Diary of Gideon Welles: Friday, July 21, 1865

A very warm day. Thermometer 90 and upward. Chief subject at the Cabinet was the offense and the disposition of J. Davis. The President, it was evident, was for procuring a decision or having the views of the Cabinet. Seward thought the question might as well be disposed of now as at any time. He was satisfied there could be no conviction of such a man, for any offense, before any civil tribunal, and was therefore for arraigning him for treason, murder, and other offenses before a military commission. Dennison, who sat next him, immediately followed, and thought if the proof was clear and beyond question that Davis was a party to the assassination, then he would have him by all means brought before a military tribunal, but unless the proof was clear, beyond a peradventure, he would have him tried for high treason before the highest civil court. When asked what other court there was than the circuit court, he said he did not wish him tried before the court of this District. And when further asked to be more explicit on the subject of the question of murder or assassination, he said he would trust that matter to Judge Holt and the War Department, and, he then added, the Attorney-General. McCulloch would prefer, if there is to be a trial, that it should be in the courts, but was decidedly against any trial at present, would postpone the whole subject. Stanton was for a trial by the courts for treason, the highest of crimes, and, by the Constitution, only the courts could try him for that offense. Otherwise he would say a military commission. For all other offenses he would arraign him before the military commission. Subsequently, after examining the Constitution, he retracted the remark that the Constitution made it imperative that the trial for treason should be in the civil courts, yet he did not withdraw the preference he had expressed. I was emphatically for the civil court and an arraignment for treason; for an early institution of proceedings; and was willing the trial should take place in Virginia. If our laws or system were defective, it was well to bring them to a test. I had no doubt he was guilty of treason and believed he would be convicted, wherever tried. Harlan would not try him before a civil court unless satisfied there would be conviction. If there was a doubt, he wanted a military commission. He thought it would be much better to pardon Davis at once than to have him tried and not convicted. Such a result, he believed, would be most calamitous. He would, therefore, rather than run that risk prefer a military court. Speed was for a tribunal and for a trial for treason; but until the Rebellion was entirely suppressed he doubted if there could be a trial for treason. Davis is now a prisoner of war and was entitled to all the rights of belligerent, etc., etc. I inquired if Davis was not arrested and a reward offered for him and paid by our government as for other criminals.

The question of counsel and the institution of proceedings was discussed. In order to get the sense of each of the members, the President thought it would be well to have the matter presented in a distinct form. Seward promptly proposed that Jefferson Davis should be tried for treason, assassination, murder, conspiring to burn cities, etc., by a military commission. The question was so put, Seward and Harlan voting for it, the others against, with the exception of myself. The President asked my opinion. I told him I did not like the form in which the question was put. I would have him tried for military offenses by a military court, but for civil offenses I wanted the civil courts. I thought he should be tried for treason, and it seemed to me that the question before us should first be the crime and then the court. The others assented and the question put was, Shall J. D. be tried for treason? There was a unanimous response in the affirmative. Then the question as to the court. Dennison moved a civil court. All but Seward and Harlan were in the affirmative; they were in the negative.

Stanton read a letter from Fortress Monroe, saying Davis' health had been failing for the last fortnight; that the execution of the assassins had visibly affected him. Davis remarked that President Johnson was “quick on the trigger.”

I this day took possession of the rooms in the new wing which had been prepared and furnished for the Secretary of the Navy.

The solicitor, Mr. Bolles, arrived to-day and entered upon his duties so far as to take possession of his rooms. He was not anxious, I perceived, to enter upon his new duties on Friday, although he did not assign that as the reason for delay.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 337-40

Diary of Gideon Welles: Tuesday, June 20, 1865

Mr. Seward was absent from the Cabinet-meeting. All others were present. The meetings are better and more punctually attended than under Mr. Lincoln's administration, and measures are more generally discussed, which undoubtedly tends to better administration. Mrs. Seward lies at the point of death, which is the cause of Mr. Seward's absence.

The subject of appointments in the Southern States the Rebel States—was discussed. A difficulty is experienced in the stringent oath passed by the last Congress. Men are required to swear they have rendered no voluntary aid to the Rebellion, nor accepted or held office under the Rebel government. This oath is a device to perpetuate differences, if persisted in.

I was both amused and vexed with the propositions and suggestions for evading this oath. Stanton proposed that if the appointees would not take the whole oath, to swear to as much as they could. Speed was fussy and uncertain; did not know but what it would become necessary to call Congress together to get rid of this official oath. Harlan¹ believed the oath proper and that it should stand. Said it was carefully and deliberately framed, that it was designed, purposely, to exclude men from executive appointments. Mr. Wade and Mr. Sumner had this specially in view. Thought there was no difficulty in these appointments except judges. All other officers were temporary; judges were for life. I remarked that did not follow. If the Senate, when it convened, did not choose to confirm the judicial appointments, the incumbents could only hold until the close of the next session of Congress. But above and beyond this I denied that Congress could impose limitations and restrictions on the pardoning power, and thus circumscribe the President's prerogative. I claimed that the President could nominate, and the Senate confirm, an officer independent of that form and oath, and if the appointee took and faithfully conformed to the constitutional oath, he could not be molested. McCulloch inclined to my views, but Stanton insisted that point had been raised and decided and could not, therefore, be maintained. I claimed that no wrong decision could be binding, and I had no doubt of the wrongfulness of such a decision, denying that the constitutional rights of the Executive could be frittered away by legislation. There is partyism in all this, not union or country.

_______________

¹ Harlan had succeeded Secretary Usher in the Department of the Interior.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 318-9

Diary of Gideon Welles: Tuesday, May 16, 1865

Great questions not taken up at the Cabinet. Several minor matters considered. Mr. Harlan, successor of Mr. Usher in the Department of the Interior, was with us to-day. Remarked to President Johnson that Governor Dennison and myself proposed leaving on Saturday next for Charleston, and if the subject of reconstruction and amnesty was to be taken up before we left, there might be haste. He said the whole matter would be satisfactorily disposed of, he presumed, before Saturday; is expecting some North Carolina Union men.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 306-7

Senator James Harlan, May 9, 1862

I shall detain the Senate for but a moment longer.

General Halleck, in an official communication addressed to the adjutant general of the State of Iowa, has mentioned the Iowa troops at the battle before Fort Donelson as “the bravest of the brave.” Nor do I know that General Grant, or any other general, has ever withheld just commendation. I therefore repeat that I have no personal grievance to redress for myself or for the troops of my State. And I would have remained silent on this subject in the Senate, if the speech of the Senator from Ohio had not made it necessary for me to speak; for I do not deem the Senate Chamber the proper place for criticisms on the conduct of a general in the field. I think it much better to present our personal convictions in relation to the character of our generals to the Secretary of War and to the President. For myself, I uniformly pursue this course, and regret that it has, in my judgment, become necessary to depart from it in this case. But, sir, it is often as dangerous and as wicked to praise the unworthy and incompetent as to detract from the meritorious. If my convictions are correct, it would be a crime for me to remain silent, and suffer influences to originate in the Senate Chamber which may result in restoring a general to an active command whom I and the people I in part represent deem unworthy of such a trust.

Iowa has sent to the field about twenty thousand troops. They have behaved, I think, well on every battle-field where they have appeared. As far as I know, no Iowa regiment has ever faltered in the discharge of duty, however perilous. Their numbers have been reduced by the casualties of the field and camp nearly one fourth. They give their lives with firmness to aid in restoring the supremacy of the laws. But, sir, they believe, and I believe, that a large per cent. of this loss was useless, and is justly attributable to the carelessness or inability of General Grant. And he shall not, with my consent, be continued in command. There is nothing in his antecedents to justify a further trial of his military skill. At Belmont he committed an egregious and unpardonable military blunder, which resulted in almost annihilating an Iowa regiment. At Fort Donelson, the right wing of our army, which was under his immediate command, was defeated and driven back several miles from the enemy's works. The battle was restored by General Smith, the enemy's works were stormed, and thus a victory was finally won. And so on the battle-field of Shiloh, his army was completely surprised, as I believe from all the facts I can procure, on Sunday, and nothing but the stubborn bravery of the men fighting by regiments and brigades, saved the army from utter destruction. The battle was afterwards restored and conducted by General Buell and other generals, who came on the field during the evening and night; and our forces ultimately succeeded in completely routing the enemy.

Now, sir, with such a record, those who continue General Grant in an active command will, in my opinion, carry on their skirts the blood of thousands of their slaughtered countrymen. With my convictions, I can neither do it myself nor silently permit it to be done by others.

SOURCE: The Congressional Globe, The Second Session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, p. 2036-7

Diary of John Hay, September 23, 1864

Senator Harlan thinks that Bennett’s support is so important, especially considered as to its bearing on the soldier vote, that it would pay to offer him a foreign mission for it, and so told me. Forney has also had a man talking to the cannie Scot who asked plumply, “Will I be a welcome visitor at the White House if I support Mr. Lincoln?” What a horrible question for a man to be able to ask! So thinks the President apparently. It is probable that Bennett will stay about as he is, thoroughly neutral, balancing carefully until the October elections, and will then declare for the side which he thinks will win. It is better in many respects to let him alone.

SOURCES: Abstracted from Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 221; Michael Burlingame & John R. Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 229-30

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: July 24, 1861

Here Mr. Chesnut opened my door and walked in. Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh. I had to ask no questions. He gave me an account of the battle as he saw it (walking up and down my room, occasionally seating himself on a window sill, but too restless to remain still many moments); and told what regiments he was sent to bring up. He took the orders to Colonel Jackson, whose regiment stood so stock still under fire that they were called a “stone wall.” Also, they call Beauregard, Eugene, and Johnston, Marlboro. Mr. Chesnut rode with Lay's cavalry after the retreating enemy in the pursuit, they following them until midnight. Then there came such a fall of rain — rain such as is only known in semitropical lands.

In the drawing-room, Colonel Chesnut was the “belle of the ball”; they crowded him so for news. He was the first arrival that they could get at from the field of battle. But the women had to give way to the dignitaries of the land, who were as filled with curiosity as themselves — Mr. Barnwell, Mr. Hunter, Mr. Cobb, Captain Ingraham, etc.

Wilmot de Saussure says Wilson of Massachusetts, a Senator of the United States,¹ came to Manassas, en route to Richmond, with his dancing shoes ready for a festive scene which was to celebrate a triumph. The New York Tribune said: “In a few days we shall have Richmond, Memphis, and New Orleans. They must be taken and at once.” For “a few days” maybe now they will modestly substitute “in a few years.”

They brought me a Yankee soldier's portfolio from the battle-field. The letters had been franked by Senator Harlan.¹ One might shed tears over some of the letters. Women, wives and mothers, are the same everywhere. What a comfort the spelling was! We had been willing to admit that their universal free-school education had put them, rank and file, ahead of us literarily, but these letters do not attest that fact. The spelling is comically bad.

_______________

¹ Henry Wilson, son of a farm laborer and self-educated, who rose to much prominence in the Anti-Slavery contests before the war. He was elected United States Senator from Massachusetts in 1855, holding the office until 1873, when he resigned, having been elected Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with Ulysses S. Grant.

² James Harlan, United States Senator from Iowa from 1855 to 1865. In 1865 he was appointed Secretary of the Interior.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 88-90

Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood to James Harlan, James W. Grimes, Samuel R. Curtis and William Vandever, January 28, 1861

Executive Office,

Jan. 28, 1861.

To Hon. Jas. Harlan, Jas. W. Grimes, Samuel R. Curtis and Wm. Vandever:

Gentlemen:—You will find herewith a paper requesting you, if you consider it advisable, to attend a meeting of the commissioners of the different States at Washington City on the 4th of February next. I wish you to be guided wholly by your own discretion as to your attendance.

I confess the whole thing strikes me unfavorably. The very early day named renders it impossible for the distant States to select and send commissioners, and also it is liable to the construction I that it was the intention to force action both upon the meeting and upon Congress before the 4th of March next and without proper time for deliberation. Again the fact that the basis of adjustment proposed in the resolutions is one that all the free States rejected by an overwhelming majority at the presidential election (the votes for Lincoln and Douglass being all against it) indicate that either in expectation that the free Stases shall stultify and degrade themselves or a purpose by the failure of the commissioners to agree upon terms of adjustment to afford excuse and justification to those who are already determined to leave the Union. You upon the ground can judge of these things more correctly than I can here.

Should you find the meeting disposed to act in earnest for the preservation of the Union without seeking the degradation of any of the States for that end permit me to make a few suggestions.

The true policy for every good citizen to pursue is to set his face like a flint against secession, to call it by its true name — treason — to use his influence in all legitimate ways to put it down; strictly and cordially to obey the laws and to stand by the government in all lawful measures it may adopt for the preservation of the Union, and to trust to the people and the constituted authorities to correct under the present constitution, and errors that may have been committed or any evils or wrongs that have been suffered.

But if compromise must be the order of the day then that compromise should not be a concession by one side of all the other side demands and of all for which the conceding side has been contending. In other words the North must not be expected to yield all the South asks, all the North has contended for and won. and then call that compromise. That is not compromise and would not bring peace. Such “compromise” would not become dry on the parchment on which it would be written before “agitation” for its repeal would have commenced. A compromise that would restore good feeling must not degrade either side. Let me suggest how in my opinion this can be done. Restore the Missouri compromise line to the territory we got from France. We all agreed to that once and can, without degradation do so again.

The repeal of that line brought on our present troubles; its restoration ought to go far to remove them. As to New Mexico and Utah leave them under the laws passed for their government in 1850 — the so-called compromise of that year. We all stood there once and can do so again without degradation. This settles the question of slavery in all our present territories. As to future acquisitions say we can't make any. We thus avoid the slavery question in future. We have enough territory for our expansion for a century and let the men of that day make another to suit themselves. It says merely we prefer our Union as it is to conquest that may endanger it. The fugitive slave law was made by the South. The reason of its non-existence is its severity. It is in direct antagonism to the public sentiment of the people among whom it is to be executed. If something were done to modify it so as to require the alleged fugitive to be taken before the officer of the court of the county from which he has alleged to have tied and there have a trial if he demand it, in my opinion the law would be much more effective than it is.

The personal liberty laws arc the acts of the States that have them and I doubt not would be repealed when the present excitement dies away. Iowa never has had nor does she want one.

Very respectfully,

SAMUEL J. KIRKWOOD.

SOURCE: Henry Warren Lathrop, The Life and Times of Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa's War Governor, p. 109-11

Important Decision

It seems, from the following letter, that the Secretary of the Interior has reversed his decision in regard to Swamp Lands.  The Government, if we understand the correspondence, will now issue land scrip in lieu of swamp lands donated to the State, but sold by the Government, previous to the selection.  As the number of acres of swamp or overflowed land thus sold by the general Government is large, this decision of the Secretary is a very important matter in our State:

WASHINGTON CITY, May 10th, 1862.

C. DUNHAM, ESQ., EDITOR HAWK EYE,

Burlington, Iowa.

SIR: Enclosed I send you a letter from Hon. J. M. Edmunds, Commissioner of General Land Office in reference to swamp lands in the State of Iowa.

This reversal of the original decision of the Secretary of the Interior, made after hearing arguments of Senator Harlan and Representative Wilson, will give to the state of Iowa, many thousands of dollars, and a large amount of land scrip in lieu of lands selected in Iowa as swampy, previously sold.

Yours very respectfully,

JAS. A. BEARD.

GENERAL LAND OFFICE, May 7, 1862.

Hon. JAMES HARLAND, U. S. Senate:

SIR – Referring to the case of report No. 13, 392 for $9,006 92-100 of Iowa indemnity on account of swamp lands, I have the honor to advise you that since the rendition of the recent decision of the Secretary of the Interior, I have been instructed to regard it as fixing form of affidavit and terms as facts in future cases, and not as affecting the past; and in this view I have certified said report and submitted it, this date, for final approval of the Secretary, so that It may be sent to the Treasury to the end that it may be followed by a draft.

With great respect your obd’t serv’t,

J. M. EDMUNDS, Commissioner.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, May 22, 1862, p. 2

Washington Correspondence

WASHINGTON, April 1, 1862.

ED. HAWK-EYE – Dear Sir: Our great army has a multitude of representatives at the hotels and “all quiet on the Potomac” is what I see; at home I only hear it.

There is a desperate effort to prop up the fortunes of Gen. McClellan, yet all agree if he does not gain a great battle, and soon, he must doff his plume and give way to Banks or somebody who defies mud and dares to lead and to die.

This city is to be free, thank God.  The Emancipation bill will pass despite the [money] used to defeat it from Baltimore and the District.  Senator Sumner’s speech was very fine as an historic statement.  He gained good attention for full two hours, and part of the speech I have no doubt, will be read with delight in Iowa.

The Iowa employees so far as I have seen them are a credit to the State, and are gradually being promoted in the Departments.

Mrs. Senator Harlan has just returned from a visit to Port Royal.  Hers was truly a mission of mercy, and at the proper time she will make public facts and theories in regard to the Carolina negroes and what can be done and what ought to be.  In her view it is a great missionary work, and can only be prosecuted by government aid in part, and the banishment of sundry official negro haters who seems to hold the power wherever there is a military occupation by the Union troops.

Senator Harlan is one of the busiest men in Washington.  Ash chairman of the Public Land Committee he is hard at work.  There is a promise of his doing some large work for the State; yet I must not particularize.  The facts will justify a large expectation and time will give more details.

Mr. Grimes has certainly a high rank here as Senator.  The commercial men of New York name him as a Secretary of the Navy, in the event of a place being made by Secretary Welles retirement.  Any one who reads the Globe cannot help seeing that the Governor knows all about this District, and that he must be the worker on the Naval Committee – not to mention the many jobs he spoils by a question, or by a very short telling, insinuating speech.

Who is this man Wilson? asks a member of the House.  I never heard of him before, but he did make a “big speech,” killing a bad Railroad bill.  He was enough for two or three of the most adroit of the old members.

I can say only for our Representative that he got Sorghum exempted from the Tax bill; that he is acting as one of the working men on the Judiciary Committee, and will get a bill for an United States Court, placing Iowa in the center of the District, embracing Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota.  Who will consent to be Judge? – on the supreme bench for life.  Have we any man who would take the place?

In the House I noticed how instinctively our Democracy voted against the tax on dogs – but it carried; but they went in for a high tax on pianos, melodeons, &c.  Don’t they love music?

I saw Le Grand Byington, a seeker for a seat in Vandever’s place, hand in glove with the traitor Vallandigham.  It will be a fine thing for him to get mileage and perchance a seat, back by 4,000 traitors votes!  Wilson will make a big fight against him, I guess.

Yours,

_______

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 12, 1862, p. 1

Abolition Of Slavery In The District Of Columbia

REMARKS OF MR. HARLAN.

IN SENATE, Tuesday, March 25.

Mr. HARLAN.  Mr. President, I regret very much that Senators depart so far from the proprieties, as I consider it, of this Chamber, as to make the allusions they do.  It is done merely to stimulate a prejudice which exists against a race already trampled under foot.  I refer to the allusions to white people embracing colored people as their brethren, and the invitations by Senators to white men and white women to marry colored people.  Now, sir, if we were to descend into an investigation of the facts on that subject, it would bring the blush to the cheeks of some of these gentlemen.  I once had occasion to direct the attention of the Senate to an illustrious example from the State of the Senator who inquired if any of us would marry a greasy old wench.  It is history that an illustrious citizen of his State, who once occupied officially the chair that you, sir, now sit in, lived notoriously and publicly with a negro wench, and raised children by her.

Mr. SAULSBURY.  Let me interrupt the gentleman for a moment.  Does he refer to any citizen of Delaware?

Mr. HARLAN.  I referred to the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Davis].

Mr. SAULSBURY.  I beg your pardon.

Mr. HARLAN.  I referred to a gentleman who held the second office in the gift of the American people; and never yet have heard a Senator on this floor denounce the conduct and the association of that illustrious citizen of our country.  I know of a family of colored or mulatto children, the children, too, of a gentleman who very recently occupied a seat on the other side of the Chamber, who are now at school in Ohio.  Yes, sir, the children of a Senator who very recently, not to exceed a year since, occupied a seat on this floor, a Senator from a slave State.

I do not desire to consume the time of the Senate and of the country in calling attention to these facts; it is humiliating enough to know that they exist; but if Senators who represent slaveholding States will perpetually drag this subject to the attention of the Senate and of the country, let them take the logical consequences of their own folly, and bear the shame which an investigation of the facts must inflict on themselves and their constituents.

I know there is a newspaper slander – written, printed, and published as a slander – on those who went down to South Carolina for a benevolent purpose, at least a desire to look after the welfare of those who had been cast off by their masters and had no means of support, the armies of the Republic furnishing them no protection, and as it is said, actually robbing them of the scanty supplies left them by their absconding owners.  Benevolent gentlemen have gone, as it is said, and I believe truly to furnish them temporarily with food and raiment, and also employment, to enable them to provide, in part at least, by the labor of their hands, for their own wants.  I confess I can perceive nothing objectionable in this; nor do I believe that the Senator himself who drags up that subject, as it seems to me, unnecessarily, in the discussion of the provisions of this bill, can point out anything improper in it.  Does he desire that those persons who have been deserted by their masters should be left there to starve and die like brutes?  I know he does not.  Then what other means can he devise for their protection and support; or does he desire the President to withdraw the Army and permit the rebels, who are now striking at the life of the nation, to return to their possessions under the folds of a rebel flag, reasserting their ownership over their deserted slaves?  If he desires the armies of the Republic to push forward until the supremacy of the laws of the Union shall be acknowledged, under the protecting folds of the stars and stripes, to its utmost limits, what does he propose to do with these destitute people?  Does he propose to support them directly from the national Treasury?  Would this be more wise than to permit benevolence to provide for their temporary wants and to permit the labor of their own hands to supply their necessities for the future?

I do not deem it proper on this occasion to enter into a labored investigation of the probabilities of amalgamation of the white with the negro race if the negroes should all be set free.  How is it in point of fact?  Do you find white gentlemen and white ladies marrying the free negroes that are now in this District?  Do you find them marrying the negroes that are now free in Maryland, and I understand the Senator says there are over eighty thousand of them in that State?  Do Senators find that the amalgamation of the white and negro race is in progress in the States they represent?  And if so, does it progress more rapidly in the free than in the slave States?  And in the slave States does it progress more rapidly among the free negroes than among the slaves.  I have known of but three cases in my own State, and all three of those men married to wenches have been residents of slave States, where, I doubt not they acquired their tastes.  [Laughter.]  Liberating the negroes carries with it no obligation to marry their wenches to white men.  Gentlemen may follow their tastes afterwards as now.

The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] has furnished me with the figures showing the exact number of free negroes in the States of Delaware and Maryland.  In the former there are 19, 723 free negroes, and but 1,798 slaves, and in Maryland 83,718 free persons of color, and but 87,700 slaves.  If the white population of Maryland does not intermarry and amalgamate with 83, 718 free negroes now in the State, would their tastes in that regard be changed in more of them were liberated?  If the people of this city, the capital of the nation, are not now insulting our delicate sensibilities by intermarrying with nearly twelve thousand free negroes here, would their tastes be changed in that regard by the liberation of about fifteen hundred others, for I understand on consultation with the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia that there are not now probably to exceed fifteen hundred slaves in the District.  There were when the census was taken but a trifle over three thousand.

This is merely a fling intended on the part of those who use it to arouse a prejudice that they know is deep-seated in the minds of the people of the free States against association with the colored population.  They know what I know and here state, that there is in all the free States a deep-seated prejudice against an association with the colored population – a prejudice that does not exist in the slave Sates.  There you find this association together, not in the social circle, it is true.  You find them, however at work together in the same shop, at the same bench, on the same farm, in the same buildings, at the same kind of toil.  You find their children on the same play grounds, at the same games, at the same amusements, not unfrequently eating, sleeping, quarreling, and fighting with each other without reference to color.  It is so in this District.  We all observe it every day we live.  Any man who will take the trouble to walk up Pennsylvania avenue at this moment will see the white hackman and the negro standing side by side, whip in hand, waiting for a job.  He will see the white man and the negro on the cross streets, sitting on wagon or cart, side by side, waiting for employment.  Go into the hotels, and you will find them there, white men and negroes, white females and colored females, in the employment of the same landlord.  Go into the Government workshops, into your own navy yard, as I doubt not all have done, and as I have done, and you will see black men and white men working side by side swinging the same kind of hammer, forging the same piece of iron.

It is here in a slave District and in the slave States that men learn to associate familiarly as laborers and mechanics with the colored population; and as a result of that familiar association at the daily toils of life, there is less shrinking away from them; less reluctance at receiving them into their embrace, so handsomely described by the senator from Delaware but a moment since.  No, sir; if you inquire for those willing to receive colored persons into their embrace, you will find a large majority of them born, brought up, and educated in the midst of a slave holding community; and as a result of this familiar association, you will find in every slaveholding community a much larger number of mulattoes than in the free states.

But then what is to be done with these fifteen hundred liberated slaves?  If they are liberated we are told that they must be expatriated; they must be sent into some other country, into a strange community, and there compelled to provide in a land of strangers for the supply of their daily wants?  Where are they now? In the bosom of the families [of] this metropolis.  They are the house servants and field hands of those who now claim to be their owners.  Whence, then, a necessity for expatriating them?  It does not increase their number to liberate them.  If their labor is now necessary for the industrial purposes and comfort of the people of this District, will it not be as necessary after they shall have been liberated? – If they are now needed as house servants and hotel servants, laborers and mechanics, in shops and fields, will they not be necessary afterwards?   The only change in this regard that I can perceive is that after their liberation, and those who now enjoy their labor gratuitously will then, if their service are continued, be compelled to pay them reasonable compensation, the Government paying them a bonus of $300 each to relinquish the supposed right to their labor without the payment of wages.  This is the only wrong that will have been inflicted on those who now own them.  They now employ them, and give them food and raiment and shelter for their services, without reference to their own wishes, coercing obedience with the lash when found necessary.  Afterwards they will be compelled to consult the will and wishes of the employed, and pay them probably stipulated wages, with which the servants will provide his own supplies.  No injury is inflicted on society, no change is wrought on its organization, and no change is made in the political condition of the emancipated.  They will have acquired no political rights or franchises.  They will have acquired simply the right to enjoy as they choose the proceeds of their own labor.  But if you confer this right on fifteen hundred more negroes now slaves in this district, we are gravely warned by Senators, in most eloquent and pathetic strains, that we will thus inaugurate a war of extermination between the white and black race!  Yes if you confer on these fifteen hundred poor negroes the right now enjoyed by more than eleven thousand of their colored brethren now living in the District, allow them to collect and use the wages of their own labor, you will incite a spirit of wholesale murder! – Rather than pay them just compensation for their services, their former masters, who have lived on the proceeds of their unpaid toil, will take down their rifles and shoot them!  A war of extermination is to arise!  Sir, I have understood that it was murder now in this District to kill a colored man; that so far from justifying the indiscriminate murder of those poor people who are now free, you regard it as a very grave offense against society to shed his blood, and would arrest, indict, try and hang the felon who would perpetrate it in a single case.  I inquire if it is not also a felony now in Maryland?  I inquire of the Senator from Maryland, who predicts a war of extermination immediately on the liberation of the slaves in this district, why it has not heretofore commenced: and if it would not be murder to shoot or otherwise maliciously destroy the life of a free negro of his own State under the laws of Maryland as they now exist?

Mr. KENNEDY.  If the honorable Senator desires an answer, I will say in a very few words that there is now a bitter antipathy between the laboring white people and the free blacks, and that it has been so strong heretofore in the State of Maryland that we have had great difficulty in restraining the passage of what we consider inhuman laws.  The antipathy is very strong between the two classes of people, and I do not know how far they might be excited to deeds of violence, of the proportion of free blacks that now exists was greatly increased.

Mr. HARLAN.  I am very much obliged to the Senator for his explanation; and yet I beg leave very respectfully to differ from him in relation to the fact which he has stated.  In my opinion, these feelings are not excited by the laboring men.  I see laboring white men standing side by side with laboring negroes in the District seeking for jobs, for employment –

Mr. KENNEDY.  The Senator will allow me to say right here that I employ both classes, and one of the troubles that I have is to restrain that very feeling.  I speak from experience.

Mr. HARLAN.  I am inclined to think that any improper results which might grow out of this prejudice could be readily controlled by that part of the community enjoying high social and official position, like the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Delaware, who have spoken to-day.  What is the inference to be drawn by the less reflecting from this statement made in this discussion.  They declare, “if you liberate the slaves, allow them to become free, the free white people will rise and exterminate them;” and, is not the inference legitimate that it would, in the opinion of the speaker, be proper for this to be done?  Is it not indirectly saying to every laboring white man of Maryland, “you may murder indiscriminately those that come in contact with your interests, in competition with you in the various avocations of life?”  You say to them, “you will do so;” you say to this entire population in this District, “you will arise and murder the free colored people if we set a few more free;” and this statement thus far has not been accompanied even with so much as a regret at the supposed existence of such vindictiveness.  Sir, the slaveholders of Maryland control the legislation of those States, and they control, to a fearful extend the opinion of the masses; and they can as readily give to public opinion the right as the wrong direction; they can as readily conform it to the plain principles of a Christianized humanity as to degrade it to the standard which controls the policy of communities in a savage condition.

Why, sir, I know a people not many hundred miles from my own home that are to-day engaged in a war of extermination.  The Chippewas and the Sioux never meet each other on the plains, but to murder and massacre each other.  A war of extermination with all the vindictiveness and atrocities common to savage life, is in progress.  They meet only to imbrue their hands in their brothers’ blood.

Mr. KENNEDY.  Will the honorable Senator allow me to make to him a single statement in further answer to the question he put just now?

Mr. HARLAN.  Certainly.

Mr. KENNEDY.  One of the worst riots we have had in Baltimore for many years, arose from the fact that free negroes were employed in the ship-yards as caulkers.  They came in competition with a class of men who had before done work of that sort, who determined to drive them out of those yards, and from that cause a tremendous riot ensued.  I do not even now know whether a single free negro is allowed to work in the ship-yards.  There is a feeling against them on the part of a class of people who regard them as interfering with their exclusive privilege to do work of that sort themselves.

Mr. HARLAN.  And in that I see an explanation of the suggestion I made.  Of course the Senator’s knowledge of the facts existing in his own State, and in the metropolis of that State, is better than mine.  I will not dispute the truth of his statement; but he winds it up by saying that even now he does not know that a “free negro” is permitted to work in the yards of that city; and why?  Because the owners of the slaves cultivate this prejudice for the purpose of driving out the free negroes who come in competition with their own slave hands, so frequently hired out for wages to be placed in their owner’s pockets.

Mr. KENNEDY.  The slave interest of the State of Maryland, I may be allowed to say, is a very small one – seventeen thousand altogether.  That interest does not prevail anywhere in Maryland except in the tide-water counties. – The Senator is entirely mistaken in supposing that it prevails in Maryland.  It is in a minority.

Mr. HARLAN.  As to the fact, of course the Senator’s knowledge is more perfect than mine could be.  I have in my hand, however, a statement furnished me by the Senator from Massachusetts, which gives the number of slaves in Maryland as eighty-seven thousand one hundred and eighty-eight.

Mr. KENNEDY.  Yes, Sir.

Mr. HARLAN.  I know the institution is going down in Maryland; it is sinking under the quiet influence of emigration from the free States and enlightened public opinion; but even in Maryland the slaveholding portion of the community controls its legislation, controls public opinion, and stimulates and sustains the savage doctrines which we have heard advanced on this floor from their Senators – I use the word with respect; but I illustrate it with the example I have just cited.  As I have said, among the savages on our western plains, wars of extermination are going on day by day; these tribes are melting away by this vindictive and savage strife, which they keep up between belligerent tribes.  Now, is it possible that Senators will teach the Senate and the country and the Christian world that the people of Maryland are not elevated in civilization above the condition of the Chippewas and Sioux; that there, too, we have hundreds of thousands of savages with white skins who will immediately commence a war of extermination – on whom?  On men with whom they have lived their lives through, men who were born with them on the same soil, men who were brought up with them under the same roof, who played with them in childhood on the same grounds; who did not accompany them to the same schools for they have been excluded from the means of mental culture, who did not accompany them to the same church for they have been excluded also from a high order of religious culture.

Mr. KENNEDY.  Does the honorable Senator mean to apply that remark to Maryland?

Mr. HARLAN.  I am applying to Maryland the doctrines the Senator has advanced to-day.  He says that in Maryland, if the slaves be set free, the white population will arise and massacre the entire colored population.  If the people of Maryland will do this savage act, they are not to-day elevated above the condition of the Chippewas and Sioux; no, they are below the civilization of these savages, because they murder their enemies, not their friends, their servants, and the people of their own households.

Mr. KENNEDY.  I trust the honorable Senator will allow me to make a statement.

Mr. HARLAN.  Certainly.

Mr. KENNEDY.  I think the Senator entirely misapprehends the scope of my remarks, and I desire to say here now, that we have some of the best regulated and best established churches and schools for negroes in the city of Baltimore that are to be found in the United States.  We have, further than that, highly educated men who were slaves who are preaching to the free colored people of Baltimore.  I have this day in my family a manumitted slave who has the privilege of teaching school.  A manumitted slave of my own family is with me now, and is a teacher of a school.  There is no restriction whatever in Maryland upon education of any sort in regard to the colored population.

Mr. HARLAN.  I would inquire at the heel of that remark of the Senator if he has any disposition to murder them?

Mr. KENNEDY.  None whatever; but there is a natural opposition that exists between two antagonist races of people; and the colored race has been protected by the well ordered and well regulated people of my State, men, like myself and other gentlemen who represent the state who are struggling everywhere to prevent the dominance of a rule that might be exercised by an antagonistic class.

Mr. HARLAN.  And if the Senator does not feel a savage disposition to murder his freed man, does he say that the mass of the slaveholders of his State are less civilized than himself?

Mr. KENNEDY.  Not one particle more than the people of the gentleman’s own country seem disposed to murder the white people of my section.

Mr. HARLAN.  Then, if neither he nor his fellow slaveholders in Maryland now entertain such a disposition, I apprehended that no such cruel result will flow from the liberation of slaves that do not live in his own State, but live under a different jurisdiction.  No, sir; these Senators have misrepresented their own people, they are not the savages they have been portrayed on this floor.  I doubt not they are in possession of all the elements of humanity.  A humanity that has been cultivated highly, cultivated well, and that they would be as far from murdering the colored men, merely because they are free, as would I or the people whom I represent.

Mr. DAVIS.  Will the gentleman allow me a word?

Mr. HARLAN.  Certainly.

Mr. DAVIS.  The gentleman certainly misconceives or misrepresents the argument that I made.  The position I assumed, and which I endeavored to sustain by argument was this: that if slaves were liberated in States where they exist in great numbers, without colonization, it would give rise to a war of races that would lead to the results which the gentleman is now deprecating; and I maintain that that is a true position.

Mr. HARLAN.  I think that that might possibly be brought about through the teachings of such gentlemen as those who now represent these States on this floor.  They declare on the floor of the American Senate in the face of a Christian nation, in the face of two hundred millions of Christians now living on the earth, that if men are to be liberated from a slavery that is more galling and degrading than any that has ever existed on the face of the earth from the commencement of time down to this moment their people will rise and murder the poor freed men.  They say so without expressing so much as a regret.  They declare it as a prophecy! – They thus inculcate its rightfulness.  They thus teach their people, that in their opinion this wholesale murder would be right, or at least, the result of a weakness to be tolerated.  They thus approve and justify this savage feeling – if it exists; but, sir, it does not exist; I will defend the people of Kentucky, of Maryland, of Delaware, and of this District, from any such slanderous aspersion.  They entertain no such purpose on their part as the indiscriminate murder of the colored population, if they should become free.  I doubt not but that the public sentiment that now exists, induced by the slaveholders themselves, in the States to which I have referred, is bitterly opposed to the liberation of the slaves; but if these slaves should be set free, it will be effected by their own Legislatures; and if thus set free, no such savage war would arise.  Nor is it probable that their liberation by the exercise of arbitrary power, of which there is not the slightest apprehension on the part of these Senators themselves, could such an historical anomaly be produced.

The Senator from Massachusetts very aptly inquired of Senators who have rung the changes on this supposed calamity, to inform the Senate when such a wholesale murder ever commenced between members of the same community on account of race?  Can any Senator put his hand on the page of history that records it?  None have, and none can.  You say that if two races are thrown together as freemen, they will necessarily engender a war of extermination.  Such a war never did commence between two races of free people; and until the laws of the human mind and the human heart change, never will.  You cannot point to any great people that has ever existed that has not been composed to a greater or less extend of, so called, different races.  You may refer to any of the great empires of antiquity – the Chaldean, the Persian, the Assyrian, the Grecian, and the Roman empires, and you will find that they each embraced people of every kindred, tongue, and race, and from every clime.  It has been so of every highly enlightened and prosperous people since civilization dawned.  It is so now of the most polished and powerful nations of Europe and Asia.  In proof, I need but cite the British and French Empires.  To say that men of different, so called, races are natural enemies to each other, and will commence and wage a war of extermination when brought into contact, is a libel on humanity.  It is a libel on the Author of the human race.  The Almighty never implanted such feelings in the human heart.  They never have been cultivated by an enlightened people.  Wars of extermination exist only among savages; and with them only between belligerent tribes.

But I was drawn away from the argument of the Senator from Delaware, that if the fifteen hundred slaves who are now the chambermaids, and the bootblacks, and the barbers, and the hostlers, and the wood choppers and wood sawyers, and coal carriers, and cart drivers, and carriage drivers and laborers on the gardens and grounds that surround this magnificent palace shall be liberated, somebody will commence a wholesale murder.

Mr. SAULSBURY.  I said no such thing.  If the gentleman is alluding to me, I did not say a word about it.

Mr. HARLAN.  I am most happy to hear the Senator recant the doctrine I have attributed to him.

Mr. SAULSBURY.  I do not recant anything.  I said nothing of the kind.

Mr. HARLAN.  The negroes then will be saved.  There is no danger of this wholesale murder.

Mr. SAULSBURY.  I will reply to the gentleman when he is through.

Mr. HARLAN.  There is no danger of this war of extermination at least in the streets of this capital; and the fifteen hundred slaves now laboring quietly under the control of their masters will probably not be murdered by their former owners if they should be liberated.  I would almost guaranty that the liberated slaves will not murder their masters if their masters will not murder them.  The mere fact of their liberation could hardly incite them to such a diabolical course of conduct.  Why should it?  If they prefer to live under the shelter that their masters have provided for them, and to labor day by day without wages for the gratuity they may receive from the hand of their former owner, their legal freedom will not compel a severance.  I will not vote for a law to compel them to leave.  The Senator desires us to do so; he proposes an amendment to this bill that will compel these poor men to leave their kind masters, to go homeless and penniless and friendless into a land of strangers.  I voted against his proposition.  I am disposed to leave them where they now are, and let them work on for their masters; if their masters choose to pay them for their labor, all well; and if they decide to work on without pay, be it so.  I perceive no motive that can arise out of the removal of the legal shackles that bind them, calculated to stimulate a disposition to murder or destroy.  They would be anomalous human beings if the mere act of liberating them would convert them into savages and murders.

If neither their masters nor they are disposed to engage in such strif, I apprehend there is no great danger.  I never yet have met a white man or white woman in the District who manifested this species of vindictiveness against the colored people.  I am gland for the same of humanity that it is so.  Why should they?  Do you answer because they are poor and ugly and ignorant and feeble.  Is it possible that an American Senator will teach here to-day that because the white race is said to be more powerful and more highly endowed, and has acquired a high position in the scale of civilization, he may with impunity trample on the feeble and defenseless?  The advancement of such a dogma ought to mantle the statesman’s cheek with the blush of shame.  It is at war with every manly impulse.  Why, sir, I have occasionally in passing through the rough society which sometimes congregates on the frontier, observed a strong, powerful man stepping into the ring in the midst of a broil “to pick up the glove,” as it was called, in defense of a gray haired man, or a boy, or a feeble person, about to be assailed by some thoughtless person of superior strength, with the declaration, “sir, if you must have a fight take a man of your inches,” and such an act never failed to secure the applause of the crowd.  This is true humanity; it is moral courage; it is a kind of natural religion, superior to much we hear from the pulpit.  It is true courage; it prompts to personal sacrifice in the defense of the feeble.  And I have never yet witnessed a crowd of frontiersmen, however rough and uncultivated, who could be induced to applaud the victor in a contest with an inferior.  This principle of humanity it is thought by many was illustrated on a grand scale when the English nation and the French people stepped in between Russia and the Turks.  Here was a great and powerful nation attempting to crush out a feeble people.  The contest was unequal; it was the athletic champion with iron muscles in deadly strife with the child or decrepit age, and two powerful nations stepped in between them and commanded peace, and took up the glove in defense of the weaker.  I suppose this element of humanity to be the foundation of that manly pride that most men experience when they stand in defense of their own families, in defense of their wives and children and parents.  They stand between the feeble and the strong, and peril their existence in defence of their rights.  As a nation we act from these generous and manly impulses in our intercourse with the children of the prairies and forests.  They are comparatively a feeble people, incapable of taking care of themselves, and you organize a bureau under the Government and appoint a Commissioner and appropriate millions of dollars year by year to pay agents to stand between them and your own citizens who might be stimulated by avarice to become their oppressors.  And this policy usually receives the applause of Christian men. – It is but another illustration of better impulses of an enlightened humanity – a powerful nation stretches out its strong arm to protect the feeble.

Here is another feeble people, a race of men that are inferior to us in beauty, not equal to us in symmetry of body, not equal to us possibly in original mental and moral capacities or endowments.  They are supposed not to be as capable of taking care of themselves as the Anglo-Saxons or others of the Caucasian race; and on that account you tell me they are to be trampled under foot.  You are to trample them into the earth because they are feeble!  Do you treat your own feeble people in this way?  I have sometimes stepped into a probate court, and I have seen a judge sitting on the tribunal of justice appointing a guardian for the persons and property of orphan children, and requiring him to give bond and security for the proper execution of the trust.  They have neither father nor mother; these natural guardians have been called hence; they may become the victims of avarice or malice.  The officer of the law steps in for their protection.  You sir, see this evidence of a Christian civilization!  And two hundred millions of Christians scattered up and down in the earth united in applause.  Orators and statesmen chime in with the axiom, the very object of the organization of civil society is the protection of the weak from the aggression of the strong.

Now if this be so in relations to every other people, in relation to weak members of your race, would it not be equally humane to provide for the protection of feeble colored people that have been born in our midst without any fault surely of their own; who have been cast here, you may say, as waifs on society by an act of Providence?  Are we to crush them with the iron heel of civilization that brings only blessings to all others?  And if their shackles shall be stricken off, are we indeed doomed to witness their indiscriminate murder because they are weak, because they are less capable of providing means of their own defense than we?  This is an illustration of what is sometimes styled the superior civilization of the slave system, and a conception of an enlightened humanity that I could not have believed a few years since would have been exemplified on the floor of the American Senate; because a people are weak, therefore you have a right to murder them, murder them indiscriminately, murder them en masse only because they are no longer slaves.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 5, 1862, p. 1

Senator John Sherman to Major General William T. Sherman, May 10, 1862

WASHINGTON CITY, May 10, 1862.

My Dear Brother:

I received your recent letter in which you mention your position on the morning of Sunday very opportunely.

It arrived on the morning I had to make a speech on Ohio volunteers. The imputations, whether just or unjust, upon our regiments make it necessary in the opinion of our delegation that someone should speak, and I did so. I was exceedingly anxious for your report and went or sent to the Adjutant General's office daily for several days, but was informed that none of the details or division reports had come, although several were published in the newspapers. I collected all the information I could and made my speech. Whether I am in a mile of the truth is mere chance, but I believe my statement is more accurate than any made. Head it and let me know. You will see from Harlan’s remarks there is much feeling against Grant and I try to defend him, but with little success. Why is not your report sent in? Pray hereafter have a copy sent to me of all future reports. . . .

I never spoke under greater embarrassment than I did yesterday. It was a delicate subject, upon which my constituents were sensitive, and yet I was in ignorance how far your reply would overthrow me. . . .

As to your personal position you need not fear. Halleck’s opinion about your action of Sunday is the opinion of the country. You are as likely to be abused on my account as on your own. I am so accustomed to storms of factious opposition as to be perfectly serene under it. I hope you will become so.

Affectionately,

JOHN SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman letters: correspondence between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 147

Iowa All Right at Washington

We clip the following paragraphs from the correspondence of the Chicago Tribune:

Senator Harlan to-day gave Garrett Davis, and Kennedy of Maryland, a capital flagellation for their atrocious statements that if the slaves were emancipated the whites in the South would butcher them.  After showing, for Mr. Kennedy’s enlightenment, that there are already 80,000 free negroes in Maryland, whom nobody ever thought of butchering, he proceeded to inform the two gentlemen that they were lower down in the human scale than a pair of Camanches [sic], for the Camanches only assassinate their enemies and never harm their friends.  Mr. Davis at last grew restive under the chastisement, and said his meaning had been misapprehended – he only said extermination would be the result of emancipation, not that he favored or desired any such savagery.  Mr. Harlan replied that that would undoubtedly be the result if such teachings as those of Davis and Kennedy should be generally accepted at the South.  Common people naturally shudder at the thought of committing murder, but if they were taught by their public men in the Senate of the United States that wholesale murder was necessary and inevitable, they might possibly be led even to that monstrous crime, the like of which the world had never seen.

A poem by an Iowa bard telling “how McClellan took Manassas” was handed around in the Senate this afternoon, and created inextinguishable laughter.  A subscription was raised by one of the pages to have it printed, and there is some talk of electing the author of the lines poet laureate.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 8, 1862, p. 2

XXXVIIth Congress -- First Session

WASHINGTON, March 24.

SENATE. – Mr. TenEyck presented a joint resolution from the legislature of New Jersey asking Congress to take immediate action for the defense of the coast of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and resolving that the several States loan Government funds for this purpose.

Mr. Powell presented resolutions from the Legislature of Kentucky, relating to the tax on tobacco, asking that it be reduced.  Referred.

Mr. Sherman of Ohio, presented resolutions from the Legislature of Ohio against any proposition for a settlement of the rebellion, except on unconditional surrender and a condign punishment of the traitors.  Referred.

Mr. Morrill presented resolutions from the Legislature of Maine, endorsing the Administration and in favor of the confiscation of the property of rebels.  Referred.

Mr. Pomeroy introduced a bill from the removal and consolidation of the Indian tribes.  Referred.

On Motion of Mr. Trumbull, the joint resolution in regard to affording aid to the States in favor of emancipation was taken up.

Mr. Saulsbury said this was a most extraordinary resolution in its purpose and, in the source from whence it came.  It was mischievous in its tendency, and he was not sure it was at all patriotic in design.  It was ignoring all the principles, he thought, of the party in power.  It was an interference with the subject of slavery in the States.  It was an attempt to raise a controversy in those States.  None of the slave holding States asked aid.  He believed that the President, had this thing in contemplation for some time.  The Legislature of his State (Delaware) had been in session and a printed bill had found its way there, offering Delaware $800,000 for the emancipation of her slaves, and the legislature rejected it.  The object of this bill is simply to renew and intensify the agitation of the slavery question in the Border States, and to raise an abolition party there.  He would like some member of the judiciary committee to show him any authority in the constitution for thus applying money to the States.  This bill presents the view of the government going into the wholesale negro trading business.  The State of Delaware will never accept of the bill, but the true Union people of that State will go before the people upon it, and there will not be a vestige of the Republican party left.

Mr. Davis offered an amendment as a substitute for the resolution as follows:

Resolved, That although the subject of slavery in the States is exclusively in the jurisdiction and cognizance of the government and people of the States, and cannot be interfered with directly or indirectly by the government of the United States, yet when any of these States or people may determine to emancipate their slaves, the United States shall pay a reasonable price for the slaves so emancipated and the cost of colonizing them in some other country.

Pending the consideration of the resolution, the morning hour expired, and the bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia was taken up.

The question was upon the amendment offered by Mr. Doolittle to Mr. Davis’ amendment, for colonization, namely, that only such persons shall be colonized as desire it, at a cost not exceeding $100 per head.

Morrill and King explained that they should vote against the amendment, as they preferred the bill as it was.  The question was then taken on Mr. Davis’ amendment, with the following result: yeas 19, including Harlan; nays 19, including Grimes.  This being a tie vote the Vice President voted in the negative.  Mr. Davis made a speech against the bill.  Executive session.  Adjourned.

HOUSE. – Mr. Blair, of Va., presented the certificate of Election of Job. Segur a representative from the first district of that State.

Mr. Bingham said: No election in the exact form of law could have been held on the day stated, namely the 15^th inst.  The election was extemporized.  He moved to refer the papers to the committee on elections.  The papers were referred.

Mr. Dunn offered a resolution, which was adopted, instructing the ways and means committee to inquire into the expedience of organizing a large force of miners, with the necessary machinery, to proceed to the gold mines of the West, and work the same for the benefit of the Government, as a means of defraying the expense of the war.

Mr. Holman offered a resolution, which was adopted, requesting the Secretary of War to inform the House why he has not responded to the resolution of last December, calling for a list of paymasters and division paymasters; and that he now be directed to furnish the same, and to what extent they can be dispensed with.

Mr. Rice, of Mass., submitted a resolution, which was referred, authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to expend a sun not exceeding $50,000, for the purpose of testing the plans for rendering ships and floating batteries invulnerable.

Mr. Anthony introduced a resolution requesting the Secretary of War to inform the House of the cause, if any, of the protracted delay in the release of Col. Corcoran, prisoner of war since July; and that the secretary be directed and requested to stop all exchange of prisoners until Col. Corcoran be released.  Laid over.

Mr. Wickliffe introduced a bill to provide funds in part to pay the interest and principal on the public debt.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, March 25, 1862, p. 1

From Washington

WASHINGTON, March 5.

The rebel congress have unanimously adopted a preamble and resolution, setting forth that whereas the U. S. are waging war with the avowed purpose of compelling the Confederate States to reunite with them under the same constitution and government, and which only tends to consolidation of general government and a consequent destruction of the rights of States and the results attained by separation, and whereas the two sections can only exist together in the relation of oppressor and oppressed, because of the great preponderance of power in the Northern section coupled with a dissimilarity of interests therefore

            Resolved, That this Congress do solemnly declare and publish to the world the unalterable determination of the Confederate States to suffer all calamities of a most protracted war, but never again to politically affiliate with a people guilty of an invasion of their soil, and butchery of their citizens.

Mr. Faulkner denies in a published letter having made a Union speech at Martinsburg.

The Massachusetts 2d occupy the court house at Charlestown, where John Brown was tried.  The regiment, while marching thither, broke forth in the John Brown chorus.

It is rumored that Mr. Toombs is to be made Lieutenant General, and put in chief command of the rebel army, and that he will inaugurate offensive warfare by throwing an immense military force into the free States.

Practical men estimate the franchise of the Pennsylvania avenue railroad as worth half a million dollars annually.

Maj. Meyers, the head of the signal corps, has invented a rocket which carries up a parachute and leaves it in the air to descend slowly, displaying colored fires, scarlet, red and white, at intervals.  The arrangement of these and the time of burning being indicative of the words and phrases.  Also to facilitate night signaling, he has invented colored lights termed Asterisk signals.  Successful experiments were recently made at midnight.

Mr. Foster’s cotton land cultivation bill passed the Senate this morning, by the following vote:

Yeas – Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Collammer, Dixon, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Howard, Howe, King, Lane, Morrill, Pomeroy, Sherman, Simmons, Sumner, Teneyek, Trumbull, Wade, Wilcox, Wilmot and Wilson of Massachusetts.  Total 26.

Nays – Browning, Carlisle, Cowan, Davis, Henderson, Kennedy, McDougal, Pearce, Powell, Rice, Saulsbury, Thomas, Wilson of Missouri, and Wright.  Total 14.

Mr. Harris was in his seat, but did not vote.

Mr. Doolittle left the chamber three minutes before the vote, having first voted against a motion, to postpone the special order for the purpose of taking up the bill.

Mr. Carlisle of Va., made a proslavery speech against the bill and indicated his opposition to the President’s message.

The Senate in executive session to-day confirmed Brigadier Generals St. Geo. Cooke, Butterfield, Graham, W. T. Ward, Pain Sykes, William W. Richardson, Stanley, Burns, Rousseau, Reno, Fitz John Porter, Plummer and Davis.  A general disposition was shown to reject Brig. Gens. on McClellan’s and Halleck’s Staff.  Gens. Morgan, W. K. Strong, Lockwood, Sickles and Gorman were all passed over.

The Senate military committee, had under consideration a bill for a railroad from Washington to Baltimore, through the upper counties of Maryland, by which the fare shall be reduced from $1, to seventy cents.

The Secretary of the Navy has addressed a letter to the naval committees of both houses, urging the necessity of the construction of more gunboats.

The bill providing for the carriage of mails to and from foreign ports, as reported from the committee on post offices and post roads, vessels clearing from foreign ports for the United States are obliged to receive mail matter placed on board by the American Consul or the postal officers at such ports.

NEW YORK, March 8.

Specials this morning are very barren of real news.  The Tribune’s dispatch says contracts for the transportation of army supplies for the next two years, from Fort Leavenworth and Kansas City to posts west of those points, including all Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, were to-day awarded by Gen. Meigs to Irwin, Jackson & Co., the former contractors, their bid being regarded as the one most favorable to the government.

Times’ Dispatch.

The more the President’s message is discussed, the more difficult it is to define the position of parties in regard to it.  One great point however, is gained.  The subject is universally discussed with more calmness than ever before characterized a question about slavery.

WASHINGTON, March 8.

Commissioner of Indian affairs, Dole, has returned from the West.  While in Kansas and Nebraska the Indian chiefs called upon him and tendered the service of their warriors for military service, but these cannot be accepted.  Our six thousand loyal Indian refugees from the Cherokee country are in the lower part of Kansas, in their retreat thither from the superior forces of the enemy.  They threw away everything which impeded their stampede.  The panic among them at the time represented as frightful.  These Indians being in a destitute condition Gen. Hunter supplied their immediate necessity.  Com. Dole telegraphed the Government authorities, and through his representations Congress passed an act for their relief.

The Post Office Department received a letter from Nashville to-day, dated the 3d inst., in which it is stated that the special agent, Markland, on taking possession of the Post Office in that city, found the rebel postmaster had stripped it of every article of property, including blanks, locks, mail bags, time, scales, keys, &ct.  The agent had managed to get the mails from Nashville to Louisville.  The letter adds that the Federal officers and troops have again agreeably disappointed the secessionists by their good behavior and deportment.  Others are mad because the officers and men will not commit acts of violence or perpetrate some outrage of some kind.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, March 10, 1862, p. 1