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Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction. Charles H. McCarthy
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isbn 4064066123789
Автор произведения Charles H. McCarthy
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In answer to an inquiry he replied that about five counties outside of West Virginia were represented in the Legislature which consented to the erection of the new State, and all the counties in the State were expressly invited to send representatives to the General Assembly. If they were loyal they should have coöperated; if not, they should have no voice in either the State Legislature or Congress. He referred in his remarks to a telegram which he had that morning received from Wheeling. It contained a resolution passed by the Assembly asking the House of Representatives to approve the bill for the admission of West Virginia, which had been favorably acted upon by the Senate at the preceding session.
“It has been asserted,” he said in conclusion, “and understood in some quarters, that the organization of the government at Wheeling was for the purpose of forming a new State. I am prepared to say that when the convention originally met in Wheeling, although there were a few radicals there who wanted to form a new State without reinstating the old State of Virginia, we voted them down, and commenced the exercise of our original rights as freemen to build up the loyal government of Virginia; and although we designed eventually to ask for this separation, and it was what we anxiously desired, yet we determined to be a law-abiding people, and ask for what we desired through the forms of law.”[182]
Representative Colfax in giving the reasons which should govern his vote stated that the restored government had been recognized by the Senate, by the President as well as other executive officers, and that the House, by admitting Mr. Segar, elected pursuant to a proclamation of Governor Pierpont, had also recognized the reorganized State. Even the political party in opposition voted for that member’s admission. He also remarked that the new State came knocking at the door for admission with the tiara of freedom on her brow.[183]
Mr. Olin, who opposed the bill at the preceding session, said: “I shall vote for it now with reluctance. I shall vote for it mainly upon the ground that the General Government, whether wisely or unwisely I will not undertake to say, has encouraged this movement to create a division of the State of Virginia.”[184] The people of West Virginia, with their experience of the evils which slavery brought on them, should not have permitted that institution to exist for an hour in their new government. For this deficiency, however, the bill provided a partial remedy.
Crittenden observed that it was the party applying for admission that gave its consent to a division of the State.[185] To this objection Representative Blair replied that there were counties outside of West Virginia which had assented to dismemberment. Other members, who had hitherto been hostile, now consented to support the measure from a conviction that it would weaken rebellion.
Representative Dawes said that the primary elections which sent delegates to the Wheeling convention discussed not a reorganization of the Virginia government, but the formation of an independent State in western Virginia. To accomplish that, he said, the only way was to restore the government of the entire Commonwealth. That government then had two things to do: to set up a new State within itself and secondly to give its consent thereto. This suggestion, he understood, emanated from Washington.[186]
In reference to the admission, Thaddeus Stevens said:
I do not desire to be understood as being deluded by the idea that we are admitting this State in pursuance of any provisions of the Constitution. I find no such provision that justifies it, and the argument in favor of the constitutionality of it is one got up by those who either honestly entertain, I think, an erroneous opinion, or who desire to justify, by a forced construction, an act which they have predetermined to do.
Now, to say that the Legislature which called this seceding convention was not the Legislature of Virginia, is asserting that the Legislature chosen by a vast majority of the people of a State is not the Legislature of that State. That is a doctrine which I can never assent to. I admit that the Legislature were disloyal, but they were still the disloyal and traitorous Legislature of the State of Virginia; and the State, as a mere State, was bound by their acts. Not so individuals. They are responsible to the General Government, and are responsible whether the State decrees treason or not. That being the Legislature of Virginia, Governor Letcher, elected by a majority of the votes of the people, is the Governor of Virginia—a traitor in rebellion, but a traitorous governor of a traitorous State. Now, then, how has that State ever given its consent to this division? A highly respectable but very small number of the citizens of Virginia—the people of West Virginia—assembled together, disapproved of the acts of the State of Virginia, and with the utmost self-complacency called themselves Virginia.
I hold that none of the States now in rebellion are entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and I am grieved when I hear those high in authority sometimes talking of the constitutional difficulties about enforcing measures against this belligerent power, and the next moment disregarding every vestige and semblance of the Constitution by acts which alone are arbitrary. I hope I do not differ with the Executive in the views which I advocate. But I see the Executive one day saying “you shall not take the property of rebels to pay the debts which the rebels have brought upon the Northern States.” Why? Because the Constitution is in the way. And the next day I see him appointing a military governor of Virginia, a military governor of Tennessee, and some other places. Where does he find anything in the Constitution to warrant that?
If he must look there alone for authority, then all these acts are flagrant usurpations, deserving the condemnation of the community. He must agree with me or else his acts are as absurd as they are unlawful; for I see him here and there ordering elections for members of Congress wherever he finds a little collection of three or four consecutive plantations in the rebel States, in order that men may be sent in here to control the proceedings of this Congress, just as we sanctioned the election held by a few people at a little watering place at Fortress Monroe, by which we have here the very respectable and estimable member from that locality with us. It was upon the same principle.
… I say, then, that we may admit West Virginia as a new State, not by virtue of any provision of the Constitution, but under our absolute power which the laws of war give us in the circumstances in which we are placed. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory, and upon that alone; for I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding.
The Union, he declared, could never be restored as it was. His consent would never be given to restore it with a constitutional provision protecting slavery. An additional reason for giving his vote in favor of the bill was that there was a provision which would make West Virginia a free State.[187]
“No right of persons, no right of property,” said Mr. Noell, “no social or domestic affairs, could be regulated or controlled by the people of western Virginia, under the circumstances in which they were placed, without recognizing the ordinance of secession, and acting as a State within the Southern Confederacy.”[188] This showed both the necessity of reorganizing the government of Virginia and the recognition by Federal authorities of the establishment so constituted.
Mr. Segar declared that eleven of the forty-eight counties to comprise the new State had not participated in its establishment, being represented neither in the reorganized Legislature nor the Wheeling convention; three others were unrepresented both in the House of Delegates and the conventions; ten cast no vote on the constitution and three had interests, social and commercial, which bound them up with the East. Then, too, the people of West Virginia made a fundamental law recognizing slavery; an anti-slavery constitution was to be imposed on them as a condition of admission.[189]
An able argument by Representative Bingham, of Ohio, who had charge of the bill, concluded the debate on December