CONGRESS. (DAVIS AND SHEBMAN.) 



237 



to mortal man in it, but there are statements 

 there and letters of a striking character, which 

 in iny judgment ought to be published, so that 

 they may become a part, not of the newspaper 

 literature of the day, but of the public records. 

 The first is and I think it is the first time I 

 ever saw it, though it may have been published 

 before he produces resolutions adopted by a 

 meeting of Democratic Senators and members 

 from the Southern States who were about to 

 participate in the rebellion, in which they re- 

 solved that they would organize a separate gov- 

 ernment, called the Confederate Government, 

 at Montgomery, Ala., and fixed the day, the 

 same day that was subsequently adopted. 



"They also resolved that a committee of 

 three persons, consisting of Jefferson Davis 

 and Mr. Slidell and Mr. Mallory, should be 

 appointed to carry into execution the reso- 

 lutions adopted, and that a portion of them 

 should remain in Congress so as by their 

 votes to prevent Congress from taking meas- 

 ures to defeat or delay their operations in the 

 South. If that is not a conspiracy, in the name 

 of God what is ? Think of it ! That members 

 of this body should conspire together when 

 under the same oath and sanction that all of us 

 are under, should go to a private chamber and 

 there with others resolve that they will not 

 only break up this Government of ours but act- 

 ually prevent the Government from arming it- 

 self and defending its life I That is a conspiracy. 

 If that is not a conspiracy, God knows what is. 



" That justified General Sherman in one of 

 the remarks that he made. The other was that 

 a certain letter he had seen himself from Jef- 

 ferson Davis to a gentleman since a member 

 of the Senate of the United States tended to 

 show that Jefferson Davis had changed his 

 opinions in 1864 ; that instead of being a State- 

 rights Democrat, he was practically intending 

 to subvert even the government that had been 

 established in the Southern States. 



" Gen. Sherman insists that he did see such 

 a letter, states the circumstances when and 

 where, and that this paper either came to 

 Washington into the general collection here, 

 where it is in the mass of unassorted docu- 

 ments difficult to find, or else it went to Gen. 

 Sherman's headquarters and thence to the head- 

 quarters of Gen. Sheridan, where it was de- 

 stroyed by the great Chicago fire, but that he 

 did see it and remembers its contents. To 

 show that the opinions avowed in the letter 

 were entertained and acted upon by Jefferson 

 Davis, he produces a letter from Alexander H. 

 Stephens, then an associate with Jefferson Da- 

 vis in the government of the rebel confederacy, 

 in which Mr. Stephens says of Jefferson Davis 

 that he has abandoned his State-rights doc- 

 trine, that he was then in his opinion seeking 

 to subvert the very government that had been 

 established by the Confederate States. That 

 letter has been recently published. It has never 

 gone into the public archives until presented 

 on this occasion. It is a very interesting let- 



ter, which was captured in the hands of the 

 person to whom it was addressed, a person 

 scarcely less distinguished than Mr. Stephens 

 Herschel V. Johnson. 



"That letter was captured at the house of 

 Johnson. I have seen the original of that let- 

 ter. I know Mr. Stephens's handwriting both 

 before the war and since. I know that it is 

 his handwriting, and it will not be disputed by 

 anyone. In that Mr. Stephens justifies every 

 word that was said by Gen. Sherman in re- 

 spect to the change of mind in Jefferson Davis 

 in the condition of affairs as they existed in 

 1864. 



" That is not all. He produces a message of 

 Jefferson Davis himself, dated in January, 1864, 

 addressed to the Confederate Congress, marked 

 'secret,' and kept in the rebel archives, and 

 found there by an officer of the United States 

 Army when Richmond was taken by the United 

 States troops. In this official message, which 

 has never heretofore been published, Jefferson 

 Davis says that the movements in the South, but 

 especially in North Carolina, would tend to sub- 

 vert the Confederate Government and must be 

 resisted by every means possible, and demands 

 the suspension of the habeas corpus. The in- 

 dorsements on the back of that paper show that 

 in the Confederate Congress such a bill was 

 introduced, and was reported by a committee 

 to that Congress. Whether the bill passed or 

 not is not known, unless it is shown by the 

 Confederate records ; but it is probably not 

 shown by these records, because it was a secret 

 document. That original document is now in 

 the hands of an officer of the army, with the 

 name of Jefferson Davis in his own handwrit- 

 ing I am not familiar with it at all, I can not 

 recognize it, but it is said to be so, and it has 

 all the ear-marks of an official document pre- 

 cisely such as the documents we have here 

 shown. 



"Now, Mr. President, the question is at 

 this time, twenty years after the war is over, 

 when these documents are first presented to the 

 public, when, they are filed in the War Depart- 

 ment, whether it is beyond a reasonable rule 

 for the Senate of the United States to call for 

 their publication. Publications in the news- 

 papers scatter and disappear. This paper is 

 filed in the war records, but it may not be 

 printed in the war records, it may be excluded 

 for a technical reason. Why should we not 

 print it, why should there be a single objection 

 to it?" 



January 13, the resolution was adopted by 

 the following vote: 



YEAS Aldrich, Allison, Bayard, Beck, Blair, Bow- 

 en, Camden, Cameron of Wisconsin, Cockrell, Coke, 

 Conger, Cullen, Dawes, Dolph, Fair, Fry, Garland, 

 Gibson, Gorman, Hale, Harrison, Hawley, Hoar, In- 

 galls, Jackson, Jonas, Jones of Florida, Lamar, Lap- 

 ham, McMillan, McPherson, Manderson, Miller of 

 California, Mitchell, Morrill, Palmer, Pendleton, Pike, 

 Platt, Plumb, Push, Sabin, Sawyer, Sewell, Sheffield, 

 Sherman, Vance, Vau Wyck, Voorhees, Walker, Will- 

 iams, Wilson 52. 



