Mr. COWAN. That may be; but I say I was always opposed to it; and I had always very grave doubts whether it was good law. certainly, I never volunteered to execute it, and never made one of a posse commiatus to carry it out, so that I am not much to be put 03 the track by a reference to the fugitive slave law. If that was a bad law, it is now our province, as, freed from that incubus which broolde, e nation so long, to make good laws instead doubtful measures, such as the fugitive slave law was; and it was doubtful, and it excited more angry animosity amen our people, and was perhaps more the causeo the present rebellion, and the excitement which gave rise to it, than anyone thing besides. I am op esed to having any more such doubt ful legislation, or such legislation as will not be acceptable to the people where the law is to operate., I may state that I have another objection to this bill at the present time; and that is, that the people of several States in the Union are not represented here, and yet this law is mainly to operate 11 on those people. I think it would be at least decent, respectful, if we desire to maintain and support this Government on the broad foundation upon which it was laid, name ly, the consent (Lf the governed, that we should wait, at any rate, unti the people upon whom it is to operate have a voice in these Halls. I know it is said that those people are not in goodEHHOIJ to be allowed representation hereMr. President, he who says the people are not in condition asserts that this Government is I failure. It rests entirely upon the people, and if the people cannot be intrusted anywhere and everywhere throughout it, then it is not the Government we supposed it was, and not the Government it was intended to be. I admit that the American people. like other peoles, are subect to periodical disturbances. ey may be ed away by the arts of the demagogue, they may be forced away by the power of de farto governments asserted over em; but if they are, the punishment they receive is war. When the question is tit, it is put to the arbitranient of the sword. hatenters judgment and issues execution at the same stroke, and when the war it is our high river is over the people are purgede When the war is over it is too late to say that the people are iilty. They have suffered the pena ty of their fdlly, or their crime, or what you may be pleased to call it, and it is time then to talk about individuals, not people. As lsaid before, the man who assails a whole people assails the very foundation of our Government, the very stones which underlie its corners, and proclaims to the world that the people are not what our ancestors supposed they were, that they lack that virtue necessary to sustain such a Government as this. Mr. President, that is not true, and it is not true of the southern people today. During the war for the rebellion, it was questioned whether after the war was over and after we had suppressed the rebellion the people would respond, whether they would come back again to their allegiance and be part and parcel of the Union as before. I say it. was questioued whether they would do so. Have they not done it? The result is a thing of which every American whg loves his country and who prides himself in this great Republic should be proud of. If the southern people, after their armies were beaten, after they had lost everything in this game of war, had refused to organize republican governments in unison with the constitution and the laws, if they had still stubbornly refused to submit. if theyhad refused to send Representatives to Congress and Senators here, then you might have said that the people werein default and that the people had failed; but inmyjudgment those peopfe have not failed; they have done, so far as I can observe, everything that the most hopeful or sanguine man could have expected them to do. I am afraid that wecon found with the people of the South another and entirely different class. We are constantly told of the traitors and the rebels of the South; and unquestionably there are traitors and there are rebels there, and I would a great deal rather see them indicted and punished than hear so much about them. Who are rebels and traitors? Who are guilty men according to the theory of our law? The presumption is, that all men are innocent until they are shown to be guilty. Every line of our law is blazing with tie light of that humane sentiment. The words “traitor” and “rebel” are exceedingly glib upon tv tongues of certain gentlemen. A few minutes ago, it was alleged iere that every man who cannot take the present test oath must necessarily be a rebel or a traitor. Mr. President, if that delusion is persisted in, if that belief is to govern in the councils of this Government, there is an end of the Republic. It is not true in fact, and it is not true in law. Let us see how that is. In the fall of 1860 a certain number of persons in the southern States proposed secession. How many? Were all the women in it? Were all the children in it? Were all the men of both parties in it? No man who knows anything about the facts dares say any such thing. There were a few conspirators who for 30 ears had been weaving their web of treason, an they had procured their election to the high places all through the South. They were in possession of all the denitments of the State governments in the South, except. in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri; and by the by at this point let me note that wherever they were not in possession of all the Depts of a State government they invariably failed in their scheme of secession. These cons irators having made themselves governors an levislators and judges, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, at a time when all the people of those communities were mortified, angry, in illhumor because they had been beaten at a previous election, when Bell men and Douglas men and Breckiiiridge men were all in the same category. they proposed secession. Did everybody nssentto it? I beg Gentlemen to read the history. In no State in the Union where the people were consulted fairly, except perhn s one, did the scheme of secession meet with the approbation of the people. Who was to resist secession? Who was to resist the governments of those States when they determined upon it? We hear a great deal about this Government being obliged to guaranty a RFG to every State in the Union. Who was the guarantor of those governments? Who was bound to see that they did not go astray into secession and to protect the people as against itf The Government of the U.S., and it is well that we note it now; it is well that we turn and look there, because history will record that it was the U.S.A.a that should have protected the people who opposed secession in SCarolina and other States of the South. Let us see how they did it. The Congress of 18596061was in session here, and what did itdoto rotecfihe peopleof the seceded States? Did it o as. Mr. Lincoln afterward did without an act of Congress, call out the militia? Did its members attempt to throttle the thing in its inception? No, sir, they played at politics herein the Capitol, and the President played at polities at the other end of the avenue, and what was the consequence? The majority of the people of the South, or of the 7 cotton States, were left without a single representative of the U.S. to whom they could look for protection; the U.S. Government suflered itself ionominiously to be put out of nossesson of all those States except the twu ittle forts of Pickens and Sumter. I should like gentlemen to tell me what a Union man in Georgia was to do under circumstances of that kind: Do gentlemen pretend that single men, without an organization, without any governmental means, without any of the insignia of power, can stand n and resist the government of a State with all these means in its hands of enforcing its power? Surely not; and there was no other power in this Government except the U.S. to which theycould look, and the U.S. went out of possession and left those people to the mercy of secession. Mr. President, for 200 cars at least the doctrine has been establisied, and established beyond question, that protection and allegiance are reciprocal. I ewe allegiance to this Gavernment, and it owes to me protection. If it refuses to protect me, I am not to be punished because I do not yield it allegiance. Let me suppose a delegation of Georgians, of Alabamians, or Mississippians, if you please, Union men, coming here to this capital in the winter of 186061, and calling upon Congress, and soing, “SCarolina has actually seceded; other States are about doing the same thing: you should appropriate money and provide means, you should authorize the President to put down that attemted rebellion.” What did Congress say? Rea the record. They would not trust the President. Then the delegation go to the President, and what does he say! “I cannot coerce a State; I might suppress an insurrection, but I have no means; I have no authority to call out the militia.” Anybody that. wants to know what Mr. Buchanan has to say on that subject, I recommend him to read Mr. Buchanans book, recently published, in which his side of the caseis put forth. I suppose, with as much strength as it is capable of eing. What were these people to do 1 I put this to Senators licre honestly upon their consciences. what were the loyal men to do who were here at that time; who, when they voted upon the ordinances of secession, and on the calling of conventionsto pass those ordinances, invariably voted against them; what were they to do? Just exactly what they did do. They went back and told their people. “There is no help from the U.S.; they are out of possession; the President is recalcitrunt and Congress is wrang ling and refusing to trust him; we cannot have help; we must. submit.” Then Mr. Lincolns Government came in, and things were in such a shape that for 6 weeks the present party in power. of whom Mr. Lincoln was the head. was unable to determine whether ornot it would put down that rebellion. There it hung in the bal ance. a hair almost being snilicient to determine it. It was not determined until the rebelsthemselves determined it by firing upon F ort Sumter. l and the moment that 1st gun was fired every body knew what to do, and there was only one thing to do: nobody could have done anything else. Then we went to put down the rebellion. What for? Was it notto fulfill our guarantee and l to do the thing that Mr. Buchanan and the previous Administration ought to have done I "as it to conquer these people? If it wns, what right had weto conquer them? Gentlemen frequently refer to the DeclarIndep, and i take from it a very doubtful phrase, of which, l they make a great deal; but there are phrases in it about which there can be no difference. One of them is, that the right to ovrrn comes from the consent of the governe. We went there because we knew that secession was against the will of the governed theme, so far as we could determine. We went there to rescue men who were desirous of standing by the Union and its flag, and not to enslave them. we went there to bring them back to a Government which insured them their rights, and not to a Government which would take those rights away.