Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank God, sir that the 39th Congress of the U.S.A. has been permitted to as semble in this magnificent temple of liberty, and under the broad folds of that sacred banner of American nationality, now 1,000 times more hallowed by its baptism in the blood of American free men fallen in the dread struggle fOr national, existence. I thank God, sir, that, despite the gigantic efforts of the vast horde of parricidal hands and traitorous hearts that have sought the destruction of this great fabric reared by the immortal of our land and race, the nations ensign still proudly floats, not only above us, but over every portion of the nations domain, and commands a new respect from every nation on this earth. When, in sorrowful retrospect, I recall the scenes enacted in this Hall but 5 short years ago, when treason stalked trium hunt and insulting, and loyal men, with bate breath and their faces in the dust, begged as a boon that traitors would but name some terms on which they would consent to spare the nations life, until, spurned with indignity and contempt in their low disgrace, the vast loyal North rose in its manhood and stood erect, with the blood of every free loyal heart ledged to wipe out this foul stain; and when {remember the deep maledictions which were heaped on the heads of those who dared to raise a hand to repel the blow aimed at the nations heart, even by those, I am pained to say, who held seats here by choice of the constituencies of the free North; and these failing, the fuiiereal wails chanted from these seats over the fancied grave of this great Republic, where the wish of the singer was but father to the thought he sang; and when, sir, I behold the inteity and perpetuity of the Republic, as I fond y hope, vindicated by the blood and valor of a million loyal hearts, its strength made terrible to all foreign foes, the last traitor disarmed, and those lately so defiant and insulting now begging permission to return here, whence they so scoffingly retired, again, sir, I thank God and take courage. I need not say to you, sir, nor to the members of this House, that upon this Congress is devolved resonsibilities the most weighty that. have ever fallen upon any deliberative assembly. It was for the Congress of 1776 to plant the seed of free overument upon this conti nent. It was for the Convention of 1787 to nur ture into propershape the growing twig, and sir, it is ours to bind up the ravagesof storm, and see that no sound limb be severed from its fair proportions and that no worm or rottenness shall gnaw away its heart. 30 millions of people, directly interested in each days word and act of ours, are intently watching the progress we may make; and from across the son are turned toward us the anxious eyes of millions upon millions moregvhose hearts are trembling between hope and fear as on! hands are shaping the new life of the Republic. The smoke and thunder of the contest have passed by. The honored soldier of the Republic, crowned with the laurels of a grateful country, and none were ever brihter, rests from the toilsome march and deaddy strife and mingles his tears with the nationsupou the grave of his buried comrade. The hour of the statesman has come; and fearful will be the responsibility of him who, blinded by party zeal or personal ambition or hate, shall be found wanting in this his countrys most important crisis. I cannot hope, even, sir, that no error will be committed, but I can confidently expect that every true patriot will, with the utmost honesty of intention and singleness of purpose, so shape all efforts here that they sh ltend to the restoration of a free republican government over all the vast heritage bequeaed as by.the fathers of the nation. The great curse and crime of our age exists no more. Slavery was the most damning stain that ever blotted the fair eseutcheon of free government. It was an excrescence, a parasite, that fastened upon the Government and fed upon its vitals. It was the poisonous Upas, whose breath infected everything within its reach. It was rank and fulsome in the halls of legislation, and molded and shaped laws for the government of the Republic favorable to the most absolute and shameless despotism." Statesmen of intellect most gigantic were subsidized by its omnipotent power, and basely prostituted the great abilities which God had given them to foster and protect an incubus that pressed with mountain weight n on the noblest impulses of the human soul. t coiled itsslimy length upon the bench where jurists sat, in courts where the weak sought protection from the strong, where justice was symboled with scales of even hand, and with serpent guile it hissed forth decrees and judgments which will eternally disrace the jurisprudence of the age, and which s attered the confidence of mankind in the integrity of all human tribunals. It was rife in the political arena, and with every conceivable appliance wrought upon the ultimate arbiter of contending political actions, the ballot box. Nay, it eveninvaded the sacred desk, and if the lips of its occupant were touched with a live coal from the altar of the living God, and burning words swelled in his breast in behalf of a downtrodden race, for whom the blood of the Son of god had been shed, its damp breath uenched the kindling flame and turned to smo dering ashes the heaven born impulses of his heart. Success but increased its arrogance, and while at 1st it asked but to be permitted to live, it grewto claim that nothing that opposed it should survive, until at lastit seize the nation by the throat, and like the fabled adder turned to pierce the benefac tor that had warmed it into life; and in that struggle it has died, and I now here but speak the epitaph I would write upon its infamous and eternal grave over which we are to reconstruct the fabric of free government. In the discussion of the momentous questions that are now presented for our solution, it has been contened by some gentlemen that the States lately in rebellion, and in and by authority of the people by which war was waged. against the Government of the U.S., were out of the Union to all practical intents and purposes, or that they were dead carcasses lying within the Union.” This, sir, I regard as the expression of the most extreme views of gentlemen on this side of the House. The views of gentlemen on the other side, as expressed by the general tenor of their argument, are quite on the opposite extreme. hey strenuously insist that those States are in the Union, with full right of representation, and in all respects upon an equal footing with all the other States. In support of these extreme viewa, and in all the varying shades of opinion that have been expressed in this wide discussion, I think all possible changes have been rung upon the phrases “States in the Union” and “States out of the Union.” Now, sir, I am not sure that the country would not have been more benefited by the vast ability and learning that have been displayed in these discussions, had the ffort been directed to exQting facts which al admit, and to the inven tion and application of a remedy for evils so great and manifest, which none deny, rather than to the establishment of preconceived the ories, which I apprehend would lead to some consequences on either hand not acceptable to their advocates. If that anomaly, scarcely supposable in the physical world, can exist in the political, of being neither in or out, I think we have its illustration in the existing condition of those States. What is a State? I go not back to Cicero, nor Solon, nor other eminent statesmen of an tiquity for my answer. Highlyas I esteem the eminent abilities of Grotius, and Puffendorf, and other great writers upon the law of nations, I think the light which they shed upon this practicalquestion of today will be ound to e but fee le. scarcelya resemblance exists between the States of Europe, upon the constitutions of which they displayed their vast learning, and the American States, whose condition should absorb the attention f the American statesman now. They wrote of kingdoms, and empires, and of the relations of independent sovereign Powers to each other. We have to do with republican governments, each to some extent supreme within its own territorial limits, associate together under a common superior Government, and together forming a nation among the nations of the earth. A State, in the American meaning of that term, conveys the idea of a political wer, existing within certain boundaries, having certain powers of local legislation, having certain rights in the General Government, and holding constitutional relations to that Government. Each State, in the full sense of that term, and in the full exercise of its rerogatives, hasamong other rights the right of representation in Congress, the right to elect its own Governor and fiegislature, the right to make, alter, and amend its constitution, rescribe the qualifications of those who shall maEc its laws, and to legislate in what soever manner it may please, so that it violate no provision of the superior law the Constitution of the U.S. But the genius of our Gerernment knows no such thin as a State, within the territorial limits of the U.S., foreign to or independent of the Government of the U.S. Hence to be a State in the Union, in the opular and legil sense of that term, implies the possession of all the rights which characterize a State, and their full exercise and enjoyment; and to be a State out of the Union would imly the full exercise and enjoyment of all privileges and powers characterizing a State independent of and forei to the Constitution and Government of e U.S. Now, sir, let us look at the historical facts of the case we are considering. It may be well to pause in the heated discussion, which the rapid recurrence of starth n events naturally engen ders, and take our earings, and see clearly where is our latitude, what our longitude, and whither we are drifting. I shall not detain this House by an elaborate rehearsal of details, or a reiteration of transactions, which, alas! are already too vivid] impressed upon the minds of all. In 1860 an 1861, 11 States, through the exercise of the ordinary machinery of their then existing State governments, and to the utmost extent that State authority could, by legislative, executive, and conventional enactment, attempted to abrogate all the relations existing between those States and the Government of the U.S. Their Representatives and Senators in these Halls, while on their conse iences were resting oaths most solemn, stopped at no perjur, but with souls rm black as violated vows could paint them, with haughty insolence strode hence to treasons camp, there to fan the kindling flame, to good on those most daring to greater des eration, to override the hesitating, and to crus out by brutal force the few who dared to raise a voice or hand to resisttheinfernal schemes they were then concoeting against no wrong to them or theirs, but against a Government whose sole fault was that it had ever been too prodigal of its indul gence to their outrages and oppression. The confederated to ether as States, and with l the form and so emnity of a pretended government created by such confederation, they ar rayed an almost resistle as force against the power of this Government. Sir, I pause before the awful facts which paint the history of the dread conflict which succeeded facts which mark the 4 years of the Administration of our lamented, martyred, and immortalized Chief Magistrate as the era of the worlds eat actions; which in sublime grandeur stan alone in the worlds great record the evidence of what free men can do and dare for the existence of a Government where man alone is sovereign; and also other facts which, in like solitude, stand the evidence of the dee degradation of infamy to which trea son could dese end to found a nation in this age whose corner stone should be a despotism at which Russia blushes, and at which people, whom these men call barbarous, stand aghast. Now, sir, while the tread of hostile armies shook the nation from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, while day after day forces which trea son had assembled, which these confederated States, acting through State machinery, had called into the field, were marching against and meeting in deadly conflict the hosts of loyal men which the sole purpose of reserviu the Government of their fathers had called from the worksho, the counting room, and the plow; while loval lilood, shed by traitors hands, was flowing like water all over the land which trea son had polluted, will it be pretended by any man, cii this floor or elsewhere, that these rebellious States were entitled toua, were but enjoing their rights as States in e American nion? Will this other proposition, legitimately following as it seems to me, be claimed as sound, that in the exercise of their legitimate State riflhts, as citizens of the States rebelling, these recl soldiers who were but acting in obe dience to the sovereign authority of confederate State power, mi t have held an election for members of this case while their hands so reeked with the blood of your slaughtered soldiers that they crimsoned the ballot which elected their Representatives who should control your legislation here? That the vanquished army of General Lee, retreating from the field of Antietam, might have retrieved its fallen for tunes by holding an election, pursuant to State authority, and sending men upon this floor who should have withheld supplies from your pursuing force 1 Sir, Withoutpursuing further inquiries which can tend to but one result in all candid minds, I take it as an established proposition that at some time, and to some extent, the rights and powers of the States in rebellion have been imaired. Have those rights and powers beenfully restored? If so, when, and how? These, sir, are grave inquiries, and it would be high presumtion in me to assume that I possessed the abiity to give the unquestionab y correct answer. But, sir, with all their gravitly, they are questions which we must meet. they are upon us; and it will have been the performance of the whole duty of the men who compose this Congress if, with the single purpose of preserving by legislation the fruits gathered by unequale heroism, blind to all party prejudices, and ignoring all personal ambition we shall have given them the consideration of the combined ability of those who must decide. It is in this 5 int that I propose to meet them, and with the umblest deference to those with whoseopinions I may seem to differ, I but discharge a duty which feel incumbent upon me if apy feeble word of mine can assist to a right decision. Sir, it has been contended by some that the ver fact of the surrender of the armed forces of the rebellion to the forces of the Government, of itself restored the States ensued rebellion to their full rights in the government of the country, that those who butyesterday had for 4 years stood in armed array, hostile to the power of the nation that was seeking to subdue them, might, by the mere act of surren dering to the power which they could no longer resist, resume all rights which those against whom they had been contending possessed, and today, though prisoners of war, stand as equals with the victors at the ballot box and in the councils of the nation. That this is not true, if what I have said in regard to their rights while in a state of hostilty is correct, is too palpable to require argument, because, if they could not legimately exercise these rights while in a state of armed hostility, it was because of some legal objection which could not be removed by simply Overpowering them, but required some other action for that purpose. But to illustrate further, if it be true that the cessation of hostilities restored their full rights as States, then it would necessarily follow that if, finding fortune going against them in the field, they should ascertain that enough would be found in the Senate and HoRep to unite with them in support of their policy to render its success certain a supposition which all gentlemen upon this floor know is entirely absurd in fact, but which will serve me as an illustration what should be more natural than that in the exercise of their hypothetical rights in these Halls, they should, through their State machinery, send their Sens&Reps here, and through their action they should obtain a reversal of the arbitrament of arms, and thus, not being able to commit murder upon the nation, should accomplish its suicide. It is contended that the individual alone is liable to punishment, and that the rights of the States are not affected. How is this individiialliability to be enforced? We are told, and all will agree, that it can only be done through the judicial tribunals of the country, that a charge must be preferred against the individual in a manner known to the law and consistent with the Constitution, 11 on which he must be put upon his trial, and it found guilty he must O punished. Now, sir, upon this h of the sis, until such trial and conviction shou be had, followed by a judgment thereon. no civil or other right of the accused is affected. The presumption of innocence, indulfled by the courts of all civilized countries in iiivor of the accused prior to conviction, leaves him standing precisely as if no accusation had been made, except the simple liability to arrest upon the charge. If, then, the rebellion is to operate only upon individuals, the surrender of the armed forces had no effect whatever upon their status, because the state of armed hostility only made the individualliable to the treatment of military authorities, for military conduct, pursuant to the laws of war, in addition to his liability for violating the civil law; and the punishment of the individual for such violation during the war was only made more difficult by the impracticability of his arrest, and the exercise of his civil and political rights only less convenient by the embarrassment of Federal bayonets. But, sir, why discuss a proposition so spe cious in theory, yet so absurd in practice? If a crime has been committed by the individual, that crime is treason, and the penalty is death. Have those gentlemen who upon this floor have advocated this theory of individual liability looked forward to the consequences thereof, and with the purpose of carrying it to its legit imate conclusion? Do they honestly intend to cover the South with gibbets, and for every life lost in the noble Army of the Republic, compel the South to answer at the scaffold with a son“! Who shall respond for all the starved and tortured 1,000s whose bones now molder in unmarked graves, around the prison pens of andersonville and Columbia, [ and upon the hearts of whose fathers, mothers, and Widows, the long years of patient, hopeful waiting, are slowly settling down to the by ackness of despair. Sir, the savage murders his victim. In cold blood, he laughs with fiendish glee as he sees him writhe in deaths agony under the gashing tomahawk, or in the keener anguish of consuming flames. But from the more fiendish practices of southern chivalt, let him take. alesson in torture. Let himlearu that refined cruelty which confines prisoners of war in loathsome, filthy dens, from whose horrors all human sense and feeling recoil, and by the slow roccss of systematic starvation, letvhim see their wasting frames reduced from noble, manly forms to emaciated skeletons; and as the gnawing demon slowly racks them, and reason totters on its throne, and he listens to their maniac ravings or idiotic gibberish, let him laugh with a keener relish, as he knows that for all these horrors he has the sanction of the superior refinement which slavery can produce. For all thesie horrors, which no language can describe or characterize, again I ask, sir, where are the individuals to answer? No, sir. There are some crimes which individuals cannot commit. We look back from the demon Wirz through the long black cata logue of individuals immortalized in infamy by being instruments to inflict this dread torture, but we must fix the ultimate responsibility upon the formallwithdrawal of the States from the exercise of their rights here, the declaration of their independence of this Government, their confederation together, and their raising, by authority of such confederation, of an immense armed force to sustain that declaration which made such horrors possible, and in the interest of which they were perpetrated. But, sir, I need hardly argue this proposition further. The conduct of the Executive, so fully indorsed by the gentlemen on the other side of the House, was entirely repugnant to the idea that any political rights remained in these States. Then. sir, I say that as you cannot look to the individualliability of each man engaged in the rebellion for responsibility and punishment, but must look to the stupendous facts of this organized resistance to your authority, it cannot follow that as soon as each individual laid down his arms the States sprang into the full possession of all their former powers. Again, it is contended that by the action of executive power, and through the machinery made use of by the President, these States have been fully restoredto their former condition, and hence their reircsentatives are entitled to admissio9th ese alls. Sir, inthepresentcon dition of the country there is little of law or precedent to guide us. If the framers of the Constitution contemplated the possibility of such an event as the eat rebellion. they have left on record but littird evidence of their intention with regard to the manner in which the civil authority shall be restored. They have created the office of Executive, and defined his general powers. Those powers, so far as they are pertinent to the subject under consideration, are to be found in the 1st clause of article 2 of the Constitution, which provides that: “The President shall be Commander inChiefof the Army and Navy of the U.S., and of the militia of the several States. when called into the actual serviceof the U.S. " and also:. “ He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union and recommend totheir considerationsuch measuresaslieshall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraor dinary occasions.conveneboth Houses, or either of them, and in caseofdisaigreementbetweenthemwith respectto the time of u journment, he may adjourn them to such time ashe shall think rept r; he shall receive ambassadorsand other pub in ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed and shall commission all the officersof the U.S. " Now, sir, with the power of the Executive thus before us, let us ook at the facts. The armed forces of the rebellion surrendered to the forces of the Government in his last. At the time of that surrender the constitutions of nearly all the States in rebellion remained as when the rebellion commenced. But as I have already attempted to show, and as a moments reflection upon the condition of affairs in each of those States will conclusively establish, the State governments were practically abdicated. Their Governors and members of their Legislatures were either prisoners of war in the hands of Federal forces, or fleeing and skull:ing from the pursuit of no foreign Power, but of the armed1 soldiers of the U.S. The entire administration of State machinery emanated from a source hostile to this government. Under these circumstances I shall raise noquestion as to the right or power of the Presir cut to appoint provisional governors for those States. her the purpose of my argument, at least, sir, I shall concede, iiay, insist, that it was right and proper. But it was the exercise of no civil power. It will not be pretended that any state of affairs has ever yet enlisted which would have justified the President in appointing a Governor for the State of Indiana or any other loyal State. But the power thus exercised was essentially a war power. The war did not cease the moment the last rebel was disarmed. we have the authority of the Executive himself thatitis stillexisting, at least for certain purposes. Major GenlHoward, Commissioner of Freedman, in an official communication of the 23d of February las“t, uses the following language: The President has assured the Commissionerthat he regards the present law as continuing the existence of the bureauat least a year from now." This can only be by virtue of the following provision of the not creating the Freedmens u“reau, namely: Be 1! enacted(, fa, That there is hereby established in the War Dept, tocontinue during the present wnrof rehellion, and one year thercafter, aBureau of Refugees, Freedman, and Abandoned Lands, ” to. Like the exchange of prisoners, and the recognition of other belligerent rights as belong in to the rebels, the appointment of provisions. governors was in the interest of humanil, to prevent that state of anarch and civil c aos that would have followed Without it. But as the stream cannot rise higher than the fount ain, as in our form of Government the military is not the ordinary form, nor the supreme power as contrasted with the civil, so Iinsist, sir, that no machinery emanating solely from the war power of the General Government can restore, control, or permanently affect the civil relations between the States and the General Government. I can scarcely believe that it will be seriously contended, that if the armed resistance to the Government had ceased during a session of Congress, that body would have had no right to a voice in restoring the civil authority of the Government, and the civil relations of the States. Yet the purely fortuitous circumstance of its happening during a recess of congress can have no effect upon the principle, because the termination of so terrible a conflict as that in which the Government was for 4 years engaged was certainl suFli an extraor dinary occasion as would have fully justified the convening of Congress. Without pursuing this inquiry further, I think I have sufficiently shown that no legitimate executive action merely, either under civil or military authority, has been or can be had by or as the result of which Congress is compelled, without inquiry, to accept these States as fully reconstructed at the Presidential hand, and reeo nize as existing, without control or sanction of this body, the full and active possession of all State powers and rights. Now, sir, having said this much upon this branch of the subject, more by far than I had originally intended, yet immensely less than these momentous questions require, I pass to the consideration of questions of even more practical importance to us and to the nation now, namely, by whom and liow shall these States be restored to their properrelations? The genius of American government is republican. The people are the sovereigns, a the lawmaking power is peculiarly their representative. It is the marked characteristic of the Anglo Saxon race to be ealous of individual power. Since the great O arter of English liberty was wrested from King John, down through our struggle for indepenence to the present time, the steady tendency has been toward the diffusion of power it than its centralization i I insist. that the lawmaking power cernment, composed of the lresideni ate, and the HoRep. power that must. do whatever shall toward the accomplishment of this sirable object; and that to devolve i other power would he to turn back this liberal and progressive spirit. Congress proceed in this work of res Satisfactorily to answer this question it proper, to some extent, to investigate another, namely, who are interested in this great work of reconstruction? Are those alone who have failed utterly to destroy the Government, by no lack of effort of theirs, but by the superior power of your brave Army? In our action upon this subject shall we bear alone in mind the importunate requests, or the haughty and imperious demands, of the lately disairned traitor? Is it true now, sir, as it was before this war, that the interests of the South alone aretlxe objects of the solicitude of legislators here, and that the toiling millions of the North must stand aside while those from suiinier skies receive attention? Nay, sir, in gathering the fruits of this most desperate and gigantic struggle the world has ever witnessed, is it the justice you will here administer that the legal riflhts, as they would unquestionably have existed before the war, of those who have spread death and de vastation all over the land, whose horrid deeds have desolated hearth stones, and filled the land with broken hearts and inconsolable mourners over the graves of the noblest of our youth, and left to a blighted life the maimed and mutilated victims of their mad effort for our common de struction, must be most speedily and carefully restored, with punctilious regard for the impetuosity of their fiery nature, while the widow, whose tears have not yet dried for the noble husband so freely given for her countrys life; the orphan child, whose piteous cries forbread were not heard until the father, leaving his sweet babe to God and to his countrys call, rushed to the front of battling hosts and went down to death, are told to wait until those who made them the widow and the orphan shall be called in to aid, in our deliberations here, in granting them the but pitiable compensation or their incalculable losses, to which the nations honor is most solemnly plqlged? Sir, he who stands upon nice quibbles and technical interpretations of the great principles of our Constitution, who argues of the great events through which we have been and still are passing, from the standpoint of an experienced advocate before an inferior court, should come up higher, and see that a mighty revolution, whose force is not yet all spent, has been sweeping over us, and that in that revolution it has been developed that there is a great free North, with 20 millions of warm and loyal hearts, who have an interest in this Government, which must not be ignored. He should remember that for years preceding this rebellion, to the earnest antislavery men of the North the southern States had been more forbidden ground than the empire of Japan, and that there, for them, awaite the coat of tar and feathers or the ibbet upon the nearest tree. He should further remember that the Constitution was ordained to “form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domes tic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos terity, ” and that the interests of those who have saeniticed so much for the preservation of the Government must not now be postponed for the gratification of those who have sought its destruction. We are told that there is but one condition that should be made a prerct uisite to representation from those late rebellious States, and that is that the claimant of the seat should be a loyal man. Let us look at the practical workings of this theory. What is loyalty? No law defines it, J and even the oath prescribed by Congress as a test for admission here is now ret opinions? heart, and not c anguage tln: noutli, that musttix ii e aracter and when all evidence is heard, it is at last but the majorit that must decide, and the test of individual loyalty would come to be but a plank in a political platform and if this condition is to be applied, shall it be alone applicable to representatives from the rebellious States, or be made alike applicable to all? and shall it be a condition precedent only, or may it not be a condition subsequent as well; and may not the testbe applied to determine whether we, who now sit here, shall be permitted longer to remain, with quite as much propr ty as to determine whether those now out sha l e permitted to come in? and if applicable to all, when will its application cease? Will the principle have spent rts force with the present Gongress? Even if it should, Ivery much fear me that with the full representation of the southern States on this floor, the further term of service of the venerable Gentfrom Pennsylvania, at least, would be short indeed. I cannot but regard this principle, though spe cious and plausible in theory, as most mise hiev ous, indeed ruine us, in practice. But it is said that taxation and representation go hand in hand, and that without representation here the Government has no constitutional authority to tax the southern people. I can now call to mind no one who has had the boldness et, upon this floor, to claim that the entire people of the rebellious States should be admitted at once to the full exercise of the elective franchise to the same extent as if no rebellion had taken place, or that the same freedom to select whom they may please to represent them here exists now as then. Whatever may be the fact, it has not yet been publicl stated that JeffersonDavis or John C. Breclyiinridge would be welcomed as Representatives upon this floor. But, sir, what is representation in the sense in which these gentlemen apply it thus? Is it the choice by the few, who might be able to truthfully swear that they had not borne arms against the Government, of men to fill these vacant seats? Or is it the selection of men, under executive or other dictation, whose particular principles the voter loathes? and is it for this empty shadow of representation that those disfranchised are to barter to you the right to impose taxation, and with this are they to be told that they are receiving full constitutional rights of the citizens of States possessing their full power? Who are the men today that represent the true sentiment and feeling of these States? Are they those who fought for, or against, the Government ofyour country? Why, sir, the old times seem to becoming back upon us when in the otherend of the Capitol we can hear language like the following even from the Senator of a State which did not succeed in gettingfully into the rebellion: " Senators seemto think that they have the whole power over this matter; but they are mistaken. The powerrestselsewhere;and I announcethat this wholo matter can be legally and constitutionally settledin ten days, ay, in one day. The 3rd section of the 2nd article of the Constitution provides that the President shall, from time to time give to the congress information of thestute of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessaryprexpedient. Herc. sir is a provision in the Constitution which requires the President to communicateto the 2 Houses“Congress information asto thestate of the Union and to recommend to them such measuresas he shall deempro or and expedient. What does this require him to 07 He hasto ascertainwho composes the two HousesofCon gross. Itishisright. It ishis constitutional function to ascertain who constitute the 2 Houses of Can gress. The membersof the Senate who are in favor of the admissionof the southern Senators could get into a concluvewith those southern Senators any day; and they would constitute a majority of the Senate. The POTUS has the constituoption it is his function: it is his power; it is lit; and I would advise him to exercise it ho v the right nt any day to ascertain, where thereare itferent bodies, members of the Senate contending, which is the true Senate. If the southern members and those who are for admitting them constitute a run only of the whole Senate. the President has a rig it and, by the Eternal. he ought to exercise that right forthwnh. to ine rrow or any other day torec ogiiize the Oppositionhereand the southorn members as a majority of the Senate." The crack of the slave drivers whi is distinctly perceptible here, and its echo is heard all over the South, and among those who in the North have been spies in your cam during all this war, but one utterance of whic, from the Chicago Times, I will obtrude upon the notice of this House. It says: "If the Rump Congress shall not speedilyabandon its sediiious, revolutionary and lawlesspractices; if it shall crsist in excluding the representatives of 11 States from their rightful seats, and in exercising the powers of the Congress of the U.S. we do not hesitate to declarethat it will become the solemn duty of President Johnson to constitute himse lt the Cromwell of the time, and dissolve the Rump by military power." Today, sir, men are fleeing from the South for their lives, for no other crime than that they have been true to your Government; and today, through large portions of those States, the most hate banner that floats upon the breeze under the whole heavens is the starry emblem that hangs above your head. Sir, shall we give representation here to this revalent sentiment of disloyalty as the basis otpour iight toimpose taxation? Taxation for what? O what purpose would these men lay taxes upon your property and their own? Would it be to my your debt incurred in their subjugation? ould it be to pay pensions to those whom their own hands had made widows? Or, sir, would it not rather be to pay their own debt incurred in their treasonable but vaiu attempt at the destruction of your Government? I warn, I beseech Gentlemen upon this floor to beware how they yield to this insidious doctrine. It is but the wily voice of the serpentin your Eden, which, under the flattering promise of good, can bring you only evil. The whole current history of affairs in those States shows that the same spirit of hostility is rife there now as existed during the conflict of arms. If the principle, that the right of taxation can only exist by virtue of representation, isapplicable to the condition of those States, then tedistinction between trea son and loyalty ceases to exist, and your governmentbecomesbutanother name foranarchy. Instead of having subdued the rebellion you have but surrendered to it, and transferred the conflict from the field to these Halls, with fear ful disadvantage to yourselves. Sir, I would not delay the return of repre sentatives from those States one hour beyond the period when they can be admitted here with safety to the Government. They would not more gladly than myself hail the auspicious moment when they should be received as members of this body could I be assured that in that not no danger was foreboded to the Republic. I look, sir, to no partisan aggrandizement, and shape my course on these great issues with no reference to mere partisan success. I stand 11 on the vastly higher ground that the welfare of the Government is superior to all party considerations. To us that welfare is intrusted and we shall be unworthy of that high trust if clamor from an uarter against our action or inaction here 5 atll swerve us from the steady course which statesmen should pursue. We are told that 3 months and more of this session have now passed and we have brought forth no plan of restoration. Sir, for 30 years the plot of the destruction of the Government was maturing; For 4 dark and terrible years all the orrid enginer of war was called in aid of the execution of that plot; and since that has failed nearly one year of quasi government and semi anarchy has complicated rather than elucidated the questions we are to decide. Is it just that we shall be reproached with inactivity because in 3 short monihfl we have not solved problems more intricate than were ever before presented for solution to any human assembly? and that, wol When l 1472v each day 5history was but develoing son phase of those problems and a ding tomore complications and embarrassmeuts. whatever may be the desire of others, the loya American people desire no haste in this matter. With infinite po they would hail, from any source, a plan which should so restore political rights to those States as to insure domestic tranquillity and romote the general welfare. As yet, sir, they have seen no such plan. The practical workings of the course pursued since the surrender of the armies of the rebellion, unexpectedly and unforeseen as I most ear nestly insist, unfortunately has been but to encourage and develop hostility to the Government. n sorrow, sir, I utter it, but my unwilling conviction is that the experiment has failed. On the 3d of the present month the GovernorofTennessee, the State most favorably regarded in this House and by the country, was compelled, by revolutionary action of members of the Legislature of that State, hostile to this Government as well as to its own loyal people, to issue a proclamation, from which I beg permission to have read the following extracts.