Burlington, September 16, 1861.
Your letter of the 13th instant, in which you say, “Ever
since Breckinridge made his treasonable speeches in the United States Senate,
it is being constantly reiterated that President Lincoln has violated the
Constitution, and, as evidence of the fact, it is asserted that the Senate
refused to ratify his acts;” and in which you ask me “to state whether the
charge that Congress did refuse to sustain the acts of the President is true or
not,” has come duly to hand.
By referring to the “Acts and Resolutions passed at the
First Session of the Thirty-seventh Congress,” page 89, section 3 of Act
LV1II., a copy of which I send you, you will observe that it is enacted “that
all the acts, proclamations, and orders of the President of the United States,
after the fourth of March, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, respecting the Army
and Navy of the United States, and calling out or relating to the militia or
volunteers from the States, are hereby approved, and in all respects legalized
and made valid, to the same intent and with the same effect as if they had been
issued and done under the previous express authority and direction of the
Congress of the United States.”
This section ratifies and confirms, to the fullest possible
extent, all the acts of the President that needed or that were susceptible of
ratification, and was adopted by the vote of every Republican and loyal
Democratic member of the Senate present. So far as I am informed, I believe it
was all the confirmation of the acts of the President that he either expected
or desired.
I know it is urged by some, but mostly, if not entirely, by
those who are opposed to the vigorous prosecution of the present war, that it
was also necessary to confirm the acts of the President suspending, in some
cases, the writ of habeas corpus. It must be apparent, I think, to every
one who will reflect upon the subject, that to have attempted such confirmation
would be to inferentially admit that, as commander-in-chief of the Army and
Navy of the United States, the President had no power to suspend the operation
of that writ without congressional authority. Very few, if any, loyal members
of Congress were willing to admit that. They did not doubt but that he had
complete power in the premises, and they chose to leave him to exercise his
authority under the Constitution according to his own judgment and as the
exigencies of the country might require. They did not believe that his acts in
this regard needed confirmation, and therefore confined their ratification and
approval to such acts as required legal enactments for their basis, and in the
initiation of which they had been anticipated by him.
There may be some who honestly believe that the Senate
refused to support the President because of their failure to pass certain
resolutions presented by Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts. The facts in regard to
those resolutions were these: They were introduced at an early day in the
session, and were put aside from day to day to make room for what was
considered more important business, until just at the close of the session,
when they had reached that stage in parliamentary proceedings when it was
impossible to amend them without unanimous consent, and that could not be
obtained. The objection urged by some gentlemen against them as they stood without
amendment was, that they were improperly drawn, inasmuch as the phraseology was
in the past tense, and declared that the acts of the President were legal
and valid when performed, whereas, as they insisted, they ought to have
declared that those acts should be legal and valid as though done under
the sanction of law. It was a question of grammatical construction. This, if my
memory serves me correctly, was the position of Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, whose
action has been much criticised in this State, as well as elsewhere. He
declared his willingness, nay his anxiety, to justify and approve the acts of
the President, but he was unwilling to say that those acts were legal at the
time they were performed. Although not agreeing with him in his construction of
the phraseology of the resolutions, it is due to him to say that no man in
America was more anxious than he to give to the Administration an honest,
hearty, and patriotic support. And, when the legalization of its proceedings
was put in what he believed to be proper language, he cordially sustained it.
It was simply on account of this objection in the minds of a
few Senators that the resolutions which it was impossible to amend were
dropped, and the substance of them incorporated into a law.
Be assured that all these charges of a refusal to support
the Administration by Republican and loyal Democratic Senators are devices of
the enemy, and should only serve to make the path of duty more plain before us.
That duty, it seems to me, is obvious. We should enthusiastically rally to the
support of the noble and true men who were nominated by the convention held at
Des Moines on the 31st day of July last. They are the representatives of the
Government in this crisis. A vote for them will be a vote in support of the Administration,
in favor of the integrity of the Government, and for peace through victory. Let
us give to Governor Kirkwood, who, in the last six months, has done more hard
work, incurred greater responsibilities, and been more causelessly abused than
all the Governors that Iowa ever had, that cheering, sweeping majority that his
patriotism, his integrity of purpose, and his devotion to the true interests of
the State, so justly merit.
_______________
* Of Albia, Monroe County, Iowa.
SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes,
p. 150-2
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