Mr. RAYMOND. Mr. Chairman, I should be glad, if it meet the sense of those members who are present, to make some remarks upon the general Mr. question now before the House. but I do iiotyvis to tres pass at all upon their disfiOSliZlOH in regard tot iis matter. do not know, owever, that there will be a better opportunity to say what little I have to say than is now offered; and if the House she. 1 indicate no other wish, I will proceed to say it. [“Go onl”] I need not say that I have been gratified to hear many things which have fallen from the hps of the Gentfrom Ohio, [Mr. FLNOK] not entirely, to the JtCommee raise who has just taken his seat. I have no feeling, nor any other feelin (party, which would prevent me from rejoicing in teindications apparent on that side of the House of a purpose to concur with the loyal people of the country, and with the loyal administration of the Government, and With the loyal majorities in both Houses of Congress, in restoring peace and order to our common country. I cannot, perhaps, help wishin, sir, that these indications of an interest in the preservation of our Government had come somewhat sooner. I cannot help feeling that such expressions cannot now be of as much service to the country as the might once have been. If we could have ha from that side of the House such indications of an interest in the preservation of the Union, such heartfelt sympathy with the efforts of the Government for the preservation of that Union, such hearty denunciation of those who were seeking its destruction, while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some years of war, some millions of money, and rivers of blood and tears. But, sir, I am not disposed to fight over again battles now he pily en ed. I feel, and I am reoiced to fin that members on the other side of the House feel, that the cat problem now before us is to restore the nion to its old integrity, purified from everything that interfered with the full development of the spirit of liberty which it was made to enshrine. lItrust that we shall have a eneml concurrence of the members of this House and of this Congress in such measures as may be deemed most lit and proor for the accomplishment of that result. I am g adto assume an to believe that there is not a member of this House, nor a man in this country, who does not wish, from the bottom of his heart, to see the day speedily come when we shall have this nation the great American Republic Again united, more harmonious in its action than it has ever been, and forever one and indivisible. We in this Congress are to devise the means to restore its union and its harmony, to perfect its institutions, and to make it in all its parts and in all its action, through all time to come, too strong, too wise, and too free ever to invite or ever to permit the hand of rebellion again to be raised against it. Now, sir, in devising these Ways&Means to accomplish that great result, the 1st thing we have to do is to now the point from which we start, to understand the nature of the mate rial with which we have to workthe condition of the territor and the States with which we are concernedy. Iliad supposed at the outset of this session that it was the purpose of this House to proceed to that work without discussion, and to commit it almost exclusiVeliy, by if the 2 Houses for the consideration of thrill. subject. But, sir, I must say that I was glad when I perceived the distinguished Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mia Srsvnxsd himself the chairman on the part of this House of that great ComReconstruction, lead 08 in a discussion of this general subject, and thus invite all the rest of us who choose to follow him in the debate. In the remarks which be madein this body a few days since, he laid down, with the clearness and the force which characterize everything he says and does, his point of departure in commencing this great work. Ihnd oped that the ground he would lay down would be such that we could all of us stand upon it and cooperate with him in our common o)ject. I feel constrained to say, sirand I do it without the slightest disposition to create or to exag crate differences that there were features in is exposition of the condition of the country with which I cannot concur. I cannot for myself start from precisely the point which he assumes. In his remarks on that occasion he assumed that the States lately in rebellion were and are out of the Union. Throughout his speechI will not trouble you with reading passages from itI find him speaking of those States as “outside of the Union, ” as “dead States, ” as having forfeited all their rights and terminated their State existence. I find expressions still more definite and distinct; Ifind him stating that they “are and for 4 years have beenout of the Union for all legal purposes;” as having been for 4 years a “separate power, ” an “a separate nation.” His position therefore is that these States, having been in rebellion, are now out of the Union, and are simply within the jurisdiction of the constitution of the U.S. as so much territory to be dealt with precisely as the will of the conqueror, to use his own language, may dictate. ow, sir, if that position is correct, it prescribes for us one line of policy to be pursued very different from the one that will be properiit is not correct. His belief is that what we have to do is to create new States out of this territory at the propertime many cursdistant retaining them mcantirnein a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage as Congress or the Government of the U.S. may see fit to prescribe. If I believed in the premises which he assumes, possibly, though I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has reached. But, sir, I cannot be lieve that this is our condition. I cannot believe that these States have ever been out of the Union, or that they are now out of the Union. I cannot believe that they ever have been, or are now, in any sense a separate Power. If they were, sir, how and when did they become so? They were once States of this Unionthat every one concedes; bound to the Union and made members of the Union by the constitution of the U.S. If they ever went out of the Unioa it was at some specific time and by some n ecific act. I regret that the Gentfrom Pennsylvauia [Mr. STEVENS] is not now in his seat. I should have been glad to ask him by what specific act, and at what precise time, anyone of those States took itself out of the American Union. Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of this Union is simply a nullity, because it encounters in its practical operation the constitution of the U.S. which is the supreme law of the land. It could have no legal, actual force or validity. It could not operate to effect any actual change in the relations of the State adopting it to the national Government, still less to accomplish the removal of that State from the sovereign jurisdiction of the constitution of the U.S. Well, sir, did the resolutions of these States, the declarations of their officials, the speeches of members of their Legislatures, or the utter ances of their press accomplish the result? Certainly not. liey could not possibly work any change whatever in the relations of these States to the General Government. All their ordinances and all their resolutions were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession. if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was 1st announced. After declaring that intention, they proceeded to carry it into effeot. How? By war. By sustaining their purpose by arms agninstthe force which the U.S. brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an oocomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt a purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know what the fact is. The did not succeed. They failed to maintaint eir ground by force of armsin other words, they failed to secede. But the Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. STEVENS insists that they did secede, and that this fact is not in the least affected by the other fact that the constitution forbids secession. He says that the law forbids murder, but that murders are nevertheless committed. But there is no analogy between the 2 cases. If Secession had been accomplished, ifthese States had gone out, and overcome the armies that tried to prevent their going out, then the prohi ices I21 bition of the constitution could not haveal tered the fact. In the case of murder the man is killed, and murder is thus committed in s ito Of the law. The fact of killing is essentia to the committal of the crime; and the fact of going out is essential to secession. But in this case there was no such fact. I think I need noLargne any further the position that the rebel States have never for one moment, by any ordinances of secession, or by any successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful jurisdiction of the constitution of the U.S. They have interrupted for a time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdiction; they rendered it impossible for a time for this Government to enforce obedience to its laws; but there has never been an hour when this Government, or this Congress, or this House or the Gentfrom Pennsylvania himself) ever conceded that those States were beyond the jurisdiction of the constitution and laws of the U.S. During all these 4 years of war Congress has been making laws for the government of those very States, and the Gentfrom Pennsylvania has voted for them, and voted to raise armies to enforce them. Why was this done if they were a separate nation?. Why, if they were not part of the U.S.? Those laws were made for them as States. Members have voted for laws imposingupon them direct taxes, which are apportioned, according to the constitution, only among the several States" according to their po olation. In a variety of waysto some of which the gentleman who preceded me has referredthis Congress has by its action assumed and asserted that they were still States in the Union, though in rebellion, and that it was with the rebellion that we were making war, and not with the States themselves as States, and still less as a separate, as a foreign, Power. The Gentfrom Pennsylvania cited a variety of legal precedents and declarations of principle, nearly all of them, I believe, drawn from the celebrated decision of the Supreme Court pronounced by Justice Grier, in what are popularly known as the Prize Cases. His citations were all made for the purpose of roving that these States were in a condition o public warthat they were waging such a war as could only be waged by a separate and independent Power. But a careful scrutiny of that decision will show that it. lends not the slightest countenance to such an inference. Gentlemen who hear me will doubtless recollect that the object of the trial in those cases was to decide whether certain vessels, captured in tryin to break the blockade, were lawful prize o war or not; and the decision of this point turned on the question whether the war then raging was sue a contest asjustified a resort to the modes and usages of public war, of which blockade was one. Justice Grier decided that it wasthat, so far as the purposes and weapons of war were concerned, the 2 parties were belli crents and that the Government might blociliade the ports and capture property within the lines of the district in rebellion, precisely as if that district were an hidependent nation engaged in a public war. But e said not one word which could assert or impl that it was an independent nation that it ada separate existence, or had gone out of the sovereign jurisdiction of the U.S. On the contrary, everything he said the very passages quoted by the Gentfrom Pennsylvan himself imply and assert precisely the opposite. He speaks of them, not as sovereign, but as claiming to be sovereign; not as being separate. but as trying to be separate from the U.S. In this paragraph quoted from that decision, for example “Hence, in organizing this rebellion. they have acted as States cldllltlng to besovereign over all perisnosn esratinndg property Within their respective limits and a right to absolve their citizens from their allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of tehroasceyfi. mtos have combined to for a new confed claimingto be acknowledged by the world as a sovereign State. Their right to do 00 10now brim! by ioaaciof battle" the court assorts precisely the principle which I have already statedthat they were claiming independenee, and that the validity of their claim would depend wholly and entirely upon the decision reached in the field of battle. be same misconstruction is traceable in all the legal citations made by the Gentfrom Pennsylvania. For example, he says: wh“ Again, the court say. what I have beenastonished th“at anyone should doubt: The proclamation of blockade isitaelf official and concluisiyo evidenceto the court that a state of war T5lia. cownvheanttwioansst, h the clterg caatlireess. Runltaod few suitch hawiiaatri?on. are broken or annulled by a war arising between the contracting parties. Vottel, 372; Hallcck. 371, section 23.” A blockade is evidence that a state of war exists; and a state of war annals all treaties between the contending parties. But does this warrant the inference that the constitution of the U.S., which is not a treaty, was annulled, or its binding force in the least degree impaired, by the war of rebellion? Sat I will not go further in examining these citations. All they show is that the Government, as against the rebels, and in wagin the war to suppress the rebellion, had the rights of belligerents, and that the rules and laws of war might and must be a plied to this contest although it was not a war between separate and independent Powers. How, then can this decision possibly be made to convey the idea that the parties to the war were separate and independent States? It proceeds throughout and in every part upon precisely the opposite idea. The Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. Sravans] spoke of States forfeiting their State existence by the fact of rebellion. Well, I do not see how there can be any such forfeiture involved or implied. The individual citizens of those States went into the rebellion. They thereby incurred certain penalties under the laws and constitution of the U.S. What the States did was to endeavor to interpose their State authority between the individuals in rebellion and the Government of the U.S., which assumed, and which would carry out the assumption, to declare those individuals traitors for their acts. The individuals in the States who were in rebellion, it seems to me, were the only parties who under the constitution and laws of the U.S. could incur the penalties of treason. I know of no law, I know of nothing in the Constitution of the U.S., I know of nothing in any recognized or established code of international law, which can punish a State as a State for any act it may perform.It is certain that our constitution assumes nothing of the kind. It does not deal with States, except in one or 2 instances, such as elections of members of Congress and the election of electors of president and VEEP. Indeed, the main feature which distinguishes the Union under the constitution from the old Confederation is this, that whereas the old confederation did deal with States directly, making requisitions upon them for supplies and relying upon them for the execution of its laws, the constitution of the U.S., in order to form a more perfect Union, made its laws binding on the individual citizens of the several States, whether living in one State or in another. Congress, as the legislative branch of this Government, enacts a law which shall be operative upon every individual within its jurisdiction. It is binding upon each individual citizen, and if he resists it y force be is guilty of a crime and is punished accordingly, anything in the constitution or laws of his State to the contrary not withstanding. But the States themselves are not touched by the laws of the U.S or by the constitution of the U.S. A State cannot be indicted; a State cannot be tried; a State cannot be hang for treason. The individuals in a State may be so tried and hung, but the State as an organization, as an organic member of the Union, still exists, whether its individual citizens commit treason or not.