Mr. COWAN. No, sir; in a moment you will have an opportunity to reply, and I do not wish to be crossexamined or harassed during the regress of what little I have to say. Thglilssam proposition to repeal fb act of congress a the aws, all State legaslation of which l Wanywaymereate distinctions –between black so far as their civiil rights and immunities extend. it is not to repeal legislation in regard to slaves. When there was no such thing as a slave in the land, of course all laws relating to slaves fell with it. I hold educated in the school in which I have been educated, and it was not that of the strictest constructionists, nor was it in that latitudinarian school which can extract anything from the terms and revisions of the constitution, but it was in the air construction school that no power has ever been delegated to this Government to repeal State legislsation which legislation was couhned to the relation of the citizens of the State making the legislation among themselves. I have never known that anybody pretended that it possessed such power. This bill pretends to repeal those laws, to set them at naught; and it pretends moreover to go further, and to make the State officers who attemptto execute those laws crim inals, and to unis them criminally, and, ifre sistance is o ered to that punishment, that the military of the U.S. is to step in and to inflict it. Now I beg Senators to pause, because this legislation not only affects the States lately in rebellion, but it affects all the States; and if it is good with regard to the State of SCarolina it is good with rerd to the honorable Senators own State of In ana; it is good with regard to the State of Ohio, it is good with regard to my State, and it is good clearly with regard to all the States. Now, sir, what is the law, and what has been the law in our country, the acknowledged law of the country, the law of the country which allowed to all and afforded to all men every where an ample, fit, civil remedynot a remedy at the point of the bayonet, but a remedy upon the tongue of the vocate and in the judgment of the judge? If we have the power to override State legislation by this bill, it is either constitutional oritis not coustitutional. There is the alternative, and either horn of the dilemma may be taken by the advocates of the bill. If it be constitutional the State courts are bound to execute it But our honorable friend says the State courts will not executeit. suppose they do not. There have been laws of the nionhereto fore which the State courts refused to execute but I have yet to learn that anybody ever proposed that those courts could be enforced to its execution at the point of the bayonet. What is the rule, then I If the State court decides that the act of Congress which restrains and limits their powers is constiltional, then the State court executes the law, and there is no trouble about it. If that court, however, on the other hand, decides that it is unconstitutional, what then? By the law now, the party injured has his rem e y by a writ oferror; an the Supreme Court that civil tribunal set up by the will of the nation as embodied in the constitution and the laws is the tribunal to determine whether that appeal is upon just grounds or not. Are we to overthrow everything? Are we going to turn this into a military dictatorship? Are we going to abandon the province of reason and resort entirely to that of force? Are we going to substitute the bayonet and the saber for argument and law and reason? Surely not; and yet that is the proposition. For the sake of the argument, I will admit that there is a fair dispute as to whether this bill is constitutional or not; and admitting that that is fairly in dispute, I say that at any other time, and under any other circumstances, a bill would have been brought up declaring that those laws should not and ought not to be enforced, and that would have raised the question as to they constitutionality of the measure. If the State court had decided that the law was constitutional, of course then you would have attained your end. If not, as I said before, a writ of error or qlppeal is the proper remedy by the party llljllle. But now look at the proposal. If the State court decides in favor of the State laws, who is to decide whether those State laws are over ridden by this general bill? I put the question here and demand an answer, who is to decide that point? Is it a judge learned in the law? Is it a court established by the law? Is it the SCOTUS, the highest judicial tribunal of the land? No, sir. By the bill, and by the admission of the gentlemen who have argued in favor of it, it is to be determined by the military, and the military are to decide whether the statute in question is Overridden by this bill or whether it is not. I ask American Senators and I ask American citizens whether this Government has come to that, or whether it has not. I had hoped never to stand in this body and hear a Republican Senator, and not only a Republican Senator but Republican Senators excuse and apologize, or rather triumphantly cite the fugitive slave law of 1850 as a model for their present legislation. Sir, if there is a recedent upon our records which above all others ought to be avoided by prudent men, by law abiding and lawloving men, it is that fugitive slave law of 1850. But it is said the Supreme Court decided that it was constitutional. I grant it, and I submitted and obeyed it because they did so decide, and because we had alled that we would submit to their decisions. At the same time it was within the province of every good man, every honest and just man, and every learned lawyer throughout the land, to struggle and strive to have that decision reversed. I do not believe it was constitution al; it never was constitutional. The clause which required the rendition of fugitives from justice, nail the clause which required the rendition of fugitive slaves, were in hwc verba, in parimay lpria, and they ought to be construed in the same way precisely. What was the law by which the rendition of criminals was provided for between sovereign States? That the reclamation must be may e upon the sovereign power of the State in order to restore the allegeif criminal. What, then, was intended by the framers of the constitution? That the reclamation ought to have been made upon the sovereign power of the State to return the fugitive from labor the one who had owed service in a State and had esca d from it. That was the properremedy. nd, Mr. President, when the slave States themselves met to make their confederacy, they aid perhaps the highest compliment to the constitution of the U.S. that was ever paid to any instrument in the world. No rebellion, no insurrection, no separation has occurred here tofore in any country where the separatists or the rebels took the constitution of the country they had left almost literally and adopted it for themselves; and yet the rebels did that, with one exception in regard to the term of the President, which they extended to 6 years; and with regard to the fugitive slave clause. They put the true construction upon it there, and by a new article of their constitution, they declared that the fugitive was only to be deliv ered up on reclamation made upon the Governor of the State to which the fugitive had escaped. They thereby ratified, sanctioned, and admitted that the construction contended for by northern men for long, long years of that chiuse was the true one; so that even southern authority, even slaveholding reason, even the argument which grows out of slavery will not sustain the futive slave law as a precedent for anything which we may do here in considering the rights of the States and of the people of the States under this Union. But, Mr. President, I beg to protest, when ever any inferior court of the U.S. any supreme court of a State, or any inferior. court of a State, makes a decision which is against a law of the U.S., the para mount law or against the constitutionality of that law, the remedy is not the military; it is not the bayonet; the remedyis an appeal to the superior, the higher tribunals of the country. [he honorable Senator asks, who would be injured by this? As I said before, the relations of the citizens or inhabitants of the several States are peculiarly within the legislation of those States. that Maryland has an act of her Legislature by which a black man is forbidden to marry a white woman. Is that competent? Is not the State of Wisconsin competent today to legislate upon that relation between her citizens? Are not the several States sovereign enough to determine upon this question of miscegenation? Are they not as sovereign to determine upon it as they are upon the question of polyg amy, the question of incest, or any other question which it is believed and is thought would materially affect the interests of the community constituting the State? Now, let us take a case. A black man in Maryland, alter the passage of this act, marries a white woman, and he is arraigned under the law of Maryland forbiddin it, and the Maryland judge, does what? hat would the land Judge do Maig I I ask what Senators would o if they were sitting in his place administering the laws of Maryland? Here is an act of congress which declares that, as to all civil rights and immunities, the negro is to be put upon precisel the same footin as the white man. Ihis ju e in Maryland ocides that the negro has a rightto marr a white womanthat repeals the laws of Maryland; or he decides that a black man has not a right to marry a white woman, and he undertakes to impose upon him the penalties which the Maryland statute provides. What is theremedy of this bill? I hat is the remedy of my honorable and learned friendfrom Indiana? It is that the President shall intervene with bayonet and ball in order You heard the other day, sir, to address the Senate. to do, what? To ete the execution of the decree or sentence of the court of Maryland. Now, I askI ask it in all seriousness; I ask it from Senators who are intrusted by the poople of the several States withthe highestinterests known among menwhether that is prudent, politic, law ul, or constitution al? I ask again whether it is not in the face of all the worlds experience, from the 1st line of recorded history down to the present day. that that question, or any such question, should be submitted to the mihtary power of any Government whatever. There it is; wordscannot make it plainer; reason cannot elucidate it; no language can strengthen it or weaken it, one way or the other. There is the question, whether a military man, educated in a military school, accustomed to an reine command. unaccustomed to the administration of civil law among a free people, is to be intrusted with this appelIate jurisdiction over the courts of the country; whether he can in any way, whether he ought in any way to be intrusted with such a power? I for my part will never agree to it; and I should feel myself recrcant to every duty that I owed to myself to my countr, to my country s history, and I may say to terace which has been for 100s and 1,000s o years endeavoring to attain to something like constitutional liberty, if I did not resist this and all similarprojects. I ask you, where is this to end? If this is to be a consolidated Government, if all power is to be concentrated at washiii ton, if all the powers heretofore reserved to the States are to e given to this Government, let us know it. I am not very certain that, personally, I should have any very great objection to it. One great Government for this great empire might be perhaps cheaper, might perhapsinduce a greater omogeneousness among the people than the several State governments which exist now; but that is not the question for determination. We sit here by virtue of authority derived from the American peole, hedged, limited, circum scribed, and bounded by the terms of the great organic law, the constitution, and it is not for us to transcend that until the will of our principals in that behalfis known and signifie accordin to the forms in that constitution laid down or the purpose of making amendments to it. Then, say, if we are to preserve this form, if this is to be a Union of States, and a Union of States which shall have all the rights reserved that have not been delegatedto the General Government, and if that is the theory on which we are to proceed, if the people of the several States in their domestic and civil and political relations are to be regulated by the States, then, certainly, upon no known principle of the law can this bill be justified, and particularly by no known principle of any constitutional law or of any sound reason can the principle of substituting military power for a writ o error be sustained or maintained.