Confederate Congress

“ There was no legislation of the Confederate congress which this court can recognize as having any validity against the United States, or against any of its citizens who, pending the war, resided outside of the declared limits of the insurrectionary districts.
3. The Confederate government is to be regarded by the courts as simply the military representative of the insurrection against the authority of the United States. ”

“ Even after the Confederate Congress authorized conscription in 1862, Southern man power, measured in numbers, was wholly inadequate to uphold the independence which had been declared. How, therefore, could the Confederacy hope to sustain itself against such a combination of men, money, and materials as the North could marshal? ”

“ There are no vital points on the preservation of which the continued existence of the Confederacy depends. There is no military success of the enemy which can accomplish its destruction. Not the fall of Richmond, nor Wilmington, nor Charleston, nor Savannah, nor Mobile, nor of all combined, can save the enemy from the constant and exhaustive drain of blood and treasure which must continue until he shall discover that no peace is attainable unless based on the recognition of our indefeasible rights. ”

“ Some of the very men who boastfully threatened to break up the Union, and, with the oath of office in support of the constitution fresh upon their lips, conspired and confederated to overthrow it, waged war against it, and were the cause of the loss of half a million of lives and thousands of millions of treasure, have been placed in high office again, in the very seats of power which they abandoned with scorn and defiance. Two members of the Confederate congress, and one man who sympathized with them, are at the head of great departments of the government. ”

“ As this Government has never professed the intention of conquering the United States, but has simply asserted its ability to defend itself against being conquered by that power, we may safely conclude that the claims of this Confederacy to its just place in the family of nations cannot long be withheld, after so frank and formal an admission of its capacity to cope on equal terms with its aggressive foes, and to maintain itself against their attempts to obtain decisive results by arms. ”

“ This Confederacy is either independent or it is a dependency of the United States; for no other earthly power claims the right to govern it. Without one historic fact on which the pretension can rest, without one line or word of treaty or covenant which can give color to title, the United States have asserted, and the British Government has chosen to concede, that these sovereign States are dependencies of the Government which is administered at Washington. ”

“ I stand half-way between the extremes of squatter sovereignty and of Congressional sovereignty. I hold that the Congress has power to establish a civil government; that it derives it from the grants of the Constitution—not the one which is referred to; and I hold that that power is limited and restrained, first, by the Constitution itself, and then by every rule of popular liberty and sound discretion, to the narrowest limits which the necessities of the case require. The Congress has power to defend the territory, to repel invasion, to suppress insurrection ”

“ Lawyers and political philosophers were much perturbed and had been for some time as to what should be done with the members of the former Confederacy. Radical Republicans held that they were "conquered provinces" at the mercy of Congress, to be governed under such laws as it saw fit to enact and until in its wisdom it decided to readmit any or all of them to the union. Men of more conservative views held that, as the war had been waged by the North on the theory that no state could secede from the union, the Confederate states had merely attempted to withdraw and had failed. ”

“ The people of this Confederacy, then, cannot fail to receive this proclamation as the fullest vindication of their own sagacity in foreseeing the uses to which the dominant party in the United States intended from the beginning to apply their power, nor can they cease to remember with devout thankfulness that it is to their own vigilance in resisting the first stealthy progress of approaching despotism that they owe their escape from consequences now apparent to the most skeptical. ”

“ The Congress of the Confederate States of America so enact, that, in order to provide additional forces to repel invasion, maintain the rightful possession of the Confederate States, secure their independence and preserve their institution, the President be, and he is hereby authorized to ask for and accept from the owners of slaves, the services of such number of able-bodied Negro men as he may deem expedient, for and during the war, to perform military service in whatever capacity he may direct.... ”

“ Such a proposal to the Southern Confederacy, tottering to her fall, only sixty-three days before Lee’s surrender to Grant would have shown magnanimous foresight. Had the Confederate States accepted it, there would have been an immediate fraternal union after the Civil War. Had they rejected it, the President and Congress would have made a noble record. The offer, however, was too wise and too generous to be widely approved of men; Lincoln of all those in authority had reached a moral height where he must dwell alone and impotent. ”

“ These proceedings he regarded as preliminary, and subject to the action and approval of Congress, before the new state government should be entitled to representation in Congress or to vote in the electoral college. He treated the Confederates as public enemies; all acts of the Confederate government, and of the rebel states while in rebellion, were void, and these organizations were to be overthrown and subjugated, and the territory from which they were expelled to be governed, until otherwise provided, by martial law. ”

“ Congress did nothing of interest yesterday in open session, but spent most of its time in secret session. There will probably be stringent martial law, for the strong hand of unlimited power will be required to correct abuses, repress discontent, and bring into the field the whole military strength of the Confederacy. The large majorities for Lincoln in the United States clearly indicate a purpose to make renewed efforts to accomplish our destruction. ”

“ When, therefore, this Confederacy was formed, and when neutral powers, while deferring action on its demand for admission into the family of nations, recognized it as a belligerent power, Great Britain and France made informal proposals about the same time that their own rights as neutrals should be guaranteed by our acceding as belligerents to the declaration of principles made by the Congress of Paris. ”

“ After military resistance should be suppressed in any rebellious State, the white male citizens were to elect a convention for the purpose of reëstablishing a state government. The new organization must disfranchise prominent civil and military officers of the Confederacy, establish the permanent abolition of slavery, and prohibit the payment by the new State of any indebtedness incurred for Confederate purposes. After Congress should have expressed its assent to the work of the convention, the President was to recognize by proclamation the reorganized State. ”

“ He says if our Congress should follow the example of the Northern Congress, and invest our President with dictatorial powers, a reconstruction of the Union might be a practicable thing; for our people would choose to belong to a strong despotism rather than a weak one—the strong one being of course the United States with 20,000,000, rather than the Confederate States with 8,000,000. ”

“ We may dispute about measures, but, as long as parties have nationality, as long as it is a difference of opinion between individuals passing into every section of the country, it threatens no danger to the Union. If the conflicts of party were the only cause of apprehension, this Government might last for ever—the last page of human history might contain a discussion in the American Congress upon the meaning of some phrase, the extent of the power conferred by some grant of the Constitution. ”

“ The first general election came on in the late autumn. Under the stimulus of the victory at Manassas, or Bull Run, Davis and Stephens were elected President and Vice-President without opposition for terms of six years. New Senators and Representatives were chosen, generally from the ranks of conservative politicians, for the sessions of the regular Confederate Congress, which was to supersede the provisional [Pg 287] congress and government on Washington's birthday, 1862. The judiciary of the Confederacy was regularly organized except as to the Supreme Court ”

“ The captured battle flags of Confederate States have been restored to the States by a Republican Congress. The Federal government volunteers to take care of Confederate soldiers’ graves. President, and Congress and Army and Navy follow General Wheeler’s coffin to an honored grave. A Republican President publicly avows his attachment to Confederate veterans and shows his faith by his appointments. Thank God, our Union to-day is again the Union of equal States. ”

“ Lincoln's policy so to conduct affairs as to strengthen the Union feeling in the border states, and to give utterance to no sentiment and to do no deed which should drive these states toward the confederacy. ... The confederacy found that it must make progress or die. The rebel Congress passed a measure for the organization of an army, on the 9th of March, and on the 12th two confederate commissioners—Mr. Forsyth of Alabama and Mr. Crawford of Georgia—presented themselves at the State Department at Washington for the purpose of making a treaty with the United States. ”

“ This policy was to allow the freedmen to vote and to deprive the Confederate leaders of the right to do so. To accomplish this, the plan was to place all the seceding States under military governors, who should call new conventions to form State governments. The negroes and not the leading Confederates had the power to vote for these delegates. Provided the new governments allowed the freedmen the right of suffrage, and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment (which excluded the leading Confederates from office) , then the Southern senators and representatives would be admitted to Congress. ”

“ For those States from which hostile armies had been excluded Congress should legislate or leave the people in the rough hand of military law. The bill designed to discharge that duty was generally acceptable to any one who conceded the propriety of Congressional action, its three prohibitions being probably the only debatable points,—that is the assumption of Confederate debts, the prevention of Confederate officers from voting and the prohibition of involuntary servitude. ”

“ Under the American theory of republican government, conventions of the people, duly elected and accredited as such, are invested with the plenary power inherent in the people of an organized and independent community, assembled in mass. In other words, they represent and exercise what is properly the sovereignty of the people. State Legislatures, with restricted powers, do not possess or represent sovereignty. Still less does the Congress of a union or confederacy of States, which is by two degrees removed from the seat of sovereignty. ”

“ Like the sages [pg 55] and patriots who had preceded him in the high office that he filled, he believed that "our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never by cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not live in the affections of the people, it must one day perish. Congress may possess many means of preserving it by conciliation, but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force."— (Message of December 3, 1860.) ”

“ The leader of his party, who was to be the chief of his Cabinet, was the man who had first proclaimed an "irrepressible conflict" between the North and the South, and who had declared that abolitionism, having triumphed in the Territories, would proceed to the invasion of the States. Even then the Southern people did not finally despair until the temper of the triumphant party had been tested in Congress and found adverse to any terms of reconciliation consistent with the honor and safety of all parties. ”

“ Whatever may be the estimate of the executive ability of the Confederate administration, it can not be denied that its courage was abundant; nor can it be questioned that the courage of Congress often required the spur of popular sentiment. In the wholesale condemnation of Mr. Davis by a class of writers, it is remarkable that the defective legislation of the Confederacy should be accredited with so little influence in producing its failure. ”

“ The plan of the President left the negroes to the care of the States alone after the establishment of their emancipation. Congress desired them to be made American citizens, secure in all the rights of freemen and voters. The refusal to admit Senators and Representatives to Congress from the Confederate States served to arrest the operation of the President's plans to hold these States in abeyance.
No compromise could be made between the two. Each appealed to the Constitution, forgetful that each had sustained all its ruthless violations during the last four years. ”

“ He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that old state of things then existing. The Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the States, as States, were parties to it. We had no other General Government. But that was found insufficient and inadequate to the public exigencies. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. They undertook to form a General Government, which should stand on a new basis—not a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between States, but a Constitution."52 ”