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PUBLIC LIFE n WASHINGTON, 
 
 THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL, 
 
 APPARENT TENDENCIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT AND 
 ' FEELING IN CONGRESS AND CABINET. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 READ ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 7, 1866, TO HIS OWN CONGRE 
 
 GATION, 
 
 HENKY W. BELLOWS, 
 
 MINISTER OF "ALL SOULS' CHURCH. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JAMES MILLER 
 1866. 
 
■IB 4 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 The real progress of Cliristianity is to be meas- 
 ured by the influence it obtains in tlie actual govern- 
 ment of the world. For the rulers of society rule 
 only by reflecting the public sentiment of the nations 
 or communities they govern. No tyrant is more 
 absolute than the servility of his people encourages 
 or allows him to be. No monarchy is limited further 
 than the independent spirit of its subjects requires. 
 The ministry of Great Britain resigns when the 
 Commons, the representatives of the people, express, 
 by a decisive majority, any lack of confidence in their 
 policy. The moral state of a peoj^le is safely judged 
 by the measures its rulers encourage. The actual 
 piety, the amount and quality of the Christian faith 
 and character of the people of this country is, with 
 tolerable precision, to be estimated from the tone, 
 character, and atmosphere of its capital, the quality 
 of its legislators, the temper and spirit of its rulers. 
 Do the American people understand the Christian 
 religion— its law of brotherhood — its reverence for 
 justice — its faith in a Holy God — its requirement of 
 personal purity and spotless integrity in its disci23les ? 
 Go and see what sort of men they choose to repre- 
 sent them and rule them ! Do you say that courts 
 and governments have always been more corrupt 
 
tliau the people about them ; that power and station 
 are seductive and betraying ; that virtue and piety 
 dwell in the shade, and love retirement ; that it is 
 the common people who constitute the moral strength 
 and excellency of every nation. There is truth in 
 this under governments, founded on hereditary rights, 
 and in nations given over to the control of a native 
 nobility. But, in a country like ours, so nearly a 
 pure rejDresentative one, there can be no error in 
 judging the spirit and temper of the people, their 
 intelligence, moral tone, and religious feeling, by the 
 character and spirit of their rulers, — the men they 
 select from all others to speak and act for them at 
 the national capital, and in the Congress of the coun- 
 try. If the Senate of the United States were com- 
 posed of dissolute, scofSng, worldly-minded, self-seek- 
 ing men, whose personal probity and principles were 
 at the mercy of bribes of money or place, we should 
 have just reason to doubt whether the communities 
 that send them there as their chosen, foremost men, 
 were not themselves hollow, faithless, and without 
 respect for the Christian religion. Of course, we all 
 know that very able politicians, and even powerful 
 statesmen, are not always good men ; even when 
 they foirly do the work expected of them, and ably 
 maintain the principles or policies they are chosen to 
 uphold. Politics and statesmanship are a trade, 
 requiring practice, experience, address ; and many a 
 community, dissatisfied with its representative on 
 moral grounds, or distrustful of his personal charac- 
 ter, persists in sending him to Congress, because 
 better men, and men it more honoi*s and trusts, lack 
 the experience required for the j)lace. Eminent 
 talents, too, and a national prestige, carry some others 
 on in a high political career, long after they are 
 
universally suspected of want of Ligli principle or 
 moral worth. It is not that the people necessarily ap- 
 prove of, or mean to wink at, the unworthiness — but 
 that they have so strong a sense of other important 
 qualifications, that they put up with the moral de- 
 fects. 
 
 For goodness, or fixed principle, or faith and 
 piety, are not of themselves alone qualifications for 
 public office. We must have knowledge, strength of 
 intellect, powers of expression, and capacity for busi- 
 ness, besides. 
 
 Another thing is to be taken into consideration. 
 The machinery of elections robs the people in certain 
 States and communities of a fair opportunity of 
 nominating and electing men of their own choice and 
 approval; and this is to be allowed for in judging 
 the people by their rulers. Just in proportion as the 
 national theory of representation is falsified by any 
 cause, the test we propose is vitiated to the extent of 
 the perversion of the principle. On the whole, we 
 do not doubt that the national taste, principle, piety 
 and will, find a fair and just expression in our Con- 
 gress and our rulers. Sometimes the Eepresentatives 
 are better than the communities they rej)resent and 
 sometimes woi*se ; but the average is nearly correct. 
 
 Having just enjoyed an opportunity of studying 
 this question for ten days at the capital, I propose to 
 give you, in the interest of national morals, the result 
 of my cursory observations. 
 
 And I begin with saying, that nobody goes to 
 Washington with any prejudices in its favor ! If the 
 old adage were infallible, "What eveiybody says 
 must prove true," the national capital would have an 
 almost infamous character. It has been the common 
 usage of the country, the familiar scandal of the press, 
 
6 
 
 and the gossip of transient visitors to Washington, as 
 long as I can recollect, to speak of it as a sink of 
 corruption, a place of universal jobbery and self- 
 seeking; where villainous contractors and dark-lan- 
 terned party conspirators, heavy gamblers, hard 
 drinkers, and showy and careless women, gathered 
 round a Congress in which, with brilliant exceptions, 
 measures were carried and policies fixed by secret 
 machinations and selfish bargainings. The Govern- 
 ment Departments have commonly been represented 
 as poor-houses for the relations and friends of Con- 
 gressmen, — where inefficient, lazy fellows got fair 
 pay for next to no work. Washington is even now 
 usually represented as a specially immoral community 
 in its own fixed population, — a place where drunken- 
 ness, crime, disease, discomfort, and want have a 
 marked existence and rule. 
 
 This opinion, even if true, is widely injurious, and 
 has a tendency to lower the general character of our 
 people ; if not true, its injuriousness is wanton and 
 without excuse. Of course there is always some 
 foundation for such opinions. It is not to be denied, 
 then, that before the war the Southern States made 
 Washington, to a considerable extent, the rendezvous 
 of their rich, reckless young men ; nor that, in the days 
 of national compromises, it was the scene of much 
 underhand political bargaining ; nor that, during the 
 war, army-officers made it the place of much carous- 
 ing ; nor that a large percentage of its people living 
 in hotels, the usual evils of that kind of life, always 
 exist there ; nor that it does not have the ordinary 
 vices, follies, and extravagancies of all capitals, and 
 especially crowded and fluctuating towns. Hasty 
 visitors, knowing only the hotel life of Washington, 
 would misiud2:e the place, and yet think themselves 
 
fully justified iu tlieir unfovorable opinion Ijy the 
 testimony of tlieir senses. 
 
 Now, tlie last five years have given me unusual 
 opportunities of knowing and judging Washington as 
 a place, and as a capital, both in its fixed residents 
 and in its floating population ; and I have no earthly 
 reason for speaking better of it than it deserves,- — no 
 present or prospective private interest in it to warp 
 my judgment. And I say that either the last five 
 years have wholly changed its character, or that its 
 bad reputation is chiefly unmerited. 
 
 Washington has, I think, the most select, intelli- 
 gent, and varied population of any city of its size 
 in this country. Successive administrations always 
 leave, as fixed residents there, a certain valuable 
 percentage of those they have drawn to the sj^ot. 
 Retired and accomplished army and navy officers 
 abound. Inventors, men of science and letters, intel- 
 ligent foreigners, and persons of fortune from the 
 South and West, collect there. It is this class of 
 fixed residents who have built up the churches of 
 Washington, which are singularly numerous and 
 uncommonly well attended. For Washington is a 
 conspicuously church-going place, and on the whole 
 even superstitious in its ecclesiastical tendencies. The 
 Catholic, the Protestant-Episcopal, the Presbyterian, 
 the Methodist churches fiourish with peculiar vitality 
 there ; and the natives and fixed residents seem to be 
 a quiet, decorous, intelligent, moral, and religious 
 people, — comparing favorably with any other com- 
 munity in the country. 
 
 Besides the fixed lesideuts, there is a great float- 
 ing population in Washington, composed of three 
 classes : 
 
 1. Congressmen and their families, with Cabinet 
 
8 
 
 ministers, military and naval officers attacbed to the 
 Departments and Bureaus, and tlie Diplomatic Corps, 
 who may be supposed to form an intelligent and 
 interesting class of persons. 
 
 2. Several thousand clerks connected with the 
 Departments, probably not less than six thousand, — 
 as there are 2,500 in the Treasury alone. This very 
 important body of men of all ages (some with, but 
 most without families), is a very different class of per- 
 sons from what it is commonly supposed to be. A 
 finer set of men, judging by their heads and expres- 
 sion of countenance, it would be difficult to collect. 
 It is composed of that portion of our American popu- 
 lation bred to trade and commerce, or the professions, 
 which possesses too little self-reliance and forwardness 
 to lead off successfully in busii^ess of their own — men 
 broken down or unsuccessful only from excess of sen- 
 sibility, or from having more reflection than executive 
 faculty. A general intellectuality, a half ministerial 
 air, characterizes some hundreds of these men. They 
 are scrimped in their means, if they have families ; all 
 tied to business from 9 a. jr.. to 4 p. m., and always 
 with quite as much as they can do in office-hours. 
 The regulations of all the Departments are rigid and 
 sj exact. In the Treasury, the admirable system of 
 methods, originated by the great mind of Alexander 
 Hamilton, equally wonderful for grasp and accuracy, 
 in management of principles and of particulars, still 
 prevails, and it is said admits of no improvement while 
 allowing indefinite extension. The acti^dty of the 
 Departments, the amount of labor and care borne by 
 the Heads of Bureaus and their clerks, is little known 
 to distant observers, and should save them from the 
 suspicion of being mere pensioners upon the public 
 bounty. The passion for political clerkship in Ameri- 
 
9 
 
 ca, so strange to enterprising and self-reliant men, is 
 due to the fact that the hot, competitive life of our 
 country does not suit all temperaments ; and govern- 
 ment clerkships are about the most independent posi- 
 tions which men with few wants, little enterprise, and 
 a great shrinking from responsibility can find. What 
 Charles Lamb abroad, and Halleck and SjDrague at 
 home, coveted and accepted, — permanent clerkships, 
 that they might pursue literature and poetry in their 
 leisure hours, free from personal business resjoonsibili- 
 ties, — still draws hundreds of Americans out of the 
 Professions and away from Commerce into the calm re- 
 treats of the Government Departments ; and this class 
 of men are a very valuable element of the floating 
 population of Washington ; and a much steadier and 
 more intelligent class than ordinary clerks in com- 
 mercial cities. 
 
 3. A third class of the floating population is 
 what may be called the Lobby — I mean those persons 
 having business with the Departments or with Con- 
 gress — interested in patents, in grants for projected 
 Railroads, anxious to secure modifications of the Tar- 
 ifij or pressing private claims, or urging political mea- 
 sures. As a rule, this is a body of marked and ener- 
 getic men, j)icked out usually by parties at home for 
 tact, force, and persistency — for skill in exj^laining or 
 enforcing their views and policy, — and -power in car- 
 rying their point. It is impossible to sit at a public 
 table at Washington without confronting these men, 
 changing almost every day ; but all with so much char- 
 acter, purpose, determination and address in their faces 
 that the very air is electric with the currents of vital 
 energy they give out. It is rare to meet a j)erson of 
 merely average force ,or common-place appearance in 
 this crowd ; and I do not doubt that there is more 
 
 »^ 
 
10 
 
 planning, originating, scheming l3rain at work every 
 day of tlie session at the Capital than in any other place 
 of its size in the country. This Lobby is the rej^re- 
 sentation, outside of Congress, of every state and terri- 
 tory, of every industry and art, of every claim and en- 
 terprise in the nation. Every considerable week-day 
 assembly, every large Sunday congregation, contains 
 at Washington not only more or less of the actual Sen- 
 ate and House, but scores of clerks and military and 
 naval uniforms, and above all dozens of this Lobby- 
 so that every handful of good seed, skillfully thrown 
 there, falls into fat furrows in every State and Terri- 
 tory of the Union. Pacific and Atlantic, North and 
 South, they are all there, in their likeliest represen- 
 tatives: not only an immense field of useful men, but 
 a most encouraging presentation of the national life 
 
 y and character is offered in these tall, high-headed 
 men, full of vigor, independence and capacity, who 
 look worthy to open and settle the new country, and 
 to own and improve the old. 
 
 If now we turn to Congress itself, I think I may 
 frankly own the gratification and encouragement de- 
 rived from a somewhat extensive personal intercourse 
 
 / with the members of the House and the Senate. It 
 is impossible to admire the manners of the House ; 
 but I believe the British House of Commons sets 
 them a poor example. There is little attention paid 
 to most orators. Members read, write, stroll about, 
 clap their hands for the pages, turn their backs upon 
 the speakers, sometimes put thek feet up higher than 
 tlieir heads upon their desks, and to the casual visitor 
 seem in a very confused and unj)romising condition. 
 But a few days' close watchfulness untangles the snarl, 
 and discloses a very rigid rule and a close eye to pro- 
 gress under all this confusion. 
 
11 
 
 The real business of tlie country is done in com- 
 mittees — tlie House and Senate not meeting till noon. 
 Many desks are always vacated by members absent 
 on committee duty. Men wlio are able to instruct 
 are carefully listened to. The precise attention which 
 members deserve for weight of character, for sense 
 and position, is accurately accorded them. When 
 speakers are really only addressing over the heads of 
 the house their constituents at home, the members do 
 not listen to them. When they are actually addressing 
 the House with honesty and earnestness they are heard. 
 When there is nothing worth hearing, members attend 
 to their own business, of writing letters and reading 
 documents. And, really, any one who supj)oses a Con- 
 gressman to have an easy place, misunderstands his du- 
 ties. He is ordinarily the victim of an immense corre- 
 spondence, — receiving scores of letters every day, if 
 his constituency be large and important, — asking all 
 sorts of questions and all sorts of favors ; attention to 
 this little affaii*, or that great question ; pressing this ap- 
 pointment or that policy ; and occasionally, I am told, a 
 member keeps a private clerk constantly busy with this 
 part of the duty. When we add to thisj the 
 wearisome sessions of the Committees, to one or 
 more of which every member is attached, the study of 
 private bills, and questions of local or State impor- 
 tance, on which members must thoroughly prepare 
 themselves to speak, the hospitalities and courtesies 
 demanded by their constituents visiting Washino-ton, 
 and, above all, the grave responsibilities of those 
 leaders who shape the policy of the rest, it is easy to 
 see that these men do not occupy sinecures. The 
 present House has a high character for business ca- 
 pacity and parliamentary tact and eloquence. It is 
 made up of vigorous-looking and thoughtful men ; and 
 
12 
 
 oue of its most respected members, as far known for 
 his philautliropic and religious work as for his wealth 
 and business ability, told me, that he had been most 
 agreeably disappointed in the moral worth, serious- 
 ness, sobriety, and purity of the members. As you 
 have all observed, spirituous liquors have been ban- 
 ished from the capital ; and I have reason to think 
 that the i^rivate life of the great majority of the 
 members has the average decorum and dignity of the 
 best circles elsewhere. It is clear that the thoughtful- 
 ness and earnestness of the country at large has made 
 itself felt in the selection of new members, and in the 
 tone, temper, and conduct of old ones. 
 
 Turning to the Senate, we find, what we might ex- 
 pect, a still higher grade of persons. The average 
 ability, moral elevation and political character of the 
 Senate, surpasses what has been known there for a 
 quarter of a century. There are no giants, it is true ; 
 no heirs of Webster's mantle, or even Clay's, Calhoun's, 
 and Benton's : men who owed their exceptional great- 
 ness to the immense demands of a young and forming 
 country, — when a few great lights had to illumine a 
 vast region without lesser lamps. But there are no 
 pigmies. Men of solid sense and worth, whose faces 
 and bearing are the unmistakable proofs of their self- 
 respect and dignity, constitute the rank and file of the 
 Senate. They are men who grow as they are ap- 
 proached; more interesting in themselves than in 
 what they say and do. They insjiire confidence, re- 
 spect, and hope ; and are fully entitled to the trust and 
 reverence of the country. It is plain enough that, with 
 the necessity for it, the days of great leadership are 
 gone by. The people, as they have grown more intel- 
 ligent, and won leisure to attend to political affairs, 
 have taken up their ow^n business, and Congress is far 
 
13 
 
 more tlieir passive representative tliau formerly. Tlie 
 Press now discliarges very much tlie office of a great 
 speecli-makiug Congress. Henceforth there will be 
 shorter and fewer speeches, and more business ; and 
 statesmen are getting to be valued more for their wis- 
 dom and attention to affairs than for their much 
 speaking, or even their most .eloquent harangues. 
 
 If we leave the Congressional extreme of the ave- 
 nue, and go over to the other end, where the depart- 
 ments cluster round the White House, we see changes 
 coming over the usages of the Government, which 
 call for serious consideration. During Mr. Lincoln's 
 administration, the pressure on the several depart 
 ments was so great and constant that their heads, it 
 is said, were of very little service as privy-councillors, 
 and had yery little time to spend in discussing a gen- 
 eral policy. The theory of a constitutional council 
 or cabinet, carefully comparing and considering and 
 settling the governmental policy was, we suspect, 
 essentially put at naught. Mr. Lincoln was his own 
 cabinet. He was, if I am not misinformed, sometimes 
 without cabinet meetings for weeks together. He 
 interfered very little with the heads of departments, 
 who were practically sole rulers in their several 
 spheres ; and he, on the other hand, was little con- 
 trolled by their advice. This I hold to be a very 
 serious and dangerous innovation — none the less dan- 
 gerous because Mr. Lincoln's character and success 
 sanctified the error. Mr. Johnson, it i^ understood, 
 adopts the usage of his predecessor ; and thus leaves 
 the country, at this critical moment, without the 
 counsel and guidance of a body of wise men, qualify- 
 ing and enriching a common judgment, and balancing 
 the obhquities and caprices, the prejudices and lean- 
 ings, of an individual mind, llv, Lincoln's cabinet 
 
 /" 
 
14 
 
 meetings — and the same is true of Mr. Johnson's, it 
 is said — were composed of an endless round of daily 
 visitors, who, beginning early and continuing late, 
 haunted the presence of the Chief Magistrate — no 
 doubt bringing him into intimate acquaintance with 
 public sentiment in all parts of the country, but dis- 
 tracting and wearing out his mind and strength, and 
 preventing that prolonged and earnest reflection and 
 comparison of views with peers and statesmen which 
 his position and obligations so much required. In- 
 deed, the conversion of the executive into a sort of 
 general agent and man of business for any and every 
 body who receives private complaints and undertakes 
 to do business in detail, seems to be rapidly going on, 
 and mischievously, as we think, for the interests of 
 the country. All the heads of departments are too 
 accessible. The general policy of every department 
 suffers from a good-natured and democratic readiness 
 to admit intruders of all sorts — men and women — ^to 
 the presence of great officers, whose minds should be 
 fastened on the highest questions, and who should see 
 only those they want to see, not those who want to see 
 them. General Taylor, we have heard, was the only 
 President, since Washington, who positively refused 
 to admit a daily crowd of intruders into his presence. 
 His genuine democracy put his reasons for this course 
 wholly beyond the suspicion of pride of place. 
 
 This is not intended as any reflection ujjon the 
 motives of our late Presidents, but as a special ciiti- 
 cism upon official habits at Washington. 
 
 It is well understood in Washington that the 
 Cabinet is divided upon the policy of the country — 
 half/ perhaps, being substantially with the Presi- 
 dent and half with Congress. This would be an 
 impossibility if the Cabinet discussed fundamental 
 
15 
 
 questions. It is probably only by confining the 
 subjects of cabinet consideration to teclinical details 
 that tliis antagonism is kept out of sight, and the 
 President made content to keep about him men who 
 do not agree with him. Perhaps he finds in this 
 want of full sympathy a ground for taking his own 
 opinion as the decisive policy of the government. 
 On the other hand, perhaps the country and the 
 Congress are glad to have men more in sympathy 
 with their own notions retained in the Cabinet, even 
 though as silent members, who, if they cannot agree 
 with, do not oppose, the President, but exercise, by 
 their very presence and known opinions, a wholesome 
 restraint upon retrogressive notions. It is the opinion 
 of wise men at Washington that Mr. Stanton, who 
 has been a tower of strength through the war, holds 
 his place in the cabinet mainly at the earnest instance 
 of leading Eepublicans, to check the Presidential 
 policy ; while his enormous strength with the people 
 makes it impossible for Mr. Johnson to dismiss him, 
 even if he would like to do so, which we have no 
 reason to believe. 
 
 It cannot be denied, then, that a certain imperial- 
 ism is slowly creeping into our government — that our 
 President, during his four years, is perhaps the most 
 autocratic ruler in the world, having it in his power 
 to throw off the control of his Cabinet and the control 
 of Congress. Out of every four years. Congress is 
 usually only about fifteen months in session, and the 
 President has an almost unchecked dominion in the 
 interval. It is well enough to play off the doctrines 
 of State Rights as an offset to this essential denial of 
 the control of Cabinet and Concrress, his more imme- 
 diate partners in power. But it seems to us that both 
 Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Johnson have stricken down by 
 
16 
 
 thei , peiliaps in j)art, necessary assumption of respon- 
 sibility, some of the cliecks wliicli can alone secure 
 the permanent safety of the country from the effects 
 and caprices of a dangerous one-man power. 
 
 In regard to the policy of reconstruction, I fully 
 believe there is integrity of purpose at both ends of 
 the avenue, — in Congress and in the Executive. But 
 there are great, and what now seem irreconcilable, 
 differences of opinion between the Legislative and 
 the Executive Departments, which are retarding and 
 postponing the settlement of the country. Congress, 
 by great majorities, is determined not to admit the 
 late Kebel States to representation without ample 
 guarantees for the loyalty — not merely of the Repre- 
 sentatives of those States, but of the States them- 
 selves — and the communities w^hose disloyal public 
 sentiment would assuredly make itself felt through 
 lips garnished with the most loyal oaths. Congress 
 is determined to know that the emancipation of the 
 slave is a real emancipation ; his liberty a real free- 
 dom ; that the spirit of secession is exorcised ; that 
 the National debt is not in danger of repudiation ; 
 and the Confederate debt of recognition, by a full 
 Congress,, to be largely composed of the Representa- 
 tives of our late enemies, a party strong enough in 
 conspiracy with the spurious Democracy in the Na. 
 tional Legislature, to seriously threaten the policy of 
 the Union Party that carried through the war. No 
 doubt these fears, honest and strong, even in the mo- 
 derate portion of Congress, are somewhat aggravated 
 by a natural love of power and dread of laying it 
 down, and by the esjytnt de corps which animates 
 every successful party. This Congress is a war Con- 
 gress, and accustomed to the exceptional acts justilied 
 by a state of war, full still of the anxious spirit 
 
17 
 
 whicli so long tortured the national mind. It is 
 backed and supported by a constituency alive with 
 the thoughts and feelings the war engendered, and 
 earnestly demanding that what the North and West 
 talked so resolutely about, when the war was goin"- 
 on, shall now be fulfilled. 
 
 The Executive, on the other hand, and his chief 
 advisers, are the proud custodians of the Constitu- 
 *tion, and seem determined to restore what they call 
 the normal functions of all the States, and so revive 
 the old national life. They assume that the war is 
 over, the rebellion subdued; they pronounce the 
 courts opened, the post-office service reestablished, 
 and no hindrance existing to the full representation 
 of all the late Rebel States — Texas excepted — into 
 the Senate and House. They insist that the Union 
 has never been dissolved, the Rebel States never out 
 of the Union, and of course that they cannot come in, 
 because they are already in. The disorder in the 
 States, they say, has been functional, not organic. 
 The Union has administered a costly medicine, has 
 purged oif the functional disease, and the States have 
 only to resume all their rights and duties, and claim 
 all their privileges ! The President is characteristic- 
 ally an intense lover of the Union. He hated and 
 opposed the Rebellion chiefly as an assault upon the 
 Union, and his sole anxiety seems to be to make and 
 kee]) the Union whole. Slavery does not seem to 
 have been in his eye a great evil in any other sense, 
 than as it endangered the Union. Mr. Lincoln pro- 
 fessed in all his earlier speeches, and especially in his 
 letter to Mr. Greeley, the same doctrine. The war 
 was to put down the Rebellion, and had no other 
 purpose. If slavery supported the Rebellion, it must 
 go down with the other weapons and munitions of 
 2 
 
18 
 
 war belonging to the public enemy — but not at all 
 as the end, simply as a means to the end — the resto- 
 ration of order, and the suppression of insurrection. 
 
 Constitutionally, no doubt, that is the lawyer-like 
 way of putting it. But the people who fought the 
 war, the Congress which represents that people, 
 know and feel that the war was a war against Slavery, 
 its facts, its spirit, its fruits. The Union has no 
 value in itself for them, except as it covers in human 
 rights and prospects. The flag does not stand*, with 
 them merely for a territory stretching from gulf to 
 gulf, from ocean to ocean, governed by a common 
 Constitution and one power, but for certain great 
 American principles of universal justice, human equal- 
 ity and personal liberty. And when they see the 
 mere mechanical or technical integrity of the Union 
 or the restoration of all its representative functions 
 preferred to the establishment of the Union on its 
 true grounds of justice and humanity, they feel as if 
 their rulers and themselves were talking and thinking 
 about somewhat different and very incompatible 
 thing's. 
 
 But after all, our liberty is a matter of constitu- 
 tional and regulated government, and with the cessa- 
 tion of war, the country, from its exceptional state 
 of justifiable expedients, necessarily falls back upon 
 its written letter. The quickening spirit which has 
 temporarily enlivened even the most torpid parts of 
 that letter, gradually ebbs away. We come back to 
 the cold bond ; and all the parties to it must finally 
 consent to interpret it strictly. It is a painful neces- 
 sity to abide by a Constitution which is less generous 
 and noble, and less favorable to human rights, than 
 the public sentiment of half a great country. But 
 we originally purchased our Union by compromises. 
 
19 
 
 and I presume it must be sustained by compromises. 
 It is simply the duty of the more advanced, intelli- 
 gent and humane States, to see that no opportunity 
 is lost to improve the Constitution, or to secure the 
 noblest and more generous readings of it by the Su- 
 preme Court. 
 
 It is this necessity, so well understood by the far- 
 sighted, which gives strength to the President's posi- 
 tion. He says in effect, " The Constitution as it is, is 
 good enough for me, and good enough for the coun- 
 try. Hands off ! All changes are of doubtful value, 
 at least to the Southern States. Do nothing when 
 you don't know exactly what to do. Let the old 
 machine in all its members resume its old motions, 
 and all will be well ! " " What ! " says Congress, 
 " without providing for the universal security of civil 
 rights ; without giving free suffrage ; without at least 
 seeing that the basis of representation is the actual 
 number of voters ; without disfranchising the leaders 
 of the Eebellion ? " " Yes ! " says Mr. Johnson and 
 his friends, " without anything but defending your 
 Senate Chamber and your House of Representatives 
 from the presence of men who cannot take all the 
 oaths of ofBce." 
 
 Sympathizing mainly with Congress, and not at 
 all with the President in his doctrine, I yet half 
 expect to see his policy prevail, because it appeals to 
 the wide-spread desire for swift tranquillization ; be- 
 cause there is such an intense longing on the j^art ot 
 the lousiness and financial classes of the Community 
 for the revival of free and extensive trade and com- 
 merce with the Southern States ;. because the better 
 policy implies the steady triumph of lofty ideas and 
 noble sentiments over economical and temporary 
 interests, and supposes the nation kept up at the 
 
20 
 
 moral level to which actual war elevated it. It will 
 prevail, I fear, because the laywers and courts will sus- 
 tain it ; because it is simple and direct ; requires noth- 
 ing to be done, but only a laissez-faire policy. It will, 
 alas ! prevail even against present appearances, because 
 the literature, the poetry, the talking and leading spii'its 
 of this country unhappily do not represent its votes ! 
 The very reverse of what is true of England, happens 
 here. There the voters do gross injustice to the pub- 
 lic sentiment, not one-eighth part of it having the 
 franchise, and the English people may hate the 
 Southern Confederacy, at the moment Parliament is 
 encouraging it. Here the voters are out of all pro- 
 portion to the intelligence, elevation and patriotism 
 of the country, especially of that portion which is 
 heard in literature, or pulpits, or dignified presses — 
 and often the public sentiment seems to go one way, 
 the votes another ! " Shoot low " is not only a rule 
 with good soldiers, but with successful politicians. 
 The President and his friends, as we fear, understand 
 the country better than a Congress representing 
 mainly the noble spirit which temporarily filled even 
 vulgar souls during the war. They reckon on the 
 average utilitarian, selfish instincts of the nation, on 
 the popular wash for a settled currency and a driv- 
 ing business, and chances for sending all sorts of ven- 
 tures into the South. 
 
 The shrewd, sagacious politicians of this country 
 see which way the cat is going to jump, and, when 
 their principles are weaker than their interests, they 
 prepare to jump with it. The moment it becomes a 
 little more apparent, what is going to succeed, we 
 shall have a new party organized upon it. Already 
 it is adumbrated, and will soon take substantial 
 form. 
 
21 
 
 The only comfort wliicli belongs to sucli a state 
 of tilings is, that finally, the interests of a free nation 
 with a free press, popular education, and democratic 
 institutions, do not, except at serious crises, depend 
 as much as we think upon its government for the 
 growth of a pure public sentiment, or for the moral 
 progress and safety of society. At this very hour 
 the American spirit is doing more to rehabilitate the 
 South than any possible legislation could ; and the 
 necessities of the case, the logic of events, are arrang- 
 ing the relations of the negro and the white man faster 
 and better than any general or State laws would be 
 able to do. A great many theoretical evils disappear 
 in practice. The negro surprises his old master with 
 his good sense. He has nK)re self-care and more 
 steadiness than he ever gave him credit for. 
 Half of the blacks probably are laboring under con- 
 tracts ; a quarter more are fitfully living from hand to 
 mouth, and a quarter are stealing, wandering, and 
 loitering round. Necessity will soon drive far the 
 greater part of these to work. Meanwhile, the 
 demand for labor will soon introduce a competition in 
 wages and kind treatment, between planters, favorable 
 to the rights and elevation of the colored race. The 
 Southerner undervalues the negro still. He thinks 
 he knows him better than we do — as parents always 
 think they know their children better than their 
 teachers or their playmates — a great mistake. The 
 planter has seen him too near, and we have seen him 
 too far off, to know him well — but our judgment is 
 better in the general, and his in particulars. We see 
 him in the lisfht of a common nature, and as freedom 
 would make him ; he, as a special, degraded race and 
 in the actual penumbra of slavery. Neither they of 
 the South nor we of the North trust enougk the 
 
90, 
 
 elevating influence of liberty. They expected nothing 
 from it to change the negro's intelligence and thrift, 
 but much to emancipate his passions and flatter his 
 sloth ; we expect too little from it, in the way of 
 stimulating his whole being, and making him inde- 
 pendent of our nursing and protection. The influence, 
 on the negro character and pros2:)ects, of emancipation 
 already ap2:)ears. It is worse in some respects and far 
 better in others than we think. The race will be 
 decimated rapidly, and its relative proportions not 
 sustained. A fearful percentage are predestined to 
 ruin and rapid decay — they have been artificially 
 nursed and propagated, and must pay the penalty of 
 this animal-raising. But the larger proportion will 
 rapidly rise to the dignity of self-protecting, self- 
 supporting citizens, and are proving the beneficent 
 influences of freedom, every day. 
 
 In the same way, the ordinary interests of the 
 South are rapidly reviving, and will rej^ort their 
 prosperity much earlier than we commonly fear. 
 The churches, the schools, the places of amusement, 
 the newspapers are again reviving and busy. The 
 people are not so desperately anxious for political 
 rights on any terms, as we fancy, and might soon 
 even discover that Representation itself is not more 
 absolutely indispensable to them than to us. It is the 
 drift of a young country, full of life and energy, and 
 setting towards prosperity, that forms the main hope 
 of wise men for the restoration of general comfort, 
 and common and peaceful relations. I must think 
 peace, prosperity, union in less danger than noble 
 faith, recognition of great humanities, and rapid prog- 
 ress in the sense of justice and essential equality. 
 
 This sense of the self-healing and self-rectifying 
 tendencies of our national life and character, is doubt- 
 
23 
 
 less at tlie bottom of the elastic faitli of the Secretary 
 of State — who four years ago drew his notes payable 
 at ninety clays for the restoration of peace and union, 
 has confidently renewed them every ninety days 
 since, and utters them with bolder confidence now 
 than ever. The most philosophical of our statesmen, 
 the American De Tocqueville, he looks into the 
 natural and universal causes of political events, and 
 bases his optimism upon human nature. He agrees 
 with De Tocqueville, too, in a not very lofty view of 
 human nature, and is content with something far 
 short of 'the ideal in " this wicked world." A sincere 
 patriot, a self relying statesman, imperturbable under 
 abuse and suspicion, acting quite as much in reference 
 to foreign as to domestic judgments, and living 
 habitually in the forum of all nations, Mr. Seward 
 has the broadest grasp and the most intelligent ap- 
 preciation of public affairs of all living Americans. 
 The world has mistaken him for an ideologist and an 
 ultraist. I wish he were more of both. He has the 
 philosopher and the politician in equal projDortions 
 in his composition — but less of the sage and the saint 
 than some of the moralists and patriots of the coun- 
 try might desire. Practical sagacity and diplomatic 
 adroitness are united in him with breadth of reason 
 and wealth of knowledge and experience. We miss a 
 little moral height of view and elevation of spirit. 
 But what can exaggerate the majestic service his 
 genius, self-control, and address have rendered the 
 country in its foreign relations ? 
 
 On the whole, my visit to Washington strength- 
 ened my confidence, and relieved my worst fears. 
 I had begun to think the days of 1851 in France 
 might be repeated here, when the President of the 
 French and the National Assembly occupied very 
 
24 
 
 mucli tlie same relation to eacli other whicli Mr. John- 
 son lias borne to Congress, and when it was for a time 
 uncertain whether the Assembly would arrest the 
 President, or the President the Assembly. The crime 
 was left, you remember, for him. It seemed not im- 
 possible that a similar coiifp (Petat might happen here. 
 But that fear was based upon the suspicion that the 
 President was a bad, a weak, and a capricious man, 
 whose body and spirit were both intoxicated with his 
 elevation to power, and who, having disappointed and 
 betrayed his party, was capable of any worse thing. 
 I rejoice in being able to say that abundant oppor- 
 tunities were given me to dissipate that fear ; that I 
 believe nothing of the indecent rumors touching the 
 President's insobriety ; that I think him a very able, a 
 very earnest, and a very patriotic man, honest in his 
 opinions and prejudices. He is, be it remembered, a 
 Southerner, and has been a slaveholder ; he is self- 
 educated ; he has been all his life a combatant and a 
 stump-orator. He has no conventional notions of 
 dignity, though far from wanting personal presence 
 and good manners. He was made Vice-President, 
 with the chance of becoming President, by the Re- 
 publican party, because of his birth-place, antece- 
 dents, and character. These have not changed, and 
 we are bound to make all the allowances which our 
 own former calculations and risks now make neces- 
 sary. I think that Congress has not handled the 
 President with perfect wisdom ; that they might 
 have admitted Tennessee, and so honored the prin- 
 ciple of the right to representation, waiting their own 
 time to admit others ; or that they might have ad- 
 mitted a few States, and tried the experiment of their 
 behavior. Now, too, they have before them a com- 
 plicated scheme of reconstruction, with altogether 
 
25 
 
 too many wheels and springs and too much top ham- 
 per to run on any common road. The President has a 
 simple positive policy, which, I confess, is altogether 
 too trustful and too little guarded, to suit my ideas. 
 But the Committee of Keconstruction have submitted 
 another, which is in its very nature self destructive, 
 and if adopted, could not be carried out. It combines 
 so many things about which different people and 
 communities cannot agree — that it may be said to 
 have broken down l>efore it started. Let one plain,. 
 stout, intelhgible issue be presented to the people 
 before it is too late. Let it be solely this, tlie basis- 
 of representation sliall he the actual voters in each 
 State^ and I think there is yet a hope that we may 
 do something to provide for the sure though gradual 
 introduction of universal suffrage, while we make it 
 the interest of the South to protect, educate, and 
 favor its black population. As to everything else, a 
 true statesmanship would let it go, either as impos- 
 sible, or inexpedient, or superfluous. General, nay 
 universal, amnesty, is our policy. Do not let us put 
 out the eyes of our Samson before we admit him into 
 our temple. Why deprive the people of the South 
 of their natural leaders ? Why make it the interest 
 and the vengeance of every distinguished man in that 
 country, to hate, and to teach hatred to, this Govern- 
 ment ? I believe we must pardon the whole South, 
 for it is equally guilty, and receive it back like a 
 half-penitent prodigal, whom we make wholly peni- 
 tent, by treating him not according to his deserts, 
 but according to our own magnanimity and mercy. 
 
 Meanwhile, the great result of the war, and its 
 full payment, the extinction of slavery, is by univer- 
 sal concession, already secure. No one could visit 
 the Senate and the House, and behold never less 
 
26 
 
 than five-and-twenty negroes sitting as his equals in 
 the galleries of each, listening to the debates of their 
 own Congress — without feeling the tremendous and 
 substantial change the war has wrought ! And this 
 extinction of slavery inevitably draws most other 
 moral and political evils out at the issues of its uptorn 
 roots. The venom of the State Ki^'its doctrine was 
 under the tongue of the serpent slavery, which always 
 lay coiled in its leaves. With its disappearance, 
 State rights will assume henceforth a milder and less 
 threatening aspect. Those who judge most calmly, 
 think the loyalty of the Southern States like enough 
 to outstrip our own, both because it will be new, and 
 because they will be more dependent on Federal care 
 than ourselves. Let us, then, seek to calm and en- 
 courage the public mind, and not leave to turn- coats 
 and renegades, political self-seekers and cunning office- 
 holders, the explanation and defence of the Presi- 
 dent's policy, accompanied with defamation of the 
 noble men who occupy our Senate and lead the 
 House. The people want honest, intelligible informa- 
 tion. They want to know what is practicable and 
 what is not ; what portion of theii- ideal hopes and 
 wishes they must surrender or postjDone, and what 
 they may now hope to realize ; how much is dej^end- 
 ent on political action, and how much may be trusted 
 to general influences. I have endeavored to give 
 you, as a portion of the people, a plain, frank, and 
 simple expression of my observations, experiences, 
 and impressions during ten days just spent at the 
 capital, and I hope it may lead you to think better 
 of the seat of Government, better of our public men, 
 and more cheerfully of the present prospects and 
 ultimate resolution of the political situation. 
 
___ — ^ 
 
 ' ^ PUBLIC LIFE m WASHINGTON, ^ 
 
 THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL, 
 
 APPARENT TENDENCIES OF POLITICAL THOUGHT AND 
 FEELING IN CONGRESS AND CABINET. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 READ ON SUNDAY EVENING, MAY 7, 1866, TO HIS OWN CONGRE- 
 GATION, 
 
 HENEY W: BELLOWS, 
 
 MINISTER OF "ALL SOULS' CHURCU." ^A^, 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 JAMES MILLER. 
 
 1866. 
 
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