CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



233 



a right to rely upon it that the members of 

 the committee, including my friend from Ohio, 

 were under the impression that the President 

 of the United States would take all proper steps 

 to arrest these barbarous acts as against our 

 own men. 



" Now, assuming as I do, notwithstanding 

 what has fallen from the Senator from Connec- 

 ticut, that the barbarities spoken of in the res- 

 olution now before the Senate were practised 

 some time ago, that we have no evidence that 

 they are now being repeated, I submit as a 

 clear proposition of national law that what- 

 ever may be the extent of the right to retaliate 

 in order to prevent continuing outrages, it does 

 not apply to a case of antecedent outrages, be- 

 cause so to apply it is to punish what is past 

 and not for the purpose of preventing the recur- 

 rence of the same things in the future. It is 

 (if the honorable member will permit me so to 

 say) revenge, and not retaliation. Conceding 

 for argument's sake, and I make the concession 

 only for that purpose, that there exists a right 

 under the laws of nations to starve the prison- 

 ers who are in our hand's, to torture them short 

 of starvation, to subject them to the inclemency 

 of the weather and to kill them by force of the 

 elements, or to use as against them every pos- 

 sible mode of human torture to which the inge- 

 nuity of man may resort; assuming that such 

 power exists under the laws of nations, I think 

 I am .safe in saying that that power lias never 

 been exerted for the purpose merely of punish- 

 ing prior outrages of the same description. 



" I come to the proposition as reported from 

 the committee, which is almost precisely the 

 same in words, and is substantially identical 

 with the original resolution offered by the mem- 

 ber from Ohio, except that it omits the provi- 

 sion that the officer is to be dismissed if he does 

 not perform his duty, and announces to the 

 President that it is not the purpose of Congress 

 in passing the resolution to make it obligatory 

 upon him ; but we are asked to say to him that 

 it is his duty to resort to this measure. We are 

 to tell him that a resort to this measure is ab- 

 solutely necessary in order to put an end to the 

 barbarities being practised upon our own prison- 

 ers; and under some doubt I do not stop to 

 inquire whether it was well founded or not 

 of the authority of Congress by legislation to 

 interfere with the President at all in relation 

 to such duties as are stated in this resolution, 

 it concludes with saying that it is to be under- 

 stood merely as advising the President, and not 

 as controlling him. Advising him to do what ? 

 The honorable member from Missouri (Mr. 

 Brown), whom I do not now see in his seat, 

 the other day said that it was not the purpose 

 of the committee to suggest to the President the 

 propriety of proceeding at once to the execution 

 of this duty of retaliation ; and he found, as he 

 supposed, a reason for that construction in the 

 latter clause of the resolution, which declares 

 that the resolution itself is designed to be merely 

 advisory to the President. That is true ; but 



what is the advice ? What are we asked to do? 

 What is every individual Senator asked to do ? 

 To advise the President that in our opinion he 

 should proceed at once to starve, to torture, to 

 assassinate, to freeze to death the prisoners 

 who are in our hands ; and every other mode 

 of dealing such as our prisoners have been, 

 treated with in the hands of the insurgents. 

 The President is advised to do that at once. 



" Now, is it expedient to exert it even if we 

 have the legal power to exert it? The honora- 

 ble member assumes that the starvation of the 

 four or five thousand, or the twenty or thirty 

 thousand, or whatever may be the number of 

 prisoners now in our hands, will prevent the 

 starvation of the thousands who are in the 

 hands of the enemy or may hereafter come into 

 the hands of the rebel enemy. Does he know 

 it ? Who can ? If the rebel government was 

 privy to the enormities practised upon our pris- 

 oners, they are to be restrained by no moral 

 restraint. Everybody will concede that. They 

 are brutes in the form of man ; they are sav- 

 ages worse than the wildest Indian that ever ran 

 loose on the prairies; and nothing like moral 

 restraint will prevent their continuing these 

 barbarities. Suppose they do ; are we to con- 

 tinue them? Then what will the world say? 

 What would any man say if he had the power 

 in his own hands ? What will the voice of 

 Christian civilization say? That such barbari- 

 ties must be arrested. Other nations have an 

 interest in it. They cannot stand by and see 

 the people of the United States become a band 

 of savages, not fighting in honorable warfare, 

 meeting the foe face to face, but after he has 

 succumbed and yielded to the power exerted 

 against him by either side and gets into the 

 hands of either party, the work of extermina- 

 tion is to begin in the most odious and disgust- 

 ing form ever known to civilized man. Would 

 not one man, if a Christian, having the power, 

 arrest it ? Who can doubt that ? Will not the 

 nations of Christendom be called upon to arrest 

 it ? Will the God of justice fail to proclaim 

 that it is their duty to arrest it ? 



" But then what is to become of the Union ? 

 Where is the struggle to end ? From the first 

 I never doubted how it would end if conducted 

 upon high, elevated principle. I never for a 

 moment questioned that the time would come, 

 and as I think it should have come before, and 

 would have v come before if the armies of the 

 United States had been properly used, but that 

 the time was sure to come when the rebellion 

 would be frustrated and the authority of the Gov- 

 ernment reinstated; and no matter what may 

 happen, no matter what course from time to time 

 the United States or the rebels may adopt, I 

 shall continue to entertain the same expecta- 

 tion, and shall continue till the last ray of hope 

 is extinguished in the darkness of perpetual 

 night. But let us turn as against each other 

 the arts of the savage ; let us proclaim war to 

 the knife, and, what is but little worse, a resort 

 to such measures as are contemplated by this 



