Mr. ROGERS. Very easily. I think no one on either side of the House will deny that during the war the governments which had been recognized by our Constitution were suspended and the States existed as such without such a republican form as the Constitution contemplates where it provides that “the U.S shall guaranty to every State in this Union a RFG.” Because the form of government which the President, through the military, was bound to fog must be a republican form in the Union; and although these States, under the articles of secession, had governments republican in form, they were not the very forms of government contemplated by the Constitution, because they were set up in defiance of it and claimed to be out of the Union. The president, in using the military to prevent anarchy and chaos South, and to place it in the power of the people to form their State governments, was doing what the Constitution commands the U.S. to do when it uses the mandatory language that they shall guaranty to every State in this Union a RFG. It was because the States were in the Union that the President had authority to enforce the guarantee. “Who could, under the Constitution, enforce this guarantee, except the president, as Commander in Chief, through the mil: itary power.” The people of the South used force to prevent republican forms in the Union, and by force attempted to set up such forms outside of it. “How then could our guarantee be carried into effect, except by the President as Commander in Chief?” is charged by the organic law to see that the laws of the Union be executed. But this bill overturns the old and the new governments both, and suspends a right in time of peace irrevocably given to the people by the Constitution. I mean the writ of habeascorpus, which the Constitution says shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion, and then only if the public safety require it. I take the ground that there is no place, position, or location where a State can exist outside of the Union; and if those States were within the pale of the Constitution, as the SCOTUS say they were, all the time during the rebellion, thes there can of the Union, possessing most of their powers, not by virtue of the Constitution, but as inherent rights belonging to them before it was made. But those rights were so limited by it as to prevent disunion. There can be no such thing Sir, as a State outside of the Union. let us see what we are attempting to do. We have before us an important question, one deserving grave consideration from every can did man. This is a measure which may result in weal or woe to the people of this country. In my view its consequences must necessarily be most destructive. It is an attempt for the 1st time in the history of our Government to inaugurate within this Union a government founded on military power; to set up such a government over territory which has hereto fore been recognized as constituting States under the Constitution. There are in these ten States 660,108 square miles of territory, a territory more than equal in extent to the 5 leading nations of Europe. This territory embraces a white population of 4,604,000 by the last cen sus, and a black population of 3,896,000, making a total of 8,500,000. These States have a coast line of 3,000 miles and 36,000 miles of internal water line, including the Mississippi. The agricultural productions of those States in 1850 amounted to $500,000,000. They have rich natural resources, which are not surpassed by any other portion of the civilized globe. They have Governors, Legislatures, courts, railroads, canals, telegraphs, postoffices, and all the machinery of free government. Before attempting to impose upon a territory like this a military despotism we should pause and consider the terrible plunge which we are about to make. It is establishing chains and shackles for civil law. ambitious of power, who hate liberty and have a contempt for law. Civil liberty and this kind of law cannot exist together; and in the conflict which it will surely bring on if it become a law one or the other must perish. If this proposition can be enforced and be submitted to then liberty is dead, and we will all be wretched mourners around its tomb. The argument urged by gentlemen upon the other side proceeds upon the assumption that there is in the southern States at the present moment a condition of affairs which renders it impossible for the people there to protect themselves. It is urged that there is an absolute necessity, if there is to be any personal security there, that there shall be a different form of government from that which existed before the war. It is urged that armies and military tribunals are necessary to be established there to secure the rights of the loyal people. This is utterly false. But, sir, this bill imposes upon the South such a government as that which King George attempted to impose upon the people of the American colonies, causing thereby the revolutionary war. The Gentfrom Connecticut has inti mated that the southern people have not yet suffered sufficiently. Now, I am not here as the special advocate of the South, but I am the advocate of justice, and I say to the honorable Gentfrom Connecticut that no people upon the face of the earth have ever suffered so direfully and calamitously as have the people of the South. Why, sir, we have burned and devastated their cities, we have laid waste 100s of miles of their territory, we have ruined their prosperous industries, we have filled their homes with lamentation and woe, we have made 100 of their fields It is the work of wicked men, party leaders are as guilty of bringing on the war as the leaders of the rebellion South. They ought not to be visited with this punishment upon the ground stated, because the masses of them are not responsible for the war. The masses did not bring it about. The inno cent babe and its harmless mother, the half grown lad and the old man in his dotage, are not to be held accountable for it. The great masses of the people were led astray by the ambitious politicians, who desired to remodel the Government that they might control it. Why should we now impose upon the mass of them a military despotism of such a character as to deserve the forcible opposition of every American citizen? In the name of God and our free institutions, I trust the people of this country will not allow their liberties to be crushed by a military despotism of this kind. As one individual 1 would feel it the duty of every loyal American citizen to resist by force such an attempted invasion of liberty. I tell you, sir, you will carry this conflict on until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at all to be compared. If you undertake to ride over the decisions of the Supreme and other courts, subvert civil law, and overthrow the Constitution, then, unless we have become slaves and unfit to be free men, we will not submit without reluctance, even though to sustain our Government it may cost us our blood. The JtCom on Reconstruction have published to the country as their opinion that the southern States were not out of the Union, and that their State governments had the right to reorganize and place themselves in their constitutional relations to the General Government.