The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1868-10-03
We reap. But that plan of adjustment W,

thrust aside-thrust aside, as shall en-
deavor to show you, in violation of the
Constitution of the United States, to the
infinite injury of the whole people of
this country, North and South, and for
no purpose under heaven but to secure
the domination in this country of o par
ty which felt itself about to become 0
minority party.
Gen. Ewing then passed to the Radf-
cal Congressional plan Ofreconstruction,
and briefly alluded to the two which
had been put forth. The first by Senator
Morton, of Indiana, that the Southern
States were still States of the Union,
and when the war ended they had Con.
stitutions and laws which the war had
not destroyed. This plan falls short of
the party emergency in this: Congress,
in its reconstruction measures, did not
merely undertake to enable the electors
of the Southern States who were quail
fed to vote, according to their State
Constitution and laws, to themselves
restore their governments, but it explic-
lilly declares that those Constitutions
and laws are abrogated and it expressly
assumes paramount authority" in Con-
gress to legislate in those States with!
out regard to their Constitutions and
laws. 1t abrogates the State COnstitu-
tions and Jaws. by depriving very
large body of the electors of the right Of
suffrage, and by admitting to the right
of suffrage another very large body Of
negroes who are excluded by those Con-
stitutions aud laws.
If those States were States in the
| h.; - IN nd lo mi, az
have been in existence when the war
ended, and must have been valid, and il
they were, Congress had no right to
say that the great body of the electors
in the Southern States should be chang
ed, and to say that those Constitutions
and laws were destroyed, and the au-
thority of Congress made paramount.
The argument, therefore, falls short of
the occasion, and does not justify the
measures that were taken by Congress-.
destroying the existing Constitutions
aud laws of the Southern States.
The other theory is that these States
were taken out of the Union by the or
dinances ofsecession. That is Stevens
theory. That was the rebel theory,
and that, too, was the theory to over
throw which we of the North spent five
! hundred Thousand lives and five or six
thousand millions of money. If these
Southern States were taken out of the
Union by the ordinances of secession, it
was because the secession ordinances
were constitutional and valid; that is,
the Southern States bad the right to
sustain their secession by force; and we
had no constitutional right to make
war on them for seeding. Under that
th cory, they were right and we of the
North wrong in the late war. Under
that theory, the Southern troops were
fighting in holy, constitutional cause,
and we of the North were fighting in
an unlawful and fagitious war of con-
quest.
He ventured to say that there was
not one soldier ont of ten, who entered
the Union armies who would have
risked his tinger-nail to overthrow the
Southern people, unless he believed they
had no constitutional right to secede.
1t was because we believed that they
were violating the Constitution that
we took up arms and went South, and
risked or gave up our lives. And this
Radical theory that these States were
out of the Union, and accordingly Con-
gress may legislate over them as 1T
pleases, is theory which degrades the
Union soldier and insults the memories
of the dead who fell in the cause of the
Constitution and the Union. But it is
fit theory for party to adopt which
for three years past, has been devotIng
it's energies to the destruction OF the
Constitution and of the ten States we
fought to restore.
Gen. Ewing then at great length OK
amined their theories OF Congressional
reconstruction, and spoke of the destl-
tuition that reigns supreme over the
Southern States and the people, how
editors were seized and sent to the Dry
Tortugas for presumins to question the
constitutionality, the patriotism or the
policy of these reconstruction measures
And down in Georgia, one of the old
thirteen States that made this Republic,
where wretch named Ashburn was
killed in negro brOthel by some men
unknown, twenty-four citizens, black
and white, were seized by order of the
military commanders, and, without even
the mock trial of a military commission,
were sent off to the Dry Tortugas, to
wear ball and chain, with shaved
heads, under the flaming sun of the tro-
pics.
When the war broke out in 1861 the
General Government was in the hands of
the Republican party-a minority party,
which had acquired power through the
division oithe Democratic party between
Breckenridge and Douglas. The people
of the South entered the conflict in the
belief That the States of the Union had
the right, under the Constitution, of Sc
cession, and almost all the North in the
belief that no such right existed. The
Northern people were thoroughly united
upon the proposition that the General
Government had the right to make war
against secession or an insurrection
against the legal authority of the Gov
ernment, but they distrusted the good
faith and honest purpose of the Republi-
can party. The party, therefore, in or
der to unite the people of the Northern
States in support of the war, pledged
itself in the most solemn form, that the
war should be waged solely to o'restore
the Union, with all the equality, digni-
ty and rights of the States unimpaired.
And when, to get enlistments for the az
my, it declared that the purpose OF the
war was solely to support the cOnstitu-
tional authority of the General Govern
ment, and hold those States as States in
the Union, leaving them at the end of
the war with all their rights unimpair-
ed. Throughout the war that was the
policy of the party. In 1864, when the
war was practically at an end, Mr.. Lin
coin declared, in Philadelphia, that the
war was begun with that worthy object,
and will end when that object shall be
attained. 1t was to restore the authori-
ty of the Government. The rights of
the conquered were to be as sacred and
to remain as intact as the rights of the
conQueror. In pursuance of these
pledges Mr. Lincoln, from time to time,
called upon the people of these States
who were qualified as electors under the
constitution and law as they existed
when the war broke out, to take steps
to reorganize their governments in or
der to resume their relations in the