CONGRESS, U. S. 



291 



Mr. Cowan: "Pray for just such a statesman 

 as the honorable Senator from Ohio, the most 

 effective ally he ever had or could have. 



u He would have prayed for measures on our 

 part which were obnoxious to all people of the 

 South, loyal and disloyal, Union and disunion. 

 He would have prayed that we should outrage 

 all their common prejudices and cherished be- 

 liefs ; that we should do these things by giving 

 ourselves over to the guidance of men whom it 

 \vu> part of their religion to hate ; to hate per- 

 sonally and by name, with an intensity rarely 

 witnessed in the world before. He would have 

 prayed for confiscation general and indiscrimi- 

 nate ; threatening as well the victims of the 

 usurpation as the usurpers themselves ; as well 

 those we were bound to rescue as those we 

 were bound to punish. Fervently he would 

 have prayed for our emancipation laws and 

 proclamations as means to fire the southern 

 heart more potent than all others ; they would 

 rally the angry population to his standard of 

 revolt as if each had a personal quarrel. He 

 woald then have a united South ; while as the 

 result of the same measures a distracted and 

 divided Xorth. 



"That is the way I think he would have 

 prayed and would pray now. Is any man so 

 stupid as not to know that the great desire on 

 the part of every rebel is to embark in revolt 

 with him the whole people of the disaffected 

 districts? Is not and has not that been con- 

 sidered enough to insure success to him ? And 

 where does history show the failure of any 

 united people, numbering five or six millions, 

 when they engaged in revolution ? Xowhere ; 

 there is no such case. 



What did we do to bring this unity about in 

 the South ? We forgot our first resolve in July, 

 1861, to restore the Union alone, and we went 

 further and gave out that we would also abol- 

 ish slavery. Xow that was just exactly the 

 point upon which all southern men were most 

 tender, and at which they were most prone to 

 be alarmed and offended. That was of all 

 things the one best calculated to make them 

 of one mind against us ; there was no other 

 measure, indeed, which could have lost to the 

 Union cause so many of them. It is not a 

 question, either, as to whether they were right 

 or wrong that was matter for their considera- 

 tion, not ours for if we were so desirous of a 

 union with them we ought not to have ex- 

 pected them to give up their most cherished 

 institutions in order to effect it. Unions are 

 made by people taking one another as they 

 are, and I think it has never yet occurred to 

 any man who was anxious to form a partner- 

 ship with another that he should first attempt 

 to force that other either to change his religion 

 or his politics. Is not the answer obvious; 

 would not the other say to him, 'If you do 

 not like my principles why do you wish to be 

 partner with me ? Have 1 not as good a right 

 to ask you to change yours as a condition prece- 

 dent I '* 



" So it was with the southern people ; they 

 were all in favor of slavery, but one-half of 

 them were still for imion Avith us as before, be- 

 cause they did not believe we were abolition- 

 The other half were in open rebellion 

 because they did believe it. Xow, can any one 

 conceive of greater folly on our part than that 

 wo should destroy the faith of our friends and 

 verify that of our enemies ? Could not any- 

 body have foretold we would have lost one- 

 half by that, and then we would have no one 

 left to form a union with? We drove that 

 half over to the rebels and thereby increased 

 their strength a thousand-fold. 



" Is not all this history now ? The great fact 

 is staring us full in the face to-day ; we are con- 

 tending with a united people desperately in 

 earnest to resist us. Our most powerful armies 

 most skilfully led have heretofore failed to con- 

 quer them, and I think will fail as long as we 

 pursue this fatal policy. 



"Xow, Mr. President, I appeal to Senators 

 whether it is not time to pause and inquire 

 whether that policy which has certainly united 

 the southern people in their cause and which 

 quite as certainly has divided the northern peo- 

 ple in their support of ours, ought not to be 

 abandoned at once. Why persist in it longer? 

 Can we do nothing to retrieve our fortune by 

 retracing our steps ? Can we not divide the 

 rebels and unite the loyal men of the loyal 

 States by going back to the single idea of war 

 for the Union ; or is it now too late? Have we 

 lost irrevocably our hold on the affections of 

 our countrymen who were for the Union in 

 1861 even in 1862? Is there no way by 

 which we could satisfy them that we yet mean 

 union, and not conquest and subjugation? And 

 what a difference in the meaning of those two 

 phrases ! The first offers the hand of a brother, 

 the second threatens the yoke of a master. 

 Or are we obliged now to exchange the hopes 

 we had of southern Union men for that other 

 and miserable hope in the negro ? Is he all 

 that is left of loyalty in the South, and the only 

 ally we can rely upon to aid us in restoring the 

 Union ? Ye gods ! what have we come to at 

 last i Either to yield to an unholy rebellion, 

 to dismember an empire, or to go into national 

 companionship with the negro. Is this the 

 alternative to which our madness has brought 



08* 



" Mr. President, these things are enough to 

 drive a sane man mad. After all our preten- 

 sion, all our boasting, how absurd will we ap- 

 pear in the eyes of all other nations if we fail 

 in this struggle ? Especially as almost all the 

 measures about which we have occupied our- 

 selves for the last three years have been based 

 upon our success already assumed as a fixed 

 fact. We provided for confiscating the estates 

 of rebels before we got possession ; we eman- 

 cipated slaves before we got theii from their 

 masters, and we provided for the disposition of 

 conquests we have not made ; we have disposed 

 of the skin of the bear and the bear itself is yet 



