Congress at War by Fergus M. Bordewich

Author:Fergus M. Bordewich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

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The session, in the generous words of weary Republican senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin, was “the most laborious, the most momentous, in our whole history.” Its achievements went far to justify such self-congratulatory rhetoric. Few members felt proud of the suspension of habeas corpus, but it was nonetheless a major legislative achievement, and one that had eluded resolution since the beginning of the war. While the Enrollment bill’s offensive discrimination against black soldiers disappointed Radicals who wanted more, it was still a political triumph that was virtually unimaginable to anyone but Thaddeus Stevens two years before. Conscription would bring the war home to every American community, but it guaranteed the flow of men that was necessary to continue fighting. The Bank Act and its creation of a national currency would utterly remake America’s financial landscape. While the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 was of course an executive act rather than a congressional one, it could not have been put into practice without the foundational support of Republicans in Congress. The proclamation overshadowed another watershed event that took place the same day, one that would also remake the nation in other ways. A few minutes after midnight on January 1, at the federal land office in Nebraska City, Nebraska Territory, a Union Army scout, Daniel Freeman, filed his claim for forty acres of free land under the Homestead Act, the first of 1.6 million homesteaders who would transform the West well into the twentieth century.

“With all its faults and errors, this has been a great and self-sacrificing Congress,” wrote Fessenden, whose towering performance, and uncompromising commitment to hard-war policies and the destruction of slavery, had given him one of the most radical voting records in the Senate, behind only Wade, Sumner, and Wilson—a remarkable evolution for a man who still liked to think of himself as a cautious conservative. “If the rebellion should be crushed, Congress will have crushed it. We have assumed terrible responsibilities, placed powers in the hands of the government possessed by none other on earth short of a despotism, borne contumely and reproach, taken the sins of others upon ourselves and forborne deserved punishment of flagrant offenses for the public good, and suffered abuse for our forbearance. Well, future times will comprehend our motives and all we have done and suffered.” The session over, the Thirty-seventh Congress having reached its end, he could at last go home to Portland.

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