CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



resolution, and the other side continue to meet 

 us in the same way I speak it with due re- 

 spect to those who entertain a different opinion 

 about this resolution we shall no longer have 

 the support of the God of justice; the war 

 ought to cease ; the destruction of the Union, 

 the end of the freest constitutional Government 

 that ever existed will have come, and ought to 

 come if it is to be supported only by a resort to 

 savage methods." 



Mr. Sumner followed, in opposition to the 

 measure, saying : " The committee, not content 

 with what has been done distrustful, perhaps, 

 of the commanding general have proposed 

 that Congress shall instruct the President to 

 enter upon a system of retaliation, where we 

 shall imitate as precisely as possible rebel bar- 

 barism, and make our prisons the same scenes 

 of torment which we denounce. Why, sir, to 

 state the case is to answer it. The Senator 

 from Michigan who advocates so eloquently 

 this unprecedented retaliation attempted a de- 

 scription of the torments of the rebel prisons ; 

 but language failed him. After speaking of 

 their ' immeasurable criminality ' and ' the 

 horrors of these scenes,' which he said were 

 'absolutely indescribable,' he proceeded to ask 

 that we should do these same things ; that we 

 should take the lives of prisoners, even by freez- 

 ing and starvation, or turn them into living 

 skeletons by act of Congress. 



" Sir, the law of retaliation, which he in- 

 vokes, has its limits, and these are found in the 

 laws of civilized society. Admit the law of re- 

 taliation ; but you cannot escape from its cir- 

 cumscription. As well undertake to escape 

 from the planet on which we live. What civ- 

 ilization forbids cannot be done. Your enemy 

 may be barbarous and cruel, but you cannot be 

 barbarous and cruel. The rule is clear and un- 

 questionable. Perhaps the true principle of 

 law on this precise question was never better 

 expressed than by one of our masters, Shak- 

 speare, jurist as well as poet, when he makes 

 Macbeth exclaim : 



' I dare do all that may become a man ; 

 Who dares do more is none.' 



So with us now. We are permitted to do all 

 that may become a man ; but nothing more. 



Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, followed, say- 

 ing, relative to the exchange of colored troops : 

 " The Senator from Kentucky, if I understood 

 him, I will not undertake to give his words, but 

 the idea, said, in substance, that if the only ob- 

 struction to the exchange of prisoners grows 

 out of a refusal on the part of the rebels to ex- 

 change colored prisoners, the exchange ought 

 to go on nevertheless, and the colored prisoners 

 left in prison or in confinement ; and I under- 

 stood the Senator from Maryland to make sub- 

 stantially the same averment : that if the treat- 

 ment of our colored prisoners was the only 

 obstacle in the way of these exchanges, they 

 ought to be left in prison." 



Mr. Davis : " The honorable Senator did not 



state me exactly right. My position was this . 

 that if any class of Union prisoners, without 

 regard to color, could be exchanged by our 

 Government, it was the duty of our Govern- 

 ment to make the exchange, and not to permit 

 the fact that another class of prisoners cannot 

 be exchanged to be an obstacle to the exchange 

 of those who can be exchanged, and that with- 

 out regard to color." 



Mr. Hale : " That is a modified statement of 

 the position, but the sentiment is the same. 

 That statement, that opinion, and that position 

 I deny utterly. If this Government, having 

 called to its defence this most defenceless class, 

 a class who are without rights, without the 

 right to protect themselves or the right to seek 

 protection under a Government of law if this 

 Government, in this gigantic struggle for its 

 existence, has called upon that defenceless por- 

 tion of its people to come into the ranks and 

 fight its battles, if there is one 'duty on earth 

 binding above all other duties upon this Gov- 

 ernment, it is to see that every protection con- 

 sistent with the state of war and the laws of 

 war and the rights of war are extended to that 

 defenceless portion of our soldiery. Sir, look 

 at them. What are they ? The highest judicial 

 tribunal of the land has said they were a class 

 with no rights that white men were bound to 

 respect ; they were the outcasts and the down- 

 trodden of earth ; the common rights of hu- 

 manity denied to them ; holden, instead of be- 

 ing considered as men, like beasts of burden, 

 and sold like them on the auction block. This 

 country, in its hour of necessity and emergency, 

 has called upon these men, and they have come 

 forward ; and the testimony of all your officers 

 is that they have fought with a courage, a her- 

 oism, a bravery, and a devotion unsurpassed 

 by any of your soldiers. The proposition that 

 if they be captured and held by the rebels as 

 prisoners they may be neglected and overlooked 

 in any contingency, is to ray mind monstrous, 

 and would stamp this Government before all 

 posterity and all time as guilty of the most in- 

 famous position they could take. When you 

 called a black man into your army, when you 

 gave him your uniform and made him a soldier, 

 he became a soldier to all intents and purposes ; 

 and if there is one class more than another that 

 has a right in the hour of its distress to appeal 

 to the Government for protection, it is that 

 most helpless and most defenceless class that 

 you have put into your army. I say that if the 

 Government, in its negotiations for exchanges, 

 consents to the shadow of a shade of difference 

 that shall operate to the disadvantage of the 

 colored soldiersthey are treacherous to the 

 highest trusts that have been confided to them, 

 and false and recreant to the first principles of 

 duty which the position of these men imposes 

 upon the Government. 



"I desire to make these remarks in order 

 that this sentiment might not go out unchal 

 lenged before the country. I repeat again that 

 in proportion to their defenceless position they 



