Mr. PAINE. Mr. Chairman, in the discussion of the effect of the rebellion upon the relations of the late rebel States to the Federal constitution it becomes necessary. at the outset. to assure ourselves that we use the word State in the right sense, for even in its application to political societies and governmental organizations it has essentially different significations. Its meaning is sometimes purely geographical. Sometimes it is used to designate the Government itself. By this word we sometimes mean the people constituting a political society, within certain geographical limits, in their highest sovereign capacity. They are then invested with all lhe attributes of sovereignty as such political society, and therefore constitute an absolutely sovereign State, a nation. England is such a State today. The people of England hold all sovereign powers in their highest form as poo. ple of Eligland. They are not invested with one portion of them aspeople of England and with another portion by virtue of some other political connection or condition and England is an absolute sovereignty. Her government, whatever successive forms it takes, Represents all possible sovereign power. Whether as a despotism, or a Commonwealth, or a constitutional monarchy, she is always the sovereign State of England. In another sense. quite distinct from all of these, thisword designates a political society, within certain geographical limits, organized under a particular government. such is its signification when n plied to one of the States of the American Union. 1 he State of NewYork is a political society. existing within defined boundaries, under the particular governmental organization which constimar i“ C “ 1866. w. XS” 563 tubes and keeps her one of the U.S., or she is no State at all. NewYork is not an absolute sovereignty. Her people are invested with only a part of the powers and attributes of sovereignty as people of NewYork. They hold the rest as people of the U.S. The people of the U.S. together, in their twofold relation to the State and the Union, constitute an absolute sovereignty, a complete State, like enland. such a State, although rude and only ialffledged, was each of the original 13 before the adoption of the national constitution. such a State not one of them has been since the adoption of that constitution. such a State not one of those admitted since its adoption has ever been for a single moment. Its framers have given us everywhere, on the same ground, 2 coex istent governments. each perfect within its own sphere, and yet neither complete in itself nor independent of the other. Neither the States nor the national Government separate from each other are States or anything else known to the constitution. They are complements of each other. The existence of each is essential to the existence of the other. The States, moving in their orbits round the central sun, the constitution, form the great national system known as the American Union. If the central power of the constitution is essential to the existence of the nation, so also is it essential to the existence of the States. When it shall be cut off from anyone of the States, whatever else that State may become, whether a mere Territory or an independent sovereignty, it will no longer be a State of this Union. Although the people and the soil will remain, the body politic known to the constitution as an American State will have perished. In no State of the Union can the machinery of State government o crate or exist for a moment if t ie vital force of the Federal constitution is withdrawn, because there can be no State constitution whereof the national constitution is not the cornerstone, there can be no State officer whose official character is not based upon an oath to the national constitution; when that foundation is destroyed, whatever else he may be, he is not an Officer of an American State. Nor is a government administered by such officers a government of a State of the Union, whatever other thing unknown to the constitution it may be. Now, if from a State like enland or France in our premises, we leap to a State like NewYork or Alabama in our conclusions, our reasonin may of course be fallacious. If we argue that a 1States, meaning such States as England, are immortal, and therefore a particular State, meaning such a limited State as Alabama, is immortal, the fallacy will be transparent and ucrile. If we affirm that “a State cannot be, “a dead State is a solccism, an impossi bilit, ” referrin to an absolute sovereignty like England, and therefore Alabama has never during the rebellion ceased to be a State of this Union, our error will be without excuse. All reasoning from a sovereign State, like England, to a limited State, like Alabama, will be utterly fallacious, because the analogy is utterly want in. Siutit is not true, sir, that even such sovereign States as England are immortal. They may perish through subjugation or by the voluntary surrender of their sovereignty without any such extraordinary visitation as the depopulation or submersion of their soil. Ithas been a common occurrence in human history. It has happened to Ireland, Poland, and scores of other nations by subjugation. Absolute sovereignty was lost to Texas and to the old 13 States by voluntary surrender. The soil of Scotland is still above the sea. Her people are there. She is not without government. Even her old name remains. But the sovereign State of Scotland has disappeared from the face of the earth. It is dead. These propositions respecting the immortality of States are not true, then, even when a lied to such complete sovereigiities as Englan, I cotland, Poland: or the aggregate American But the people of Pennsylvania are not invested Republic. They are still more erronepus when applied to these limited sovereignties, the States of the American Union. If the people of Pennsylvania were invested with the inghest capacity of sovereignty as people of Pennsylvania, in which case Pennsyl lvaniawould be like France, absolutely sovereign and independent, then would it indeed be true that whatever changes might befall her, short of actual loss of sovereignty by surrender or subjugation, she would, whether asa despotism, a constitutional monarchy, or are “ublic, always remain the sovereign State of. Pennsylvania. with the highest capacity of sovereignty as people of Pennsylvania, but as people at once of Pennsylvania and of the U.S.; and when the constitutional relation between the State and the Union is broken up, although the people and soil and name may remain, yet the thing known to the constitution as the State of Pennsylvania dies as surely as the branch dies if severed from the tree. I will indicate, sir, a few of the forms in which death, welcomp or unwelcome, inayover takc one of the States of the American Union. If those who assert that, “Alabama, once a State must always be a State, ” that “the State of Alabama can never die ” only mean that her soil will, unless depopulated or submerged, always remain with her people upon it, under one name and form of government or another, the proposition is worth neither as scrtiii nor answering. It amounts to nothing more than that physical cography will remain as it is unless changed. f, however, the proposition means that the State of the American Union known to the constitution as the State of Alabama must always remain such, it is not true. In the 1st place, the national constitution itself provides for the most quiet and orderly death and burial of such an “ immortal" State. The framers of that instrument have deliber ately and irccisely indicated the proceedings by which labaina might have ceasedoto be a State of the Union, have actually prescribed her funeral ceremonies and these proceedings and ceremonies are so utterly devoid of pomp and circumstance that 6 votes may be decisive of her fate, of which 6 votes only 2 need be cast by her own citizens. The 3rd section of the 4th article of the constitution stands in these words: “New States maybe admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed orderectedwithin the jurisdiclion of nny other statemor any State be formed by the junction of 2 or more States, or partsof States. without the consent of the Legislaturesof the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.” If, therefore, the Legislatures of Alabama and Mississippi had, by a majority of one vote in each branch, enacted the political death of these 2 States, and the organization of a new State with anew name by ajunetion of the 2, and if congress had a few days later by a majority of one in each branch ratified this arrangement, then would the last have been heard of the “ immortal” State of Alabama. The map would no longer show even her name. Into such a narrow, unhonored grave collapses the huge bal loon of State immortality. Against the creation of a new State by the junction of Alabama and Mississippi would perhaps be urged the grave constitutional objection that such a subtraction of one from the number of the States, without a corresponding diminution of the number of stars on our flag, would make “that flag a daunting lie.” But then an appealto the paint pot would obviate this objection. A ain, RhdIsland, for example, may in the istant future be driven by the exi encies of history from commerce and manufactures backto agriculture. Depopulated by emigration and miserabl car she may grow weary i of the burden ofy fier State government and come to regard it as a curse rather than a blessing. If RhdIsland shall then ubrogate her State constitution, rescind her ratification of the national constitution, vacate every State officc, ariite sovereignty is irrctrievably lost. repeal every law, recall from Congress her Sens&Reps, solemnl renounce forever all her rights as a member of the Union, and ask the Federal Government and her sister State of Massachusetts to permit her to become again, what she had been for 30 years preceding 1662, a part of the State of Massachusettswhat, sir, becomes of the State of RhdIsland? She is politically dead. The peOple remain, the land remains, both subject to the Federal constitution; but that organization of political society, under the Constitution, within her borders, which constituted and ke it her a State of the Union no longer exists Had limited sovereignty which she formerly cherished as a blessing she has now thrown away as course. If, in comlianee with her request. she is an nexed to hiassaehiisetts, her last vestige of sep It will be idle for her afterward, in the day of returning prosperity, to insist upon resuming. at her pleasure, her functions as a State, on the preposterous plea that once a State she always “as and still is a State, and has lost none of her State rights under the constitution. If she is not annexed to Massachusetts she becomes at once o. art of the unorganized tei" ritory of the U.S. A territorial governmenuis then to be speedily provided and if, becoming rich and strong once more, she desires to resume her State sovereignty, she has no other door of entrance into the Federal Union than that provided in the constitution for the admission of new States. If in all this RhdIsland should make no attempt to join a hostile Power, should perform no hostile act, should manifest no purpose tr harm the Republic, nevertheless she could not, after her voluntary abrogation of all her rights and functions as a State, insist upon her constitutional right to resume those functions at her pleasure without the acquiescenceof the Federal Government or the other States. The question of her political death she assumed to decide for herself, as she had a right to do; but upon the question of her resurrection it woulii)be for Congress to speak. Now, suppose that she had rescinded herratification of the Federal constitution, renounced her allegiance to it and her rights under it, and recalled from Congress her Sens&Reps, without abrogating her State constitution or vacating her State offices; then i would her condition be, if possible, more fatal than in the case 1st supposed to all claim to the rights of one of the sovereign States of the Union. Having with her own hand severed the constitutional bond which sustained the State relation and existence, the affected retention of a State government would have been in itself a menace, a preposterous claim of in dependent sovereignty Within the geographical limits of the Union in open defiance of the constitution, and at the expense of the national existence, which claim self preservation and the maintenance of the constitution would compel the national Government to crush. SCarolina realed the ordinance by which she had ratifie the Federal constitution, renounced all interest in and allegiance to the Union, called home her Sens&Reps, and yet affected to retain her State government. Certainly this, if persisted in for 4 years, would not only have remitted her to a territorial condition, under the Constitution, and rendered the assent of the Federal Government necessary to her resumption of the functions of a State, but would have compelled the national Government to crush her menacing, dangerous pretense of independent sovereignty within the territorial limits of the republic. In the absence of traitorous or crim ina intent, and of lasting peril to the Union, the country would natural y have been most lenient as to the conditions of her reconstruction, would have welcomed her back as. the joyful father welcomed the returning prodigal. But SCarolina, like the other rebel States, went further than that. She took another step which gave a worse complexion to her case. She undertook to trunsf:i her allegiance to a hostile government which could only exist on the ruins of ours, and waged war against the Union for 4 years, seeking not merely the injury but the disintegration and absolute ruin of the Republic and yet it is claimed that during this whole time she actually remained a State of the Union, with such sovereignty and such rights as the constitution secures to the States of the Union, with the right at any moment when the whim seized her, before, at, or after her defeat, to drop the sword and resume, untuestioned, her place among the States; that her practical relations to the constitution were merely disturbed by the war. Sir, these relations were notmerely disturbed; they were utterly destroyed. Among the relations which she sustained to the Union were 8, vital in their character, affecting respect ively the Federal revenues, the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, the official oaths of State otheers, allegiance to the U.S., representation in the Federal Congress, the privileges and immunities of citizens in the scveral States, the etfect to be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of the other States, and the liedera regulation of our foreign affairs and interState commerce. In not one of these relations has there been, during tour years, one single spark of life. They, and the State whose breath and bloodthey were are dead, and the trump of her resurrection will be something else than the whistle of a Secretarys proclamation. It is true that she has not shaken off the national sovereignty; that not by the mere pendency ofwar, but only by final success in war, could she escape her obligations to the Union and the constitution. But on the other hand, it is equally true that her acts, although powerless and void to take her out of the jurisdiction of the constitution, did terminate her State existence; and therefore consign her to the condition of an unorganized territory, to be organized as a Territory or admitted as a State according to the judgment and discretion of the Congress of the nation. It is urged by the earnest champions of the immortality of these States, thatt e provision of the constitution which binds the U.S. to guaranty to every State in the Union a RFG is a pledge of intervention to States, as States, not Territories; and therefore the clause, in fact, provides not only for a guarantee of a RFG to the States, but also for a guarantee of their perpetuity as States. Sir, this doctrine of a doubleheaded guarantee will bear no scrutiny. Neither standing alone nor construed by the context will the clause yield such a twofold guarantee. Every word used is essential to the single guarantee of a RFG and it is but a shabby compliment to the wisdom of the statesmen who framed the constitution, to so that they have, in one section bound the U.S. to guaranty that Alabama shall live forever as a State of the Union, after having, in the very next preceding section, deliberately provided a most unostentations ceremony whereby 6 votes might finally decide for her the question of life or death. But this is the precise compliment which this doctrine of a double guarantee ays to the framers of our constitution; for ifthat instrument has, in one section of the 4th article, guarantied that Alabama shall forever remain a State, it has also in another section of the same article guaraiitied that Alabama may cease to be a State whenever her deathwarrant shall be signed by her own Legislature, with the assent of the Legislature of an adjacent State and of Congress. Not only does this provision contain no guarantee that she shall always remain the State of Alabama, but it involves no guarantee that she shall always remain a State, or a par) of a State, under any name or lbrm. It is nothing I more than it purports to bea provision for a guaranty of republican governments to the itates of this uion, while they are States, leaving the question whether they shall forever remain States to be decided by something out tildeof this section. It might as well be claimed l that the clause which guaranties full faith and credit in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State, guaranties also that the States shall always remain States because the pledge is made to the States. It might as well be claimed that the section which guaranties to the citizens of each State all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States also guaranties that such citizens shall always remain citizens, shall never, by crime or expatriation, or otherwise, lose or t row off their citizenship, because the pledge is made to citizens. Nor can you find, sir, anywhere in the constitution a guarantee that a State shall neverput off the garments of State sovereignty, never, throughthe crime or choice of her citizens, return to the territorial condition. There is no such provision expressed or implied in the constitution. There ought to be no such provision there. The time may come when it will be a grievous hardship for a particular State to be forcibly compelled, by the U.S., to maintain against her own interest and choice the burden of a State government. The time has alread come when it will he an intolerablehardship to the rest of the Union to permit States, which, attempting mur. er, perpetrated suicide, to become living States again without security against future crime. Nor is it true that if these rebellious communities were Territories and not States, their people could not. have been traitors against the Y U.S. For Territories are subject to the Federal constitution and laws no less than States. There is nothing in this condition an more than in that of States to absolve their citizens from allegiance to the Federal constitution or diminish the turpitude of the crime of treason against the U.S. Sofar as the punishment for treason is concerned, if the doctrine that they were States in the Union has any advantage over the doctrine that they were States out of the Union, it rests upon the ground that in a conflict of State and federal allegian be the Federal constitution is para mount for States in the Union, and a nullity for the States out of the Union. But the osition that they were mere Territories oft is Union has this advantage over both, that for the people of aTerritory the Federal constitution is not only the paramount but the sole bond of allegiance. Nor does this doctrine entail upon the U.S. as conquerors the payment of any portion of the rebe debt. Not upon this foundation, if upon any, can rest the claim that the nation; which, without intermission, struggled to subdue the rebels, became, when successful, bound by the law of nations to pay, to foreign or domestic creditors, the debts incurred in resisting its authority. Whateverliabilities may result from the doctrine that SCarolina left the Union and incurred debts as a sover eiwn State, or as a member of a sovereiwn confederacy, which doctrine I repudiate; whatever liabilities may result from the doctrine that during the war she remained a State of the Union and incurred debts as such State, which doctrine I also repudiate it is very clear that the only payments which her European credit ors can hope to realize from meddlinv with our territories, will be such as can be made through the thwarts of old Farravuts guns. In my judgment, then, the constitutional relation of these communities to the Federal Government is that of unorganized territories. But they sustain at the same time another relation; that of the conquered to the conqueror under the laws of war. If it would be the right and duty of the Government to maintain the authority of the constitution and the integrity of the Republic, by crushinr a claim to absolute sovereignt on the part of a State, even though such State 5 ould not herself 1st draw the sword, still clearer will be the right, still more imperative the duty of the Government, if the State herself 1st [lies to arms, and, in alliance with other armed enemies, attempts to destroy the nation and the right to draw the sword in defense of the national existence is the right to hold the sword unsheathed until such defense is completely achieved and crowned with solid gnar antees of future security and peace. The doctrine to which the Democratic party has steadily adhered, since the day of its eiiuuciation by Mr. Buchanan is that the Republic had no right to resist by force of arms the attempt of the rebels on its life because “the constitution contains no provision authorizing the coercion of a sovereign State.” others believed that in the clauses authorizing Congress to provide for the common defense and general welfare, for calling forth the militia to execute the laws and suppress insurrections, for arming and governing the militia, and for the punishment of trea son, and reairing the President, who is commanderin hicf of the Army and Navy, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, could be found ample authority to defend the Republic by force of arms against the assaults of a State as well as against assaults from any other quarter. But the existence of this power in the federal Government is not dependent upon constitutional provisions. Its expression in the written constitution would be only a formal recognition of a power which would exist, valid and complete, whether so recomized or not. The American people organized into political society under the State and national Governments are, in the ngrregate, invested with all the inherent rights and attributes of sovereignty which belong to any independent nation. 1st and foremost among these is the right of selfpreservntion, which is as clearly inherent in nations as in individuals, is indeed inseparable from the very idea of national sovereignty. It can neither be strengthened nor impaired by written constitution s; and if anynation on the face of the earth has the inherent right to defend itself against foreign or domestic foes, this Republic has that rivht; and the defense must be made decisive and complete. If it was the right of the nation to undertake the war, it was the duty of the nation to carry it forward to its legitimate end. That end is the solid rock of national salvation. It was tobe expected, sir, that the northern men who could assert that the Republic had no right to resist, by arms, an armed attempt upon its life would not hesitate to assert also that the belligerent rights of the nation terminated at the instant of the military surrender of the rebel armies. But the 2nd proposition is as false as the 1st. This nation was not, at the instant of military victory, to be, as in the twinkling of an eye, stripped of the right to exact securities for future life and peace, which pertains to all belligerent Powers, unless the war was waged, not for national salvation, but for military triumph. But if we undertook and waged this war for the achievement of military victo, we are the bloodiest butchers in the annn s of our race. These rebel communities sustain, therefore, the twofold relation of inhabitants of Territories subject to the constitution, and of enemies conquered in war. All the rights springing from both of these relations vest in the U.S.; and it is at the otion of the U.S. to exercise one class or the other, or both, in the reconstruction of the late rebel States. How and by what Dept of the Government are those rights which vest in the nation as the sovereign of the Territories to be exercised? Fortunately we are not without beacons, set in the constitution, to guide us forward from the point where the civil authorit succeeds the militar power. In the 1st ace the control of the Territories is vested in on ess. If in the judgment of Congress it shal be necessary to organize and govern the late rebel States as Territories, upon Congress will devolve the duty of providin for their organization and government. Int e next place, the power to admit new States is given to congress and when in the judgment of Congress 5it shall be proper to admit these Territories as States of the nion, it. will be for conto provide the necessary legislation. And the constitution provides that “ the U.S shall guaranty to each State in this Union a RFG, ” not quibbling over a distinction between foriu and substance, but indicating the kind of government to be guarantied, as distinguished from monarchical or other forms. Is the authority for the practical realization of this guarantee vested in the Federal or in the State governments? On this point there is no sue ambiguity in the constitution as appears in the clause relatin to fugitives from labor. Its language is explicit. he U.S. are to enforce the guarantee and yet, when we inquire into the precise method prescribed for its enforcement, the case is not so clear. other powers are given to Congress, to the judicial Dept, to the President. But this is not specially assigned to either Dept of the Government. It is given to the U.S. Hey, then, will the U.S. practically execute the provision? In my judgment the power is to be exercised by Congress when the act to be performed for the realization of the guarantee is a legislative act, by the President when executive action is proper, and by the judicialDept when judicia action is demanded, an, in General, by those branches of the Federal Government whose functions embrace the acts to he performed. if an existing State should throw off the republican form and become a monarchy, it would o necessary to cure the evil, although, per haps, difficult either to indicate or execute the remedy. But in the case of States applying for admission to the Union there can be no such difficulty. An act of Congress is the only machinery for the enforcement of the guarantee. This provision has hitherto remained virtually a dead letter as against the despotism of slavery, because slavery has hitherto maintained for its own benefit a law higher than the constitution, has in fact held the constitution itself in chains. Now that a million bayonets have emancipated the constitution as well as the slaves, it is time that this provision should cease to be a dead letter that the word republican should cease to reek with the slime of slavery. If Congress shall be false to the obligation iiii posed by this provision it will not now, as here tofore, e able to plead the fear of a power higher than the constitution as a justification for settin at naught the letter of the Constitution and 51:: law of God. Our rights of conquest are, in my judgment, subject to no limitations except those of hu manity. The Republic is the sole judge of the extent of these limitations, and is, under the law of nations, responsible to no human tribunalfor the manner in which these rights are exercised. The fact that the southern people were subjects of the constitution, as well as ene mies in war, effects not the extent of our rights of conquest, but only the question who shall exercise them. The President is not the war power of the nation. He isa conspicuous art, but not the whole of it. Under the constitution congress declares war, grants letters of marque an reprisal, makes rules concerning captures on land and water, raises and supportsarmies, provides and maintains a navy, makes rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. provides for calling forth, armin, and disciplining the militia and exercises exc usive authority over all forts, arsenals, magazines, and dockyards. The President is Commander inChiefof the Army and Navy which Congress raises and provides. Here, as elsewhere. he executes the laws which Congress enacts. That part of the war power which is legislativein its nature belongs to Congress. That. which is executive belongs to the President. such a division is unknown to absolute monarchics; and hence they can afford us in this case neither precedents nor principles. With a foreign nation he may make peace, by virtue of his treatymaking power, and yet even then his action will be rendered nucatory by a renewed declaration of war. But when Congress recognizes war in insurrection he has no power to conclude or proclaim peace except such as is be stowed and maybe resumed by Congress. The President is bound to obey all constitutional laws of Congress relating to war, just as he is bound to obey any other constitutional lewd. To those whom the virtual dictatorship of the President, enforced by circumstances during the war, has not wholly blinded to the constitutional line of demarkation between the legislative and executive Depts of the Government, it cannot be dillieult to determine which of these rights are to be exercised by Congress and the President, respectively, in this case. If the mere pendency of war exempted the rebels from the jurisdiction of our constitution, then had the President and Senate the constitutional power, not indeed to reannex them, but to give them absolute independence, before or after the surrender of their armies, and so to cast them off beyond the reach of Congress, because the treatymaking power is vested in the President and Senate. But this treaty making power being unexereised, everything would devolve on Congress egcept the mere maintenance of order through the Army and Navy until Congress could express its will in legislation. If, however, the late rebel States did not, as the result of the mere pendency of war, become separate States, the whole powerto dispose of them rests without restriction or lim itation in the legislative Dept of the Government. The only constitutional power of the President over them, after actual hostilities ceased, is to preserve order by means of the Army and Navy until the voice of the lawmaking power can be heard. This would be rill different in Russia. It will sooner or later be all different here, if we suffer the executive strain upon our constitution which we have tolerated as a necessity in time of war to be perpetuated in time of eace.” But gent emen aflirm that it is now all different here; that the entire political work of reconstruction intervening between the cessation of hostilities and the scrutiny of credentials by the election committees of Congress, devolves on the Presidentas CommanderinChief and they present this reasoning in support of the position. The military surrender of the rebels on the field of battle must, it is said, he followed as an act of justice by a surrender on the field of political controversy. Whoever had the right to dictate the terms of the military surrender, has also the right to dictate the terms of the political surrender. The former right belonged to the President. Therefore the latter also belonged to him. This right to insist upon what is termed a political surrender, is probably a cautious expression for the right of conquest. It must be that or nothing. For certainly it can only be derived from the relation of the conquered to the conqueror under the law of nations, unless you 100 to the relation of the sovereign to unorganized territory under the constitution. In no event can it possibly exist asagaiiist a State of the Union. But the obection to this reasoning is, that thereis no truth in the main propositiou. The possession of this right in the one case does not involve the possession in the other. The right to fix the conditions of the military surrender devolved upon the President because he was the military commanderinChief, and what he did lay strictly within the scope of his military duty. But the political surrender, if you please to call it such, is quite another thing, and liesjust as certainly with iout the scope of his military duty. It will not do, sir, tosaythat the rebels, having the power to choose, selected him as the functionaly to “whom they would surrender, and thereby invested him, at their own option, with functions not provided by the constitution. They surrendered to him, because there was no other CommanderiuChief to whom they could surrender and he accepted their surrender in the only capacity in which he could accept it, in his military ca iacity. Neither they nor he could transform the power which executes, the laws into the power which makes them, any i officer with the functions of lawmaker or commanderiiiChief. Now, if gentlemen shall appeal to the American people, or to this Congress, to ratify and legalize particular measures of a heroic and patriotic President, adopted in the exercise of is discretion as a military commander and civil ruler compelled to bear a burden of over whelming responsibility on an untrodden road, to this appeal the people and this Congress will, I doubt not, respond with a generOsity which will go as near as stern justice and plighted faith will permit to the extreme verge of the constitution. But when they appeal to our grateful admiration for a man who stood like arock against the storms of treason on the soil of Tennessee, and ask as. not to ratify particular measures, but to admit them to have conabsolutely valid and constitutional in their inception, and within his exclusive jurisdiction, they ought to be able to lay their hands upon that article of the constitution which authorizes the President to create and fill the office of civil Governor of one of these States, which they pronouncejust as truly States of the Union now as they were before the war; on that article which authorizes the Federal Executive to brush aside a State government as a cobweb, to summon a State constitutional convention, to prescribe the qualifications of electors, to prescribe the qualificationsof members, to prescribe requisites of the new constitution s, to prescribe legislation for the new Legislatures. ore than that, sir, they ought to be able to show us the verysectionand the very clause which transfer such sacred and timehonored rights of States asthese to the CommanderinChief of the Army and N avy; the very section and the very clause which invest him with such so erhuman attributes that SCarolina can is at his feet, a conquest of war, and yet at the same instant stand up before him “as truly a State of the Union as she was before the rebellion.” Sir, nothing of this kind stands written in the constitution. Nor is there any truth in the plea that all this has been done, not in derogation but in aid of whatever of State severeignty was left to SCarolina by the war. We have not wagedthis war against an abstraction called rebellion. but against living rebels. It was the people of the South who filled the rebel armies as o eers and soldiers, who maintained and directed the rebel State governments, who provided means to carry on the war. They have not been fighting on our side against their own State governments and their own rebellion; they have not, for 4 years, so plicated us for deliverance from their own rebellion and rulers. If these communities were indeed States of the Union when the rebellion collapsed, “just as truly as before the war, ” their governments were just as truly State governments; for no man can deny that they rested on whatever of Sate rights and sovereignty remained to their people and granting that SCarolina re. mained a State of the Union, she had the right to choose and kee her Governorif she had any rights at all; s 10 had the right, if she had any rights at all, to decide whether and when she would have a new or an amended constitution; what should be the qualifications of her electors and of her constitutioirmakers; what should be the character of her new constitution and of her State legislation. subject only to the requirements of the Federal constitution itself. Sir, the man who asks us so to trample down cardinal principles of our constitution oughtto bear in mind that this will have to do, not merely with the present butalso with the future; that the power which, by this subversion of the constitutional barriers between the legislative and executive branches of the Government, he would today put into the hands of a patript, may tomorrow fall into the hands of a traitor; he ought to take heed lest the Democratic party a frozen, harmless cop erhead today. warmed to life tomorrow in iis own bosom sting to death the nation which the Presidenthas done so much to save. Mr. Chairman, there is a tide in the affairs of, more than they could invest the chief judicial l nations, as of men, which, taken at the flood, 566 February 1, leads on to fortune. The Republic rocks upon a floodtide now. it is for this Congress to seize or lose a golden opportunity which centuries may not bring back and when history shall summon us to judgment, the attempt to shift this burden of responsibility from our own to the Presidents shoulders will meet the scorn and execration which it merits. For oneI will attem 1. no such evasion of duty. When the Gentfrom NewYork [Mr. RAY nose] exhorted you to remember that they who have fallen in this war on either side are the nations dead, and their courage and devotion the priceless possession of the republic; when he sought thus to blind your eyes ytears shed over rebel graves to the enormity of the crime he would have you perpetrate upon the name and race of my black comrades in arms, who have died that this nation might live, I felt again something of the pain with which I heard that a Federal of the er had drunk wine with the butcher of Fort Pillow, while his hands ct dripped with the blood ofhis victims. I, too, believe in broth erly love; but it is in that brotherly love which is radiant in the light of Godsjustice, not in that which, turning its back on loyal whites and loyal blacks, weeps with living oppression over the Grave of dead treason. “The nations deadl” Ay, sir, dead patriots and dead traitors. If the distinction between loyalty and treason has so soon disappeared in the quicksands of our consciences, it nevertheless stands written in fire on millionsof bereaved loyal hearts in this Republic. No such sentimentality as this shall serve as my pretext for delivering over the loyal whites of the South to the torments of battled treason, or for breaking the nations faith plighted to the freedmen. Never, through my vote shall rebels have any power either to pay the debt incurred in the attempt to destroy the Republic, or to repudiate the debt incurred in its salvation. Never, with my consent, shall one bloodyminded, bloodyhanded traitor of SCarolina have greater power on this floor than 3 bulletridden patriots of Wisconsin. More than that, sir: never, with my consent, shall another representative from SCarolina enter this all until her black patriots shall be equal at the ballotbox to her white traitors.