American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) by Various

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AMERICAN ELOQUENCE

STUDIES IN AMERICAN POLITICAL HISTORY

Edited with Introduction by Alexander Johnston

Reedited by James Albert Woodburn

Volume IV. (of 4)

VII.--CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

VIII.--FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

IX.--FINANCE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

VII.--CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
First Inaugural Address,
March 4, 1861.

JEFFERSON DAVIS
Inaugural Address. Montgomery, Ala.,
February 18, 1867.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS
The "Corner-Stone" Address
--Atheneum, Savannah, Ga., March 2, 1861.

JOHN CALEB BRECKENRIDGE and
EDWIN D. BAKER
Suppression Of Insurrection
--United States Senate, August 1, 1861.

CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM
On The War And Its Conduct
--House Of Representatives, January 14, 1863.

HENRY WARD BEECHER
Address At Liverpool, October 16, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The Gettysburgh Address,
November 19, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Second Inaugural Address,
March 4, 1865.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS
On Reconstruction ; The First Republican Theory
--House Of Representatives, March 22, 1864.

GEORGE H. PENDLETON
On Reconstruction ; The Democratic Theory
--House Of Representatives, May 4, 1864.

THADDEUS STEVENS
On Reconstruction; Radical Republican Theory
--House Of Representatives-December 18, 1865.

HENRY J. RAYMOND .
On Reconstruction; Administration Republican Theory
--House Of Representatives, December 21, 1865.

THADDEUS STEVENS
On The First Reconstruction Bill
--House Of Representatives, January 3, 1867.

VIII.--FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION.

HENRY CLAY
On The American System
--In The United States Senate, February 2-6,1832.

FRANK H. HURD.
A Tariff For Revenue Only
--House Of Representatives, February 18, 1881.

IX.--FINANCE AND CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

JUSTIN S. MORRILL
On The Remonetization Of Silver
--United States Senate, January 28, 1878.

JAMES G. BLAINE
On The Remonetization Of Silver
--United States Senate, February 7, 1878

JOHN SHERMAN
On Silver Coinage And Treasury Notes
--United States Senate, June 5, 1890.

JOHN P. JONES
On Silver Coinage And Treasury Notes
--United States Senate, May 12, 1810.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
On The Spoils System And The Progress Of Civil Service Reform
--Address Before The American Social Science Association,
Saratoga, N. Y., September 8, 1881.

CARL SCHURZ
On The Necessity And Progress Of Civil Service Reform
--Address At The Annual Meeting Of The National
Civil Service Reform League, Chicago, Ills.,
December 12, 1894.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

GEORGE W. CURTIS--Frontispiece
From a painting by SAMUEL LAWRENCE.

JOHN C. BRECKENRIDGE
From a photograph.

HENRY W. BEECHER .
Wood-engraving from photograph.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Wood-engraving from photograph.

JAMES G. BLAINE
Wood-engraving from photograph.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FOURTH VOLUME.

The fourth and last volume of the American Eloquent e deals with
four great subjects of discussion in our history,--the Civil War and
Reconstruction, Free Trade and Protection, Finance, and Civil Service
Reform. In the division on the Civil War there has been substituted in
the new edition, for Mr. Schurz's speech on the Democratic War
Policy the spirited discussion between Breckenridge and Baker on the
suppression of insurrection. The scene in which these two speeches were
delivered in the United States Senate at the opening of the Civil war
is full of historic and dramatic interest, while the speeches themselves
are examples of superior oratory. Mr. Schurz appears to advantage in
another part of the volume in his address on Civil Service Reform.

The speeches of Thaddeus Stevens and Henry J. Raymond, delivered at the
opening of the Reconstruction struggle under President Johnson, are
also new material in this edition. They are fairly representative of two
distinct views in that period of the controversy. These two speeches are
substituted for the Garfield-Blackburn discussion over a "rider" to
an appropriation bill designed to forbid federal control of elections
within the States. This discussion was only incidental to the problem
of reconstruction, and may be said to have occurred at a time (1879)
subsequent to the close of the Reconstruction period proper.

The material on Free Trade and Protection has been left unchanged
for the reason that it appears to the present editor quite useless to
attempt to secure better material on the tariff discussion. There might
be added valuable similar material from later speeches on the tariff,
but the two speeches of Clay and Hurd may be said to contain the
essential merits of the long-standing tariff debate.

The section of the volume devoted to Finance and Civil Service Reform
is entirely new. The two speeches of Curtis and Schurz are deemed
sufficient to set forth the merits of the movement for the reform of
the Civil Service. The magnitude of our financial controversies during a
century of our history precludes the possibility of securing an adequate
representation of them in speeches which might come within the scope of
such a volume as this. It has, therefore, seemed best to the editor to
confine the selections on Finance to the period since the Civil War, and
to the subject of coinage, rather than to attempt to include also the
kindred subjects of banking and paper currency. The four representative
speeches on the coinage will, however, bring into view the various
principles of finance which have determined the differences and
divisions in party opinion on all phases of this great subject.

J. A. W.

VII.--CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION.

THE transformation of the original secession movement into a _de facto_
nationality made war inevitable, but acts of war had already taken
place, with or without State authority. Seizures of forts, arsenals,
mints, custom-houses, and navy yards, and captures of Federal troops,
had completely extinguished the authority of the United States in
the secession area, except at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, and Fort
Pickens and the forts at Key West in Florida; and active operations to
reduce these had been begun. When an attempt was made, late in January,
1861, to provision Fort Sumter, the provision steamer, Star of the
West, was fired on by the South Carolina batteries and driven back.
Nevertheless, the Buchanan administration succeeded in keeping the peace
until its constitutional expiration in March, 1861, although the rival
and irreconcilable administration at Montgomery was busily engaged in
securing its exclusive authority in the seceding States.

Neither of the two incompatible administrations was anxious to strike
the first blow. Mr. Lincoln's administration began with the policy
outlined in his inaugural address, that of insisting on collection of
the duties on imports, and avoiding all other irritating measures. Mr.
Seward, Secretary of State, even talked of compensating for the loss of
the seceding States by admissions from Canada and elsewhere. The urgent
needs of Fort Sumter, however, soon forced an attempt to provision
it; and this brought on a general attack upon it by the Confederate
batteries around it. After a bombardment of two days, and a vigorous
defence by the fort, in which no one was killed on either side, the fort
surrendered, April 14, 1861. It was now impossible for the United States
to ignore the Confederate States any longer. President Lincoln issued
a call for volunteers, and a proclamation announcing a blockade of the
coast of the seceding States. A similar call on the other side and the
issue of letters of marque and reprisal against the commerce of the
United States were followed by an act of the Confederate Congress
formally recognizing the existence of war with the United States.
The two powers were thus locked in a struggle for life or death, the
Confederate States fighting for existence and recognition, the United
States for the maintenance of recognized boundaries and jurisdiction;
the Confederate States claiming to be at war with a foreign power, the
United States to be engaged in the suppression of individual resistance
to the laws. The event was to decide between the opposing claims; and it
was certain that the event must be the absolute extinction of either the
Confederate States or the United States within the area of secession.

President Lincoln called Congress together in special session, July 4,
1861; and Congress at once undertook to limit the scope of the war
in regard to two most important points, slavery and State rights.
Resolutions passed both Houses, by overwhelming majorities, that slavery
in the seceding States was not to be interfered with, that the autonomy
of the States themselves was to be strictly maintained, and that, when
the Union was made secure, the war ought to cease. If the war had ended
in that month, these resolutions would have been of some value; every
month of the extension of the war made them of less value. They were
repeatedly offered afterward from the Democratic side, but were as
regularly laid on the table. Their theory, however, continued to control
the Democratic policy to the end of the war.

For a time the original policy was to all appearance unaltered. The war
was against individuals only; and peace was to be made with individuals
only, the States remaining untouched, but the Confederate States being
blotted out in the process. The only requisite to recognition of a
seceding State was to be the discovery of enough loyal or pardoned
citizens to set its machinery going again. Thus the delegates from the
forty western counties of Virginia were recognized as competent to
give the assent of Virginia to the erection of the new State of West
Virginia; and the Senators and Representatives of the new State actually
sat in judgment on the reconstruction of the parent State, although
the legality of the parent government was the evident measure of the
constitutional existence of the new State. Such inconsistencies were
the natural results of the changes forced upon the Federal policy by the
events of the war, as it grew wider and more desperate.

The first of these changes was the inevitable attack upon slavery.
The labor system of the seceding States was a mark so tempting that no
belligerent should have been seriously expected to have refrained from
aiming at it. January 1, 1863, after one hundred days' notice, President
Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves within
the enemy's lines as rapidly as the Federal arms should advance. This
one break in the original policy involved, as possible consequences, all
the ultimate steps of reconstruction. Read-mission was no longer to be a
simple restoration; abolition of slavery was to be a condition-precedent
which the government could never abandon. If the President could impose
such a condition, who was to put bounds to the power of Congress to
impose limitations on its part? The President had practically declared,
contrary to the original policy, that the war should continue until
slavery was abolished; what was to hinder Congress from declaring that
the war should continue until, in its judgment, the last remnants of the
Confederate States were satisfactorily blotted out? This, in effect,
was the basis of reconstruction, as finally carried out. The steady
opposition of the Democrats only made the final terms the harder.

The principle urged consistently from the beginning of the war by
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, was that serious resistance to the
Constitution implied the suspension of the Constitution in the area
of resistance. No one, he insisted, could truthfully assert that the
Constitution of the United States was then in force in South Carolina;
why should Congress be bound by the Constitution in matters connected
with South Carolina? If the resistance should be successful, the
suspension of the Constitution would evidently be perpetual; Congress
alone could decide when the resistance had so far ceased that
the operations of the Constitution could be resumed. The terms of
readmission were thus to be laid down by Congress. To much the same
effect was the different theory of Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts.
While he held that the seceding States could not remove themselves from
the national jurisdiction, except by successful war, he maintained
that no Territory was obliged to become a State, and that no State was
obliged to remain a State; that the seceding States had repudiated their
State-hood, had committed suicide as States, and had become Territories;
and that the powers of Congress to impose conditions on their
readmission were as absolute as in the case of other Territories.
Neither of these theories was finally followed out in reconstruction,
but both had a strong influence on the final process.

President Lincoln followed the plan subsequently completed by Johnson.
The original (Pierpont) government of Virginia was recognized and
supported. Similar governments were established in Tennessee, Louisiana,
and Arkansas, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to do so in Florida.
The amnesty proclamation of December, 1863, offered to recognize any
State government in the seceding States formed by one tenth of the
former voters who should take the oath of loyalty and support of the
emancipation measures. At the following session of Congress, the first
bill providing for congressional supervision of the readmission of
the seceding States was passed, but the President retained it without
signing it until Congress had adjourned. At the time of President
Lincoln's assassination Congress was not in session, and President
Johnson had six months in which to complete the work. Provisional
governors were appointed, conventions were called, the State
constitutions were amended by the abolition of slavery and the
repudiation of the war debt, and the ordinances of secession were either
voided or repealed. When Congress met in December, 1865, the work had
been completed, the new State governments were in operation, and the
XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been ratified by aid of their
votes. Congress, however, still refused to admit their Senators or
Representatives. The first action of many of the new governments had
been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws which looked much
like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority in Congress felt
that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen were necessary
before the war could be truly said to be over.

Early in 1866 President Johnson imprudently carried matters into an open
quarrel with Congress, which united the two thirds Republican majority
in both Houses against him. The elections of the autumn of 1866 showed
that the two thirds majorities were to be continued through the next
Congress; and in March, 1867, the first Reconstruction Act was passed
over the veto. It declared the existing governments in the seceding
States to be provisional only; put the States under military governors
until State conventions, elected with negro suffrage and excluding
the classes named in the proposed XIVth Amendment, should form a State
government satisfactory to Congress, and the State government should
ratify the XIVth Amendment; and made this rule of suffrage imperative
in all elections under the provisional governments until they should be
readmitted. This was a semi-voluntary reconstruction. In the same
month the new Congress, which met immediately on the adjournment of
its predecessor, passed a supplementary act. It directed the military
governors to call the conventions before September 1st following, and
thus enforced an involuntary reconstruction.

Tennessee had been readmitted in 1866. North Carolina, South Carolina,
Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas were reconstructed under the
acts, and were readmitted in 1868. Georgia was also readmitted, but was
remanded again for expelling negro members of her Legislature, and came
in under the secondary terms. Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas,
which had refused or broken the first terms, were admitted in 1870, on
the additional terms of ratifying the XVth Amendment, which forbade the
exclusion of the negroes from the elective franchise.

In Georgia the white voters held control of their State from the
beginning. In the other seceding States the government passed, at
various times and by various methods during the next six years after
1871, under control of the whites, who still retain control. One of the
avowed objects of reconstruction has thus failed; but, to one who does
not presume that all things will be accomplished at a single leap, the
scheme, in spite of its manifest blunders and crudities, must seem to
have had a remarkable success. Whatever the political status of the
negro may now be in the seceding States, it may be confidently affirmed
that it is far better than it would have been in the same time under
an unrestricted readmission. The whites, all whose energies have been
strained to secure control of their States, have been glad, in return
for this success to yield a measure of other civil rights to the
freedmen, which is already fuller than ought to have been hoped for in
1867. And, as the general elective franchise is firmly imbedded in the
organic law, its ultimate concession will come more easily and gently
than if it were then an entirely new step.

During this long period of almost continuous exertion of national power
there were many subsidiary measures, such as the laws authorizing the
appointment of supervisors for congressional elections, and the use of
Federal troops as a _posse comitatus_ by Federal supervisors, which
were not at all in line with the earlier theory of the division between
Federal and State powers. The Democratic party gradually abandoned
its opposition to reconstruction, accepting it as a disagreeable but
accomplished fact, but kept up and increased its opposition to the
subsidiary measures. About 1876-7 a reaction became evident, and with
President Hayes' withdrawal of troops from South Carolina, Federal
control of affairs in the Southern States came to an end.

Foreign affairs are not strictly a part of our subject; but, as going to
show one of the dangerous features of the Civil War, the possibility
of the success of the secession sentiment in England in obtaining the
intervention of that country, the speech of Mr. Beecher in Liver-pool,
with the addenda of his audience, has been given.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,

OF ILLINOIS. (BORN 1809, DIED 1865.)

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861.

FELLOW CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES:

In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear
before you to address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath
prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the
President "before he enters on the execution of his office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or
excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist, among the people of the Southern States,
that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and
their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There never has
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample
evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to
their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches
when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where
it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no
inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with
full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and
had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform
for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and
emphatic resolution which I now read:

"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States,
and especially the right of each State to order and control its
own domestic institutions according to its judgment exclusively, is
essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance
of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by
armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what
pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon
the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is
susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are
to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming administration. I add,
too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution
and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States,
when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause, as cheerfully to one section
as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from
service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the
Constitution as any other of its provisions:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall
be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may
be due."

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who
made it for the re-claiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the
intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear
their support to the whole Constitution--to this provision as much as
any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within
the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered up," their oaths are
unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they
not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law by means of which
to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by National or by State authority; but surely that difference
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be
of but little consequence to him, or to others, by what authority it is
done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath should
go unkept, on a mere unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be
kept?

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so
that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might
it not be well, at the same time, to provide by law for the enforcement
of that clause of the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens
of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States"?

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservation, and with no
purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules.
And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as
proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all,
both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all
those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting
to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President
under our National Constitution. During that period, fifteen different
and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the
Executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many
perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope for
precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional
term of four years, under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of
the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution,
the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not
expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is
safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its
organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the
express provisions of our National Government, and the Union will endure
forever--it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not
provided for in the instrument itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak; but does
it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

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