Mr. ROGERS. I desire that there shall no longer be known in this country any traitors for what was done in the war. I want to see the privileges and benefits of our Government extended to the people of the South as well as to the people." the North, and had I been POTUS I would have issued a general proclamation of amnesty before this Congress met, which should have relieved every person in the South from the treason consequent on the rebellion. As you all know, I never had any delicacy in stating the positions I assume and occupy. I feel today for the downtrodden people of the South who are now subject to despotism and tyranny and held under the yoke of bondage. The conduct of this Congress toward them would be in the eyes of the civilized world a sufficient cause for rebellion. I protest against despotism and tyranny in every form, and especially against the despotism of this Congress. I warn the people of the U.S. that their liberties are about to be taken from them by a Congress imbued with crazy fanaticism, who are engaged in plotting the destruction of the fairest Government ever framed by men. I am in favor of general amnesty and pardon, and there are others, men in the Republican party, who are in favor of the same thing. orace Greeley, the leading light of the black Republican party, is in favor of general amnesty all ofsuffrage, and he says that if he cannot get general suffrage he wants general amnesty anyway. He came here and offered himself as bail for JeffersonDavis. He wants that man relieved from the punishment now inflicted upon him by being kept in prison for 2 or 3 years after the offense was commit ted, and deprived of a speedy trial to which i. basest criminal is entitled by our organic a W. This Congress outstrips in wicked despotism the worst Parliaments of England. Its action disgraces and degrades the people of this country. It is inimical to the Constitution of the U.S., and as long as God Almighty gives me breath I for one will raise my voice against such despotic conduct whether it comes from the legislative, executive, or judicial branch of the Government. The white people of this country were born free men, and I shall do all I can to have them die free men. I have seen enough of the course of this congress upon these questions to make a lover of. country shed tears of blood. The whole object of its legislation appears to be to punish the South. We do not hear in these. except from a few individuals, any utterance of charity, Christian sympathy, or magnanimity with regard to the people of the South. The southern people are a brave people. They have Fo or what the great body of them believed a just and righteous cause, and they have been defeated; but they have done nothing but what 1000s and 1000s have done in former days in rebelling against both monarchies and republics. i. recent rebellion of the southern people was simply an uprising against a Government whose powers they believed were exercised in a despotic and unconstitutional manner. Yet I am not here to justify their action; I am here to condemn it, as I have always done. I did what I could to prevent their success in the rebellion. Yet I have sufficient charity in my heart to be willing to accord to the great masses of the southern people honesty of intention. This was demon strated by their exhibitions of valor and their outpouring of blood in their conflict with the heroic Army and Navy of the U.S. And when the President wiped out the consequences of their guilt through the pardoning and amnesty power he did, but imitate the example of our Saviour, who in order to pardon a condemned world shed His own precious blood upon the cross. The gratitude of posterity and of civilization throughout the world will be poured ". the great name of AndrewJohnson for his humanity and charitable conduct. This country must be united at some time. We cannot continue in our present state of division and alienation. The civilized world is now looking with pain and amazement at the spectacle which, our country, presents. And, sir, I tell you that though the people of the South may be obliged for a time to submit to the galling yoke of despotism, reason and judgment will eventually assert their sway, and the day is not far distant when the bright casket of human liberty will be again intrusted to the hands of men who will transmit it to their descendants as we received it from our fathers of the revolutionary era. In speaking on this subject I employ stron language; I do notintend any disrespect towar anybody on either side of this House. gentlemen on both sides of the House will bear me witness that I have always treated them in a courteous and gentlemanly manner. I have no ill will or antipathy toward any member of this House; but I implore gentlemen, in be half of my country, in behalf of those who are to come after us, to join with me and others on this side of the House in an effort to reunite this country in a bond of fraternal affection upon the basis of the Constitution and the old Union established by our patriotic fore fathers, so that we may again become the envy and admiration of the civilized world. My motive in thus plainly talking is to warn the people of approaching danger that they may stand upon the watch towers and guard the citadel of their liberties against Girondists and Jacobins who would destroy their country for political power. It springs from an earnest and sincere desire to promote the best interests of my country. I see with pain the spirit of vengeance which gentlemen here are seeking to exercise toward the people of the South, and I implore Almighty God that He may enlighten their consciences to a sense of the real demands of the country before we are plunged into another revolution. May Christian love and charity prevail and the innocent mother and harmless babe of the South no more be the victims of the fire and smoke that once ascended from the dwelling which sheltered age and infancy. As a matter of law, as well as of policy and justice, the legislation now proposed should not be adopted. Why, sir, if the doctrines which are advocated here be correct, none of the men of the South who have been engaged in rebellion can be indicted or convicted for treason. The honorable Gentfrom Pennsylvania, [Mr. STEVENs, in the honesty of whose sentiments. I fully believe, has proclaimed and the declaration has been 2nded by the other gentlemen on that side, and has been embodied in a preamble to a resolution or bill presented in this House that the southern States are out of the Union and have lost their constitutional relations to the government of the U.S., and are dead in law, and their people public enemies; that those States have lo.mere Territories, and bills have been introduced for the purpose of declaring and enforcing this doctrine. If this be the true view, then why should we undertake to repeal the law which limits the time within which those men can be indicted and tried for treason? For if those States are out of the Union and have lost their constitutional relations to the Government of the U.S., then they must have constituted a defacto Government; and those who partici. pated in that defacto Government, the only Government that could give them protection, cannot, according to the principles of public and international law, be convicted of the crime of treason. Men cannot be guilty of treason to a Government to which they do not owe allegiance. No man who is not a citizen of he U.S. can be convicted of treason against the U.S. for being engaged in a war against them. If those who were engaged in the rebellion were, by virtue of their secession, taken outside of the Union, then they do not come within the constitutional provision in regard to treason. They were subjects of a defacto Government, and according to the principle settled in the English and American law adherence to such a Government in opposition to a Government dejure cannot render an individual guilty of treason. We all know that the rebellion was brought about by the Radicals of the North and South; one set to destroy slavery and the other to preserve it. The Radicals of the North were all the time hounding the people of the South. In fact they are more accountable for the rebellion than the people of the South, because the people of the South had reason to believe from what was stated in the speeches and in the public press of the North that they would be permitted quietly to secede. It was well known that Horace Greeley advocated secession. We know that throughout the length and breadth of the North men of character in the different States proclaimed that the South ha the right to secede. Now, after they have failed in the act of secession, after the rebellion has been put down, after you have laid waste their fields, burned their cities, desolated their homes, destroyed all their branches of industry, is it not time to show some magnanimity, some charity, and to say that after 3 years have elapsed from the time those offenses were committed they shall go acquittod? I know you would hesitate to pass a resolution in this House saying that the people of Ireland, who are fighting against the despotism and tyranny of England, were guilty of treason and should be hung. Do we not know that the President is using all the peaceable machinery of the Government of the U.S. to prevent the Canadian Government czecuting upon the gallows men who went upon its soil, having their base of operations here, for the purpose of relieving the millions of the do people of Ireland from the yoke of bondage i. which they are held by the Queen of England. Gentlemen, there is no difference today between the status of the people of the South and the people of Ireland, except that the people of Ireland have less despotism exercised over them by the English Government than the people of the South have by you; because the people of Ireland have some representation in the British Parliament, while the people of the South, with the exception of one single State, and that not having a RFG, have none. mean Tennessee. I know perfectly well if I should offer a resolution in this House protesting against hanging the Fenians in Canada, every man in this House, especially the Radicals who pretended at the recent elections to be great friends of the Irish, would corditlly vote for it. Perhaps, however, you will not be so friendly now, as you have had all the use you can make of the Fenians for the present. I want to see your friendship by the repeal of the neutrality laws. Why do you feel willing to extend your sympathy and hospitality to the people of Poland, Hungary, Ireland, and other countries where revolutions have taken place, and want to hang your own countrymen for being engaged in a like revolution? Why will you extend the hand of charity and friendship to them and refuse it to the people of the South?