CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



163 



take them and welcome them here as long as 

 you leave to the State governments that power 

 which the framers of the Constitution intended 

 they should have, and which, in my judgment, 

 is essential to the very existence of free insti- 

 tutiong at all. But if you will strike down 

 that power, if you will abolish local legislation, 

 if you will annihilate the States, if you will 

 make them mere departments of a centralized 

 Government, if you will make them the mere 

 counties of a great State, then I say to Sen- 

 ators the time will come when that inequality 

 in the Senate will not he submitted to longer. 

 But I do firmly believe that it is precisely the 

 institution of State governments, it is precisely 

 th'e allotment of local legislation to a local 

 power, which enables this Republic to spread 

 itself from ocean to ocean, and from the arctic 

 zone down to the torrid. Strike that out of 

 it, strike its local self-government out of the 

 system, and it will go the way that all consoli- 

 dated centralized governments have gone in all 

 time past ; first a despotism unendurable, and 

 next a rending into fragments more numerous 

 far than the States of this Union now are." 



Mr. Morton said : "Mr. President, I ask the 

 indulgence of the Senate a few minutes in re- 

 ply. This speech that we have heard about 

 the State governments being swallowed up, 

 about the General Government absorbing all 

 power, and about the despotism that is to 

 come, has been frequently heard in the swamps 

 of Indiana to which my friend referred. It is 

 the same old Democratic speech with which 

 the people are perfectly familiar in the swamps 

 of Indiana and everywhere else. The Senator 

 talks about State rights, but he expressed his 

 whole philosophy in a phrase that dropped 

 from him just before he concluded, ' the 

 original sovereignty of the States.' I tell the 

 Senator that as long as that doctrine is urged 

 upon this country, there will be those who 

 believe in the right of secession. I believe in 

 State rights. I hold that there are State 

 rights that are sacred and unapproachable. 

 They are conferred by the Constitution of the 

 United States, and they are safest under the 

 protection of the nation, and the States have 

 them because the Constitution has so declared, 

 and not because of any original sovereignty. 

 My State is the offspring of the Republic ; she 

 was carved out of territory that belonged to 

 the nation ; she was born of an act of Con- 

 gress ; she never had any original sovereignty, 

 and but for that act of Congress she would to- 

 day be but a Territory. And yet the Senator 

 talks about the original sovereignty of Ohio 

 and Indiana. These States have rights because 

 the Constitution gave them to them ; the 

 States and the General Government both have 

 rights; they both derive them from the same 

 fountain, and one class of rights is just as 

 sacred as the other ; but just as long as this 

 old doctrine of State sovereignty is urged upon 

 the nation there is no security against future 

 rebellions." 



Mr. Schurz, of Missouri, said : " Let me, in 

 a few words, sum up the whole meaning of 

 the question which we are now engaged in 

 discussing. No candid man can deny that our 

 system of political disabilities is in no way 

 calculated to protect the rights or the property, 

 or the life or the liberty, of any living man, or 

 in any way practically to prevent the evil- 

 disposed from doing mischief. Why do you 

 think of granting any amnesty at all? Is it 

 not to produce on the popular mind at the 

 South a conciliatory effect; to quijcken the 

 germs of good intentions, to encourage those 

 who can exert a beneficial influence, to remove 

 the pretexts of ill-feeling and animosity, and to 

 aid in securing to the Southern States the bless- 

 ings of good and honest government ? If that 

 is not your design, what can it be? 



But if it be this, if you really do desire to 

 produce such moral effects, then I entreat you 

 also to consider what moral means you have 

 to employ in order to bring forth those moral 

 effects you contemplate. If an act of generous 

 statesmanship, or of statesman-like generosity, 

 is to bear full fruit, it should give not as little 

 as possible, but it should give as much as pos- 

 sible. You must not do things by halves if 

 you want to produce whole results. You 

 must not expose yourself to the suspicion of a 

 narrow-minded desire to pinch off the size of 

 your gift wherever there is a chance for it, as 

 if you were afraid you could by any possi- 

 bility give too much, when giving more would 

 benefit the country more, and when giving 

 less would detract from the beneficent effect 

 of that which you do give. 



" Let me tell you, it is the experience of all 

 civilized nations the world over, when an am- 

 nesty is to be granted at all, the completest 

 amnesty is always the best. Any limitation 

 you may impose, however plausible it may 

 seem at first sight, will be calculated to take 

 away much of the virtue of that which is 

 granted. I entreat you, then, in the name of 

 the accumulated experience of history, let 

 there be an end of these bitter and useless and 

 disturbing questions ; let the books be finally 

 closed, and, when the subject is forever dis- 

 missed from our discussions and our minds, 

 we shall feel as much relieved as those who 

 are relieved of their political disabilities. 



" Sir, I have to say a few words about an 

 accusation which has been brought against 

 those who speak in favor of universal amnesty. 

 It is the accusation resorted to, in default of 

 more solid argument, that those who advise 

 amnesty, especially universal amnesty, do so 

 because they have fallen in love with the 

 rebels. No, sir, it is not merely for the rebels 

 I plead. We are asked, Shall the rebellion go 

 entirely unpunished? No, sir, it shall not. 

 Neither do I think that the rebellion has gone 

 entirely unpunished. I ask you, had the rebels 

 nothing to lose but their lives and their offices ? 

 Look at it. There was a proud and arrogant 

 aristocracy planting their feet on the necks 



