24

going war steamer"; " a bill authorizing the President to take possession of railroad and telegraph lines; 25 a bill to carry into effect the treaty with Great Britain for suppression of the African slave trade; 26 a bill providing for a limited emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia and appropriating $100,000 to assist their emigration to Hayti or Liberia.27

It was in connection with another bill on a related subjectthe abolition of the "black code" in the District, that Wilmot expressed himself most freely on the broader aspects of the question. He advocated the passage of a bill abolishing slavery in the District completely, saying, that "in his judgment, they would be the most derelict in their duty of anybody that ever sat in the seats of power if they adjourned that Congress without the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia." (Cong. Globe, Feb. 24, 1862, p. 918.) He moved that Morrill's bill to that end be made the special order for the following Wednesday, but withdrew his motion pending Morrill's

return.

Wilmot voted, also, for a bill to punish polygamy in the territories of the United States, and annulling certain acts of the legislative assembly of the territory of Utah; 28 and a bill "for the relief of Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant." 29

This allowed him the sum of $1,000 in settlement of his accounts as commissary and regimental quartermaster, fourth infantry, for a loss by theft, incurred without any culpability on his part, June 16, 1848. It seems that, while he was serving at Tucubaya, Mexico, on that date, he found the lock of his trunk broken, and placed $1,000 in silver, Government funds in his hands, in the trunk of a brother officer, Captain Gore, for safe-keeping. The captain's tent was entered and the trunk carried away.

24 Senate Journal, p. 349. 25 Senate Journal, p. 151. 26 Senate Journal, p. 716. 27 Senate Journal, pp. 367, 368. 28 Senate Journal, p. 559.

29 Senate Journal, p. 638. Wilmot also voted for a joint resolution declaring that the United States ought to coöperate with, and afford, pecuniary aid to any State which might adopt the gradual abolishment of slaverya policy strongly favored by President Lincoln. Senate Journal, p. 358.

There was some angry opposition to passing this relief bill, which had haunted the ears of Congress since 1852. Possibly General Grant and Senator Wilmot discussed the tardiness of Federal justice on that same evening when they traced their respective family trees, and found that distant point where the two stems interlocked.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE CLOSING MONTHS IN THE SENATE

THE third session of the Thirty-seventh Congress was not a garden of oratory. Seldom, perhaps, have so few important speeches been made in an equal time in either House; clearly, because the great issues of the past had gone beyond the stage of debate. The time for talking was over. Men of different minds were for the most part segregated under different and widely separated governments, and each of these governments had before it the practical measures of the physical struggle for establishment of its fundamental principles. The United States Senate, at least, found no special need of restating the underlying theories of the Constitution to its own members, and on matters of action (with the possible exception of the Conscription Bill) the differences of view were chiefly confined to matters of detail.

The most important address contained in the records of the session is the President's message, submitted December 1, 1862,1 centered about the idea advanced, as Mr. Lincoln reminded the Congress, in his inaugural-"the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections." "One section believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. . . . Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them." "There is no line, straight or crooked," he added, "suitable for a national boundary on which to divide. . . . Our national life springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit; not from our national homestead. There is no 1 Senate Journal, pp. 6-23.

possible severing of this, but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes, it demands union and abhors separation. In fact it would, ere long, force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.

"Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generation of men; and it can, without convulsion, be hushed forever with the passing of one generation."

That was a doctrine in harmony with ideals that Wilmot himself had expressed-the ideal of "paying as you go," meeting in each generation the obligations that generation had incurred, and not passing on the debts of the fathers for the children to pay, whether those debts be financial, economic or spiritual. And this seems to have been the task to which Senate and House addressed themselves with determined, if not wholly undisturbed, mind. For the segregation just spoken of was not quite complete. The United States Senate still seated some men whose sympathies were with the Administration at Richmond rather than that at Washington, and the increasing solidarity of this copperhead group-not strong enough to work serious mischief, not daring enough to make too open a stand, but still cohesive and purposeful enough to form a definitely recognizable figure in the picture-this was the secondary noticeable feature of the session.

Wilmot's course during these last months of his service in the national legislature was an epitome of the whole: little speechmaking, diligent attention to and support of all Administration measures and all measures for carrying on the war to the swiftest possible ending, and abrupt suppression of the attempts at obstruction or the petty harassing attacks which formed the tactics of the opposition group.

His service in commitee, where of course much of the original construction and after-shaping of the Senate legislative program was carried on, was further extended. To the work on foreign relations, pensions, and claims, carried forward from the preceding sessions, was added, January 19, member

ship on the committee on naval affairs, in succession to Richard S. Field, of New Jersey.2

He took the floor during the consideration of the Revenue Bill in an effort to change what he took to be an injustice and inequality in the licensing of taverns, including all the little hostelries of that period throughout the country. By the coincidence or cumulative imposition of several different license taxes (some of which were graduated according to the rental paid for the establishment, and some level over all places, small or large), the smallest crossroad inn was subject to an annual tax of $35, besides the State license fees. "I cannot understand," urged Wilmot, "the propriety of imposing the same tax or license duty on a hotel like the Continental at Philadelphia, or the Fifth Avenue at New York, that you would impose on a tavern situated in the country at a crossroad, where some accommodation is absolutely necessary, where really they do not do a business of $200 a year. Persons call there occasionally, and they are necessary. I know many such in my country, where the public interest is subserved by the existence of such a tavern.'

3

Poor little country hotels, the only ones offering hospitality of any sort to the traveler among the Pennsylvania hills-no doubt Wilmot in his strenuous hand-to-hand campaigning had known many such. And as he pointed out, under the burden of such taxes they would be closed up, in which case no revenue at all would result; or worse yet, they would be compelled to launch out in liquor selling and peddling outside, to make up their expenses. "It is neither consistent with the morals of the community nor with the interest of the country in regard to revenue," he insisted, in his unsuccessful effort to have the section reconsidered.*

His next conspicuous participation was in the debate of a joint resolution directing the Secretary of the Navy not to

2 Senate Journal, p. 119.

3 Cong. Globe, Thirty-seventh Congress, 3rd session, pp. 110, III. 4 Cong. Globe, p. 110.