336 



CONGRESS, U. S. 



celling out the State of South Carolina among 

 the negroes and enterprising Yankees of Mas- 

 sachusetts, gives courage, energy, and enthu- 

 siasm to the men now in arms in the confed- 

 erate States. The order of the President to 

 his military commanders in Louisiana and 

 Arkansas, and the order issued in pursuance 

 thereof by General Banks to the people of 

 Louisiana, in which, by a single dash of his 

 pen, he strikes out of existence the constitu- 

 tion and organic law of the State, and by vir- 

 tue of the power vested in him as a major 

 general proceeds to call and hold an election 

 and inaugurate State officers, and set up a 

 State government, and the legislation consum- 

 mated and proposed by Congress and speeches 

 made upon this floor, in support of radicalism, 

 is strengthening the confederacy and prolong- 

 ing the war. Herein, sir, is where they find 

 strength ; the true friends of the confederacy 

 in the North are the radical abolitionists and 

 the radical press goading on the President to 

 issue proclamations and military orders, which 

 provide food, raiment, strength, and support 

 for the confederacy. 



" If Mr. Lincoln had made a gift of millions 

 of greenbacks to Jefferson Davis to be used as 

 bounty money in recruiting the confederate 

 army, he could not have done better service 

 to the cause of the South than he has done by 

 his silly, absurd, and insulting amnesty procla- 

 mation, and his equally absurd attempt to 

 create State governments by dictatorial power. 

 He has, in effect, said to the southern people, 

 ' You shall not return to the Union except 

 under such local governments as I and my 

 military officers dictate ; ' and with the aid of 

 his friends in Congress he is enabled to add : 

 ' In the event of your submission and return, 

 your estates shall be confiscated, your proper- 

 ty, personal and real, shall be taken from you ; 

 your children shall be disinherited and left 

 homeless and penniless to starve, under the 

 scorn and hatred of northern fanatics ; your 

 lands and manor houses shall be parcelled out 

 among our retainers ; the negro (freedman) 

 and the adventurer shall sit and rule at your 

 hearthstones ; and you, beggars and outcasts, 

 shall be forbidden representation in our na- 

 tional councils, and be shut out forever from 

 all offices of trust and honor.' Such is the 

 language in which Mr. Lincoln and this Con- 

 gress and the preceding Congress have spoken 

 and are speaking to the people of the South. 

 And now, sir, with such a prospect before 

 them as the sequel of submission, outlawry, 

 disfranchisement, social, moral, and political 

 degradation, penury for themselves and their 

 children, decreed as their portion, will they 

 throw down their arms and submit to the 

 terms ? Who shall believe that the free, proud 

 American blood, which courses with as quick 

 pulsation through their veins as our own, will 

 not be spilled to the last drop in resistance ? 

 This is the source, sir, from whence comes 

 encouragement, strength, support, and susten- 



ance for the confederates ; herein lies the 

 secret of the unity of their action, the prolon- 

 gation of the contest, and the desperation of 

 the conflict, produced, not by any thing said or 

 measures proposed by gentlemen upon this 

 side of the House, or by any measures proposed 

 or policy advocated by the Democratic party, 

 but by the acts of the gentlemen who make 

 the charges, and the President and his military 

 commanders, who issue the proclamations and 

 military orders. 



" Mr. Chairman, I have deemed it proper 

 thus to advert to the charges of encouragement 

 to the confederates so repeatedly made upon 

 this floor, and I again recur to the considera- 

 tion of the Union. Can the Union be restored 

 by war? I answer most unhesitatingly and 

 deliberately, No, never ; ' war is final, eternal 

 separation? My first and highest ground of 

 opposition to its further prosecution is, that it 

 is wrong ; it is in violation of the Constitution 

 and of the fundamental principles on which 

 the federal Union was founded. My second 

 objection is, that as a policy it is not recon- 

 structive but destructive, and will, if continued, 

 result speedily in the destruction of the Gov- 

 ernment and the loss of civil liberty, to both 

 North and South, and it ought, therefore, to 

 immediately cease. 



" In order, Mr. Chairman, that we may 

 know what views were entertained upon the 

 right, as well as the expediency, of coercing 

 States into submission, by some of the depart- 

 ed as well as living statesmen of the country, 

 previous to the commencement of the present 

 war, I propose to call the attention of the 

 House and the country to a few extracts which, 

 to my mind, are worthy of consideration at 

 this time. 



In 1827, during the administration of Mr. 

 John Quincy Adams, when the Legislature of 

 Georgia had passed an act setting aside the 

 laws of Congress regulating intercourse with 

 the Indian tribes within her limits, the mes- 

 sages of the President, of the 5th and 8th of 

 February, 1827, in relation thereto, were re- 

 ferred to a select committee of the Senate, of 

 which Colonel Benton was chairman, and of 

 which Martin Van Buren and General William 

 H. Harrison,-both afterward Presidents of the 

 United States, were members. The committee 

 in their report (Senate Documents, second ses- 

 sion Nineteenth Congress, Document No. 69) 

 say: 



It is believed to be among those axioms, which in 

 a government like ours no man may be permitted to 

 dispute, that the only security for the permanent 

 union of these States is to be found in the principle 

 of common affection, resting on the basis of common 

 interest. The sanctions of the Constitution would be 

 impotent to retain, in concerted and harmonious ac- 

 tion, twenty-four sovereignties, hostile in their feel- 

 ings toward each other, and acting under the impulse 

 of a real or imagined diversity of interest. The re- 

 sort to force would be alike vain and nugatory. Its 

 frequent use would subject it, with demonstrative 

 certainty, to ultimate failure; while its temporary 

 success would be valueless for all purposes of social 



