Mr. TRUMBULL. You and I agreed that the Senators asking admission into this bod from the State of Louisiana ought to be a mitted last year. That was then my opinion. That question was referred to the committee of which I have the honor to be chairman. We considered it deliberately; we heard evidence, we examined the facts, and we made a report. I was exceedingly anxious then for their admission, cooperating in harmony with the late POTUS, who thought that the public interests would be pro moted by the early recognition of the new State government set up in Louisiana, who thought it would be the best policy to admit the members who had been sent from Louisiana. They were loyal men. The POTUS and all of us wanted to strengthen those loyal men. We wanted to give them strength at home. We desired that they should go back to the people of Louisiana and say to them that the Congress of the U.S. was dis posed to encourage them, just as we want to say now to these members from Tennessee who have been Union men, some of them all the time, and have fought in the Union Army. It is with extreme regret, for one, that Reel compelled to wait an hour, to delays. moment, in a mitting them to their seats in Congress. I want to strengthen them. I desire that the people of Tennessee shall see that these loyal men who have come here are supported by the nation, and I want them to have strength at home that the loyal men may rally around them. I undertake to say that that is the feeling of every Senator. But, sir, we cannot do that until we can ascertain whether the State organization has been established 11von such a foundation that it will be true to the Governmentnt. We cannot do that if the probability is that the day after we have done it the State organization of Tennessee is to be overturned and placed in rebel hands and another civilWar inaugurated and the Union men driven out of the State. But we want to do it as soon as it can be safely done, and I trust that it may be safely done very soon. I expect, from the information I have, that we shal be able to do it at an early period. I am sure there is no authority for saying that it is the intention of anybody to keep these members permanently out of this Congress, or to keep the State of Tennessee permanently out of the Union, as the call it, and dissolve the Union. 1 here is one other idea to which I desire to refer before I sit down, and that is, as to the course of the Senfrom Connecticut and myself less than a year ago when I was anx ious to have the members from Louisiana admitted.,What did I do at that time, as the chairman of one of your committees and by instruction of the committee? Did I ask the Senators from Louisiana to present themselves and be sworn as members of this body? Not at all; but by the unanimous instruction of that committee I brought in a resolution similar to that nowintrodncedb the committee of 15, and what was it? Hhad it here before me I would read it, but I can state the pur ort of it. It was aJtResolution declaring that the State government which was inaugurated in the city of NewOrleans on a certain day is hereby declared to be the legitimate government for the State of Louisiana, entitled to representation in the Congress of the U.S. Anxious as I was to have those Sens&Reps admitted, I did not think, and the committee did not think that they had an pi oper authority to admit them, until hot Houses by joint action agreed that the State, its authorities having been once overthrown, was in a condition to c represented here. All of us who desired to admit those members were “ acting together then, and acting in harmony with the POTUS, and nobody thought, and least of all did the lamented Lincoln think, that we were eneroaching upon his powers. That is precisely what is proposed to e done now. As I made up my opinion de liberately then, the Senfrom onnecticut can hardly expect me to depart now, at the bidding of anyone, from what seemed to me upon conscientious convictions to be in duty then, and what seems to me, actin under the lolcmnities of an oath, to be my duty today.