Page:Disunion and restoration in Tennessee (IA disunionrestorat00neal).pdf/42

 CHAPTER V

RECOGNITION BY CONGRESS

The Radical leaders in Tennessee naturally expected that the readmission of the Representatives to their seats in Congress would immediately follow the restoration of the State government. Therefore, upon the assembling of the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, the full delegation from Tennessee was present on the floor, ready to answer to their names. When Mr. Edward McPherson, the clerk of the House, omitted the name of Tennessee along with the other Southern States from the preliminary roll-call, Mr. Horace Maynard created a dramatic scene by waving aloft his certificate of election, and demanding recognition. In the discussion which followed the roll-call, the cause of Mr. Maynard was championed by Mr. Brooks, the leader of the Democratic minority. "If Mr. Maynard," he said, "is not a loyal man, and is not from a State in this Union, what man, then, is loyal? In the darkest and most doubtful period of the war, when an exile from his own State, I heard his eloquent voice on the banks of the St. Lawrence rousing the people of my State to discharge their duties to their country." The action of Mr. McPherson was upheld by a vote of the House.

This refusal to seat the Tennessee Representatives arose, partly on account of the failure to distinguish between the loyal government in Tennessee, and the so-called Johnson governments, but chiefly because the Republican leaders wished to delay action until a complete reconstruction policy could be mapped out. The Representatives continued, however, to press the claims of the State for recognition