theGen- 
 eral Government controls the right to vote in the 
 States, it may establish such rules as will restrict the 
 vote to a small number of persons and thus create a 
 central despotism. 
 
 "My position here is different from what it would 
 be if I was in Tennessee. There I should try to intro- 
 duce negro suffrage gradually; first, those who had 
 served in t&e Army, those who could read and write, 
 and perhaps a property qualification for others, say 
 two hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars. 
 
 "It will not do to let the negroes have universal 
 suffragenow, it would breed a war of races." 
 
 Such were the opinions of Andrew .Tohnson 
 expressed then, in which he showed that he was 
 willing to meet the question of suffrage to the 
 negro population, but he desired to do it grad- 
 ually, and not, as he conceived, by a usurpation 
 of power on his part. It is also shown by the 
 evidence introduced the other day by the hon- 
 orable Senator from Illinois, that the Freed- 
 men's Bureau, right under the eye of Andrew 
 Johnson, in Nashville, Tennessee, where he 
 knew all that was going on, had organized vast 
 systems for the education of southern negroes. 
 AH the plans of General Howard for the edu- 
 cation of the freedmen of the South, under 
 which seventy thousand negroes are now being 
 educated by the national Government ; all these 
 plans, so far as we know, have met the sanction 
 and approval of Andrew Johnson. It seems 
 to me, therefore, he has evinced no undue 
 hatred or jealousy of the colored population of 
 the soixthern States, but that he is willing grad- 
 ually to extend to them the right of suffrage. 
 In the mean time, as he tells us in the late veto 
 message, he strongly desires to protect them in 
 the enjoyment of all their natural rights. Now, 
 I say again, to require impossibilities of the 
 
 President of the United States, to make any 
 undue demands or exactions of him, will not, 
 in my judgment, be wise. 
 
 president's speech on TWENT-T-SECOND FEBRUARY. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, this branch of what I 
 have to sa",' by this general observation : that up 
 to and including the recent veto message of the 
 President of the United States there had been 
 no act of Andrew Johnson which in my judg- 
 ment was inconsistent with the high obligations 
 he owed to the great Union party of the United 
 States. I would to God that I could end here ; 
 but some things that have transpired since, my 
 duty to myself and my State — a duty from which 
 I shall not shrink whether it meets the enmity 
 of friends or opponents — compel me now to 
 speak upon some matters in connection with the 
 President of the United States which I deeply 
 regret. And first of all and most prominent, as 
 being that which now stands in the public eye, 
 I do most deeply regret his speech of the 22d of 
 February. I think there is no true friend of 
 Andrew Johnson who would not be willing to 
 wipe out that speech from the pages of history. 
 It is impossible to conceive a more humiliating 
 spectacle than the President of the United States 
 invoking the wild passions of a mob around 
 him with the utterance of such sentiments as 
 he uttered on that day. Whether he be Presi- 
 dent or priest, I care not; I must express my 
 deep and hearty regret and condemnation of 
 some passages of that speech. The honorable 
 Senator from Maine the other day read one 
 paragraph in which he arraigns Congress for 
 organizing a central despotism. No charge 
 could be more unfounded. We, in pursuance 
 of a time-honored custom in Congress of gather- 
 ing through our committees the information that 
 is necessary td'enable us to act upon the great 
 questions brought before us, chose to appoint 
 a joint committee. 1 suppose the President has 
 taken offense at the fact that this committee 
 was organized on*the day before his message 
 was sent in, under circumstances, as he thought, 
 of heat, and I have no doubt that much of what 
 was said by the President of the United States 
 is but the exhibition of temper and passion 
 against what he regarded as unjust insults and 
 accusations, but nevertheless no true friend of 
 his will justify him in this arraignment of Con- 
 gress. 
 
 I must confess that I have not seen anything 
 in the conduct of the committee of fifteen in 
 their reports to the two Houses of Congress to 
 justify it. Individual members of that com- 
 mittee or individual members of Congress and 
 citizens of the United States may have criticised 
 with undue severity some of the acts of the Pres- 
 ident; but every man who holds such a position 
 must expect manly criticism. The people will 
 not stop to choose terms in speaking of those in 
 power. He must .expect that. It is a part of 
 the penalty of his greatness. He must not 
 therefore return accusation with accusation. I 
 
13 
 
 therefore say that the accusation made by the 
 President of the United States against the action 
 of Congress thus far has Ix^en unjust and un- 
 founded. I speak with no feeling on this sub- 
 ject. The other day I objected to the discussion 
 being commenced for fear that irritable remarks 
 might be thrown back from Congress to the 
 President. I do not desire to see it done, but 
 I say to you now as the result of my deliberate 
 reflection — and I know every true friend of the 
 President will say I am right in this — I must 
 express deep and heartfelt regret that he felt 
 himself called upon to address that crowded 
 and seething mass on the 22d of February. Bet- 
 ter far, if, when the citizens of the United States 
 called upon him, he had paid the respectful com- 
 pliment of thanks, instead of speaking to them 
 in the manner he did, assailing independent 
 branches of the Government. Every man, I 
 think, must regret this paragraph : 
 
 " I fought traitors and treason in the South. I op- 
 posed the Davises, the Toombses, theSlidells, and a 
 long list of others, which you can readily fill without 
 my repeating the names. Now, when I turn round 
 and at the other end of the lino find men, I care not 
 by what name you call them, who still stand opposed 
 to the restoration of the Union of these States, I am 
 free to say to you that I am still in the field." 
 
 I will say that I read from a report made by 
 the gentleman'who reports for us, and which 
 report modifies very much the language of one 
 report that I have seen in one of the city papers ; 
 but as this report is an official one. prepared 
 by the gentleman who reports our proceedings, 
 I prefer to take this. 
 
 Mr. HOWARD. What paper is it in? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. The Philadelphia In- 
 quirer. The'President went on to say: 
 
 "I am called upon to name three at the other end 
 of the line; I am talking to my friends and fellow- 
 citizens, who are interested with me in this Govern- 
 ment, and I presume I am free to mention to you the 
 names of those whom I look upon as being opposed 
 to the fundamental principles of this Government, 
 and who are laboring to pervert and destroy it. 
 
 "Voices. 'Name them 1' 'Who are they?' 
 
 "The President. You ask me who they are. I 
 say Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania is one; I say 
 Mr. Sumner of the Senate is another; and Wendell 
 Phillips is another." 
 
 This is extraordinary. The President of the 
 United States is thoroughly combative in- his 
 disposition ; he has been fighting all the days 
 of his life ; but it seems to me he ought to 
 waive this disposition now, and remember the 
 manner in which his lamented predecessor, 
 Abraham Lincoln, received the jeers and blows 
 of friends and foes. His easy good nature was 
 a soft cushion against which everything which 
 was offensive feu dead. His words were always 
 kindly and genial to friend or foe. That is not 
 the character of Mr. Johnson. It is one of the 
 peculiarities of his character that he has not 
 the gentleness of the late President, and yet let 
 me say that in this respect the very courage 
 
 with which he resists opponents wherever they 
 present themselves, we commended five years 
 ago as the highest virtue of Andrew Johnson's 
 life. 
 
 What is the reason given for these personal 
 allusions? Wendell Phillips has arraigned and 
 abused the President in a shameless manner ; 
 but he is in the habit of doing that in regard to 
 almost^every one. He recently classed him 
 with Arnold and Burr. He said he had taken 
 Jeff Davis's place as leader of the confederacy, 
 and threatened impeachment. This world will 
 never be good enough for him. My friend from 
 Massachusetts, before the magnificent oration 
 he gave us covering the whole ground of our 
 difficulties, let drop an expression about ' 'white- 
 washing" in debate in December last that I 
 have no doubt has greatly wounded and irri- 
 tated the mind of the President. He regards 
 it rather in the light of a personal afl:ront, 
 though I do not believe it was so intended. 
 
 In regard to Mr. Stevens, the other gentle- 
 man named by him, we cannot judge fairly with- 
 out recallingto mind the fact that Mr. Stevens 
 pi-oclaimed Andrew Johnson to be an alien 
 enemy, a citizen of-a foreign State, in the con- 
 vention that nominated him as Vice President 
 of the United States, and therefore not now 
 legally President. We must not forget that he 
 has shown violent and bitter feeling at various 
 times, and that he wields great influence, and 
 in such a way as to exasperate even a patient 
 man. I know him well — a man of greatnntel- 
 lect, with a controlling will, and possessing the 
 dangerous power of keen sarcasm, which he 
 wields against friend and foe, cutting like a 
 Damascus blade. In a recent debate he made 
 use ofan expression that would irritate any man, 
 especially when coming from a leader in the 
 House of Representatives. He said of the Pres- 
 ident that his conversation with a certain ''dis- 
 tinguished Senator" was 
 
 "In violation of the privileges of this House, made 
 in such a way that centuries ago, haditbeen made in 
 Parliament by a British king, it would have cost him 
 his head." 
 
 I ask you, Senators, whether the Presidentof 
 the United States, regarding him as he is ; a 
 man who never turned his back upon a foe, per- 
 sonal or political ; a man whose great virtue has 
 been his combative propensit}'; as a man who 
 repellec^ insults here on the very spot where 
 I now stand, when they came from traitoi's 
 arming themselves for the fight ; can you ask 
 him, because he is President, to submit to in- 
 sult? Every sentiment of manhood, every dic- 
 tate 01 our nature, would induce a man, when 
 he heard these words uttered, in the heat of 
 passion, to thrust them back. When a man 
 becomes President he has none the less the 
 feelings of manhood. Whether a peasant or a 
 President, he is a man for a' that. He can 
 never overcome tliat feeling, and therefore I 
 say, Senators, when we are examining the 
 
14 
 
 present condition of affairs, although I con- 
 demn the time and manner of repelling these 
 insults as strongly as one can, yet that con- 
 demnation must be jjalliated by the circum- 
 stances by which he was surrounded, by our 
 knowledge of his character, by the fact that he 
 believed he was repelling personal insult thrust 
 upon him by high officers of the Government, 
 or by a gentleman like Wendell Phillips, who 
 controls great masses of public opinion, and 
 we are bound to give him the charity of this 
 explanation. 
 
 There is another portion of this speech which 
 I think is even still more indefensible than any- 
 thing I have referred to ; and that is that clause 
 which I will not read to the Senate, in which 
 he charges that these men are endeavoring to 
 incite his assassination. No charge can be more 
 idle, no accusation can be more unfounded ; 
 and I am astonished to the last degree that such 
 an idea should ever enter the mind of the Pres- 
 ident of the United States that these gentlemen 
 were conspiring his assassination! I have seen 
 many papers printed on both sides of the ques- 
 tion, by Democrats and Union men, and I 
 never have seen one that appi'oves this accusa- 
 tion. I have received many letters pro and con 
 on this subject since this thing occurred, and 
 I have never yet seen an intimation but what 
 this charge was most unfounded. Sir, it is not 
 in the ranks of the Union party the President 
 will find assassins. They are bred only by a 
 differSnt school of politics. The men who have 
 done so much to save this country from anarchy 
 will not play the part of assassins. He need 
 not guard against them ; and this accusation 
 seems to me rather the product of resentment, 
 hatched by anger and passion, and hurled with- 
 out reflection at those he believed wished to 
 badger and insult him. 
 
 But, sir, throwing aside these personal al- 
 lusions and these irritating remarks, what is 
 there left of the speech ? Cast over the remarks 
 that I have referred to 'the mantle of charity, 
 and what is there in the speech with which we 
 can find fault? There may be ideas and sen- 
 timents which seem to be out of place ; we 
 are not here to criticise the speech of the Pres- 
 ident by the rules of grammar or syntax ; but 
 there are ideas in his speech that are deserving 
 the grave consideration of the Senate. In one 
 clause of the speech he says in speakiilg of the 
 spirit of his address and conduct to the south- 
 ern people: 
 
 " Coming in that spirit, Tsay to them, ' When you 
 have complied with the requirements of the Consti- 
 tution, when you have yielded to the law, when you 
 have acknowledged your allegiance to the Constitu- 
 tion, I will, so far as I can, open the door of the 
 Union to those who had erred and strayed from the 
 fold of their fathers for a time.' " 
 
 Now read in connection with that another 
 paragraph of the same speech : 
 
 " When those who rebelled comply with the Con- 
 
 stitution ; when they give sufBcient evidence of loy- 
 alty ; when they show that they can be trusted; when 
 they yield obedience to the law that you and I ac- 
 knowledge obedience to, I say extend them the right 
 hand of fellowship, and let peace and Union be re- 
 stored." 
 
 TENNESSEE. 
 
 Other passages of this speech, and especially 
 one or two in the veto message, show his ear- 
 nest desire for the admission of Tennessee ; and 
 I have no doubt that much of the excitement 
 in the President's mind arose out of the long- 
 delayed admission of Tennessee into this Union. 
 That feeling crops out very strongly in the veto 
 message, and I confess to you that I do sympa- 
 thize very much with his feelings. What is the 
 condition of Tennessee? It was reconstructed 
 in the sense in which the term is now used be- 
 fore the death of President Lincoln, under his 
 guiding hand, with Andrew Johnson as his mere 
 agent. It was reconstructed by Union men in 
 the midst of war, and Tennessee aided us very 
 much in the closing operations of this war. 
 More than thirty thousand of her brave sons 
 marched under the banner of I'homas and Sher- 
 man. Its government was reorganized before 
 President Johnson came here. -It was organ- 
 ized by his own personal friends who shared his 
 fortunes. The men that are sent here to rep- 
 resent Tennessee are as true and loyal as either 
 of you Senators, without exception. I have 
 just had brought to me the recent letter of Mr. 
 Maynard to the convention held on the 22d of 
 February, and it breathes the very spirit of pa- 
 triotism. There are Stokes and many others of 
 these gentlemen who have served the cause of 
 their country. Now I say to you that there is 
 a feeling in the public mind that Tennessee ought 
 to be admitted into the Union, and as soon as 
 possible ; that she has complied with every con- 
 dition imposed upon her ; that she has organized 
 civil society so far as it can be ; and I think it 
 is the common feeling and desire of the people 
 of the United States, whom we represent, the 
 mass of the Union people, that she should be 
 admitted as soon as possible. One year ago 
 she was declared by the President not to be 
 in insurrection ; and I do think our first duty 
 is at once to prepare a mode and manner by 
 which she maybe admitted into the Union upon 
 such terms and conditions as will make her 
 way back the way of pleasantness and peace. 
 And, sir, I would follow the marked exception 
 in the case of Tennessee by an encouraging plan 
 for the admission of Arkansas and such other 
 States as may be reconstructed on a loyal basis. 
 
 NO PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION BY CONGRESS. 
 
 The weakness of the position of Congress 
 now is not that any one denies yourj^ower, but 
 that you hold no lanterns to them, no light, no 
 plan, no mode by which they can get back into 
 the folds of the Union. I say therefore, if the 
 committee on reconstruction can report a joint 
 resolution ( instead of this asserting their power) 
 
15 
 
 fixing the mode and manner by which Tennes-. 
 see and other States may come back into the 
 Union, by which their loyal sons maybe repre- 
 sented upon this floor, I believe it will meet the 
 hearty plaudit of the American people. I do 
 not wish to go into the general question still 
 before the committee on reconstruction ; but if 
 I had any power in arranging a plan, I would 
 mark the line as broad and deep between the 
 loyal people who stqod at our side and the rebels 
 who fought against us as between heaven and 
 hell. 
 
 Mr. HOWARD. How can you do it ? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. Whenever loyal men pre- 
 sent a State organization, complying with such 
 terms and conditions and tests of loyalty as 
 you may prescribe, and will send here loyal 
 repi'esentatives, I would admit them ; and when- 
 ever rebels send or come here I would reject 
 them. The President in his veto message, to 
 which I intend to refer presently, states this 
 point as strongly and as well as I can make it, 
 and I will read it in reply to the honorable 
 Senator : 
 
 " I hold it my duty to recommend to you, in the 
 interests of peace and in the interests of Union, the 
 admission of every State to its share in public legis- 
 lation, when, however insubordinate, insurgent, or 
 rebellious its people may have been, it presents itself 
 not only in an attitude of loyalty and harmony, but 
 in the persons of representatives whose loyalty can- 
 not be questioned under any existing constitutional 
 or legal test." 
 
 Define loyalty in your own terms ; show that 
 yoit have at least a generous appreciation of 
 the position of these men ; prescribe what you 
 call a loyal man, if you choose; and then when 
 these loyal men send here loyal men who can 
 be tested by your oath or by any other mode 
 or manner you choose to {prescribe, let them 
 come, in the name of God and humanity, and 
 share our councils as they have shared our 
 hearts ; and I believe it is the- irritation occa- 
 sioned by this delay that has caused much of 
 the excitement in the mind of the President. 
 
 You may say that the President's idea of 
 loyalty is not yours, and you may differ upon 
 that. Why do you not define your idea of loy- 
 alty, and send it to him, and if it meets his 
 approval, well? If not, then he makes an issue 
 with Congress, and then you can fight it out ; 
 but until then you cannot. 
 
 VETO MESSAGE. 
 
 Now, Mr. President, I come to the veto mes- 
 sage. It is well known that I not only voted 
 for the freedraen's bill, but I voted for it against 
 the President's veto. I would vote for it over 
 andoveragain. I considered it carefully ; I find 
 nothing in it but what I can approve : and I 
 am surprised that any one who is willing to 
 support the present Freedraen's Bureau is not 
 willing to vote for this modification of it ; but I 
 do not wish to discuss at any length its merits. 
 The honorable Senator from Illinois, in an elab- 
 
 orate and very able speech, has exhausted the 
 whole subject. I am willing to let the veto of 
 the President, with the answer of the Senator 
 from Illinois, go to the people of the country, 
 and upon that I am willing to defend my vote 
 at any time and at all times. But what then ? 
 The President of the United States has consti- 
 tutional powers and rights ; he has the same duty 
 imposed upon him to vote for or against that 
 bill that rests upon any of us. 
 
 The Constitution declares that every bill shall 
 be submitted for his approval or disapproval. 
 If he does not approve it he sends it back, and 
 it is nothing more nor less than a vote by him of 
 "no" against the passage of that bill. H^ sends 
 it back with his reasons. Suppose those rea- 
 sons are not sufficient. That is a question that 
 he must judge as well as you. He alleges that 
 this bill is unnecessary, and I must confess that 
 a recent construction put upon the bill through 
 General Howard very much takes away from 
 the immediate necessity for its passage. I sup- 
 posed myself that the original Freedmen's Bu- 
 reau bill expired bj^ its own limitation in JMay, 
 1866, because I sujjposed that the President 
 considered the rebellion as over in May last. 
 He certainly did as to Tennessee. I supposed 
 that the year of the duration of that bill after 
 the war would commence, say some time in 
 May, I860, and therefore there was immediate 
 necessity to supply some temporary act by which 
 the freedmen in the southern States should be 
 protected. It seems that in that we mistook 
 the construction of the President, and I have 
 here before me the order recently issued by 
 General Howard, in which he says that — 
 
 " The President has assured the Commissioner that 
 he regards the present law as continuing the exist- 
 ence of the bureau at least a year from this time." 
 
 That is, as no pi'oclamation has been issued 
 fixing the termination of the rebellion, imtil 
 one year after that proclamation the present 
 Freedmen's Bureau continlfes. If so, we have 
 all the benefit of that system under the care 
 of the most excellent manager of it now for 
 one year for the protection of the freedmen. 
 There are but very few powers conferred in the 
 second bill that are not included in the first. 
 There are three sections of the second bill that 
 I think ought to be passed in the form of a law. 
 One provides for the poor negroes on the plan- 
 tations set apart by General Sherman for them. 
 It did seem to me that it was but reasonable 
 and right for us to secure to them a military 
 possession for a short period of time. They 
 came into possession of that property lawfully 
 under myitary rule ; they were placed upon it 
 when it was abandoned by its owners, and when 
 its owners were fighting this Government. Their 
 title was legal, their possession was legal ; and 
 I say there was nothing but a reasonable coft- 
 dition that you should not turn them out with- 
 ouLat least two years' preparation. I could 
 see no objection to that, it is true the expensfe 
 
16 
 
 of a Freedmen' s Bureau may be large ; but how 
 can we help that? We have ourselves, in pur- 
 suance of our policy, emancipated the slaves; 
 and whether it costs much or little, we are bound 
 •to ease their way from a condition of servitude 
 to a condition of assured freedom. T tell you 
 the people of Ohio do 'not care as to that. 
 Whatever is necessary to be expended for this 
 great purpose they are willing to pay their 
 share. While they are reasonably economical 
 in all questions, yet when it comes to the ques- 
 tion of taking care of a race of people whom 
 we ourselves have emancipated, they are will- 
 ing to bear their share of the burden. 
 
 The sixth section of the bill, I must confess, 
 seemed to me rather arbitrary ; I refer to the 
 power given to the President to buy lands at 
 . pleasure and without limit. I was disposed to 
 vote to strike that out; but as the whole sys- 
 tem was a temporary one, I did not believe the 
 power would be abused by General Howard, 
 and 1 trusted the President. I was willing to 
 vote for it with that clause in -, but that is neither 
 here nor there. He had the right to veto it. 
 What he says about taxation without represen- 
 tation I look upon very much like a stump 
 speech that had no pertinency to the veto. That 
 we have the power to legislate for the southern 
 States is admitted by the President himself 
 In all the proclamations to which I have re- 
 ferred he by terms extends the Treasury laws 
 over the southern States. He has admitted 
 over and over again our power to legislate for 
 these States by approving and indorsing and 
 ratifying laws wo have sent to him ; and there- 
 fore all he said about taxation 1_ look upon 
 merely as one of those make-weights in an 
 argument that with the people would not have 
 any material influence. If he meant by that 
 part of his veto message simply to say that as 
 a general principle of American constitutional 
 law every people who are affected by laws 
 passed by Congr^ should be represented, I 
 say that is right ; but there are exceptions to 
 that as there are to every other rule. We 
 legislate for the people of this District and they 
 do not vote and cannot have the right to vote. 
 We will not even let them be heard here. 
 YV^e legislate for the Territories and do not give 
 them the right to vote. We legislate for for- 
 eigners, who are not represented here, except 
 indirectly, and who have no political power. 
 We legislate for the women and children of our 
 country, who have no vote. Wc legislate for 
 a great many people who do not vote. They 
 are all inferentially represented, but not di- 
 rectly represented by members of their own 
 choice. Therefore i regard this part of the 
 veto message simply surplusage not to be con- 
 sidered ; bub whether it is considered or not J 
 afti willing to stand by that bill ; and let me 
 say, sir, that if any President of the United 
 States, I do not care -whether it is Andrew 
 Johnson or his successor, shall fail or neglect 
 
 to protect from lawless violence the men who 
 have been freed by this Government in the oper- 
 ations of war, that man will be cursed forever 
 and forever. Our obligation to protect them 
 is even more sacred than to protect the white 
 people. My Democratic friends may think 
 that is a very strong expression, but the reason 
 is this : the white people can take care of them- 
 selves ; they have been trained for generations 
 as freemen ; they will dtifend and maintain 
 their rights; you cannot hold them in slavery. 
 All the powers of hell could not keep in sla- 
 very the American people who have once tasted 
 the sweets^of freedom. 
 
 But it is different with the freed people of 
 the southern States. They are very poor, help- 
 less, dependent upon our bounty and our pro- 
 tection, and are there in the presence of their 
 masters who hate them because they have lost 
 their services. We dare not trust their protec- 
 tion to the white people of the southern States, 
 because we know the instinctive prejudices that 
 govern and control in the southern States. I 
 believe, and I will take the President at his 
 word when he tells me, that his earnest desire 
 is to protect them in all their rights. In the 
 very veto message in which he sends back the 
 measure we sent him, he tells us in most une- 
 quivocal terms — 
 
 "I share with Congress the strongest desire to se- 
 cure to the freedmen the full enjoyment of their free- 
 dom and property, and their en tire independence and 
 equality in making contracts for their labor." 
 
 Then he goes on and states his objections to 
 the bill. While he stands by that declaration, 
 while he protects the freed peopl(?of the south- 
 ern States, I will not quarrel with him about 
 the means. Let him fail to do that, and I will 
 denounce him as freely and as bitterly as any 
 Senator on this floor. 
 
 WHAT THE UNION PARTY DEMANDS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
 
 Mr. President, I feel that I have already 
 detained the Senate too long, but there are 
 some other observations which I shall take this 
 occasion to make so that 1 may not hereafter 
 feel called upon to trouble the Senate on these 
 various questions of reconstruction. In my 
 judgment, the Union party of the United States, 
 whose representatives we are, demand both of 
 the President and of Congress grave and im- 
 portant duties. I do not think either of us 
 can avoid the fair performance of these duties 
 by any excuse or equivocation. What they 
 demand of the President, who accepted the 
 nomination of the Union party, and who is the 
 agent and representative of thie Union party, 
 and who is bound in honor to carry out its 
 principles, is a faithful observance of the prin- 
 ciples upon which he was elected. I look upon 
 the common declaration either of a President 
 or a member of Congress that he is the repre- 
 sentative of the whole people, and is not under 
 any obligation to the men who elected him, as 
 
17 
 
 as false iu honor and false in principle. The 
 President, it is true, is President of the United 
 States, but he is the chosen representative of 
 the Union party of the United States, and he 
 is under obligations to that party which he can- 
 not in honor dejjlkrt from. Now, sir, a debt of 
 honor Is even of higher obligation than a debt 
 which can be enforced in a court of law, sim- 
 ply because it rests upon honor alone. No 
 debt can be of higher honor than that which 
 the representative owes to the constituents who 
 elected him. I think therefore that wo have a 
 right to expect that the President of the Uni- 
 ted States shall fulfill his promise upon which 
 he was elected, that he would do all he could 
 to make treason odious and to punish traitors. 
 There is a growing feeling in the public mind 
 that he is forgetting this cardinal principle of 
 his early proclaimed policy. We have a right 
 to expect that in the various departments and 
 agencies of this Government he shall exercise 
 the power intrusted to him through those men 
 who aided and contributed to his election. He 
 is bound as a principle of honor to select 
 as the agents of the Government those who 
 shared with him the political feeling that gave 
 rise to his election. They are numerous enough 
 to form the foundation of any Administration. 
 And if he seeks fellowship, counsel, aid, or 
 association from or with those who either took 
 up arms in the recent contest, or who, regard- 
 ing the war a failure, would have passively 
 yielded to rebels, he commits that offense from 
 which no man occupying his high position can 
 or will recover. Tolerance of opinion within 
 a political party is indispensable and choice of 
 agents within it is a necessity, but it must be 
 a grave exigency that will justify a betrayal of 
 those by and through whom we obtain trust 
 and power. 
 
 The Union party, in my judgment, is the 
 most powerful political organization that has 
 ever controlled the Government of this coun- 
 try. During the last fall it carried every one 
 of the so-called northern States — ^'northern no 
 more, I hope. The Legislatures of all those 
 States are in a harmony with the Union party. 
 Nine out of ten of the soldiers who carried 
 our flag are adherents of the Union party, and 
 sustained us at the election as they did in the 
 field of battle. The great body of the officers 
 who led the soldiers through all the perils of 
 war are of the same feeling. The great Union 
 party is a sound, conservative, healthy polit- 
 ical organization, demanding only of its agents 
 what is reasonable and right. 1 think its mem- 
 bers demand, and have a right to demand, of 
 Mr. Johnson a strict, earnest, faithful adher- 
 ence to the principles which led to his selec- 
 tion as a candidate for the Vice Presidency, 
 and placed him side by side with the lament- 
 ed Lincoln ; and they demand of him trust 
 and confidence in those who placed him in 
 pov/er. 
 
 WHAT IT DEMANDS OP CONGRESS. 
 
 And, sir, this party demands of Congress 
 some things, also. It demands of Congress a 
 prompt restoration of some of the rebel States, 
 or at least a prompt plan of restoration of the 
 rebel States. If on account of their present 
 condition any of these States cannot yet come 
 into the Union ; if because they are still rebel- 
 lious, or will not in spite of our laws select men 
 who have not stained their hands with the 
 blood of our countrymen, let them stay out. 
 While the State of Georgia or any other State 
 of the South can find no citizen within her 
 bosom to represent her except those who, 
 more almost than all others, are responsible 
 for the blood that has been shed in the recent 
 war, I will never vote for the admission of its 
 Representatives or Senators. They must first 
 show by their conduct an obedience to the law. 
 Among the laws that stood on the statute-book 
 when they were the force to which they ap- 
 pealed was that law which prescribed a test 
 oath ; and I^ for one, will never j-ield that test 
 oath to enable any man whose hand is stained 
 with the blood of my fellow-countrymen to take 
 a seat on the floor of the Senate. 
 
 But, sir, I am desirous to see some mode by 
 which loyal men from the southern States, in 
 States that are organized on a secure and safe 
 basis, may be promptly admitted on this floor. 
 The people of the United States demand of 
 Congi-esssome such plan and that right speedily, 
 and they demand a change of the basis of rep- 
 resentation. By the provisions of the Consti- 
 tution of the United States there are four mil- 
 lion people of the southern States who, denied 
 all political rights, will still be represented in 
 Congress, and the strange anomaly will pre- 
 sent itself of these rebel States, who have done 
 all they could to overthrow the Government, 
 coming back here with increased political 
 power. I think that our constituents v/ill 
 demand of us that before they are admitted 
 we shall have at least adopted a plan by which 
 the basis of representation may be put upon a 
 secure and safe footing. 
 
 Let us take some cases disclosed by the cen- 
 sus tables and let us make a momentary com- 
 parison. The State of Alabama has a total 
 population of 964,201 ; she is entitled upon the 
 basis of representation to seven Representa- 
 tives ; but the State of Alabama has only 435,080 
 white people who exercise any political power. 
 The State of Wisconsin has a population of 
 774,710, or nearly twice as many white people 
 as the State of Alabama, and yet unless you 
 change the basis of representation, Alabama 
 will come back here with seven Representatives 
 while Wisconsin has but six. So with Virginia 
 and Illinois. Virginia has a total population 
 of 1,596,318, and a white population of only 
 1,047,411, while Illinois has a white population 
 of 1,704,-323, or nearly twice as many as the 
 State of Virginia; and yet unless there is some 
 
18 
 
 change in the Const itntion, Virginia will come 
 back with twelve Representatives while Illinois 
 has but thirteen. I might go through the list. 
 This is a condition of inequality to which our 
 people will not submit now when they have the 
 power to remedy it. 
 
 The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania 
 [Mr. BucKALEw] the other day in a very ably 
 prepared argument demonstrated, as I think,' 
 very clearly that the inequality of representation 
 in the Senate is even still more marked than 
 this ; but he must remember that that inequal- 
 ity is beyond the power of recall ; that no change 
 can be made in that respect except either by 
 revolution or by a national convention. Be- 
 sides, this inequality of representation in the 
 Senate does not really amount to very much, 
 for the reason that the small States are mainly 
 distributed side by side with the large States, 
 and they have a community of interest with the 
 large States. I have myself watched the vote 
 upon the various propositions to see whether 
 this inequality of representation of States in the 
 Senate has operated hard, and I find almost 
 always the large and small States mix and min- 
 gle in their votes. It very rarely makes any 
 difference, as whenever the popular majority 
 carries the House of Representatives that same 
 popular majority carries the Senate. This in- 
 equality, while it cannot be changed, really does 
 but little harm. The only section of which 
 any complaint can fairly be made is New Eng- 
 land, where a group of six small States stand 
 together, and sometimes have peculiar inter- 
 ests of which they are very tenacious ; but 
 the West rapidly growing into giant power, 
 strengthened by new States every year, and 
 where there is a community of interests of great 
 Statea and small States — the great West can 
 soon hold New England in check whenever 
 she unduly avails herself of her unequal polit- 
 ical power here. 
 
 THE BASIS OP EEPRESENTATION— V(3TERS. 
 
 Mr. President, the real question of difficulty 
 is how this change in the basis of representa- 
 tion shall occur. The committee of fifteen have 
 reported a plan that I shall probably vote for, 
 but I must express my preference for another. I 
 do it now, so that I shall not take up the time of 
 the Senate hereafter. In my judgment the true 
 basis of representation in this country is voters. 
 1 know this was discussed in the other House, 
 and I have read the debate there, but the result 
 was not satisfactory tome. All the objections 
 that have been made to that system were ob- 
 .jections that might be easily obviated and easily 
 answered. Suppose the basis of representa- 
 tion was the very one suggested by Andrew 
 Johnson, that all men above the age of twenty- 
 one years, citizens of the United States, who 
 by the laws of the respective States are entitled 
 t to vote shall be the basis of representation. 
 What then ? What is the objection to that plan ? 
 
 It is simple, uniform, applying to all sections 
 without any appearance of legislating against 
 a particular interest or a particular section. It 
 is fair, manly, and honorable. The true basis 
 of representation are men whQ cast the votes. 
 All the others who stand outsiae of this circle 
 are voted for by the voters and are represented 
 by the voters. 
 
 But one of the objections made to this plan 
 is that in the border States by their laws they 
 exclude a large portion of their population from 
 voting on the ground of disloyalty, having taken 
 share in the rebellion. Suppose they do; sup- 
 pose Maryland has excluded one third of her 
 population because they were rebels, ought the 
 loyal men of Maryland to vote for those rebels? 
 Whether they are excluded on acccount of color 
 or crime they are equally to be excluded from 
 the basis of representation, and this argument, 
 which applied only to a narrow interest and of 
 a temporary character which will soon disap- 
 pear by the march of events, is now made to 
 stand in the way of a just and fair basis of rep- 
 resentation. So it is said that in the State of 
 New York where there is a large preponderance 
 of foreigners, the State of New York will lose, 
 because foreigners not being voters will not be 
 counted. Suppose it is, would not that be right ? 
 Foreigners are not citizens, but may become 
 such. They pass through a pupilage and then 
 are citizens and maybe counted. Because they 
 happen to have the most of them in New York, 
 is that a reason why they should be included 
 in the basis of representation?. The States 
 ought not to look upon this question as it af- 
 fects their own particular interests for the time, 
 but as a question of equality, of right, and of 
 justice in the Electoral College and the House 
 of Representatives. 
 
 So of New England. It is said that New 
 England will lose something because she has a 
 great number of beautiful women and children 
 more than she has men. That is true; but I 
 ask you, Mr. President, yourself a distinguished 
 representative from New England, where the 
 men are who represent these women? They 
 are the best blood of your country who go west- 
 ward and there soon give tone to society, and 
 come back here to represent themselves and 
 the mothers and sisters and kindred they left 
 behind. New England is at this moment not 
 only represented by her twelve Senators, but 
 by six or eight more who are sons of New Eng- 
 land who moved to the West and carried with 
 them their religion , their principles, and in some 
 cases their wives, or where they did not we pro- 
 vided wives for them. They came back here 
 as Senators, and now stand here to vote New 
 England ideas and New England principles. 
 Suppose New England should lose a member 
 or two because the young men have gone West, 
 are her women and children unrepresented ? 
 No, sir, they are represented by men from every 
 State in the Union. 
 
19 
 
 I say, therefore, that this rule, proposed first 
 I believe by Professor Leiber, is in my judgment 
 the fairest basis of representation. That a 
 change of the basis is demanded there can be 
 no doubt. This in my opinion is the best prop- 
 osition, but I do not profess to be among the 
 impracticables, and if I cannot get what Iwant 
 I am willing to take that proposition which was 
 reported from the committee of fifteen, which 
 does at least take away that singular feature by 
 which the South would gain representation by 
 the rebellion. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 
 
 Sir, pei'haps I ought not to say anything 
 further in regard to a proposition made by the 
 Senator from Missouri, [Mi-. Henderson,] so 
 eloquently and ably defended and maintained 
 in a long and elaborate oration by the Senator 
 from Massachusetts, that we ought now to start 
 de novo, to go back to first principles and base 
 representation on population, and take away 
 from the States the jjower to fix the qualifica- 
 tion of voters, and proclaim that nobody should 
 be excluded from voting on account of color, 
 [t has always seemed to me best to attempt 
 that which is attainable ; and when I say to you 
 that no man can really believe that we can keep 
 these States out from representation here until 
 we can educate the people of the United States 
 up to a change of their Constitution so as to 
 compel any State to adopt negro suffrage, it is 
 a proposition so clear that I need scarcely dis- 
 cuss it. 
 
 If we propose to exclude those eleven States 
 from the Union until we can compel three 
 fourths of all the States to vote for negro suf- 
 frage, then these eleven States will be a Hun- 
 gary, a Poland, an Ireland, to be ruled over by 
 the military rod for years to come. You may 
 depend upon it the people of the United States 
 will not acquiesce in that demand. They will 
 not waste their energies and their money in 
 enforcing so impossible a proposition. There- 
 fore, without going into its merits, I say it is 
 simply proposing that which we cannot adopt. 
 
 I beg Senators not to let the protection that 
 is due to the negroes of the southern States 
 depend upon the narrow foundation of a con- 
 gressional enactment. Suppose you were to 
 pass the law proposed by the Senator from 
 Massachusetts, how long would it remain on the 
 statute-book, in the mutations of parties in this 
 country, where nothing is more unstable than 
 party power, especially where no^reat princi- 
 ples are immediately at stake? How long 
 would it be before a dominant majority in Con- 
 gress would repeal your law, and then you would 
 have wasted all your power to change the basis 
 of representation and to protect the freedmen 
 of the southern States? What I desire now is 
 to secure a just and fair basis of representation 
 BO that the South may have a reasonable share 
 of political power, no more, no less. Then 
 after their representatives have been tried 
 
 by the tests of loyalty that you may prescribe 
 — let them be reasonable, moderate, kind, for- 
 bearing — then I hope to see these States come 
 back into their old places in the Union, shorn of 
 their treason, shorn of their power ; equal with 
 us, no better, no worse ; white men and white 
 women and white children, on the same foot- 
 ing, side by side, acting in harmony with each 
 other in adopting legislation for the good of our 
 great country. 
 
 LET us BE MODERATE. 
 
 Such is my view of the subject, and although 
 I shall probably take no part in the debate upon 
 it, but will vote for almost any basis of repre- 
 sentation that changes the present one, 1 do 
 ^ay it is the duty of Congress to adopt some 
 mode by which the basis of representation may 
 be put upon a safe foundation. Sir, the peo- 
 ple of the United States now demand of us wis- 
 dom and moderation. This is not the time for 
 extreme counsels. It is not the time to attempt 
 great reforms and works. We have just gone 
 through a terrible war, with an overwhelming 
 debt staring us in the face. We have to tax 
 our people to a greater extent than they have 
 ever been taxed before. We have complicated 
 political relations growing out of the condition 
 of the southern States. Do the best we can, 
 we shall have trouble and contention and strife. 
 We know that lawlessness and crime are spread- 
 ing with giant footsteps all over the southern 
 States. We know that the race that we have 
 redeemed from bondage is now held in fierce 
 terror all over the South. We know that we 
 owe them protection, and we are bound to pro- 
 tect ourselves against undue power of traitors 
 in the southern States. We have to guard our 
 councils against the machinations of traitors 
 here and elsewhere. 
 
 I say now is no time to quarrel with the Chief 
 Magistrate of the United States, unless we are 
 compelled to do so by his base betrayal of the 
 obligations he imposed upon himself when ho 
 became our candidate. It is a time for moder- 
 ation and for wisdom. Sir, I would not plead 
 for it, but I believe it is absolutely necessary, 
 not only for our existence as a party, but for our 
 existence as a nation. I fear the storm. 1 fear 
 struggles and contentions in these eleven States, 
 unless there is some mode by which the local 
 power of those States may l^e put in loyal hands, 
 and by which their voices may be heard here 
 in council and in command, in deliberation and 
 debate as of old. They will come back here 
 shorn of their undue political power, humbled 
 in their pride, with a consciousness that one 
 man bred under free institutions is as good at 
 least as a man bred under slave institutions. J. 
 want to see the loyal people in the South, if they 
 are few, trusted; if they are many, give them 
 power. Prescribe your conditions; but let 
 them come back into the Union upon such 
 terms as you may prescribe. Open the door 
 for them. I hope to see some great spectacle 
 
20 
 
 of punishment, some grand tribunal erected to 
 try, not merely Jefferson Davis, but in his per- 
 son to try the rebellion, to condemn it before 
 the civilized world ; the sentence to be recorded 
 in the pages of history, not as the sentence of 
 death merely against "an old man broken with 
 the storms of state," but as the ignominious 
 sentence of a free people against the worst re- 
 bellion ever inflicted on mankind. But that 
 over, I do hope that without more bloodshed, 
 of which we have had enough, we may see har- 
 mony restored in this great Union of ours ; that 
 all these States and all these territories may 
 be here in council for the common good, and 
 that at as speedy a moment as is consistent 
 with the public safety. 
 
 OHIO AND INDIANA. 
 
 Before I conclude, allow me to read two sets 
 of resolutions framed since we have been en- 
 gaged in this debate, and which receive my 
 hearty approval : one passed by the Union party 
 of the State of Indiana, and the pther reported 
 to the Union members of the Legislature of 
 Ohio, and which, I believe, will receive their 
 sanction. The Indiana Union convention 
 passed the following resolutions : 
 
 "Resolved, That it is the province of the legislative 
 branch of the Government to determine the question 
 of reconstruction, and in the exercise of that power 
 Congress should have in view the loyalty of the peo- 
 ple of those States, and their devotion to the Consti- 
 tution and obedience to the laws. Until the people 
 of these States prove themselves loyal to the Govern- 
 ment they should notbe restored to the rights enjoyed 
 before the rebellion. 
 
 "Resolved, That no man who voluntarily partici- 
 pated in the rebellion ought to be admitted to a seat 
 in Congress, and under the Constitution of the Uni- 
 ted States the power to determine the ciualifications 
 requisite of electors rests with the States respect- 
 ively. 
 
 "Resolved, That the Union of these States has not 
 and cannot be dissolved except by successful revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 I now present and read kindred resolutions 
 reported to the Union members of the Ohio 
 Legislature recently by a committee of their 
 own number : 
 
 "Resolved, That the President, Andrew Johnson, in 
 demanding of the revolted States the repeal of their 
 ordinances of secession, the repudiation of their rebel 
 war debts, and the adoption of the amendment of the 
 Constitution abolishing slavery before he would with- 
 draw the military control of the provisional govern- 
 ments, wisely inaugurated the necessary measures of 
 reconstruction, that can only be completed by Con- 
 gress and the States by the adoption of a further con- 
 stitutional amendment apportioning representation 
 in Congress among the States according to the num- 
 bers of those classes thereof who, by the laws of such 
 States, have a voice in such representation ; and that 
 while the safety of the nation and justice to all its 
 parts require that these States should be admitted 
 only with such representation, we deem it inexpedient 
 and unnecessary to press upon them other conditions 
 
 to a full restoration to their place and rights in the 
 Union. 
 
 " Resolved, That we deem it the duty of Congress to 
 provide by just and prudent but effective legislation 
 for the protection of the freedmen. 
 
 "Resolved, That we respectfully and earnestly urge 
 upon Congress and the President to waive extreme 
 opinions, and that in the discharge of the great trust 
 confided to them by the nation they harmoniously 
 provide for us the ways of future concord and the 
 moderate but effectual measures of a lasting recon- 
 struction." 
 
 I will also read from a private letter which I 
 have received from a distinguished citizen of my 
 State, expressing an opinion in which I heartily 
 concur: 
 
 " Our party is now in the hour of its trial, and it 
 needs to gain strength by prudence rather than prod- 
 igally wasted by the very extravagance of rashness. 
 We can never maintain ourselves against the Presi- 
 dent or anybody else upon a policy of indefinite and 
 unconditional exclusion of the southern States, es- 
 tablishing a Ilungary or Poland in the midst of the 
 Republic. We must rather, in my judgment, offer 
 immediate admission to the rebel States upon terms 
 clear, distinct, and announced, and show to our people 
 that it is not revenge but safety that wo want." 
 
 I have thus, Mr. President, endeavored to 
 show that to this hour no act has been done by 
 the President inconsistent with his obligations 
 to the great Union party that elected him. 
 
 Differences have arisen, but they have arisen 
 upon new questions, not within the contempla- 
 tion of either the Union partj^ or the Union 
 people Avhen the President was nominated. I 
 have also shown that he has acted in jjursuance 
 of a policy adopted by Mr. Lincoln, and ap- 
 proved by the people, and that no event has 
 yet transpired that will preclude him from a 
 "hearty cooperation with the great mass of the 
 Union party in securing to the country the ob- 
 ject for which we conducted successfully a great 
 war. That events have transpired, that utter- 
 ances have been made tending in that direction, 
 no one will deny. The surest evidence is in the 
 joy of the woi'st enemies of the country over 
 our divisions. 
 
 I find in a recent paper this significant para- 
 graph : 
 
 Democratic Demonstration at Dayton. 
 
 Dayton, Ohio, February 20. 
 The Democracy of Dayton had a jollification over 
 President Johnson's veto of the Freedmen's Bureau 
 bill this afternoon, firing one hundred guns. Mr. 
 Vallandigham made a brief speech, saying the De- 
 mocracy did not elect President Johnson, but it is 
 now their duty to stand by him. He announced a 
 mass meeting in future for exultation. A flag floats 
 from Mr. Vallandigham 's window. 
 
 Mr. CRESWELL. May I ask what kind of 
 a flag? 
 
 Mr. SHERMAN. I do not know ; a good 
 flag in bad hands, I suppose. 
 
21 
 
 Sir, I Cfin imagine no calamity more disgrace- 
 ful than for us by our divisions to surrender, to 
 men who to their country were enemies in war, 
 any or all of the powers of this Government. 
 He who contributes in any way to this result 
 deserves the execrations of his countrymen. 
 This may be done by thrusting upon the Presi- 
 dent new issues on which the well-known prin- 
 ciples of his life do not agree with the judgment 
 of his political associates. It may be done by 
 irritating controversies of a personal character. 
 It may be done by the President turning his 
 back upon those who trusted him with high 
 power, and thus linking his name with one of 
 the most disgraceful in American history, that 
 of John Tyler. I feel an abiding confidence 
 that Andrew Johnson will not and cannot do 
 this ; and, sir, v/ho will deny that the overbear- 
 ing and intolerant will of Henry Clay contrib- 
 uted very much to the defection of John Tyler? 
 But the division of the Whig party was an event 
 utterly insignificant in comparison with the evil 
 results of a division in the Union party. Where 
 will be the four million slaves whom by your 
 policy you have emancipated ? What would be 
 their miserable fate if now surrendered to the 
 custody of the rebels of the South ? Will you, 
 by your demand of universal suffrage, destroy 
 the power of the Union party to protect them 
 in their dearly purchased liberty ? Will you, by 
 new issues upon which you know you have not 
 the voice of the people, jeopard these rights 
 which you can by tlie aid of the Union pai-ty 
 secure to these freedmen ? We know that the 
 President cannot, will not, and ijever agreed to, 
 unite with us upon the issues of universal suf- 
 frage and dead States. No such dogmas were 
 contemplated, when, for his heroic services in 
 the cause of the Union, we placed him side by 
 side with Mr. Lincoln as our standard-bearer. 
 Why, then, present these issues? Why decide 
 upon them? Why not complete the work so 
 gloriously done by our soldiers by securing 
 union and liberty to all men without distinc- 
 tion of color, leaving to the States, as before, 
 the question of suffrage. 
 
 Sir, the curse of God, the maledictions of 
 millions of our people, and the tears and blood 
 of new-made freemen will, in my judgment, 
 rest upon those who now for any cause destroy 
 the unity of the great party that has led us 
 through the wilderness of war. We want now 
 peace and repose. We must now look to our 
 public credit. We have duties to perform to 
 the business interests of the country in which 
 we need the assistance of the President. We 
 have every motive for harmony with him and 
 with each other, and for a generous and manly 
 trust in his patriotism. If ever the time shall 
 come when I can no longer confide in his de- 
 votion to the principles upon wl;ich he was 
 elected, I will bid farewell to Andrew John- 
 son with unaffected sorrow. I will remember 
 when he stood in this very spot, five years ago, 
 
 repelling with unexampled courage the assaults 
 of traitors. He left in their hands wife, chil- 
 dren, property, and home, and staked them all 
 on the result. I will remember that when a 
 retreating general would have left Nashville to 
 its fate, that again, with heroic courage, he 
 maintained his post. I will remember the 
 fierce conflicts and trials through which he and 
 his fellow-compatriots in East Tennessee main- 
 tained our cause in the heart of the confed- 
 eracy. I will remember the sti'uggles he had 
 with the aristocratic element of Tennessee, 
 never ashamed of his origin and never far from 
 the hearts of the people. Sir, you must not 
 sever the great Union party from this loyal ele- 
 ment of the southern States. No new theories 
 of possible Utopian good can compensate for 
 the loss of such patriotism and devotion. Time, 
 as he tells you in his message, is a great ele- 
 ment of reform, and time is on your side. I 
 remember the homely and encouraging words of 
 a pioneer in the anti-slavery cause, an expelled 
 Methodist preacher from the South, who told 
 those who were behind him in his strong anti- 
 slavery opinions, " Well, friends, I'll block up 
 awhile ; we must all travel together. " So I say 
 to all who doubt Andrew Johnson, or who wish 
 to move more rapidly than he can, to block up 
 awhile, to consolidate their great victory with 
 the certainty that reason and tlie Almighty will 
 continue their work. All wisdom will not die 
 with us. The highest human wisdom is to do 
 all the good you can, but not to sacrifice a pos- 
 .sible good to attempt the impracticable. God 
 knows that I do not urge harmony and concili- 
 ation from any personal motive. The people 
 of my native State have intrusted me with a 
 position here extending four years beyond the 
 termination of the President's term of office. 
 He can grant me no favor. 
 
 If I believed for a moment that he would seek 
 an alliance with those who by either arms or 
 counsel or even apathy were against their coun- 
 try in the recent war, and will turn over to them 
 the high powers intrusted to him by the Union 
 party, then, sir, he is dishonored, and will re- 
 ceive no assistance from me ; but I will not 
 force him into that attitude. If he shall prove 
 false to the declaration made by him in his veto 
 message, that his strongest desire was to secure 
 to the freedmen the full enjoyment of their 
 freedom and property, then I will not quarrel 
 with him as to the means used. And while, as 
 he tells us in this same message, he only asks 
 for States to be represented who are presented 
 in an attitude of loyalty and harmony and in 
 the persons of representatives whose loyalty 
 cannot be questioned under any constitutional 
 or legal test, surely we ought not to sej^arate 
 from him until, at least, we prescribe a test of 
 their lo3'alty upon which we are willing to stand. 
 We have not done it yet. I will not try him 
 by new creeds. I will not denounce him for 
 hasty words uttered in repelling personal af- 
 
22 
 
 fronts. I see him yet surrounded by tbe Cab- 
 inet of Abraham Lincoln, pursuing hisf)olicy. 
 No word from me shall drive him into political 
 fellowship with those who, when he was one of 
 the moral heroes of this war, denounced him, 
 spit upon him, and despitefully used him. The 
 association must be self- sought, and even then 
 I will part with him in sorrow, but with the 
 abiding hope that the same Almighty power 
 
 that has guided us through the recent war will 
 be with us still in our new difficulties until every 
 State is restored to its full communion and fel- 
 lowship, and until our nation, purified by war, 
 will assume among the nations of the earth the 
 grand position hoped for by Washington, Clay, 
 Webster, Lincoln, and hundreds of thousands 
 of unnamed heroes who gave up their lives for 
 its glory. 
 
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