The reports of committees are usually handed in and ordered to be printed; but now, at the impassioned call of a Senator from South Carolina,[11] the report of the Committee, whitewashing incredible outrages, was read by the Chairman at the desk of the Secretary of the Senate. The Chairman left his seat for this purpose, and stood face to face with the Senate.[12] For two hours the apology for that usurpation which had fastened a Black Code upon an inoffensive people sounded in this Chamber, while the partisans of Slavery gloated over the seeming triumph. There was a hush of silence, and there was sadness also with some, who saw clearly the unpardonable turpitude of the sacrifice. Mr. Collamer followed with a minority report, signed by himself alone, which he read at the desk of the Secretary, standing face to face with the Senate. Jesse D. Bright was at the time our President, but he had installed in the chair on that momentous occasion none other than that most determined artificer of treason and drill-sergeant of the Rebellion, John Slidell, who sat behind, like Mephistopheles looking over the shoulder of Truth,[13] while the patriot Senator, standing before, gravely unfolded the enormities that had been perpetrated. Few then present now remain; but none then present can fail to recall the scene. The report which Mr. Collamer read belongs to the history of the country. But the scene comes clearly within the domain of Art. In the long life of our departed friend it was his brightest and most glorious moment,--beyond anything of honor or power, whether in the cabinet or on the bench. For what is office, compared to the priceless opportunity, nobly employed, of standing as a buttress for human rights?
The other signal occasion, when he showed much of the same character, and was surely inspired by the same sentiment, was during the last year, when the illustrious President, who now reposes in immortality, undertook, in disregard of Congress, and solely by executive power, to institute civil governments throughout that region of the Union where civil governments had been overthrown,--imitating, in the agencies he employed, the Cromwellian system of ruling by “major-generals.” The case of distant and oppressed Kansas was revived. Who can forget the awakened leonine energy of the aged Senator, when, contrary to his custom, he interrupted another in debate to declare his judgment against the power of the President to institute permanent civil governments “to last beyond the war”?[14] The dividing line was clear. The President might exercise a temporary military power, but Congress must lay the foundations of permanent peace. This simple principle was, of course, only the corollary of that rule of Jefferson, which has become one of the commonplaces of our political system, asserting “the supremacy of the civil over the military authority.”[15] The eggs of crocodiles can produce only crocodiles; and it is not easy to see how eggs laid by military power can be hatched into an American State.