$5.-In the Fortieth Congress.-1867-1869.

The impeachment of President Johnson was first bruited in the House of Representatives, January 7, 1867. It was regarded by Mr. Grimes, at the time, as an impolitic measure, and without sufficient warrant. In the course of this year affairs assumed a gloomy aspect. Mr. Grimes had serious apprehensions of anarchy for a time. The excesses of the President provoked extreme measures in opposition. New constructions were given to the Constitution. The powers of the respective departments of the Government were disturbed. As Mr. Grimes predicted, the Republicans lost ground in the fall elections. The first session of the Fortieth Congress was held in March, July, and November.

108.-To Mrs. Grimes.

WASHINGTON, March 12, 1867. The impeachment project is subsiding; it being the almost universal opinion that, while the President has been guilty of many great follies and wickednesses, he has not been guilty of those overt, flagrant, corrupt acts that constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors," and make an impeachable offense; and that it is not worth while to establish an example which might result in making ours a sort of South American republic, where the ruler is deposed the moment the popular sentiment sets against him. We have very successfully and thoroughly tied his hands, and, if we had not, we had better submit to two years of misrule, which is a very short space in the lifetime of a nation, than subject the country, its institutions, and its credit, to the shock of an impeachment. I have always thought so, and everybody is now apparently coming to my conclusion.

AGAINST CLASS LEGISLATION.

Upon a proposition to place in the care of the Freedmen's Bureau moneys due colored soldiers, to be deposited in the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, Mr. Grimes remarked, March 13th:

I do not know that any very great degree of consistency is

Certainly I do not think we
During the session that has

expected of public men nowadays. exhibit any very great degree of it. just closed, we solemnly declared by act of Congress that all the colored men of this country have intelligence enough, and position enough, and consequence enough in the country, to entitle them to the elective franchise. We have made them citizens. We have said nobody shall exercise guardianship over them. And now comes a resolution which declares that the Freedmen's Bureau shall take possession of the property of these men; that the bureau, or its agents, shall be authorized to receive the drafts issued to them from the Treasury Department for their bounty, pay, or pensions; and that under certain circumstances the money shall be deposited to the credit of the commissioner, not in a sub-Treasury of the United States, not in a national bank, but in the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company; which, so far as I know, the Senator from Massachusetts knows no more about the solvency of than I do ; which has made no exhibit of the condition of its affairs to the Senate, or to Congress, or to the Military Committee; and which may be no more solvent than the bank in the neighborhood of the Senator, at Newtonville, which, I suppose, he would have been willing to indorse two weeks ago, in as emphatic terms as he has indorsed this savings-bank to-day.'

The men belonging to the party to which the Senator from Massachusetts and I belong have always claimed that this class legislation was a great error, that it was wrong, that it was wicked; that we should not single out one class, and say that the nation should take the guardianship of that class, to the exclusion of another class, and confer upon them a consequence which we would not confer upon another class. I had thought and hoped that that. time had gone by; that we were successful; that we had triumphed in this regard; and that we were to see and hear no more of class

1 In 1873, a national-bank examiner, under instructions from the Controller of the Currency, examined the books of the Freedmen's Bank, and reported its affairs to be unsatisfactory, and pointed out a number of irregularities, which might well have been characterized first as last as so many robberies. In 1874, another examination was held, and the concern was pronounced insolvent. And in little less than a year from the time that the insolvency of the bank became known-such was the involved and atrocious condition of its affairs-none of its wronged and needy depositors has received a cent.-(The Nation, April 15, 1875.)

legislation. But what is this proposition but placing, by an act of Congress, the business affairs of all the colored men who have been in the Army and Navy and marine corps, under the guardianship of the Government and of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company? I have no doubt that wrong has been perpetrated on colored men in the collection of this money. So it has on white men, and there is no reason why we should pass such a law applicable to colored people, and not apply it to the white people.

With reference to tendering the thanks of Congress to several generals for their civil administration in the South, Mr. Grimes said, July 8th:

I think it would be exceedingly immature and improper for the Congress of the United States, upon the little testimony they have before them on the subject, to adopt these resolutions. Until within the last two or three years, a vote of thanks of Congress was regarded as the highest benefaction that could be bestowed upon an American citizen. We have already greatly lowered it in the estimation of the public by conferring it upon civilians' for no distinguished merit; and now it has been proposed, not, as heretofore, in regard to Army and Navy officers, for distinguished services in the field where they have periled their lives, but for, it is supposed, civil administration. I do not know enough about the administration of these men to be able to pronounce such a judgment as I ought to be able to pronounce, when I cast a vote for such a proposition. So far as General Sheridan is concerned, we have thanked him for his services in the field. What do we know about his administration at New Orleans, except such information as we get through the newspapers?

THE COTTON-TAX AND THE PROSPERITY OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

I considered this cotton-tax at the time it was imposed, two years ago, as a temporary tax. All the taxes imposed at that time were, in fact, experiments. We all so regarded them, and spoke of them. We have been taking them off from some articles, and putting them on others, and changing them every session since we began this system of internal direct taxation. The question is,

1 Cornelius Vanderbilt, George Peabody.

What has experience taught on this subject? Is it wise to continue the tax? Does the condition of our finances require it? Will it improve the industries of the country? Can its continuance be longer justified? I have always voted for taxes on cotton, not because they are based upon the slightest principle in the world, except the same principle that will justify a forced loan.

I should like to call the attention of the Senate to the chapter that we are now making in American history, as it is to be read in the future. There were eleven States of the Union that undertook to destroy our Government, for the sake, as they insisted, of preserving their property in men. They levied war and appealed to arms. In those eleven States, slaves had been held as property for many generations. In six of those States, slaves were employed almost exclusively in the production of cotton for nearly a century. That was the means by which they supported and accumulated wealth for their masters, and procured their own daily bread. They are accustomed to no other kind of labor. The rebellion against the Government was crushed. We have been the victors. As the victors, we have imposed terms upon the rebels. One of those terms is, that the slaves shall be free men from this time forward. We have done that as an act of precaution, and as an act of justice. We have felt it to be our duty to elevate, to educate, and to make free men, in every sense, of these colored people, and have bestowed upon them the elective franchise. And now, while attempting to elevate and ennoble that class of men, we propose to strike at the industry to which they have been accustomed-the only instrumentality which it is in the power of those men to use, in order to educate and support their families-by selecting the article of cotton, the only agricultural product reared upon American soil that is taxed, and impose upon it a tax of twenty-three per cent. And you do this, when you protect free labor in the North, by imposing an average duty of sixty-five per cent. upon all articles which come in competition with Northern labor from abroad. Do you say that this is not striking at free labor in the South? We all know that it is. If it be not, what becomes of the argument of forty years' standing, that the free labor of the country needed protection, and that your tariff had a tendency to foster, protect, ennoble, and dignify American labor? Yet here you take from the very poorest, the most dependent agricultural laborer in the country, twenty-five

per cent. of the value of his product, while you protect the skilled laborer of the country to the average extent of sixty-five per cent., knowing at the same time that this burden which you impose upon the needy American producer of cotton operates as a forty per cent. bonus to the grower of cotton in India and Egypt, to enable the latter to drive your own producer out of the markets of the world. This is the chapter of history we are making.

We are deeply interested in this subject. We are not anxious, as some gentlemen avow that they are anxious, that the production of cotton in the South shall be broken up, and the people of that section only produce corn and the cereals in the place of cotton. We want labor in the South to be rehabilitated and reorganized. We want the old productions resumed, and labor there to have its proper reward. We want the Southern States to furnish in the future, as they once did, a reliable market for the agricultural products of the Northwest. Is there anything improper in this? What is the argument that our New England friends urge here in favor of their sixty-five per cent. upon all the imports of the country? That by the aid of that duty they build up a market where our agricultural products are consumed. Are they unwilling that we should have two markets? Is it not as proper for us to be interested in having a market at the South, and to that end allow the Southern people to raise such. products as they please, as that we should vote to enforce sixty-five per cent. of duties on such imported articles as we consume, and then attempt to justify ourselves on the ground that we thereby make a market for agricultural products in the Eastern States?

I am willing that the tax should be suspended for one year, until we can see what may be the effect of that suspension upon the industry and finances of the country; otherwise, I shall vote for its entire repeal (December 20th).

In the fall of 1867, before leaving home for Washington, Mr. Grimes expressed to a few friends his desire to aid in founding a public library in Burlington. An association was organized for that purpose, February 22, 1868. His original donation was five thousand two hundred and four dollars and twenty-five cents, which he expended in the purchase of twenty-one hundred and four volumes, many of them large and costly books.