During the debates about amnesty for Jefferson Davis that took place in 1875 and 1876, Republican Representative and former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine argued that giving Jefferson Davis amnesty from the 14th Amendment would make Davis eligible for President of the United States.

In 1876, a bill was proposed by Samuel J. Randall in the House of Representatives to remove all of the “[political] disabilities” that had been added by the 14th Amendment, which had been ratified in 1868.1 It was summarized like this:

The bill, entitled “A bill to remove the disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of the amendments of the Constitution of the United States” was read. It proposes (two-thirds of each House concurring) in its first section to remove all the disabilities imposed and remaining upon any person by virtue of the third section of the fourteenth article of the amendments of the Constitution and relieves therefrom forever each and every person.

It provides in its second section that whenever any person from whom disabilities removed by this act shall be elected or appointed to any post or office of honor or trust under the Government of the United States, he shall take the oath prescribed by section 1757 […].2

The 14th Amendment had placed political restrictions (“disabilities”) on those who had “engaged in insurrection” against the Constitution of the United states after having “taken an oath […] to support” it. A general Amnesty Act was passed in 1872 to decrease the number of people with political restrictions from tens of thousands to “about 750”.3

And so it came to a vote to determine whether the rest of the Confederates would have the strictures of the 14th Amendment removed and thus be eligible for office. The vote failed to meet the required two-thirds majority and Randall’s bill was not passed. At this moment, James G. Blaine, who wished to propose an amendment to the bill, was able to speak.4

The Republican party had not been “bigoted, narrow, and illiberal”, as some had said, and it was not “as though certain very worthy and deserving gentlemen in the Southern States were ground down to-day under a great tyranny and oppression.” Instead, he argued, the Republicans had “an imperishable record of liberality, and large-mindedness, and magnanimity, and mercy far beyond any that has ever been shown before in the world’s history by conquerer to conquered.”

The Government, having won the war, “had the right to determine what should be the political status of the people who had been defeated in the war.” And all they did, showing great restraint — “Did we inaugurate any measures of persecution? Did we set forth on a career of bloodshed and vengeance?” — all they did was to place “only this exclusion”:

That no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The text that Blaine quoted was the text of the 14th Amendment. Years earlier, early in his career as a representative, Blaine had himself voted “Yea” on the joint resolution which proposed the amendment. 5 In the intervening time, he had spent six years as the Speaker of the House.

Now, Blaine was ready to clear the slate for all but one of the confederates. He explained that the amendment he was to propose excepted a single person from the amnesty bill: Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Blaine’s problem with Davis was not that he was the “head and front of the rebellion”. In fact, Blaine thought Davis was “just as guilty, no more so, no less so, than thousands of others who have already received the benefit of grace and amnesty.” (Three days later, Blaine would call Davis the “arch-fiend” and “arch-enemy of the Union”.6)

Instead, Blaine wanted to remove Davis from the amnesty bill because Davis “was the author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville.” Andersonville was a military prison constructed during the Civil War. There, Union soldiers who lived long enough to be freed were photographed naked and utterly emaciated, stick figures with with visible ribs.7 Blaine noted that one in three men held there had died.

In his speech against Randall’s bill and its inclusion of Davis, Blaine used accounts from Southerners to explain to congress how vile the prison at Andersonville was. His goal was to find people who were not naturally inclined to support his cause. Take, for example, the case of the Catholic priest from Macon: “He is a southern man and a democrat and a catholic priest. And when you unite those three qualities in one man you will not find much testimony that would be strained in favor of the republican party. [Laughter.]”

Reverend William John Hamilton, “a man who I believe was ever in the North”, had visited Andersonville “on a mission of mercy”. When he got there, he saw the horrible conditions under which the prisoners were held:

I would frequently have to creep on my hands and knees into the holes that the men had burrowed in the ground, and stretch myself out alongside of them to hear their confessions. I found them almost living in vermin in those holes; they could not be in any other condition but a filthy one, because they got no soap and no change of clothing, and were there all huddled up together.

Blaine blamed Davis for appointing the man who ran the prison and willfully ignoring the conditions there and hiding it from others: “One of the great crimes of Jefferson Davis was that, besides conniving at and producing that condition of things, he concealed it from the southern people.”

This led him to his conclusion. “There is no proposition here to punish Jefferson Davis. Nobody is seeking to do it.” Though Davis could not hold office, he had the basic liberties of a citizen: “He is a voter; he can buy and he can sell; he can go and he can come. He is as free as any many in the United States.” But, seeing as he had not been granted amnesty, he was still bound by section 3 of the 14th Amendment. To remove that stricture, Blaine argued, would make him eligible to be president:

This bill proposes, in view of that record, that Mr. Davis, by a two-thirds vote of the Senate and a two-thirds vote of the House, be declared eligible and worthy to fill any office up to the Presidency of the United States. For one, upon full deliberation, I will not do it.

In 1876, ten years after he first voted in favor of the 14th Amendment, the Republican former Speaker of the House thought (or believed it useful to his argument to say) that section 3 of the 14th Amendment barred insurrectionists from the Presidency of the United States. Randall’s bill without Blaine’s amendment would make Davis eligible for the Presidency as it removed the “disabilities” of the 14th Amendment.8

After Blaine’s speech on January 10th, Samuel S. Cox, a Democrat from New York, took the floor. He was not particularly agreeable to Blaine’s thinking:

Mr. Speaker, the honorable gentleman from Maine, who under some dispensation of Providence or of the people is no longer our Speaker…

Blaine was no longer the Speaker of the House since the Republicans had lost the majority in the spring of 1875.

…has seen proper at the beginning of this centennial year to tear away the plasters of prudence over the green and bloody wounds of our civil conflict.

Cox began to lay out what would become one of the main critical responses to Blaine’s speech. Blaine’s protesting was another instance of waving the “bloody shirt”, of re-opening political wounds between the North and the South for political gain. Why would he do such a thing? Cox said that the reason Blaine was “raking up the embers of dead hates” was for some “bad purpose” — “a bad, mischievous, malicious purpose, which will never elect him [Blaine] to the Presidency if he lives a thousand years [Applause.]”. Blaine was himself in the running for the Republican candidacy.

The longest and most forceful response to Blaine would come from Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia the next day, on January 11th. Historian E. Merton Coulter notes that timing worked in Hill’s favor: he was given the night to prepare his response. In it, he defended Davis against the Andersonville charges and mocked Blaine for his presidential ambitions: “Is the bosom of the country always to be torn with this miserable sectional debate whenever a presidential election is pending?”9 The debate went on for days. Hill disputed the characterization of Andersonville, talked of failed prisoner exchanges and wondered why Blaine hadn’t objected to similar bills before.10

Two days after Hill’s speech, Massachusetts’s John K. Tarbox began his speech by complimenting a previous speaker from Massachusetts.11 Then, he began telling a story about a beautiful day in Boston where thousands cheered as the “soldiers of Maryland, of Virginia, of South Carolina” marched “shoulder to shoulder.” Near “the patriot shrine of Bunker Hill”, the soldiers paused to “[consecrate] anew the union of the Republic [Applause].” There, they “struck hands […] in pledge of eternal amity and declared on that altar sacred to a common glory that not alone from the statute-book of the nation, but equally from the hearts of the people, should be razed forever all memorials of our unhappy feud.” Tarbox was seeking full amnesty on behalf of the “voice of Massachusetts.”

Full amnesty ought to include Davis, he said, and Blaine had misunderstood what amnesty means. It was not “a pardon of any offense [for Davis]”; amnesty “is simply the removal of disabilities imposed upon Jefferson Davis.” The only thing that could justify continuing to bar Davis from office is “public safety”:

[Blaine] would refuse this amnesty, because by it this body declares that he is worthy to fill the highest offices of the Republic. Sir, the gentleman knows, or ought to know, that this bill has no such significance. It pronounces no opinion upon his worthiness.

Blaine had said three days earlier that the bill would make Davis “eligible and worthy to fill any office up to the Presidency of the United States”. Tarbox’s implication was that the bill only spoke to Davis’ eligibility and not his worthiness for office. Tarbox continued:

Suppose, sir, the gentleman from Maine [Blaine] was under some legal disability to hold office from any cause and a proposition was submitted here to remove that disability, would he like that test applied? Would he ask that this body should refuse relief unless it judged him fit, capable, and worthy to be President of these United States? Such a test might, sir, somewhat imperil his chances of the amnesty he sought. [Laughter.]

The mistake in Blaine’s speech, for Tarbox, was to believe that giving Davis amnesty and making him eligible for “the highest offices of the Republic” was necessarily to declare him worthy of them.

Blaine’s great speech was not universally well-received. Coulter reprints a cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper with an illustration by Joesph Keppler showing Hill and Blaine fighting over a dead dog labeled “Rebellion”. Uncle Sam stands behind them and asks them to stop fighting, pointing to a shirt flying in the wind labeled “Morton’s”.12 Senator Oliver P. Morton, especially known for emphasizing the rebellion and the Democrats’ role in it, was a Republican senator also running for the presidency.13 “Stop fighting, boys, and bury that offensive thing with Morton’s ‘bloody shirt’,” Sam says. “Go to work. ”