Mr. COWAN. They are anonymous so far as we are concerned; and I commend the Senators prudence in keeping the names of their writers from the public, because I have no doubt that if their names were known they would not be considered of much importance. I very much doubt whether there is a single man among them who has ever wielded anything more than a pen during this rebellion. But say that we have the testimony of men of unexceptionable veracity; we have the testimony of the POTUS, who was a Union man, and who was in favor of the Union at a time and in a place where there was some merit in it. I do not suppose there was any great merit in being a Union man in Massachusetts. I suspect a man would have been very likely to get a lamppost if he had been a POTUS was a Union man in the very thick and storm of the battle. He was driven from his home; he was waylaid hither in Order to attend to his official duties in this body. has stood by the constitution, by the Union, I all the way through, steadily and firmly, and as a compliment to him the great party to which I belong, and to which he did not belong, and never pretended to belong, conferred upon him office which, in the providence of God, has made him POTUS Now, sir, you are told here that this man in his official communication to the Senate of the U.S. whitewashes the condition of things down below. Yes, sir, “whitewash” is the word. The honorable Senator says that he will not accept the definition of “whitewash” driven by the Senfrom Connecticut or the Senfrom Wisconsin, but he has not told us what he means by the word “whitewash.” It is not necessary that he should say what he means by that word. Everybody understands it. I suppose even his colored friends, in whom he takes so much interest, would know what the meaning of the word “whitewash” was, [Laughter] He savs that this man, who stood firm when everybody else faltered, this man who stood almost al0ne in the midst of an enraged population, and in the Very storm and or; strife of the worst civilWar perhaps the world has ever seen, comes here to “whitewash.” What does he mean except that the POTUS in an official communication to this body comes here to lie; that is the plain English of it; comes here either to suppress the truth or to suggest a falsehood. What does the President say? I will read what he so s as a sufficient answer to what all these people of down South report of the state of affairs there, and I do not find it necessary to deny 1,000s of instances of exceedingly he recital talk may have taken place there, and of treasonable tale if you please; and I have no doubt that in a state of things unparalleled in the history of the world heretofore wrongs and outrages innumerable happen there but that is not the question. The question is, what is the condition of the mass of the people in the South, what is their disposition and tendency, not to love the North, not to love the honorable Senfrom Massachusettsbecause I very much fear that that will not be brought about soon unless there is a change in the tenor of both partiesnot to have hearts over wing with to those who they think persecute and not them in their submission, who kick and strike at them after they are down, after they have cried “ enough”but the question is, what is their disposition to obey the laws? What do we care about their hearts or their dispositions if they are obedient to the laws, and submit to the laws? Now they have submitted to laws which impose the heaviest penalty, for if they are traitors the law imposes the penalty of death and confiscation of estates by means of fine. I will read what the President says now of the condition of that people from the information he has received: “In that portion of the Union in rebellion the respect of affairs is more promising an in view of all the circumstances well have.” I think there is no candid man who will not indorse that sentiment. “The people throughout the entire South evince a laudable desire to renew their allegiance to the Government, and to repair the devastations of war by a prompt and cheerful return to peaceful pursuits.” Why should they not? To an pose anything else is to suppose that they are demented, that they have no kind of common sense left, that 4 years of the most terrible war and the most terrible punishments ever inflicted upon a people have been without their lessons. It cannot be, Mr. President; it is not in the nature of things that it should be. An faith on the part of this man who suffered from these people, who suffered from this war and the doctrine of secession and the attempt to break the Unionhe says: "An abiding faith is entertained that their actions will conform to their professions and that in acknowledging the supremacy of the constitution the laws often Limited given to the Government whose leniency they cannot fail to appreciate, and whose fostering core will soon restore to a condition of prosperity.” and here, Mr. President, allow me to ask when in the history of this world or of fire human family has it happened that severity, cruelty, persecution, refusal to recognize common rights, has reconciled a people and sacrificed a distracted country; and when has it appeued that clemency, leniency, as the President expresses it, has failed to produce beneficial results? It is not necessary to go very far back for instances to show this. Look at the treatment of England toward Ireland. What has been the result there of her holding that people in a species of vassalage? A Fenian insurrection upon her hands now after 100s of cars of attempt to dominate over that people. ok at Poland; look everywhere and if it be necessary to see what clemency, what leniency and justice and trust and confidence can do to restore a people once in revolution take the conduct of in LaVendee. here by the genius of one man, high enough to be a ove vulgar passion, statesman enough to look to the future, LaVende e was restored to France, and is there now part and parcel of iti with every recollection of the revolution Says the President, "It is true that in some of the States the are to be seen in occasional dis" These effects are to be seen in the North as well as in the South " but these are local character, not frequent in occurrence and are rapidly disappearing as the nu authority of civl law is extended and sustained. Perplexing questions were naturally to be citpected from the neat and sudden change)1]the relations between the 2 races: but systems are themselves under which the freedmen will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled and by means of his labor make himself a useful, and independent member of the community in which he has is home. From all the information in my occasion and from that which I have recently arrived from the most reliable authority, I am induced to cherish the belief that sectional animosity is surely and rapidly merging itself into a spirit of nationality, and that representation, connected with a properly adjusted system of taxation. will result restoration of the relations of the States to the national Union.” There is a little more testimony yet Mr. president; and it is worth while to commend, while we are here to take counsel and to know what we ought to do in the extraordinary situation in which we find ourselves, from whom will we take that. Are we to take it from men, the purpose of whose whole life seems to be to wage war upon these people and their institutions? Shall we take it from men whom they hate personally and by name, and to whom it is almost impossible to suppose the ever will be reconcile, or, in the nature of t nngs, can be reconciled 1 Or are we to take it from the men who have not made this a personal war; who have treated it as a national war, and who, in their conduct of it, have won the applause of both sections? The President says that rt of his information has been received from GenlGrant. Who is GenlGrant? Who is to b. but in the scale with that scarred soldier, and whose testimony is to weirh down his? Is he “ whitewashing” here too? Has be forgotten the position he occupies before the American people? With the highest military character of any man today upon the earth, as he condescended to come here. to deceive the Senate of his country, and to be about the condition of affairs in the South, which he has recently visited? Let us hear what he says, and listen with patient reverence to the utterance of a man of sense, a patriot, and a prudent man, who desires not to embroil, not to emb1tter, not to widen the gap that already exxsts between 2 people who ought to be fraterually united, but. a man who desires to heal and to pacify; a man imbued with the spirit of Hoche when he went to LaVendee, and where he succeeded when others had failed. What does he say? It is not the tone or manner of the letterwriter, but it is in the manner of a man and a soldier. "I am satisfied" says he; and when he is satisfied who dares say he is not satisfied upon the score of honesty and good intent toward this Republic? “I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men in the South accept the present situation of affairs in good faith.” That is what GenlGrant says. Is that “whitewashing?” The questions which have heretofore divided the sentiments of the people of the 2 sectionsslavery and State rights, or the right of a State to secede from the Union the civil regard as having been settled forever by the highest tribunal, arms, that man can resort to.” It is now said that they do not think so; that they are only pretending; and have a covert purpose of mag something hereafter about this thing, nobody can tell exactly what. Perhaps we will be told they Will not abide the result: I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met, that they not only accepted the decision or arrived at as final. but that now, when the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given for reflection, this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and in council.” Why, Mr. President, the common sense of that last utterance is worth more as testimony than that of 1,000 scribblers who merely look of this great field. They L have resolved to accept the decision as final; and, what we ought all to be glad to know, they have found that it is for their benefit. They have found, too, after the smoke has cleared away, that they are really in a better condition than they were before, that they have been relieved from the incubus which has oppressed 1 them for so long a time, and they are ready now to taketheir places in the Union and alongside of the northern States who have made liberty their great principle rather than slaver. Why should they not? If any man can give a reason why the should desire to keep up this strife longer, With their devastated fields, with their treasuries, with their society disorganized, I should li e to hear it. I therefore hope, Mr. President, that We may meet them in a different spirit; that we may show to them that we made this war, not to make them eternal enemies of ours, not to humiliate them, but to rescue them; that we made this war to go and get them out of the clutches of the bad men who had misled them into the gloomy realm of secession and disunion; and that we intend, after the great military victory which we have achieved, to achieve another by magnanimity and clemency in our conduct to ward them; that we will win them back to be as they were before, our friends and our brothers, of the same race and of the same lineage. I hope too that this angry, irritating, and exciting mode of treating this subject, which is calculated to make us anything else than friends, will be discarded hereafter, and that we shall coolly and calmly and in the spirit of the nation, (because that is the spirit of the nation, examine this question and o with it that which will be calculated to restore the old harmony and peace and the old Union again.