Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. Speaker, the able i and protracted debate on this floor and in the Senate upon the subject of reconstruction, has been of an extraordinary character. It has involved largely 1st truths in political i philosophy, and reminded one rather of the solemn and earnest discussions in the Convention of 1787 than of the forensic encounters of i an ordinary Congress. Nor has the interest been confined to these Halls. The people of the whole country have followed these debates from day today with a profound sense of the reach and magnitude of the principles involved in the issue. No graver or more difficult questions ever perplexed a legislative assembly. The ru ent hand of free labor has given the pronets of 3 generations and pledged the wealth of the children to maintain the integrity of the Government; the blood of half a million victims, innocent of the crime of oppression, has redeemed 4 millions of a despised race from a debasing servitude, and thrown them, poor, ignorant, and helpless, upon our charity and justice. These precious results of popular sacrifices and sufferings must be made secure against the subtile craft and embittered hate of an experienced and powerful fee by the statesmanship of this Congress, upon whom Providence has devolved the task of perpetuating the Republic and of insuring the liberty and welfare of its entire population in this and the generations to come. Posterity will hold us accountable for the improvement of this splendid opportunity of civil liberty. It is the offspring of the ages, and has been brought to the birth in our time, amid the shock and agony of revolution, for the realization of grand and beneficent purposes in the divine economy. The Machiavel ian dogma, that it matters not whether we act or how we act in these unsettled and pregnant times, is dangerous teachin. In this transition period, when a mistake might be ihtal to liberty, the people will not be ulled into security by any Eircean form of speech. Nor will they long submitin patience to the narrow ambition and unthinking zeal which attributes to aquestion of temporary policy the importance O essential principles, and stakes the permanent welfare of the country n on a personal triumph. They demand Wis. but decisive action, and hold in healthy contempt subtile dialectics and musty precedents which there is no power to enforce, and which each nation accepts or rejects as will best subserve itsinterests. Justice and public lsfety are to them the natural and supreme law, and by them they will test our work. They demand that these shall be realized in the set ting up and readjustment of the disorganized States. They will never consent that we should put liberty to sleep upon any Procrustean bed made by the fathers, much less strangle it in the cast off garments of its own childhood. American liberty is equality before the law, and the protection of person and property. No emancipation is complete which does not secure these primary rights to the freedman. Nothing less will satisfy public opinion or accord with the spirit of the amended Constitution. Political heresy must be excluded from places of power, and never again permitted to scatter its poison into the fountains of legislation. It is the simplest dictate of legal justice and political prudence that the leaders of the rebellion, who have been foiled in their attempt to destroy the Government, but not urged of their purpose or their hate, should he banished forever from the halls of legislation, the courts of justice, and the seats of administration. It is equally clear that time should be allowed to remove the prejudiccs and soften the asperities of a hostile population, ere they are permitted to exercise the elective franchise and sway the forces of political power. Can these grand results of the revolution be fixed by permanent guarantees in the present discordant state of public sentiment? I answer unhcsitatingly, they can and will be. The common sense and common patriotism of the people, which have battled the force and the machinations of treason, which have brought the latest and mightiest conflict for civil liberty to the most sp endid triumph of history, will not in these 1st days of restored peace be cheated of the fruits of victory by the craft of polities or the passion of parties. With such a past, our faith may repose upon the people and the God of nations for the future. Differences of opinion and strong language are to be expected and tolerated upon great and abiding questions of national polity. A party which can boast of an undisturbed unity of sentiment in a formative epoch like this, has either become too corrupt or too imbecile to be of service to the State. We are reminded that leading Republicans in Congress and out of Congress are in conflict; so Were Hamilton and Madison in the Constitutional Convention, but they stood together in the production of the Federalist, that immortal argument for the adoption of our organic law so largely the result of their combine wisdom and forbearance. We should invoke upon our deliberations the spirit that blended firmness and moderation, and harmonized without the sacrifice of principle, conflictin views and interests in the councils of our fathers. Some among us would have universal suffrage, while others would exclude in perpetuo all who have participated in rebellion from the political rights which attach to citizenship. lhcse things may be right. Are they possible? Can abstract justice be realized in any form of human institutions? Men are not made for Governments, but Governments for men, and must be adapted to their circumstances and wants. Self government is not possible for savages, nor absolutism for on educated and virtuous people. Between these extremes there must e political gradations to meet the varying conditions of society. So in the restoration of the States to their Federal relations, we cannot ignore the past or blink out of sight the numbers who have been in arms against us. Vat tel, in defining the conduct due to insurgents, says it should be “such conduct as shall at the same time be most consonant to justice and the most salutary to the State. Subjects who rise against their princes without cause deserve severe punishment; yet even in this case, on account of the number of delinquents, clemency becomes a duty in the sovereign.” Neither can we shut our eyes to the general ignorance. inexperience, and subserviency of the emancipate. I do not counsel, and would not allow any concessions which would jeop ardize the safety of the Government or the welfare of the freedmen; but we cannot wholly disregard, in laying down our platform ofre construction, the opinions, or the prejudices even, of the 30,000 men of Tennessee who fought with us, and of the other 1,000s of other States who, standing in the very path of the terrible tempest, never wavered in their loyalty as it swept away their all, and brought to their hearth stones unntterable forms of woe and death. But, sir, while I am anxious for harmony among the friends of the Government, I spam with a righteous scorn the arrogant claims and insulting advice of the State criminals who have been put upon the stand to testify in respect to the amiable deportment and loyal attitude of a population which the Government has not yet dared to let sli from its mailed hand, and to signify upon what conditions these squelched reels Wlll deign to resume their functions in the Union. The imndent and unblushing assurance with which these rebel leaders, after their utteroverthrow and humiliation, rehearse their defunct dogma of State sovereignty, and plead their constitutional right to an exemption from all disabilities, and a resumption of all privileges, is such a burlesque and mockery of the stern realities of the time as the genius of Aristophanes never reached. Guilty of every political crime, and deserving 1,000fold the taints and forfeitures of treason, they assert their innocence in the face of an insulted but magnanimous people. Standin above the graves of 300,000 victims of their wrath, these men who have made the very air hot as the shirt of Nessus with their poi soned words of malediction and denunciation against the Government, insist upon being propitiated, and demand admission to the forum of lo slation, the halls of justice, and the seats of a ministration. Are we not turning this bloody tragedy of revolution into a comedy of errors? Wh, sir, the culprit at the bar pleads the magnitu e of his crime as a ground of acquittal! Nay, he even claims the right to ase end the judgment seat and pass judgment upon his accuser, and threatens ere long to assume the place of the executioner. " O. judgment, thou art fled to brutisb beasts, and men have lost their reason." With all deference to the opinion of others, I think these men have no business here but to plead for pardon. The court which takes testimony from the criminal sits upon a rotten throne. The GOVernment which seeks counsel and support from its enemies is both weak and treacherous. Sir, it is the right of those whose political tenets are universa liberty and universal justice, and who have hallowed their creed with their blood, to make conditions of return and to rebuild the shattered fabrics of State governments on principles which will obviate future antagonisms an conflicts in the sisterhood of States. I would pay to these fallen chiefs the tribute due to men who were brave in a ban cause, and would give them the privilege to live and die in unmolested obscurity. “All is not lost, " even to them. They invoked war upon the land, and in the bloody carnival the slaves have done what their fathers did, asserted their inalienable right and made themselves free. The Nemesis of national justice has swept away the opulence which they had wrun from unrequited toil, has de prived them of the power to dispense an ele gant and magnificent hospitality in the sweat of other mens brows; int Providence has kindly left them the consolation of their bounds and fighting cocks. As they sit amid the ruins and desolations of their great plantations, their chastened spirits may still tin fit utterance in the sweet lyric of Cowper: “I am monarch of n.llI My right there is nonseutrowayls.puto: From the center all round to the sea. am lord of the fowl and the brute.” When we look simply at the future peace and safety of the Republic, the work of reconstruction seems simple and unperplexed. That the governments of the insurgent States should be reorganized by and maintained in the hands of men sincerely loyal, is too nearly selt evident to admit of argument. It is equally obvious that this can be reached only by requiring as conditionsrecedent to restoration. That the (in and military leaders of the rebellion, who naturally create and direct the public opinion of the South, should be made ineligible to Office under the U.S. Government. 2. That the rights of the freedmen and the safety of the Government be secured by granting suifra c to the liberated or withholding it temporariy from the disloyal. 3. That the elective franchise and an equal distribution of political power shall be protected by a decrease in the basis of representstion, whereim artialsuffrage is denie, by such a proportion oi the whole population as the disfranc ised males above 21 years of age bear to the whole male population above that e. There is no injustice in such requisitions, and they are imperatively demanded for public safety. There is no hardslii in withlioldin political power from men who have violate the most solemn oaths, have destroyed untold wealth, and decimated the population of the land in an effort to overthrow its Government. Is it not our paramount duty as nardians of the Republic to throw around it such safeguards of law as shall protect it against the machinations of a yet powerful foe, until treasonable purposes shall have passed away or become innoxious? I am constrained to believe that no loyal man would hesitate for a moment to give a cordial support to these measures were not his reason perplexed or his desires over ruled by a theory of the indestructibility of States which dominates his better judgment and his patriotism. I fully concur, sir, in the opinion entertained by gentlemen around me, that the insurgent States did not perish, either by their ordinances of secession or their acts ofwar; butl differ in late from the conclusion that they have a right to representationin Congress simply because of their existence as States. If the present governments of the rebel States have been organized by those who had forfeited all their political rights, and are held in their power, they have no legal existence or right of representation more than the revolutionary governments which have been overthrown. The national Legislature, to whom alone the right belongs, must in some way signify when their political status has been properly restored be ore they can rightfully claim seats within it. The right of a Government to make use of the means necessary to its own existence is the supreme law of every State. It was that reserved and sovereign right of the Government which conferred upon us the power to refuse representation during the pendency of the struggle, and the same imperative law of public necessity demands the continued exclusion of the representatives of that rebel power till the loyal ieople of the South, who have never worshiped at the altars of treason, shall have reconstructed their State governments upon principles consistent with the genius of civil liberty and upon conditions which we shall dictate as essential to the future peace and welfare of the Republic. It is not for treason to sit in judgment upon itself, nor for the enemies of the Government to become chief counselors of the State. The war has wrought great changes, not only in the social condition, at the civil structure of the late slave States. They cannot return It! they were originally, and it is properthat Congress, to whom belongs the right of determining the conditions upon which States shall be organized and of maing them parts of the Union, should decide when those States have n properly reorganized and fitted to renew their legitimate functions in the Union. This is a responsibility which we, whom the people have made depositaries of their will, cannot Innocently yiel or repudiate, and for another tmastitime it would be a usuration of power Inch as would not be tolerated in the coarsest dmost. absolute despotism to be found on like map of the world and yet, sir, on this very question of the right of Congress to impose i on their readmission to the Union. upon the rebel States conditions precedent to I representation, the issue is to be made and I contested before the people, and we had better meet it fully and fairly upon this floor. The war was a logical and inevitable result of the conflicting views entertained by the northern and southern schools of polities in respect to the nature of our Government. They who regard it as simply a league, necessarily transferred sovereignty to the independent States of which it was composed, and held that the State was entitled to their highest allegiance and could secede at pleasure. We, on the other band, who held that the Union was a Government de facto, denied the right to withdraw, and contended that the Federal Government could claim supreme allegiance and coerce the people of a State. With social and industrial systems in constant and complete antagonism, it must ultimately happen that sectional interests would be thought paramount to the advantages of the Union, and then the final arbitrament of force must come, as it did. But when it came, was it the purpose of the South to overthrow the State governments? Certainly not, for it was in their interests that they rebelled. They renounced their allegiance to the Constitution and attempted to transfer it to another. They did not desire to inaugu rate anarchy, but to construct a new confederacy out of the existing States. When peaceful measures failed they attempted forcibly to sunder the umbilical cord which bound them to the parent State, to expel Federal authority in all its forms from their borders, and to transfer the States without lapse or essential modification of their governments to a new federal league. This t cy did in fact, but not in law. It was simply a suspension of Federal authority. Their ordinances of secession passed by Legislatures were void, for the States, as such, are not parties to the Union, and have no more power to break the bond than a board of trade or city council. Their ordinances of secession passed in conventions were equally void, 1st, because the Constitution has no provision for self destruction inuthat way; and 2ndly, because the Government was originally organized by a 3iburths vote of all the States, and could only be disorganized, ifthat were possible by peaceful means. by a similar vote. 11 States only instead of 24 made the attempt, and hence their work was a nullity. Did they effect their object in the conflict of arms? They established a civil power which had a de factn existence and exercised the functions of government for 4 ears. Did it acquire an existence de jurc? think not. lfit did, then the rebels dismembered ourterritory and became alien enemies upon a foreign soil, for they could not have become alien enemies upon our own soil. If it did, then the can only be held as prisoners of war an can claim exemption from the guilt and the punishment of treason. lfit did, they cannot be required in law or justice to pay taxes levied upon the States during their separate existence; and have a right to insist that the liabilities which they incurred as an independent power shall be assumed and honorably disetiarged by the General Government, If it did, theyare today in the condition of conquered territory and should be brought into the Union, like other States, by a vote of Congress, and not by the snpererogatory work of constitutional amendments. If it did, then the rebels layed the double part of victors and van uied in the final scene of the drama, and have been asking and receiving pardons from a defeated foe. It is clear, sir, that the slave States never reached the dignity of an independent confed cracy. There has never been a moment when they have not been regarded and treated as a part of the Union. Their de facto government was never recognized by other Powers as of not less heroic men who survive, are entitled to the glory of having preserved the integrity of the Union and the supremacy of the government. But though the right of the Government to collect customs, hold courts, maintain military power, and exercise all other functions of federal authority in the insurgent. States, has remained unbroken, yet it has been assumed, and much legal learning marshaled to prove, that the local governments perished. I admit the great skill and abilit of the advocates of this theory, but have fui ed to be convinced of its truth. I am unable to see how the numer ous citatigns which have been made from distinguished publicists are applicable to the stats of things which here exist. The local governments of the seceding States had an uninter rupted continuity of existence until the fall of the confederacy, and were then destroyed, not by the enemies, but by the friends of the Union. The legitimate governments were usurped by a revolutionary power, which administered them in the interests of treason and in defiance of Federal authority. There was a continuity but not an identity of existence when a lo a was transferred into a disloyal State. The former passed over its form, but not its life, to the new State, and hence did not necessarily perish, either at its birth or its demise. It was neither a metamorphosis nor a metem sycho sis of the State. It was not a case O death, but of suspended animation. The insurgents maintaine the old forms, in order the better to concentrate and wield their power, but in law they had no municipal governments in operation from the beginning to the close of the war, for a State can come into existence only by an act of Congress. They are simply municipal organizations for home purposes, and not governments in the purview of international law. Hence they do not come into existence by the recognition of foreign Powers, and their status is to be determined by constitutional rather than international law, the same as cases are decided in court by stat ute law, where there is a statute, to the exclusion ofconimon law. Under the Constitution, I know of no way in which a State can perish. If the people should resort to their reserved right, and sunder their relations to the Federal Union by successful revolution, undoubtedly the State would cease to exist as a part of the Government. But this case does not occur until the revolution has been recognized as a success by other Christian Powers. This position, I think, will not be controverted by Gentlemen familiar with public law. The loyal eo is of the South were over powered and el in duress by an armed mob, and their governments rendered ine perative by force during the periodin which the slave power was testing the ability of the Federal Government to maintain its supremacy. But the usurpation has been crushed and the rebel power subverted, and now the governments of the States revert to the loyal people of the South, who have a right to claim protection and immunity at our hands while they reor nize their governments on principles which we may deem essential to the republican form guarantied by the Constitution and to the future peace and safety of the Republic. Says Chief Justice Chase: “It is my opinion the States remain States. The rebel governmentsof the southern States have been destroyed. All the machinery ottheso governments hase ometo an end: and now. holding, as I do. that these states rcinain States, the 2nd proccss of reorganization is that the governmentsnow revert into the bands of the southern people. They are to rebuild the governments of these tatas." It is not designed by the series of measures now pending to construct a platform for the admission of new States, though it may become such, but to put the organization of the disrnpted governments into the hands of loyal citizens, and to preserve them in their custed till belonging to the community of nations, and I was treated by us as a fiction during the pendency of the contest. The brave men who fell 1 on uthousand battle fields, and the mighty host l time shall have removed, or at least soothed, the passions and prejudices of these troubled times. The justice and wisdom of such a policy will hardly be questioned by any friend of the Government; but in organic legislation whatever is just and wise has the force oflaw. The late President Lincoln, in speaking of reconstruction. says: “An attempt to guaranty and protect a revived Stategovernment constructedin wholeor inpreon dorn tingpart from the very clement against w lose hostility and Violenceit is to be protected is simply absurd.” The present Chief Magistrate, too, speaking coat of the fullness and bitterness of his expe name, said: “But in calling a convention torestore the State, who shall restoreand recstablishit? Shall the man who gave his means nd his influence to destroy the Government? Is he O participate in the Rrcutwork “reorganization? Shall bewho brought iis misery to his t boesSota. the hnea lethrmlsittperdectoiocuos nbtlroooldi tosf oducrstbnrnacvse? soldiers and officers.so freely poured out. Will have been wantonly spilled; allt isglorious victorieswon by our noble armies will go for naught and all the battle fields which have been sown with dead heroes during the rebellion will have been madememorable in vain. Why all this carnageand devastation? It was that treason might be put down and traitors unlshed. Therefore Isay that traitors should ta O a back seatin the work of restoration. lfthere be but 5,000 men in Tennesseeloyal to the Constitution loyal to freedom loyal to Justice, these true and faith ul menshouldeontrol the work of reorganilation and reformation absolutely. I.say that the traitor has ceasedto be a citizen and in oining the rebellion has becomea public enemy. o forfeited his right to v otewith loyal men when he renounced his citizeuship and sought to destroy our Governmentn. The bill reported by the committbe proposes the temporary disfranchisement of rebels, while the amendment offered by the Gentfrom Massachusetts provides for a system of suffrage which shall inclhde all males above the age of 21. These 2 measures fairly involve a discussion of the grounds and the policy of suffrage. The theory has been advanced that the family is the unit of society and the rightful source of political power. llhis, though beautiful as an abstraction, does not, I apprehend, solve the problem of suffrage; If the right to vote springs from the family relations, how many votes shall the family cost? If but one, who shall cast it? Do you say the father, who is the natural representative and defender of the family? But suppose the father is superannu ated and feeble, would he be called upon in an emergency to shoulder his staff, when staggering under the weight of 80 years, to defend either his family or his country? Would not his stalwart but unmarried son, sustained and impelled by the vigor of 30 summers, rather be summoned to stand in the breach when the rights and privileges of either his family or the State are invade 1 As, under such circumstances, the son would more ably defend, so would he not more safely exercise the suffrage of the family than the father? But the theory deprives him of the privilege and the State of the advantage of a vote. If, now, all the family but this son were cut off, and he left alone, is he still to be deprived of all political rights till he becomes the head of a family? Would not this be a limitation rather than an extension of the precious privilege of suffrage, and tend to transfer the sovereignty of the majority to an aristocratic minority? Suppose, again, the head of the family is a Mormon, and the husband of a score of wives: 35 the political power of 20 families to be given to the saintly patriarch of Utah? Sir, such a policy would turn the current of history, swiftly flowing into civil freedom, backward toward the patriarchy of the infant world. I dismiss the theory, and turn to one more plau sible though equally fallacious. I refer to the dogma that suffrage is an inalienable natural right. Now, sir, I contend that it is not a natural right at all. It does not exist in a state of antire, but is created by the or nization of Civil society. It is the method y which the ultimate sovereignty of the people is exressed in the administration of government, an hence is purely a political right. Voting is not an end but a means, and should be extended or lim ited according as the one or the other will best subserve the ends for which Governments are made. In a republic the privilege should be as near universal as the well being of society and the perpetuity of government will allow. The axiom of political equality, and the dogma that all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed, which we have laid in the foundations of our civil institutions, forbid any restriction upon suffrage, except when overridden by the higher law of public safety. This is the only and suficient justification for withholding the privilege from aliens, mine rs, and females. Properly speaking, any conditions of suffrage in the nature of personal qualifications, made for the public good, are not restrictions, and can only become such when individuals fail to reach the standard which their own good and the welfare of society demands. This is self exclusion from a full particiation in the privileges of free men for which the Government should not be held responsible. Rational liberty is the off spring of law, and must be maintained by law. But law in a free Government is an expression of national sentiment, and can only be executed when in accord with the public mind. I do not mean in accord with the views and wishes of all men, or sections even for then it might not he a “terror to evil doers” but with the prevailing sentiment of the people. It is essential, therefore, for the reservation of liberty, that the law should em ody intelli gence and virtue of a high order. Republics are the latest and the best results of an advanced civilization, and are the civil forms in which the will and ideas of those for whom and by whom Governments are established have sought the highest condition of man. But were you to establish a republic among the unthinking and unrestrainedp barbarians of the South Sea islands, it would be subverted before a 12 month. A savage people cannot be a free, self governing people. Vhere the passions of men are not under the restraint of the developed reason and conse ience, they will not be a law unto themselves, but must be restrained by force. Transport to our shores ten million corrupt and ignorant Chinamen, a thing by no means impossible, and give them unlimited suffrage, and straightway your institutions would be subjected to radical and essential changes, if not to coin lete subversion. For those, among other reasons, I hold that the question of suffrage is not to be determined by an appeal to our original rights, but by a consideration of its probable effects upon the public welfare and the perpetuity of the government. This I contend for, not because I wish to exclude freedmen from the ballot box, but because I would trace our political privileges to their true source. I would place upon defensible and impregnable grounds the exclusion of amnestied but nnre entant rebels from any art or lot in the war of reconstructing the Bnion, shattered by the ir hands, and which they are still anxious to destroy. We have no right to exclude any man from the privilege of suffrage unconditionally, but we have the same right and are under the same obligation to require of him for its exercise those conditions of intelligence and virtue without which republics cannot exist, as we have to make prearation and fitness aprerequisite for the discurge of official and ministerial duties. This is demanded of us by all the force of our obligations to reserve and perpetuate good government. he political axiom that taxation and rere sentation are correlative rights, which the faters laid down in justification of their act of revolution, has been reiterated here and elsewhere as an irrefutable defense of universal suffrage. But the argument is false in philosophy and defective in logic. It assumes that suffrage should be as universal as representation, which is the very question at issue. Taxation does not necessarily carry with it the right to vote. Men may be required to ay taxes or the support of a Government which protects them in the enjoyment of their civil rights, even wherepublic safety requires a restriction of their political rights. lhis holds in the case of fe males and aliens, and may he applied with even greater force to native born citizens who have been in arms against their Government. Ignorance may exclude from the ballot box, but treason must. Whether the entire adult male population made free by the proclamation of January 1, 1863, and by the late amendment of the Constitution, numbering some 700,000, shall at once be admitted to the full enjoyment of all the political privileges of American citizens or not, is simply and so ely a question of political wellbeing. A deprivation of civil rights is a defeat of the ends for which Governments are organized, and is an abuse of power, but a Government based upon politica. equality presnp oses a degree of intelligence and virtue, an hence may properly demand the qualifications essen tial to its own existence in those who exercise its preivicle agnenso.t settle the question of suffrage by reference to abstractions. Civil institutions are not a creation of the pure reason, but are an outgrowth of the experience of ages, and must be maintained by practical wisdom; but it is beset with difficulties. Free Governments are impossible among uncivilized peoples. When the masses are but partially or viciously educated, as in South America and Mexico, and even in parts of Europe, they have but a precarious and fitful existence. Then, an addition to the existin body of electors, of 700,000 men wholly destituteof mental discipline and a practical knowl edge of affairs, if not fatal to free government, might render it undesirable. But ere, where the great majorit of the people are under the restraints of a Christian education, we have a reserve of conservative power, which would seem to be abundantly abfe to counteract any dangerous tendencies resulting from such an increase. It may be more safe to give them the privilege to vote than to leave them like the pent up 4th estate in Europe, a discon tented and factions force under the State, perpetually seeking to redress its real or imaginary wrongs by mobs and revolutions. Every British ministry for half a century has been obliged to protect itself against this class of the population, by holding an army in one hand and a reform bill in the other. The fact that the freedmen are concentrated at the South throws some doubt and perplexity into the problem. If they were scattered over the whole country the gift of suffrage to this people would not hazard or materially affect any State or national interest whatsoever. The whole body is less than the number of foreigners naturalized every ten years, and would constitute but one 7th of the entire voting population of the country. A Government which has sufficient power of assimilation to maintain its character and its stability against the igno rance and prejudice brought in by an annual increase of the foreign vote of a 100,000need not entertain an apprehension of evil to result from the vote of 700,000 natives who have been taught the fin tuc of se lfrestraint and the value of liberty in the school of oppression. There can be but little danger from a race so docile and opt to learn. We should bearin mind, too, that though themselves enslaved, they have grown up in the midst of free institutions and have had the moral discipline of suffering. Remember, also, what unswerving loyalty they exhibited in the darkest and most hopeless hour of the war, when the ampered children of the republic had yielded to the sorcery of treason am gone into a foul revolt a inst liberty and the government of their fathers. With what incorrupt ible fidelity they fed and guided through all snares and dangers our starving soldiers ese aping from the infernal lazaretto of a power which renounced alike the laws of war and the in stincts of humanity. With what alacrity they leaed into the bloody arena when the hazard of life was made the price of their liberty. With what danntless heroism they fought and fell, side by side with the bravest and manliest of the lan, for the integrity of a Government which had been to them the house of bondage. Why, sir, these despised chattels of the traitor Ous chivalry grappled with their masters in the deadliest breach, and fought with a firm and des crate courage where bullet and shell made will est have c With your ranks, and their ashes mingle with the dust of your noble dead from the rivers to the sea and the Gulf. H c not such deeds redeemed the race from dishonor and distrust, and entitled them, not only to a protection of their civil rights, but to an impartial enjoyment of the privileges of citizenship? It seems to me, sir, to be a legitimate result of the war, and as though to withhold it would be a violation of the gratitude, the honor, and the plighted faith of the Republic. But, Bll, I would not insist upon my views or make my convictions an obstruction to the restoration of a cordial union and fraternal intercourse with the South. We must ask nothing more, we must accept nothing less than what is necessary to the future peace and safety of the country. The suffrage of colored men, though limited by intelligence and military service, would undoubtedly be offensive and humiliating to the South, for it would conflict with pride of caste and with settled convictions that political subordination is the divinely appointed condition of black men. It is idle for us to expect that legislation or victories will supplant the inveterate prejudices of a century. Time is an important element in moral triumphs, for the progress of ideas in general society is slow. but we have a right to insist, both as conquerors and the friends of freedom, that theories that have covered the land with shame and sorrow and well nigh wrecked the Government shall nowhere again take forms of law or turn our legislative halls into the arenas of discord and passion. We have been told that the apearance of the freedmen at the polls would be the signal for an indiscriminate war of extermination, and in the next breath that it would enhance the political power of their former mast ers. If, new, the desire of the South to realize both of these objects did not neutralize their efforts for either, the past is an assurance that the power of the Government would be ample to crush sedition, while the untarnished record of the negro during the war and his quiet but earnest pursuit of knowledge and the legitimate fruits of industry now, are to us a pledge of his future loyalty to liberty. The southern argument that the ballot should be withheld on account of race or color rests in unalloyed prejudice, which has grown up from a false e ucation and a vicious social system. It is indefensible on any principles of human nature or sound logic. A reference to facts and history shows abundantly that there is no natural repugnance between races or colors. What is sometimes regarded as such is only a false class pride, made obstinate by longcon tinued, artificial, and enforced distinctions in social condition, which becomes obvious and palpable when the races are brought together upon a common level of political equality. Why, sir, these sticklers for an incompati bility of race if you will but perpetuate the inequality and wrong of a barbarous age, will mix and circulate freely and gladly in this wide mosaic of society, and even mingle their blood till all the nice distinctions of color are blended and lost in a universal smut of the cuticle. These puerile conceits which we have been wont to hear pronounced with solemn and assured gravity by politicians of the southern school will soon follow into obse urity or contempt the outrage and wrong in which they were engendered Opinionum commentadelet dies, nalum: iudicia confirmat.” But the aramount argument for a system of suffrage which shall admit freedmen and exclude rebels from the franchise of the ballot is the necessity of securing at the South a part whose loyalty is unimpeachable, to renew an maintain municipal governments in the insur gent States, true to the principles which have prevailed in the late struggle of arms. This will he specially imperative, if we adopt the vtheory of the Executive, that these States are still in the Union. My own opinion has been that our condition was without precedent, either in our own or foreign history, and that the theory of reconstruction which was most direct and simple, and which could receive the General and cordial support of the people, provxled it was in the interest of imartial rights, was most legitimate, and should shape the policy of the Administration. We have just emerged, sir, from a grand revolution. his principles involved, and which have ained the final mastery, have no less intrinsic value and are not less vital to the welfare of those who shall enter into our labors than were those for which our fathers staked their lives and for the transmission of which they renounced the whole proud inheritance of the fatherland and built anew the fabric of civil government. Is there any “powerful charm ” in the wizard past which should hold this generation spell bound? Our responsi bilities to the future are not less than were those of the past to us. The authority of legal maxims and venerated parchments is not so high as the cry of justice and the demands of public safety. Sir, we are under a covenanto blood to the loyal dead and the loyal living and to their children after them to see that what the people have gained in the field is not lostin the orum. We cannot shirk this grave responsibility under the pretext of public necessity, and be guilt less. The people will hold us in the discharge of our solemn obligations. The divine law vdoes not require us to do equal justice to “white” men, but to all men; and if we cannot find the statute upon the tables of the law ivers, we may find it written upon the heart by Him who “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”, We cannot afford to lose time in restoring the rebel States to the full exercise of their functions in the Federal Government. The Union cannot long lie asunder in time of peace. There is a silent, irresistible force in the tide of events, a recuperative power in the great industries of the country, stronger than political parties, which will enforce an early reor ganization of these States. If we do not adopt some just and feasible lan for the reconstruction of the disorganize South, the people will reconstruct this House. Nothing should be done in a spirit of exasperation and revenge. The safety of the Republic and the cause of national liberty alone should dictate terms. The freedom of all must be “maintained, ” and the peace and security of the Government as sured by retaining it in the hands of its friends. But while we battle with an inflexible will for the realization of these indispensable conditions of reunion, we shall do well to bear in mind that in bringing back 11 great States to their allegiance we cannot secure full and exact justice as in the ordinary administration of law; that retaliation, if possible, would not restoie our treasure or bring back our dead, and that time, which obliterates the trenches of war, will soften our sense of wrong and take something from the severity of our demands. Practical statesmauship today does not consist in determining what we would do if we could, but what we can do if we will, and then in doing it. Let me not be understood as palliating the guilt or counseling a feeble dispensation of justice to the master spirits who raised and directed this storm of blood. Today the are building the tombs of dead traitors, n inciting the rabble to the red handed workabt negro extermination. They are attempting, by processions, songs, and eulogies to corrupt the current of history and redeem from eternal infamy the memory of their comrades in perjury, murder, and treason. These things must cease. We must have but one history, and our monuments must teach the wisdom and glory of loyalty. It cannot be otherwise than that the latest and most resplendent chapter in our national records, the statutes of the last half decade, and the next; the very tribute which industrycasts into the public treasury; nay, that the prevailing sentiments and familiar speech of the loyal country should be a bitter and perpetual reproach to these men. Would you, then, place them hereto baffle legislation, where eve debate would be to them as torrible as the fiery tracery n may his palace walls to the doomed monarch of abylon 1 Place them here and you make this place a bedlam to us and an inferno to them. Bitter dissensions would constantly arise, which would finally dismember and ruin the Republic. Once within. these walls their purpose would find fit expression in the language of Beelzebub to the infernal council: “ Untamedreluctanceand revenge.thoughslow, Yet over plotting how the conqueror least may reap his conquest, and may leastrejoice In oing what we most in suffering feel." It is an indisensable condition of peace to both North an South that the guilty authors of the war, whose ptide and assions would rankle with the shame of de eat, should be forced into obse urity where they will be stripped of the prestige of distinction and the power of p nce. Our policy should be to punish the leaders, but to elevate and inspire with confidence the masses who have been cheated or forced into rebellion. We should no longer handy the epithets of “fanatical Yankee” and “southern tyrant, ” nor nurse sectional animosities and prejudices as groundless as the childish sentiment the poet has cast into the pleasant epi gram: "I do not love on Dr. Fell. The reasonwicannot toll, But this alone know full wellI I do not love you, Dr. Fell." While we should shrink from no duty, and shirk no responsibility which the safety and welfare of the country demand, our abiding aspiration and effort should be to lay wide open the channels of trade and intercourse between the North and South, and to bind the 2 sections together by the bonds of mu tual interest, and the yet stronger tics of common ideas and common patriotism. If we are to be one people, the deep, dark chasm which has opened in our history, which puzzles the skill of the wisest, must be spanned by frank and manly concessions and a mutual forbearance until the growth of other times shall have obliterated the horrid breach. The men who have trodden the paths of war, and whose graves lie thick and beautiful on southern plains, as the stars that keep watch in the deep vault of heaven; the heroes who survive and the heroes who went down in the r e and wrath of battle, like grass in the swath of the mower; they who at NewOrleans and at Mobile, with rudder set and sails spread to the breeze, sailed as into the very mouth of hell, and brought forth the twin demons of treason and bondage to the light of justice and liberty, have made it impossible that a slave should ever again crouch and tremble beneath the flag of the Republic. To us belongs the duty of assuring the safety and peretuity of the Union. Let us do our work int c spirit of Christian charity, and in our admiration of men of noble natures and heroic mold, who dared to stand, like heroes at the threshold of their homes, and to fall like men at their hearthstones, in defense of a bad and wicked cause, let us forget our wrongs and foster a spirit of patriotism and of brotherhood, which shall embrace every State and eve citizen in our broad and sea girt domain, ric in its mountains and rich in its plains blessed in its climates and blessed in its copies.