Mr. WADE. As I have stated, there is no doubt that it was left to the vote of the people of Alexandria. Now, Mr. President, believing the act of retrocession to be entirely unauthorized by the Constitution of the U.S.; believing, as I do, that.it was gotten up for no other purpose than as preparatory to the secession of the Status that took place afterward, I desire to repeal the act. we all know that the absn uctiouists and secessionists, the statesmen representing old Virginia in this Senate, for many years had been hostile to the Union of those States, or, at all events, had contended for doctrines utterly destructive to the permanent Union of the States, claiming the right to annul any law that was unpalatable to a sovereign State of this Union, cluiminr' the right to secede from this Union, peaceabIy, as they called it, whenever a State should believe that circumstances existed which in its judgment would warrant and authorize such:1 proceeding. They did not claim the right ol revolution, which we all admit, taking the hazard and the consequences of it. When any euple are so oppressed by the laws underwhich they live that they believe the hazard of a violent revolution is justified, I grant you they must be the judges; but these secessionists claimed the peaccable right under the Constitution to secede, not as a revolutionary but as a constitutional right. They had beendreaming over that subject, arguing upon it in Congress, meeting it everywhere. until it became the prevailing doctrine in all the southern States; and it was meditated even at that time that those States were to secede from the Union; and nothing which could have been done to prepare the States for the attempted disunion by violence that took place afterward could have been better calculated to forward the success of such an attempt than 1st to get back that part. of the District of Coliimbia which came from Virginia. It brought the sovereignty, as they called it, of that State right up under your Capitol, for old Virginia has nlwa s claimed the Potomac river up to theMaryland bank, and brought your Capitol right. under the guns of the State. You cannot efend your Capitol againstthe State unless you have the entire territory that youhtipnlated for under the constitution and as was provided for in the original not of Congress. Why did our fathers claim so large a terri‘tory as ten miles square for the seat of government? It Was for the reason to which I have already alluded. Previousl Congress had been held in a State, subject as it were to State jurisdiction, subject to all the turbulence that might be stirred u by State authorities, who might ‘perhaps in time proposeto drive members 0 Congress from their seats. They saw the propriety of having a territory at least large enough to enable them to defend themselves against the point blank shot of their enemies if a civilWar should arise; and according to modern gunnery it takes full ten miles square if you desire to put your a itol effectually beypnd the reach of cannon s 0t at this day. How, sir, what a redicament are we in! When the rebellion roke out, every member of the Senate who was here then remembers how we expected, yea were afraid, that on Arlington heights the rebels would erect fortifications and plant their batteries for the destruction of this city, or this Capitol. And what shall prevent the State of 'irginia tomorrow, ifshe should meditate another attempt to go out of the Union, from erecting fortifications there, placin them on her own soil as she calls it now, wIthin range ofyour Capitol, compelling us to legislate here under the guns of an enemy? Mr. President, I have stated some of the reasons which were potential at. the time in inducing the requirement of so 'lar e a territory for the national capital. Ten mi essquare is none too large to give as entire‘independence within the jurisdiction of the U.S., subject to no State interference, to no State authority whatever. It is not too large for us to fortify, if we please, against. all foreign aggression. And yet this retrocession, as I said before, does away with all this security and laws us under the control of a “sovereign ‘tate.” But, besides all this, we have a great number of petitions presented here asking for the passage of this bill. When it. was 1st agitated about the time this session commenced there seemed to be very great opposition to the measure. Almost all the original secessionists in Alexandria were entirely opposed to any such this. They claimed to belong to the State of irginia, and it Was their ardent desire to stay there; they did not like to be under the jurisdiction of the Congress of the U.S. But I have observed, and the petitions on file show, that as the question has been agitated there among all classes it has become more and more popular, and I believe today, and I am informed by some of the best men there, that they have no doubt that a majority of the people of Alexandria themselves wish to come back to the old fold from which they were driven by an act, unauthorized by the Constitution of the U.S. The taxation of the State is exceedingly grievous to be borne, and they find that by going out from under the jurisdiction of Congress mto‘that of the State of Virginia they have lost immensely in every way, and they wish now to get under the shadow of this great Government, and be governed by its equitable laws, and freed from that onerous burden of debt that would rest upon them as members of the State of Virginia, and I claim that they have a perfect. right to prefer this. Besides, sir, it should be remembered that we have a great cemetery on Arlington heights where lie the bones of many brave and patriotic men who fell in defense of their country, a place held sacred and revered by every patriotic man and woman in the U.S. We are bound to protect their remains from that indignity to which they will be subjected if we allow them to be under the jurisdiction of the State of Virginia. But, Mr. President, it has been said by some with whom I have conversed that this is a constitutional question, that if the act of retrocession was not authorized by the Constitution of the U.S. those aifected can bring a process in the courts of the U.S and try the question there. I do not. den that that maybe done; but it is a great bards tip to put upon the Union people who have ever been i loyal, who have ever resisted what almost every l body considered an unauthorized and uncon l stitutional act, the burden of prosecuting such. a suit. same footing that they would have occupied if i no such unwarrantable law had been passed. It is their right to claim that; it is their due; and I hope every gentleman here will be willing to award it to them. Sir the great capital, laid out by the Father; of his Country, the territory surveyed, as it were, under his own eye, and most dear to his i own patriotic heart, has been mutilated by this i act. There ought to be some reverence aid l to those who made the compromise under w rich 1 this District was made the seat of Governmentl the greatest compromise that ever took place under our Constitution. We ought not. thus ruthlessly to tear it up and annul it. How was it brought about? I have alluded to the fact. that the question was so important a one that it endangered the Union itself; and how did we get over the difficulty? Every gentleman acquainted with the history of his country knows full well that after we came out of the war of the Revolution, burdened with an enor mous debt, there was a great question to be settled, how that debt should be disposed of; one party claiming that the debt should be funded and taken under the protection of the U.S. Government, and paid by it, and the other claiming that the States should pay the debt, as they had ipearred it. The latter We ought to place them back on the' proposition was very unjust, in my judment, because it would have thrown the great jurdcn of the debt of the Revolution upon the northern States, who had furnished infinitely the greatest number of troups, who had been at infinitely the greatest expense during that.war; and consequently they eelared that the debt ought to be funded and paid by the General Government; and the other party took the opposite ground, and opposedo it because it threw the debt 05 the shoulders of one sectionv of the country and compelled the other to participate in it according to their ability or according to the equitable rules which resailed in collecting taxes forjhe payment of) the e ts. Another controversy existin at that time, just about as stubborn, just a out as uncon trollable, just about as hopeless to settle, was on the question where the seat of Government should)& located. There were 3 or 4 places that were'contended for.