266 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



vote, to decline to count the vote of Louisiana 

 that had been cast for a person for President in 

 direct conflict with the spirit and the letter of 

 the Constitution? It certainly would. The 

 vote must be counted. How can it be counted 

 until it is ascertained? The vote must be 

 identified. It must be identified, and as- 

 certained in obedience to certain principles 

 of the Constitution. One of those principles 

 is that the candidate voted for must be thirty- 

 five years of age; another is that he must 

 have been a citizen of the United States at 

 the time the Constitution was adopted, or he 

 must be a native-born citizen. Any vote cast 

 in opposition to these plain and palpable pro- 

 visions of the Constitution would be null and 

 void ; it would not be a vote for President in 

 conformity to the Constitution, and therefore 

 it would be void. To ascertain whether this 

 vote is so cast or not, the two Houses of Con- 

 gress, acting in the count of the vote, must de- 

 cide whether any State has voted for a man 

 under thirty-five years of age, or voted for an 

 alien, against the provisions of the Constitution. 

 They are to ascertain whether such votes have 

 been given or not, before they can make a con- 

 stitutional count of the votes. 



" Now, sir, as I understand the effect of this 

 joint resolution, it is simply in a form to do 

 that duty; that is, to ascertain whether the 

 vote of certain States has been cast in conform- 

 ity to the Constitution or not, and deciding 

 that they have not been cast in conformity to 

 the Constitution, to exclude them from the 

 count." 



Mr. Powell, of Kentucky, said : " I believe 

 that the States in revolt are still States of the 

 Union. I believe they are not out of the Union. 

 I believe, furthermore, that when they choose 

 to lay down their arms, and to elect officers of 

 their State governments who acknowledge this 

 Government, and to send members to the House 

 of Representatives, and Senators to this cham- 

 ber, they have the right to do so, and I believe 

 that they ought to be permitted to do so. 

 While I say that, I know of course that each 

 House is the judge of the qualifications of its 

 members, and each House is to judge for itself 

 whether the resistance to the Government in 

 any State has sufficiently ceased to entitle it to 

 representation here, and hence it is that each 

 case must stand upon its own merits as it is 

 presented here. For myself, I would vote to- 

 morrow to receive Senators in this hall from 

 every State that is in revolt, provided I be- 

 lieved that a majority of the people of those 

 States, unawed by the military power, unin- 

 fluenced by any outward force, of their own 

 good will, in the exercise of their own volition, 

 had in good faith elected those men in the way 

 prescribed by their constitution and laws. I 

 think, whenever they manifest such disposition 

 to return, a majority of the people will indicate 

 that it is our duty to allow them to return. 

 We, of course, and the other House, must be 

 the judges of that matter to a great extent ; we 



must sit in judgment upon each case ; and we 

 must decide whether or not a majority of the 

 people of the State have ceased their resistance 

 to the authority of the United States, and 

 whether or not the parties who present them- 

 selves were elected by the free suffrages of 

 those people, unawed by the military or any 

 other power." 



Mr. Cowan: "Allow me to ask the honor 

 able Senator what he would do if a majority of 

 the people of a State were to establish a mon 

 archy?" 



Mr. Powell : " The Constitution guarantees a 

 republican form of government." 



Mr. Cowan : " The inquiry which I put to 

 the Senator from Kentucky I think is one which 

 reaches to the very marrow of this question. 

 The people of a State are divided ; about half 

 of them desire to preserve their connection 

 with the Union, to give it their allegiance ; but 

 the other portion, say a majority, refuse, and 

 insist upon secession. We are bound by the 

 Constitution to preserve the Union and to pre- 

 serve the rights of the people under union ; not 

 merely the rights of a majority, but the rights 

 of the people, of all the people, and of any num- 

 ber of the people, however small. What are 

 we to do ? A minority of the people come for- 

 ward and say, ' If you aid us for awhile, we can 

 preserve this State and keep her in the Union.' 

 'But no,' according to the doctrine advanced 

 here, ' there must be a majority of you before 

 we can recognize you as in the Union.' Sup- 

 pose they answer you, 'The majority, by per- 

 sisting in abandoning the Union, can destroy 

 forever the State and deprive us of our rights 

 which were guaranteed to us as a portion of the 

 people of the State.' 



" A portion of the people of Louisiana come 

 here and say, ' We are loyal, we owe you al- 

 legiance, we have a State government organ- 

 ized and in operation, and if you will aid and' 

 assist us we will keep it in organization and 

 operation, and we will control and dominate 

 after a time the rebels and secessionists.' What 

 is it proposed to answer to them ? ' You can- 

 not come back ; there are not enough of you.' 

 That will be very poor encouragement for the 

 loyal men of the rebel States to try and bring 

 back their people to reason, and it presumes 

 another thing that never was true that the 

 people, the masses of a country under circum- 

 stances like those which surround us, ever were 

 in rebellion. The masses of the people even in 

 the Southern States never were in rebellion 

 against the Government of the United States. 

 They never could have been. The mas^s 

 never go into rebellion unless they have wrongs 

 to redress andTinjuries to avenge. That \\ as 

 not the case in this rebellion. It is a rebellion 

 of leaders, and the masses are deluded away l>y 

 falsehoods industriously circulated everywhere, 

 and inflammatory speeches made. It is impos- 

 sible for them to get back unlejs we create 

 some such scaffolding in the rebel States as 

 these governments of Arkansas and Louisiana 



