Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1866-01-18
RECONSTRUCTION.

Senator Doolittle yesterday delivered a pow
full speech in the Senate in support of President
Johnson's policy and in opposition to the reso-
lutions of Mr.. Howe TO provide provisional
governments for the lately insurrectionary
States Lieut.. General Grant was present
during the speech, and was an attentive lis
tener. Mr.. Doolittle closed his argument with
brilliant peroration, and on taking his seat
was loudly applauded by the spectators in the
galleries. and received the Congratulations of
Senators on the floor.
In his speech he argued that two radical
ideas, radically false, brought in this civil war
which has cost the nation half a million of
lives. First, that the States had right to Sc
cede; and second that slavery is a blessing
These ideas have been surrendered by the
South, and we have now the basis of a perma-
nent peace. We must stand on one side, sup
porting the Lincoln and johnson policy, or we
must take our stand with the Senator from
Massachusetts on the other. Mr.. Lincoln's
policy received the unqualified appreciation of
every member of his cabinet, and every day
up to his assassination he was more favorabIy
convinced of its right and justice. On the re-
turn of peace the army should be withdrawn,
the sword should be returned to its scab-
bard. OF all governments on the face of the
globe, the military government was the worst
Ii was the concentrated essence of despotisn
All that the President had done was done by
authority OF the laws Of Congress, and not in
derogaton OF them. 1t has been said that this
Congress could annul laws passed by its pre
decessor, and, technically speaking, it possibly
might, but would it be right and acting in good
iailn dileI the eeCeuIng StdJes mad submitted TO
the laws already in force. If we now direct
the President to withdraw the terms of pacifi-
cation he has offered, and which have been ac-
cepted, II we carry out the spirit of this resolu-
tion, we shall be in the wrong, we shall falsify
our pledges of devotion to the Union The
people of the South have been SO humbled and
prostrated by this war that they will bear almost
anything before again appealing to arms but in
his judgment, If anything could induce them so
to do this would. Itwould turn the North intoa
community of Shareholders, with the Southern
people as their slaves. To hold them tn hus would
require the presence of large standing army
which would undermine our republican insti-
tutions and pave the way for empire. 1t
would subject us to incalculable expense and
affect our national credit most disastrously at
home and abroad. Peace we must have, il is
essential to our very life. To acknowledge the
right Of State to secede, or the right of Con-
gress to expel it, would admit an idea fatal to
the perpetuity of our Government. Every law
we passed, every blow we struck, every shot
we fired, every drop of blood we shed, was not
to put the States out of the Unien, but to keep
them in forever. His colleague claimed to rep.
resent the voice of the people of Wisconsin, but
he was confident, from the tone of the Union
Convention, and the sentiments of his con.
stituents, that such was not the fact.