The bill concerning States in insurrection against the United States then passed the Senate by 26 yeas to 3 nays.1 When the vote was taken 20 Senators were absent. On the succeeding day, July 2, 1864, a message announced the disagreement of the House to the Senate amendment and requested a committee of conference. A subsequent motion of Mr. Wade that the Senate recede from its amendment and agree to the bill of the House was carried after some discussion by a vote of 18 to 14, thus passing the bill on the same day. The names of Doolittle, Henderson, Ten Eyck and Trumbull voting with the Democrats in opposition foreshadowed that division in the Republican ranks which afterwards occurred.

The history of this famous bill from the moment of its passage by Congress until the publication a week later of the President's proclamation concerning it is best related in the Life of Mr. Lincoln by his private secretaries, Messrs. Nicolay and Hay. These writers possessed an unusual opportunity for ascertaining the sentiments of the President upon nearly every question of public interest.

Congress," says the diary of Mr. Hay, "was to adjourn at noon on the Fourth of July; the President was in his room at the Capitol signing bills, which were laid before him as they were brought from the two Houses. When this important bill was placed before him he laid it aside and went on with the other work of the moment. Several prominent members entered in a state of intense anxiety over the fate of the bill. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Boutwell, while their nervousness was evident, refrained from any comment. Zachariah Chandler, who was unabashed in any mortal presence, roundly asked the President if he intended to sign the bill. The President replied: This bill has been placed before me 'Globe, Part IV.,1 Sess. 38th Cong.,p. 3461.

'Ibid., p. 3491.

a few moments before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way.' 'If it is vetoed,' cried Mr. Chandler, it will damage us fearfully in the Northwest. The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed States.' Mr. Lincoln said: 'That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act.' 'It is no more than you have done yourself,' said the Senator. The President answered: 'I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress.' Mr. Chandler, expressing his deep chagrin, went out, and the President, addressing the members of the Cabinet who were seated with him, said: 'I do not see how any of us now can deny and 'contradict what we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the States.' Mr. Fessenden expressed his entire agreement with this view. 'I have even had my doubts,' he said, 'as to the constitutional efficacy of your own decree of emancipation, in those cases where it has not been carried into effect by the actual advance of the army.'

"The President said: 'This bill and the position of these gentlemen seem to me, in asserting that the insurrectionary States are no longer in the Union, to make the fatal admission that States, whenever they please, may of their own motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Now we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced. If that be true, I am not President; these gentlemen are not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid that question ever since it first began to be mooted, and thus to avoid confusion and disturbance in our own councils. It was to obviate this question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the Senate and failed in the House. I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without the necessity of a violent

quarrel among its friends as to whether certain States have been in or out of the Union during the war — a merely metaphysical question, and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion.'

"Although every member of the Cabinet agreed with the President, when, a few minutes later, he entered his carriage to go home, he foresaw the importance of the step he had resolved to take and its possibly disastrous consequences to himself. When some one said to him that the threats made by the extreme radicals had no foundation, and that people would not bolt their ticket on a question of metaphysics, he answered: 'If they choose to make a point upon this, I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly to me. At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right. I must keep some standard or principle fixed within myself.'

A perusal of the preceding abridgment of debates shows clearly that the bill was designed by Congress as a measure of reconstruction and intended by many of its leading advocates as a rebuke of the President. He was not, however, a statesman whom even the deliberate censure of a coordinate branch of Government could hurry into an act of rashness; he had never been precipitate; indeed, the burden of radical criticism was that Mr. Lincoln was provokingly slow. This was the opinion which Charles Sumner expressed in confidential correspondence with his English friends 2 and which Secretary Chase entered in the pages of his diary. The President was, it is true, the most cautious of men, and the fact goes far to explain the absence during his eventful administration of even a single serious blunder; the dis

Diary of John Hay, quoted in Abraham Lincoln, A History, Vol. IX. pp. 120-122.

'Pierce's Memoir of Sumner, Vol. IV. pp. 57, 60, 83, 84, 106, 108, 130, etc. 3 Shuckers' Life of Chase, pp. 44on, 442, 453, 495.

covery of a gross error of judgment seldom or never rewarded the researches of his ablest critics. Though his modesty was scarcely less than his prudence, he entertained a just conception of the dignity of his office; long reflection upon constitutional questions, which made him familiar with the extent of executive power, taught him likewise to recognize those limitations which the fundamental law had imposed upon legislative action. Another characteristic which made him a formidable adversary in every controversy was a constant purpose to be always, as he expressed it himself, "somewhere near right."

The measure had been so long under consideration that none of its provisions could have taken him by surprise, and we are justified in concluding that when the bill was presented for his approval he had already determined on his course of action. Indeed there is evidence that some of his supporters in Congress had written to their friends in Louisiana predicting the very fate that afterward befell the bill. Their outline of the President's course admits of no other explanation than that he had communicated to them his intentions respecting it. The progress of the measure in the Senate was to be so retarded that the adjournment of Congress would relieve him of the necessity of exercising the veto, and that is precisely what happened. In the very last hour of the session it was submitted for his approval; his disposal of the bill on that occasion has already been noticed; his approval was withheld and Congress rose before the expiration of the ten days which would enact the bill into a law without his signature. Though an interested view had not been overlooked, he disregarded in discharge of his duty every personal consequence of the important step which he purposed to take. His hostility to the measure had long been suspected, but when knowledge of his failure to approve it had become a certainty the anger of the more radical members of his party became extreme. They

had clearly been outwitted by the President and many of them, eager for retaliation, returned to their homes meditating schemes of revenge.

For the present, at least, anything like adequate discipline of Mr. Lincoln was not within their power, for the Baltimore convention, which renominated him for the Presidency, had adjourned nearly a month before. This at least was secure. His election, though not entirely a foregone conclusion, was reasonably assured; few of the discomfited members even imagined the thought of injuring their party to embarrass the President. It is easy to believe, however, that they intended such criticism of his policy as would be consistent with party success. But even here he resolved to dispute with them a field of operations which they believed entirely their own. The President, it is true, could not, even if so inclined, justify his conduct in person before the voters of every State in the Union; he could, however, and did forestall expected criticism from Congressmen by publishing a proclamation vindicating his "pocket" veto, thus destroying whatever hope remained to radical Republicans of diminishing his popularity by ascribing to him base or selfish motives for opposing the sense of the Legislative department of Government. As on other critical occasions so on this he found no precedent to guide him, but with characteristic firmness proceeded deliberately to establish one. When some of the Congressmen reached their States they found their constituents already pondering the proclamation of July 8, 1864. Its importance requires that it be quoted in full:

Whereas, at the late session, Congress passed a bill to guarantee to certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed; And whereas the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the sine die adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him;

And whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for