SPEECH OF HON. T. STEVENS, OF PENNSYLVANIA, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 19, 1867, ON THE BILL (H. R. NO. 20) RELATIVE TO DAMAGES TO LOYAL MEN, AND FOR OTHER PUPOSES.
Transcribed by Meryle Holdredge and reverse-order proofed by Mark Rowe, Furman University, from the Thaddeus Stevens Papers.
INTRODUCTION:
In 1865, the Civil War finally ended. The massive devastation and social upheaval ushered in a brief period of governmental Reconstruction wherein the Northern politicians attempted to define the terms and ramifications of the Union victory. The Republican party consisted of moderates, more sympathetic toward the Confederates, and radicals who sought to disenfranchise the Confederates and to champion the cause of the Southern Black Freedmen. As early as 1865, President Andrew Johnson, contrary to the wishes of the Republican radicals, began accepting Southern politicians back into the government. These politicians claimed to have revised their state constitutions, abolished slavery, and taken a prospective oath against secession. Johnson’s actions were sanctioned by the 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty which demanded the measures taken by the politicians. This, however, allowed the politicians to reconstruct the old slave codes, hence frustrating the political progress of the freedmen and that of the radicals. [1]
By 1866, with the death of Henry Winter Davis, Stevens became the most extreme radical leader. With the goals of preserving his position as Speaker of the House and then attaining a seat in the Senate, Stevens had to sway the public. His primary concern involved the railroad contractors, ironmen, and manufacturers of his home state, Pennsylvania. Stevens knew that an attack on Southern property was necessary to maintain the advantages gained by his constituency during the war. Thus, he upheld the Black race as a radical Republican party platform. In February, Stevens began to construct a campaign for the fall elections. [2] He relied upon the support of Union soldiers as well as radical words earlier spoken by Johnson. [3] Stevens’ congressional propaganda persuaded the public, adding more radicals to his platform.
In the year of this speech, Stevens faced a new fear of the potential power of the Supreme Court over the public, for the Court had denied some of the wartime powers utilized by Congress. By March, the 75-year-old Stevens desperately fought for his power despite his waning strength in physical health and political influence. He was even losing power in his most sympathetic audience, the congressional district of Pennsylvania. [4] This speech merely echoed Stevens’ numerous endeavors to reconstruct the South through confiscation of Confederate property, military supervision of the Confederates, and land distribution to the freedmen.
Mr. SPEAKER: I am about to discuss the question of the punishment of belligerent traitors by enforcing the confiscation of their property to a certain extent, both as a punishment for their crimes and to pay the loyal men who have been robbed by the rebels, and to increase the pensions of our wounded soldiers. The punishment of traitors has been wholly ignored by a treacherous Executive and by a sluggish Congress. I wish to make an issue before the American people, and see whether they will sanction the perfect impunity of a murderous belligerent, and consent that the loyal men of this nation, who have been despoiled of their property, shall remain without remuneration, either by the rebel property or the property of the nation.
To this issue I desire to devote the small remnant of my life. I desire to make the issue before the people of my own State, and should be glad if the issue were to extend to other States. I desire the verdict of the people upon this great question.
This bill is important to several classes of people.
It is important to our wounded and maimed soldiers, who are unable to work for their living, and whose present pensions are wholly inadequate to their support. It is important to those bereaved wives and parents whose habiliments of woe are to be seen in every house, and proclaim the cruel losses which have been inflicted on them by the murderous hands of traitors.
It is important to the loyal men, North and South [5], who have been plundered and impoverished by rebel raiders and rebel Legislatures:
It is important to four millions of injured, oppressed, and helpless men, whose ancestors for two centuries have been held in bondage and compelled to earn the very property, a small portion of which we propose to restore to them, and who are now destitute, helpless, and exposed to want and starvation, under the deliberate cruelty of their former masters.
It is also important to the delinquents whose property it takes as a fine—a punishment for the great crime of making war to destroy the Republic, and for prosecuting the war in violations of all the rules of civilized warfare. It is certainly too small a punishment for so deep a crime, and too slight a warning to future ages[sic: no punctuation]
No committee or party is responsible for this bill. It is chargeable to the President and myself. Whatever merit it possesses is due to Andrew Johnson. In the summer of 1864 he said in a public speech:
"Let me say now is the time to secure these fundamental principles, while the land is rent with anarchy and [sic: upheaves] with the throes of a mighty revolution. While society is in this disordered state and we are seeking security, let us fix the foundations of the Government on the principles of eternal justice, which will endure for all time.
"Shall he who brought this misery upon the State be permitted to control its destinies? If this be so, then all this precious blood of our braves soldiers and officers, so freely poured out, will have been wantonly spilled. All the glorious victories won by our noble armies will go for naught, and all the battle-fields which have been sown with dead heroes during the rebellion will have been made memorable in vain.
"Why all this carnage and devastation? It was that treason might be put down and traitors punished. I say the traitor has ceased to be a citizen, and in joining the rebellion has become a public enemy.
"Treason must be made odious and traitors must be punished and impoverished; their great plantations must be seized and divided into small portions, and sold to honest, industrious men. The day for protecting the lands and negroes of these authors of rebellion is past. It is high time it was. I have been most deeply pained at some things which have come under my observation. We get men in command, who, under the influence of flattery, fawning, and caressing, grant protection to the traitor, while the poor Union man stands out in the cold."
This is all the eloquent language of Andrew Johnson as "he was." This was the text which I took up and elaborated in a speech to my constituents at Lancaster, in September, 1865, and which has been much criticized by humane sympathizers with rebels. Andrew Johnson was the apostle whose preachings I followed. His doctrine pervades and animates this whole bill. Whatever of justice is in it is due to him. I call upon his friends to stand by him in this, his favorite policy. If you now desert him, who can you expect to defend the "much-enduring man" at the other end of the avenue? Having thus rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, I will proceed to defend the course recommended by him, who above all others knows what is due to traitors.
This bill, it seems to me, can be condemned only by the criminals and their immediate friends, and by that unmanly kind of men whose intellectual and moral vigor has melted into a fluid weakness which they mistake for mercy, and which is untempered with a single grain of justice, and to those religionists who mistake meanness for Christianity, and who forget that the essence of religion is to "do unto others what others have a right to expect from you." It is offensive to certain pretentious doctors of divinity, who are mawkishly prating about the "fatted calf, the prodigal son, and the forgiving father." They forget that there is no analogy between the cases. The thoughtless youth having received a part of his father’s estate, and probably taking a load of corn to market, fell into bad company and contracted the loathsome vice of drunkenness, and spent the money in rioting and debauchery, and, like all drunkards, make his bed with the swine and fed on husks; but like one case only in a thousand, he reformed, joined the total abstinence society, washed himself clean, brushed his clothes, and with repentant steps returned to his father’s house. Well might his aged parent rejoice; well might he kill the fatted calf at such a rescue. But how venial was such an offence compared with this murderous rebellion!
When the great ancestor of this bloody race had slain his brother, and tremblingly met his Judge and sought for pardon, what was the answer? "The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth." When Cain cried out that his "punishment was more than he could bear," the Judge who administered justice in mercy drove him forth into stern, inexorable exile. He taught no forgiveness for such sins. He prated of no "fatted calves."
I proceed to consider the bill. By the act of 17th July, 1862, [6] treason is made punishable by death or some smaller punishment, at the discretion of the court. Before punishment can be inflicted for treason or misprision of treason the party must be duly convicted in a court of the United States. Not so with the balance of the bill. All the rest of that law (after the first four sections) refers to persons engaged in the belligerent army, or officially connected with the government known as the "Confederate States of America," or to those who voluntarily aided that power. While that law supposed that most of the people composing that army and government were traitors, yet they are death with in all the provisions which refer to confiscation merely as belligerents making an unjust war. The forfeitures which follow from a conviction for treason are left to the operations of the common law.
The fifth section enacts that--
"To insure the speedy termination of the present rebellion, it shall be the duty of the President of the United States to cause the seizure of all the estates and property, money, stocks, credits, and effects of the persons hereinafter named in this section, and apply and use the same and the proceeds thereof for the support of the Army of the United States."
Then follow the enumeration of all the officers of the army and navy of the confederate government: all civil officers of said government; all persons engaged in the army or navy, less they laid down their arms within a given time. [sic: or] or aiding said confederate States of America, un-[sic: missing]
To secure the condemnation of property thus seized, proceedings in rem are to be instituted wherever the property may be found, which proceeding shall follow the proceedings in admiralty or revenue cases, and the same shall be condemned as enemies’ property, and become the property of the United States, and the proceeds paid into the Treasury of the United States. (Seventh section act of 17th July, 1862.) The [sic: eight] section provides that the court shall make all necessary orders, and the marshal shall make deeds and conveyances for such property to the purchaser, and then such titles shall be good and valid.
This law is unrepealed. It is in full force, and stands on the statute-book as one of the laws which the President swore to execute. (Would to God he had obeyed his oath! Let us see that we obey ours.)
It may be objected that the Government is stretching its powers in making such confiscations. That was a question well considered when the act of 1862 was passed. It must be remembered that this is not an open question; we are merely considering the enforcement of an existing law. But I will briefly review some of the arguments in favor of the right. We are treating these belligerents simply as enemies, and their property as enemies’ property now in the possession and power of the conqueror. By the law of nations in its most stringent provision all the property, liberty, and lives of a conquered enemy who has waged an unjust war are at the disposal of the victor. Modern civilization will seldom justify the exercise of the extreme right. The lives, the liberty, and, in most cases, the real property of the vanquished are left untouched. The property, however, of the vanquished is held in some shape liable to pay the expenses and damages sustained by the injured party. If peace is brought about by treaty, it is usually stipulated that the expenses and damages shall be paid by the defeated belligerent. As such remuneration must be levied as taxes on the subjects, it does subject all their property to this burden. Where there is no government capable of making terms of peace the law-making power of the conqueror must fix the terms. This gives them sufficient right to take just such property as it may deem proper. Where the subdued belligerent is composed of traitors, their personal crimes aggravate their belligerent offence and justify severer treatment just as a tribe of savages are treated with more rigor than civilized foes.
From such a people much more might and ought to be exacted than from an honorable enemy. Whenever example requires it, heavy fines should be imposed and the criminals reduced to poverty, as was properly required by our excellent President. Vattel [7] says:
"When, therefore, he has subdued a hostile nation, he undeniably may, in the first place, do himself justice respecting the object which has given rise to the war, and indemnify himself for the expenses and damages which he has sustained by it."
Halleck [8] (page 457) says that by strict right property on land and real estate is subject to seizure, though seldom enforced with an ordinary enemy.
All writers agree with Vattel, (page 369)--
"Thus a conqueror who has taken up arms not only against the sovereign, but against the nation herself, and whose intention it was to subdue a fierce and savage people, and once for all to reduce an obstinate enemy, such a conqueror may with justice lay burdens on the conquered nation, both as compensation for the expenses of the war and as a punishment."
Apply these principles to the case in hand. The cause of the war was slavery. We have liberated the slaves. It is our duty to protect them, and provide for them while they are unable to provide for themselves. Have we not a right, in the language of Vattel, "to do ourselves justice respecting the object which has caused the war," by taking lands for homesteads [sic: for] these "objects" of the war?
Have we not a right, if we chose to go to that extent, to indemnify ourselves for the expenses and damages caused by the war? We might make the property of the enemy pay the $4,000,000,000 which we have expended, as well as the damages inflicted on loyal men by confiscation and invasion, which might reach $1,000,000,000 more. This bill is merciful, asking less than one tenth of our just claims.
We could be further justified in inflicting severe penalties upon this whole hostile people as "a fierce and savage people," as an "obstinate enemy," whom it is a duty to tame and punish. Our future safety requires stern justice.
What more "savage or fierce people" than they who deliberately starved to death sixty thousand prisoners of war; who shot or reduced to bondage all captive soldiers of the colored race; who sought to burn our cities through secret agents; who went infected materials into our most populous towns to destroy non-combatants, old men, women, and children, by the most loathsome and fatal diseases; and who consummated their barbarism by the assassination of the mildest of rulers and the best of men" If this is not a "fierce and savage enemy," whom we have a right to reduce to absolute submission and dependence, point me out one to which the language of Vattel will apply. You would do great injustice to those mild savages who owed us no allegiance by pointing to those who perpetrated the massacre of Wyoming; or to the Camanches or the wild Indians of the West, or the fierce tribes of the Oronoco—and yet you seize their lands and expel them from their native country.
I suppose none will deny the right to confiscate the [sic: preperty] of the several belligerent States, as they all made war as States; or of the Confederate States of America; for no one ever denied the right of the conqueror to the crown property of the vanquished sovereign, even where the seizure of private property would not be justified by the circumstances.
That would give us all called for by the first section of the bill. I believe Texas has about one hundred and ten million acres. She retained all her public lands at the time of annexation on the condition of paying her own debts; and afterwards called on the United States Government for the payment of those very debts, and procured it. I know not how much the other States may have; possibly enough to make up with Texas, one hundred and fifty million acres. But it is said that any of the property of the sovereign is subject to seizure by the conqueror. In ordinary wars between monarchies such is the fact; but that is not the case where war is made on a whole hostile people—"a fierce and savage people." But, admitting the limitation to prevail, still it does not obstruct us.
Here is a belligerent made up of men whose crimes had forfeited all their rights, independently of their belligerent liabilities. But beyond that the case of republics is very different from absolute governments, where the people are responsible for nothing—be guilty of nothing. The sovereign and his estate may well be distinguished from his subjects and their estates. But in republics the people—the whole people—are the sovereigns. All the responsibility of the acts of the Government falls upon all the people. Their individual property must answer for the expenses, damages, and indemnities which fall on the Government of the nation. The Roman, from whom we derive our national law, might be seized, because he was a sovereign, a part of the governing power.
But it matters not what you may think of the efficiency of the act of July 17, 1862. The laws of war authorize us to take this property by our sovereign power—by a law now to be passed. We have a subdued enemy in our power; we have all their property and lives at our disposal. No peace has been formed. No terms of peace or of reconciliation have been yet proclaimed, unless the proclamation of the President can make peace and war. The Constitution denies him any power in either case. Then, unless Andrew Johnson be king, the terms of peace are yet to be proclaimed. Among those terms, as we have shown, we have a right to impose confiscation of all their property—to "impoverish" them, as Andrew Johnson has told us; to "divide their large farms and sell them to industrious men." This is strict law and good common sense. Now, then, without reference to any former act, we have a right to seize the property named in this bill, and ten times more. You behold at your feet a conquered foe, an atrocious enemy. Tell him on what terms he may arise and depart or remain loyal. But do not embrace him too hastily. Be sure first that there is no dagger in his girdle. The President has been throwing thick around him decrees and proclamations and speeches upon subjects wholly beyond his jurisdiction. He assumes that his declaration of a fact creates a fact, however false it may be. His constitutions dictated to hordes of rebels; his declaration that the States are States in the Union; his proclamation that peace is restored, he has cunningly put forth as cumulative evidence of the condition of the "confederate States." Not one of them is any better than waste paper. All put together are but accumulated nonsense. Does he expect to deceive or to bewilder Congress by such incoherent assumptions? I think that Congress will proceed in that calm, unimpassioned, but unwavering course which distinguishes the statesman from the demogogue.
Having, as I conceive, justified the bill which I seek to have enforced, let us now look to the provisions of the bill under consideration. [9]
The first section orders the confiscation of all the property belonging to the State governments, and the national government which made war upon us, and which we have conquered. I presume no one is prepared to object to this, unless it be those who condemned the conquest. To them I have nothing to say, except to hope that they will continue consistent in their love of the rebels; to show an exuberant humanity into which is merged and submerged all the exalted feelings of patriotism.
The second section requires the President to execute an existing law which he is sworn to execute, but the performance of which oath is in abeyance. Certainly such law should be enforced or repealed; it is a mockery to allow it to stand on your statute-books and be not only not enforced, but violated every day by the executive government. The third section furnishes a more convenient and speedy mode of adjudicating such forfeitures, and more consistent with the military condition of the conquered States.
The fourth section provides, first, that out of the lands thus confiscated each liberated slave who is a male adult, or the head of a family, shall have assigned to him a homestead of forty acres of land, (with $100 to build a dwelling) which shall be held for them by trustees during their pupilage.
Let us consider whether this is a just and [sic: politic] provision.
Whatever may be the fate of the rest of the bill, I must earnestly pray that this may not be defeated. On its success, in my judgment, depends not only the happiness and respectability of the colored race, but their very existence. Homesteads to them are far more valuable than the immediate right of suffrage, though both are their due.
Four million of persons have just been freed from a condition of dependence, wholly unacquainted with business transactions, kept systematically in ignorance of all their rights and of the common elements of education, without which none of any race are competent to earn an honest living, to guard against the frauds which will always be practiced on the ignorant, or to judge of the most judicious manner of applying their labor. But few of them are mechanics, and none of them skilled manufacturers. They must necessarily, therefore, be the servants and victims of others, unless they are made in some measure independent of their wiser neighbors. The guardianship of the Freedmen’s Bureau, [10] that benevolent institution, cannot be expected long to protect them. It encounters the hostility of the old slaveholders, whether in official or private station, because it deprives these dethroned tyrants of the luxury of despotism. In its nature it is not calculated for a permanent institution. Withdraw that protection and leave them a prey to the legislation and treatment of their former masters, and the evidence already furnished shows that they will soon become extinct, or driven to defend themselves by civil war. Withhold from them all their rights, and leave them destitute of the means of earning a livelihood, the victims of the hatred or cupidity of the rebels whom they helped to conquer, and it seems probable that the war of races might ensue which the President feared would arise from kind treatment and restoration of their rights. I doubt not that hundreds of thousands would annually be deposited in secret, unknown graves. Such is already the course of their rebel murderers; and it is done with impunity. The clearest evidence of that fact has already been shown by the testimony taken by the "Central Directory" [11][sic: no punctuation] Make them independent of their old masters, so that they may not be compelled to work for them upon unfair terms, which can only be done by giving them a small tract of land to cultivate for themselves, and you remove all this danger. You also elevate the character of the freedman. Nothing is so likely to make a man a good citizen as to make him a freeholder. Nothing will so multiply the productions of the South as to divide it into small farms. Nothing will make men so industrious and moral as to let them feel that they are above want and are the owners of the soil which they till. It will also be of service to the white inhabitants. They will have constantly among them industrious laborers, anxious to work for fair wages. How is it possible for them to cultivate their lands if these people were expelled? If Moses should lead or drive them into exile, or carry out the absurd idea of colonizing them, the South would become a barren waste.
1. Barney, William L. The Passage of the Republic. Lexington: Heath and Company, 1987. pp. 235-262.
2. Current, Richard Nelson. Old Thad Stevens.Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1942. pp. 208-277.
3. Speech of Hon. T. Stevens, March 19, 1867, p. 1
4. Current, p. 276
5. Speech, p. 1 When he said "loyal men" of the South, Stevens was alluding to the Union sympathizers in the border states and to his Pennsylvania constituency.
6. Barney, p. 235.
7. "International Law." Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1992. p. 790 Stevens is quoting Vattel, an 18th century Italian philosopher on international law.
8. "Henry Wager Halleck." Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 1992. p. 643 Stevens is quoting Halleck, a Union general who served in the war until he was replaced by Grant in 1864.
9. Current, p. 270-274 Stevens was referring to the Sherman Bill, a drastic reconstruction plan excluding Johnson, he had proposed and passed through the House of Representatives twice in the 39th Congress.
10. Barney, p. 240 The Freedmen’s Bureau was a federal organization formed in 1865 to assist free Blacks in their march toward civil rights.
11. Current, p.208-277 Stevens was dryly referring to President Johnson’s special label for Stevens and his adherents as anti-Johnson radicals.
(benson/HST41/silver/stevens1.htm)