Year: 1868

OVeftnIOWlnx OF interfering Win Jne rights
or established institutions of those States.
but to defend and maintain the Supremacy
of the Constitution, and to preserve the
Union with all the dignity, equality and
rights of the several States. unimpaired ;
that as soon as these objects are accom-
plished, the war ought to cease" After the
declaration of this policy our gallant young
men, without regard to party, under the
impending call of the President for five
hundred thousand men, rushed to head
quarters in sucn numbers that 1t became
necessary to stop enlistments, as they could
not be provided for and equipped. When.
however, the real policy of the Radicals in
the prosecution of the war was foreshad-
owed in the emancipation proclamation no
further call for troops could be filled ex-
cept under the stimulus OF an impending q
many men, think you, would have willingly
taken up arms at the call of the President
In 1851 If Congress had then declared what
the Radical Congress of to-day say was the
policy of the war? That this war is
waged, upon our part, in the spirit of op-
preston, and for the purpose of conquest
and subjugation, and for the purpose of
overthrowing and destroying the rights
and established institutions of those States.
to defend and maintain absolute supremacy
in the General Government in all mat
tersi whatsoever, regardless of the Con-
stitution, and to destroy the Union as
well as the Dignity, equality and
rights of the several States, and that after
the war, ceases those States should be sub
jected to the absolute control of military
dictatorship until the people thereof ac-
quiesce quietly and humbly in the full ac-
cOmplishment of the foregoing purposes,
until the white race meekly submit to the
domination of the negroes under the wise
and humane direction of Radical leaders
and until perpetual power can be Sc.
cured to the Radical party. Had such a
policy been declared in 1861, assure gem
tlemen that men of all parties in this couu-
try would not have rushed to the front at
the call of the President. Had the people
then supposed that under the pretext of
saving the Union the last vestige of Con-
stitutiOnal liberty was to be destroyed, or
the attempt made so to do. it is not difficult
TO determine what would have been their
course. The party now in power has ever
been party of false pretenses; the wine
upon which it has invited the people tv
regale themselves has ever been mixed
with poison, and to-day it sits upon the
Republic like vampire, with its fangs
fastened upon the throat of the victim,
while with its wings stirring up those gen.
tie breezes which foster continued repose.


To me it is amusing to hear gentlemen
upon this floor talk about peace Democrats
WuCl IuST0 arc HcT0 TtpTtScuUa LIVES vi
almost every arm of the service voting and
acting steadily and consistently with the
Democratic party; men who went into the
service at the beginning of the war both as
officers and privates, and remained until
its close; men who have often stood in the
thickest of the fight, and where the whistle
of rebel bullets would have paralyz yzed with
fear the coward hearts of those men who
now call them peace Democrats. And
Whan This floor nr s.ls I haa
the term peace Democrat used by men
Whose only service in the field was in the
capacity OF contiscators of cotton and other
valuable commodities, and who never
smelled rebel powder after it had been
burned unless waited to them ION the
wings of the wind" while they were Grip
ping the energies and resources of the
rebels by picking up cotton and such other
valuable and needtul articles as they could
safely take, it is to me disgustingly amusing.


The gentleman asks If we indOrse Presi-
dent Johnson's reconstruction policy. l
can assure him for one do not, and never
did; but the gentleman cannot say so much
tor his party in Ohio. In the platform of
the party in 1865, adopted by the State
Convention on the 2lst of June, after Mr..
johnson had fully developed his recon-
struction policy in proclamations issued
previous to that time to four of the States
then lately in rebellion, the following is
the second resolution:


'That President Andrew johnson, by his
unwavering devotion to the Union, through
years of severest trial, has won our highest
confidence; that we cheerfully indorse the
policy OF his administration, looking to the
restoration of peace and civil order in the
so-called seeded States; and that as Union
men OF Ohio, we will give him our hearty
and undivided support"


And Il have no 0OuDt but that at the
time the Union party of Ohio so fully in-
dorSed Mr.. johnson and his reconstruction
policy, that Endorsement reflected the hon.
est St ntiment of the party. Thaddeus Ste
yens had not then been heard from. and
when in his speech of December, 1865, he
that if the Southern States
were permitted to exercise their constitu-
tional rights, the rights which he frankly
admits they are entitled to under the Con-
stitutiOn. they with the number of
Copperheads that would at any orr
binary time be elected from the North
would have the power in this country,
and thus the great Union party lose its
control of the Government, new recon-
struction policy was adopted having for its
idea Negro Suffrage and Negro Equality,
an i1ea which formed no part of the Pres
ident's policy; and in 1856, this same party
denounced the President as traitor for
to that policy which they cheer
fully endorsed in 1865. But President
johnson owes no thanks to me nor to the
Democratic party for the position he.holds.
We did all in our power to prevent you
from elevating to that responsible position
a man you now say is a traitor. We pre-
sented to the people in his stead one of
Ohio's own most worthy sons, as pure a
patriot and as true a man as ever breathed
the air of Heaven. If you have imposed
a traitor upon trusting people once, and
to do so went out of the States of the
Union and into conquered provinces to find
him, in express violation of the Constitu-
ton, how can you have the hardi-
hood ever again to ask the people
to trust you? But we of the Dem
ocratic party have become so accus-
toned to being called traitors by you of the
opposition that we have come to regard
the man to whom you apply the term as one
who in the days of Washington and Jeffer-
son would have been called patriot, and
who in fact sincere lover of his country,
and such man will always find true friends
in the Democratic party, and when he is
right and his acts in accordance with the
provisions of the constitution, will always
have our support. l do not endorse any
policy of reconstruction; 1 do not believe we
have, under The Constitution, ANYTHING to
reconstruct. I deny that our magnificent
governmental structure composed of euuel,
independent sovereign States, cemented
together by the Constitution, has ever been
torn down or destroyed.


Mr.. LEE-Does the gentleman endorse
the Democratic platform of this year?


MIR. FOLLETT-I do, sir, most cordial
ly; but as, like all Democratic platforms,
it speaks for for itself, 1 shall not
stop to comment upon it. The Southern
States were never out of the Union. Their
ordinances of secession could not take
them out The great mass of Southern
statesmen themselves claimed no constitu-
tiOnal right to withdraw from the Union,
and placed themselves solely upon the rev.
right. And if, as is almost uni
yersally conceded by all parties in this
the Constitution nowhere, either
expressly or by implication, recognizes the
right of secession, upon what theory could
tile framers of that instrument have con-
the existence of a state of facts