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at Port Hudson, Mr. King, and Mr. Ray, active and influential secessionists.

Texas has not completed the work of reconstruction and reorganization. Governor Hamilton, one of the truest and noblest Union men of the South, and a few true and tried Union men are bravely struggling to make Texas loyal to the Union and to liberty, but I fear they are struggling in vain. In a few weeks the government of Texas will pass into the hands of unrepentant rebels, and disloyal men will be selected to represent her in the Congress of the United States. Of fourteen Senators chosen in the States reconstructed under Mr. John son's policy, two only, Governor Marvin and Judge Sharkey, can take the oath of office. Of the Representatives chosen from the seven States, five only can take the oath prescribed by the laws of the country.

By the election of these Governors and Legislatures, these Senators and Representatives, the people of these States have manifested in the most signal manner that they are unrepentant though subjugated rebels. Tried, true, and loyal men are proscribed, hunted down, put under the ban of public opinion. Can that policy that has put down the loyal men of the rebel States and clothed rebels with power pass unquestioned by a patriotic people or their representatives? The late rebel States are a part of our common country, within the Union, subject to the authority of the Government. Their people are as amenable to the laws of the country as they were the day they raised the standard of rebellion. They undertook to break up the Union and establish a government of their own; they fought four years to dismember the Union, and they signally and ingloriously failed. These States are members of the Union, but their practical relations with the Government are not yet completely established. The demand is now made and persistently pressed upon the country that these States that have defiantly chosen unrepentant secessionists shall be clothed with political power, that they shall come into these Chambers without any conditions, qualifications, or reservations. From the Potomac to the Rio Grande, ninety-five out of every hundred of the loyal men are earnestly opposed to this demand. These loyal men of the South, wronged, outraged, and oppressed, are vehemently opposed to that policy that allows rebels to mark and brand them for their fidelity to their country. Tennessee, the President's own State, is strongly opposed to this policy which tends to make treason respectable and loyalty odious."

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When this presidential policy was inaugu rated the nation was comforted with the assurance that it was but an experiment; that if it failed, the Congress, the representatives of the people, could correct all errors and mistakes. Mr. Seward more than once telegraphed that the final action was in the Congress of the United States; but when Congress met in December last, when it manifested its intention to investigate, to examine, to exercise its high powers, Democratic presses and politicians rained upon Congress their fiercest maledictions. But Congress, cheered by the potential voice of the people, has investigated and examined, and will, I trust, fearlessly discharge the high duties imposed upon it by the needs of the country. Let Congress promptly submit to the people a constitutional amendment not to pay the debts incurred in support of the rebellion, not to pay for four and a half million slaves emancipated, not to permit one man in the rebel States to be equal in the Electoral College and in the House of Representatives to two men in the loyal States, and to admit any rebel State when it accepts that amendment, and the people will sustain the action of the Thirty-Ninth Congress and elect another House of Representatives that will adhere with unwavering fidelity to the amendment till it shall become a part of the organic law of the land. Most cheerfully would I accept the proposition of the Senator from Nevada [Mr. STEWART] for impartial suffrage and universal amnesty; but if I cannot secure that great measure of justice and mercy, I will

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Mr. COWAN. Mr. President, it may be well now to recur to the origin of this debate, for it really seems to have no relation to the subject-matter at present before the Senate. I rose yesterday to say to the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WILSON] that I thought he was in error in every way, politically as well as morally, in attempting to get up a quarrel with the President of the United States, in assailing his motives, in expressing apprehensions of his future conduct, and particularly in personally attacking him for two appointments which he had made. I regretted the language which the Senator made use of both toward the President and toward the persons to whom I have just referred. I stated what that language was; it was not denied at that time, although there was a dubious shake of the head which might have been taken for a denial; but I reiterated it, and I reiterate it again, and I have only to ask in this connection the candor of the gentleman himself to confess that he has toned down his speech, and that the "record" to which he appeals is not a witness who has not been tampered with on this occasion.

Mr. WILSON. If the Senator will give way I will state that not a single word or line in reference to the President was touched in the report. The Senator charged that I had accused the President of betraying the party. There is no such word there, nor anything like it. I was sure of it at the time and I looked at the report and found that I was correct. If|| the Senator will consult the reporter he will find that he is mistaken.

Mr. COWAN. I ask the honorable Senator if he did not soften the charge against the marshal of western Pennsylvania recently appointed; whether he did not change the word "penitentiary" to "prison?"

Mr. WILSON. I did.

Mr. COWAN. That is sufficient for my purpose. I do not wish to enter into any personal controversy with the Senator. He has a right to do with his speeches as he pleases before they are sent to the country. I have no complaint whatever to make of that; but I think it would be well in all cases where a controversy has arisen as to the identical words of a Senator, he should leave his speech to be published according to the notes of the reporter. If I misunderstood the Senator from Massachusetts yesterday, I of course was willing to make any retraction or apology which was necessary in order to set him right. I thought I did not misunderstand him, and being positive in my opinion at that time I asserted that he had made use of that word which implied treachery on the part of the President. I say it is enough, though, that he admits that that speech has undergone supervision in some of its parts.

There would have been no dispute if the President had not been attacked yesterday, if his appointees had not been attacked. It was that attack which I met, and it was that error, as I conceived it, which I desired to correct. But, sir, this is not the first time, it is not the only time, that these attacks have been made. It is well known to the country that ever since the President announced that he was opposed to the imposition of negro suffrage upon the southern States, but was willing to leave that question to the States themselves, there has been a systematic and continuous warfare upon him; and it is upon that question that the party is divided, if it be divided at all. My honorable friend thinks it is not divided; and as it is not necessary to speculate on this point just at this time, I will simply say that we shall all be wiser about it after next fall.

What is party fealty, Mr. President? What is the criterion as to whether a man is a good party man or as to whether he is a bad party man; whether he betrays his party or whether he is faithful to it? Is it that he always votes with the majority upon every question that is submitted to the Senate? I certainly do not

understand that to be the rule; and if it is the rule, I am free to say I am not a party man and never can be made one under any circumstances, and I think it would be a sorry day for the country and for the Senate if men were to become so slavish as to do that thing. If this is a free country, and if it is to be governed upon the great principles of liberty of which we hear so much, thought and opinion must be free; men must be as free to dissent as they are to agree, and as free to agree as they are to refuse. What, then, does a man agree to when he belongs to a party? As I understand it, when a national convention meets it establishes certain principles, and the members of the party, as gentlemen, agree to stand upon those principles and abide by them. This is not positive. A man may change his mind even upon these principles; and when he does it, and honestly avows it, he honestly avows himself out of the party. But as to every other thing, not embraced in that platform, and as to all other things to which he never assented, I never heard that any gentleman was bound to lay down his private opinions and yield them to a majority. A majority may be right; it may be oftener right than a minority, but we have no evidence of it heretofore in the history of the world.

Now, I think it would not be very difficult for me to demonstrate that the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, according to the tenor of his speeches, is to-day a Democrat. Why? The last half hour of the speech he has just made was nothing but a verification of Democratic predictions. I am a Union man; I have always been a Union man; and I was a Union man because I had faith in the Union; and I not only had faith in the Union, but I had faith in the people of the Union. I not only had faith in the people of the Union North, but I had faith in the people of the Union South; and I have to-day. What was the burden of the last half hour of the Senator's speech? It was to show that union is impossible. What were we told, at the outstart of the war, by the Democrats? They said, "You are all wrong in making war; you cannot preserve the Union by war; you will only widen the breach, and you will only make it more difficult than ever to compromise your differences." said by the Union men? They said, "The southern people are misled by factionists; they have not had a fair opportunity of determining in this matter; a large majority of them have always been in favor of the Union, and always opposed to its disruption; if they are properly supported and properly treated, and the fac tionists are put down and the conspirators routed in every direction, the people will come back to their allegiance if we treat them as we ought to treat our fellow-citizens and men with whom we expect to live in union and harmony; they will behave very well, and everything will go on just as it did before."

What was

What was asserted in the Chicago platform of 1864, of which the honorable Senator complains? That the war was a failure. A failure in what way? That the war was a failure because it could not restore the Union. The men who made the Chicago platform, I suppose, were just as honest as the honorable Senator himself, and I suppose they had quite as much stake in the Union. This is another thing, I regret to hear, to have one half the people made out to be traitors. If I thought I lived in a community where one half the people were traitors, or where one half the people could not be trusted with the administration of the Government, I would leave it. What did the men who met at Chieago in 1864 say? They said the war was a failure. They did not mean to say that it was a failure because it did not kill anybody, because it was not full of great battles, because it did not cover the earth with blood and slaughter and desolation. They did not mean to say that; but they meant to say "You cannot reconcile your differences with the southern States in that way, and so far it is a failure." What did the Union men say? "No; it is not a fail

ure; just wait until the war is over and then we will heal our differences, and we will unite as before; everybody will be under the dominion of the Constitution and the laws." That was what Union men said, and it was upon that theory that the war was conducted.

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What then? The war is over; the southern people submit, and submit to whom? Not to the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, or to the Senate of the United States, or to the "President of the United States, or to anybody else. Nobody asked them to do so; they had no right to do so; but they submit to the Constitution and the laws. If there is a rebel in the South to-day you have his neck in your halter. What more do you want? "Terms" do you say? What right has an officer of the law, when a resisting felon yields himself, to talk to him about "terms?" The felon, the vilest though he may be, covered with crimes of the deepest dye, has a right to say to the officer, Who imposes terms? I am under the law." These men are under the law; they have come back and done precisely what all wise and good men, I think, said they would. They regret their folly. They have suffered and atoned for it. Talk about punishing! Was there ever a people so punished on earth before? I ask Senators in all candor and sincerity. is there a man on the earth who would be willing to inflict any further punishment upon the people as people? Is it not the law and the rule of history and of politics that war purges the people? What man ever attempted, and succeeded in the attempt, to punish a conquered people? Nobody. No just man of good sense ever tried it, and no one ever tried it but what failed.

Then the rebellion is put down and we attempt to restore the Union. The honorable Senator from Massachusetts gets up and the whole burden of his speech here is to prove that the Union cannot be restored, that the southern people are just as bad as ever, that they are just as rebellious as ever, and that, in fact, the rebellion exists there just the same as it ever did, except that it is not carrying muskets, or standing behind cannon, or riding a trooper's horse. That is the argument. Now, I ask him wherein that differs from the Chi

cago platform of 1864. How far is he away really in opinion from his Democratic friends who were in favor of that platform? I cannot see it, I must confess; and, sir, what is more, I am unwilling to verify that remarkable passage in that platform. I did not believe it at the time it was made; I do not believe it now. I believe with my friend from Wisconsin [Mr. DOOLITTLE] that the Union will restore, and that it will restore immediately, and that all that is necessary to restore it is for a few men to forget their animosities, to turn their attention in a charitable direction instead of that of crimination. If it will not restore, why are we sitting here? If it is impossible to reconcile this difference between the loyal and the rebellions States, if it is impossible that the hearts of these people can ever come into union with us, what do we expect to come from it? Hold them as vassals, as conquered people? What benefit shall we derive from that, and how long will you hold them? You will hold them precisely as long as you have force to hold them and no longer. It is certainly not to be expected that meu of our race would submit to any domination of any kind imposed upon them longer than that.

Mr. President, the doctrine that the rebel States are in that condition, that their people are in that condition, is disunionism; instead of reconstruction it is obstruction-ĺ believe that was the word used by the Senator from Wisconsin. Impregnate the people with that idea, satisfy them of its truth, and the Union is gone beyond a peradventure, because gentlemen will remember that a Union is not a thing of force, a Union is not a thing to be imposed upon a people. A Union imposed upon a people is called by another name; it is a yoke, and that yoke will be thrown off whenever the first and fitting opportunity occurs;

and any speech, any utterance made with the intent of establishing that fact to-day is disunion, and it is of the same kind with and will have the same result as those speeches had and were intended to have at the outstart of the rebellion, in which we were told, Union is impossible; you cannot restore it by war.' It is in the same spirit and will be followed by the same result as the declaration of the Chicago platform of 1864 that the war was a failure.

Mr. President, as I stated before, this discussion arose upon the question whether the President of the United States had been true to his party fealty. I asserted yesterday that he had been, and I defied any gentleman to put his finger upon any part or parcel of the Chicago or Baltimore platforms of 1860 and 1864 respectively, the published platforms of the party, to which he had not adhered literally and distinctly, and I say that he is standing there upon them to-day, and I defy contradiction. To make the matter short, I have to say to the honorable Senator who boasts about the popularity of his wing of the party, and about the strength he has with the people, that he durst not now avow his principles, and he approached them very cavalierly even after he was obliged in this present speech to allude to them. What are they? Does he believe those States are in the Union or out of the Union? Are they States or are they not States? Are their people our vassals, or are they people having the same rights that we have under the Constitution and the laws, subject to such punishments as the laws inflict upon them? Is he in favor of negro suffrage, or impartial suffrage," as he calls it? If so, I should like to meet him in Pennsylvania where he has been talking to such multitudes upon that subject. I will promise him a good reception there, and as handsome entertainment as a Pennsylvania landlord can serve for the occasion; and they are famous for having good things to eat and good places to stay at. Let that be avowed. I have no quarrel with one who believes in universal negro suffrage; but announce it, avow it, put it in your platform, and let us discuss it.

Mr. SUMNER. I am for it.

Mr. COWAN. The other Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. SUMNER] is for it, and he has said so. He avows it. I have the highest respect for him and his principles, and no difficulty whatever about them. But put it into your platform. The President says that question belongs to the States. Does it? Is it solely within the province of a free State to determine who shall be the depositaries of political power within that State? If it is, the President is right. If, however, the other States under this Confederacy and the powers which they enjoy under the Constitution have a right to amend it so as to take away from free States that power, then avow that, and put it down and make it your platform and stand upon it. I have a right then, if I choose, to get upon it, I suppose, but you have no right if I do not get upon it, to say that I have abandoned any previous platform. Nobody has a right to say that I have not been faithful to my party obligations because I do not happen to vote with the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. WILSON] and his friends.

Now, I will say further to that Senator that I was a member of the Republican party, the party that adopted the Chicago platform of 1860, the party that denounced John Brown for his raid into Virginia. The honorable Senator and his set as I call them-because I really think they never had a party, they never amounted to more than an abolition society-the people who entertained the views and insisted upon the doctrines which he says now ought to be the doctrines of the American people, and perhaps it may be so, had no part or lot, with their extraordinary schemes and measures, in the Chicago platform of 1860. I ask in all candor, suppose somebody at that time had mentioned in that platform, or could have got a plank inserted in it, that the Republican party were in favor of negro suffrage, where would the

honorable Senator have been with his tremendous majority to-day that he talks about? Put it in your platform in the coming election, and I can show where he will be after the next election in Pennsylvania. I do not profess to know anything about Massachusetts, and indeed I do not profess to care a great deal. She is of great importance when newspapers are to be printed and speeches are to be made; but when the votes come to be counted she is not of so much importance, and almost anybody can tell a long while before hand what she is going to do upon any question. Her people have a very large margin within which to display themselves. If there is a hundred thousand major. ity in favor of the Republican platform as announced by her representatives, there is plenty of room for a diminution without much danger.

Mr. SUMNER. She is a sure State.

Mr. COWAN. She is a sure State, but we have a much narrower plank to travel on in Pennsylvania. Our people are divided in opinion there; they do not all go one way. We have half a million voters, and I suppose that eight or ten thousand men will turn the scale one way or the other.

Mr. SUMNER. We are outspoken in Massachusetts. If you adopted Massachusetts ideas perhaps you would have the same majority.

Mr. COWAN. I do not know about that. We have been entertaining Massachusetts ideas for a very long while, and I must confess that they have never attained to any very warm reception there. Massachusetts is supposed, on the part of the Teutonic tribes who inhabit the State from which I come, to be somewhat vagarious in her political notions, somewhat visionary. I suppose they have not yet forgotten the time when you cut off the ears of our Quakers for going up there and trying to propagate their notions among you. It may be that that still sticks in the minds of our people. I do not know why it is, but they have not very high regard for the politics of Massachusetts, nor, I may say, for its poetry, either, in Hiawatha.

But to come back; I am taken to task for the votes which I gave during the war. I want simply to state a few of the things which guided me during the war. In the first place, we were in the war, and I was utterly and totally opposed to any discussion of the causes of the war; I was utterly and totally opposed to the discussion of any of the issues which had divided the people of the North in the past; and above all I thought it was of the utmost importance for every patriotic man to avoid giving offense to the Democratic party, constituting as it did about one half of the people. I was, moreover, opposed to every measure, no matter by whom concocted, that was calculated in any way, either directly or indirectly, proximately or remotely, to revive any dissensions between the Republican party and the Democratic party during the war. And who did revive them? If the Democratic party stands before the country to-day a great party, almost equal to yours, by virtue of whose schemes does it stand there? By virtue of whose projects? Upon what meat did it feed? I can tell the honorable Senator; it fed upon the measures, and the very measures, which he blames me for opposing. About the very first item of grand political capital which was given to the Democrats of the North was the confiscation bill. Was Mr. Lincoln in favor of that? Was that a measure of his? I opposed it.

Mr. CRESWELL. Let me ask the Senator if Mr. Johnson did not advocate a very general confiscation bill in some of his public speeches in Tennessee.

Mr. COWAN. I cannot tell anything about that. I was not talking about him in this connection.

Mr. CRESWELL. The gentleman will find that to be the case.

Mr. COWAN. That may be Mr. CRESWELL. Especially in the speech in which he accepted his nomination.

Mr. COWAN. The question is not what Mr. Johnson did twenty years ago, or five years

ago, or six years ago, or at any other time; the question now is, whether he stands upon the platform of the Republican or Union party, its published, declared platform before the world. I suspect that if gentlemen here were to go back to their own old records in order to establish a character for consistency, they would not succeed very well. I do not know, indeed, how my friend from Maryland would succeed, for if I have been correctly informed

Mr. CRESWELL. I think I could measure it squarely and fairly with the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. COWAN. That may all be. I do not make the allusion for the purpose of reflecting upon the honorable Senator; but I have only to say that I found upon my table the other day what purported to be a copy of resolutions,

think offered by him in his State, and which looked to me very strongly like secession, in the early part of this difficulty. I do not blame the Senator for that; I have no want of charity for a man who fell into an error of that kind. Mr. CRESWELL. The gentleman of course will not blame me for that, inasmuch as I never offered such a resolution. I never offered a resolution which intimated that I or any part of the people of Maryland were in favor of secession, and no such resolution was ever adopted anywhere with my consent.

Mr. COWAN. I do not know how that is. I only state this fact to justify what I hinted. Mr. CRESWELL. I say it is not a fact. Mr. COWAN. It is a fact that the resolutions are here and were put upon the desks of members. It is not such a very great distance but that the record, I suppose, may be found. Mr. CRESWELL. Not at all; the record can be produced.

Mr. COWAN. I suppose the correctness of the resolutions laid upon our tables can be verified. Now, Mr. President, let us see what the platform is, as announced at Baltimore; let us get back to the platform. I do not know who was the author of this instrument. I was not a member of that convention, nor was I present, and therefore I have no means of knowing who the scrivener was; but I find in that platform this first resolution:

"Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen to maintain, against all their enemies, the integrity of the Union and the permanent authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States."

I think I do remember a time when, if a gentleman had offered that resolution in this body, he would have been hooted at from all radical quarters as having" Constitution on the brain." Yes, the platform declares that the highest duty is to maintain the integrity of the Union and the authority of the Constitution and laws. I have insisted upon that always; I insist upon it now. It is the remedy that I suggest now for the difficulties under which the country labors. The President has a plan of policy; what is it? The Constitution and the laws; that is the whole of it. Certain gentlemen here wish to introduce an entirely new plan ; they wish to remodel the Constitution and they wish to change the laws. Now, what ought to be done in a case of that kind, if men want to preserve the harmony of the party, if they are satisfied that on the safety of the party depends the safety of the country? Is it not the most rational thing in the world that they should come back at once to some point where we could agree? You cannot make a party by continually introducing new schemes, as Wendell Phillips said the other day, blinding the pilot with the storm of constitutional amendments, upon no one of which can any half a dozen men agree.

When a measure is introduced as a party measure, and it cannot command the undivided support of the party, the man who persists in it afterward is guilty of the division, and if division and separation and defeat results, it is to be attributable to him, not to the slave who puts his head into the collar and follows with servility a majority. I am asked by a Senator whether I belong to the Wendell Phillips party. I never belonged to the Wendell Phillips party; but I

consider Wendell Phillips as the outspoken, grand man of that party; he is the typical man of that party; and whether he wins or loses he has the advantage at least of speaking out his desires and his designs. There is no concealment about Phillips, which is one good trait in his character.

Can

I ask, then, instead of blinding the pilot with a storm of constitutional amendments, can we not come back to something on which we can all agree? Can anything be more simple? We have sworn to support the Constitution. not we agree upon that? We have compelled the President to swear that he will see that the laws shall be executed. Cannot we agree upon that? The rebels have agreed to that, too; have they not? They have laid down their arms; they submit themselves to that same authority; and your authority is established everywhere all over the States lately in rebellion.

Now, if we could concoct a new measure upon which we could all agree, I would say that would be meritorious; but when you concoct measures, and cannot agree upon them, why persist in making them tests? As I understand, there has been such a divergence between Agamemnon and Achilles, even so late as yesterday, that Troy is not likely to be taken soon. Agamemnon has taken Briseis, the captive of Achilles, and insists upon carrying her away into captivity as his prize, notwithstanding by the laws of war she is claimed by the other. That is significant, to start upon. When the Achilles of the House and the Agamemnon of the Senate divide and differ, such poor doctors as we are may well disagree,

and as we are all members of a common fam

ily, although belonging to different wings, why is it that we cannot compromise and agree, upon what? That of which above all other things our country has reason to be proud, her Constitution and her laws, and trust to time to work out the proper results.

The question is asked, why not try rebels and execute them? As I said before, surely no man can thirst for vengeance against communities, against States, against people. However much he might desire to see an individual mischievous rebel punished, surely the women and children and the Union men of the southern States have suffered their share for any folly of which they may have been guilty in this war, and especially so when we remember that at the outstart of the war this Government had forgotten its duty. What is a Government created and instituted for? It is that it shall be a standing organization for the protection of the people. If the people could get up a governmental organization as soon as a conspirator could usurp an organization you could put off having a Government until the contingency happened; but a Government is a standing organization of the people, whose duty it is to protect the people against hostile and usurping organizations seeking to rule them. In 1861 there were conspiracies against the General Government all over the southern States. They were covered over with societies whose sole business it was to overawe and terrify the people, rendering necessary to them that very protection which it was the duty of the Government to afford them. What, under the circumstances, did this Government do? Does any sane man believe that if this had been a Government vigorous, concentrated with its forces, knowing its duty, it would not have throttled the rebellion upon the instant, that it would not have dispersed the vigilance committees, dissolved the order of the Lone Star, and punished as criminals all the men who were engaged in getting up the plot to overturn the Union? The Government did not do this. It allowed itself to be kicked out of the possession of seven States ignominiously. What, then, was it expected that the people should do? Was it expected that they were able to stand up against their State governments; that they were able to resist the organized bands of the various kinds of secessionists who were plotting together for the dismemberment of

the Union? The man who supposes they were able to do so in the absence of their Govern ment, which was not there to protect them, which had gone away and left them helpless and defenseless in the face of that tide of secession, has not reflected on the nature of government enough to qualify him to govern anybody.

Allegiance and protection are reciprocal. I owe allegiance to the Government of the Uni-. ted States, and the Government of the United States owes me protection; and when I fall under the power of another organization, of a third party, and I obey that party when the Government of the United States is not there to protect me, that Government is derelict, and not me. There are men, I admit, strong, sturdy, and willful enough even to stand up against a State organization and refuse obedience to it; but they are the rari nantes in gurgite vasto; they are the stray swimmers in that pool. There are very few of them. Most people submit to the authority that is over them, to its insignia and to its emblems, and especially in this country where the General Government is a confederacy of States, the States themselves being in effect the governments most directly in contact with the people, and to which they have been in the habit of looking for the administration of their laws.

I say, then, that it is one of the principles of the Baltimore platform that—

"Every good citizen should maintain the integrity of the Union"

I suppose that meant that everybody in the confers on himUnion should have the right which the Union

"and the permanent authority of the Constitution

and laws of the United States; and that, laying aside all differences and political opinions, we pledge ourselves as Union men, animated by a common sentiment and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms the rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to their crimes the rebels and traitors arrayed against it."

Has the President violated any part of that? Fix your tribunal; put your judge upon it; get your machinery ready, and five hundred chief criminals, with Jefferson Davis at their head, or five thousand if you demand them, are at your service. I suppose it is not intended that the President should be common prosecutor; I suppose it is not intended that he should usurp the functions of the judiciary; and I suppose it is not intended but that the American people now at this time are qualified to pass upon the question of crime. I do not know but that perhaps I am wrong in saying that; it is pretended that they are not qualified to play the part of public prosecutor; because we passed a law the other day by which an office for that purpose was created so as to put in somebody to play public prosecutor, but he was not to prosecute traitors; he was not to prosecute rebels; he was not to bring them to criminal punishment, but he was to punish judges and magistrates who did not put the negro on an equality with the white man before the laws of the South. I say I suppose, however, that if rebels are to be punished, there are American citizens of intelligence enough, love of through the ordinary channels of the adminis country enough, desire enough to bring them tration of justice into the clutches of the law; and I say on the part of the President, and I say it for him, fix your tribunal, get your machinery ready, and you can have five hundred of them to try to-morrow. We will not be par ticular about the selection; you can select them yourselves; but it is time that the blame was thrown from his shoulders because he does not himself, in some way not known to the law, bring them to trial when it was utterly impos sible, according to the decision of the Chief Justice of the United States, that he could do anything. These men could not, under his ruling, be put to trial unless you undertook to try them by military commissions; and that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided, and very properly, I think, to be extra-judicial. If you can make out a case

before a military tribunal; if you have the evidence by which you can show that these men violated the laws of war, then they are properly triable before a military tribunal. You cannot try them for treason before it. That is pretty clear, I think.

I go on to the next resolution, which is also significant of the position which this party occupied in 1864:

der being forbidden, bills of pains and penalties
are also forbidden.

The Constitution provides again that no ex
post facto law, no law shall be passed which
imposes a punishment upon an offense which
was not the punishment due to the offense
when it was committed. I know you do not
like the law. The law has been the bugbear
all the way. After a war of four or five years,
to get back to the Constitution and the law is
difficult. Of course none of you want the law;
you do not appeal to the law; you appeal to
the committee of fifteen; you appeal to a con-
stitutional amendment; you appeal to some
new regulation that is to be made. Why not
appeal to the law? If a deprivation of polit-
ical rights can be imposed upon a community,
where is the law for it, where is it found? It
is not found in our Constitution; it is not
found in the history of the country; it is not
found anywhere here; and this is a Govern-
ment of written law.

"That we approve the determination of the Gov-
ernment of the United States not to compromise with
rebels or to offer any terms of peace except such as
may be based upon an unconditional surrender of
their hostility and a return of their just allegiance
to the Constitution and laws of the United States."
That is right. If we had any right to make
war at all, our right was founded in the fact
that these people were bound by the Constitu-
tion and laws. If we had any authority to
strike with the sword at all, that was the source
from which we derived it; and having struck
for that purpose, this resolution declares that
it is fit and proper that nothing less shall sat-
isfy us. Have they returned to their allegiance?
Are they submissive to the Constitution and
the laws? Then they have accepted our terms.
What is now proposed? Now, it is proposed
to ratify the ordinances of secession next.
First you ratify the Chicago platform of 1864 Mr. COWAN. I am sorry that every man
by declaring the war to be a failure and that in the nation is not fully and thoroughly im-
the Union will not restore, and then you pro-pregnated with the doctrine that there is no
pose to ratify the secession ordinances, you
propose to treat these States as though they
were out of the Union and to make terms with
them in order that they shall come back.
Think of it! Make terms!

Mr. EDMUNDS. I should like to ask a question of my friend from Pennsylvania; whether, in his opinion, the political crime of treason does not justly involve the political punishment of a forfeiture of political rights on the part of the traitor?

Mr. COWAN. I can answer that very distinctly, and without a moment's hesitation. The political crime of treason, or any other crime in this country, incurs just such forfeiture as the laws impose upon it, and no more and no less; and I have no doubt that my learned friend from Vermont will see in an instant that that is vital and is essential to the very theory of our Constitution and laws. This is a Government of law, and not of arbitrary will on the part of anybody.

Mr. EDMUNDS. I would remind my friend that my question was whether, in his opinion, the political crime of treason did not justly involve the forfeiture of the political rights of the traitor as a theory of government. I was not discussing the question of indictments at law, but the general principles of government.

Mr. COWAN. Well, Mr. President, if the honorable Senator means that the Congress of the United States can impose as a forfeiture upon a community for rebellion the loss of their political rights, I deny it in toto; and I deny further that the Congress of the United States can impose for any offense any punishment whatever upon anybody. It is expressly provided in the Constitution that no bill of attainder shall be passed and no ex post facto law made; and what for? For the very purDose of preventing that. What did the Parliament of England do after a rebellion? It sat down and put the names of leading traitors into an act of Parliament, Parliament being the judge, being clothed with the judicial authority, and by an act of Parliament imposed the penalties of treason upon all those named in it. That was a bill of attainder. It was called a bill of attainder when the blood of the persons charged with crimes was corrupted, when they could not inherit, when nobody could inherit through them. If it imposed any less punishment it was called a bill of pains and penalties; and if this Congress were to pass a bill by which any State in this Union or the people of any State were deprived of any of their rights as a punishment, that would be, properly speaking, & bill of pains and penalties. The Supreme Court of the United States have decided that, as the greater includes the less, bills of attain

Mr. EDMUNDS. May I ask my friend from Pennsylvania if it is not found in the general laws of nature, by which all communities are entitled to exclude from the functions of society persons who are dangerous to it?

such thing as absolute power in this land. Com-
munities have power in a state of nature; but
communities have found that when they dele-
gate that power belonging to them in a state of
nature to parliaments, omnipotent parliaments,
parliaments abuse power; they found when
they delegated it to monarchs that monarchs
abused the power; and our fathers when they
established this Government limited its powers,
and they said to their rulers, "You shall have
no power except that which we delegate to
you." Now, I agree that if this was the Par-
liament of Great Britain, omnipotent, not bound
or fettered by any constitution of delegated
powers, we might do that; we might impose
upon a State the penalty of forfeiture of polit-
ical rights for what we supposed was political
treason. But that is not the case. It is not

true.

The law is different. This is a Government of law, written, express law; and he who attempts under it to exercise any authority or control whatever over his fellow-men, by way of punishment, must show that he has the law on his side.

But I was going on to state that the resolutions of the Baltimore platform forbade any offer of terms to the States in rebellion. I am opposed to-day to any offer of terms. When you offer terms to your antagonist you mean that he has a right to reject them. If you offer terms to the southern States, what do you mean? Do you mean that they may reject them? If you do not, it is a very strange proposition of terms. And suppose they do reject them, what then? You have either to satisfy yourselves with that which you have now, or you have to enforce your terms by another war. You make a war first to compel them to come to the terms of the Constitution and laws, and then you make war to compel them to other and new terms!

Mr. President, the common sense of the American people never will agree to reconcile itself with that doctrine; and to talk about "indemnity for the past and security for the future" is as utterly idle as the idle wind that blows about the very topmost dome of the Capitol. "Indemnity for the past and security for the future" is well enough in foreign wars and in disputes between foreign Governments; but who ever heard of a sovereign stipulating for terms with his rebellious subjects? The terms are that you must submit to the law; and when the rebellion is put down and you are in the grasp of the law, the law is satisfied. Offer terms to rebels! Terms to the rebel States! If you do that you ratify the ordinances of secession, and you admit that they are out and that they are treating with you on equal footing. We made the war to

compel these people to observe the Constitution and the law. Are you satisfied? If you want more you must put them on a footing to treat with you, or else you must compel them to more; and when you compel them to more, where is your right?

Mr. President, it is said here that an attempt has been made to reconcile with the President of the United States. Why, sir, I can say that this war upon the President is a war of that society of which I spoke; I can say that its inspiration comes not only from people in this country, but one half of it comes from England, where one half of the society is; and I can tell you, sir, that the programme of the war upon the President was published in a letter from England in one of the leading journals in this country written before this Congress met, in which it was laid down that the President must be attacked and that the President must be restrained even to the verge of war. I refer to a letter of Professor Newman to a friend in this country. The professor is well known. The person to whom the letter was written is unknown. If he is present, he can avow it. That letter was dated November 8, 1865, and it contains, not only the animus of this war upon the President, but it contains exactly and particularly the animus of the party who assail the President.

"My dear friend”—and I may remark at the outstart that its tone is almost as lugubrious and doleful as that of my friend from Massachusetts when he tells us of his praying men and women on their bended knees beseeching Heaven to protect them against the President, or against the doubts of the President

"MY DEAR FRIEND: I confess that it makes me sorrowful to write to you. I have indeed put it off on that account."

He had evidently been written to before and had not answered as promptly as was proper.

"In your war I was never gloomy. I did not lose heart after Fredericksburg. But I am becoming gloomy now. Nor can I get comfort from other minds. All whom I meet that were your warm friends in the war are more or less sad, some direly so: but those who were your bitter enemies think President Johnson very judicious,' and seem highly contented."

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That is a favorite argument with this set, and always has been; it is not a question what you say or what you believe, but what does somebody else say. I suppose that nothing could so far condemn a man in their eyes as that the Democratic party should approve of what he does. Why is that? I think a man should be thankful for having the approval of an opposition. I think it shows that his conduct is, as this writer says, "judicious," when even his political opponents approve it. Remember these men say they stood by Lincoln. Professor Newman goes on to say:

"You all had the fond hope-and in spite of Mr. Lincoln's weakness, so had I-that this was to be your sparing energy, in order to give peace forever to your only civil war. You fought it with magnificent, unchildren. But the ghastly vision now rises over me, and makes me sick, that you are doomed to follow in the bloody routine of the Old World. With us it is an axiom, that kings have to be deposed and a dynasty exiled before they cease to conspire against the constitution."

That may be an axiom, but it has not proved true in Europe. The King generally goes back there, or has done so far. They roll their heads sometimes off the scaffold, but they restore the son, or the heir in some way usually gets to the throne afterward.

"I now miserably forebode that you will have a civil war to decide whether President or Congress is to set the policy of the Union."

Here is the Englishman talking as good Massachusetts doctrine as if he had been bred and

born there. You will have to have a civil war between the President and Congress in order to determine who shall set the policy of the nation? Did not this writer know that the policy was set in the convention at Baltimore? Did he not know that neither the President nor Congress set policies here except each in its own department? There was no policy about it. The question was to compel a parcel of recalcitrant people to return to their obedience to

the Constitution and the laws. That was the question; but he assumes that there was to be a war, and I will show you he advised it, too: "All is in train for it, unless the next Congress sternly call the President to account. Nothing is clearer than that he has pretended to do things experimentally and provisionally, with the express aim of so entangling matters that the Congress should have no choice but to ratify all that he has done and have no real direction of the public policy."

The same doctrine that we hear continually, the same apprehensions, the same misapprehensions, of the motives of the President, and the same charge made against him of criminal motive!

"It is just what Aberdeen or Palmerston have systematically done with the English Parliament, but would hardly dare to do in so terrible a crisis as yours."

This, by the by, is exceedingly characteristic; this gentleman, as he goes along, cannot help taking a turn at his own Government. He seems to have a universal disposition to scold and find fault, and never be satisfied with anything; but that is characteristic of this class of people. They seem never to be satisfied and never to know what they want.

"The first error was in not prosecuting Buchanan in the summer of 1861. The next was in enduring Mr. Lincoln's Louisiana constitution, and his reply to Congress that he meant to violate the confiscation act if he saw it to be for the public good."

That ought not to have been endured! Mr. Lincoln should have been "sternly" restrained at that point!

"Out of President Lincoln's high-handed settlement of affairs without Congress is developed the present policy of President Johnson."

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I suppose this is authority enough to show that the President is treading faithfully in the footsteps of his predecessor. It is so understood across the water, and that, I should think, would be conclusive of it.

"The conduct of Louis Napoleon"

I beg my friend's attention to this, because, perhaps, he has read it, and it is at the bottom of his apprehensions

"The conduct of Louis Napoleon in 1819, 1850, 1851, shows what a President, elected by the people and independent of the Parliament for four years, can do if he have large patronage.'

There is the apprehension. There is that which makes the knees tremble and the hand unsteady; the fear that in this contest between the President on the one hand and Congress on the other, the President, with his patronage, may succeed. It is not very complimentary to the people, I confess; but still a good joke comes from the head of the table.

He has unity of action"I hope he will have

"promptitude, continuity. Congress has factious and long debates and long vacation; and when it comes to debate, finds itself too late. Your President's course (unless violently arrested) assures to you many years of instability and alarm, and therefore many years of high expenditure and high patronage, during all which time you will become accustomed to the Executive forestalling and superseding the legislative. Out of this it will be almost a miracle if so vast an Executive do not (like that of old Rome) involve you in another civil war, even if the negro question was to blow over in ten or twelve years' time."

That is the nitro-glycerine that is concealed in the cargo of the ship of state. Your pilot is treacherous; he contemplates running her upon the shoals; and he will do so and perhaps destroy her, even if this combustible material were not there ready to blow her to pieces in ten or twelve years' time!

I will not detain the Senate much longer with this. I only desire to give you this gentlentau's advice to his friends here, and I beg the attention of Senators to it, because it seems that it was followed:

As your President is not at all deficient in understanding, I do not like to tell you what I think of this sentence; but he might surely be asked by a negro to explain wherein is the virtue of such patience. Sidney Smith would say that A exercises sublime patience with B, while B is tormenting C.' That is a solecism that we have heard matched here very frequently. In order to have this understood I must give the "sentence" here alluded to. It is:

"If the southern States go wrong, the power is in

our hands; we can check them at any stage, to the end, and oblige them to correct their errors; we must be patient with them.'

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Does the President seriously say that when the Federal troops are withdrawn, the State militia constituted, State rights restored, you have any power of 'obliging' the States to correct their errors' except by a new civil war? Mr. Seward (in same paper) tells us at Auburn, for our comfort, that there cannot be a new civil war. It is comforting to the white race, but it is the knell of despair to the colored race."

Do you want another war for the colored race? That seems to be this man's opinion. "It secures that the South shall be victorious,' as Wendell Phillips puts it; and from despair alone will come a negro uprising and war of races. This would bring on you lasting disgrace, instead of that moral glory which you had all but earned: it might make your whole future as stained as that of bloody old Europe. This conversation of the President, following on his heartless speech to the colored soldiers (so unlike his Nashville speech, in October, 1864,) exhibits him as one who cannot come right except by external constraint; and Mr. Seward's speech is the warrant that the whole Cabinet is going wrong. (Have they corrupted him?) I see no possibility of Congress bringing him right by a mere defensive policy; it must assume the aggressive against him, to give it a chance of success. The mildest form of attack, I think, would be to invite him to explain his apparent neglect of the act of Congress which forbids any one who has been in overt rebellion to hold office or draw pay from the Federal Government."

How many resolutions have we had in obedience to that mandate? And was not the first resolution offered this session, addressed to the President, exactly that kind of one? Was it not in pursuance of this suggestion?

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Also, his allowing the reorganization of State militia should be solemnly denounced as initiating the means of a new rebellion."

Mr. SAULSBURY. Will my honorable friend allow me to ask him to whom that letter was addressed, if he can inform me?

Mr. COWAN. The person to whom it is addressed is unknown. It is written by Professor Newman, from London, November 8, 1865. I could read much more of the same import, and if I had time I should be glad to refresh the memory of my friend from Massachusetts by reading a few sentences from the Anti-Slavery Standard written by a gentleman who signs himself L. B., and who is unquestionably a man of ability and of great acuteness as a writer. He says:

"The moral sense of the country, organized into the Liberty party of 1844"

That is the word I was struggling for some time ago the Liberty party of 1844. That was the party

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was weakened in the Free-soil movement of 1848, and still further diluted in the Republican party of 1854."

Getting smaller and smaller and more beautifully less.

"In 1860 the first irreparably fatal step was taken by the nomination of Mr. Lincoln at Chicago. The success of the Republican party, whoever its nominee, had already been insured. That success, a part of the prearranged programine of the secession conspirators, was predestined"

It is hard to suppose that the Chicago convention of 1860 had any notice of that predestination, I think; and they were not to blame for taking Mr. Lincoln on that account"was in the air"

Epidemic!

was patent to the commonest political intelligence. The heart of the country beat for Frémont."

A good deal. It beat in 1864. It beat along for Chase and for a good many people besides Mr. Lincoln, we were told. [Laughter.]

Republican politicians declared him unavailable. "The heart of the country beat for Frémont, but Seward had openly apostatized upon his return from Europe, and his nomination had happily become impossible. The perfidious pretense of a necessity for compromise,' the usual readiness of honest Republicans to accede to 'conservative' demands, gave us Lincoln."

I wish they would concede a little now; we might perhaps succeed better.

"The people accepted him upon trust, and have not yet learned how grievously they were deceived. Succeeding to the Government in 1861, the leaders of the Republican party took hold of power with the feeble grasp of men conscious of their unfitness to rule. They waited for events-they did not make or control events. From 1861 to 1864, in a period of revolution and civil war, in a crisis which should have called forth the loftiest qualities of administrative ability,

the Republican majority in Congress contented itself with merely tiding over temporary difficulties. Campaigns were planned and battles fought, not so much for the purpose of crushing the rebellion as to carry an election in New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. In all those eventful years the voice of a statesman was not heard in the Halls of Congress."

Think of the impudence of the fellow! [Laughter.]

Mr. NYE. He had not read your speeches. Mr. COWAN. I believe the Senator from Nevada was not in the Chamber at the time alluded to.

"Not until Sumner, breaking the bonds of silence imposed upon him by party discipline and the timid policy of his associates, first took up the cause of the people against the Administration on the question of the final recognition of Louisiana, and defeated for the time the purposes of Mr. Lincoln, was there any action taken by the representatives of the Republican party commensurate to the occasions before them.'

I believe that is the same learned Theban who has been doing mischief recently.

"All through the war they had allowed the policy of Mr. Lincoln to prevail, without one word of indignant public protest, with scarcely one instance of the exercise of their prerogatives as the sovereign law-making power of the nation, to arrest the downward course of public affairs."

And so on; it is full of animadversions of that kind.

Now, Mr. President, to get at the secret, what is at the bottom of all this? What is wanted? What will satisfy this Liberty party of 1844, which has been so unfortunate and so much abused and so much thwarted from that day down to the present? What does it want to-day? If negro suffrage will satisfy it, say

So.

If in addition to negro suffrage there must be negro eligibility to office, say so, put it down, make it into a platform. If, in addition to all that, in order to give effect to these rights conferred upon the negro, there must be social equality, put it down and let us know it, let us draw the lines, and it will not take very long to determine with the people which wing of the party is the one they will favor, notwithstanding the immense amount of machinery that is now brought to bear under the name of the representatives of the party.

Again, what is the condition of these States? Are they in or are they out? Put it down. Are their people subject to us, subject to the will of the conqueror, subject to the political forfeitures of which the honorable Senator from Vermont spoke? If that is a plank in your platform, put it down. If the Union is dissolved, if it cannot exist any longer, put it down; let the lines be drawn; but I say, until your programme is announced, until your plataltiyour form is made, until you have stated mates, do not assail the President for leaving his party, do not assail anybody else for leav ing it, after having urged all the measures for having voted against which I have been taken to task, because every one of them is in direct violation of both the Chicago and the Balti more platforms. I may say that the principal item of our Chicago platform which has any relation to the politics of to-day is that the perpetuity of the Union depended on the maintenance of the rights of the States, accompanied, as I said before, with a denunciation of old John Brown and his raid upon Virginia. Who the President? Who attempts to hold them assails the rights of the States to day? Is it within the grasp of a bill of attainder or a bill of pains and penalties by this Congress? Is it the President? Not at all. Sir, the men who stand by the President are those who stand by the principles announced in those platforms, and who have stood upon them; and it is the men who go away after false lights, who wander in dangerous places, who cook up Freedmen's Bureau and civil rights bills, and who get up all these things, to say the very least, of doubtful constitutionality, that depart from the platforms.

Mr. President, I was taken to task here to day very strongly for voting against the repeal of the fugitive slave law. I must confess I did not expect that from my friend. That was "the unkindest cut of all." If I was in the

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