istration. No
unmanly efforts to compromise, no weak shirking from duty, sullied the
fame of the great body of senators and representatives. Even the Whig
party in 1841, with Mr. Clay for a leader, did not stand so solidly
against John Tyler as the Republican party, under the lead of Fessenden
and Sumner in the Senate and of Thaddeus Stevens in the House, now
stood against the Administration of President Johnson. The Whigs of
the country, in the former crisis, lost many of their leading and most
brilliant men,--a sufficient number indeed to compass the defeat of Mr.
Clay three years later. The loss to the Republican party now was so
small as to be unfelt and almost invisible in the political contests
into which the party was soon precipitated. The Whigs of 1841 were
contending only for systems of finance, and they broke finally with the
President because of his veto of a bill establishing a fiscal agency
for the use of the Government,--merely a National Bank disguised under
another name. The Republicans of 1866 were contending for a vastly
greater stake,--for the sacredness of human rights, for the secure
foundation of free government. Their constancy was greater than that
of the Whigs because the rights of person transcend the rights of property.

On the 12th of December Mr. Cowan had submitted a resolution requesting
the President to furnish to the Senate information of "the condition of
that portion of the United States lately in rebellion; whether the
rebellion has been suppressed and the United States again put in
possession of the States in which it existed; whether the United-States
post-offices are re-established and the revenues collected therefrom;
and also, whether the people of those States have re-organized their
State governments; and whether they are yielding obedience to the laws
and Government of the United States." Mr. Sumner moved an amendment,
directing the President to furnish to the Senate at the same time
"copies of such reports as he may have received from the officers or
agents appointed to visit this portion of the Union, including
especially any reports from the Honorable John Covode and Major-General
Carl Schurz." The President's message, sent to the Senate a week
later, in response to this resolution, was brief, being simply a
statement of what had been accomplished by his Reconstruction policy,
with an expression of his belief that "sectional animosity is surely
and rapidly merging