Mr. COWAN. They surrendered to the law. Your arms compelled them to surrender to the law, but they surrendered to the law. The honorable Senator is a law on and a good one, I should say, in many of the Depts of that profession; and impressed as he is, impregnated as he is all through with the very spirit of the law, the moment that surrender was made the honorable Senator would not have dared to lift his hand to the worst rebel of them all. He would not have been guilty of the impropriety of which the Senfrom Nevada [Mr. NYE] was the other day, when he said that he would have hanged Jeli. Davis without law. The honorable Senator knows that the man who would do so, the man who would violate the sanctity of the law and take a criminal out of the grasp of the law and execute his individual vengeance upon him, would be a murderer in fact and a murderer in law. The law is supreme over the American people, and it is to the law that we bow. We owe no allegiance to Presidents or to congresses or to anybody1 else as the sovereigns in this country, and t ank God for it! I hope the day may never come when wc,as citizens of this great and free republic, shall be held to obedience to anythin. but the law. Do you want to be slaves? Do on want to wear the collar and the harness o a man an erior over you? If you do you are unwortiiy sons of revolutionary sires. I yield me to the law, but I yield to no man and no body of men; and without desiring to boast at all, I will make my boast there; I will never submit to wearing the collar or the harness of any man. I am willing to pay my obeisance humbly to the law. I am willing to yield to its requirements, even when I believe it to be unconstitutional; but I will obey the law and never obey the behests of any single man or body of men unless they are enfdrced upon me and I cannot resist it. The honorable Senator set out by trying to show that Mr. Lincolns plan of reconstruction was not President Johnsons plan of reconstruction. That was his object. He proposed to set that question entirely at rest, and I can state to you in a very few words how nearly he came to it. President Johnson, in his last annual message, declared that it was for each House of Congress to determine for itself upon the admission of members of Congress from the rebellious States. That was his phrase; and that was all. Nobody iretends that President Johnson ever undertoo to say that we should admit this man or that man or the other man, or that we should reject this one or the other one. Even the honorable Senator himself did not pretend it. What did he sa? He gave a legal opinion in that respect. I: as it a good opinion or was it a bad one? What does the constitutjon provide in that case? Constitution provide that this SenaDteocs.sentahlel determine who shall be members of the Senate and who shall not, or does it confer that power jointly upon the Senate and the House? It is very expressive on that subject. It is about as clear as it can be made. The Constitution confers the power upon each House separately. Then the Senator read Mr. Lincolns opinion on that point, and Mr. Lincolns phrase was the “ respective Houses." What does that mean? oes that mean the Houses jointly or the Houses separatel.Ishould not think it would require a very c ose or accurate criticism to determine that. There is the whole of it. Now, Mr. President a very brief statement will set all this matter right. The States are corporations; they are legal persons, having no actual physical existence, but existing in contemplation of law for the purpose of carrying out the purposes of the trust, and the citizens of the several States are corporators; and in one of its aspects, and in this aspect, a State may be contemplated precisely as you contemplate a bank or a railroad or any other corpo ration. The officers of these corporations, the officers of rebel States, and a certain number of the corporators, ifyou please I am not here disposed to quarrel as to the number or to dispute as to the number; that can be talked of hereafter undertook to pervert the purpose of the corporation, undertook to carry the corporation bodily away from the original intent and purpose to which it was bound by the constitution and the laws. What was the duty of the U.S. under these circumstances? Was it not their bounden duty to see that the citizens, the corporators, even if there were not more than udozen of them faithful, should not be deprived of their franchise, and that this corporation should not be carried away without their will and consent? 1 say that if there was one man from the rebel States who came up and pgotested against this perversion of the State corporate authorities and being carried away by secession, the U.S. Government would have been bound to listen to him and to rese ue him and restore him to his rights as guarantied under the Constitution and the laws. Well, sir, that was the view the U.S. took of it. They took precisely the same view of it that a court of chancer takes of trusts. They were the custodian of the rights of the people, the general custodian; and t cy interfered that the trusts might be preserved; that the corporation might not be perverted from its original uses? hat then? Var resulted and the war was successful; re sistance ceased. When that happened, there were 2 ways by which those corporations could be restored. Who could restore them? Gentlemen talk here about Congress restoring them; they talk about the President restoring them; they talk about anybody restoring them. I can say to gentlemen that in this country States are not made by Presidents, States are not made by Congress; State overmnents are not made by them. Neither tcPresident nor Congress nor anybody else when this war was put down had a right to interfere in the restoration of the corporate rights of the citizens of the southern States. The question was to be referred to them. There wei c 2 ways of doing it. One was to allow the cOrpo rate officers to continue upon their profession of repentance and coming backwithin the purview of the original great charter. Suppose, ifyou please, that Governor Brown, of Georgia, and the Legislature of Georgia, i who had been in rebellion, professed repent: c. once and acknowledged the Government of the Union and their obligations to the Constitution and laws just as before, what. would you have done with theml You could do one of 2 things. You could say, “Very well, that is all right; you may go on just as you are. provided you obey the Constitution and the aws, subject, however, to our right to hang you; we have the right to hang you if we choose to enforce it, but thatis a question we will not decide now; in the mean time we will hold it in abeyence over your head, and on can go on and play Governor and Legis nture.” That was one way, and the President had a perfect right to do that. Nobody could quarrel with him if he had chosen to take that course. On the other hand, the President had the perfect right to say to these men, “ You have been engaged in rebellion; you have been in complicity with treason and unfaithful to the trust committed to you by your people; you are set. aside, your office is vacated. What then? What would a court say in such a case, and I address some who have been judges? The court then appoint somebody to support the trust until the corporators meet together and elect for themselves.