by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER VII
A WOMAN LAUGHS
Each day the conflict waxed warmer between the President and theCommoner.
The first bill sent to the White House to Africanize the "conqueredprovinces" the President vetoed in a message of such logic, dignity, andpower, the old leader found to his amazement it was impossible to rallythe two-thirds majority to pass it over his head.
At first, all had gone as planned. Lynch and Howle brought to him a reporton "Southern Atrocities," secured through the councils of the secretoath-bound Union League, which had destroyed the impression of GeneralGrant's words and prepared his followers for blind submission to hisCommittee.
Yet the rally of a group of men in defence of the Constitution had giventhe President unexpected strength.
Stoneman saw that he must hold his hand on the throat of the South andfight another campaign. Howle and Lynch furnished the publicationcommittee of the Union League the matter, and they printed four millionfive hundred thousand pamphlets on "Southern Atrocities."
The Northern States were hostile to negro suffrage, the first step of hisrevolutionary programme, and not a dozen men in Congress had yet dared tofavour it. Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Kansas had rejected it byoverwhelming majorities. But he could appeal to their passions andprejudices against the "Barbarism" of the South. It would work like magic.When he had the South where he wanted it, he would turn and ram negrosuffrage and negro equality down the throats of the reluctant North.
His energies were now bent to prevent any effective legislation inCongress until his strength should be omnipotent.
A cloud disturbed the sky for a moment in the Senate. John Sherman, ofOhio, began to loom on the horizon as a constructive statesman, andwithout consulting him was quietly forcing over Sumner's classic oratory aReconstruction Bill restoring the Southern States to the Union on thebasis of Lincoln's plan, with no provision for interference with thesuffrage. It had gone to its last reading, and the final vote waspending.
The house was in session at 3 a. m., waiting in feverish anxiety theoutcome of this struggle in the Senate.
Old Stoneman was in his seat, fast asleep from the exhaustion of anunbroken session of forty hours. His meals he had sent to his desk fromthe Capitol restaurant. He was seventy-four years old and not in goodhealth, yet his energy was tireless, his resources inexhaustible, and hisaudacity matchless.
Sunset Cox, the wag of the House, an opponent but personal friend of theold Commoner, passing his seat and seeing the great head sunk on hisbreast in sleep, laughed softly and said:
"Mr. Speaker!"
The presiding officer recognized the young Democrat with a nod ofanswering humour and responded:
"The gentleman from New York."
"I move you, sir," said Cox, "that, in view of the advanced age andeminent services of the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, theSergeant-at-Arms be instructed to furnish him with enough poker chips tolast till morning!"
The scattered members who were awake roared with laughter, the Speakerpounded furiously with his gavel, the sleepy little pages jumped up,rubbing their eyes, and ran here and there answering imaginary calls, andthe whole House waked to its usual noise and confusion.
The old man raised his massive head and looked to the door leading towardthe Senate just as Sumner rushed through. He had slept for a moment, buthis keen intellect had taken up the fight at precisely the point at whichhe left it.
Sumner approached his desk rapidly, leaned over, and reported his defeatand Sherman's triumph.
"For God's sake throttle this measure in the House or we are ruined!" heexclaimed.
"Don't be alarmed," replied the cynic. "I'll be here with stronger weaponsthan articulated wind."
"You have not a moment to lose. The bill is on its way to the Speaker'sdesk, and Sherman's men are going to force its passage to-night."
The Senator returned to the other end of the Capitol wrapped in the mantleof his outraged dignity, and in thirty minutes the bill was defeated, andthe House adjourned.
As the old Commoner hobbled through the door, his crooked cane thumpingthe marble floor, Sumner seized and pressed his hand:
"How did you do it?"
Stoneman's huge jaws snapped together and his lower lip protruded:
"I sent for Cox and summoned the leader of the Democrats. I told them ifthey would join with me and defeat this bill, I'd give them a better onethe next session. And I will--negro suffrage! The gudgeons swallowed itwhole!"
Sumner lifted his eyebrows and wrapped his cloak a little closer.
The Great Commoner laughed as he departed:
"He is yet too good for this world, but he'll forget it before we're donethis fight."
On the steps a beggar asked him for a night's lodging, and he tossed him agold eagle.
* * * * *
The North, which had rejected negro suffrage for itself with scorn,answered Stoneman's fierce appeal to their passions against the South, andsent him a delegation of radicals eager to do his will.
So fierce had waxed the combat between the President and Congress that thevery existence of Stanton's prisoners languishing in jail was forgotten,and the Secretary of War himself became a football to be kicked back andforth in this conflict of giants. The fact that Andrew Johnson was fromTennessee, and had been an old-line Democrat before his election as aUnionist with Lincoln, was now a fatal weakness in his position. UnderStoneman's assaults he became at once an executive without a party, andevery word of amnesty and pardon he proclaimed for the South in accordancewith Lincoln's plan was denounced as the act of a renegade courting favourof traitors and rebels.
Stanton remained in his cabinet against his wishes to insult and defy him,and Stoneman, quick to see the way by which the President of the Nationcould be degraded and made ridiculous, introduced a bill depriving him ofthe power to remove his own cabinet officers. The act was not only meantto degrade the President; it was a trap set for his ruin. The penaltieswere so fixed that its violation would give specific ground for his trial,impeachment, and removal from office.
Again Stoneman passed his first act to reduce the "conquered provinces" ofthe South to negro rule.
President Johnson vetoed it with a message of such logic in defence of theconstitutional rights of the States that it failed by one vote to find thetwo-thirds majority needed to become a law without his approval.
The old Commoner's eyes froze into two dagger-points of icy light whenthis vote was announced.
With fury he cursed the President, but above all he cursed the men of hisown party who had faltered.
As he fumbled his big hands nervously, he growled:
"If I only had five men of genuine courage in Congress, I'd hang the manat the other end of the avenue from the porch of the White House! But Ihaven't got them--cowards, dastards, dolts, and snivelling fools----"
His decision was instantly made. He would expel enough Democrats from theSenate and the House to place his two-thirds majority beyond question. Thename of the President never passed his lips. He referred to him always,even in public debate, as "the man at the other end of the avenue," or"the former Governor of Tennessee who once threatened rebels--the latelamented Andrew Johnson, of blessed memory."
He ordered the expulsion of the new member of the House from Indiana,Daniel W. Voorhees, and the new Senator from New Jersey, John P. Stockton.This would give him a majority of two thirds composed of men who wouldobey his word without a question.
Voorhees heard of the edict with indignant wrath. He had met Stoneman inthe lobbies, where he was often the centre of admiring groups of friends.His wit and audacity, and, above all, his brutal frankness, had won theadmiration of the "Tall Sycamore of the Wabash." He could not believe sucha man would be a party to a palpable fraud. He appealed to himpersonally:
"Look here, Stoneman," the young orator cried with wrath, "I appeal toyour sense of honour and decency. My credentials have been accepte
d byyour own committee, and my seat been awarded me. My majority isunquestioned. This is a high-handed outrage. You cannot permit thiscrime."
The old man thrust his deformed foot out before him, struck itmeditatively with his cane, and looking Voorhees straight in the eye,boldly said:
"There's nothing the matter with your majority, young man. I've no doubtit's all right. Unfortunately, you are a Democrat, and happen to be theodd man in the way of the two-thirds majority on which the supremacy of myparty depends. You will have to go. Come back some other time." And hedid.
In the Senate there was a hitch. When the vote was taken on the expulsionof Stockton, to the amazement of the leader it was a tie.
He hobbled into the Senate Chamber, with the steel point of his caneringing on the marble flags as though he were thrusting it through thevitals of the weakling who had sneaked and hedged and trimmed at thecrucial moment.
He met Howle at the door.
"What's the matter in there?" he asked.
"They're trying to compromise."
"Compromise--the Devil of American politics," he muttered. "But how didthe vote fail--it was all fixed before the roll-call?"
"Roman, of Maine, has trouble with his conscience! He is paired not tovote on this question with Stockton's colleague, who is sick in Trenton.His 'honour' is involved, and he refuses to break his word."
"I see," said Stoneman, pulling his bristling brows down until his eyeswere two beads of white gleaming through them. "Tell Wade to summon everymember of the party in his room immediately and hold the Senate insession."
When the group of Senators crowded into the Vice-president's room the oldman faced them leaning on his cane and delivered an address of fiveminutes they never forgot.
His speech had a nameless fascination. The man himself with his elementalpassions was a wonder. He left on public record no speech worth reading,and yet these powerful men shrank under his glance. As the nostrils of hisbig three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice,his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger,his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed footseemed to grip the floor as the claw of a beast.
"The life of a political party, gentlemen," he growled in conclusion, "ismaintained by a scheme of subterfuges in which the moral law cuts nofigure. As your leader, I know but one law--success. The world is full offools who must have toys with which to play. A belief in politics is thefavourite delusion of shallow American minds. But you and I have nodelusions. Your life depends on this vote. If any man thinks theabstraction called 'honour' is involved, let him choose between his honourand his life! I call no names. This issue must be settled now before theSenate adjourns. There can be no to-morrow. It is life or death. Let theroll be called again immediately."
The grave Senators resumed their seats, and Wade, the actingVice-president, again put the question to Stockton's expulsion.
The member from New England sat pale and trembling, in his soul theanguish of the mortal combat between his Puritan conscience, the ironheritage of centuries, and the order of his captain.
When the Clerk of the Senate called his name, still the battle raged. Hesat in silence, the whiteness of death about his lips, while the clerk ata signal from the Chair paused.
And then a scene the like of which was never known in American history!August Senators crowded around his desk, begging, shouting, imploring, anddemanding that a fellow Senator break his solemn word of honour!
For a moment pandemonium reigned.
"Vote! Vote! Call his name again!" they shouted.
High above all rang the voice of Charles Sumner, leading the wild chorus,crying:
"Vote! Vote! Vote!"
The galleries hissed and cheered--the cheers at last drowning every hiss.
Stoneman pushed his way among the mob which surrounded the badgeredPuritan as he attempted to retreat into the cloakroom.
"Will you vote?" he hissed, his eyes flashing poison.
"My conscience will not permit it," he faltered.
"To hell with your conscience!" the old leader thundered. "Go back to yourseat, ask the clerk to call your name, and vote, or by the living God I'llread you out of the party to-night and brand you a snivelling coward, acopperhead, a renegade, and traitor!"
Trembling from head to foot, he staggered back to his seat, the cold sweatstanding in beads on his forehead, and gasped:
"Call my name!"
The shrill voice of the clerk rang out in the stillness like the peal of atrumpet:
"Mr. Roman!"
And the deed was done.
A cheer burst from his colleagues, and the roll-call proceeded.
When Stockton's name was reached he sprang to his feet, voted for himself,and made a second tie!
With blank faces they turned to the leader, who ordered Charles Sumner tomove that the Senator from New Jersey be not allowed to answer his name onan issue involving his own seat.
It was carried. Again the roll was called, and Stockton expelled by amajority of one.
In the moment of ominous silence which followed, a yellow woman of sleekanimal beauty leaned far over the gallery rail and laughed aloud.
The passage of each act of the Revolutionary programme over the veto ofthe President was now but a matter of form. The act to degrade his officeby forcing him to keep a cabinet officer who daily insulted him, the CivilRights Bill, and the Freedman's Bureau Bill followed in rapid succession.
Stoneman's crowning Reconstruction Act was passed, two years after the warhad closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting the namesof ten great Southern States from its roll, and dividing their territoryinto five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.
When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied by amessage whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest page ofthe Nation's life.
Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read itsburning words:
"_The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of eachdistrict is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take theplace of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it asbloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege ofacting on the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises._
"_Here is a bill of attainer against nine millions of people at once. Itis based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, andfound to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millionswas heard in his own defence. The representatives even of the doomedparties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The convictionis to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted onlarge masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands anddegrades them all--even those who are admitted to be guiltless--from therank of freemen to the condition of slaves._
"_Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more thanfive hundred years, and in all that time no people who speak the Englishtongue have borne such servitude._"
When the last jeering cat-call which greeted this message of the ChiefMagistrate had died away on the floor and in the galleries, old Stonemanrose, with a smile playing about his grim mouth, and introduced his billto impeach the President of the United States and remove him from office.
