REMARKS OF MR. STEVENS IN CONGRESS JULY 9, 1867
Transcribed by Sally Marin and reverse-order proffed by Chip Bates, Furman University, from the Thaddeus Stevens Papers.
INTRODUCTION:
Thaddeus Steven’s speech to Congress expresses many of his feelings towards reconstruction. He feels that the Southern states are a conquered land and should be treated as conquered states. Stevens felt that he had been betrayed by Congress because they did not declare the Southern lands to be conquered states. He specifically states that the lands are conquered because the union army conquered the southern army, the southern capital, and destroyed a land that had a separate Constitution. Later in his speech he attacks the office of the president and states that Johnson does not have the power to veto any legislation decided upon by congress. Johnson is overstepping his grounds and Congress should have the power to control all the actions of the southern states. The confiscation of the lands should occur because the Confederates were renegades who left the union and should punished severely. Johnson has no remorse for the south and the speech shows his attitude to the total confiscation of the southern lands and the removal of their governments. He feels that Congress should rule over the conquered lands with an iron fist.
REMARKS OF MR. STEVENS
Mr. Stevens having allowed a portion of his time to Mr. Eldridge,
The SPEAKER. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. STEVENS] has now remaining twenty-eight minutes of his hour.
Mr. STEVENS, of Pennsylvania. I trust that in time I shall be able to state the position which I hold to be the correct one with regard to this bill, without attempting to answer the various remarks which have been made by gentlemen on the other side.
I confess, sir, that a small portion of the blame with reference to the acts of the President since we adjourned, may be attributed to Congress, in that it used improper language in the acts heretofore passed. And this, it appears to me, was owing to an indistinct conception of the condition of the territory for which we were legislation. If we had then all agreed, as we have since, that the States that were lately in rebellion were conquered territory and as such subject to the power of this nation and had treated them accordingly, we should have had very little trouble in reconstructing government in the South upon the principal of the admission of new States. But, sir, we were not all perfectly agreed in our understanding of the laws of nations as applicable to this question; nor is it wonderful that we should thus have differed, when even some of the judges of the Supreme Court have differed in their opinion upon this subject. I will state what I suppose to have been our real position.
The nation was afflicted with a civil war which for a time was an insurrection. Some twelve million of the inhabitants of the country claimed that they no longer belonged to this nation. They set up an independent government. They established all the machinery of government, both of a national government and of States under that national government. They raised large armies to defend their pretensions. We, at the period when we declared against time a blockade, admitted them to be, not an independent nation, but an independent belligerent, rising above the rank of insurrectionists, and entitled to all the privileges belligerent. The nations of Europe so trusted them. We so trusted them in our dealings with prisoners of war. In short, there could be no doubt of the fact.
We were, then, at war as two independent nations; and it depended upon the will of the conqueror whether the defeated party should be treated merely as a vanquished nation, or whether we should, in addition, punish them as individuals for the violation of the sovereign rights of the nation. We conquered. What did we conquer? We conquered the confederate government. We conquered all the States forming the confederate government. We conquered a government that has bee erected and maintained by those who declared that they owed no allegiance to the Government of the United States. For these conquered rebels to pretend that they had any rights under a Constitution which they had then repudiated and attempted to destroy, and that the States which had been arrayed in hostility to the nation were still States within this Union, as asserted to-day by the gentleman from Wisconsin, [Mr. ELDERDIGE] seems to me a bold absurdity. Yet that was the doctrine which some gentlemen maintain here.
Under military law we treated them as conquered provinces. What is the law with regard to provinces conquered from a foreign independent belligerent? When you conquer territory from a foreign nation or an independent belligerent, the territory thus conquered is governed by military power, by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, being in this case the President, until the legislative power of the nations shall have spoken and directed what laws shall govern. But the moment the legislative power of the nation interposes the military authority ceases to have sway, and the Commander-in-Chief has no more to say in regard to this matter than a corporal of militia. He is to do just what the legislative power orders him to do, and he can do nothing else.
A great deal is said about the Present acting as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Until he was superseded in his authority by Congress I have no fault to find with his maintaining military rule in the South. But he assumed to excretes legislative powers; he assumed to establish governments; he assumed to appoint civil officers; he assumed that these conquered provinces should come back at once to the enjoyment of all the rights of loyal States under the Constitution, and be entitled to all the privileges which they had possessed prior to their rebellion. Now, sir, as I said before, nothing of this kind came within the power of the Commander-in-Chief. What is the duty of the Commander-in-Chief? If Congress sends an army to quell the Indian war in Nebraska, what is the Commander-in-Chief to do? Congress orders that army to go there. It raises and equips the army. What do the officers do? They pass no act of legislation; they go there and order the troops when to charge and when to retreat; they drill them; they put them through military exercises. But they can do no act that looks like regulating the object of the war or the object with which the army is sent there. Why, sir, the Constitution of the United States makes express reservation of all such power to Congress. It expressly declares that Congress shall have power “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” The Executive has nothing to do with it; the judiciary have nothing to do with it. Congress is the only and the controlling power. Congress is the only and the controlling power. Congress has enacted the rules and articles of the war. Could the President of the United States interfere with those? Could he add new articles, new rules, new regulations? Certainly not. The military officers that were sent as commanders in the States were simply appointed as agents of Congress. To be sure, the original bill provided a military supervision simply, and we had intended to follow it up with a law putting reconstruction into the hands of civilians. That is what I should have been disposed to do now, (and I had prepared a bill with that view,) using the military simply as a police and appointing civilians to reconstruct. But if Congress chooses to take officers of the Army and assign them to this duty, they them become the agents of Congress, and neither the President nor any officer under him has any right to interfere or do anything but execute what Congress commands.
Now, sir, it being reduced, I think, to a plain proposition that Congress is the only power that reconstruct and reclaim these outlying States, the President had no right to call upon the Attorney General or any other officer of the Government to interfere in any manner in such reconstruction. There is but one appeal, and that is either to the agents appointed by Congress ot to Congress. It has been well decided in Dorr’s case that all power on this subject is vested in Congress. But, sir, we need not look to any such decision. It ought to be known before this time by the President of the United States-it is known, I trust, by the scholars in every colored school in this District-that the Constitution of the United States does not apply to any Territory. The States are parties to the Constitution; they are the contracting powers; they are the substantive body. Territory, however, acquired by purchase or conquest or by inheritance is the property only of that substantive power, of that power bound up by the Constitution, and that power alone is governed by the Constitution, but does not extend for any purpose into any Territory or conquered province, in a Territory, in a conquered State, whether conquered from a legitimate State or an illegitimate State?
I may be asked how we would treat the Confederate States of America? Just as Congress chooses. They are our property; their citizens are our subjects. Their lives, their liberties are subject to the supreme will of this body, always controlled by the laws of nations, the laws of war, and the laws of humanity. There is no other power on earth; there is no branch of the Government; there is no power in the Government, except what I have mentioned, that has any right to interfere or to say one word on the subject. If you wish to punish the malefactors for violated majesty, that is another matter. Possibly you might do so through your courts of justice. At least you might attempt it, but I do not suppose you can do it. But there is one thing clear: that territory not being yet declared by Congress to be in a state of peace or restoration is under the military authority of the government, and any tribunal constituted by the military authority, and military tribunal, any court-martial can try any one of those who belonged to the belligerent forces. Jefferson Davis, or any man of the army of the confederacy conquered by us, is this day liable to trial by military tribunal and to sentence. Mr. Speaker, while I would not be bloody-minded, yes if I had my way I would long ago have organized a military tribunal under military power, and I would have put Jefferson Davis and all the members of his cabinet on trial for the murders at Andersonville, the murders at Salisbury, the shooting down our prisoners of war in cold blood.. Every man of them is responsible for those crimes. It was a mockery to try that wicked fellow Wirs, and make him responsible for acts which the confederate cabinet was guilty of. Of course they should be condemned. Whether they should be executed afterward I give no opinion. I would carry out such punishment as, in my judgment, the justice of the country required. I would carry it out through the legal tribunals that I have mentioned, and which are as much the legal tribunals of the land as the Supreme Court of the United States. That is my view exactly of what would be logical.
As to the question of confiscation, I think that a man who has murdered a thousand men, who has robbed a thousand widows and orphans, who has burned down a thousand houses, escaped well if, owning $100,000, he is fined $50,000 as punishment and to repair his ravages. I said before that I was not in favor of sanguinary punishments. I trust in saying that I need not be supposed to condemn them when they are necessary. For instance, the elamor that has been raised against the Mexican government for the heroic execution of murderers and pirates, [applause] that clamor finds no favor with me. I think that while they have gone far enough, (though not half as far as they might be justified in going,) yet there is no law nor policy under heaven, and no sense of justice that will condemn that great, heroic, much-enduring man who for six years had been hunted with a reward upon his head, has been driven from one and of his empire to another until he got to the very borders, who has no parallel in history that I know of except it be William of Orange, who was driven from island to island, and from sand patch to sand patch by just about as bloody a persecutor as was to be found in Maximilian when he decreed that every man warring against him should be shot down without further trial. I am not going to shrink from saying that I think such punishment proper. I do not say nor do I ask that anybody should be executed in this country. There has got to be a sickly humanity here which I dare not get along side of for fear I might catch it. [Laughter] And it is now held by one of the most liberal and enlightened gentleman in the country--I mean Gerrit Smith--that we should even pay a portion of the rebel debt. [Laughter.] I shall come some day to have an argument with Horace Greeley about that, and he will explain it, therefore I need not say anything further. I believe I have said enough to explain my views on the subject, and now I ask for a vote on the question. [Applause.] I withdraw the motion to recommit.
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