344 



CONGRESS, TJ. . 



guilty of that crime. I have never, I repeat, 

 belonged to a party that takes this oath with 

 a mental reservation. It seems to me that, if 

 my colleague had desired to stand right before 

 the House and before the country, before he 

 assumed the responsibility of charging me in- 

 dividually with being disloyal, he should have 

 remembered the authorities that I brought be- 

 fore the House, and when he branded me as 

 disloyal would have recollected that the lead- 

 ers of his own party, and the. organs of his 

 own party, from the 'New York Tribune' 

 down to the ' Columbus Journal' of the State 

 in which he and I live, have advocated the doc- 

 trines that I have promulgated here to-day, 

 and that the Secretary of the Treasury, hailing 

 from our State too, advocates this identical 

 doctrine. 



On the next day, April 9th, the Speaker, Mr. 

 Colfax, took the floor and offered the following 

 resolution : 



Whereas on the 8th of April, 1864, when the House 

 o Representatives was in Committee of the Whole on 

 the state of the Union, Alexander Long, a Repre- 

 sentative from the second district of Ohio, declared 

 himself in favor of recognizing the independence and 

 nationality of the so-called confederacy now in arms 

 against the Union ; and whereas the said so-called 

 confederacy, thus sought to be recognized and estab- 

 lished on the ruins of a dissolved or destroyed Union, 

 has as its chief officers, civil and military, those who 

 have added perjury to their treason, and who seek to 

 obtain success for their parricidal efforts by the 

 killing of the loyal soldiers of the nation who are 

 seeking to save it from destruction ; and whereas the 

 oath required of all members, and taken by the said 

 Alexander Long on the first day of the present Con- 

 gress, declares " that I have voluntarily given no aid, 

 countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons 

 engaged in armed hostility to the United States," 

 thereby declaring that such conduct is regarded as 

 inconsistent with membership in the Congress of the 

 United States ; therefore, 



Resolved, That Alexander Long, a Representative 

 from the second district of Ohio, having, on the 8th 

 of April, 1864, declared himself in favor of recognizing 

 the independence and nationality of the so-called con- 

 federacy now in arms against the Union, and thereby 

 " given aid, countenance, and encouragement to per- 

 sons engaged in armed hostility to the United States," 

 is hereby expelled. 



" Mr. Speaker, before presenting this resolu- 

 tion I reflected, as it was my duty to do, seri- 

 ously on the obligations under which, in con- 

 sequence of my position, I feel I am placed. I 

 recognize that there is a double duty incumbent 

 on me; first to the House of Representatives 

 whose kindness has placed me in its principal 

 chair, to administer the duties of that chair and 

 the rules of the House faithfully and impar- 

 tially to the best of my ability and judgment. 

 That, I can say sincerely and conscientiously, I 

 have endeavored to do, and shall so endeavor 

 until this Congress expires by its constitutional 

 limitation. But I feel that I owe still another 

 duty to the people of the ninth congressional 

 district of Indiana, who sent me here as their 

 Representative to speak and act and vote in 

 their stead. It is in conformity with this latter 

 duty to those who cannot speak here for them- 

 selves, and who, I believe, would indorse the 



sentiment of this resolution, that I have felt it 

 my duty to rise in my place as a member of 

 Congress from the State of Indiana and offer 

 this resolution. 



"I rise to offer this resolution in the per- 

 formance of a high public duty which I felt I 

 could not myself shirk or evade. It is a duty 

 I owe, not only to those of my constituents 

 who are at home, but to the many thousands 

 of them who are in the tented fields meeting 

 the armies of the confederacy in deadly conflict, 

 and exposing their lives for the safety and per- 

 petuity of this imperilled Union. Nay, more, 

 sir, I owe it to the many widowed and orphaned 

 families in my district whose natural protectors 

 have been stricken down by the bloody hand 

 of treason, and lost to them in this world for- 

 ever. 



" I believe in the freedom of speech. I have 

 not heard any thing on this floor during this 

 Congress that would have prompted me to offer 

 tins resolution except the remarks made yester- 

 day by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Long). 

 He declared distinctly, in so many words, that 

 he was in favor of the recognition of this so- 

 called confederacy, and recognition is the re- 

 cognition of its independence and its nationality 

 as one among the nations of the earth. The 

 flag of this confederacy was thus boldly un- 

 furled here by a gentleman who had taken the 

 oath at the opening of Congress and I have 

 no doubt truthfully that up to that time he 

 had not given any aid, countenance, or encour- 

 agement to those who are engaged in armed 

 hostility against the United States. Believing 

 that oath shows that those who do thus give 

 aid and countenance and encouragement to 

 those engaged in armed hostility against the 

 United States are not worthy of membership 

 here in a Congress of the United States, I felt 

 it my duty at least to ask the House of Repre- 

 sentatives to pass their judgment upon it. 



" I have offered this resolution not as the re- 

 sult of a consultation with any persons upon 

 the floor of this House, but upon my sole and 

 entire responsibility ; and I say here deliberate- 

 ly and solemnly that if what fell from the lips 

 of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Long) yester- 

 day is to pass unrebuked by this House, then 

 you have no right to complain of any foreign 

 Government on the face of this earth that re- 

 cognizes the independence and nationality of 

 this confederacy, which, within your own walls, 

 under your own flag, by one associated with you 

 in the Government of this country, was public- 

 ly avowed as his preference and Ms conviction. 



" Now, sir, if by the quiet and tacit assent of 

 this House,' as a House of Representatives, this 

 sentiment is to go unquestioned by the Repre- 

 sentatives of the United States of America here 

 assembled, then I say you should stop shooting 

 your deserters from the army, for they have 

 not turned their backs upon the obligation 

 which they have assumed any more influen-- 

 tially by their leaving the flag which they had 

 bound themselves to sustain, than has a gentle- 



