Mr. COWAN. How did we justify ourselves in the 1st Revolution? What did we as to the mother country then and there? but every communit, that every people had the right to choose their own form of government. I have heard the DeclarIndep quoted here 1,000times over to establish absurdities which it never was intended to establish; but here is a great historical fact that no man dare deny; and that is, that the American Revolution was based upon the right of a people to govern themselves, and that nobody e so had a right derived from heaven. If they had the right, whence did they derive it? E mm the gentlemans higher law of force 7 and then talk about standing in the pass of Thermopylze, and talk about building monuments there! "Tl iesyvfeerlyl dgeavleoted, but undying; theirnames seemedsighing; hewatersmurmuredof their name: hewoodswere peopledwith their fame; is silent pillar lone and grey, aimed kindred with their Blwredelay." Why, sir it is to desecrate that which has been sacred for 3000 years to allude to Thermopylse in such a connection. What was the struggle of Leonidas? That Greece should govern Persia? No; it was to throw back the tide of the Persians, who insisted, according to this higher law of force, that the king of kin s, Xerxes, had a right to govern Greece, has a right to hold its people as a conquered people and its provinces as conquered provinces. Mr. President, let us look at this question coolly. I ask again, by what warrant did we make this war? Was it because, as the question was put to me the other day, there is such a thing as political dominaucy, political sovereignty, by which one people have a right to dominate another people! Who will are to nvow it upon this floor? Our warrant was the Constitution and the laws. We said to the southern people: you bound ourselves, States and people, with us in that constitution; you assisted in making those laws; and now you refuse to fulfill your obligations; now you undertake to secede and withdraw yourselves from the operations of the very law that you assisted to make under that Constitution; you provided that the Executive of the nation shoud swear to support the Constitution; you provided that he should see that the laws were faithfully executed; you provided that those laws should be paramount, that the should be higher than all other laws within their particular constitutional circle; you did all t t, and we claim the right to compel you to stand upon them. Sir, we did. We compelled the recusunts, we compelled the rebels, we compelled the traitors, if you please, to lay down their arms and yield obedience to the Senfrom Michigan or anybody? Not at all, sir. It was not by any especial virtue of his or mine; it was not on account of any Superiority that we might assume over the southern people that we claimed the right to compel their surrender. We did it in the name of the Constitution and standing under the shadow of the majesty of the law. They surrendered to the law.