Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, I think, in view of the den er which portends and which has been alluded to by the honorable Senfrom Michigan, that this is a good time to be brave, and a good time to say stout things; and I am glad that he has availed himself of the opportunity. I am not so well leased that he has claimed for himself the posion of Leonidas and his Spartans in the asso Ther mopylse, in his fight. There the 300 stood against an invading horde of foreigners who sought their country. Where is the senator standing now? Is be standing in the breach? A, sir, directly in the breach; but it is in that reach which the American people desire to heal. He stands in that chasm which they would bridge over. He stands in the mouth of that wound which they would close and cicatrize. That is his true position. He stands in the very breach which prevents the Union, the Union for which this war of which he has spoken was undertaken, and for which it was carried through in the manner in which it was carried through. The Senator alleged that the southern States during the war Were out of the Union, and he appealed to me as to whether they were not out of the Union. Admitting for the nonce his ostulate, . but the question, What Was the war For? That to promised to anstver, but that was what he did not. unstrer. It is the answer to that question for which the American people look from that honorable Senator and those with whom he acts. What was the war for? If the ordinances of secession, if the rebellion, if the war, if anything which occurred during that time took the O even States in question out of the Union, what was the war for? The Union man answers, it was for the purpose of Supporting and sustaining and restaring the Union; if they were out, it was to bring them back; if they were not out, it was to kee them in. Has not that been the understaning of the American people, with the exception, perhaps, of a few extremists? Sir, that was the unanimous opinion of the Congress of the U.S. in July, 1861. That was the almost unanimous, if not the unanimous eXpi ession of the opinion of the loyal States as to the object and purpose of the war. Was it false? Did that resolution assert a falsehood, or was it a truth? Did it assert the true intention of the people, or was it a cover for a design which they chose to conceal, and which is only devel opIed now in the face of the people? I say to the honorable Senfrom Michigan that the war was for the Union; it was to save the Union 5 it was to restore it and to compel the submissmn of those who desired to die member the Union to the laws and the Constitution of the country. The honorable Senator is a member of the star chamber committee of 15; he is a member of that committee which carries atits girdle the keys of the Union; he was appointed to inquire into the temperof the southern people; he was appointed to inquire whether the people of those States were fit to be restored to their rights under the Union; and now I say, as I said the other day, if what he says is true, he indorses the Chien O platform. He has established himself upon the platform that the war was a failure; and he flings out. broadly, into the faces of American soldiers and American citizens, that instead of restoring to the Union and to the country and to their rights under the Union the people of the South, the war was a failure; and here, in the open face of day, in the presence of the people, he says the southern people are a conquered people, and that we hold them, to use his own language, by the point of the bayonet. Mr. President, is that so? I do not under take to take issue with the gentleman upon the fact as to whether the condition of that people be what he represents it to be or not. It is enOugh for me to know that that is the ground upon which he plants himself here; and I am exceedingly lad that he has so manfully avowed it. lghe rebellion, then, was successful in that: it took the/rebel States out of the Union; it took their people out, as a matter of course, loyal and disloyal, false and true, faithful and unfaithful; and since they have been out, and since the reconquest has been made, if you please to call it so, or since the conclusion of the war, they have remained dehors the Union, and are held as a conquered people. If that is true, say so. We will meet you in the pass of Thermopylee or at Philippi, if on lease. {Ir OWARD. We will meet you at both places.