Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, I do not agree with the Senfrom Michigan in his construction of the decision of the Supreme Court to which he refers, by any means whatever; and I undertake to declare thatif it bore that construction, it is not only an outrage upon law, but an outrage upon the good sense of this wholo people, and that it will be reversed the 1st time it is brought in question. But I have yet to learn that any such decision as that which my friend has stated has been announced as the deliberate opinion of the SCOTUS. If so, Ifail to put the construction upon it which I ought to have put, in the estimation of the gentleman. One word more, sir, and I shall have done. My friend says that the Government defacfo, that is the Government of the U.S., has found it necessary to declare certain districts in insurrection, and therefore that the General Government has undertaken to declare and has in fact declared, that all the people within those districts were in insurrection. I deny that there is any such declaration on record from the Government of the U.S. I undertake to declare that the true construction of these acts of ours has been that within certain districts of territory an insurrection existed, without undertaking to define whether it was the whole people or a part of the people who were cuguged in that insurrection; leaving it for the' courts of law and the process of time to determine upon whom, and how far, the weight of this legal warfare should operate. That is the construction that I put upon the acts of Congress and the acts of this Government, and, in my judgment. it is the only true construction. But suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I am mistaken in that; suppose that by the laws of internal warfare, that is, the laws of war operating as between rebels upon one side and a lawful Government upon the other and in a case where the rebellion is not carried to that crowning point of success which makes Iit a complete war and a war of independence; defy the gentleman to produce any authority, from the foundation of the world to this day, which declares that when that rebellion is put down any man who did not personall aid and assist in that rebellion had his legal or civil rights changed a particle. No such 1 authority can be found anywhere. But suppose there could; suppose that by relation and operation of law, against justice and against common sense, innocent and loyaland patriotic persons who were refugees and hunted, and traitors against treason in their own land, had become, by relation, enemies of ours. If that be so, would it not follow as a matter of course that the very moment the armies of the U.S. repossessed themselves under Federal authority of this territory, the persons who were then within their reach and under their protection became transmuted again, by operation of law, into real patriots and orderly and peace 'loving citizens. If they did, if the same acts which, by relation carried them out, again being reversed brought them in again, and they then supplied the armies of their country with pro, visions, ought the not to be paid for them) But, Mr. Presient, I rose only to enter my dissent against this idea of a universal treason by relation, and had not intended to occupy so murh time as I have.