Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Senator James Grimes to A. C. Barnes*, September 16, 1861

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

No comments: