Year: 1866

of Washington. iia -


The Southern Loyalists with representa-
tives from every State except South Carolina
were also present. 0;


Judge Carter on behalf of the people de-
ivered the address of welcome 'if


Speaker Colfax replied. He said:


"But four months since we left this Capt.
tol, and yet how crowded with events The
bloody and wicked massacre at New Orleans,
the very week after our adjournment, and
the extraordinary speech of the President at
st. Louis, palliating the guilt of the mur-
derers, and charging its grave responsibility
on the Congress of the United States the
two great Philadelphia Conventions, one
memorable for the frank Acknowledgement
that those who denounced Congress were
really arm-in-arm with the men who, tramp
ling on broken oaths, had sought to destroy
the nations life; and the other honored by
the presence of the faithful Loyalists, who,
when the storm of treason swept over their
States, refused to bow the knee to Baal; the
expulsion from office of thousands, trusted
andcommissioned by our martyred President
to whom, more than any other equal number
of men, the present Administration was in
debted for the power it wielded-their crime
being infexible fidelity to the principles pro-
fessed by the successful candidate for Vice
President in the canvass of 1S64-the hun
dreds of speeches of the Presidential tour
throughout the land, and their republication
in millions of copies of all our prominent
presses, bringing the issues to the hearth
stone of every voter-the magnificent re-
sponse of the people, from ocean to ocean,
condemning the policy of which they had
heard so much, and attesting their unshaken
confidence in the Congress which had stood
SO faithfully, so fearlessly, and so immova-
bly,, in the pathway of duty and of right
how rapidly have we been making history in
these past few months! Thank God, in this
this land the people are the only rulers
Every two years they resume their sovereign
ty, and at the ballot-box-given to them by
the dead of the Revolution-they make and
unmake Congress; they approve or condemn
Administrations; they speak their will !;
they command, and Congresses and Presi-
dents must obey. 80.


We return, then, to these halls to carry
out and enforce this decision of the rulers of
the nation-the people. No man can mis-
understand their will. Four points have
been settled by them beyond all controversy.


1. That the work of reconstruction must
be in the hands of those who have been the
friends, not the enemies of the nation; that
it must be based on the granite of loyalty.
and not the quicksands of disloyalty !; and
that those whose wicked leadership and
guilty reputation of solemn oaths plunged
peaceful country into the bloody conflict of
civil war shalln not be clothed with the power
to legislate for the widows and orphans
the kith and kin-of the men they have slain
in their attempt to slay the nation itself.


2. That the promises of Abraham Lincoln,
in his immortal proclamation, that the free
dom of our emancipated millions should be
maintained, must be fulfilled both in letter
and spirit, and guaranteed beyond any pow
er Of abridgment in our supreme law; for
bidding interference by any unfriendly State
with the privileges and immunities of the
liberty granted by the whole nation to all its
people


8. That no persons shall be disfranchised
in this Republic on account of their race,
and yet have their numbers counted to con-
fer increased political power on those dis
franchising them.


/ 4. That the national debt, the cost of our
national existence, shall be forever sacred
and that all debts or claims growing out OF
the rebellion, or the breaking of fetters that
ended it, shall be forever held illegal or void


And the people also declared as their de-
sire and will that Congress should enforce
this decision of theirs by appropriate legisla-
ton But, on the contrary, these terms are
spurned and scornfully rejected by those who
control public opinion and WELD political
power in the South and the recent election
of most conspicuous secessionists in North
Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, &C., with the
hostile messages Of their Governors is their
defiant reply.


Rejecting the Constitutional amendment,
they show that they insist on representation
in Congress and the Electoral College, for all
the four millions of their former slaves, thus
ascending to enlarged and increased law-ma-
king power in consequence of the rebellion
while, at the same time they not only dis
franchise them and refuse them the rights
and protection of citizenship, but by dis
graceful and oppressive laws, pretending to
regulate labor contracts, and to punish va
grancy, reduce those whom the nation made
free, to subserviency and serfdom, but little,
if any better, than slavery itself.


Yet, while we cannot compel them to ap-
prove the constitutional amendment, our du-
ty to the nation, to justice, to liberty, and to
humanity is none the less. And, exponents
of the peoples will as we are, we cannot
avoid that duty. Indeed, we may see in it
the finger of Providence. Like our fathers,
we have, in the past few years, builded bet
ter than we knew. In the earlier stage of
the war, how willingly would an overwhelm-
ing majority IF the people have consented to
perpetual slavery in the Republic if South
ern traitors had taken from our lips the
bloody chalice of civil war, which they COM
PEELED us to drain to its very dregs! But
God willed otherwise and at last, when ev-
cry family altar had been crimsoned with
blood, and every cemetery and churchyard
crowded with patriot graves, the nation rose
to higher plane of duty, and resolved in
these halls that slavery must die.


The question naturally arises, how can
this be done Surrounded by these able ju-
rists and patriotic statesmen, returning here,
as they do, crowned with an unparalleled
popular endorsement, it might not be fitting
to anticipate their arguments on these vital
themes in the session just opening. But
when the Constitution declares in its open
ing sentence, that all legislative powers
herein granted shall be vested in Congress
of the United States"-when it solemnly en-
joins that the United States shall guaranty
to every State in this Union republican
form of government when it gives to
Congress full authority "to make all laws
which shall be necessary and proper for car
rying into execution all powers vested by
this Constitution in the Government of the
United States, or in any department or officer
thereof''-the duty and its exercise both
seem to have been specifically anticipated by