Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I am not dis. posed to allow the speech of the honorable Senfrom Massachusetts [Mr. SUMNER] to o to the country without a very brief reply. gIf that speech be true, and if it be a correct picture of the South. then God help us; then this republic, this Union is at an end; then the rent war which we waived for the Union was a folly; then all the blood and treasure which we have expended in that war in order to restore our selves to companionship with the people of the South have been equally follies. But, Mr. president, is it true? Or is not this a series of exparte statements made up by anonymous letter writers, people who are down there more than likely stealing cotton, people who are down there in the enjoyment oi place and power people who are interested that the disturbed ition of things which exists there now shall always continue because thcymake profit of it? Is there any man who has had any experience in the trial of causes, any man who knows anything about the nature Of evidence, who does not know that the honorable Senator could have sent his emissaries into anyone county in the lately rebellious States and gathered u from the expressions of knaves and fools and is contented, singleidead people, for more than he has given us in this speeches are told here of the exceptional instances conof bad conduct on the part of the people of the South. Why, what a large volume it would take to hold all that! If a man were to go about an where in the loyal States and hunt up what o might suppose to be treasonable expressions, heretical expressions, how man could he find? and yet we are treated to all this here as if it was the whole of the evidence in the case. One man out of 10,000 is brutal to a negro, and that is paraded here as a type of the whole people of the South, whereas nothing is said of the other 9,999 men who treatthe negro well. One man expresses a great deal of issatisfaction at the present state oiaffairs, and that is paraded here, while nothing is said of the other 10,000 men who are contented to accc t it and make the most of it. what, then, are we to do? We are to suppose that the people of the southern States ately in rebellion have common sense; and when their utterances are in accordance with what is common sense and the dictate of their own interest, we have a right to presume it to be true. But according to what we have just heard, everything that has come from the people of those States and from their public be es, from the representatives of these people, is to be taken as false; and why? Because some cotton agent, some correspondent of a radical newspaperin the North, some officeholder who has been making profit of the state of things there, chooses to say it is all false I The heresy of State rights is not destroyed there, the honorable Senator says. Have we not heard from almost all the public men of the South that that question was put to the arbitrament of the sword, that they have lost, and that they submit? Have they not acquiesced in the abolition of slaverythat thing of all others which was the last, in the opinion of everybody, that they would submit to? But still further guarantees are wanted; we are not told what they are. What are they? Whatis wanted? Every body admits that the negro ou lit to have his ilratural rights secured to him. believe all the moderate, conservative men of this Chamber are fully a eed that every man should have his natural rights secured the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the protection of property, limbs, and reputation; that he should have the right to sue and be sued, and to testify in courts o justice. The negro has not hith erto been allowed in the southern States to tes tify in courts of justice, and why? Because he was a slave, and if I had been a citizen of the southern States when slavery revailed there, I would have resisted his rightto testify in courts. A witness like a voter ought to be a free man; he should not belong to another man. What chance would a litigant have against the master of slaves if the slaves could testify? It seems to me that the slave ought not to testify for the same reason that the wife onght not to testify either for or against the husban Would you ask a negro to testify against his master, to go back to that master and be subjected to his illwill because of his testimony? Would you allow him to testify for the master as against a part on the other side? Certainly not. But now this state of things has passed away. Now the people of the southern States themselves, so ar as I understand them, are in favor of o ening the courts to all these classes of people. and, sir, they must open them for their own security. I am willing to leave that to themselves; their own interest will compel them to allow all people to testify unless the are excluded by those disabilities that have ere tofore excluded witnesses from testifyipg. If the honorable Senfrom Massachusetts and those who think with him desire that these people should have the right of suffrage, why not say so broadly?