Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Speaker, an amendment of the Constitution of the U.S., whatever it may be in its character, should be aproached by this Congress with grave consideration. We have been taught in the ast generations of our history to regard that onstitution as embodying perhaps moreof human wisdom and human sagacity than was ever embodied in any instrument for civil government. We are told by those who frame it that we should be careful hereafter in changing its provisions or invading its spirit. The proposition which is now before the House proposes to amend the Constitution so that “ Gongress shall have power to makeall laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each State alFthe privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States, ” and then is added a most important provision “ and to all persons in the several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property." Now, sir, the distinguishing feature in our Government is this: the Federal Government has its peculiar and restrictive duties. It is a Government of limited power and authority, extending over the whole country, providing for general and national interests; an in every thing relatin to the affairs which pertain to the Union that government is supreme; but with in that jurisdiction are erected many different States bound to allegiance to the Federal government imall matters pertaining to the Union, yet in respect of social arrangement, in respect of the rights of property and control of persons, are entirely independent and it is this feature which has given greater security and greater libertytothis country than was ever conferred before by any system of government which human wisdom has devised. I am unwilling, after this Constitution has beeh tested in peace, and in foreign war, for nearly 80 ears, and when, during the last 4 years, it has been to us as a cloud by do and a pillar of fire by night, pointin out a 511 e pathway to the nation t rough the Sea of civilWar, and has led us to haul trium h, and while the assions excited by the civi strife remain active and unsubdued, and wounds received are still open and bleeding, to amend or alter the organic law of the nation in any particular where a supreme necessity does not de mend it. I am, moreover, especially opposed to any amendment which may prove subversive of the principles on which the Government is founded. We are the Representatives of States in this Union, and as such are under solemn obligations to see that. while the national sovereignty of the Union is reserved, noinfringement on the reserved rights of the States shall be permitted. As a Representative of a constituency de voted to the Union and loyaltothe State which protects them in all their rights of life, liberty, and property, I propose to meet the respon sibilities of this our in no spirit of partisan ship and in no spirit of vindictivenoss, and to do conscientiously what I may, to preserve the Union for my State and for every other which has been baptized into the communion of the Constitution. For 4 years Iwas the advocate of war, with all the vigor, by all the means and in all the modes which could make war effective in crushing the rebellion in order to prevent a dissolution of the Union. Disaster, defeat, and the necessity for unparalleled taxation, never for a moment suggested a doubt as to my duty. The stake was the Union of my fathers, in all the glories of its past, in all the benclicence of its resent, in all its promises of the future. Who, or that, so cowardly or so selfish as to refuse the sacrifice of life or treasure? For that Union a half million of our best and bravest sleep beneath the ground the slee that knows no waking, or on the battle fiel s where treason was stricken down, have left their bones to bleach and rot unburied in the sun. Today, I am the advocate of peace, because the high purpose for which these heroes perished has been accomplished, and the sovereignty of the Union, with the right of protection to its own life, is recognized y every rebel who denied it. Once I favored war, because war was n necessity for Union. Now I favor peace, because peace is a necessit for Union; and if we love the Union we shal seek peace, for peace alone can preserve it. But, Mr. speaker, we are told that the States recently in rebellion are no longer entitled to recognition as n.part of the Union, and that the only mode of restoring them to it with safetyto the Government, is by exercisin over them the rights of conquerors in war and the powers of tyrants in peace. The venerable Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. Srnvnss] asserts even in respecttoovery citizen of any State recently in rebellion that he is an alien enemy, and that this Government, even after the suppression ofrebellion, in a time of peace, has the right of universal confiscation of property without reference to the original or continued loyalty of the citizen. v The theory supperted by the gentleman, and which I may denominate the “ territorial the ory, ” rests upon the assumption: 1, That the civilWar from which we have emerged, creating, as I concede it did, distinct parties entitled to belligerent rights, made all of the citizens and residents of the secodin States public enemies, and therefore nationa enemies. 2. That as public enemies they lost all rights as States or as citizens in the Union. 3. That when subdued they were subduedas national enemies and as foreign territory, and are in all things subject to our absolute power. It is unnecessary for me to say that our Government, composed of States retaining to themselves many of the rights and immu nities of sovereignty over their own citizens, yet divested of all the powers of sovereignty as international States, which powers are granted to the Federal Government, finds no precise analogy in the history of nations. The people of each State formed the governmento such State. The people of all the States formed the Union, an each State, and all the States, individually and collectively, were thereby bound, and by a common, supreme constitution, imposing reciprocal duties and chin gations, to a common destiny. The Union was formed for a continental Government, into which new States, s ringing up underthe creative energies of the nflo Suxon race, from the vast wilderness beyon the Alleghanies, might be permitted to enter. but from which none could depart, save by mutual consent or by superior force. It was perpetual in its character, as a necessity arising from the purposes of its for matron. Not for one hour, since the adoption of the Constitution, has the sovereignty of the government over any State within it been annihi lated, nor have its reciprocal obligations to such State been destroyed. The States were dependent on the federal Union for their mutual security, and the Union was dependent on the State organizations for its life. The constitution, ordained and adopted as the supreme and enduring law of all the States and the whole people, coustituted a pe etual covenant, in which not only eve Stat. but every citizen of every State held an inalienable interest. The secession of a State was no more authorized by the Constitution than the dissolution “of the Union itself. The one would be no less disastrous than the other: The law of a mutual life forbade either. No legislative enactment, no vote by the people of aState, through a convention or at the polls, can of its own force or vitality take a State out of the Union, nor absolve it from its Federal obligations, nor can any law of Congress relieve the Federal government from its constitutional duty to guaranty to every “ State” a RFG, and to every citizen that protection in aTfhis national riflhts and privileges, whichis the consideration for obedience and allegiance. As well m ht the stars which circle the Sun, "living in his ight and held to their orbits by his power, attempt to disturb the harmony of the solar system by receding from its limits; as well might the Sun, which in his revolution owns the counter attraction of surrounding planets, attempt to ved his burning glories, and makeNightandDarknesse rnalin the heavens, as either the States or the nion claim the constitutional power of relaxin or annihilating those bonds which bind cac and all in the "unity, power, and perpetuity of the Republic. The unity of the solar system will remain till the supreme will of the reator shall decreeits dissolution; the Union of the States will be unbroken until the suprenie will of the people, expressed by legislative action or physical force, shall announce its end. This theory, which has secured to it the sanction of distinguished names, gives the lieto the expressed object for which the Union arose by the fiat of the people from the discordant elements of the old Confederation, into the match less perfection of civil government. It is supported by no principle of international law applicable to the relations between States and the Union, and it is branded as false by all the facts of history and by all the arguments of reason. Every act of war on the part of the Government, from April, 1861, till the surrender ofLee and Kirby Smith, was a denial of the right or the power of a State to leave the Union. The vast array of armies called forth by command of the Government, greater than any which in the history of our race imperial power ever organized for defense or conquest, was an avoival of the constitutional obligation of the Government to keep the Union of the States unbroken. Your iron clad monsters guarding the coast lines of an empire; your ships of war I tracking confederate pirates upon every sea; your frowni g fortresses reared from the Ches apeake to tie Rio Grande; the 1,000 bat tles in which the soldiers of the Republic marched unfaltering to victory er the grave, express but the unalterable conviction of the American people that neither the constitutional obligations of the Federal Government nor the constitutional obligations of the States can be ignored, evaded, or destroyed. Sir, I Bhall endeavor to show that those obligations, mutually assumed and Operative, created an enduring. perpetual Union, indissoluble save by physical force, or by the consent of its creators. Organized civil government presupposes the surrender by the individuals framing it or subJect to it, to a greater or less extent, of their natural rights, and the character of the Government formed will depend not only 11 on the extent of the surrendered or delegate power, but upon the modes and agencies in and by which this power is to be exercised. i. In an absolute monarchy, there exists, as between sovereign and subject, no limitation of power, except that which is directly orindircctly exressed in the right of revolution. In alim ite monarchy, like England, the extent of the surrender of natural rig it is the precise equiv alent of the power constitutionally exercised by the King and Parliament. In the mo, sovereignty is united. In this country, and under our Constitution, sovereignty exists in the people, and in the people alone. Our Constitution is but the expressibn of the popular will as to the formingwhich, and the which, that sovereignty shailnl sbtreumade mntianliistitcesrl ye. But we find existing here a distinguishin feature, an anomaly in civil government. whole people, living within separate State jurisdictions, or governments, an owing obedience to the constitution and laws of such States, affecting personal rights and propert, excepting only those which interfere with t to constitutiona powers of the Federal Government, still owe entire allegiance to that Federal government in everything pertaining to national sovereignty. I may use the expression of Judge Grier, in the Prize Cases, to dhow the anomaly I have alluded to: " Under the very peculiar constitution of this government, although the citizens owe supreme alle tiange to the federal Government, they owe also a qualiifleled a.lle[nhieniprcepetorstohnesa State prionpewrthyicahrethseuybaJercet to its laws." When we undertake to apply the settled principles of the civil international law in relation to sovereignty and alleance to the federal Government, the people of the Union, and the citizens of the States, it is self evident that no case in which these peculiar relations do not exist, can for one moment he urged as a precedent in determining the relations of a loyal citizen of aState in rebellion to the Federal Government. There were 4 parties to our great constitutional covenant: 1. The people of all the States. 2. The people of each State. 8 3. The organized State government of each State. 4. The Federal and national Government. The last was the creation of all the others, and they inspired it with life and supreme power as a sovereign nation, to preserve each State in the enjoyment of republican institutions and each citizen in the exercise of his national rights and privileges uhderatlagwhich, to the external world, should be the symbol of the united power of the whole people. Every citizen, no matter what the State of his resi deuce, has a personal interest in this enduring cOvenant for the common protection, and I, as a citizen of NewYork, may demand of the Federal Government that, for the protection of my State in its constitutional immunities, SCarolina and Georgia shall not be permitted to overthrow republican government, and thus break up the Union. SCarolina and Geor gia covenanted with every citizen of my State that he should enjoy the same rights within their lines as were accorded to their own citi pens, both as to protection of person and y personal rl"lll.S, and they cannot take away that right uiilcss they can dissolve this Union. Every loyal man in any seceding State, has the right to demand of the Federal Government, not only protection in his citizenship, but protection avainst an usurping power in his own State which sha deny to him a republican government. I so mit, Mr. Speaker, that.under the mutual covenants thus constituting the Government of the pee lo, and affecting every citizen, no State can withdraw itself from the Union except by constitutional permission or by successful resistance to its authority. 1 Rebellion, therefore, if suppressed, could not destroy the Union by taking a State from it, no matter whether a month, a year, or 5 years were s ent in the suppression of that rebellion. he constitutional duty of the State was in no way affected by its neglect to perfoim it; and the constitutional duty of the Government to every loyal State and to every loyal citizen could be discharge only by the maintenance of its sovereign authority. If, as l have shown, all acts of Legislatures, all acts of conventions, and all popular action of the States attemptin to secede were void, as in contravention of the supreme law of the whole nation. they, in no constitutional sense or manner, changed the relations of the State or people to the Federal Government; and we solemnly assert this doctrine by every statute we have enacted for the punishment of rebels. If any other doctrine be true, we have no right whatever to punish any citizen of u seceding State as a rebel, for secession would make him the subject of an independent sovereignty, and he could not be a rebel againsta foreign Government. Every gentleman who has addressed the House or the committee on this subject has denied all right of secession in exprias terms, and on this point. I fully agree; but still, with strange and mcompreliensible logic, they aver that although attempted secession has utterly failed; although the national sovereignty has been vindicated over all the States in rebellion; and although the sole purpose of the war, which terminated in the universal triumph of the national arms, was to keep the rebellious States in the Union, yet, because they are conquered and subdued to the Union, they are out of the Union, and may be treated as conquered Territories, and all their citizen! as enemies, no matter whether such citizens were loyal or disloyal, no matter whether they were true or false to the (is of their country. The proposition is a paradox, an absurdity, and in no manner sanctioned by any principle of international law. EVery citizen of a southern State owed sn preme allegiance to the Federal Government and subordinate allegiance to his State; and the Federal Government was bound as a condition concurrent in demanding his allegiance to extend to him its protection against any interference by his State with the discharge of his Federal allegiance. Now, sir, when the great rebellion which we have conquered began, 1,000s of men in almost every southern State denied the right of secession, asserted their loyalty to the old Union, and called upon the Government for a protection it was powerless to afford. State laws, nul and void as against the Federal Constitution, pronounced these loyal citizens traitors to State governments. They were persecuted, despoile of estates, imprisoned, tortured, and some of them were haned because of their fidelity to the Federal government. Some, escaping from prison, with the sentence of death upon them, leaving home, famil, and hope, sought the Union lines with bloo ounds ba ing upon their tracks, entered the ranks as soldiers of the Republic under the [in which had failed to protect them at home, an fell beneath its folds to maintain its sovereignty and preserve the Union. Yet their widows in bereavement and their children in desolation are pronounced enemies of the Government fer which their own lives were sacrificed, and the pittance of property left by rebel sequestration the honorable Christian Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Ma Srnvsxs] claims the right to confiscate, even when the war is at an end, as enemys property. I undertake to say that in this Government of ours the relations of the loyal people of the southern States to the Union have not been changed by State secession, either as to citizenship or the right of protection. It is true that International law regards all persons residing within the military lines of an enemy as public enemies, but this term is restricted in its meaning, and relates simply to property, not to allegiance; it relates to a time of war, not to a time of peace; Judge Grier says. in the “ prize cases, " which are quoted as leading authority by the Dracornian advocates of dissolution, in speakin of the term “ enemies property, ” itir a technical phrase peculiar to prize courts, and depends upon principles of public policy as distinguished from the common law. Whether property be liable to capture as “enemies property” does not in any manner depend upon the personal allegiance of the citizen. It is of no couse 1 guence whether it belongs to an ally or a citizen. 1,000s of northern men who were doin their utmost to suppress rebellion, and many of whom were in the ranks of the Army, were the owners of property in the southern States, and when our armies were marching to the Gulf, all this propert, if capable of contributing to the support of the enemy or to the aid of our own armies, was liable to seizure. as “ enemies properly;" and in respect to that property its owners, though loyal men, were technically “public enemies." The Prize Cases decided only that all prepert, whether belongingo a citizen of the U.S., to a neutral resid iner in or out of the lines of the rebellion, arm a rebel, was liable, with the vessel hearing it, to seizure as “enemies property ” iftaken in attempting to enter a blockade rebel port. No court of competent jurisdiction has ever decided, and no court of common sense will ever decide, that the property of a loyal citizen in a late rebel Star: is liable to confiscation in peace as the prilperty of an enemy. i ot a single authority has been cited which is applicable to the relations of, an American citizen to his peculiar Government. Vattel says: “A civilWar breaks the bands of society and ov crnment or at least suspends their force and a cot; it producesin the nation 2 independent nrties, who consider each other as encmics and acknowl edgeno commonjudge. These 2 parties must no cessarily bepqnsidered as constituting, at least for a time, 2 distinct societies." Vattel and Phillimore, Halleck, and all eminent publicists assign the true reason for this rule, which is to modify the atrocities and carel ties of war as between armies in the field, and to place captured persons upon the footing of prisoners of war instead of liangin them as rebels. The rule in nowise affepts teobligation of the sovereign to his loyal subject: fin"inBgy the expressauthority of international lawde the duties of the sovereign toward his loyal suppectt, he former is bound torestoroall property on offects which the enemymay have taken from is subject. if the sovereign 11shall require it from c encmy.” Valtel on I Rights of mtliminium. chap. 14. Instead, therefore, of the barbarous doctrine asserted by the Gentfrom Penna lvania, the Government, in lieu of acquiring the right of confiscating the property of ioyal men in the southern States, is bound to restore to them all their effects of, which the enemy may have deprived them, and which may have been taken mm the enemy by our arms or by the ending of the rebellion. “ As I stated, Mr. Speaker, the error into which gentlemen have fallen has arisen from their failure to distinguish between the term “ ene mies" as recognized by the common law, and “public enemies” as accepted by international law regulating captured property or the right of capture. In this rebellion those only were enemies to the Government in the eye of the law, applicableto our condition, who were in arms against it or iving aid, assistance, and comfort to the confe erate authority. The only were rebels, in the eye of the law, who on their own volition, or without comulsion, leagued together for the destruction of t 10 Republic. No reason, no logic, no law can sanction any other conclusion, or permit prejudice, vindictiveness, or malignity to say that any man living Within the limits of the rebellion. who refused to articipate in its iniquity or be false to the law ul Government of the U.S., even though it failed to protect him, has either lost his citizenship or become a rebel ora trai tor by the secession of his State. It is a new doctrine; it is a false doctrine. It is secession clothed in the habiliments of patriotism. It is a theory in utter antagonism with every act and every purpose of the American people in the suppression of rebellion. It is in conict with the policy of the Government, as announced from he commencement of the war to its close, and even to the present hour. It is an insult to the udginent of the American people. it is a libel upon the Constitution. Tennessee seeeded in 1861; but AndrewJohnson, ofTennessec, a citizen of Nashville, the rebel ca ital of the State, was still a Senfrom that State in Congress, and made the Senate Chamber resonant with his eloquent denunciation of treason and secession. From 1861 to 1863, Tennessee was represented on this floor as a State of the Union. Her citizens, as Representatives, took part in the measures enacted to suppress rebellion and keep Tennessee, as you claimed her to be, in the U inonand a State, not as a Territory. In 1864 the Republican party at Baltimore nominated to the high office of VEEP AndrewJohnson, of the State of Tennessee. Elected as VEEP, Mr. Johnson succeeded to the Presidenc by the lamentable murder of the true and onest patriot, whose name and memory. honoredand beloved by the pure of every land, will survive when those, who maligned him as an usurper, traduced him as a tyrant, and today are ready to payequal honor to his successor, shall have er ised from the recollection of mankind. nd yet, if Tennessee was out of the Union as a State in rebellion, or as a Territory in rebellion, then he has since its secession been and still is an alien enemy, and at least during the war, as a plaintiff in any court of a loyal State prosecutin a personal claim against a loyal cit men of sue State, would have been driven out of court by a plea in bar of alien enemy" to acfioyernment of which he was the Executive ue. The State of Tennessee, sent 30,000 men into your ranks to uphold the cause of the Union, and on every battle field from Nashville to Atlanta, they attested theirfidelit as citizens by their valor and their blood. o day, you spurn their loyalty, you deny them citizenship, you refuse them representation, you pronounce them aliens, and ennessee is but aTerritory of the Republic, whose citizens enjoy only the privilege of being taxed and the “ right of being ung. I If Tennessee be but a.Territory, each seced in State is reduced to the same condition, and alFis common territoryfrom which not onlyState lines but State jurisdictions are obliterated, and from which Congress ntay erect new States, with such geographical limits as may be agreeable to its sovereign pleasure. It may hold the vast area under its, absolute control, until with 2 Senators it shall knock for admission as a sin is State. The star of the Old Dominion maydte stricken from your flag, and Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia, be known to history only in the rec. 0rd of their ancient glories and their recent. crime. The iron fingers of a political despot ism may spread the pall of eternal night over historic names, and States which were of the old 13 and gave birth to the nation, may disappear forever. The power of Congress over the Territories of the U.S. is unlim ited. The language of the Constitution, article 4,section 3, is explicit: “ Congress shall have power to disposeof and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the U.S. " What is the power to dispose of? We all understand it as a power to do what one pleases, with the subject or object over which the power is won. ebster defines the very term “to dispose of” as follows: to part with; to alienate; to part with to another; to put in anothers hand a power; to restore; to give away; to transfer by authorit; to use or employ; to put away. Worcester cfines it: to bestow; to give away; to arrange for; to place in some condition; to put out of ones possession; to put out of the waly; to get rid of. s it not clear that the “dead carcasses” of these departed States, may under this power he disposed of in some other way than by sending them to a committee of anatomical surgeons for dissection or reconstruction. 4 There is, then, standing on the forefront of this territorial theory the bold assertion of a power to disintegrate and destroy the Union of those States, the vital object of which was perpetuity. The whole theory and its consequences are exressed in one clear, distinct, and fatal formu a The Constitution exists to preserve and perpetuate the Union of the States. It is the bounden duty of the Government to coerce any State attempting to secede from the Union, and to emplo t 1: whole power of the Government to subue armed resistance, to prevent disunion. But when all resistance has been suppressed and secession prevented, then congress may treat the rebe ious State asaTerritory; a ieriate it by virtue of constitutional authority to any foreign Power, and thus accomplis the very dissolution which it is its highest constitutional dut to prevent. We may not anticipate the future; we cannot tell who shall come after us in other days to administer for our descendants the powers of this Government on the precedents we establish now. We are denling with great principles, we are deciding great questions, we are establishing permanent precedents; and for one I will not, while I hold) a seat upon this floor, consent, for the purpose of eradicating a present though temporary evil, to the establishment. of a precedent which may be a dagger in the bosom of posterity. I will not accept any theor which shall concede the right of the federal government to erect a despotism upon the ruins of the States. I will pour no oison into the sacred fountain of republican iberty. I maintain, moreover, that this territorial theory is pressed at this time with a view to the exerciseof the powerof amending the constitution in important particulars atfecting not only the rights of States here represented, but also the rights of all loyal an true citizens of the States recently in rebellion. while they have no voice and no representation in congress. p I do not question the motives of those who present these measures. They certainly act from convictions of duty; but I nevertheless believe that the pending amendment is not only in its effect, if adopted, to centralize power in the Federal Government, but that that power is intended to be exercised in the establishment of perfect political equality betwceuthe colored an the white race of the South. The rebellion has, as one of its results, emancipated 4 million slaves, and lifted the chain from their posterity forever! They are free, and their freedom is guarantied by the stron arm of the Federal Government. An amendment of the Constitution duly submitted to and adopted by 3/4ths of all the States, wives to congress full power to enact all laws which shall be essential to their protection. They must be made equal before the law, and be permitted to enioy life, liberty, and the pursuit Of happiness. I ample ged to my own conscience to favor every measure of legislation which shall be found essential to the protection of theirjust rights, and shall most cheer fully aid in any plan for their education and elevation which may reasonably be adopted. Already within the last 4 years have we done more for the slave than has before been accomplished since European cupidity consignedliiim to bondage. We have given him his freedom, his wife, his children, and his unquestionable title to his own acquisitions. 5 years since, the most ardent friend of immediate emancipation would have compro mised for the accomplishment of such results in a century. 2 and a half years ago, lie would have been content with peace and Union, even recognizing slavery as it existed in the beginning of the war, and trusting to a distant future for its gradual annihilation. I rejoice, sir, in what has been accomplished but in the interest of a downtrodden race deny the expediency of any action by congress to raise them to the exercise of those political rights for which, as a people, they are now unfitted by long centuries of ignorance and degradation. It is insisted that such action is necessar to secure them against outrage and abuse. I answer, such action but invites out rare and abuse., sir, have no sympathy with those who would oppress or abuse agreedman. I have no sympathy with any man who of his own volition lifted his hand in rebellion against the Government of my fathers. I hate treason and rebellion, and while I have a seat upon this floor I will never consent to the admission here of any rebel to represent any portion of any southern State, whose hands are, for aught I know, red with the blood of true and loyal men. I regret that anything of disturbance or anything of insubordination is found in any State of the South. I have no apolog to offer for what has been done by individuals or perhaps by associations. Let all abuses be punished. Let the right he vindicated; let justice prevail. But, sir, we ought to remember that we are just emerging from aterrible war during which the civil law has been overthrown in the seceding States, and personal right has been sacrificed ito the spirit of violence. Acetate of war excites the brutal passions, it makes life cheap, it disregards the restraint of civil authority, it deranges society itself. Since the disbanding of our own armies our northern cities and towns have been startled by the frequency and atrocity of crime. Robbery, burglary, arson, and murder lare upon us from almost ever newspaperan alarm every community. ere in the capital of the Republic we sleep securely only under the vigilance of public and private watchmen. Overthrow the administration of the criminal law the North, as it has been throughout overthrown at the South by war, and Carl Schurz would find in northern society ample material for another gloomy picture of our public condition. I submit that it cannot be expected that the entire body of the people of the seceded States should accept without dissatisfaction and even disturbance the great and radical changes which have been forced upon them. They have been conquered by military power. Their boasted chivalry, invincible in theory, went down before the sturd blows of the despised Yankee. Slavery has been utterly anni ilated. The fabric of aristocracy which yvas based upon it is gone. The barriers behind which caste for 3 centuries had been intrenching itself were broken and leveled in an hour. To add intenser bitterness to the chalice of humiliation, the armies of the confoderacy, which were to run riot in northern capitals, were driven from the Rappahannock to the Gulf of Mexico, or, fleeing before the genius of Sher man and Thomas, left the fair fields and cities of Tennessee, Georgia, and Carolina a prey to desolation and the flames. You have made their servants and slaves their equals in legal right, and you menace them with equality in political power. Until you can change human nature, you cannot expect passive, uniVersal, and unaffected submission to this bitterness of disappointment and this sudden and organic alteration of their socialstructure. Triump i has not changed our natures; defeat has not chaiiged theirs. All of these southern States n wn the extinction of slavery; most. of them consent toit. Thus the life of the rebellion is extinguished forever. Most of them have annulled all acts and ordinances of secession. They have repudiated the confederate debt, and are even in their poverty willin to contribute to the payment of our own. hey have adopted the constitutional amendment. They ask of you twp things. 1. That you shall allow to them the power of determining the political status of the freedman. 2. That when on tax them as States in the Union you shal permit them representation as States. 1 Mr. Speaker, our legislation should be conliltent with the unvarying policy of the Government in the prosecution of the war to maintain the Union. It. should be consistent with the dignity of a great nation, strong enough to be magnanimous in its power and merciful in its justice. From the day when Abraham Lincoln de livered his inaugural address to Congress to the heur when himself unconscious of the ineffable crime which suffused the e es of a nation in tears he passed to his rewar, not one word did he utter, not one act did he perform which can be tortured into an approval of the doctrine that the seceding States had left the Union. In his reclamation of September, 1862, he expressly invited the States in rebellion to lay down their arms and return their representatives to Congress as States in the nion and not out of it. In his letter to Fernando Wood he says that the laying down of the rebel arms was all that was necessary to the restoration of such States. In his proclamation of emancipation he expressly recognizes them as States. In his message of December 8, 1863, he submitted to Congress the exact plan for the restoration of these States to representation which President Johnson has pursued. The plan of the President above mentioned was submitted by the President to his Cabinet and approved by each, and in his last public utterance, after his return from Richmond, and just preceding his assassination, he gave this alloy his renewed sanction. This policywas ully indorsed by the American eo e in the renornination and reelection of Mr. lincoln in 1864. The reconstruction bills introduced into the last session of the 38 h congress, and based on the idea of States converte into territory by secession, were rejected by the general sentiment of Congress, and their aut ors did not venture even to ask a vote upon them. congress treated Virginia as a State in the Union fiiy erecting from her the State of WestVirginia under the forms of the Constitution. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee were recognized as States by the admission of their Representatives, although the rebels held armed possession of the greater portion of each. In August, 1861, Congress by special act imposed a direct tax u n all the States in the Union to raise means or prosecuting the war, and this law was under the authority of section 2 of article 1 of the Constitution, which says Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included in this Union in proportion to their respective numbers. Each of the seceding States was charged with its due proportion of the whole tax of $120,000,000. On the 4th of March, 1862, Congress made the apportionment of Representatives among the several States upon the census returns of 1800 as required by law, and all the seceding States which had then been guilty of every actwhich is now claimed as dissolvingtheir connection with and destroying their rights in the Union were awarded their due share of rere sentation as States still in the Union, an for weal or woe bound to its fortunes. Again, Congress in July, 1861, after the secession of all the States in rebellion, and just subsequent to the defeat of our Army at Bull Run, passed almost unanimously the following resolution: “That thiswurisnotn prosecuted uponour artinany spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose o conquest orsubingution, nor purpose of overt rowmgoriuter fer ingwith the rights or established institutions of those states. but to defend and maintain the supremacy of of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity. utility, and rights of the several States unimpaired; that assoon as those objects are accomplished the war ought to cease., This has never been contradicted by any subsequent uct or legislation of Congress until the present session. The rebellious States now submitting to our authority, tell you in view of all your pu he acts and declarations, that you prosecuted for 4 years a gigantic war to eep them in the Union, and since you subdued them to the Union you continue a war upon them to keep them out; you treat them as conquered provinces; you tax them as loyal to their trust. States; you demand of them abject submission to all you have done or may do, olfensivel to social and long existing prtjudice, and as of them loyalty and devotion, while by your legislation you would throttle and extinguish even the germinating principle of loyalty. You can expect under such legislation no other reconstruction than that which shall be marked out by Federal bayonets, and whose lines will be preserved only in the presence of Federal cannon. You will have no eace save that which exists in universal solitu e and universal desolation. Mr. Speaker, I stand here today as the Representative of a radical constituency, who have voluntarily given $3, 500,000 to suppress rebellion, to maintain, not to dissolve, the Union of these States. They have honored me with their confidence, and I will not willingly be recrcant I have no aspirations for the futurein political life. I would cheerfully today resign a position where personal inde nd once is treason to party power. But whileI remain, I shall attempt to do my whole duty, in the exercise of my best judgment, not for my constituency alone, but for my whole undivided countr. I know that the sentiments I have uttered are by no means consonant with the opinions of those who lead or mislead, the Union men of this House. They may not be in accordance with popular sentiment in my State or in the countr, inflamed as it may be by appeals made ere to prejudice and to passion. Bpt they are my sentiments they are honest] entertained; the are fearlessly uttered. fear not the issue. know the power of public opinion. I have felt it in its excitement. I have seen it in the fury of its tide. It may be irre sistible; it may be omnipotent; but, thank God, it is not immutable; and for myself, holding fast to (justice and to right, let me rather be submerge beneath the waves, to reappear when the storm is over, than borne like wrack and sea weed on the oceans breast, without purpose or self control, drifted by its currents, and riven by its tempests, be cast high upon the shore, to mark in decay and rottenness the highest elevation of the tide and the point whence it receded. Mr. Speaker, I shall shrink from no respon sibility in extending to the freedman full protection in his rights as a matter of essential justice or as a recognition of the fidelity and eroism of his race during the rebellion. But I will not consent to inflict needless and wanton injury upon the people of the South because they are not ready in a moment to surrender the ride or the prejudice of generations. I wiil not deny them the right of representation, and hold the Union dissolve simplybecause they are not willing to extend to the colored race that universal enfranchisement which we ourselves deny them in every State of the Union save Vermont alone. such was not the purpose for which the war was prosecuted, and I will not prove false to its history. Today I summon from theirhonored though unmarked graves the countless 1,000s who beneath the Federal flag laid down their lives in this fierce and unnatural conflict. From the pestilential prisonyards of Anrlersonville, Castle Thunder, and Libby, I call forth the 50,000 of our heroes who perished there from cruelty or slow starvation; and from the rim, ghastly throng, beariii yet upon them in eath the tattered and bloo y uniform of blue, I demand, for what did you die? Though they be dead they yet speak. The same answer comes from each and all “We diedfor the Union unbroken, undiried, and at eace." 500,000 men went own to bloody graves with the cry yet thrilling on their lips, “ The Union forever!” Today we who sent them forth from friends and home to fall in battle for the Union; we who told them, by all our public acts and by solemn resolutions, that the war was prosecu for no purpose of subjugation or conquest. but only to enforce submission to the Constitution " and the laws, spurn this sacrifice of death, and refuse, for Union and peace together, to surren der a suspicion or a prejudice. The world moves. Is it backward or onward? Has it rolled backward for more than 2000 years into the deep darkness of barbaric aves, or has it rolled onward till that voice which, amid the agonies of crucifixion, uttered in love to his enemies, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do, ” is audible no longer?. Sir, no social error, no political prejudice, no religious heresy was evereradicated from the popular mind by ersccution or prescription, fire or sword. Tile religion of the Redeemer proclaimed from the hills of Iudea, has survive I the martyrdom of its founder, and the civil authority of those who by torture and flame sought to strangle its life. It held in its hand no fire brand and no sword in the hours of its peaceful triumph. The various sects to which it gave birth, regardless of its divine origin, in vain endeavored by punishment, imprisonment, and death to forcc the ir respective tenets upon the world. Catholic S min, in the reiyi of Charles V, Philip H, and Philip HI tried inquisitorial power upon the Moors of and alusia and the Irotestants of the Netherlands. She hunted the former from their homes, confiscated their property, burned them byfire, and smothered them in caves, to convert them from the faith of Mo hammed to the religion of peace, and finally exiled the helpless remnant of the race to the burnin sands of the African deserts. On tie 26th February, 1568, Philip H signed the infamous decree of Ximenes, which consigned every Protestant in the Netherlands to the scaffold, even after the boast of Alva that he had beheaded 20,000 heretics. The murder of 130,000 tested the persuasive power of sectarian des potism. Catholic England burned Protestants at Smithficld. ProtestantEngland hanged Catho lics at Tyburn. Since these scenes were enacted, 300 ears have passed away, and though the crum ling palaces of Granada, stillattractive in the adornment s of Arabian genius, no longer by the banks of the Jenil and the Darro cast thyeir shadows on the Moor; though death has staed the murderous armsof Charles and Phili an Alva and Granvelle on the Rhine; thong the firesof smithficld were long since extinguished, Spain, England, and the world, in the 19thcentury and in the high noon of its civilization, have yet to learn that the word of Love is mightier than the arm of Power, and that Truth itself ceases to be omnipotent when Oppression and Proscription standas accredited ministers at her altars. I fear, Mr. Speaker, that in the spirit of our legislation, an in the bitterness of our denun ciations against the whole people of the late southern confederac, we are committing an error and a crime. The war islover. The past, with all its passions, with all its cruelties, with al its sacrifices, with all its horrors, is gone. The 1,000s who in the tumult of battle met as foes, and “Foremost fighting, fell, ” slee together and at peace. The aggregated hate of the nation toward the rebelliving or the rebel dead cannot reanitnate the ashes of a single of our loved ones who perished there for the Union. Alas! hate, proscription, and injustice, may render the sacrifice vain. Our duty is not with the past but with the present; not with the dead but with the living; not with conquered provinces and foreign foes, but with our own soil shadowed by the mgis of the Constitution, and with our own citizens erring, criminal guilty, deserving of punishment, but still American citizens. Inthe utter annihilation of Slavery, Reason and Philosophy discover that the seeds of bar mony and peace are sown broadeast over the Republic. But the seed which the husbandman sows springs not up at the moment of its planting. It germinates in sunshine and gentle showers, itrises unseen through the protectin soil, it rejoices in the daylight, it expands an grows, its leaves open to the zephyrs of the spring. Nature supplies its wants: nature watches over it; nature and time mature the harvest, the blade, the ear, the full corn in the car. This is natures law. The planting is mans mission; the growth and the perfection belong to time and to God. We have planted the seeds of universal freedom and equality. They will germinate neither in the frosts of neglect nor in the flames ofanger. The gentle showers of prosperity and the sun light of peace alone will l)give vitality to that we have planted; and God in His mere and in His time will spread upon the field an a undant harvest. I speak in the interest of republican government and of all people when I say that I believe no legislation Will be so unwise and so disastrous as that which shall put far off the day ofreeonciliation with those of our count men who are now denied all interest in this nion; who are taxedwithout representation; without whose concurrence you propose to change the organic law of the land, and upon whom you design to enforce the principle of political equality in races, which our own constituents have never acknowledged. Far better is it, as it seems to me, to return “to the principles on which the Government was framed, and to recognize the interests of every loyal citizen in the legislation which permanently affects the country. I want no war ofraces in this land, and to prevent it, our legislation should be so wise and so just as to give to no race reasonable ground for complaint. It is but 11 years since that, one whose life and whose death were consecrated to freedom, and whose fiat struck the shackles from 3 million bondmen, declared that this countilry could not live at peace half free and half s ave. I Sooner than he dreamed, the life struggle and slavery went down before freedom, because freedom was stronger than slavery. I hope that no page in our histor shall here after prove that in a most half of the republic our people could not live in peace, half white and alfP colored, or that our legislation was such as to rovoke or justify collision. Time an reason alone can remove existing prejudices of opinion. Time casts its mantle of oblivion over hate and passion. Time will bring its solace to wounded pride, and resig nation to broken hearts. Time legislates for peace. Its decrees you can neither stay, modify, nor repeal by your legislation. It mocks your “previous question.” Your descending gavel, Mr. Speaker, may note the passage of its hours, but cannot arrest its argument. fyou will not hear it you shall feel it in returning prosperity and peace. Time lifts the continents from the oceans bed, or buries them beneath the waves. Time legislates upon climates, upon productions. lime builds up and pulls down empires. It lays its hand upon the generations and races of mankind, and they pass away, the weaker before the stronger. 400 years ago this continent was the home of Indian empire, and within its him its no white man trod t lesoil. Where today are the countless Indian tribes who then held undisputed sway from the Gulf of StLaw rence to the Caribbean sea? Kin Philip has left his scepter to no descendant the Nar ragansett. Massasoit, Canonicus, i etacomet, and Miantonomoh have lefl. their graves, but not their empires to the present a e. No child on the banks of the James now claims Virginia as an inheritance from Powhatan. The rerulers of the shade, and the races they governed, have gone forever. Anglo Saxon civilization, crowding westward from the shores of Europe, hearing the arts of life in its hand and the elemenw of freedom in its bosom, demanded the shores of the Atlantic and the great valleys of the I est for its empire and its home. Civilization was stronger than barbarism, intelligence was. If began and ended ended, alas! with his own ifc stronger than ignorance, art was stronger than nature. Mr. Speaker, I. solemnly, I sorrowfully believe, that but one course can save the colored race of this country from s cedy and almost universal destruction; and that is, not by forcing upon the ignorant and debased the full exercise of political rights, but by protecting them in the enjoyment of their reedom, by securing to them the reward of their own labor and all rights before the law, and providin for their education that thus they may be fitte for the ultimate political duties of free men. Give them protection, teachers, education and hold out to them indu ements to self! improvement, and patient industry will open the avenue to thrift and thrift will secure both respect and enfranchisement. n this mode you will avoid collision, and your policy will remove a prominent obstacle to restoration, and on will escape the inconsistency of giving the highest right of a free man, which requires intelligence in its exercise, to a whole race, who are. by your solemn legislation in the last session of your Congress, pronounced incapable to make a contract for their own labor. Cast to the winds our unconstitutional schemes of confiscation in peace without conviction for treason. Let the world know that the American Congress has learne that unihment is adjudged by law for the goo of society, for the reformation of the offender, and not for revenge. Permit me, before I close, to say that while I regard the Constitution as organizing the most perfect Government which we have known, its amendment may at times be essential and proper. 2 amendments I have cheerfully supported because I believed them to be just. I am willing, if need be, to support others, but on] when consistent with the general interests, an in harmony with the cardinal principles of the Government. An amendment which gives in terms to congress the power to make all laws to secure to every citizen in the several States equal protection to life, liberty, and property, is e at for original legislation by Congress. If, congress may give equal protection to all as to property, it is itself the judge of the measure of that protection. Its legislation may be universal. t may enlarge protection, it may circumscribe it and limit it, if only it make it equal., Under such a power the constitutional functions bf State Legislatures are impaired, and Congress may arrogate those powers of legislation which are the peculiar muniments of State organizations, and which cannot be taken from the States withouta radical and fatal change in their relations. I will, sir, consent to no centralization of power in Congress in derotion of constitutional limitations, norwill I edge there today any grant of power which may in other times and under the control of unprincipled political aspirants or demagogues, be exercise in contravention of the rights and liberties of my countrymen., Mr. WOODBRIDGE obtained the floor.