Mr. ROGERS. The gentleman and myself do not disagree upon the proposition he lays down, that the moment the war ceased the people were entitled to all their constitutional rights as they existed before the war. But the gentleman said that the POTUS had no right, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, to lend his aid as such byoprovisional governors and put ting the people in the former position, or the original status which they occupied before the rebellion broke out. I hold this question to be settled by a judge of the Supreme Court, in the opinion given by one of the ablest men on that bench in a case where this identical question of the status of these States and the rights of their people came up. I refer to the opinion of Justice Nelson in the case of James Eaton, who applied for a habeascorpus to be released from imprisonment, to which he had been sentenced by a military commission in SCarolina for the offense of murder alleged to have been committed in that State. Among other things the judge decided: "For all thatothe civil local courts of the State of SCarolina were in the full exercise of their judicial functions at the time of this trial, as restored by the suspension of months previously, by the rreebveivllaiolnosfomtheeselavwesn and the reorganization of the State in obedience to and in Qonformity with its constitutional duties to the Union. Indeed, long previous to this the provisional govornor had been appointed by the president, who, as Navy Commander in Chief of the Army and of the U.S.—and whose will under martial law constituted the only rule of action—for the special purpose of changing the existing state of things and restoring the civil government over the people. In operation of this appointment a new constitution had beenformed, a Governor and Legislature elected under it, and the State placed in the full enjoyment or entitled to the full enjoyment of caollnshteitrutcioonnasltitluatwiosnaolf rtihgehts Unaionnd wpreirveilethgeerse.byTeh enjoyed and obeyed, and were as authoritative and over the people of the State as in any other ort ion of the country. Indeed, themoment the re was suppressedand the governmentgrowing out of it subverted, the ancient laws resumed their accustomed, sway, subject only to the new reorganization by the appointment of the proper officer to give them operation and effect. This organization and appointment of the public functionaries, which was under the superintendence and direction of the President, the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the country, and who as such had previously governed the State from imperative necessity by the force of the necessity tinaol lolanwg, ehr aedxisatlereda.”dy taken place, and I read this for the purpose of showing that Andrew, Johnson, in pursuing the course of .which he did in organizing these States, did no more than his duty imposed upon him by the Constitution of the U.S. under his oath of office as President and Commander in Chief of the military and naval forces of the U.S. He was bound to assist them in forming constitutional governments so as to place them in their proper constitutional relations as they existed prior to the breaking out of the rebellion. Because, if the theory of the Gentfrom Ohio be true, that the President had no right to lend his aid to the people of those States to form their governments, then the moment he undertook to interfere, either by direction or implication, let alone all mandatory action, he was a usurper and a violator of the constitutional power which was lodged in him either as Chief Mag istrate of the nation or as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. And, sir, I am not willing here, as the advocate of the reconstruction policy of the President, to brand him as such a usurper and violator of the Constitution. Although I do not say that the Gentfrom Ohio undertakes so to brand him, yet the effect of his doctrine is the same; it is equiva lent to declaring that the President has usurped powers with which he was not clothed by the Constitution in the course which he took in guarantying under the solemn form of law the reorganization of the State governments in the South and their restoration to the same status which they occupied before the rebellion broke out. When the war ended the people of the South were in a state of chaos, and it was in dispensable that the President should lend his aid, through the military power, to enable them to elect their Governors, hold their conventions, form their constitutions, and place their State organizations upon republican forms, because the Army swept away all their governments formed under the articles of secession; but this bill proposes to destroy all the present State governments there, and makes no provision for forming any governments there.