CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



251 



officials, from the highest judicial officer to the 

 lowest constable in a parish, town, or county, 

 the President may appoint just as many of them 

 as he pleases, and from what part of the coun- 

 try he pleases. There is no provision in this 

 bill that they shall even be residents of the 

 State over which they are, by this bill, to ad- 

 minister its provisions and to execute the laws 

 of the State. An army of officers, in one para- 

 graph of four lines, is here created, subject to 

 the sole authority and control of the President 

 of the United States. 



" Sir, this bill authorizes and requires the 

 provisional governor to levy the whole body of 

 the taxes, in sum total assessed and provided by 

 law, in the year next preceding the rebellion, 

 on these people. And, sir, upon what sort of 

 people ? Upon a people, to begin with, that are 

 beggars and seekers of alms at this day, depend- 

 ent upon the charity, the noble and boundless 

 charity of the North, to keep them from starva- 

 tion. Their houses have been burned, their 

 lands have been laid desolate, the sources of 

 their industry have been destroyed or dried up. 

 They are wanderers in their own land, homeless 

 and houseless. And upon such a people, with 

 all the new circumstances that rebellion and its 

 effects, and the march of armies, fire, and plun- 

 der, have visited upon it, it is proposed to levy 

 yes, sir, levy in this year of our Lord 1865, 

 and every succeeding year thereafter, the pre- 

 cise sum which constituted the whole body of 

 the taxes assessed upon them for all purposes 

 whatever the last year before they went into 

 rebellion. Sir, the condition of these people, 

 upon whom this gross sum is to be assessed, for 

 wretchedness and for inability to sustain even 

 their lives, much less pay taxes, passes all de- 

 scription. I know nothing that more nearly 

 comes up to a just description of that condition 

 than Burke's glowing and inimitable description 

 of the awful devastation which followed when 

 Hyder Ali marched his conquering army over 

 the Carnatic. Upon this people, as unlike in 

 every thing that constitutes a people capable of 

 paying taxes, that people which they were when 

 the taxes were originally imposed upon them 

 as a beggar is unlike a prince, it is proposed 

 nevertheless to impose and levy these taxes, and 

 call upon this innumerable army of imported 

 officeholders to collect and wrench them as the 

 last drop of life-blood from shrivelled bodies. 



" I have thus far considered one of the two 

 branches into which this bill is divided that 

 which proposes to establish over them a present 

 system of government. How long does this bill 

 propose to continue that system over them ? In 

 the first place, just so long as the provisional 

 governor shall see fit to have it maintained. It 

 is left by this bill itself discretionary with the 

 provisional governor himself to determine when 

 lie will institute the first initiatory steps of 

 measures calculated to bring out of this state of 

 things a new form of government. The bill 

 says that when the people of any State ' shall have 

 sutSciently returned to their obedience' this 



provisional governor shall institute steps for a 

 State government, making no provision except 

 his own opinion for determining this point. Be- 

 fore he will institute the first step, it is in his 

 discretion to say whether the people ' shall have 

 sufficiently returned to their obedience.' With 

 his place and the places of the whole army of 

 office-holders under him at stake, it will not be 

 soon, I think, were there no other obstacle in 

 the way ; it will be no immediate period that 

 this governor will come to the conclusion that 

 the people have been sufficiently subdued for 

 him to take the initiatory steps to form a State 

 government. 



"But there is another limitation upon the 

 proceeding. Even if the provisional governor 

 should come to be willing in the course of events, 

 to take these initiatory steps, this bill goes on 

 to say that those proceedings shall depend upon 

 another question, that is, whether a majority 

 of the people in the State have of their own 

 choice signified their loyalty by taking the oath 

 of allegiance. Under this bill, it does not de- 

 pend upon the wish of the loyal people to have 

 a government of their own ; it depends upon 

 the wish of the disloyal people. So long as the 

 disloyal people can keep a majority on their 

 side, they can dictate what sort of a government 

 they shall have. In the early part of this rebel- 

 lion there was no uncertain voice on this side 

 of the House. It was held that upon the loyal 

 people, and upon the loyal people alone, were 

 to be reposed the functions of government ; that 

 they were to hold the elective franchise ; they 

 to determine the character of the government ; 

 and that rebels were only to be ' counted ' that 

 we might know what force may be necessary 

 for their subjection. But, sir, under the ad- 

 ministration of these men this army of foreign 

 officers, from him who sits in the high court 

 of judicature, passing upon the rights of the 

 people, down to the most insignificant official 

 how long, under such instruction as that, I sub- 

 mit to my distinguished friend, will it be before 

 that majority are won back to signify their de- 

 sire to exchange this form of government which 

 he imposes for one of their own making ? 



Mr. Edgerton, of Indiana, in opposition to 

 the bill, said : " Before considering the leading 

 provisions and character of this bill I propose 

 to look briefly at its history. The forerunner 

 of this measure of legislation, so far as this 

 House is concerned, may be found in the terri- 

 torial bill reported by the gentleman from Ohio 

 (Mr. Ashley) from the Committee on Territo- 

 ries in the Thirty-seventh Congress, in March, 

 1862. It was aptly termed at the time by tho 

 gentleman's colleague from the Cincinnati dis- 

 trict of Ohio (Mr. Pendleton), ' A bill to dissolve 

 the Union and abolish the Constitution of the 

 United States.' The bill was summarily, if not 

 indignantly, rejected by the House without a 

 second reading But, sir, men and events have 

 since changed, if the Constitution of the United 

 States has not changed, and the stone of revo- 

 lutionary reconstruction then rejected by the 



