History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United StatesBarnes, William Horatio
History
History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States
Barnes, William Horatio
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1869; United States. Congress (39th : 1865-1867)
The Senate adjourned, with the understanding that the vote should be
taken on the following day. In the morning hour on that day, as the
States were called for the purpose of giving Senators an opportunity
of introducing petitions or resolutions, Mr. Lane, of Kansas,
presented a joint resolution providing for admitting Senators and
Representatives from the States lately in insurrection. This bill,
emanating from a Republican Senator, who professed to have framed it
as an embodiment of the President's policy, was evidently designed to
have an influence upon the action of the Senate upon the Civil Rights
Bill. It proposed that Senators and Representatives from the late
rebellious States should be admitted into Congress whenever it should
appear that they had annulled their ordinances of secession, ratified
the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, repudiated all rebel
debts, recognized the debts of the United States, and extended the
elective franchise to all male persons of color residing in the State,
over twenty-one years of age, who can read and write, and who own real
estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars.
As a reason for introducing this measure, Mr. Lane, of Kansas,
remarked: "I have been laboring for months to harmonize the President
of the United States with the majority on the floor of Congress. I
thought yesterday that there was a hope of securing such a result. It
did seem that some of the members of this body were disposed to
harmonize with the President. I proposed to go very far yesterday to
secure that harmony. But while pursuing this course, we were awakened
by one of the most vindictive assaults ever made upon any official, by
either friend or opponent, from the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade]--an
assault upon my personal friend, a man who for two years sat side by
side with me here, whom I learned to respect and admire for his pluck,
his ability, and integrity, and to love for his manly virtues; a man
whom I originally selected as the candidate of the Republican party
for the second office within the gift of that party; a man whom I
urged on the Republican convention at Baltimore as their candidate; a
man whose election I did my utmost to secure against the efforts of
the Senator from Ohio. In the most critical moment of that political
campaign, an assault was made on our presidential candidate in the
same spirit evinced by him yesterday in his attack upon the President.
I defended the candidate of the Republican party against that assault,
and I defend the President of the Republican party against the assault
of yesterday.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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