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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



their punishment otherwise had passed by, and 

 all that was left to the loyal people of the 

 United States, in the way of marking their 

 disapprobation of the rebellion, was, by this 

 amendment, to render the authors of it ineligi- 

 ble to office. It was provided, however, in the 

 concluding part of this section of the amend- 

 ment, that the disability might be removed by 

 a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress. 



" I believe that any proposition to grant uni- 

 versal amnesty is a violation of the spirit of 

 the amendment, if not of its letter. As was re- 

 marked by the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 

 Frelinghuysen), the other day, it was not in- 

 tended to put it into the power of Congress 

 absolutely to abrogate that section of the 

 amendment, but to put into the power of Con- 

 gress to relieve the disability in any given case 

 where it might be thought proper to do so 

 where the merit or the condition of the appli- 

 cant was such as to entitle him to the favor of 

 Congress, giving it the power by a two-thirds 

 vote in that case to relieve the disability. But 

 no man can read the debates which occurred 

 on the adoption of the amendment, without 

 coming to the conclusion that the proposition 

 to amnesty by classes was not within the 

 meaning and intendment of Congress at the 

 time the amendment was passed. 



*'Now, Mr. President, what is amnesty? It 

 is an act of oblivion ; it is a proposition, when 

 we consider it in the light of universal amnes- 

 ty, to place the authors of the rebellion upon a 

 footing with the loyal people of the United 

 States, and to authorize them, provided they 

 can procure the suffrages, to hold the highest 

 offices in the Government. I have always 

 voted amnesty to every man who has asked 

 for it in good faith, and I am prepared to do 

 so now. I believe I have refused in one in- 

 stance ; but it was because the applicant had, 

 in addition to being a Confederate soldier, been 

 a guerrilla. I believe there is a general feeling 

 on the part of Congress, in both branches, to 

 grant amnesty to every man who will ask it in 

 good faith, except, it may be, to the principal 

 authors of the rebellion, the chief criminals. 



" Mr. President, this question is usually con- 

 sidered in the light of expediency on one hand, 

 or in the light of feeling or hostility on the 

 other. I propose to consider it from a higher 

 plane, entirely above the domain of feeling or 

 expedience. I think there is a great principle 

 involved in this question, which Congress 

 ought to consider a principle of consistency, 

 a principle of duty to the Government, and 

 especially a principle of the greatest impor- 

 tance to posterity. 



" The principal argument in favor of amnes- 

 ty is expediency. Let me consider that for a 

 moment. Why is it expedient to grant amnes- 

 ty ? It is said that it will conciliate the men 

 who have been engaged in rebellion. So far as 

 the authors of the rebellion are concerned, you 

 can no more conciliate them than you can 

 conciliate rattlesnakes by restoring their ex- 



tracted fangs. Those men have been cast in 

 the mould of the rebellion, and they cannot 

 bend. They must go down into history as 

 they have lived rebels. They must die as 

 they have lived. Whatever dignity history 

 may give to their character, will depend en- 

 tirely upon their maintaining their consistency 

 maintaining the character of rebels until 

 they have passed away. This may not be the 

 case with the great majority of the people of 

 the South, but it is certainly true of those 

 men who may be said to be the authors of the 

 rebellion. 



" And, Mr. President, this rebellion did not 

 go up from the people. It was not the work 

 of the people. It came down from the politi- 

 cians to the people. It was not forced by the 

 mass of the people upon the politicians, but was 

 essentially the work of politicians and the re- 

 sult of political machinations that had been 

 carried on for more than thirty years ; and 

 the question is, whether the men who had been 

 engaged in these machinations, and who, by 

 the practice of arts for many years, brought 

 this great calamity upon the nation, shall be 

 amnestied, and rendered eligible to hold the 

 highest office in the Government. 



" As I said before, you cannot conciliate the 

 authors of the rebellion. Now, how will am- 

 nesty to the authors of the rebellion conciliate 

 the masses of the Southern people ? It will 

 only conciliate them by being a concession 

 that they were in the right, and that we were 

 in the wrong. This is the way in which it will 

 conciliate them, and it can do it in no other 

 way. 



"As I remarked before, universal amnesty 

 removes the last mark of legal disapprobation 

 of this rebellion. It is a declaration to pos- 

 terity that there was nothing wrong in the re- 

 bellion, that it involved no criminality, that it 

 was simply an honest difference of opinion be- 

 tween parties, in which there was no crimi- 

 nality on either side. If you grant amnesty to 

 the authors of the rebellion, you cannot con- 

 vince the children twenty years hence that 

 there was any thing wrong in that rebellion. It 

 will be regarded as a mere difference between 

 parties, which unfortunately came to blows. 



" The question now is whether you propose 

 to educate the children of this country and 

 those yet unborn in this opinion of the rebel- 

 lion ? Sir, in twenty years, the small reasons 

 of expediency, which are now urged in favor 

 of general amnesty, will be forgotten, and all 

 that will be remembered will be the great fact 

 that amnesty was awarded to the authors of 

 the rebellion, and some of them, the most fla- 

 grant and responsible of all, were afterward 

 placed in the highest positions in the Govern- 

 ment. 



" Now, sir, I remove this question from the 

 domain of expediency and of feeling ; I put it 

 upon the ground of high principle ; I put it 

 upon the ground of our duty to coming genera- 

 tions, to the children that are now growing up 



