Mr. ROSS. Mr. President, it would appear to be a work of supererogation to attempt to demonstrate the necessity for the adoption of the measures contemplated in this proposition. Of the justice and reasonableness of the pending constitutional amendment, the nonacceptance of which is proposed to be made the basis and pretext for }. er legislation for the purpose sought to be attained thereby, there is no occasion for further argument. That amendment has passed the ordeal of the most exhaustive public discussion to which any policy was ever subjected, and the voice of the people has been overwhelmingly in its approval. A verdict of commendation has been passed upon it which no political measure ever Fo received, and we are admonished thereby, to adhere faithfully and persistently to it, as the only one upon which the people of this country are willing to risk the work of reconstruction as the plan, of all others, which will most speedily, most effectually, and most safely compass the great object we all have in view the rehabilitation of that section of the country lately in rebellion against the General Government, and its restoration to its former peaceful prosperity in the Union. Thus far all attempts to that end have failed of accomplishing the desired object, in fact have worse than failed, through causes that have been needlessly and unexpectedly thrown in the way, and we are today witnessing an apparent negation of the axiom that “revolutions never go backward.” There is now no protection under the law, in many of those districts, for life or property; and it has become a grave question how the rights of loyal citizens there may be best conserved and society reorganized upon a stable and enduring basis. Manifestly in no way but by the assertion of the power of the Govern.ment in such a manner as to compel respect. Theorize as we will about the particular legal status of the late States we cannot escape this conviction: that they are practically out of the Union; that so far as the exercise of the functions of sovereign States in the Union are concerned, it is an impossibility. Those functions have been destroyed by the acts of rebellion, war, and a general surrender. Those people surrendered all they had and were, including the right to exist as States in this Union, conothey cannot again exist as States until political vitality is breathed into them by the general Congress. The labor now demanding our attention is, instead of simply discussing theories, whether practicable or impracticable, to devise forms which shall accomplish the great aim of human government the protection of the citizen in all his rights. If those States persist in refusing to be reconstructed within the Union, it is our duty to reconstruct them outside of the Union. They are none the less under the obligations of citizens because traitors; their obligations to the Government remain unimpaired notwithstanding their rebellion; while. duty of the Government to preserve so far as possible the organization of society, and to secure a complete and impar tial administration of justice among them, is equally enduring and unimpaired. uta brief period has elapsed since the whole country was ablaze with joy as the tidings of peace spread over the land. The most despondent were hopeful of a restored Union and the reestablishment of better and safer counsels. Under these inspiring impulses, that magnificent Army which had exceeded in equipment, in discipline, in fortitude, in heroic devotion to the cause h which it was enlisted, and in splendor of achievement, all previous military establishments of the world, suddenly melted away and was absorbed in the commercial, mechanical, and industrial pursuits from which it had been drawn at the oof its beleaguered and endangered Government. Our count appeared about to resume, as a whole, its mare on the high road of material prosperity and political greatness which had been so summa rily checked by the inauguration of.the rebellion. The rebel armies had been vanquished and scattered. Disloyalists everywhere had seen and experienced the futility of their trea sonable armaments and schemes. The power and vitality of the Government and people had been demonstrated to them in a most convin cing and fearful manner, and nothing appeared to remain to them but submission to and acquiescence in the decisive verdict that had been oupon the field of battle. Nothin. but a desire to gather up the wrecks of what they had been, and prepare, submissively yet joyfully, for such a future as their magnamimous and forgiving conquerors had hastened to declare they mighthope for, seemed to actuate them; and the country, from one end to the other, joyously proclaimed the advent of peace. But in an evil hour of our destiny that good man who, like the fabled Atlas, had, as it were, carried the nation upon his shoulders through its 4 years of war and tribulation, was permitted to be taken from the post of honor and responsibility which he had so worthily filled, and the fruition of that hope which had been the ever present and abiding faith of loyal men, was put far from us. The hand of the assassin had nearly undone the work of years and scattered the bright visions of the future. An insidious, baleful influence seemed to have taken possession of a portion of the Government, and unrepentant rebels were permitted to swarm at the capital of that Government which had so recently been the object of their vengeance, impudently demanding the restoration of rights which their great treason had forfeited. Treason, instead of being made odious, became apparently the surest passport to executive clemency and favor. Under no other Government and in no other age was a parallel to it ever witnessed. Encouraged by favor and patronage, where there was a conscious merit of punishment, the central idea of the rebellion, resistance to the always and everywhere aggressive spirit of liberty and progress, seemed again to take possession of that people, and the hope was tacitly held out to them by wicked and designing men, in power and out of power, that that which physical force had failed to accomplish might yet be secured by partisan machinations and the ballot. In furtherance of this diabolical plot we have knocking at our doors today the representatives of former States which yet stand unwashed, unpurged of the greatest crime of the age treason to the Republic and to o The party of treason, which gave no word of encouragement to the armies of the Republic in the day of its sore trial, which pronounced the war a failure, and clamored for disbandment and separation, finds in those late States its warmest partisans and adherents. There the more prominent, a man may have been in rebellion, the and the greater his zeal in resisting the proposed measures of restoration, the more certain are his chances for official preferment by the suffrages of the people; while the reverse is equally true, that continued and consistent loyalty to the Government is deemed ample warrant for oppression, ostracism from society, and expatriation. So loft has this state of things continued, and to such an extent has it been carried, that there is now practi cally no law in many localities of that country, for the protection even of property or life. Loyalty to the Government is made a social crime, for which the offender is, in too many instances, thrust beyond the pale of society, beyond the protection of law. The Constitution and the laws of the country are daily and hourly violated, in that a discrimination in political creeds is established which excludes the citizens of many of the States from residence and the prosecution of commercial and industrial pursuits in large portions of the Republic. The 1st business of this Congress should be to seek and find a remedy for this grievous and growing wrong. The abortive and ill conceived subterfuges thus far applied by the executive branch of the Government have but aggravated the evil, and already brought this question into almost interminable complications. The pretended Governments attempted to be established there, are but a sham and not worthy to be dignified by the term. The most practicable and effective plan for its solution now presented is, in my judgment, that contemplated by this JtResolution the institution by this Congress of a vigorous system of government for that country, which shall enforce obedience to the law and respect for the rights of others; which shall be able to create a degree of loyalty to the Government, if not in this generation, then in the next. Let it be understood as a foregone conclusion, that the just and righteous principles of the pending constitutional amendment must be acceded to in some legal, responsible form, by convention or otherwise, before they can ever again enjoy the privileges and prerogatives of citizens of the U.S. Whether that plan shall conform to the one now maintained for the government of the Territories, or whether it shall combine the territorial with the State organization, is proposed to be made in part the duty of this JtCommee to determine and report. The main thing to be accomplished is the successful government of the turbulent elements and the protection of society in that country against that confusion and anarchy to which, under its.misgovernment, it is rapidly hastening. we would not see repeated at our own door, and within our own borders, the supremacy of violence, and that absence of law and order which has characterized the history of neigh boring nations, we must act promptly and cisively. We have within do body politic a stupendous moral and political evil, which can be removed only by the application of the most vigorous measures of cure, those measures to be continued in effective, practical operation until that people shall consent to be governed, in common with ourselves, by a Constitution broad enough to embrace within its protecting folds the humblest of God's creatures, who confesses to it allegiance and support. It is my own deliberate and settled conviction that a thorough, complete readjustment of the machinery of government of those States, entirely in harmony with the General Government in all its parts, can never be secured until the ballot shall have been placed in the hands of every loyal man in those communities, whatever may have been his previous condition, or what his color. I take the broad ground that suffrage is a natural right, one which inheres in every hu man being, not to be restricted except for in competency or the commission of crime circumstances which render that restriction imperative for the preservation and well being of society and of government. It is upon this principle that all forms of republican government and law are based, and without which those forms would be tyranny and oppression, in that they would deny the right of the individual to participation in the formation of laws for his protection and for his government. Where does any man, any class, or any race, procure the exclusive authority to make laws or his fellow or his neighbor? Where all are contending for equal political right, who is to decide in which party or race that right shall rest? I am aware that the custom of the world has been for the stronger to arrogate to itself the right to govern and make laws for the weaker. In our own day it has ever been so, and the further back we go in the history of our race, the more marked and prominent be comes that custom, the more conspicuously and hatefully is that old idea illustrated, that certain races, were born to rule; that certain classes in those dominant races were still more elevated in the scale and fitted for government; and to carry the logic to a legitimate conclu.sion, there were in those superior classes certain families and individuals peculiarly endowed with the capacity for the government of their neighbors a peculiarity which came to constitute in the ignorance and superstition of that day a sort of divine right to rule and lord it over their fellows from generation to generation. Sir, if that species of logic was good then, it is good now, and our forefathers made a fearful mistake when they established this government of the people, and introduced the sad innovation of declaring that all men were in vested by nature with equal inalienable political rights, and were entitled to an equal voice in the selection of their rulers. Now, sir, if this theory proves anything it proves too much, unless its advocates are willing to go back to the political systems of the early ages of oil. which vested in the patriarch of the clan the sole sovereignty, descending from father to son. To that does the principle inevitably tend. There is no escape. f one race is endowed by nature with political prerogatives over another, then the same must of necessity be true of classes, families, and individuals; and we find ourselves reverting back to the most absolute forms of monarchy. So that, admitting for the sake of the argument, the general inferiority of the negro as a race, the deduction therefrom that he is incapable and not entitled to exercise the right.". the principal argument used by the opponents of all measures for his enfranchisement and elevation to political equality, by proving too much, proves nothing. The proposition to invest the negro with the right of suffrage has been denounced on this floor as monstrous. Sir, another proposition has also been advo cated on this floor equally monstrous the continued exclusion of a race from the enjoyment of the rights of manhood because they have from time immemorial been deprived of them. It is simply a proposition to perpetuate a wrong upon a whole race because, forsooth, that race has borne it so long that they are not deemed worthy of redress. What can be more mon strous than this? Again, sir, we are accused of insincerity in our profession of a desire to deal justly and generously with this despised race; and gentlemen claim for themselves credit for the performance of acts of kindness toward these people, which those who are demanding for them concessions of political right would not deign to perform. Sir, what is kindness? Is it simply the doling out of a few crumbs, or perchance a pleasant word, to one whose manhood or womanhood we are daily and hourly grinding out of them under the iron heel of oppression? Or is it a confession and fostering of that manhood, and a concession of those God given rights which it carries, the right to live, the right to work, the right to be peers in the Commonwealth, the right to own ourselves and be ourselves? That, sir, is kindness, that is justice, and it is not strange that those who are most nearly interested should be quick to perceive it. For one, sir, I confess that I do not share the fear expressed by some gentlemen, of the effect of precipitating a mass of ignorance, as it is styled, upon the ballot box. The black man's aspiration for liberty has always been as fervent and enduring as the white man's, not withstanding the lamentable fact that he was totally unable to decipher the printed word which spelled it. He has ever been an enthu siastic lover and devoted follower of our beau tiful flag, although totally unable to read or comprehend the cabalistic device inscribed thereon. He has always known enough of astronomy even, to comprehend the fact that the north star pointed to liberty, although he and his fathers were prohibited, by most solemn legal enactment, and under fearful pains and penalties, from learning it from books. Where will you draw a line of demarkation which shall rule out such men as these? Shall the fact that a man is able to make a scratch with a pen and call it his written name, or read his A, B, C, alone entitle him to the almost sacred right of suffrage? By no means. There is a test infinitely above these by which they should be judged a test established by God himself when He set his seal upon his finished work and saw that it was go That test is manhood, and by no other can we safely abridge that right was an outgrowth and has become a characteristic of this western world, That test, thank God, has been established here at the fountain head of the Government, and I have an abiding faith that it will be eventually copied and imitated by all the branches, and this country made in truth what it has been in theory the home of liberty. These are laid down simply as the bases of correct republican government, to be ultimately provided for in the reorganization of these States, though it is not my purpose to insist upon them as a condition precedent to their readmission. We have proffered to those States specific terms of readmission in the proposed amendment. We have virtually said to them that their claim for representation in these Halls shall be granted upon the acceptance of that amendment, necessarily, of course, in the nature of our Government and in view of constitutional provision, with the right to criticise and determine the qualifications of individuals who are thus returned by them for admission. I regard the proposal of this amendment as in the nature of a compact by which at least this Congress is virtually pledged to so admit them upon the fulfillment of the terms proposed, and that to do otherwise would be an act of bad faith which could not but be disastrous in the operation of the precedent which would thus be established. especially in view of the fact that a portion of that people, as in the State of Tennessee, have accepted the terms and returned to their alle giance, would it be unjust to vary those terms to others who are even now laboring for their acceptance in their own States, and with whom the proposed amendment is being daily strengthened and its ultimate ratification be coming more certain. In a limited sense we are treating with them as with a foreign nation; we offer them terms of readjustment; we have had with them a war which, though it practically destroyed their former governments and relations with the Federal Union, yet demonstrated their inability to discard their allegiance to this or perma nently establish other governments in its stead. The question now recurs, their governments having been destroyed by a war which has left in existence but little of the material of which they were originally composed, having inea pacitated themselves by treason from participating in any form of loyal government until authorized to do so by the removal of that disability by Congress, and having relinquished the right to maintain any other by the implied and universally understood terms of a general surrender who shall reorganize those Governments, and by what power can they be vested with the authority so to do? Manifestly that authority must be delegated to whatever loyal persons may be found there who have survived the chaotic condition which has passed over them, together with such others, if any, the Congress may deem it safe and proper to reinvest with that franchise. This theory cannot be justly made obnoxious to the charge of destroying those governments and seeking to replace them with others, as so far as practical operation and efficiency are concerned, no matter what theory may obtain, they were already destroyed, and by the hostile act of those people themselves. The lawmaking power of the country not having reorganized them or instituted others, the conclusion becomes inevitable that there is now no legit imate local government in those late States. Under this state of facts the duty of the congress, in my judgment, becomes clear and palpa ble. The Constitution imperatively requires us to guaranty to every State a RFG. The dictates of humanity require that individuals and society shall be protected in the enjoyment of rights incident to manhood and associated communities, while the integrity of the Government demands that its powershall be asserted through forms competent for the protection of the loyal citizen in the exercise of his political rights. In my judgment these ends can be reached in no way so effectually as by reinvesting the power of the State in the hands of those who, be they few or many, have been its faithful friends in the day of its extremity, and guarantying to them the support of the military power of the nation, if that should be necessary, for their maintenance, and the administration of impar tial justice throughout the limits of those districts. It is not sufficient to say that Congress is unmaking States by the institution of this process, for they 1st unmade themselves. The 1st subverted or destroyed the forms which had been originally, given them, the perma nency of which had been guarantied by the Constitution, and assumed to set up in their stead a spurious government in contravention of that guarantee. That spurious government assumed to make war upon the General government, and was in its turn destroyed; all its functions, all its powers, all its rights if that that term were admissible having been surrendered unconditionally at the close of that war. Now, what is an unconditional surrender? Manifestly a yielding of all pretensions, forced though it be, which were in dispute and which had produced the state of war. When an army is vanquished and its members surrender themselves as unconditional prisoners of war, they manifestly surrender their cause as well as their persons, the right to resume the same to accrue only at the voluntary consent of the victor. So it is today all over the South. Those ten late States are simply ten camps of paroled prisoners of war, every man of them who voluntarily pronounced allegiance to the confederate government being liable to be ar. rested and shot by a drum head court martial upon the 1st manifestation of turbulence or insurbordination. How can such a people organize or reorganize a political government? anifestly only by the consent of the conqueror. There is 3.no power but in the general Congress for their resuscitation. Another most potent reason why the action I now propose should be taken, and that without delay, is that the youth of that country are growing up under the baleful influence of the political dogmas which inspired and sustained the rebellion, unchecked by that wholesome, restrictive legislation for which loyal men every where are now looking anxiously to this body. It is our bounden duty to throw around thatrising generation the better influences of loyalty, to teach them the necessity of obedience to law, by punishing disobedience and enforcing order and respect to the authority and rights of the Government and society. It is to those who are now coming upon the stage that we must look for the permanent maintenance of peace and the ultimate restoration and reor ganization of the social and political systems of that region. The great bulk of those who have been engaged in the effort to overthrow the Government can never be expected to enter with any genuine heartiness into this work. The virus of treason has been too long rankling in the body politic; has too thoroughly permeated the social system and characterized the habits of thought of that people to admit of any future dependence upon them for any cooperation in the great labor of reconstruction which the of the past 5 years has imposed upon us. With them the question is not one of conciliation. It is simply one of government; whether they shall be permitted f.to in sult the Government for which their fathers and ours passed through untold horrors to establish; whether they shall be permitted longer to defy its just and equal laws; whether they shall continue with impunity to harass and oppress those to whom the law of God and of the land vouchsafe the right to live and traffic among them. In those who are so soon to step upon the stage of political life and in their turn to assume the privileges and prerogatives of citizenship, we have a plastic element which, by wise and just, yet decisive legislation, we may mold into firm and faithful adherents of the Government, out of which may be evolved a powerful and consistent loyalty that will bind together the extremes of this country with an indissoluble bond. This is one of the para mount objects of legislation on this subject. It should be ours. We are not making laws for today, nor for this generation simply, but for all time to come. oinfluence of a right determination of this now long mooted and distracting question of reconstruction cannot but be felt to the latest day of the Republic. Let us keep steadily in view that magnificent future which the concurrent data of the past warrants us in Anticipating, and legislate for that as well as for the present. Let us secure a firm reunion of this Republic, now stepping upon that elevated political dais assigned to the front rank of nations, by the institution of measures which shall irrevocably establish justice and equality of political right between all its citizens. In no other way can we hope to secure this beneficent result. The measures to that end now pending before the country in the proposed constitutional amendment promise all that is asked or hoped for: In the language of the bronzed and scarred veterans who fought out the late war to its so successful termination, language spoken by one of the mightiest gatherings of free men ever witnessed upon this continent, that amendment is wise, prudent, and just: “It clearly defines American citizenship and guaranties all his rights to every citizen. “It places on a { and equal basis the right of representation, making the vote of a man in gopotent one State with the vote of another man in any So ft righteously excludes from places of honor and trust the chief conspirators andguiltiest rebels, whose food crimes have drenched the land in fraternal it puts into the very frame of our Government the inviolability of the national debt, and the nullity forever of all obligations contracted in support of the rebellion.” But in their blindness and the madness of their folly, a portion of this people have refused the terms of restoration thus fairly, even generously offered, and persist in those practices which in the late war made our country a reroach to the humanity of the age. In the insanity of their treason they have contempt. uously spurned the proposition, and thrust it ignominiously from the doors of their legislative assemblies. It is too just and equitable a proposal to find favor in the eyes of this generation of traitors. It breaks down the bar riers which successive ages of class legislation have established between men. It humbles that gilded and guilty aristocracy which for 200 years has preyed upon the rights and lived upon the labor of those it had succeeded in despoiling of their manhood. That amendment lifts a race from that condition of abject serfdom in which the end of the “war found them, and invests them with the common rights of man. Yetitis spurned and jeered, and those who now essay to wield the destinies of 1/3rd of the Republic will have none of it. They vainly and foolishly throw themselves in the way of the pacification of the country, and would retard its progress to its high and inevitable destiny, heedless of the misfortunes of those who are blind to the logic of events, and resist the decrees of fate. What then?. Shall we regard the impotent ravings of madmen and recede from the work so well begun and so vehemently approved by the country? Undo the labor of a year, and abandon a cause which is watered by the tears and carried to the throne of the Most High upon the prayers of good men everywhere? By no means. The Divine curse rests upon him who puts his hand to the plow and looks back. We are enjoined by every consideration of justice, of mercy, and of wise and prudent statesmanship, not to retrace our steps, not to yield the vantage ground thus far attained in the scheme of reconstruction and national prog ress, but to press forward and to seal.fur ther discreet and opportune legislation, that triumph which time will speedily unfold to our WieW. It is useless for that people to demur against this proposed amendment, that it disfranchises those who have taken prominent part in the war of the rebellion, and guaranties the faithful payment of the debt created for their subjudgation. This action is but a repetition of the history of all unsuccessful rebellions. Not to thus protect ourselves, our institutions, and our credit, would justly subject us to the criti cisms which have been so lavishly made upon our form of government by the statesmen of other nations, of instability and of containing within itself the germ and moving cause of its own dissolution. Not to do it would but sow the seeds of another and perhaps more potent rebellion in future years. But we must stand by that amendment. It has triumphantly passed the ordeal of public criticism, and is practically established as a feature of our fundamental law. Let us be admonished by the spontaneous outburst of popular feeling in its favor. Not only the people proper, but that grand army of the republic, which carried the country through the terrible fires of the rebellion, which left dead upon the field an 8th of its entire number, sacrificed in the fury of battle that the republic might live, has resolved that no traitor whose hands have been lifted in impious and fratricidal strife against his country, shall ever. again have it in his power to use the functions of the Government for its destruction. We want no more examples of public officials, who but seek power that they may the more effect ually subserve the purposes of repudiation. treason and We who have stood shoulder to shoulder in the battle's red front, where the fires of carnage lighted the souls of brave comrades to death and immortality, will not now insult the cher ished names of the dead; will not falsify the issues upon which we have fought and conquered in this war; will not now blacken the record of devotion to our country and to liberty which has been signalized upon 1000 battle fields by honoring treason and exaltin traitors. We have not forgotten our murdere President we have not forgotten our martyred comrades, starved in the loathsome pens of Libby, of Andersonville, of Saulsbury, and of Bojicisis. We have not forgotten those faithful spirits who piloted our escaped prisoners through dreary nights of wandering in southern swamps and forests, who fed and secreted them from their blood hound pursuers, and then paid the penalty with their lives. We have not forgotten those unconquerable southern loyalists who braved persecution and death to signalize their love for the old flag and their faith in the ultimate triumph of the cause which it symbolized. We have with us the widowed and orphaned ones of this war. We have with us an army of scarred and maimed heroes, who are condemned, but wrecks of their former selves, to walk the earth in sadness and in sorrow all their after lives. We remember that it was by this great affliction that the coun: try was saved that they unflinchingly stood in the breach between the Republic and her foes, and we will be true to them. No diabolical rebel scheme of repudiation shall ever, deprive them of the just and grateful tribute which our rescued country pays to these stricken ones. In view of the distracted condition of that country the most effective and speedy legislation consistent with prudence is imperatively demanded. Everywhere throughout the late rebellious States loyal men are imploring with outstretched hands for that protection which only this Congress can give, through the operation of just and equal laws. Not alone to the persistent, long suffering loyalists of that country, who through the night of horror which followed the attempted secession of their States bravely kept the faith, but to our selves and to the world, do we owe the duty of suppressing the reign of violence inaugurated by the war and fostered by the machinations of demagogues. The humanity of the enlightened and progressive age in which we live, demands at our hands that the massacres of Memphis and NewOrleans shall not be repeated; that the sacred regard of human life and human right which characterizes this age of all others shall again be restored there; that the downtrodden poor, who for 2 cen turies have borne in meekness and humility the lash of the taskmaster, shall be reinvested with their manhood and protected by the strong arm of the Government in the enjoyment of those rights which the contempora neous verdict of all other nations has given them, and which ours can no longer withhold with safety to our political or social fabric. It is to this end that I offer the JtResolution now submitted, and I move its reference to the JtComReconstruction. The motion was agreed to. LAND OFFICE REPORT FOR DISTRIBUTION.