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
