Mr. HISE. I do not intend to inflict a constitutional argument upon the House at this late hour, for I have not time. But I take the ground, and I do not think it can be successfully controverted, that these States are now States in the Union, subject to the Constitution of the U.S and the laws enacted in conformity thereto, and consequently entitled to all the rights and powers that appertain to the other members of the Union. assume this to be an obvious political truth, an actual existing fact, that cannot be contradicted with any show of reason or by constitutional or legal sanction or with a due regard to his toric truth; to deny it is revolting to common sense and in opposition to the convictions, nay the knowledge of all unprejudiced men, unless resolved to persist in. grossest error both of law and fact. What an unwarrantable assertion it is to say that they are not now States in the Union, that they have got out of the Union, although they failed in their effort to do so; although the war was successfully prosecuted to maintain the Union; although the war was waged with the express and solemn"declaration on the part of Congress that when it should terminate by the suppression of the rebellion the States would resume or rather continue their existence in the Union as o States, with all their rights and privileges as such, and with all their institutions preserved intact equally with all the other States. Now, I will ask again, where is the authority to disfranchise a State; to expel a State from the Union for the purpose of punishment? Why, sir, examine the debates in the constitutional convention as reported in the Madison papers, and you will find that it was contended in so many words, without being contradicted or questioned, that a State as a State could not be punished. Hence in framing our government, it was so constituted as to provide for a judicial and an executive dept, so that the powers of the Government and its laws could be executed and made to operate directly upon the citizen. And this was done in conformity to the acknowledged political truth that a State as such was not susceptible of trial, arraignment, conviction, or punish ment, and could commit no offense for which their place in the Union could be changed or their rights and immunities under the constitution annulled. The power conferred was to admit States in the Union: none was granted, for any cause, to expel them from it. What, then, but malignant and hostile feelings toward the people of those States can be the ground for your determination to rivet this most odious military despotism upon them? If youentertain this feeling of resentment and revenge let it be carried out legitimately. If those men are guilty of a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. upon the subject of treason or conspiracy or rebellion, they are amenable to punishment in a regular and legit imate way: ocan be if guilty apprehended, indicted, and tried for their offenses in the civil courts of the U.S. of competent juris diction. That is the mode, and the only mode, by which their crimes, if any have been committed, can be lawfully punished. A State as a State cannot be guilty of a crime. Whatever crime may have E. committed, if any, in fonmenting a rebellion in those States, it is the crime of A, B, C, or D, and they alone can be tried, convicted and punished by the courts according to law and in the manner prescribed in the Constitution. This Congress has no judicial power except for impeachment of civil officers. o: has no power to assume by legislation that a State or its inhabitants have committed crimes, and then judge, convict, and punish them by a deprivation of their rights of representation, their right of suffrage, by their disfranchisement, and by placing their property, liberty, and lives under the arbitrary and irresponsible control of a military tyrant, with authority to plunder, imprison, and slay, at his discretion, and provided with a military force sufficient to support such oCongress may pass laws defining crimes and fixing their punishments, and when this is done its power in this respect is exhausted. The courts alone can try and punish the offenders. All the States as corporate political bodies are in the Union, and have been continuously ever since the original 13 ratified the constitutional compact, and ever since the other 23 became parties thereto by their admission into this Union. 4 of these States, through their illustrious representatives in the constitutional Convention, were among the most influential in constructing our Government. Nay, it may be said, almost, that madison was the framer of it. Others of those States have been admitted to the Union under the Wo. power of Congress to admit new States. Why admit States? Because essentially and necessarily there could be no government of the Union under the Constitution except by States and the representatives of States being equal in one branch of a constitutional congress, and being represented also as States, although without equal numbers in the lower branch of Congress. I charge, then, upon the party predominant in this House that set ting aside and subverting the Constitution of the U.S., they have denied to ten States of this Union their equal representation in the Senate and their proportionate representation in this House, without any authority under Heaven for so doing. What is the warrant for this bill? When ever you ask for constitutional authority gentlemen get up and clamor and rant about the “loyal” men and the “freedmen”—the free negroes of the southern States—being oppressed; their property, their liberty and their lives endangered by unlawful misrule. Gentlemen do not appear to understand the fact that in those States all the property holders, all the land holders, all the traders and merchants who had capital, including all the best and most o: citizens, the substantial men disposed and interested to maintain good government, to uphold law and order, and to secure the enjoyment of regulated liberty, were engaged in the movement for secession and separate independence. They composed, I venture to say, exclusive of the negroes, 9 10ths of the entire population of all those States. Yet you assert a right to enslave all those people—to make political bondsmen of the men who have the capital of that section, who do the business, who carry on the factoties the men who have a deep stake in the country for the preservation of law and order. These are to be placed under the dominion of their own slaves, now turned loose among hem, and of the interlopers, the renegade Sutlers, jobbers and contractors and army followers from the North, who return spreading abroad unfounded reports of their having been “Union men” all the time and having been proscribed and persecuted and driven off, not one word of which, in my deliberate opinion, has any foundation in truth. Since the war has closed, since the armies of the rebellion have been dispersed, the actual citizens of those States to whom I have referred, who have a stake in the well being and prosperity of the country, are the men to whom we should look for the preservation of law and order and the prevention of crime and misrule. Yet because you suspect and believe if these governments continue in the hands of those men, disloyal men, rebels, traitors, as you continue to call them, and they are allowed representation in the Congress of the U.S., which you cannot deny to them without violation of the Constitution; because it is apprehended that they will stop the progress of all your rev. olutionary measures, of your unconstitutional schemes of policy for monopolizing all the power and patronage of the Government and all the emoluments of office, you design to destroy their States, disfranchise the citizens, whatever may happen, subvert their State governments and laws, and subject the inhabitants to a military despotism.