Mr. WARD. Mr. Speaker, I should not thrust myself upon the attention of the House at this time, could I with justice to myself remain silent. So varied and novel are the schemes of reconstruction and the resolutions upon that subject that are crowded through the House without opportunity for debate, under the operation of the “previous question, ” that it seems necessary for members who desire their true position understood upon this vexed question to take the opportunity offered for the discussion of the Presidents message to do so. After so many great minds, at both ends of this Capitol, have exhausted so thoroughly all views and phases of this question, it will not Prayer be exeeted that I will advance an hing new. I shn I only express the earnest, ccply fixed convictions of one of the humblest upon this floor, and you will receive them simply as such. Who can but tremble at the vast responsibility to our country, our countrymen, and to (lod, under which we rest as members of this congress? Never before in the history of nations has a legislative body met charged with such duties and obligations as have been imposed upon us. We are legislatingforthe present and the future. The effectofour action will not becircumscribed by our time and country alone; it will reach the whole earth and the remotest generation. Ten million people, emerging from the chaos of war, stand before us powerless, disarmed, without government, without law, save from the strong arm of the military power, awaiting our action. demanding from us the full exercise of the rights they enjoyed in the better days gone by, when, true to the Union, they stood side by side with us in u holding the honor of our common flag. What have they done? Why are the knocking thus at the doors of our nation councils? Why these vacant seats? Ahl they have committed the most fearful and gi ntic crime known in the records of time. Ihcy conspired to overthrow and blot from the book of nations the Government of their fathers, under whose protecting power the had grown rich, powerfui: and enjoyed every by essin, without cause, save the desire to perpetuate humanbondage. The conspired against popular rights and liberty. hey sought to dishonor and degrade labor. Governors, legislatures, judges, municipal officers; the whole machinery of government, State and local; all collective and individual action of the people, were directed with awful power for long and terrible years for the destruction of this Republic. In the cabinet, on the field, on the ocean, in foreign climes and capitals, with armed men, with the torch, with poison, with fire, by rob bery, arson, murder, starvation, pillage, and all the crimes that a fiendishingenuity could devise and put into execution, they pursued their work of death. They declared the Union was dissolved, its mission ended, and that never while they lived on earth, while the last man could grasp the last musket, would they yield this pretension and well they did their infernal work. They stand before God and man staggering under the murder of 300,000 of the noblest men that ever went forth to battle and to death. They have desolated and darkened every home in the land; $3,000,000,000 of national debt, $500,000,000 more obligations incurred by States and counties 2 million men have shouldered arms for the Republic; 103,000 pensions upon our bounty caused by the war. these are some of the results of their action. They failed. such men as were gathered into hosts and marched to the music of the Union and swept the armies of treason from the land were never before given to any country. How we should prize and cherish those who live, bind up their wounds, give them of our substance in their time of need and those who died, whose precious dust reposes in the soil of every State, let us remember and sanctify their resting places, and guard well their widows and orphans as the nations treasure. What is the condition of those States and people? What their relations to the General government? What shall we do with them? and now, without resentment or fear or looking backward or trimming our sails to catch some popular breeze, acting under our oaths, and wrth the desire only to do right as it is given us to “ see the right, ” let us enter upon the consideration of these momentous questions. All sovereignty rests with peodo in this country; by virtue of this sovereignty they have organized States and State governments, and been received as such States into the Union; and subject to the constitution of the U.S and the laws of Congress trade in pursuance thereof, each State, as long as the people thereof have observed their allegiance to the General Government, has been tree and independent. The legal union of the States cannot be broken by the action of the people of any State unless it is accomplished by successful rebellion. The rebellion failed, an therefore all the people who have upheld the Union and still control its Government can insist that the Union is not dissolved, and that territorially the States in rebellion still exist. Sovereignty is still inherent in the people of those States, to be exercised whenever in the judgment of the Government they can do so consistent with the national safety. I do not recognize any authority now existing in these States to represent this sovereignty or to carry out the powers which a loyal people instituting loyal State governments and sening loyal members to Congress can do, for the reason that the authorities and peo10 of those States went into the rebellion, as have stated, together with their Representatives in Congress who withdrew from these Halls for that purpose. Their right to a new State government, to resume their practical and original relations with the loyal States, undoubtedly exists under certain conditions and restrictions. It seems to me that it necessarily follows from the relation of Government and people, which is of allegiance on the one hang and rotcction on the other, that if a portion of the people refuse their allegiance to the Government and make war upon it for its destruction, and are defeated in the attempt, they have forfeited the right of protection and are at the mercy of the Government. I said they were entitled to resume their original relations under certain conditions and restrictions. Who is to be the judge of those conditions and what they shall e! Shall the redhanded traitor be the judge? Is he to prescribe the conditions of his own return. 1 o one will contend that. The whole practice of our Government under the last administration and the present has been against it. Shall foreign nations be the judge? No, thank God, in our darkest hour our Government presented even the advice of some of those nations as offensive and impertinent and now we stand magnificent and eerless among the nations which of them shal thrust its judgment upon us? Will the autocrat of France? We say to him that if his intermeddling with affairs on this continent in defiance of the timehonored policy of this country does not cease, the army of blue will again be in motion and Maximillian will be hurled from the throne of the Montezumas. I shall not perplex myself with abstract propositions or enter into any discussion as to whether the rebel States are in the Union or out of it. No one contends that they have legally severed their connection with the Union. The territorial boundaries of the States still exist; we have the right still to compel their obe dience to the Government they owe allegiance to no other; but as Mr. Lincoln, in his great good sense, in a speech made a few days before is assassination, says: “llioyare out of their practical relation with the Union.” Practically, they have been out of the Union, and practically in feeling and sympathy they are out still; and ours shall be the task to bring them back, not simply to power without Union, but so to reconstruct as to secure a true Union with power and while a State, considered as simply a legal institution, cannot be destroyed, still its government can be overturned and its members and people go into treason, so that practically it is destroyed; for after all “ What constitutesa State? Not highraised bitttleinents, or labored mound. ick wall or moatedgate; Not citioslproud, with spiresand turrets crowned; 0t buysand roadarmed ports, Where, laughing at thestorm. rich naviesride: Not starred and span led courts. Wherelowbrowod bnseness wastperfumostopride 7at man, highminded men.” not traitors. Where do you get your constitutional power to keep their Representatives fiom Congress; to organize military tribunals over them; suspend their courts, their Legislatures, their State functions? Ask gentlemen on the Dem ocratic sideyou are revolutionary, say they. The land roans under your despotism, they exclaim. lhese terrible assertions would alarm us did we not “consider the source.” These same persons and their party said, when trea sons gripe was at the nations throat, and its guns commanded this capital, and our Government was trembling in the balance, ” Oh! you cannot coerce a State!” “You must not make arbitrary arrests!” “You cannot make your Government credits legal tender!” “ You cannot legally draft men into the Army; you are revolutionary; ou disregard the Constitution.” They said the war was a failure, at Chi cago; they were the 1st after the war to grasp hands all red with the blood of our slain broth ers; and now they are in these Halls still harp in on the subject. They had not long since the Democratic party with 3 quarters of the States; and year by year and one by one the people thrust them out as false prophets and gui es; and now they have notaState (exce tafew reconstructed rebel ones in the South) that they can control: and here they are, a lean and hungry band of 35 or 40, uttering their notes of discord as ever, and now “ crookin the regnant h“inges of the knee” to presient ohnson, that thrift may follow fawning.” and they, thus repudiated and disowned are still repeating their old cry of unconstitutionality. I say to them that they learn nothing by experience, nothing from history, or they would have seen ere this the “ handwriting upon the wall, ” and read their own fate in that of the Tories of the devolution and the Federalists of 1812. They assume to be the special champions of the President, whom not long a of they denounced tLQHHSUXPGIH and “tyrant. Do they think the President anxious to share their fate, to go down with them to a political death from which there will be no resurrection I No, gentlemen; be admenished; the President understands you as he did when the southern wing of your party drove him a refugee from his home and hunted him like a wild beast. Had your counsel been followed in time of war the nation would have perished. The people will not listen to you now. When the difficult work of reconstruction iseto be done, they will follow the earnest men who have brought them safely through the night now the morning is breaking. Call them radicals, call them revolutionists, denounce the reconstruction committee ordered by Congress as you denounced Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and the “mercenary soldiers” that scared your rebel friends and rested like nightmares upon your copperhead slumbers, 81K? yet the nation will come u to the great work, Congress will do its whole duty unawed by fear, unseduced by favor. The people will sustain that Congress in taking all the time necessary to reconstruct our Union on the foundations of immutable justice and equity to all classes and races under this broad flag, and wfoc to him, high or low, that stands in the way of it. But I answer you that the constitution does not provide for its own destruction; it was not so framed as to exclude all things that were needed for its own perpetuity. It provides for putting down rebellion, for the punishment of treason, for securing republican governments to the States; for rules and regulations to govern the Territories and other property of the U.S.; for raising armies an navies, and for the common defense. These are the grand objects of the constitution; anything necessary to be done to carry outthese objects is constitutional. It is constitutional to do all things necessary to preserve the constitution and the nation which it founded. It was constitutional to put down the rebellion; so it is constitutional to do all to prevent a return of rebellionto provide for the future security of the nation. You cannot invoke precedents in history to control our action; the situation is now. As there never was such a framework of governmentsuch a people, such a rebellion, such traitors to deal With we have consequently no ides in the past to illumiue our pathway in the future. we must do what is necessary, relying upon our own judgment and sense of duty to complete the work begun in the field; for I say to you we are still combatting our old enemy in another form. Again, the rights we new claim to exercise spring from the war power which is inherent in all Governments. When civil governments fail to secure obedience to the constitution and laws, resort is bad to the military power, and military governments are established such as Tennessee possessed under Governor (now President) Johnson, and other States have had during the rebellion; aud, since the disloyal armies were overthrown, the war power has still been exercised, and its exercise is still needed in those States. The President has in sisted that they should ratify the constitutional amendment, give the freedman a standing in court as witness and party, and that they should repudiate the rebel debt before he would remit them to their civil rights or advise the reception of their members by Congress. How can this extraordinary executive power he jus tified except upon the principles I have adverted to? The only question remaining is, when are these former rebels to be admitted to a share in the Government? That will depend much upon their loyalty and the ability they mani fest to take loyal part in the Government. 30 years the rebellion was hatching. Have all its teachings gone in 9 months? 4 cars it fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause. Are its resentments, its pride forgotten? The same ministers that preached treason, the same presses that proclaimed it, now lead the people and control their opinions. It must be remembered that these people are now on their good behavior. Everything that is printed, said, or done is with reference to their gettin back into the Government as soon as possib e, and so the cloven foot is hidden as much as possible. But truth will assert itself in spite of all these recautions; facts crop out proving beyond all doubt their continued disloyalty. Shouts are given for Lee in the loyal Legislature of Virginia. A former member of the rebel congress, once a Speaker of this House, whose lips are steeped in violated constitutional oaths, is elected Governor of SCarolina. Loyal Alabama has a rebel general for Go“vernor. Whipped, but not conquered.”Jockoon(Minio etp1phiFo)retyitlTeraodferre. bel i s a proud one. ”Petenburg (V"irginia) Daily New. The southern people have not been guilty of any crime; theyhave only failed.” saysa leading southern divine. "We have aright to elect our military heroesto office. Ought we to give u our cherished notions of policy to swallow a plum? 1llacon(Georgia)Jour lm“aWe vote for the late confederate soldiers because they represent theyalor. honor, and intelligence of the people. "TheSouthearolmmn. The Richmond republic thus illustrates the southern idea of loya ty: "The other da 2 youn men were talking on a street in a city. 1]: y were iving deeplyinto undamental principles. noof them asked the other what loyalt was. Ideiishave been so unsettled about what it real y consistsin that an answerdid not come very readily to the respondent. After some deliberation and an anxious. puzzled expressionof countenance, the others face suddenly frightened u p. Why. saysbe. Ill tell on enactly what it is: it is swearing to a lie. did or did not this young man. in the candid impulse of youth, speak the popular sentiment or describe in a few words the sort of loyalty which is manifestedaround us?". See what the Menu his Argus said of Union men during the rebellion: "The Daily Memphis Argus of December 2, 1861, contained a paragraph headed llanz em and comEGHCinr”" Hang eml yes. Hang them everyone! Every East Tennesseeun. every Tenucsseean found recrcant to the will and interest of the State of Tennessec and known to be actively contriving With its enemies, should be. hung and loftily. " See what the Memphis Appeal says now: "The oontedoraoy is gone and while we hold in sacred reverence its glorious memories and treasure in our heart of hearts those few in Sardis who did not defile their garments, those noble breedof men and women who showed most true metal the greater the sacrifices they were called uson tomake, and who to the last gave an unreserve allegiance to their country, drinking “ Love in eachlifedrop thatflowedfromherbreast. we, bitter rebels as we have been, can give the charity of silence to " The slave Whose treasonlike a deadly blight Crept oer the councils of the rave To blast them in their hour of might. “ Yes, wecaifirive him or her the charity of silence. If he seesfit to live in and seek a comstance in the land he has betrayed, why let him eat t isbitter bread of remorsein peace and be assured that if a single slementot a man remains within him. that breadwill indeed be bitter.” Tennessee loyalists begging to have the military retained for the rotcction of loyal men, an saying that the reels there are as cruel, malignant, and insolent as everl This is indorsed by their Governor, the dauntless Brown low. What do you think of reconstructed Tennessee? 500 loyalists from the mountain fastnesses ofAlabama say the same of that State. “They talk of insurrectionary violence yet. in Alabama ” says Major General Swayne. The Ifew Era, a loyal paper, published in Arkansas, sums up the whole situation thus: "Arkansas. As shc stands before the country now, can never beadmitted upon a footingof equality with the loyal States, and we fervently trust never will until loyalty shall be supremein the State. Arkansas is no worsethan other insurrcctionary States: on the contrary, she containsa considerable loyal element of the conservativestripe. But. that element is even now in danger. if it has not already done so. of losing the prestigeit so for possessed. Certain it is that when once admitted on the floor of Congress, and the inditar protection of the U.S. removed. the late disoyal clement. whiehis as much opposedto republican principles as ever, and vastly superior to the loyal element hnot onlyin numbers but brains. organization, wcult and everything to make a party successful, “lll make short work of the present State government, laws and ordinances. “Eternal vigilaiiedistho)XIGB of liberty: the rebels are seeking to gain by the allot what they could notgain by the bullet. Congress aloiic stands between the reestablishment oftho power of the old slave oligarchy and the triumph of republican and radical union principles. "Go grant that Congress remainfirm and not aban don the principles for the especial vindication of which the Almighty seems to have raised up this nation.” This is but a type of the whole. GenlGrant is sometimes cited as an authority to show that the South is pacified, trust worthy, and loyal. If so he has a queer way of showmg it. See what he says in answer to an application from Governor Parsons, of Alabama, for Withdrawmg the military from that State: "For the present, and until there is full scenrit for equitably maintaining the rights and safety oiy all classes of citizens in the States lately in rebellion, I would not recommend the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from thenco. The number of interior garrisons might be reduced, but a movable force sufficient to insure tranquillity should be retained. While such a force is retained in the South I doubt the propriely of putting arms in the hands of the militia.” and I might multiply these terrible proofs to any extent. Do you need any more evidence that the “leopard has not changed his spots?” If so, peruse carefully the official report of General Carl Schurz. He found no loyalty there, only bold, defiant treason. In not a single southern State have they done justice by the freedmen. In not one have they passed just and equitable laws that will protect imin his rights. The courts are rebel, urors rebel, Legislatures rebel; the men who ought our ilag boastof scars won in behalf of treason as honorable, and receive in reward othee, honor, and profit. They do not disuise their hate for Union men; who are excluded from all those honors and privileges because of their loyalt. Freedom of speech. as of old, is a mocker. n the name of God, is such a people entit edto representation on this floor? Are you ready to receive them back now, to make laws for the widow whose husband they have slain; for the orphan whose sire they have murdered; for the maimed and helpless soldier whom the have robbed of arms or legs or eyes, and left m to drag out a miserable life? Is he to be a pensioner upon their bounty? Are you ready now to leave without protection the loyal men of the South both white and black, and hand over the whole power of your Governmentin those States to their enemies and oppressors? Who are these loyal white men of the South? They who fled to the mountains and the caves; who wor shiped the old He, though it trailed in the dust, with more than eastern idolatry; who suffered loss of home, family, property, all but death itself for their country and the 4 million black men who were the slaves and under the control of the rebels, who were away from the Union lines and its protection, who only knew God because they saw Him in the stars and heard Him in the winds for the Bible to them was a forbidden book they who had onlyknqwn the flag from the stripes it gave them and the Union from the chains it bound them with; they who from the 1st sent their morning and evening prayers to Heaven that the nation might live, who furnished our soldiers flying from captivity and death with guide and shelter, food and fire, while the master let slip bloodhounds on the fugitives track: who of the 4 millions betrayed a loyal man? Not one who but exposed the traitor master. This faithfulness on the part of those poor, simple, ignorant men is to my mind one of the grandest phases that the war has developed. How strange the contrast between the slave in his chains and the master who had been am pered by the Government. The former kissed and upheld the rod that had smitten him, the latter smote the hand that had fed him and yet we are asked at this time to consign these loyal mon, both white and black, to the mercy, as I have said, of these rebels and enemies. Iam free to say, Mr. Speaker, that if such is to be the policy of this Government it i. s recreant to its high duty; it is unworthy of all the blood shed and treasure expended in its cause; it deserves to perish in itsingiatitude and be blotted from the face of the earth. We are told, sir, that they have ratified the constitutional amendment abolishin slaver. Ay, so they have; but their courts have so d the freedmen into slavery the next day under some pretense of punishing him for vagrancy or something else equally absurd. You say that they have reudiated the rebel debt. Indeed they have, in orm; but how long do you an pose it will be after they get their members back into Congress before they will repeal all such legislation? They will have the power to do so; o you doubt their will? Have they done another thing more important; have they given us any assurance that they in conjunction with their obsequious northern allies will not repudiate the national debt, which they say was incurred in their subjugation? You say that they have given the colored man a standin in court. Ay, so had Robert Emmett before is English murderers! So had the early martyrs in councils convened to take their lives! So had Jesus of Nazareth in the court of Pilate! A standing in court, with, as I have said, hostile judges, jurors, witnesses, church and state all hostile. such a standing in court is mockery; it is worse, it is insult. But we are told that these are “ honorable men, ” and will live up to the oaths they have taken. “Honorable men” who butchered hel less women and crushed out the brains of litt o children at Lawrence, who murdered in cold blood prisoners ofwar at Fort Pillow, who stood by with infernal malice and saw the flesh shrink month by month, week by week, day by day from the bones of 30,000 as brave and noble men as ever went forth to save a nation, until their strong frames tottered, their eyes grew dim, and suffering all the tortures of the amned, gnashed their teeth and wailed for food until the mind went wandering back to home and wife, mother and child, and they called on sacred names and laughed the may niaes laugh, and then moaned and cried for bread, and died for want of food. In this land of plenty, in the land they had gone to save, on the slimy couch where vermin crawled, trampled into the wet earth or over the “dead line, ” in tatters, in rags, in awful stench and filth, with dead men in heaps around them they died, and RobtELee and Jefferson avis and all the rest of these “honorable men,; stood by upholding the hellish deed. God save the“ nation from such “honorable menl” But what would you do?" says the impatient inquirer.” Are you not weary of war and blood? Are you not for peace and Union?” I am for peace and Union: that peace which will he lastin, that Union which will be just for the fearfu lesson of the last 4 years will be lost upon us if we have reconstruction without justicejustice to the 10al men, justice to the freedmen. We tolerate injustice to a race until it was wiped out by the blood of a million men. Let us reconstruct now upon solid foundations. We have the power and the right, and it is our highest duty to do so. We should convict and ban for treason the leaders of the rebellion, that alambitious demagogues here after shall be admenished that “treason is a crime” to be punished. Justicc, by constitutional amendment fixed beyond the mutations of southern legislation, would give to every class and race of men in those States equality before the law, and all the power and franchises necessary to secure that equality. Justice and a due regard to our national safety would take the government of those States from the hands of our countrys enemies and place it in the hands of its friends; and if special legislation is needed to create for 2ti. future, as in the past, territorial governments for them to secure those ends, let it be done and let not any indecent haste to strike hands that are red with our brothers blood and put on garments that are reeking with the odors of rebel prison pens throw away the opportunity to enforce justice. Take all the needed time to settle these grave issues upon the eternal principles of right, build u the new structure on the rock of justice an equalit, so that the waves of war and sedition may ash against it unharmed through all the ages that are to come. We are the judges, I have said, of the conditions of their return to power., Congress, the loyal Congress, is to decide who shall take seats here. Loyal men, I am told, have come here as representatives from some of those States; as such men I take them by the hand. But I would ask them, do you represent a loyal constituency? It is the constituency we are rejecting, not the man. I would ask them what guarantee they can give, that when their brief term here is ended, that men in sympath with their rebellious districts, who can swear ard enough to take the oath, (for they are a nation of oathtakers and oath breakers) will not succeed them. They should remember that they were elected while the war was still ragin, while these rebel constituents were in the tie d; now the have returned to vote at the next election, of they expect a reelection from their hands? Can they assure me that they were not put forward for the present by design, to use their 10 shy to edge their districts into conss, an then to be laid aside (as Governor olden of NCarolina was) as a castoff mask when the object is accomplished? Suppose we let them in now, what excuse can we give, having established this precedent, for excluding other s? I will yield to none in my regard for the Union men of the South, but I can do nothing to jeopardize the great question of the time. cannot sacrifice prinnciple in my partiolity for men. Congressmen and Presidents are but the objects of the day “That strut and fret their hour upon the stage, and then are heard no more.” They pass away and are forgotten; but our acts here on these great questions will live forever, for the weal or woe of the Republic. We must make no mistakes, but build the edifice slowly and surely and when the justice we have demanded is secured, the guarantees we ask for are given, and a returnin Union sentiment is aparent, then we would lift no longer the ved o horrors, but consign to Heaven, that rights allwrongs, the guilty of our “min. o guided countrymen;” and United with the South we would seek to lift it up to a purer patriot ism and to the level of the olden time, when together we fought the common foe, cherished common glories and traditions, and reosed beneath the folds of a common flag. An then our couuntry will march on to its imperial des tiny, the greatest and the best of allt e nations of the earth.