The Northern States were hostile to negro suffrage, the first step of his revolutionary programme, and not a dozen men in Congress had yet dared to favour it. Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Kansas had rejected it by overwhelming majorities. But he could appeal to their pa.s.sions and prejudices 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 negro suffrage and negro equality down the throats of the reluctant North.
His energies were now bent to prevent any effective legislation in Congress until his strength should be omnipotent.
A cloud disturbed the sky for a moment in the Senate. John Sherman, of Ohio, began to loom on the horizon as a constructive statesman, and without consulting him was quietly forcing over Sumner"s cla.s.sic oratory a Reconstruction Bill restoring the Southern States to the Union on the basis of Lincoln"s plan, with no provision for interference with the suffrage. It had gone to its last reading, and the final vote was pending.
The house was in session at 3 a. m., waiting in feverish anxiety the outcome of this struggle in the Senate.
Old Stoneman was in his seat, fast asleep from the exhaustion of an unbroken session of forty hours. His meals he had sent to his desk from the Capitol restaurant. He was seventy-four years old and not in good health, yet his energy was tireless, his resources inexhaustible, and his audacity matchless.
Sunset c.o.x, the wag of the House, an opponent but personal friend of the old Commoner, pa.s.sing his seat and seeing the great head sunk on his breast in sleep, laughed softly and said:
"Mr. Speaker!"
The presiding officer recognized the young Democrat with a nod of answering humour and responded:
"The gentleman from New York."
"I move you, sir," said c.o.x, "that, in view of the advanced age and eminent services of the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania, the Sergeant-at-Arms be instructed to furnish him with enough poker chips to last till morning!"
The scattered members who were awake roared with laughter, the Speaker pounded furiously with his gavel, the sleepy little pages jumped up, rubbing their eyes, and ran here and there answering imaginary calls, and the whole House waked to its usual noise and confusion.
The old man raised his ma.s.sive head and looked to the door leading toward the Senate just as Sumner rushed through. He had slept for a moment, but his keen intellect had taken up the fight at precisely the point at which he left it.
Sumner approached his desk rapidly, leaned over, and reported his defeat and Sherman"s triumph.
"For G.o.d"s sake throttle this measure in the House or we are ruined!" he exclaimed.
"Don"t be alarmed," replied the cynic. "I"ll be here with stronger weapons than articulated wind."
"You have not a moment to lose. The bill is on its way to the Speaker"s desk, and Sherman"s men are going to force its pa.s.sage to-night."
The Senator returned to the other end of the Capitol wrapped in the mantle of his outraged dignity, and in thirty minutes the bill was defeated, and the House adjourned.
As the old Commoner hobbled through the door, his crooked cane thumping the 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 c.o.x and summoned the leader of the Democrats. I told them if they would join with me and defeat this bill, I"d give them a better one the next session. And I will--negro suffrage! The gudgeons swallowed it whole!"
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 done this fight."
On the steps a beggar asked him for a night"s lodging, and he tossed him a gold eagle.
The North, which had rejected negro suffrage for itself with scorn, answered Stoneman"s fierce appeal to their pa.s.sions against the South, and sent him a delegation of radicals eager to do his will.
So fierce had waxed the combat between the President and Congress that the very existence of Stanton"s prisoners languishing in jail was forgotten, and the Secretary of War himself became a football to be kicked back and forth in this conflict of giants. The fact that Andrew Johnson was from Tennessee, and had been an old-line Democrat before his election as a Unionist with Lincoln, was now a fatal weakness in his position. Under Stoneman"s a.s.saults he became at once an executive without a party, and every word of amnesty and pardon he proclaimed for the South in accordance with Lincoln"s plan was denounced as the act of a renegade courting favour of 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 Nation could be degraded and made ridiculous, introduced a bill depriving him of the power to remove his own cabinet officers. The act was not only meant to degrade the President; it was a trap set for his ruin. The penalties were so fixed that its violation would give specific ground for his trial, impeachment, and removal from office.
Again Stoneman pa.s.sed his first act to reduce the "conquered provinces" of the South to negro rule.
President Johnson vetoed it with a message of such logic in defence of the const.i.tutional rights of the States that it failed by one vote to find the two-thirds majority needed to become a law without his approval.
The old Commoner"s eyes froze into two dagger-points of icy light when this vote was announced.
With fury he cursed the President, but above all he cursed the men of his own 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 man at the other end of the avenue from the porch of the White House! But I haven"t got them--cowards, dastards, dolts, and snivelling fools----"
His decision was instantly made. He would expel enough Democrats from the Senate and the House to place his two-thirds majority beyond question. The name of the President never pa.s.sed 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 late lamented 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 would obey his word without a question.
Voorhees heard of the edict with indignant wrath. He had met Stoneman in the lobbies, where he was often the centre of admiring groups of friends.
His wit and audacity, and, above all, his brutal frankness, had won the admiration of the "Tall Sycamore of the Wabash." He could not believe such a man would be a party to a palpable fraud. He appealed to him personally:
"Look here, Stoneman," the young orator cried with wrath, "I appeal to your sense of honour and decency. My credentials have been accepted by your own committee, and my seat been awarded me. My majority is unquestioned. This is a high-handed outrage. You cannot permit this crime."
The old man thrust his deformed foot out before him, struck it meditatively 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 doubt it"s all right. Unfortunately, you are a Democrat, and happen to be the odd man in the way of the two-thirds majority on which the supremacy of my party depends. You will have to go. Come back some other time." And he did.
In the Senate there was a hitch. When the vote was taken on the expulsion of Stockton, to the amazement of the leader it was a tie.
He hobbled into the Senate Chamber, with the steel point of his cane ringing on the marble flags as though he were thrusting it through the vitals of the weakling who had sneaked and hedged and trimmed at the crucial 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 did the vote fail--it was all fixed before the roll-call?"
"Roman, of Maine, has trouble with his conscience! He is paired not to vote on this question with Stockton"s colleague, who is sick in Trenton.
His "honour" is involved, and he refuses to break his word."