Representation in the National Congress from the Seceding States

Representation in the National Congress from the Seceding States

US Politics

Accounts of how the US Congress dealt with members representing seceding states.

Frederick W. Moore

The American Historical Review

Oxford University Press

January 1897

Public Domain

The following paper deals with a small part of a very large subject. It is limited in two directions, in time and in scope. It ends just as Congress was about to constitute the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction. It does not discuss the report of that committee;
much less the laws that followed. It does not even discuss the
earlier proposition in Congress, made in the form of bills for the better
governing of the seceded states, or of resolutions setting forth the
true relations between the national government and the seceding
states. Interesting and valuable, doubtless, from some points of
view, none of them were ever passed to be laws; none were ever
applied practically.
Moreover of all the various relations existing between the several
states and their citizens on the one hand and the national govern-
ment on the other, only those with the national legislative are here
discussed, and these not in full. The discussion is strictly limited to
the cases in which the respective houses of Congress judged the
qualifications of applicants for membership from the states in insur-
rection. The results are made public in the hope that they may
prove of some little interest to students of United States history
since I 86o; and in the further hope that they may prove of some
service as one introductory chapter to the study of reconstruction.
Ten times in the Senate and more than thirty times in the House
of Representatives, during the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Con-
gresses, was application made for admission by men claiming to re-
present some portion of the territory then in insurrection against the
national government. Full lists of the cases with the disposition
made of each are given in notes at the end of this article and of its
continuation respectively. The body of the papers will be limited to
an analysis of the typical cases in order to present the principles and
interests involved.
The point of view is necessarily and exclusively that of the na-
tional government. In a considerable portion of the territory over
which it held sway, its authority had of a sudden been resisted and
defied; there was rebellion, the organization of a hostile government
and attempted revolution.
(279)
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2 80 F. W. Moore
Some of the states were in full possession of the hostile power
before the national government could move. Its first step was to
check the progress of secession. Maryland, Kentucky and Mis-
souri were saved after a struggle. The next step was to recover
lost ground. West Virginia had been promptly and completely re-
covered; and after a while Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas were
regained beyond successful military dispute. The longer and more
stubborn the resistance, the more difficult and risky the reconstruc-
tion. It is impossible to refer here to the work of the executive de-
partment of the government in reconstruction, or to describe the pro-
gress of the army and the work that was accomplished in its rear-
establishing civil order and local government, opening the courts
and starting business. Our attention must be confined to the ac-
tion of the two houses of Congress on the question of filling the
vacancies in their ranks by the admission of members from the states
and districts which had seceded.
One general remark in passing: Some of the applicants for
membership came representing districts which honestly and fully re-
pudiated secession and secessionists. In other cases the desire of
the applicant for office and the emolument thereof is more apparent
than either the desire or the worthiness of the district to be repre-
sented. These are the extreme cases; others lie between.
The chairman of the House Committee of Elections in both
Congresses was Mr. Henry Dawes (Rep.) of Massachussetts, later
senator from that state. Of the nine members, six were Republi-
cans and three Democrats, Mr. Voorhees, of Indiana, being the
leader of the minority. In the Senate Mr. Lyman Trumbull (Rep.)
of Illinois was chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, to which
all election cases were referred, with four Republican and two Demo-
cratic associates.'
When the Thirty-seventh Congress met in extra session, July 4,
i86i, four congressmen appeared from Virginia, one from the dis-
trict opposite Washington, including Alexandria, and three from the
western portion of the state, out of which the state of West Virginia
was afterwards formed. Mr. Dawes made a statement concerning
the election west of the mountains. In brief the situation was this:
In view of the near approach of the regular congressional election,
the Richmond convention forbade the election of federal congress-
men. There was no official call; but an election de facto was held
on the regular day, May 23, and was part of a movement by which
the people of the western counties were proceeding to repudiate the
I But when Jas. A. Bayard (Del., Dem.) resigned from the Senate, Jan. 29, 1864,
his place on this committee was taken by Reverdy Johnson (Md., Rep.).
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Congressmen from Seceding S/ates, z86z 65 28I
action of the Richmond convention and to form ab initio a state
government composed of loyal men. The vote was taken in the
midst of much partisan excitement. But " no serious breach of the
peace occurred."' The vote was only moderately full, but the ap-
plicants received a majority of the votes cast. On this showing,
Messrs. Brown, Carlile and Whaley were admitted to represent
the tenth, eleventh and twelfth districts, respectively, and they im-
mediately qualified and took their seats.
So also did Mr. Upton, from the seventh, the Alexandria district,
whose case was not distinguished from the others at this time.
Several days later, however, a member questioned his title to a seat
and his case was referred to the Committee of Elections, which re-
ported during the long session. The question was raised whether
he was a citizen of Ohio or of Virginia at the time of his election.
But the case was decided on another point. Only a small fraction of
his district was loyal or at least able to show its loyalty. It was con-
stantly threatened by the Confederate army and part of it had been
occupied by them on the day of the alleged election. The election
was called by the secession authorities for the choice of state senator
and delegates to Richmond and was held on May 23. A docu-
ment purporting to be a copy of the poll-book of one precinct (vot-
ing in Virginia at that time was viva voce) showed that ten votes had
been recorded for the claimant for representative in the national
Congress; but no election officers, secessionist or other, certified to
its authenticity. The committee held that there was no proof that
any votes at all had been legally cast for him and that he was not
entitled to a seat. The report was opposed on the floor of the
House on the ground that it was as proper to hold an election in
this district on May 23d, as in the western districts, whose repre-
sentatives had been admitted; that the authority of the Richmond
convention should not be recognized either to prohibit or to super-
vise an election to Congress, and that it was simply a question whether
loyal votes had been polled. But this point was covered in the re-
port. The committee had inquired whether enough loyal votes had
been polled to make the election a valid one, and had agreed that to
seat him on the showing would be a bad precedent. A motion to
amend the report by confirming Mr. Upton's title to his seat was
voted down, fifty yeas to seventy-three nays (thirty-five Republicans
and fifteen Democrats to forty-nine Republicans and twenty-four
Democrats). Accordingly he was unseated, February 27, i862.
Meanwhile the movement to re-establish a loyal state government
had resulted in a popular convention at Wheeling; the convention
'Hagans's W. Va. Reports, I. 54.
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282 F. W. Moore
had inaugurated a state government, including a legislature; the
legislature had met, transacted ordinary business and adjourned.
The convention, reassembling, then called an election for the choice
of representatives in congress in those districts in which none had
been chosen in May. Under this call an election was held in the
first district, as a result of whichl Mr. Segar claimed a seat. The
committee held that the convention had " no authority to act in the
presence of the legislature." It was convened for the purpose of creat-
ing a new state. Its functions ceased the moment the new govern-
ment took on form and life. The election was, therefore, illegal.
They went on to say further that the law of Viriginia had not been
complied with, and that, finally and decisively, a majority of the voters
of the district had no opportunity to participate. Yet Mr. Blair, who
was chosen to succeed Mr. Carlile in the eleventh district on the same
day and under the same authority, had already been admitted with-
out reference to a committee. Mr. Dawes had insisted, in the face
of objections, that this case was clear on its face and in fact and
ought not to be referred; and it was, indeed, pretty well known
that there had been a full, fair and free expression of the wishes of
the district. It therefore appears that the alleged illegality of the
call was treated as cumulative with other irregularities in the case of
Mr. Segar; and was overborne in the case of Mr. Blair by the fact
that there had been a full, fair and free choice in his district, con-
ducted at the polls in essential conformity to law. Still, if the first
point made by the committee in the Segar case really means any
thing, it is hard to harmonize with it the implied ruling of the House
in the Blair case, supported, as the former is, by later rulings; and
probably it is not best to try to do so. Mr. Blair's primna facik
title to a seat was confirmed by the House without an investigation
by the committee, an essential difference despite the attitude of the
committee's chairman.