Mr. RAYMOND. Mr. Speaker, I do not propose to discuss this general subject in any formal manner, but merely to make a few remarks, which I fear will prove rather desultory. upon the necessity which has arisen for some action on our part, and upon the character of the action it is now proposed that we shall take. There is, I think, no sentiment more deeply rooted in the public mind at the Present moment than that of the necessity and the duty of extending full, ample, just protection to those men throughout the southern States who stood by the flag of the Union when it was imperiled, whatever may be their race or color. As my colleague {Mr. HoTCHKiss] has already stated, the public mind in the northern States was enlightened and excited upon this subject during the recent autumnal canvass. Many of those loyal men from the southern States came among us and related the story of their wrongs and their sufferings; and wherever they spoke they awoke a generous and hearty response to the demands which they made for sympathy and protection. I fear, sir, it is also true, lamentably true, that there exists a necessity for some interposition on the part of the General Government to secure to those classes of our fellow citizens the protection to which they have a just and a rightful claim. I cannot shut my eyes to the testimony which has been adduced on every side, the testimony not only of observers who were in the southern States in no official capacity, disinterested and interested observers alike, but the testimony also of those in official position, and therefore qualified to speak with special knowledge and impartiality upon this precise point. This testimony, I think, can eave no doubt in the public mind, as it certainly leaves none in mine, that there is a necessity for some measure of protection to the people of the southern States. I think it is clear that life, liberty, and property are not properly guarded by law, are not safe through out those southern States. They are not properly protected by the courts and judicial tribunals of those States. They are not properly protected by the civil authorities that are ine of political power in those States. I think it is also but just to say that much of this defaultis directly traceable to the preva lence in the South of a temper not friendly to the General Government of the U.S. which we rePresent. It is undoubtedly true that there is a lingering rebellious temper in the southern States, and out of that temper arises the necessity for protection, which we are now called upon to consider. Now, sir, admitting the necessity which thus exists, the next question that comes before us is, how can this protection which we owe to them be best afforded? Is this bill the proper measure for such an emergeney? Does this bill provide the necessary means of protecting those classes in the southern States most in harmony with the spirit of our institutions best calculated to attain the objects sought? In a word, is it a measure which, on the whole, it is wise for us to adopt? The character of the bill may be stated in a very few words. It is a simple abnegation of all attempts for the time to protect the people in the southern States by the ordinary exercise of civil authority. It hands over all authority in those States to officers of the Army of the U.S., and clothes them as officers of the Army with complete, absolute, unre stricted power to administer the affairs of those States according to their sovereign will and pleasure. Gentlemen may say that those officers are there to enforce the laws and protect the rights of the people secured to them by law. What laws, what rights, what statutes, define the rights which these officers of the Army are to protect the people in enjoying? Not the laws of those States, for those States are discarded, and their authority to make law at all is exPressly repudiated. Not the laws of the U.S., for there is no law of the U.S. to punish larceny, felony, murder, or crime of any sort. There is no law of the U.S. to enforce contracts or to regulate the relations of individuals as members of the community, as citizens of the States in which they live, and those States are not allowed to make such laws. There are no laws to be enforced, there are no rights defined by law to be protected by the officers of the Army whom we send into those districts. They themselves make the laws, as well as enforce them. They and they alone define the rights they are to protect. The 3rd section of the bill is explicit and precise on that point. It says: It shall be the duty of eachofficerassigned as afore said to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to supPressinsurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peaceand criminals according to their own judgment of rights and of laws. That is not in the bill, but that is the necessary inference, because no other provision is made. There is nothing to specify what is the peace they are to maintain; what are the crimes they are to punish; what are the contracts they are to enforce. We send a brig adier general into each one of the 5 military depts created by this bill to be absolute sovereign over all its people, to issue his decrees as their law, and to enforce his will as in all cases their rule of action. Gentlemen will all admit that is an extreme measure, the most extreme measure which can possibly be enacted by this Congress or by any legislative body in the world. No legislative body can do more. Can there be any higher exercise of authority than to clothe a solitary individual with absolute power, authority, and control over millions of men; to give him power at once to Prescribe the law and to enforce it? Now, Mr. Speaker, is there a necessity which calls for this? Is the emergency so absolute that we must enact such a law as this? The able and learned Gentfrom Ohio, {Mr. SHELLABARGER] who spoke a few moments ago on this point, insisted that it was made the duty of Congress by the Constitution to suspend the writ of habeascorpus under certain contingencies, and that such action was all this law contemplated. I do not think that is all this bill contemplates. As I have already attempted to show, the law extends far beyond that when it clothes an individual Army officer with.to make laws for the people over whom he is placed in command Is it the duty in an unqualified sense, is it the absolute duty of Congress to suspend the writ of habeascorpus even in such an emergency? The gentleman referred to the Constitution, reciting it as if it read “Congress shall suspend” the habeascorpus in certain contingencies or in case of war. It would be with the greatest hesitation that I should attempt to correct so able a lawyer as the Gentfrom Ohio on a question of constitutional law, but where it is a matter of simple quotation from its terms I may venture to set him right. The Constitution, sir, nowhere imposes upon Congress the duty of suspending the writ of ha beascorpus under any contingency. It provides that the habeascorpus shall not be suspended except in a certain contingency., What is that contingency? The gentleman said it was when war prevailed, and he insisted that war prevails now in the southern States, not “fla grant” war, but war in the legal sense of the word. I suppose he intended to refer to the distinction which publicists and writers on the laws of war recognize in this respect, one of which is actual, raging war, and the state that follows such a war before peace has been legally restored, and which is described in technical phrase as bello nonflagrante sed mondum cessante. But neither phrase describes the Present condition of the southern States. War is not raging it is not “flagrant, ” and it has ceased ceased in fact and in the contemplation of law. The state of war has been ended and the state of peace has been restored by proclamation of the President, issued by authority of law. In no sense, therefore, does war exist in the South today. It is ended in every sense, in legal sense, in every international sense, in the sense of the Constitution, in the sense in which it is used by every writer on the subject that can be found. It cannot be, therefore, on the ground that war prevails there that we have a right to suspend the writ of habeascorpus. The case is made specific by the language of the Constitution: “The privilege of the writ of habeascorpus shall not be suspendedexcept when in casesof invasion or rebellion the public safetymay require it.” In that case the Government is clothed with the power to suspend the writ. Now, there is no invasion in the South and there is norebellion in the South in any such sense as menaces the public safety by which is meant, of course, the safety of the nation. The gentleman once or twice said in this connection that the life of the nation is at stake. Not certainly in any large or general sense is that true. By remote inference we may say when any single man is deprived of life or property, except by due process of law, that the life of the nation, that is the constitutional legal life of the nation, is to that extent impaired and endangered. But cer. tainly that would not justify us in saying that the life, the existence of the nation is at stake. The public safety is not so endangered as to justify a suspension of the writ of habeas cor pus. Private rights are undoubtedly jeopar dized in the southern States today. The lives of individual citizens are not adequately protected; the liberty and property of individuals are insecure; but it can only be by a strange or forced construction that we can say that the public safety is therefore so far in danger as either to constitute a state of war, or to author iCzoerptuhse. suspension of the privilege of habea. but I do not intend to argue the legal points of the question. It is a large question, and it has already been fully canvassed. In my opinion there has not occurred an emergency which justifies a resort to this extreme remedy. The Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. says the people have decided that the southern States are to be regulated by their rePresentatives; that the laws are to be enforced; that life and liberty are to be protected on behalf of the people themselves and by their ‘. '. I admit that; but are Army officers the true rePresentatives of the people in that sense? Is there no other way in which the people of this country, the sovereign people, rePresented here in these Halls of Congress, can enforce their will except by delegating absolute and unrestricted power to an officer of the Army? Certainly the Army has never been considered the rightful fountain and origin of civil authority in this Republic until quite recently in our history. It has always been considered the arm of the government, its right hand to execute authority emanating from the civil power. Is there a necessity for reversing that state of things now? My colleague [Mr. Hotchkiss] thinks it proper that the Army should lead the advance and clear the way for the civil government. An army should lead the advance when there is an obstacle in the way of the establishment of civil government too great to be otherwise overcome. When the establishment in the South of civil government recognizing the authority of the I U.S. was opposed by armed rebellion then the Army very properly led the way and cleared it thoroughly and effectually. But I know of no obstacle now to the establishment of civil government in the southern States on such basis as Congress may deem wise and just, which shall have all the authority that governments have everywhere, and which will be entitled, in case of resistance, to the aid of the Army in the execution of their decrees.