CONGRESS, IT. S. 



235 



the preservation of its liberties, and not upon 

 the extent of its dominion. Standing, there- 

 fore, almost alone in this body, I have lost the 

 hope that I can longer be of service to my 

 country or my State. Xever an ambitious 

 man, the passion of ambition has with the ad- 

 vance of life so diminished that I prefer the 

 repose of private life to the imbittered contests 

 of the political arena in these tempestuous 

 times. 



"I have lived to see the elective franchises 

 trodden under foot in my native State by the 

 iron heel of the soldier, and " Order ~8o. 55," 

 not the people of Delaware, represented in one 

 Hall of Congress. I have lived to see her citi- 

 zens torn from their homes and separated from 

 their families on the warrant of a self-styled 

 detective, without any charge expressed on its 

 face, and without any known accuser; and 

 then, without hearing or trial, these citizens 

 banished from their State, beyond the protec- 

 tion of the laws, into a State in which the laws 

 of the United States are now neither enforced, 

 nor enforceable. Yet in the State of Dela- 

 ware the courts have been always open, and at 

 no period has there existed the semblance of a 

 conspiracy or combination to resist the author- 

 ity of the United States. Such an allegation is 

 a gross calumny, and utterly groundless, come 

 from what source it may. 



" And now, Mr. President, the Senate of the 

 United States have, by their decision enforcing 

 an expurgatory and retrospective test-oath, 

 repugnant to both the letter and spirit of the 

 Constitution, made a precedent which, in my 

 judgment, is eminently dangerous, if not en- 

 tirely subversive of a fundamental principle of 

 representative government. Under these cir- 

 cumstances, with my construction of the Con- 

 stitution, having held the seat, I am bound to 

 submit to your judicial decision as to the valid- 

 ity of the act of July, 1862, and have there- 

 fore taken the oath it prescribes. I cannot 

 doubt that the precedent now made will be 

 followed, and yet 'I regard all test-oaths as 

 useless and demoralizing acts of tyranny. It 

 has been as truly as beautifully said by a bril- 

 liant and distinguished advocate : 



They are the first weapons young oppression learns 

 to handle ; weapons the more odious since, though 

 barbed and poisoned, neither strength nor courage is 

 necessary to wield them. 



"With a firm conviction that your decision 

 inflicts a vital wound upon free representative 

 government, I cannot, by continuing to hold 

 the seat I now occupy under it, give my per- 

 sonal assent and sanction to its propriety. To 

 do so, I must forfeit my own self-respect and 

 sacrifice my clear convictions of duty for the 

 sake merely of retaining a high trust and sta- 

 tion with its emoluments. That will I never 

 3o, but retiring into private life, shall await, I 

 trust, with calmness and firmness, though 

 certainly with despondency, the further pro- 

 gress of a war which it is apparent to my vision 

 will in its continuance subvert republican insti- 



tutions, and sever this Federal Union into many 

 arbitrary governments. 



" Among these, wars for dominion will arise 

 and continue until, from exhaustion, the dif- 

 ferent divisions subside into separate national- 

 ities, leaving not the vestige of a republic re- 

 maining. If the lessons of history be not 

 deceptive and valueless, such will be the inevit- 

 able result of protracted war ; for a single cen- 

 tralized Government over so vast a territory, 

 inhabited by so intelligent and energetic a peo- 

 ple, could it be organized through military 

 genius and power, and be successful for the 

 hour, would not outlive the generation in 

 which it was established. 



"I close these remarks with the language in 

 which a historian of the Constitution so elo- 

 quently portrays the universal sentiment of the 

 American people (alas! how changed now) at 

 the time of its adoption, and the great object 

 they intended to accomplish in thus cementing 

 more firmly a Federal Union : " 



They beheld that republican and constitutional 

 liberty which with all that it comprehends and all 

 it bestows was not only altogether lovely in their 

 eyes, but without which there could be no peace, no 

 social order, no tranquillity, and no safety for them 

 and their posterity. 



This liberty they knew must be preserved. They 

 loved it with a passionate devotion. They had been 

 trained for it through a long and exhausting war. 

 Their habits of thought and action, their cherished 



Erinciples, their hopes, their life as a people, were all 

 ound up in it ; and they knew that if they suflered 

 it to be lost, there would remain for them nothing 

 but a heritage of shame and ages of confusion, strife, 

 and sorrow. 



In the Senate on Feb. 26th, a bill proposing 

 to repeal the law which prohibits colored peo- 

 ple from being employed as carriers of the 

 mail, which was reported from the Committee 

 on Post Offices and Post Roads with an amend- 

 ment, was considered. The amendment was as 

 follows : 



SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That in the courts 

 of the United States there shall be no exclusion of 

 any witness on account of color. 



Mr. Collamer, of Vermont, said : "In rela- 

 tion to the bill, it is sufficiently explicit in itself; 

 but the committee were of the opinion that if 

 persons of color were to be employed and ren- 

 dered eligible to be employed as carriers of the 

 mail by those who have contracted to carry the 

 mail and who wish to employ them, it would 

 be unsafe to commit to their hands the mail, 

 when they could not themselves be witnesses 

 against those who should violate that mail, 

 steal it, rob it, commit depredations on it. In- 

 asmuch as in many of the States persons of 

 color cannot be witnesses in the courts, we 

 thought it was necessary to add this section to 

 make them witnesses in the United States 

 courts, iu order to render the bill safe to the 

 community. 



" By our general law, the rules of evidence in 

 the courts of the United States are the same as 

 those existing in the particular State in which 



