obvious that this can be reached only by requiring as conditions-precedent to restoration

1. That the civil and military leaders of the rebellion, who naturally create and direct the public opinion of the South, should be made ineligible to office under the United States Government.

2. That the rights of the freedmen and the safety of the Government be secured by grant ing suffrage to the liberated or withholding it temporarily from the disloyal.

3. That the elective franchise and an equal distribution of political power shall be protected by a decrease in the basis of representation, where impartial suffrage is denied, by such a proportion of the whole population as the disfranchised males above twenty-one years of age bear to the whole male population above that age.

There is no injustice in such requisitions, and they are imperatively demanded for public safety. There is no hardship in withholding political power from men who have violated the most solemn oaths, have destroyed untold wealth, and decimated the population of the land in an effort to overthrow its Government.

Is it not our paramount duty as guardians of the Republic to throw around it such safeguards of law as shall protect it against the machinations of a yet powerful foe, until treasonable purposes shall have passed away or become innoxious? I am constrained to believe that no loyal man would hesitate for a moment to give a cordial support to these measures were not his reason perplexed or his desires overruled by a theory of the indestructibility of States which dominates his better judgment and his patriotism. I fully concur, sir, in the opinion entertained by gentlemen around me, that the insurgent States did not perish, either by their ordinances of secession or their acts of war; but I differ in toto from the conclusion that they have a right to representation in Congress simply because of their existence as States. If the present governments of the rebel States have been organized by those who had forfeited all their political rights, and are held in their power, they have no legal existence or right of representation more than the revolutionary governments which have been overthrown. The national Legislature, to whom alone the right belongs, must in some way signify when their political status has been properly restored before they can rightfully claim seats within it. The right of a Government to make use of the means necessary to its own existence is the supreme law of every State. It was that reserved and sovereign right of the Government which conferred upon us the power to refuse representation during the pendency of the struggle, and the same imperative law of public necessity demands the continued exclusion of the representatives of that rebel power till the loyal people of the South, who have never worshiped at the altars of treason, shall have reconstructed their State governments upon principles consistent with the genius of civil liberty and upon conditions which we shall dictate as essential to the future peace and welfare of the Republic. It is not for treason to sit in judgment upon itself, nor for the enemies of the Government to become chief counselors of the State.

The war has wrought great changes, not only in the social condition, but the civil structure of the late slave States. They cannot return as they were originally, and it is proper that Congress, to whom belongs the right of determining the conditions upon which States shall be organized and of making them parts of the Union, should decide when these States have been properly reorganized and fitted to renew their legitimate functions in the Union. This is a responsibility which we, whom the people have made depositaries of their will, cannot innocently yield or repudiate, and for another to assume it would be a usurpation of power such as would not be tolerated in the coarsest and most absolute despotism to be found on the map of the world. And yet, sir, on this very question of the right of Congress to impose

upon the rebel States conditions-precedent to representation, the issue is to be made and contested before the people, and we had better meet it fully and fairly upon this floor.

The war was a logical and inevitable result of the conflicting views entertained by the northern and southern schools of politics in respect to the nature of our Government. They who regard it as simply a league, necessarily transferred sovereignty to the independent States of which it was composed, and held that the State was entitled to their highest allegiance and could secede at pleasure. We, on the other hand, who held that the Union was a Government de facto, denied the right to withdraw, and contended that the Federal Government could claim supreme allegiance and coerce the people of a State. With social and industrial systems in constant and complete antagonism, it must ultimately happen that sectional interests would be thought paramount to the advantages of the Union, and then the final arbitrament of force must come, as it did. But when it came, was it the purpose of the South to overthrow the State governments? Certainly not, for it was in their interests that they rebelled. They renounced their allegiance to the Constitution and attempted to transfer it to another. They did not desire to inaugu rate anarchy, but to construct a new confederacy out of the existing States. When peaceful measures failed they attempted forcibly to sunder the umbilical cord which bound them to the parent State, to expel Federal authority in all its forms from their borders, and to transfer the States without lapse or essential modification of their governments to a new federal league. This they did in fact, but not in law. It was simply a suspension of Federal authority. Their ordinances of secession passed by Legislatures were void; for the States, as such, are not parties to the Union, and have no more power to break the bond than a board of trade or city council. Their ordinances of secession passed in conventions were equally void, first, because the Constitution has no provision for self-destruction in that way; and secondly, because the Government was originally organized by a three-fourths vote of all the States, and could only be disorganized, if that were possible by peaceful means, by a similar vote. Eleven States only instead of twentyfour made the attempt, and hence their work was a nullity.

Did they effect their object in the conflict of arms? They established a civil power which had a de facto existence and exercised the functions of government for four years. Did it acquire an existence de jure? I think not. If it did, then the rebels dismembered our territory and became alien enemies upon a foreign soil, for they could not have become alien enemies upon our own soil. If it did, then they can only be held as prisoners of war and can claim exemption from the guilt and the punishment of treason. If it did, they cannot be required in law or justice to pay taxes levied upon the States during their separate existence; and have a right to insist that the liabilities which they incurred as an independent power shall be assumed and honorably discharged by the General Government, on their readmission to the Union. If it did, they are to-day in the condition of conquered territory and should be brought into the Union, like other States, by a vote of Congress, and not by the supererogatory work of constitutional amendments. If it did, then the rebels played the double part of victors and vanquished in the final scene of the drama, and have been asking and receiving pardons from a defeated foe. It is clear, sir, that the slave States never reached the dignity of an independent confederacy. There has never been a moment when they have not been regarded and treated as a part of the Union. Their de facto government was never recognized by other Powers as belonging to the community of nations, and was treated by us as a fiction during the pendency of the contest. The brave men who fell on a thousand battle-fields, and the mighty host

of not less heroic men who survive, are entitled to the glory of having preserved the integrity of the Union and the supremacy of the Gov

ernment.

But though the right of the Government to collect customs, hold courts, maintain military power, and exercise all other functions of Federal authority in the insurgent States, has remained unbroken, yet it has been assumed, and much legal learning marshaled to prove, that the local governments perished. I admit the great skill and ability of the advocates of this theory, but have failed to be convinced of its truth. I am unable to see how the numerous citations which have been made from distinguished publicists are applicable to the state of things which here exist. The local governments of the seceding States had an uninterrupted continuity of existence until the fall of the confederacy, and were then destroyed, not by the enemies, but by the friends of the Union. The legitimate governments were usurped by a revolutionary power, which administered them in the interests of treason and in defiance of Federal authority. There was a continuity, but not an identity of existence, when a loyal was transferred into a disloyal State. The former passed over its form, but not its life, to the new State, and hence did not necessarily perish, either at its birth or its demise. It was neither a metamorphosis nor a metempsychosis of the State. It was not a case of death, but of suspended animation. The insurgents maintained the old forms, in order the better to concentrate and wield their power, but in law they had no municipal governments in operation from the beginning to the close of· the war, for a State can come into exist ence only by an act of Congress. They are simply municipal organizations for home purposes, and not governments in the purview of international law. Hence they do not come into existence by the recognition of foreign Powers, and their status is to be determined by constitutional rather than international law, the same as cases are decided in court by statute law, where there is a statute, to the exclusion of common law. Under the Constitution, I know of no way in which a State can perish. If the people should resort to their reserved right, and sunder their relations to the Federal Union by successful revolution, undoubtedly the State would cease to exist as a part of the Government. But this case does not occur until the revolution has been recognized as a success by other Christian Powers. This position, I think, will not be controverted by gentlemen familiar with public law.

The loyal people of the South were overpowered and held in duress by an armed mob, and their governments rendered inoperative by force during the period in which the slave power was testing the ability of the Federal Government to maintain its supremacy.

But the usurpation has been crushed and the rebel power subverted, and now the governments of the States revert to the loyal people of the South, who have a right to claim protection and immunity at our hands while they reorganize their governments on principles which we may deem essential to the republican form guarantied by the Constitution and to the future peace and safety of the Republic. Says Chief Justice Chase:

"It is my opinion the States remain States. The rebel governments of the southern States have been destroyed. All the machinery of these governments has come to an end; and now, holding, as I do, that these States remain States, the second process of reorganization is that the governments now revert into the hands of the southern people. They are to rebuild the governments of these States."

It is not designed by the series of measures now pending to construct a platform for the admission of new States, though it may become such, but to put the organization of the disrupted governments into the hands of loyal citizens, and to preserve them in their custody till time shall have removed, or at least soothed, the passions and prejudices of these troubled times. The justice and wisdom of such a policy will hardly be questioned by any friend of the

The present Chief Magistrate, too, speaking out of the fullness and bitterness of his experience, said:

"But in calling a convention to restore the State, who shall restore and reëstablish it? Shall the man who gave his means and his influence to destroy the Government? Is he to participate in the great work of reorganization? Shall he who brought this misery upon the State be permitted to control its destinies? If this be so, then all this precious blood of our brave soldiers and officers, so freely poured out, will have been wantonly spilled; all the glorious victories won by our noble armies will go for naught, and all the battle-fields which have been sown with dead heroes during the rebellion will have been made memorable in vain. Why all this carnage and devastation? It was that treason might be put down and traitors punished. Therefore I say that traitors should take a back seat in the work of restoration. If there be but five thousand men in Tennessee loyal to the Constitution, loyal to freedom, loyal to justice, these true and faithful men should control the work of reorganization and reformation absolutely. I say that the traitor has ceased to be a citizen, and in joining the rebellion has become a public enemy. He forfeited his right to vote with loyal men when he renounced his citizenship and sought to destroy our Government.'

The bill reported by the committee proposes the temporary disfranchisement of rebels, while the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts provides for a system of suffrage which shall include all males above the age of twenty-one. These two measures fairly involve a discussion of the grounds and the policy of suffrage.

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The theory has been advanced that the family is the unit of society and the rightful source of political power. This, though beautiful as an abstraction, does not, I apprehend, solve the problem of suffrage. If the right to vote springs from the family relations, how many votes shall the family cast? If but one, who shall cast it? Do you say the father, who is the natural representative and defender of the family? But suppose the father is superannuated and feeble, would he be called upon in an emergency to shoulder his staff, when staggering under the weight of eighty years, to defend either his family or his country? Would not his stalwart but unmarried son, sustained and impelled by the vigor of thirty summers, rather be summoned to stand in the breach when the rights and privileges of either his family or the State are invaded? As, under such circumstances, the son would more ably defend, so would he not more safely exercise the suffrage of the family than the father? But the theory deprives him of the privilege and the State of the advantage of a vote. If, now, all the family but this son were cut off, and he left alone, is he still to be deprived of all political rights till he becomes the head of a family? Would not this be a limitation rather than an extension of the precious privilege of suffrage, and tend to transfer the sovereignty of the majority to an aristocratic minority?

Suppose, again, the head of the family is a Mormon, and the husband of a score of wives: is the political power of twenty families to be given to the saintly patriarch of Utah? Sir, such a policy would turn the current of history, swiftly flowing into civil freedom, backward toward the patriarchy of the infant world. I dismiss the theory, and turn to one more plausible though equally fallacious. I refer to the dogma that suffrage is an inalienable natural right..

Now, sir, I contend that it is not a natural right at all. It does not exist in a state of nature, but is created by the organization of civil society. It is the method by which the ultimate sovereignty of the people is expressed in the administration of government, and hence is purely a political right. Voting is not an end but a means, and should be extended or limited according as the one or the other will best subserve the ends for which Governments are made. In a republic the privilege should be

For these, among other reasons, I hold that the question of suffrage is not to be determined by an appeal to our original rights, but by a consideration of its probable effects upon the public welfare and the perpetuity of the Government. This I contend for, not because I wish to exclude freedmen from the ballot-box, but because I would trace our political privileges to their true source. I would place upon defensible and impregnable grounds the exclusion of amnestied but unrepentant rebels from any part or lot in the work of reconstructing the Union, shattered by their hands, and which they are still anxious to destroy. We have no right to exclude any man from the privilege of suffrage unconditionally, but we have the same right and are under the same obligation to require of him for its exercise those conditions of intelligence and virtue without which republics cannot exist, as we have to make preparation and fitness a prerequisite for the discharge of official and ministerial duties. This is demanded of us by all the force of our obligations to preserve and perpetuate good government.

The political axiom that taxation and representation are correlative rights, which the fathers laid down in justification of their act of revo lution, has been reiterated here and elsewhere as an irrefutable defense of universal suffrage. But the argument is false in philosophy and defective in logic. It assumes that suffrage should be as universal as representation, which is the very question at issue. Taxation does not necessarily carry with it the right to vote. Men may be required to pay taxes for the sup port of a Government which protects them in the enjoyment of their civil rights, even where public safety requires a restriction of their political rights. This holds in the case of females and aliens, and may be applied with even greater force to native-born citizens who

have been in arms against their Government. Ignorance may exclude from the ballot-box, but treason must. Whether the entire adult male population made free by the proclamation of January 1, 1863, and by the late amendment of the Constitution, numbering some seven hundred thousand, shall at once be admitted to the full enjoyment of all the political privileges of American citizens or not, is simply and solely a question of political well-being. A deprivation of civil rights is a defeat of the ends for which Governments are organized, and is an abuse of power, but a Government based upon political equality presupposes a degree of intelligence and virtue, and hence may properly demand the qualifications essential to its own existence in those who exercise its privileges.

We cannot settle the question of suffrage by reference to abstractions. Civil institutions are not a creation of the pure reason, but are an outgrowth of the experience of ages, and must be maintained by practical wisdom; but it is beset with difficulties. Free Govern ments are impossible among uncivilized peoples. When the masses are but partially or viciously educated, as in South America and Mexico, and even in parts of Europe, they have but a precarious and fitful existence. Then, an addition to the existing body of electors, of seven hundred thousand men wholly destitute of mental discipline and a practical knowledge of affairs, if not fatal to free government, might render it undesirable. But here, where the great majority of the people are under the restraints of a Christian education, we have a reserve of conservative power, which would seem to be abundantly able to counteract any dangerous tendencies resulting from such an increase. It may be more safe to give them the privilege to vote than to leave them like the pent-up fourth estate in Europe, a discontented and factious force under the State, perpetually seeking to redress its real or imaginary wrongs by mobs and revolutions. Every Brit ish ministry for half a century has been obliged to protect itself against this class of the popu lation, by holding an army in one hand and a reform bill in the other.

The fact that the freedmen are concentrated at the South throws some doubt and perplexity into the problem. If they were scattered over the whole country the gift of suffrage to this people would not hazard or materially affect any State or national interest whatsoever. The whole body is less than the number of foreigners naturalized every ten years, and would constitute but one seventh of the entire voting population of the country. A Government which has sufficient power of assimilation to maintain its character and its stability against the igno rance and prejudice brought in by an annual increase of the foreign vote of a hundred thou sand need not entertain an apprehension of evil to result from the vote of seven hundred thousand natives who have been taught the vir tue of self-restraint and the value of liberty in the school of oppression. There can be but little danger from a race so docile and apt to learn. We should bear in mind, too, that though themselves enslaved, they have grown up in the midst of free institutions and have had the moral discipline of suffering. Remember, also, what unswerving loyalty they exhibited in the darkest and most hopeless hour of the war, when the pampered children of the Republic had yielded to the sorcery of treason and gone into a foul revolt against liberty and the Government of their fathers. With what incorruptible fidelity they fed and guided through all snares and dangers our starving soldiers escap ing from the infernal lazaretto of a power which renounced alike the laws of war and the instincts of humanity. With what alacrity they leaped into the bloody arena when the hazard. of life was made the price of their liberty, With what dauntless heroism they fought and fell, side by side with the bravest and manliest of the land, for the integrity of a Government which had been to them the house of bondage. Why, sir, these despised chattels of the traitor

ous chivalry grappled with their masters in the deadliest breach, and fought with a firm and desperate courage where bullet and shell made wildest havoc with your ranks, and their ashes mingle with the dust of your noble dead from the rivers to the sea and the Gulf. Have not such deeds redeemed the race from dishonor and distrust, and entitled them, not only to a protection of their civil rights, but to an impartial enjoyment of the privileges of citizenship? It seems to me, sir, to be a legitimate result of the war, and as though to withhold it would be a violation of the gratitude, the honor, and the plighted faith of the Republic.

But, sir, I would not insist upon my views or make my convictions an obstruction to the restoration of a cordial union and fraternal intercourse with the South. We must ask nothing more, we must accept nothing less than what is necessary to the future peace and safety of the country. The suffrage of colored men, though limited by intelligence and military service, would undoubtedly be offensive and humiliating to the South, for it would conflict with pride of caste and with settled convictions that political subordination is the divinely appointed condition of black men. It is idle for us to expect that legislation or victories will supplant the inveterate prejudices of a century.

Time is an important element in moral triumphs, for the progress of ideas in general society is slow. But we have a right to insist, both as conquerors and the friends of freedom, that theories that have covered the land with shame and sorrow and well-nigh wrecked the Government shall nowhere again take forms of law or turn our legislative halls into the arenas of discord and passion.

We have been told that the appearance of the freedmen at the polls would be the signal for an indiscriminate war of extermination, and in the next breath that it would enhance the political power of their former masters. If, now, the desire of the South to realize both of these objects did not neutralize their efforts for either, the past is an assurance that the power of the Government would be ample to crush sedition, while the untarnished record of the negro during the war and his quiet but earnest pursuit of knowledge and the legitimate fruits of industry now, are to us a pledge of his future loyalty to liberty.

The southern argument that the ballot should be withheld on account of race or color rests in unalloyed prejudice, which has grown up from a false education and a vicious social system. It is indefensible on any principles of human nature or sound logic. A reference to facts and history shows abundantly that there is no natural repugnance between races or colors. What is sometimes regarded as such is only a false class pride, made obstinate by long-continued, artificial, and enforced distinctions in social condition, which becomes obvious and palpable when the races are brought together upon a common level of political equality.

Why, sir, these sticklers for an incompatibility of race, if you will but perpetuate the inequality and wrong of a barbarous age, will mix and circulate freely and gladly in this wide mosaic of society, and even mingle their blood till all the nice distinctions of color are blended and lost in a universal smut of the cuticle. These puerile conceits which we have been wont to hear pronounced with solemn and assured gravity by politicians of the southern school will soon follow into obscurity or contempt the outrage and wrong in which they were engendered-"Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat."

But the paramount argument for a system of suffrage which shall admit freedmen and exclude rebels from the franchise of the ballot is the necessity of securing at the South a party whose loyalty is unimpeachable, to renew and maintain municipal governments in the insurgent States, true to the principles which have prevailed in the late struggle of arms. This will be specially imperative, if we adopt the theory of the Executive, that these States are

We have just emerged, sir, from a grand revolution. The principles involved, and which have gained the final mastery, have no less intrinsic value and are not less vital to the welfare of those who shall enter into our labors than were those for which our fathers staked their lives, and for the transmission of which they renounced the whole proud inheritance of the fatherland and built anew the fabric of civil government. Is there any "powerful charm" in the wizard past which should hold this generation spell-bound? Our responsi

bilities to the future are not less than were those of the past to us. The authority of legal maxims and venerated parchments is not so high as the cry of justice and the demands of public safety.

Sir, we are under a covenant of blood to the loyal dead and the loyal living and to their children after them to see that what the people have gained in the field is not lost in the forum. We cannot shirk this grave responsibility under the pretext of public necessity, and be guiltless. The people will hold us in the discharge of our solemn obligations. The divine law does not require us to do equal justice to "white" men, but to all men; and if we cannot find the statute upon the tables of the lawgivers, we may find it written upon the heart by Him who "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."

We cannot afford to lose time in restoring the rebel States to the full exercise of their functions in the Federal Government. The Union cannot long lie asunder in time of peace. There is a silent, irresistible force in the tide of events, a recuperative power in the great industries of the country, stronger than political parties, which will enforce an early reorganization of these States. If we do not adopt some just and feasible plan for the reconstruction of the disorganized South, the people will reconstruct this House. Nothing should be done in a spirit of exasperation and revenge. The safety of the Republic and the cause of national liberty alone should dictate terms. The freedom of all must be "maintained," and the peace and security of the Government assured by retaining it in the hands of its friends. But while we battle with an inflexible will for the realization of these indispensable conditions of reunion, we shall do well to bear in mind that in bringing back eleven great States to their allegiance we cannot secure full and exact justice as in the ordinary administration of law; that retaliation, if possible, would not restore our treasure or bring back our dead, and that time, which obliterates the trenches of war, will soften our sense of wrong and take something from the severity of our demands.

Practical statesmanship to-day does not consist in determining what we would do if we could, but what we can do if we will, and then in doing it. Let me not be understood as palliating the guilt or counseling a feeble dispensation of justice to the master spirits who raised and directed this storm of blood. To-day they are building the tombs of dead traitors, and inciting the rabble to the red-handed work of negro extermination. They are attempting, by processions, songs, and eulogies to corrupt the current of history and redeem from eternal infamy the memory of their comrades in perjury, murder, and treason. These things must cease. We must have but one history, and our monuments must teach the wisdom and glory of loyalty. It cannot be otherwise than that the latest and most resplendent chapter in our national records, the statutes of the last half decade, and the next; the very tribute which industry casts into the public treasury; nay, that the prevailing sentiments and familiar

speech of the loyal country should be a bitter and perpetual reproach to these men. Would you, then, place them here to baffle legislation, where every debate would be to them as terrible as the fiery tracery upon his palace walls to the doomed monarch of Babylon? Place them here and you make this place a bedlam to us and an inferno to them. Bitter dissensions would constantly arise, which would finally dismember and ruin the Republic. Once within these walls their purpose would find fit expression in the language of Beelzebub to the infernal council:

"Untamed reluctance and revenge, though slow, Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice In doing what we most in suffering feel.' It is an indispensable condition of peace to both North and South that the guilty authors of the war, whose pride and passions would rankle with the shame of defeat, should be forced into, obscurity where they will be stripped of the prestige of distinction and the power of place.

Our policy should be to punish the leaders, but to elevate and inspire with confidence the masses who have been cheated or forced into epithets of "fanatical Yankee" and "southern rebellion. We should no longer bandy the

tyrant,' nor nurse sectional animosities and prejudices as groundless as the childish sentiment the poet has cast into the pleasant epi

gram:

"I do not love you, Dr. Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell, But this alone I know full well, I do not love you, Dr. Fell.” While we should shrink from no duty, and shirk no responsibility which the safety and welfare of the country demand, our abiding aspiration and effort should be to lay wide open the channels of trade and intercourse between the North and South, and to bind the two sections together by the bonds of mutual interest, and the yet stronger ties of common ideas and common patriotism. If we are to be one people, the deep, dark chasm which has opened in our history, which puzzles the skill of the wisest, must be spanned by frank and manly concessions and a mutual forbearance until the growth of other times shall have obliterated the horrid breach. The men who have trodden the paths of war, and whose graves lie thick and beautiful on southern plains, as the stars that keep watch in the deep vault of heaven; the heroes who survive and the heroes who went down in the rage and wrath of battle, like grass in the swath of the mower; they who at New Orleans and at Mobile, with rudder set and sails spread to the breeze, sailed as into the very mouth of hell, and brought forth the twin demons of treason and bondage to the light of justice and liberty, have made it impossible that a slave should ever again crouch and tremble beneath the flag of the Republic. To us belongs the duty of assuring the safety and perpetuity of the Union. Let us do our work in the spirit of Christian charity, and in our admiration of men of noble natures and heroic mold, who dared to stand like heroes at the threshold of their homes, and to fall like men at their hearth-stones, in defense of a bad and wicked cause, let us forget our wrongs and foster a spirit of patriotism and of brotherhood, which shall embrace every State and every citizen in our broad and sea-girt domain, rich in its mountains and rich in its plains, blessed in its climates and blessed in its peoples.

Mr. ROSS. Mr. Speaker, it is known, at least by my constituents, that I was not a supporter of the last Administration, and did not cast my vote for the election of the present incumbent of the presidential chair; nor have I any retractions to make or apologies to offer for such opposition. Educated in the principles of the Democratic party, with an abiding faith in their correctness, I cheerfully gave my aid to the election of its chosen standard-bearers, thinking it the best and safest policy to intrust in its keeping the destinies of the country; nor have these opinions been shaken by subsequent events, but confirmed. I thought that

conciliatory measures and wise counsels would preserve the Union and avert the calamities of à civil war. To this end I favored the peace offerings tendered in Congress by Mr. Crittenden and Mr. Douglas. Some of the measures of the Administration, which I regarded as infringing upon the Constitution, the reserved rights of the States, and the liberties of the citizen, I strenuously opposed. This difference of opinion with and opposition to the Administration has sometimes called forth from its friends the unjustifiable charge of disloyalty to the Government and sympathy with treason. The inference is unfair, and no hypothesis could be more foreign to the truth. At the last presidential election eighteen hundred thousand votes were cast outside of the States in rebellion against the policy of the Administration. These men were not disunionists; they were true friends of the Constitution and the perpetuity of civil liberty. They would have preserved the Union peaceably if possible, but forcibly if necessary. The Union preserved in its pristine purity is worth all the sacrifices, vast as they have been, of blood and treasure. Whether they were right or wrong, whether the one or the other policy would have been best, is no longer a practical question; what is done cannot be recalled.

Let us turn from the dead past to the living, practical issues before us. First and greatest in magnitude and importance is the restoration of the Union with amicable, fraternal relations between its different sections. It rises infinitely above all others, and merits the profound and dispassionate consideration of Congress and the country. Half a million of our brave men and untold millions of treasure have been lavishly bestowed to suppress rebellion, enforce the laws, and maintain the Union. The objects for which the war was prosecuted were authoritatively enunciated by resolutions introduced in both branches of Congress by Messrs. Johnson and Crittenden, and obtained with great unanimity its concurrent sanction. On this congressional platform, acquiesced in by every department of the Government without change or modification, the war was prosecuted, the rebellion suppressed, peace restored, and the Union maintained. Such, at least, was the judgment of the country up to the time of the meeting of the present Congress. Every where, on land and sea, our arms had been triumphantly victorious; the insurgents were routed and vanquished, laid down their arms and sued for peace. Animosity began to give way, sectional bickering was hushed, business and confidence began to revive, the country was tired of strife and war, the national heart yearned for peace, quiet, unity, and fraternity. The Executive had inaugurated and was successfully carrying out a policy for the restoration of civil authority, which for its wisdom and justice commended itself to the country and the civilized world. Such was the condition of national affairs when Congress convened.

These bright visions and cherished hopes received their first rude shock when the honorable Speaker, in his serenade speech, sounded the key-note of opposition to restoration-that we should make haste slowly." The sentiments enunciated in that carefully prepared speech, by one of the ablest and most distinguished of his party, foreshadowed unmistakably the purpose to thwart the Executive in his policy for the restoration of the Union. A caucus was called, Mr. STEVENS's anti-restoration resolution adopted, the Clerk refused to place on the roll or call the name of any member from either of the eleven southern States. As soon as the House was thus organized the caucus resolution was adopted, creating the celebrated joint committee of fifteen on reconstruction, to which were to be referred without debate all credentials and other matters appertaining to members from the eleven southern States, thereby ignoring the standing Committee of Elections in each House and depriving them of their right to "judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members."

This committee was created for the purpose of preventing restoration; to destroy, not to restore, and thus far it has successfully carried out the objects and purposes for which it was ushered into existence. They are opposed to the restoration of the Union, and it will never be restored as long as they have the power to prevent it. The resolution creating this committee and defining its duties is in palpable conflict with the plain provisions of the Constitution. Permit me to call your attention to it. Article one, section five, provides that "each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members." Now, while this resolution stands as valid and is executed it virtually annuls this constitutional provision that "each House shall be the judge," &c., "of the qualifications of its own members." By the terms of this resolution both Houses must judge of the qualifications, &c., of each, instead of each House judg ing of its own members. By referring all credentials to this committee you deprive this House of being "the judge," or of even expressing an opinion on the subject; neither House can act separately as the "judge; but it requires both Houses, acting jointly, to be the judges."

By the Constitution each House is to act separately in judging of the qualifications of its own members, while by the resolution this right is denied, as it requires the concurrent action of both Houses before the members can be admitted to either. If three fourths of the members of this House desire to admit a member from Tennessee it cannot be done without the consent of the Senate, wherefore I hold that the resolution is in violation of the Constitution as it prohibits each House from the exercise of the constitutional right to judge of the qualifications, &c., of its own members, as this House cannot act upon the subject without the concurrent action of the Senate. By this new rule all propositions for the admission of members from the southern States must be referred, without debate or vote, to the joint committee on reconstruction. How, then, can this House judge of the qualifications and admit a member when it desires to do so? It may be said by rescinding the resolution. But can one House repeal a joint resolution? Thus the Constitution is held in abeyance by joint resolution of Congress.

Again, article one, section two, of the Constitution provides that "each State shall have at least one Representative;" and by article one, section three, the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. Yet Congress has been in session for over five months, and in palpable violation of this plain constitutional provision has persistently refused any representation either in the Senate or House from eleven States of the Union, although from some of them, at least, loyal Senators and Representatives, duly elected and qualified, with legal credentials, have been knocking at our doors asking admission, unless they would consent to abandon the great fundamental principle which lies at the basis of our form of government, that each State has the exclusive right to determine who shall exercise the elective franchise, and to manage and control her own domestic institutions and civil polity in her own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States and the laws made in pursuance thereof Congress can only lawfully exercise the delegated powers, all others 'are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Many of the States now represented in Congress do not conform to the invidious discriminations of the disunion committee. Why not exclude their members for the same reason?

Sir, I have not been disappointed in the action of the committee charged with the specific duty of reconstruction. According to all parliamentary rules and usages, it should have been constructed with a majority favorable to the object with which it was specially intrusted. I fear

this orphan child of reconstruction will never receive much nourishment from the breast of its unnatural, unfriendly mother. Like military courts-martial, the committee was organized to convict. Their object has been to dis sever and destroy, not to restore or build up. This "central directory" has held its star-chamber meetings in secret conclave. Still the country could readily divine what such a committee would naturally be doing. After two months" session with the credentials of members from eleven States before them, the first bantling ushered into the presence of the House, nurtured on the fructifying pap of the "committee of public safety," was a constitutional amendment to deprive these unrepresented States of some twenty or thirty Representatives in Congress, to which they are entitled under the Constitution, and without permitting them to be heard by Representatives or otherwise. It is sought to enforce an odious constitutional p al provision upon eight million people, against their will, and without their assent.

Then a very modest appropriation of $10,000 is asked for to enable them to manufacture testimony in favor of disunion and against the restoration policy of the Administration. Such a request was promptly granted by such a Congress. Next, twenty-five thousand extra copies of voluminous ex parte testimony, prepared by the secret junta, are ordered to be printed, expressly as a campaign document, to be used for the purpose of engendering sectional strife and exciting personal animosities and bitterness between the people. Thus increased taxes are imposed upon the people to further party schemes, dissever the Union, and misrepresent and malign the President.

After three months of the most excruciating labor the "directory" introduce another proposition to admit the State of Tennessee into the Union. The State of Tennessee out of the Union! If so, then the rebellion was a success, the Union severed, and the Government destroyed. Sir, is this theory of a dissevered Union and dead States true? If so, when, where, and by what means was it accomplished? The insurgents passed ordinances of secession. Did we acknowledge their binding force or validity? Surely not; we held them as absolutely null and void. They claimed the right to take certain States out of the Union, and, to enforce it, appealed to the arbitrament of arms. We denied the right and accepted the tendered wager of battle. They waged war against the Government for the purpose of taking the States out of the Union; we prosecuted it on our part to keep them in the Union; and inasmuch as it is admitted that the contest was decided in our favor, it is difficult to understand how the committee come to the sage conclusion that the insurgent States are out of the Union. If this theory be true, the present incumbent of the executive chair is ineligible to the office of President, not having been prior to his election "fourteen years a resident of the United States."

Sir, the sophistical theory of a dissevered Union is false and fallacious, and cannot stand the scrutinizing test of investigation. Accord ing to the reasoning of the committee, the singular anomaly is presented that the States, in some mysterious manner, without any person knowing when, where, or how, actually got out of the Union, though the rebellion collapsed and the Government triumphed. It is urged that the States were guilty of treason, and, therefore, dead States, out of the Union Every lawyer knows that a State cannot com mit treason. Tennessee, never having been out, requires no enabling act at our hands for readmission. Though temporarily overrun by rebellion, she is not obliterated or torn by ruthless hands from her orbit. She still stands as one of the States in the national constellation, without any constitutional right or lawful au thority on her part to secede or on ours to force her out.

The Union of these States can only be de stroyed or dissevered by consent or force. Con sent has not been given, and force has been

Forewarned we are forearmed, while those who betray with a kiss are most to be dreaded and shunned.

Sir, why are the threescore and ten constí. tutional amendments thrust upon the consid

Article four, section three, of the Constitution provides that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the States concerued as well as of the Congress." Under and by virtue of this provision the State of Virginia was divided, the State of West Virginia admitted by the consent of the Legislature of Virginia, thereby recognizing her as a State in the Union, and the action of her Legislature as valid in giving their consent to her dismember

ment.

It is well known that President Lincoln always recognized and regarded the States within the Union, and urged in public and private upon his party the admission of Representatives from the State of Louisiana into Congress. In the adoption of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery the States lately in rebellion were distinctly recognized as being in the Union, for that purpose, by the Administration. The Supreme Court of the United States recently, with but one dissenting voice, decided to take up and dispose of the business in said States, thus adjudicating that they are States in the Union, and not Territories or conquered provinces.

Sir, I have now shown that for the last four years every department of the Government, executive, legislative, and judicial, has uniformly recognized them as States in the Union, and repudiated the suicidal dogma of a destroyed Union and dead States. The chairman of the committee on reconstruction mooted his favorite theory of conquered territory and dead States in the Thirty-Eighth Congress, but with all his popularity as a party leader and acknowledged ability he was unable to control twenty votes of his own party in favor of the proposition; and when introduced by him in the Baltimore convention was voted down by an overwhelming majority in the house of his own friends. Now, since the meeting of this Congress, new light seems suddenly to have dawned upon the darkness. Heretofore an intimation that the Union was disrupted or severed was regarded as disloyal, but now it constitutes the very quintessence of patriotism. Now, the President and his Cabinet, as well as the brave officers and soldiers who periled their lives that the Union might live, are to be ostracized and repudiated because they refuse to keep step to the revolutionary strides of these radical destructionists.

Mr. Speaker, can it be possible that honorable members are serious when they propose to hold as conquered provinces, and govern by military force eleven States, with eight or ten mil lions of people, for an indefinite period of time without representation? Will they obliterate these States, and strike eleven stars from the national galaxy? Would they create a Hungary, a Poland, or an Ireland? Shall we turn upon our fathers, abjure our past history, and take to our embrace theories of government drawn from the despotisms of the Old World? I implore gentlemen to pause and consider before they peril all we hold most dear by taking a step so pregnant with danger; to let reason and justice, and not passion or party

ment of the anti-American doctrine of "taxation without representation" will tend to diminish it or increase their respect and love for

us.

The southern people committed a grave error, and were guilty of a great wrong in waging war against a beneficent Government; and they have been greatly humiliated and severely punished. In their penury and penitence they ask to come back. Like the prodigal son, they have wandered far from their father's house, wasted their substance in riotous living, have been feeding upon husks, have come to themselves and turned their faces homeward. Now, what shall we do? Shall we imitate the elder brother by getting angry, or the kindhearted father who saw the returning prodigal when afar off, and went forth to meet him? Sir, for myself I am frank to say I have no heart to turn my back upon the returning penitent. If there are still roots of bitterness springing up in the hearts of this people, the surest and most expeditious way to eradicate them is by justice tempered with mercy. Two antagonistic plans, radically different, are pending before Congress and the country:

1. The plan of the committee of fifteen, of a severed Union, dead States, conquered provinces, and public enemies, to be taxed without representation and governed by arbitrary force.

2. The plan of the President: that the ordinances of secession were void; that the States still live and are in the Union; that taxation without representation is against the genius of our Government; that legally elected loyal Representatives should be admitted to their seats in Congress.

On these issues I cannot doubt as to my duty, and shall cordially support the restoration policy of the Administration in preference to the destructive policy of Congress. One will build up, the other destroy; one is life, the other death, to the nation. It is my deliberate conviction, founded upon the best information at my command, that the controlling minds on that committee neither desire nor intend that the Union shall ever be restored. They fan the dying_embers of sectional prejudice and passion; they pretend that there is danger of another outbreak in the South, and that the freedmen will be reënslaved, and thereby hope to conceal their covert designs upon the liberties of the people, and more effectually break down the reserved rights of the States, undermine the foundations of constitutional liberty, and erect upon its ruins a consolidated despotism. I say it in sorrow, not in malice, and sincerely hope I may be mistaken.

The

Mr. Speaker, paradoxical as it may appear, there are persons in this country, nurtured in our midst, basking beneath the protecting ægis of our flag, inimical to our free institutions, hostile to our form of government, ready to overturn it whenever a favorable opportunity is presented; nor, sir, are they confined to the south side of Mason and Dixon's line. "hammering" has been going on at both ends; at the South it has now ceased. If like obstructions impede our progress at the other end of the line, they must get out of the way, or a like remedy must be applied. The great mass of our people are devotedly attached to our institutions and form of government, and will not tolerate treason or disunion in any section. History is replete with instances in which friendship and devotion have been assumed for the purpose of stealthily disarming apprehended danger and destroying the victim. We may find, when too late, that we have nurtured in our bosoms venomous reptiles ready to strike with poisoned fangs at the heart of the cherlished and revered institutions of our fathers.

number than in all previous Congresses com. bined. It is a circumstance pregnant with meaning, ominous of the deep-seated hatred and utter contempt with which that instrument is regarded by a majority of the members of this Congress. Indeed, it is thought unfashionable and in bad taste to speak a word in praise of the old Constitution. If all these amendments were adopted there would scarcely be anything left of it. To us, truly, has ignorance been bliss; for over three fourths of a century we have been plodding along with our old Constitution. Washington, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and their compeers, made it. The benighted and sluggish intellects of such men as Jackson, Clay, Webster, and Benton, were impervious to this latter day light, and died in blissful ignorance that a Constitution they had lived under and cherished was so radically defective in protecting the rights and liberties of the people. How weak and frail is human judgment! How strange and inscrutable are the ways of Providence, that the nation should have been suffered to grope its way in darkness so long! But now, suddenly and miraculously as the conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, pretended statesmen in the Thirty-Ninth Congress rise up, men assuming to have more purity than Washington, more intellect than Madison and Jefferson, and discover that our form of government is a failure; that our admirable Constitution, with all its symmetrical checks and balauces, is an abhorrent thing, to be detested and spurned, and wholly unfit for this moral and enlightened age!

Mr. Speaker, I am sometimes oppressed with serious misgivings, whether gentlemen who find so many radical defects in our Con. stitution are really in favor of the form of gov ernment under which we live. I prefer to let well enough alone, to

"Bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of." And I trust it will not be esteemed discourte ous to the House when I announce that I have as much confidence in the capacity and integrity of the men who made our Constitution as I have in the "central directory," which, if not checked in their revolutionary schemes, will destroy it. I concur in and commend to the House the views of the President so felicitously expressed in relation to amending the Constitution.

Now, I submit, Mr. Speaker, for the can did and dispassionate consideration of the House, whether the paramount interest of the country does not demand at our hands that we should stop this tinkering with the Constitution and apply ourselves to the necessary and legitimate business before us. The people expect and will demand this at our hands. They are grievously oppressed with onerous taxes; let us try and ameliorate their condition and lighten those heavy burdens. Retrenchment of expenses should commence at once in every branch and department of the public service. The tariff should be repealed or reduced to a revenue standard; the lords of the loom are amassing princely fortunes at the expense of the consumer. The Army and Navy should be at once reduced to a peace establishment. The internal revenue is oppressive and bears very unequally, especially on mechanics and artisans; the $600 exemption should be increased to $1,000, and large incomes of $20,000 and upward should pay a higher tax, say twenty to twenty-five per cent. The laws in relation to fishing bounties is class legislation for the benefit of the few at the expense of the consumer, and should be repealed. The nation's gratitude, as well as the claims of jus tice to our country's brave defenders, demand the passage of a law for the equalization of bounties. These important measures are kept