294 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



President may be elected in such State. Until 

 reorganization, the Provisional Governor shall 

 enforce the laws of the Union, and of the State 

 before rebellion. 

 The remaining sections are as follows : 



SEC. 12. That all persons held to involuntary ser- 

 vitude or labor in the States aforesaid are hereby 

 emancipated and discharged therefrom, and they and 

 their posterity shall be forever free. And if any 

 such person or their posterity shall be restrained of 

 liberty, under pretence of any claim to such service 

 or labor, the courts of the United States shall on 

 habeas corpus discharge them. 



SEC. 13. That if any person declared free by this 

 act, or any law of the United States, or any procla- 

 mation of the President, be restrained of liberty, with 

 intent to be held in, or restored to involuntary labor, 

 the person convicted before a court of competent 

 jurisdiction of such act shall be punished by fine of 

 not less than $1,500 and be imprisoned not less than 

 five nor more than twenty years. 



SEC. 14. That every person who shall hereafter 

 hold or exercise any office civil or military except 

 offices merely ministerial and military offices below 

 the grade of colonel, in the rebel service, State, or 

 Confederate, is hereby declared not to be a citizen of 

 the United States. 



Mr. Davis, of Maryland, said : " Mr. Speaker, 

 the bill which I am directed by the Committee 

 on the rebellious States to report is one which 

 provides for the restoration of civil government 

 in States whose governments have been over- 

 thrown. It prescribes such conditions as will 

 secure not merely civil government to the people 

 of the rebellious States, but will also secure to 

 the people of the United States permanent peace 

 after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill 

 challenges the support of all who consider sla- 

 very the cause of the rebellion, and that in it 

 the embers of rebellion will always smolder; 

 of those who think that freedom and perma- 

 nent peace are inseparable, and who are deter- 

 mined, so far as their constitutional authority 

 will allow them, to secure these fruits by ade- 

 quate legislation. The vote of gentlemen iipon 

 this measure will be regarded by the country 

 with no ordinary interest. Their vote will be 

 taken to express their opinion on the necessity 

 of ending slavery with the rebellion, and their 

 willingness to assume the responsibility of 

 adopting the legislative measures without 

 which that result cannot be assured, and may 

 wholly fail of accomplishment. Their vote will 

 be held to show whether they think the meas- 

 ure now proposed, or any which may be moved 

 as a substitute, is an adequate and proper meas- 

 ure to accomplish that purpose. It is entitled 

 to the support of all gentlemen upon this side 

 of the House, whatever their views may be of 

 the nature of the rebellion, and the relation in 

 which it has placed the people and States in 

 rebellion toward the United States ; not less of 

 those who think that the rebellion has placed 

 the citizens of the rebel States beyond the pro- 

 tection of the Constitution, and that Congress, 

 therefore, has supreme power over them as con- 

 quered enemies, than of that other class who 

 think that they have not ceased to be citizens 

 and States of the United States, though incapa- 



ble of exercising political privileges under the 

 Constitution, but that Congress is charged with 

 a high political power by the Constitution to 

 guaranty republican governments in the States, 

 and that this is the proper time and the proper 

 mode of exercising it. It is also entitled to the 

 favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the 

 other side of the House who honestly and de- 

 liberately express their judgment that slavery 

 is dead. To them it puts the question whether 

 it is not advisable to bury it out of sight that 

 its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to frighten 

 us from our propriety. 



" What is the nature of this case with which 

 we have to deal the evil we must remedy, 

 the danger we must avert? In other words, 

 what is that monster of political wrong which 

 is called secession ? It is not, Mr. Speaker, do- 

 mestic violence, within the meaning of that 

 clause of the Constitution, for the violence 

 was the act of the people of the States through 

 their government, and was the offspring of 

 their free and unforced will. It is not inva- 

 sion, in the meaning of the Constitution, for 

 no State has been invaded against the will of 

 the government of the State by any Power ex- 

 cept the United States marching to overthrow 

 the usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, 

 the act of the people of the States, carrying 

 with it all the consequences of such an act. 

 And therefore it must be either a legal revolu- 

 tion which makes them independent, and makes 

 of the United States a foreign country, or it is 

 a usurpation against the authority of the Uni- 

 ted States, the erection of governments which 

 do not recognize the Constitution of the Uni- 

 ted States, which the Constitution does not 

 recognize, and, therefore, not republican gov- 

 ernments of the States in rebellion. The lat- 

 ter is the view which all parties take of it. I 

 do not understand that any gentleman on the 

 other side of the House says that any rebel 

 government which does not recognize the Con- 

 stitution of the United States, and which is 

 not recognized by Congress, is a State govern- 

 ment within the meaning of the Constitution. 

 Still less can it be said that there is a State 

 government, republican or unrepublican, in the 

 State of Tennessee, where there is no govern- 

 ment of any kind, no civil authority, no organ- 

 ized form of administration except that repre- 

 sented by the flag of the United States, obeying 

 the will and under the orders of the military 

 officer in command. It is the language of the 

 President of the United States in every procla- 

 mation, of Congress in every law on the stat- 

 ute-book, of both Houses in their forms of 

 proceeding, and of the courts of the United 

 States in their administration of the law. It 

 is the result of every principle of law, of every 

 suggestion of political philosophy, that there 

 can be no republican government within the 

 limits of the United States that does not recog- 

 nize, but does repudiate, the Constitution, and 

 which the President and the Congress of the 

 United States do not, on their part, recognize. 



