Mr. BROOMALL. Mr. Chairman, the great political problem of the day, the problem on the right solution of which Will depend the well being of our country for ages is, what shall we do with the people lately in rebellion? The embarrassments which attend this question are not all embraced within its lauguagc, since one of the most serious of them is, who shall decide it; whether Congress, the courts, or the Executive, or some or all of them? lf there are no rights to be conferred, if the whole matter depends upon the existing rights of these people, then certainly Congress has nothing to do with it. The mere deciding upon. the legality of the elections of claimants to seats, so far from being the solving of the great prob lem, is indeed no part of it. If. on the other hand, the business is not. the mere ascertainment of rights, at the creating and conferring of them; and cspecially if there are no existing rights that interfere with such solution of the question as will be for the bes. interests of the rebels as well as ourselves, then the question in to be answered and the remedy up lied, not by the Executive, not by the courts, at by the lawmaking power of the Government. I propose, therefore, to consider what is the legal status of these people, and whether they have any rights which will prevent. our treating the question as one solely of policy. If the late disturbance of the public peace was more insurrection, now so pressed, it is clear that the rights of the peopfe):of the South as n peolile are in no way affected by the result, and the whole business consists in ascertaining these rights and remitting the respective southern communities to them. But to call that insurrection that resisted the military flames of the country for 4 years with success; that destroyed the lives of halfa million of its citizens and brought mourning to one 6th of all the homes in tlfie land; that cost on both side; twice the national debt of England, the product of n century of gi antic wars; that seized and held by force halg the domain of the country; that swept. our commerce from the ocean and had its flag respected, not only in foreign orts, but in the courts of our own country: (“it that was only suppressed by a series of military achievements such as the world never saw: to call that. insurrection is a strange abuse of language. No! the conflict was war, terrible, bloody war, in which the defeated resisted to the last with a valor that. commanded ihc won der of the world, and then surrendered without conditions. The inquiry now is, what are. the legal consequences of such a struggle with such a termination? If the States were sovereign, they had the right to make war and accept its consequences; and a sovereign State vanquished in war ceases to exist, or exists only at the willof the conqueror. The advocates of the old theory of State sovereignty, therefore, can set up no claim for the vanquished to interfere with our considerin the question as one of policy, unembarrass by the rights of defeated rebels. “1 But assume the opposite hypothesis, that. the States are component parts of a single sovereignty, resembling counties, cities, and other such municipalities, how does this alter the result? Because they had less rights than sovereignty before the war shall we concede them greater rights than those of vanquished sovereignty now? Because they inaugurated war wrongfully and traitoronsly, not being sore! eign, is this crime to be accounted in their favor in the construction of)hcir surviving rights? In this point of view, the conflict was civilWar, differing from international war only in the fact that in the former one of the belligerents claims, has exercised, and is trying to enforce sovereign rights over the other. A logical consequence of this condition of things is that if the claimant of sovereign rights be the victor, it may elect to treat the vanquished eitherns traitors or prisonersof war. It may enforce upon them either the civil law or the rights of conquest. The vanquished, having failed to throw off their allegiance. cannot deny being citizens to avoid the punishment of treason. On the other hand, having forsworn their allegiance, havineg set up an independent government and wage war as a nation, they are estopped from pleading the rights of citizenship to efeat the rights of conquest. All this is in accordance with common reason. It is fully sustained by writers on the law of nations, and is laid down as applicable to the late rebellion by the Supreme Court in the prize eases. In one of these points of view, therefore, the rebel States are destroyed, and in the other it is for the Government to elect whether they are or not. In either case there are no rights of the vanquished to embarrass our action, to prevent ourreviving the old State gowmments, creating new ones, or keeping the conquered country in a state similar to that of Territories, according as one or another of these measures may best subserve the interests of the whole countr. But it is said that States cannot rebel, that the late war was waged by individuals only, and therefore that the States have been in no way aifected by its progress or termination is strange argument from the li s of those who believe in the sovereignty of the States, since one essential element of sovereignty is the power to make war. But without this attribute why cannot States rebel? Wh may they not inaugurate civilWar? To may ewar, combi nations of men are necessary, quasi corporations for belligerent purposes. not make war, 10,000 cannot, acting without concert. The organized body that wages war may be one formed for the purpose, or it may be a preexisting one formed fbr some other or scand wrongfully or rightfully perverted. ft e organized body that wages war is the State, if the State employs soldiers and pays them, appoints and commissions officers, provides arms and munitions of war, establishes courtsmartial, and if with all this war really exists, can it be said that the State does not make war? If the war is civilWar, beginning on that side by rebellion, can it be said that the State does not rebel? I can well understand that a rebellion may exist without being participated in by a State. If the combination of men that wages war is not the combination that forms the State, as in the cases of the Dorr rebellion and the whisky insurrection, then the State is not in rebellion. But if the Governor of Pennylvania, the Legislature, the courts, the entire municipal machinery, had been turned over to the purposes of the whisky insurrectiOn, history would have truly said that the State of Pennsylvania rebelled. Now, what State of the entire 11 not now represented in the Government of the country did not turnits entire organization over to the purposes of the late rebellion? What Govern ors, what legislators, the judges of what courts, did not unite in the blasphemous oath to subvert the GoVernment of their country? What functions of government, executive, legislative, poijudicial, did any of those f States were not used rtssin e purpose o whin war against the U.S. gStatgsPp as g g Some hypercritical Democrat may say that the States as States did not wage war, but that the war was waged by that combination known, while it existed, as the confederate States. The answer is. that the 11 States constituted that combination, o erated throu by that combination, did everyt dog that comination did, and that, when the combination waged war, each State, each constituent part of it, waged war. An organized body of men carried on war against the Government of the U.S. for 4 years. That organized bod was composedpf 11 smaller organized ho ies. These ecoupred districts of country bounded by State This One man can lines. They had 11 Governors, 11 Legislatures. 11 supreme or superior courts, and each of them h its State, county, and township officers, performing respectively all the functions of such officers in an organized State; and every one of these Officers, from the Governor down to the overseer of highways, was active in the combination that waged war. During all thistime whatwere the States doing? Common sense would say, waging war. These 11 States combined, therefore, on the one hand, and the Government of the country on the other, have been for 4 years engaged in war; civilWar, certainly, but not the ess war on that account. Now, war can terminate only by treaty, by cessation of hostilities or by one of the combatants conquering the other. How did the recent war terminate? Not, certainly, by treaty. The northern allies of the southern enemy failed to bring that about. Doubtless the rebels and their political friends would like the theory of a drawn battle. That is the only hypothesis upon which their claim to equal participation in the Government of the country with the successful belligerent can be based. But the facts will not warrant this hypothesis. It is hardly consistent with the acceptance of pardons from the Executive, and the incessant begging at the deors of Congress for admission to seats so seornfully abandoned live years ago. The only remaining alternative is that of conquest, and history will find little difficulty in determining on which side that occurred, though it seems here sometimes to be an open questiOn. In short, from 1860 to "1865 a combination of individuals existed formed for the purpose of taking by force a portion of the territory of the U.S., and forming therein an in dependent sovereignty. This combination was composed of citizens of the U.S. ” It embraced almost all the citizens of 11 States. It possessed and used for its own purposes the municipal power of those States. It levied war against the Government on land and sea. It claimed to be a nation. It was treated as such by foreign Powers, who accorded to it the rights of a belligerent, who treated its vessels of war as privateers and not as pirates, who recognized its flag, and who protected, if not received, its ministers. It was treated as a nation for war purposes by our own Government in giving to its people when captured the rights of pris oners of war, and in recognizing its commiesions to rob and murder on the high seas as legalizing robbery and murder or some time it was doubtful whether this combination would maintain itself as a nation or not. the party now asking us to ignore the past, the horrible and bloody past and take in friendship the hands of the murderers over the graves of the murdered, this party said it would so maintain itself. The last Democratic national convention proclaimed the victoryal ready on its side. In fact for 4 years it did succeed in holding the position of a nation, because for that length of time it maintained war. Finally the military forces of this combination were vanquished by those of the U.S., and surrendered without terms to the victors. By this means the combination was broken a and tilOSG who composed it became a conquered peoe. 0w, accordin to the strict law of nations, as always enforced in ancient times, and always now unless restrained by respect to public opinion, a conquered people have no rights, either civil or political. With all the restraints which modern civilization has imposed upon the will of the conqueror, he may still exact all the guarantees necessary to reveut a recurrence of hostilities, and he is the sole and irresponsible judge of those guarantees. His power is themfore absolute, and if he abuses it the law of nations knows no remed.