Mr. JULIAN. Mr. Speaker, in demanding the punishment of the chief rebel conspirators, I beg not to be misunderstood. I do not ask for vengeance. I feel sure there is no man in the country, however intense his loyalty, who would inflict the slightest unnecessary suffering, or any form of cruelty, upon even the most flagitious of the confederate leaders. What the nation desires, and all it asks, is the ordinary administration of justice against the most extra ordinary national criminals. The treason spun from their brains, and deliberately fashioned into the bloody warp and woof ofa. 4 ears war, involving the sacrifice of 100s ofy1,000s of lives, and 1,000s of millions of treasure, ought to be branded by the nation as a crime. It on ht to be made “odious” and “infamous.” he punishment of that crime prescribed by the Constitution, is death; an Tam just as unwilling to see the Constitution set aside and made void in this respect, in the interest of vanquished rebel leaders, as I was to see it tramped under foot by their armed legions while the war continued. Indeed, the punishment of these leaders is a necessary part of the logic of their infernal enterprise, and without it the rebellion itself, instead of being effectually crushed, must find a fresh incentive to renew its life in its impunity from the just consequences of its guilt. It Will not do to say these leaders have been sufficiently punished already, by the failure of their treason, the loss of their coveted power, and their humiliation, poverty, and disgrace. Kindred arguments would empty our jails and penitentiaries, and make the administration of criminal justice eve where a farce. The way of all transgress ors is hard; but this hardship cannot justify society in failing to protect itself by fitly chas tising its enemies. Rustice to the nation whose life has been attempted, and to the assassins who made the attempt, is the great demand of the hour and here, again, Mr. Speaker, I hope I shall be understood. In pleading for justice I mean of course public justice, which seeks the prevention of crime by making an example of the criminal. Human lawsdo not pretend to fathom the real moral guilt of olfen ers. They have no power to do this. Their sole aim IS the prevention of crime. They have nothing to do with that retributive justice which grad uates the punishment of each transgressor by the exact measure of his guilt. To the great Searcher of all hearts belongs this prerogative, while society, acting through government as its agent, and having an eye single to its own protection, must deal with its criminals. This, sir, is my reply to the lea often urged that we should not hang the reel leaders, because we cannot also hang the leading s mpathizers of the northern States who are perhaps more guilty. The Government has nothing to do with the question of degrees of moral uilt or blame worthiness, either in the Nor or the South. Its concern is with the nations enemies, whose overt acts of treason have made them amenableto the laws, and whose punishment should be made a terror to evil doers hereafter. The fact that our power of punishmerlt cannot reach all who are guilty, including many men in the loyal States who richly deserve the halter, is no reason whatever for allowing those to go nuwhipped who are properly within the reach of public justice and the same reasoning applies to the argument sometimes urged against all punishment founded on the numbers who would fairly be liable to suffer. The question is frequently asked. would you build a gallows in every village and neighborhood of the South? Would you shock the Christian world by the spectacle of 10,000 gibbets, and the hanging of all who have been guilty of treason, or even a respectable fraction of their number? I answer, I would do no such thing. Public justice and the highestgood of the State do not require it. I would simply apply the ordinary rules of criminal jurisprudence to the question, and as in other conspiracies, so in this grand one, I would mete out the severest punishment to the ring leaders. Most undoubtedly I would give them a constitutional entertainment on the gallows; or should the number of ringleaders be too great, or the guilt of some of them be less lla grant than others, pe etuul exile might be substituted. The rebe masses, both on the score of their numbers and their qualified guilt, should have a general amnesty; but by no possible means would I spare the unmatched villains who conceived the bloody project of national dismemberment, and by their devilish arts lured into their horrid service the igno rant and misguided people of their section. Whoever may ese ape justice, either North or South, or whatever embarrassments may belong to the problem of punishment at the end of this stupendous conflict, nothing remains so perfectly clear and unquestionable as the duty of the nation to execute the great malefactors who fashioned to their uses all the genius and resource of the South, and throughout the entire struggle invoked all the powers of hell in their wor of national destruction. Mr. Speaker, the adequate punishment of the rebel leaders involves the whole question of the rebellion itself. It is nota matter which the government may dispose of indifferently, but is vital to the nations eace, ifnot to its veryexistence. Totrifie with it is to trifle with public justice and the holy cause for which the country has been made to bleed and suffer. It is to mock our dead heroes, and confess our own pusillanimity or guilt. It is to make treason respectable, and put loyalty under the ban. It is to call evil good apd good evil; and since God is not to be mocked, it must in some form bring down upon our own heads the retribution which we may only ese ape by enforcing the penal laws of the nation against the magnificent felons who have sought its life. Sir, I shall take it for granted that treason is a crime, and not a mere accident or mistake. In this most frightful and desolating struggle there is transe endent and unutterahle guilt; and I take it for ranted that that guilt is on the side of those who wantonly and causelcssly took up arms against the nation, and not on the side of those who fought to save it from destruction. Treason is a crime, and therefore not a mere difference of opinion; a crime, and therefore not an honest mistake of dgment about the right of a State to secedhl; a crime, and therefore not a mere struggle of the South for independence while the bforth contended for empire; ase rime, and therefore not a mere “misapprehension of misguided men, ” as some of our copperhead journals affirm; a crime, and the highest of all crimes, including all lesser villainies, and eclipsing them all, in its heaven daring leap at the nations throat; and therefore those who withstood it by arms were patriots and heroes, fighting for nationality and freedom, against rebels whose sure and swift punishment should be made a warning against the repetition of their deeds. Mr. Speaker, if a man were to comeinto our midst and ersuade us that treason and loyalty are about the same thing; that right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, are convertible terms; that God and Satan are in fact the same personage, under different names, and that it matters little under whose banner we fight; and if he could thus enlist us in the work of uprooting the foundations of Government, of morals, of society, of everything held sacred among men, would he not. be tsmost exe crable creature in the universe? If he could indoctrinate mankind with his theory of “ reconstruction, ” would not this beautiful earth of ours be converted into a 1st class hell, with the devil as its king? Sir, you dare not trifle with this question of the punishment of traitors. Theory oes before practice. right believing, on moral or political issues, prece cs right acting; and you touch the very marrow of the rebellion when you approach the question of the punishment of the rebels. Sir, there is not a State in this Union, nor a civilized country on earth, which in the treatment of its criminals sanctions the sickly magnu nimity and misapplied humanity of this nation in dealing with its leading traitors. NOcivilized Government, in my judgment, could possibly be maintained on any such loose and confounded principles. Crime would have unchecked license, and public justice would not even be a decent sham. No man will dispnte this, or an to be amazed that, in dealing with our red handed traitors, whose crimes are certainly uusurpassed in histor, and have filled the land with sorrow and by good, we utterly decline to execute against them the very constitution which they sought to overturn by years of wholesale rapine and murder. Sir, this fact is at once monstrous and start ling. Wc seize the murderer who only takes the life of one man, indict him, convict him, and then hang him. Undoubtedly some mur derers ese ape punishment through pardons and otherwise, but certainly the pens. ty of death is indicted in most countries. The pirate, who boards a vessel on the sea, and murders a few sailors, is " chased by the civilized world to the gallows.” The plea in his behalf of magnanimity to a vanquished criminal would not save him, and his riends would scarcely urge it. Public justice demands the sacrifice of his life, and no one expects him to be spared if fairly convicted. But JeffersonDavis is no ordinary assassin or irate. He did not murder a sin lo citizen, but 100s of 1,000s of men. 9 did not heard a ship on the sea and murder a few sailors, but he oarded the great ship of state, and tried, by all the power of his evil genius, to sink her, cargo and crew, with the hopes of the world forever, into the abyss of eternal night and is not his guilt as much greater than that of an ordinaryassassiu or pirate as the life of a great republic is greater than the life of one man? as not each one of these leaders a national assassin, aiming his bloody dagger at the countryls vitals, and is not his guilt multiplied by the millions whose interests were imperiled? and shall justice only be defied by the worlds randest villains and outlaws, an mercy defile erself by taking them into her embrace? Mr. Speaker, JeffersonDavis was a favored child of the Republic. He had been educated at the nations expense, and upon him had been lavished the honors and emoluments of office. He owed his country nothingbut t itude and fidelity, and no man understood as obligations better than himself. Again and again be had asked his Maker to witness that he would be faithful to the Constitution, which at the time he was plotting to destroy. Long years before the rebellion he had been ine cu lating the ublic opinion of the South with the oison of Ihis heresies, and secretly hatching is treason in the foul atmosphere which he helped to create. His perfidy was most cold blooded, deliberate, and premeditated. In order to blast the Government of his fathers, and establish upon its ruins it confederacy with slavery as its corner stone, he has ruthlessly wrapped his country in fire and blood. He has wantonl destroyed the lives of more than 2 hundretf and 50,000 soldiers, who gloriously perished in resisting his treason in arms. He has maimed and erippledfor life more than 250,000 more. He has du licated these atrocitiesin his own section of the nion. He hasorganizedgrand conspiracies in the North and Northwest to lay in rapine and blood the towns and cities and plantations of the whole loyal portion of the land. He has put to death, by the slow torture of starvation in rebel prisons, 60,000 brave men who went forth to peril their lives in saving the country from his devilish crusade a inst it. He has deliberately sought to introduce into the U.S and to nationalize among us pestilence, in the form of yellow fever; an enterprise which, had it succeeded, would have startled the very heavens above us with the agony and sorrow it would have lavished upon the land. He stands charged by the Government with the murder of the POTUS, and that charge, as I am well assured, is amply verified by roofs which will very soon be given to the public, and awaken a stronger and sterner demand for his punishment. llu has instigated the burning of our hotels. lic has planted infernal machinesin the track: of his armies. He has poisoned our wells. He has murdered our wounded soldiers. He has made drinking cups of their skulls and jewelry of their bones. He has spawnel upon the world atrocities so monstrous as to defy all definition, and which nothing but the hot incubation of the slave power, as the ripe fruit of its 200 years of diabolism, could have warmed into life. Sir, he has done every thing, by the help of his confederates, that an incarnate demon could do to let loose “the whole contagion ofhell, ” and convert his native land into one grand refuge of devils. Mr. Speaker, the pardoii of a criminal so transe endentl guilty would be an act in itself strongly partaing of treason against the nation. It. would be at once a monstrous denial and a frightful mockery of justice. Do you plead for mercy to the great confederate assassin? I refer that plea. to the Father of Mercies, who, I believe, only pardons on condition of reeiitance; and as yet I have heard of no rebel cader who even professes penitence for his crimes. Sir, I repudiate, as counterfeit, the mercy which can only be exercised by tramp ling justice under our feet, while it forgets both justiceand mercy to the millions who have been made to mourn through stricken lives by the hu man monsters who lgungedour peaceful country into war. The loyal people of the nation demand that they be dea t with as criminals. For myself, I would not have a civil trial for the leader of a belligerent power, which has maintained a public war against us for years. The nation cannot afford to submit the question of the right of a State to secede to a jury of 12 men in one of the rebel States, and a majority of them traitors, under an implied alternative that if they fail to convict, the government itself would stand convicted of half a million murders. After the nation has established its right to exist by a 4 years war, it cannot put that right on trial by a jury of its conneredencmies, orany earthlytribunal. Sir, let JeffersonDavis betried by amilitary court. as he should have been. promptly, at the time other and smaller offenders were dealt with a car ago. Let him have the compliment of a ormnl inquiry to determine what the whole world alreadv knows that he is immeasurably guilty and whea that guilt is pronounced let the Government erect a gallows, and hang him in the name of the Most High. I put aside mercy on the one hand, and vengeance on the other, and the simple claim I assert, in the nations behalf, is justice. In the name of half a million soldiers who have gone before their Maker as witnesses against "the deep damnation of their taking off;” in the name of our living soldiers, who have waded through seas of fire in deadly conflict with rebels in arms; in the name of the Repiihlic, whose life has only been saved by the precious offering of multi tudes oflier most idolized children; in the name of the great future, with ils procession of count less generationsof men, whose thtetoday swings in the balance, awaiting the example you are to make of treason, I demand the execution of JeffersonDavis. The gallows is the symbol of infamy throughout the civilized world and no criminal ever earned a clearer right to be croivned with its honors. Sir, I ask wh the Constitution should be mocked when it eniands his lifeT What right have the authorities of the Government to cheat the halter out of his neck? Not for all the honors and offices of this nation, not for all the gold and glory of the world, would I spare him if In my power; for I would expect the ghosts of 300,000 murdered soldiers to haunt my poor, cowardlylife to the grave. As I have said already, the punishment of the rebel conspirators is a necessary part of the work of suppressing the rebellion. Their treason was de i rately aimed at the cause of free government on earth and they are justly to be classed omon the guiltiest wretches whose crimes ever drenc ied the earth in bliiid. Every one of them should have a felons death. The grave of every one of them should be made a ve of infamy, and the cause they served should be illoried by all the ages to come. Sir, if you ise harge the confederate chiefs because of the very magnitude of their work of carnage. on offer a public license to treason hereafter. ou say to turbulent and seditious spirits every where thnt. they have full liberty, when it may suit their convenience. to levy war against the nation and that while it may lead their deluded followers to wholesale slaughter, they shall be allowed to ese ape. You say that although the nation participated in the hanging of John Brown as a traitor, for the crime of loving liberty "not wisely, but too well.” that some nation, which has copied John Browns example in emancipating slaves by military power, shall turn loose upon societythe hideous monster who waged war to establish and eternize a mighty slave empire on the ruins of our frtz institutions and you speak it in the ear of the nations as your deliberate estimate of the value of free government, whose very life is the breath of the people, that the bloody conspirnlor who seeks to destroy it by the hand of war is unde serving of punishment, and consequently inno cent of crime. Mr. Speaker, can we, dare we, hope for the favor of God in thus confounding the distinction between right and wrong, between treason and loyalty and forgetting that government is a divine ordinance, whose authority can only he maintained by enforcing obedience to its mandates? I speak earnestly, because I feel dee ly, on this question of the punishment of leaing traitors. The grand peril of the hour comes from the mistake of the Government on this point. During the war our deserters and bountyjumpers were executed. Our brave boys, overcome by weariness, who fed]asleep at their postsassentincls, were shot. Ayearagothemis orable tools of Davis and Lee, selected for their infernal deeds because of their known fitness to perform them, were summarily tried and hung. But in no solitary instance has treason yet been dealt with as a crime. Pardon, pardon, pardon, has been the order of the day, as if the Governmentdesired to make haste to apol ogize for its mistake in fighting traitors, and WtSllfd to reinstate itselfin theirgood Opinion. Beccaria, in his celebrated Essay on Crimesand Punishinents, says that “clemency is a virtue which belongs to the legislator, and not to the executor of the laws; a virtue which ought to shine in the code, and not in privatcjndgment. To show mankind that crimes are sometimes pardoned, and that punishment is not the necessary consequence, is to nourish the flattering hope ofimpuuity, and is the cause of their considering every punishment inflicted as an act of injustice and oppression. The prince, in portioning. gives up the public security in favor ofan individual, and by ill judged benevolence proclaims a public not ofimpunity." Dr. Licher. says that “ every pardon granted upon insufficient rounds becomes a serious offense against society, and he that grants itis, in justice, answerable for the offenses which the offender may commit and the general injury done to political morality by undue interference with the law.” With these wise and just sentiments the POTUS, on accepting his high office, perfectly agreed. He declared that mercy to t to individual is often cruelty to the State. He said that “robbery is a crime, murder is a crime, treason is a crime, and crime mustbe punished." He said that“ treason must be made odious, and traitors impoverished, ” and he reiterated and multi plied these declarations on very many occasions which were offered him for weeks and months following his inau uration. He repeatedly referred, approving y, to his nst record, cov ering declarations in favor of angin, the leading traitors, in favor of dividing up their great lautations into small forms for honest and industrious men, without regard to color, and in favor of breakingn the great aristocracy of the South, and coinpe ling the rebels to “take the back seats in the work of reconstruction.” For a season the whole loyal country was elec trified by the clear rin of his words, while rebels were as complete y palsied and dumb. They understood the new President quite as little as his loyal friends. They expected no unrtor, and studiously sought their pleasure in the will of the Executive. They would have assented gladly to any terms or conditions of reconstruction dictated by him, ine ludingeven negro suffrage. havingstaked all on the issues of war and lost, they felt that they were entitled only to such rights as the conqueror might see fit to impose. Sir, this golden season was sinned away by the President, and that systematic recreancy to his pledges and record which has marked his subsequent career, has brought the country into the most fearful peril. The responsibility l is upon him, and it must be measured by the magnificent o portuuity which the situation afforded him or an easy solution of our national difficulties, and at the same time a solid and permanent reconstruction of the South. “No iiu oftlflli, political movement, ” says a famous English writer, “ was ever obtained in a period of tranquillity. If the effervese euct of the public mind is suffered to pass away without effect, it would be absurd to expect from lauguor what enthusiasm has not obtained. If radical reform is not, at such a moment, procured, all partial changes are evaded and defeated in the tranquillity which succeeds." These are suggestive and solemn words, and the reflection is a very sad one that the nation today would have been saved and blest, if the President had heeded them. He disobeyed the divine command to “ execute justice in the morning, ” and did not even remember the heathen maxim, that “the gods themselves cannot save those who neglect opportunities." Sir, while I dislike the occupation of an alarmist, I must say that I have seen few darker seasons than the present since the 1st battle of Bull Run. The President has not kept the faith. He has not favored the hanging of a single rebel leader. He has not made treason infamous, nor impoverished traitors. He has not favored the confiscation of rebel estates, and their distribution among the poor. He has not required traitors to take the back seats in the work of reconstruction. He has pot cooperated with Congress in placing the governinur power of the South and of the nution in the hands of loyal men. He has not shown himselfthe “Mose s ofour loyal colored millions in leadin them out of their grievous bondage. He has onetheoppositeofall these. The Richmond Times, the eading organ of treason in Virginia, says that “in his course toward the mass of those who supported the southern confederacy the President has been singularly magnnnimous and wisely lenient. 9 10ths of those who for 4 years, with unparalleled gallantry upheld the confedeiacy, have long since been unconditionally pardoned. The cabinet officers who counsele the President of the confederacy, the congressmen who enacted those stringent conseript and ment laws which kept up our armies, iamnprmisoanny distinguished generals of the confederate ar mies, have either been formally pardoned, or been released upon parole, and no one dreams that they will ever be molested in person or} estate. The military bastilcs of the country, with one exception, have long since been thrown open, and the distinguished confederate officers who were confined in them have been restored to their friends and families." and these Virginia traitors who thus damn our President by their encomiums openly demand the unconditional release of JeffersonDavis from prison. Judgung the President by the logic O his licy t as far, the demand will be compliedwwith. When he decided, nearly a year ago, a inst the trial of Davis by a military court, O virtually decided that his treason should go unpuaished; for no jury of southern rebels would ever find averdictpf guilty, and the trial itself would only be an in sult to the nation. JeffersonDavis, I doubt not, is to be restored to his family and friends, and the argument of consistency demands it at the hands of the President. RobtELee. whose spared life has out raged the honest claims of the gallows ever since his surrender, is running at large. perfectly unmolested and safe from all harm. Black with treason, perjury, and murder, guilt ier by for than the Christless wretch who obeyed his orders in starving our soldiers at andersonville, he goes his way in peace, while the government. in this monstrous and appalling fact, confesses to the world that treason is unworthy, of its notice. He is president of a Virginia 1 college, and teacher 0t her youth. He visits Washington and tenders his advice to our public men about the work of restoring the Union. He goes before the reconstruction committee and gives his testimony, as if an oath could take any possible hold upon his seared conse ience; and all that can be said is, that his unpunished crimes are doina precisely as much to make the Government. in mous, as the goveminent itself has done to make those crimes respectable. The Legislature of Virginia. indorses him as a fit man for Governor, and the champions of this proposition visit our republican President. laud his principles and policy, and take the front seats in the house of his friends. The VEEP of the southern confederacy is likewise at large, and has been elected a Senator in Congress from his State. He also visits Washington, and gives his testimony before the JtCommee of 15. Like the Other leading traitors, he very naturally “ac ccpts the situation, ” because he could not do otherwise, but. he shows not the smallesttoken of ienitence, says the rebels were in the light, In seems wholly unconse ious of his real character as simply an unhung traitor, whose advice and opinions we shall only accept at their value. Leading traitors are not only pardoned by wholesale, but they hold nearly all the places of power and profit in the South. They are made Governors, judges, postinasters, revenue officers, and are likewise frequently chosen to represent their cause in Congress; and the President, our distinguished SecyTreasury, and the PostMGenl, have all openly trampled under their feet the law of Congress requiring a test oath, in order that rebels might fill these offices, and on the false pretense that loyal men could not be found qualihed to fill them in a country which furnished more than 40,000 loyal white soldiers during the war. As might naturally be expected under this system of reconstruction, loyal men are more unsafe in the revolted (lis tricts now than they were before the war, while the condition of the negroes in very many local ities is more pitiably deplorable than that of their former slavery. So intense and wide {read is the feelin of hostility to the Union in use regions that loyalty is branded as both a crime and a disgrace, while even Wilkes Booth is regarded as a martyr, and his pictures hang in the arlors of “southern gentlemen” whose children are called by his name. Nor am I surprised at the audacity of the rebel leaders. Neither do I complain, or blame them. They do not disguise their real character and o inions, because they have been made sure of the executive favor. With the president resolutely on the side of Congress in this crisis, a very different exhibition ot feeling and polio would have been developed in the South. be u er now at our doors would never have nppaare. The prospect of another bloody war to complete the work which we supposed already accomplished would never have alarmed the country. The President has deserted the loyal millions who crushed the rebel cause at the end of a conflict of 4 ears and joined himself to that very cause which is now bor rowing new life from the fertilizing sunshine of his favor, reasserting its old heresics, and renewing its treasonable demands. This is at once the root and source of our present national troubles, the prophecy an parent of whatever calamity may come. The President not only opposes the will of the nation, the policy of the nation, as expressed through congress, but he brands as traitors before a rebel mob leading and representative men in both Houses, who are as gniltless of treason as the great majority with whom they act. Not content with the good fellowship of the men who began the war and fought us with matchless desperation to the end, he unites with them in branding loyalty itself as treason, while he employs the power and patronage of his high office in rewarding his minions, and opposing the very men who made him their standard beurer along with Abraham Lincoln, in the faith that his loyalty was unselfish and sincere. In fact, every phase of the presidential policy, as latterl displayed, confounds the difference between foyal and disloynl men, and gives aid and comfort to the rebels by mitigating or removing the justconsequences of their crimes. Mr. Speaker, this policy, utterly fatal to the nations peace, as I have shown, must be aban doned.The Government cannot wholly undo the mistakes of the past, but itican do much for the future, and save the loyal cause, if the people, who see the threatene danger, will set themselves to work so resolutely as to compel a change. In Gods name, let this be done. Let the people speak, for the power is in their hands, and if faithful now, as the proved themselves during the war, justice wifl prevail. liet them thunder it in the ears of the President that the nation cannot be saved, nor the fruits of our victory gatheredz if in the settlement of this bloody conflict with treason right and wrong are confounded, and public justice trampled down. This is the duty of the loyal miliions; and here lies the danger of the hour. It isjust as impossible for the country to pros perif it shall sanction the present policy of the Executive, as it is for a man to violate a law of his ph sical bein" and ese ape the consequences. The demands of justice are as in exorable as the demands of natural law in the material world; and the moral distinctions which God himself has established cannot be slighted with the least possible impunity by individuals or nations. There is a difference, heaven wide, between fighting for a slave empire and fighting for freedom and the univer sal rights of man. The cause of treason and the cause of loyalty are not. the same. Perjur is not as honorable as keeping a mans oat. The black flag of slavery and treason was not as noble a standard to follow as that of the stars and stripes. The leading trai tors of the South should not. have the same honorable treatment and recognition as the patriot heroes of the Union. The grandest assassins and cut throats of history should not defraud the gallows, while ordinar murderers are hung. JeffersonDavis should not have the some honorable place in history as Gear O Washington. Benedict Arnold was not the beau ideal of a patriot, nor was Judas Ise ariot “a high souled gentleman and a man ofhonor, " nor even “ a misguided citizen of his country who engaged in a mistaken cause." The green mounds under which sleep our slaughtered he roes are not to have any moral comparison with the ravesof traitors. The “throng of dead, led y StonewallJackson, ” are not to “contribute equally with the noble spirits of the North to the renown ofour great Republic.” Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, heaven and hell, are not mere names which signify nothing, but they pertain to the great veracities of the universe; and the throne of God itself is immovable, only because its foundations are jus tice. Mr. Speaker, I now move that this resolution be referred to the ComJudiciary.