iscussion.

The reason assigned for excepting Jefferson Davis was not that he had
been a rebel, for rebels were restored by thousands; not that he had
been in Congress, for Southern Congressmen were restored by scores if
not by hundreds; not that he had been the chief of the revolutionary
government, for that would only be a difference of degree in an offense
in which all had shared. The point of objection was that Mr. Davis,
with the supreme power of the Confederacy in his hands, both military
and civil, had permitted extraordinary cruelties to be inflicted upon
prisoners of war. He was held to be legally and morally responsible,
in that, being able to prevent the horrors of Andersonville prison,
he did not prevent them.

The debate took a somewhat wide range, engaging Mr. Blaine and General
Garfield as the leading participants on the Republican side, and
Benjamin H. Hill, Mr. Randall, and Mr. Cox on the Democratic side.
Upon a second effort to pass the bill with an amendment requiring an
oath of loyalty as a prerequisite to removal of disabilities, it
failed to secure the necessary two-thirds, the _ayes_ being 184, the
_noes_ 97. All that the Republicans demanded was a vote on the
exclusion of Jefferson Davis, and this was steadily refused. Many
gentlemen of the South are still under disability because of the
parliamentary tactics pursued by the Democratic party of the House of
Representatives at that time. If a vote had been allowed on Jefferson
Davis, his name would have been rejected, and the bill, which included
even Robert Toombs and Jacob Thompson, would have been passed without
delay. If Mr. Davis though that he was ungenerously treated by the
Republicans, he must have found ample compensation in the conduct of
both Southern and Northern Democrats, who kept seven hundred prominent
supporters of the rebellion under disability for the simple and only
reason that the Ex-President of the Confederacy could not share in the
clemency.

[(1) In the history of the Federal Government only one administration
(that of Franklin Pierce) has completed its full term without a single
change in the Cabinet announced at its beginning. The following are
the members of General Grant's Cabinet, the changes in which were in
the aggregate more numerous than in the Cabinet of any of his
predecessors:--

Secretaries of State.--Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton Fish.
Secretaries of the Treasury.--George S. Boutwell, William A.