ANDREW JOHNSON'S FIRST MESSAGE

Said the New York Times, December 6, 1865:

Probably no executive document was ever awaited with greater interest than the message transmitted to Congress yesterday. It is safe to say that none ever gave greater satisfaction when received. Its views on the most momentous subjects, domestic and foreign, that ever concerned the nation, are full of wisdom, and are conveyed with great force and dignity.

The original manuscript of the message thus eulogized was discovered nearly half a century later by Professor Dunning, of Columbia University, in the handwriting of George Bancroft, among the Johnson papers in the Library of Congress.

It remains a document creditable alike to the man who composed it and to the one who made it his own by sending it as an official communication to Congress. It breathed the spirit of peace and harmony, of justice tempered with mercy, of human kindness and helpfulness, of self-abnegation and self-restraint, all couched in the tone of high statesmanship. It adhered, however, to the opinion previously expressed by the President, that the Executive had no right to extend the suffrage to persons to whom it had not been granted by state authority.

A discriminating yet warm eulogium of the message was pronounced by the New York Nation, which was then in the sixth month of its existence. It had criticized the President's Reconstruction acts as too hasty. Two or three months' time it considered too short to reconcile whites and blacks and teach them to respect each other's rights. Nevertheless, taken for all in all, the message was one which every American might read with pride.

We do not know [it continued] where to look in any other part of the globe, for a statesman whom we could fix upon as likely to seize the points of so great a question, and state them with so much clearness and breadth, as this Tennessee tailor who was toiling for his daily bread in the humblest of employments when the chiefs of all other countries were reaping every advantage which school, college, and social position could furnish. Those who tremble over the future of democracy may well take heart again when men like Lincoln and Johnson can at any great crisis be drawn from the poorest ranks of society, and have the destinies of the nation placed in their hands with the free assurance that their very errors will be better and wiser than the skill and wisdom of kings and nobles. For if the President were to commit to-morrow every mistake or sin which his worst enemies have ever feared, his plan of Reconstruction would still remain the brightest example of humanity, self-restraint, and sagacity ever witnessed—something to which the history of no other country offers any approach, and which it is safe to say none but a democratic society would be capable of carrying out.

The statesmanship of George Bancroft did not govern very long. The irony of fate decreed that within two months of the time when such words as the foregoing were uttered by the most competent critics in the land, the President of whom they were spoken should be in bitter strife with the majority of his own party, and within two years be facing trial by impeachment.

Andrew Johnson was born of a fighting race and in a region of fighters. He shared the poverty and ignorance of the mountaineers of East Tennessee. Hard labor was his portion in youth and early manhood. He was a tailor by trade.[79] He could read, but could not write until he was married, when the latter accomplishment was imparted to him by his wife. With this kind of start he became, like Abraham Lincoln, and in much the same way and facing the same difficulties, a public speaker, and acquired by steady practice the faculty of making his meaning clear to the commonest understanding. When he found himself in the Senate of the United States, shortly before the outbreak of secession, he had few if any superiors as a debater in that body, and the Union had not a more unflinching defender, North or South. Alexander H. Stephens, a competent judge, considered Johnson's speech against secession the best one made in the Senate during the whole controversy. Secretary Seward, who accompanied him in his "swing around the circle" in 1866, said that he was then the best stump speaker in the country. Certainly the speech with which he began that tour at New York on the 29th of August was a great one. It fills five pages of McPherson's "History of Reconstruction." It was extemporaneous, but faultless in manner and matter; it was charged with the spirit of patriotism, and it will bear comparison with anything in the annals of American polemics. If he had made no other speech in that campaign the results might have been far different, and the Union party which elected him might have avoided the breach which soon became remediless.

The first blow leading to this breach was struck by Sumner in the Senate, December 19, 1865, when he referred to a message of the President, of the previous day, on the condition of the South, as a "whitewashing message" akin to that of President Pierce on the affairs of Kansas. When Reverdy Johnson deprecated such an assault on the President of the United States, Sumner replied that it was "no assault at all," but after two other Senators (Doolittle and Dixon) had said that it was the same as accusing the President of falsifying, he replied that he did not so intend it, but he did not withdraw or modify it.

Certain acts of Southern legislatures on the subjects of apprenticeship, vagrancy, domicile, wages, patrols, idleness, disobedience of orders, and violation of contracts on the part of laborers were early brought to the attention of the Thirty-ninth Congress. Many of these acts betokened an intention on the part of the lawmakers to reduce the freedmen to a state of serfdom or peonage. The Virginia legislature, for example, passed a vagrancy act, the ultimate effect of which, Major-General Terry said, would be to "reduce the freedmen to a condition of servitude worse than that from which they had been emancipated—a condition which will be slavery in all but its name." Whereupon the general, being in command of the military department, issued an order dated January 26, 1866, that "no magistrate, civil officer, or other person, shall, in any way or manner, apply or attempt to apply, the provisions of said statute to any colored person in this department." President Johnson refused to interfere with General Terry's order when it was brought to his attention.

On the 13th of December, Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, introduced a bill to declare invalid all acts, ordinances, rules, and regulations in the states lately in insurrection, in which any inequality of civil rights was established between persons on account of color, race, or previous condition of servitude. The Natick cobbler was as keen and fluent a debater as the Knoxville tailor. He had a Yankee drawl in his pronunciation which detracted from the real merits of his argument, and so it came to pass that, contrary to the usual fate of extempore speaking, his speeches read better than they sounded. His speech in support of his measure on the 21st of December was in his best style. It was devoid of passion or invective. He cherished no ill-feeling toward any person, high or low, who had been engaged in the rebellion. He did not seek or desire to punish anybody. Least of all did he desire to raise an issue with the President. He wanted only peace, order, friendship, and brotherhood between North and South, as soon as possible; but there could be no peace with these statutes staring us in the face. Therefore, he demanded that they be swept into oblivion with the slave codes that had preceded them.

Wilson desired an immediate vote on his bill. Senator Sherman thought that it ought to be referred to a committee and postponed until the anti-slavery amendment of the Constitution should be officially proclaimed. Trumbull concurred with Sherman. He said:

I do not rise, sir, with a view of discussing the bill under consideration: it is one relating to questions of a very grave character, and ought not to pass without due consideration. The Senator from Massachusetts tells us that it has been submitted to distinguished lawyers, and they all conceded its propriety, and nobody disputes the power of Congress to pass it. Doubtless that was their opinion and is the opinion of the Senator from Massachusetts. Perhaps it would be my opinion upon investigation. I will not undertake to say, at this time, what the powers of the Congress of the United States may be over the people in the lately rebellious states.

There was a time between the suppression of the rebellion and the institution of any kind of government in those states when it was absolutely necessary that some power or other to prevent anarchy should have control. The Senator from Delaware, and I believe the Senator from Maryland, said the rebellion was over, but at the time that the rebellion ceased there was no organized government whatever in most of the rebel states; and was the Government of the United States to withdraw its forces and leave the people in a state of anarchy for the time being? Surely not. As a consequence of the rebellion and of the authority clearly vested in the Government of the United States to put down the rebellion, in my judgment the Government had the right, in the absence of any local governments, to control and govern the people till state organizations could be set up by the people which should be recognized by the Federal Government as loyal and true to the Constitution. It must be so. It is a necessity of the condition of things.

But, sir, I do not propose at this time to discuss this bill. It is one, I think, of too much importance to be passed without a reference to some committee. The bill does not go far enough, if what we have been told to-day in regard to the treatment of freedmen in the Southern States is true. The bill, perhaps, also may be premature in the sense stated by the Senator from Ohio. We have not yet the official information of the adoption of the constitutional amendment. That that amendment will be adopted, there is very little question; until it is adopted there may be some question (I do not say how the right is) as to the authority of Congress to pass such a bill as this, but after the adoption of the constitutional amendment there can be none.

The second clause of that amendment was inserted for some purpose, and I would like to know of the Senator from Delaware for what purpose? Sir, for the purpose, and none other, of preventing state legislatures from enslaving, under any pretense, those whom the first clause declared should be free. It was inserted expressly for the purpose of conferring upon Congress authority by appropriate legislation to carry the first section into effect. What is the first section? It declares that throughout the United States and all places within their jurisdiction neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist; and then the second section declares that Congress shall have authority by appropriate legislation to carry this provision into effect. What that "appropriate legislation" is, is for Congress to determine, and nobody else.

Mr. Saulsbury here interrupted, saying, "I wish to ask the honorable Senator a question, with his consent, first answering his own. He asks me for what purpose that second section was introduced. I do not know; I had nothing to do with it. And now I wish to ask the honorable Senator whether, when it was before this body for adoption, he avowed in his advocacy of it that it was meant for such purposes as are now claimed."

Then the following colloquy ensued:

Mr. Trumbull. I never understood it in any other way.

Mr. Saulsbury. Did you state it to the Senate?

Mr. Trumbull. I do not know that I stated it to the Senate. I might as well have stated to the Senator from Delaware that the clause which declared that Slavery should not exist anywhere within the United States means that slavery should not exist within the United States! I could make it no plainer by repetition or illustration than the statement itself makes it. I reported from the Judiciary Committee the second section of the constitutional amendment for the very purpose of conferring upon Congress authority to see that the first section was carried out in good faith, and for none other; and I hold that under that second section Congress will have the authority, when the constitutional amendment is adopted, not only to pass the bill of the Senator from Massachusetts, but a bill that will be much more efficient to protect the freedman in his rights. We may, if deemed advisable, continue the Freedmen's Bureau, clothe it with additional powers, and if necessary back it up with a military force, to see that the rights of the men made free by the first clause of the constitutional amendment are protected. And, sir, when the constitutional amendment shall have been adopted, if the information from the South be that the men whose liberties are secured by it are deprived of the privilege to go and come when they please, to buy and sell when they please, to make contracts and enforce contracts, I give notice that, if no one else does, I shall introduce a bill and urge its passage through Congress that will secure to those men every one of these rights: they would not be freemen without them. It is idle to say that a man is free who cannot go and come at pleasure, who cannot buy and sell, who cannot enforce his rights. These are rights which the first clause of the constitutional amendment meant to secure to all; and to prevent the very cavil which the Senator from Delaware suggests to-day, that Congress would not have power to secure them, the second section of the amendment was added.

There were some persons who thought it was unnecessary to add the second clause. It was said by some that wherever a power was conferred upon Congress there was also conferred authority to pass the necessary laws to carry that power into effect, under the general clause in the Constitution of the United States which declares that Congress shall have authority to pass all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution any of the powers conferred by the Constitution. I think Congress would have had the power, even without the second clause, to pass all laws necessary to give effect to the provision making all persons free; but it was intended to put it beyond cavil and dispute, and that was the object of the second clause, and I cannot conceive how any other construction can be put upon it.

Now, sir, I trust that this bill may be referred, because I think that a bill of this character should not pass without deliberate consideration and without going to some of the committees of the Senate. But the object which is had in view by this bill I heartily sympathize with, and when the constitutional amendment is adopted I trust we may pass a bill, if the action of the people in the Southern States should make it necessary, that will be much more sweeping and efficient than the bill under consideration. I will not sit down, however, without expressing the hope that no such legislation may be necessary. I trust that the people of the South, who in their state constitutions have declared that slavery shall no more exist among them, will by their own legislation make that provision effective. I trust there may be a feeling among them in harmony with the feeling throughout the country, and which shall not only abolish slavery in name, but in fact, and that the legislation of the slave states in after years may be as effective to elevate, enlighten, and improve the African as it has been in past years to enslave and degrade him.[80]

On the 18th of December the adoption of the anti-slavery amendment was officially announced. On the same day the President sent to the Senate two reports on the condition of affairs, and the state of opinion, in the South,—a very brief one from Lieutenant-General Grant and a much longer one from Major-General Carl Schurz. The former was an incidental result of a three weeks' tour of inspection for military purposes.

General Grant had spent one day in Raleigh, North Carolina, two days in Charleston, South Carolina, and one day each in Savannah and Augusta, Georgia. The substance of his report was that he did not think it practicable to withdraw the military at present; that the citizens of the Southern States were anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible; that they were in earnest in wishing to do what they supposed was required of them by the Government and not humiliating to them as citizens.

I am satisfied [he said] that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiment of the people of the two sections—slavery and state rights, or the right of a state to secede from the Union—they regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal—arms—that man can resort to. I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision arrived at as final, but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and in council.

He alluded to a belief widely spread among the freedmen that the lands of their former owners were to be divided, in part at least, among them and that this belief was seriously interfering with their willingness to make labor contracts for the ensuing year. Then he added:

In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman's mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman has the right to live without care or provision for the future. The effect of the belief in the division of lands is idleness and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities. In such cases, I think, it will be found that vice and disease will tend to the extermination or great reduction of the colored race. It cannot be expected that the opinions held by men at the South for years can be changed in a day; and, therefore, the freedmen require for a few years not only laws to protect them, but the fostering care of those who will give them good counsel and on whom they can rely.

General Schurz's investigation had been made at the special request of the President. He had spent three months in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The President, when appointing him, had said that his own policy of Reconstruction was merely experimental and subject to change if it did not lead to satisfactory results. Schurz says in his "Reminiscences?"[81] that when he returned to Washington from his journey he had much difficulty in procuring an interview with the President; that the latter received him coldly and did not ask him for the results of his investigation; and that when he (Schurz) said that he intended to write a report, the President said that he need not take that trouble on his account. Schurz was convinced that the President wished to suppress his testimony and he resolved that he should not do so. He accordingly wrote the report and sent it in, with the accompanying documents, and let his friends in the Senate know that he had done so. On the 12th of December the Senate, on Sumner's motion, called for the report. The President did not respond immediately. In the mean time he had had a conversation with General Grant whose views were for the most part in accord with his own, and he asked the latter to communicate the information he had gained during his Southern tour in order to make it a part of his reply to the Senate Resolution. The reply occupies only one page and a half of McPherson's "Reconstruction." Schurz's consists of forty-four printed pages of text and fifty-eight pages of appendix; Schurz considered this the best paper he had ever written on a public matter, and there can be no doubt that it had great influence in Congress and on the Republican party. Yet the brief report of Grant was the sounder of the two. Indeed, Schurz himself in his later years had doubts as to the validity of his own conclusions.[82]

Schurz's conclusions may be summarized thus:

If nothing were necessary but to restore the machinery of government in the states lately in rebellion in point of form, the movements made to that end by the people of the South might be considered satisfactory. But if it is required that the Southern people should also accommodate themselves to the result of the war in point of spirit, those movements fall far short of what must be insisted upon....

The emancipation of the slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel slavery in the old form could not be kept up. But although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of society, and all independent state legislation will share the tendency to make him such. The ordinances abolishing slavery, passed by the conventions under pressure of circumstances, will not be looked upon as barring the establishment of a new form of servitude.

Practical attempts on the part of the Southern people to deprive the negro of his rights as a freeman may result in bloody collisions, and will certainly plunge Southern society into restless fluctuations and anarchical confusion. Such evils can be prevented only by continuing the control of the National Government in the states lately in rebellion until free labor is fully developed and firmly established, and the advantages and blessings of the new order of things have disclosed themselves. This desirable result will be hastened by a firm declaration, on the part of the Government, that national control in the South will not cease until such results are secured....

The solution of the problem would be very much facilitated by enabling all the loyal and free-labor elements in the South to exercise a healthy influence upon legislation. It will hardly be possible to secure the freedman against oppressive class legislation and private persecution, unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power.

It is fitting to notice here a letter written by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, of Alabama, to Senator Doolittle and read by him in the Senate on April 6, 1866.

I was [said Mr. Curry] a secessionist, for a while a member of the Confederate Congress, and afterward in the army, on the staff of generals, or in command of a regiment. It would be merest affectation to pretend that I was not somewhat prominent as a secessionist.... Having laid the predicate for my competency, I desire to aver, as a gentleman, and a Christian, I hope, that with large personal intercourse with the people and those who are suspected of rebel intentions, I never heard (of course, since the surrender) of any conspiracy or movement or society or purpose, secret or public, present or prospective, to overthrow the United States Government, to resist its authority, to reËnslave the negroes, or in any manner to disturb the relations that now exist between the Southern States as constituent elements of the Federal Government and that Government, until I read of such intentions recently in Northern newspapers. With perfect certainty as to the truth of my affirmation, I can state that there is not a sane or sober man in Alabama who believes or expects that African slavery will be reËstablished. As unalterable facts, the people accept the abolition of slavery, the extinction of the right of secession, and the supremacy of the Federal Government. It is as idle, a thousand times more so, to speak of another contemplated resistance to Federal authority as to anticipate the overthrow of the British Government by the Fenians.[83]

Mr. Curry's words were true, but at the time when they were written the weight of testimony available at Washington and in the North generally was of a contrary sort, and Mr. Curry counted for no more at the national capital than any other disarmed secessionist. At a later period he became known to the North as one of the great benefactors of his time and country, especially noted for his labors in educating and upbuilding both races in the Southern States.[84]

[79] "For a man who had 'come from the people,' as he was fond of saying, and whose heart was always with the poor and distressed, Andrew Johnson was one of the neatest men in his dress and person I have ever known. During his three years in Nashville, in particular, he dressed in black broadcloth frock-coat and waistcoat and black doeskin trousers, and wore a silk hat. This had been his attire for thirty years, and for most of that time, whether as governor of Tennessee, member of Congress, or United States Senator, he had made all of his own clothes." (Benjamin C. Truman, Secretary to Andrew Johnson, in Century Magazine, January, 1913.)