they would, I think, be impregnable. It is because they yielded that platform with its great and patriotic principles that they have become weak.

The honorable Senator spoke of my reference to Grant and his indifference in battle. I believe that General Grant is a patriotic and honest man; he is unquestionably a man of courage and of will; but I do not think he has one other single quality of a great military man. When you speak of intellect that can plan a great campaign and that can take intuitively and comprehensively into its conception of the movements of a great army, he is as unequal to that work as he is to make a world. He has had success. What was the secret of it? He fought the battle of Belmont, in which || he was badly used up. He went to Pittsburg Landing and there he encountered sore defeat, and even the Union officers who followed Buell's lead there and regained the lost day say that if Johnston had reformed he would have destroyed Grant and the Army under him; and I doubt it not. It was the gunboats in the river that saved him then. The siege and capture of Fort Donelson was the work of Smith, a much abler man naturally and as a soldier and as a scientific warrior than ever Grant was or ever could be, if he should live to the age of Methuselah. If Buell had not reached the field of Pittsburg Landing, Grant and his army would have been destroyed and we should not have heard of this candidate for the Presidency.

When he came here to the Wilderness and moved upon that line, as he said he would fight it out on that line if it took him all summer, he did not fight it out on that line; he deployed from it every day until he reached the point where McClellan struck for Rich- || mond, and in this bloody enfilade upon the enemy he lost fifty per cent. more of soldiers than that enemy commanded. He lost in killed, wounded, and missing from eighty to one hundred thousand men. Look at the correspondence between McClellan and Stanton when McClellan was before the same point two years before. You recollect the story, not of McClellan's disastrous campaign, but of the base and infamous manner in which he and his army were abandoned by the authorities here. He was promised the corps of McDowell, forty-five or fifty thousand, à division of ten thousand in the upper valley, and ten thousand more from Fortress Monroe. If he had received these reënforcements then and there, in thirty days Richmond would have fallen; the rebels would have yielded; half a million of slaughtered men would have been saved to their country and their families, and a thousand or fifteen hundred millions of treasure would have been saved to the nation. We all knew that the object was not to suppress the rebellion; it was not war to put down the insurgents; it was war upon slavery and slaveholders, and the war was to be prosecuted until slavery was abolished and until the slaveholders were subjugated. All who were here at the time knew it to be so. This man Stanton was in the War Office.

After McClellan met with his reverses in the seven days' battles and he and the Government began to feel apprehensive for the safety of the Army, he wrote to McClellan exhorting him to bring it off safely. What did McClellan say? "If I am enabled to effect that work, I shall owe its success neither to you nor to any man in Washington." He had said before, "Give me fifty thousand men of reënforcements; give me the men you promised me, and I will bring this war to a close." He called for fifty thousand troops to reenforce his Army that then was not more than equal, if it was equal, to the enemy behind his intrenchments. That was refused. Then he asked successively for thirty thousand and twenty thousand, and the invariable answer was, "No; a man cannot be spared;" but when the present candidate for the Presidency was appointed to command that Army he could meet the enemy and suffer his bloody slaughter

||

of ten thousand a day and each day more than replenish the places of those slaughtered in his ranks. He received in the way of reenforcements thousands and tens of thousands more of men than McClellan had when he beleagured Richmond.

Mr. President, it is not because he is a military hero. It is not because he has great capacity in war. He has no such capacity. It is because he is an uninformed man, a stranger to statesmanship and policy. He comes a novice into the hands of his keepers; they will manipulate him as they please; and because he holds the command of the Army, and you have made him by your unconstitutional laws to supersede the Constitution itself, and to supplant the President in the command of the armies in the ten States and to a limited extent in the whole United States, you have nominated General Grant.

Sir, I told the honorable Senator from Nevada that we had two great issues here. The first is, Shall the bayonet or the Constitution be the law? and the other is, Shall the negroes appoint the President of the United States, and shall this be a negro Government or a white man s Government? These are the issues, simple, comprehensive; and we care not where mer stand on other and immaterial issues if they are right here. If the men who voted for the resolution proposed by Andrew Johnson after the battle of Bull Run had adhered faithfully to that resolution, I would always have been their supporter as I was then. Now, I do not care who battles against the bayonet for the Constitution, who battles for the white man's Government against negro Government, I am with him. If the honorable Senator from Nevada would come I would hail him as an ally in that cause if I believed him faithfully and truly enlisted in it. Talk not of "greenbacks!"

What are greenbacks when put in contrast with popular liberty and constitutional gov. ernment? Nothing; but that platform says that the obligations of the Government are to be met according to the bond. If the honorable gentleman excepts to that let him except to it; but that is nothing, not the dust in the balance compared with the great, controlling, grand issues that address themselves to the American mind with resistless force. Are you for maintaining the supremacy of the bayonet and martial law, or are you for sustaining the Constitution? Are you for the white man's Government or are you for negro Government? Are you for eight million white slaves under the mastery of four million negroes in the South, or are you for enlarging the white men of the South and restoring to them that political power and that right of government which the Constitution secures to them? These are the issues. They are important issues. They are the issues on which I enter into this contest and upon which I intend to wage and maintain it.

The honorable Senator seemed to suppose that I contemplated there being double sets of electoral votes from the southern States. I expect no such thing. I do not believe the majority of Congress and the Army will permit any free election in those States. Whenever the Army is withdrawn those States, white men and negroes, will vote against the Radicals. Any of those States which may be allowed to vote at the ensuing election will vote under their reorganized constitutions. I have no dream that there will be any attempt to set up any previous governments and to cast a vote under them. If it should be so, they will be stifled, suppressed, they will not be allowed; but if you will allow a free election there under your own laws, you will lose more than half the votes of those States. I have no hope nor dream of a free election under your own laws. You back up your laws by military compulsion and by the presence of the bureau, and you will not allow anything like a free election even under your own laws.

Mr. MORTON. Mr. President, I have no defense to make for General Grant; he needs

none. I simply rise to call the Senator from Kentucky back to the great issue presented by the New York convention, and that issue is the issue of peace or war. General Blair wrote a letter to a member of that convention less than one week ago, in which he said, "If we elect our President"-that is the substance of it-it will be his duty to use the Army of the United States to overturn and to disperse the State governments that have been erected in the South under the action of Congress." That is rebellion; that is war. He says, If

I go before the convention I want to go before it upon these principles." He says, “The question of greenbacks, of finance, of taxing bonds and all that are unimportant compared with this." And he went before the convention on that letter, and he was nominated almost unanimously on the first ballot. That is the great and broad issue presented to this country, and is not to be obscured by attacks on General Grant or by anything that may be said of the past. It will now be more important to talk of the future rebellion that is threatened and promised by the Democratic party than even to talk of the past.

Mr. President, this is the issue, and I should have been glad to have heard the Senator on that issue. He supports General Blair, he supports Mr. Seymour. The Senator from Pennsylvania last night said that they had laid down a platform. Yes, sir; the logical result of the platform laid down by the convention is the same thing as General Blair's letter. They declare that the reorganized State governments in the South are unconstitutional, null, and void. The logical result of that is what General Blair has said. General Blair has made his utterance. He says, "I go before the convention upon this declaration of war against these State governments," and the convention takes him; the Senator takes him; the convention has affirmed the declaration of General Blair and there is no escape from it. I call upon Senators, therefore, to meet the issue boldly and frankly and not attempt to obscure it as the cuttle-fish does in which he makes his escape. Sir, this, then, is the issue: shall there be acquiescence in and submission to the action of Congress; shall we again have peace in this country; shall we again resume our progress, growth, and prosperity; or shall war become the normal condition of the United States as it has been of other countries? The Democratic party has declared for war, continuous, unending war except upon the condition of the success of the principles of the rebellion.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, a word in reply to my honorable friend. The convention at New York formed their platform before they nominated their candidates. They do not square their platform according to their candidates, but they make their candidates square their opinions and purposes according to the platform. As I understand the platform, it does not present any issue of war which has occurred to the imagination of the honorable Senator from Indiana. They do not allow their candidates, if I understand the principle upon which they act, to make platforms for the party. I am not of the party; I was not represented in it; I had no voice in making the platform; I am speaking of it simply as I understand it. They make a platform upon which their candidates must take position, and by which they must square their principles and their purposes in the canvass if they should be elected.

Now, sir, I am not for any war at the term. ination of this election for the Presidency; nor for war for the inauguration of the President who is elected, whoever he may be; but I believe, as I said before, that the numbers in favor of the Constitution over the bayonet, and of the white man's President over the President of the negroes will be a majority of three fourths of all the electoral votes.

Mr. MORTON. I desire to ask the Senator a question, with his permission. I ask if there is any repugnauce or disagreement between

the platform adopted, in the shape of resolutions, and the letter of Francis P. Blair, and it so to point it out?

Mr. DAVIS. I have not read Mr. Blair's letter with any particularity, but I think that it speaks wider, broader, than the platform speaks or intended to speak.

Mr. BUCKALEW. Mr. President, my idea is that the issue of reconstruction is dependent pon popular votes in the States represented

Congress. I went over the grounds of that opinion last night, and attempted to vindicate it. Of course I shall not repeat the argument on this occasion, but I refer to it as constituting, in the main, my answer to the present remarks of the Senator from Indiana.

I have an idea that when the people in their sovereign capacity-I mean in the States about whose organization there is no doubt-shall have pronounced their judgment, there will be an acquiescence in it and no necessity for any party to resort to force. I have an idea that the currents of human action, particularly in our country, are governed by moral causes; that this country is under the dominion of moral power, and that the force of popular judgment, as expressed in the presidential election of the present year, will be potential and efficacious in itself and in its direct aud necessary consequences to terminate this protracted dispute over reconstruction. That is my view.

Now, let me tell the Senator that in the case supposed, the case of a majority given in the adhering and regularly-organized States, I undertake to say that the Supreme Court will have its mouth opened; there will be no longer any attempt to muzzle that court; we shall get its honest judgment of the legality of the system, at least of the military part of it which was involved in a case pending before it, when the present Congress undertook to withdraw jurisdiction by a particular bill. I undertake to say that when the freemen of this country in their sovereign capacity, upon this very subject of reconstruction, have pronounced heir voice, in these very ten States concerned here will be acquiescence, there will be no popular turbulence, there will be no necessity to esort to force in order to carry into execution the judgment of the people.

I do not agree with General Blair that it would be necessary to overturn everything and remit society back into a state of complete disorganization. It may be thought provident and politic to use existing forms, to give them such modification as the Constitution and the principles of justice may require; and I have no doubt that there will be concurrence and assistance, as well as acquiescence in these very States themselves. They understand that a majority of the adhering people of the United States, who went to war with them and by whose patriotism and whose sacrifices the result was achieved have a moral power to determine this very question of reconstruction; and they will acquiesce, I venture to say, promptly and thoroughly in any judgment which these northern and western populations may pronounce.

However this may be, sir, the whole point made by the Senator from Indiana is answered by the platform itself, made before candidates were selected, in which the judgment of the con vention was pronounced upon this question of reconstruction, and it was handed over to the people for their judgment. There is no threat of war, of violence, of revolution, of unlawful action. These men are freemen, loving the institutions of our Government and desir ous to maintain them; and in an orderly and legal and patriotic manner they submit this subject of reconstruction which Congress has controlled to the decision of the masters of Congress, the decision of the people themselves. That is all they have done in their plat form; that is all they have asked of the people, a judgment upon the merits of this question, and a judgment upon it for the first time. The people have never had an opportunity yet to pronounce upon it, because there has been no election of members of Congress since 1866,

and all these reconstruction laws have been passed since. What the convention did was to send down to the people for their sovereign judgment this question. It was an appeal from the political majority in the two Houses of Congress that they framed there, and they have sent it to those who are competent to pass judgment upon it and whose judgment will carry such moral power and strength that it will be felt throughout our country and it will repress all elements of turbulence and disorder. It will not be necessary to levy armies, to gather munitions of war, to awake the passions of the people of this country, to array them in hostile camps against each other. The institutions of our fathers give us means for a peaceable solution of this question of reconstruction.

We ask no more; we expect nothing else. If we are beaten in this issue, we submit because it is the decision of the highest authority and of the highest power in this country. If the decision is with us, justly and of right, and of necessity also, the contrivances of the political majority in Congress must go down before the judgment of the people, and they will go down. I attempted last night to state the grounds for this judgment and to vindicate it by reasons which must be most apparent to every intelligent observer.

The Senator from Indiana would raise a specter of war to fright us from our propriety; to prevent a just popular judgment upon the real question in controversy between the great parties of this country. Sir, he will fail. They were not alarmed in former years when the specter of war was shaken before them. They went forward and they executed their purpose. Whether it was right or wrong they had courage and will to pursue their own course and to pronounce their own judgment; and just so it will be in the elections of the present year. The Senator from Indiana is to go to his people upon the merits of this controversy and get their judgment as freemen upon it from beginning to end. All these laws are to be passed in review, and for the first time, as I said before, judgment is to be pronounced upon them; and nobody is to be frightened, nobody is to be alarmed. This people are sovereign; and their will is the fundamental law, higher and behind even the written forms of the Constitution itself. They are not to be alarmed by this cry which comes up to us from the Senator from Indiana.

Mr. CONKLING. I ask for the yeas and nays on this question.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore The question is on the amendment of the Senator from New York to the amendment of the Senator from Missouri.

Mr. SHERMAN. I should like to have the original resolution and the amendment

both read.

Mr. DRAKE. I ask that all three propositions that are lying on the Clerk's desk be now read, the original resolution, the amendment I proposed, and that offered by the Senator from New York.

The resolution and amendments were read. Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, if there

one here who has not listened

pleasure to the very eloquent speeches of which this measure has been the occasion it is he who remember, that this is the 10th of July, and that abundant opportunity will be afforded on the platform and at the hustings for the discussion of all those questions which have been so earnestly presented to-day. The proposition before us is an eminently practical one; it is a proposal to do that which, properly understood, it seems to us, will be the subject of universal accord, if we can only hit upon the mode of bringing it about. The law as it is now, by the Constitution, is precisely the law as each one of these three propositions attempts to declare it. By the Constitution, without referring to any part of it except a single clause of the second article, it is clearly for Congress, or for the Senate sitting in the presence of the House of Representatives and counting the

votes, to see to it that no State is represented unless the condition of things concurs provided in each of these propositions. The language of the Constitution is that—

"Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

"In such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct," thus presupposing, thus having as an indispensable prerequisite to the proceeding here ordained, the existence of a constitution in the State and a Legislature operating under that constitution. The pending proposition, therefore, is merely declaratory, declaratory of the law, which, I submit, would be administered without objection and without agitation on any ordinary occasion; but we stand in the pres ence of events, and we are waited upon by contingencies which admonish us that a declaration should be made in advance so plain and specific that no political party, that no political faction, maddened by disappointment or ambition, may plausibly insist that action has been taken by the national Legislature in either of its branches for the purpose of accomplishing the success or the overthrow of a party ticket or a party measure.

Article twelve of the amendments to the Constitution-I need not stop to quote itproceeds upon this same theory. And therefore, as I have said once before, the simple question is in what form we shall declare the law so as to make the declaration certain and ample for the occasion.

Now, beyond all question, three communities known in the history of our country as States, are not at this time entitled to have their votes counted in the choice of a President. I refer to Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia. Whatever may be the theory of gentlemen as to the status, politically, of these States, the historical fact is patent that the forms of government as they once existed have been prostrated, and, in the language of the acting President of the United States, "all civil government has become extinct," unless the provisional governments which were set up afterward are for this purpose to obtain; and upon that I believe nobody insists. We have presented to these States, in common with all the other States— and I make this remark now in answer to an observation which fell from my honorable friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCKALEW] yesterday

the plan which, for the time being, at least, must be accepted by all concerned as the only road leading to restoration. Neither Texas, nor Mississippi, nor Virginia has qualified itself in this the only recognized mode of representation in the Electoral College. Unless they shall be qualified hereafter in season, beyond all question, accepting what is fixed now as legislation, however we may differ as to its propriety, these three States must be excluded from representation in the Electoral College. This follows, let me stop to observe, and I will devote a moment to it, according to the law as announced by the Supreme Court in the case which has been quoted here many times, and as the law has been accepted always by all departments of the Government. It follows from the theory that to Congress as the law-making power, or the political power of the country, belongs the recognition or the refusal to recog nize a State government in any particular State as the legitimate government there, because, although the Rhode Island case did say that to the President belonged the power to determine which government he should aid by ordering troops in that instance, as I heard the honorable Senator from Kentucky argue at great length some time ago, the court said that that was the result because the act of 1795 committed to the President the determination of that question, that Congress might have committed its determination to a court or to any other body known to our organism, and then the prerogative of recognizing which government was regular would have been located as Congress had located it; but the action of the Legisla ture was that the act of 1795 had reposed that

power in the President, and therefore the court said that to him and to nobody else at that time appertained the administration of that power.

Mr. DAVIS. The honorable Senator, I think, has misrecollected the point that was decided. The court did not decide that Congress could have conferred on the President or any other power the right to recognize the government; but the court decided that Congress might have conferred on the President or any other power the authority to determine the fact of an insurrection in a State.

Mr. CONKLING. Ishould not have referred to that case if I had supposed it would lead to any controversy; but, without sending for the book, the point of that case, I undertake to say-and I submit to be tried by the honorable Senator for my error if I commit any— was this: the Governor of the State of Rhode Island had a right to make a requisition for troops in order to quell insurrection; and the original question in the case was which of the two governments was the true one. By the act of 1795 Congress had reposed in the President the power of responding to a call for troops; the President had responded; and the court held that in so responding, by that act he had determined for himself and for the Government of the United States which was the true government in Rhode Island. Why? Because there resided inherently in the Executive the power to determine that question? Not at all; but because Congress had invested him with the power; and the court say in so many words that Congress might have invested a judge or a court with the same power, and had Congress done so the determination of the question by the court or judge so invested would have had the same virtue and the same effect as they held attached to the determination of the President of the United States. But I beg my honorable friend not to draw me into a discussion of the particular point of that case any further, as he will see that the question between him and me is not important to the purpose for which I introduced it. I say that it has been held universally by bench, bar, Government, and people, that to Congress pertained the power of saying which government in a State was regular, as an elementary proposition; and when you add to that the fact that the Senate, in the presence of the House of Representatives, is to count the votes which represent a State organization, I think I need not argue or split hairs with the honorable Senator in order to come to the conclusion that in this instance, at all events, the determination of that question is reposed either with Congress or with the Senate sitting to count the votes in the presence of the House of Representatives.

Now, the question arises as to the mode of making this declaration and making it most effectual. The honorable Senator from Vermont advances a proposition which he speaks of as coming from the Judiciary Committee, and in a certain sense it does come from the Judiciary Committee. It does not, however, I violate no propriety in saying, come from any portion of that committee, majority or minority, as a proposition without amendment to be supported in the Senate. The honorable Senator had permission, by the votes of a majority of the committee, to report that proposition, those who composed that very majority saying at the time that they reserved the right to perfect it, and expected it to be perfected and changed in the Senate.

66

Mr. EDMUNDS. I do not so understand, though it is not a matter of any very great consequence. We want to get it in the best form, and if my friend's form is the best we shall all say amen." The only difficulty is that a great many of us do not see it. In committee the measure was considered in the usual way, if it is proper to state what occurred there, and the honorable Senator himself moved an amendment in committee which, after discussion, was agreed to, and the measure was directed to be reported, as I understood, in the ordinary way. I do not mean by that that any member of the

committee is not at liberty to move to amend it further and make it as perfect as it can be ; but I certainly do not understand it as stated by my friend. However, he may be correct.

Tennessee is omitted entirely. Why omit Tennessee? Is there not as much danger in Tennessee of irregular action, of the interposition of military force, of lawless invasion, and of eloctoral votes being sent here despite that State organization quite as hateful to the hon

to his criticisms, to say the least, as the organizations in the residue of these States, and quite as liable, I may say, in the face of current history to be disordered and overturned as the organization in some at least of the States which are here enumerated?

The joint resolution offered by the honorable Senator from Vermont proposes, naming certain States, to make a special act applicable to them and applicable to this one single case. Why should we do that? If we are going to declare, not to bind our successors, but simply to bind ourselves in February next, what we will do in counting votes from certain States, we do not need any law for that, we do not need to wait here ten days for a veto and struggle to pass by a two-thirds vote over a veto such a law; we only need a concurrent resolution. Why? Because it would not be designed to apply to any case except one now before us, or to bind anybody except ourselves. The resolution which was passed in 1865, although it took the form of a joint resolution, and not a concurrent resolution, was special and temporary. It was sent to President Lincoln, and he signed it, and what did he say in doing it? He was criticised with some harshness at the time for saying that, although he signed it, he thought it did not pertain to him at all; that it was a mere concurrent resolution. I have here the message which he sent to the two Houses, and I beg to read it, as it is very brief:

To the honorable the Senate

and House of Representatives:

The joint resolution entitled "Joint resolution de

claring certain States not entitled to representation

in the Electoral College," has been signed by the Executive, in deference to the view of Congress implied in its passage and presentation to him. In his own view, however, the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution, have complete power to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal; and it is not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct that power by a veto, as would be the case if his action were at all essential in the matter. He disclaims all right of the Executive to interfere in any way in the matter of canvassing or counting electoral votes, and he also disclaims that by signing said resolution he has expressed any opinion on the recitals of the preamble, or any judgment of his own upon the subject of the resolution. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 8, 1865.

But, Mr. President, the votes of North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, &c., are not to be counted upon the happening of certain things. Suppose that the same things occur in the State of Maryland, is the vote of Maryland to be counted? Suppose they occur in Kentucky or in New York, are the votes of those States to be counted? If there is a Shays in Massachusetts, or a Dorr in Rhode Island, or a whisky insurrection in Pennsylvania, or an anti-rent insurrection, which we have had in most formidable proportions over and over again in the State of New York, and they prostrate the modes of election, overturn regularity, and send by lawlessness and usurpation electors to an Electoral College, and their votes are transmitted here, are they to be counted on this occasion, or on any future occasion?

In 1864, we stood upon the law as the Constitution makes it; as we might have stood upon it since but for these troubious times, full of suspicion, of discord, of animosity, and of elements of disturbance. But now that we do so stand, why should we adopt a provision, partial, special, technical, temporary, if we are going to pass any law on the subject? I agree that the amendment offered by my honorable friend from Missouri [Mr. DRAKE] is an improvement upon the original proposition, and I shall vote for it with great pleasure if I am unable to get the consent of the Senate to my own proposition.

Mr. FOWLER. I desire to ask the Senator from New York whether his proposition provides that in any case New York shall not be represented in the Electoral College? Does he so understand it?

Mr. CONKLING. The proposition provides that the vote of no State, whether it is New York or any other, in which the State government has been overturned, in which there is at the time no government under which an election can be held or is held, can be counted. That is precisely what the Constitution says now, as I have been arguing longer than perhaps I should, to show; for when the Constitution says that electors shall be chosen in such mode as the Legislature of the State shall prescribe, if there is no legal Legislature there, then electors cannot be chosen and votes cannot be counted. Therefore, it says precisely what the Constitution declares it shall say, provided we are to declare anything on the subject.

But again, the proposition of the Senator from Vermont calls by name certain States, and says the votes from them shall not be counted in certain contingencies. Now, to show the danger of that sort of enumeration let me mention that in looking over this bill I see that

proposes it, the vote of Maryland would not be counted at all.

Mr. DRAKE. Will my honorable friend from New York be so good as to name the time when the State of Maryland was in insurrection?

Mr. CONKLING. Oh yes, sir; I will name that time. My friend, who is a lawyer, will remember the maxim that that is certain which can be rendered certain; and I therefore render the time certain by referring to the occasion when George B. McClellan, with the universal

acquiescence of the loyal people of America, swept away the Legislature of the State of Maryland and blotted out her Statehood entirely, for the reason that she was in open, rampant rebellion against the Constitution of the United States and the laws of Congress. I do not say it was declared by the President to be in insurrection, and was in that sense technically in insurrection; nor does this amendment require that she should have been so ; and therefore it is that I invite the attention of the Senator from Missouri to the fact, that in order to exclude Maryland from the operation of his amendment he should change its language thus, "No State declared in insurrection." Maryland was not so declared; but practically, historically, politically, militarily, Maryland was in insurrection quite as much as some of these other States.

Now, Mr. President, not to detain the Senate on this subject, I wish to suggest, as briefly as I may, the idea with which I have proposed the amendment I have submitted. It is first to put upon the statute-book a permanent provision for all cases and for all times, and a provision so specific that it cannot be eluded and cannot be baffled by the omission, accidental or otherwise, of any particular State-a provision which, looking not only to the dangers immediately before us, to the three States whose condition is special, to the residue of the eleven States, the condition of some or all of whom may be special, but looking to all the States, shall make adequate provision.

Why should we not do that? What is the object, I beg to ask the Senator from Michigan, [Mr. HOWARD,] referring to a remark which he made yesterday. What is the object we have in view here? It is to close the door of the Electoral College against all those not entitled to enter. The Senator assents to that, as he must. That is what we are all driving at. The object is to close the door of the Electoral College against all States not entitled to enter. Then why not say so?

Mr. HOWARD. Against those mentioned in the bill.

Mr. CONKLING. Does the honorable Senator mean that if between now and the election an outbreak should occur in some State not mentioned in the bill, in consequence of which the same state of things legally should come about which he fears, he would be in favor of counting those votes? I beg the Senator to let me know what he means by saying "those mentioned in the bill."

New York proceeds further, I wish to know whether his amendment provides for this pos sibility: in case any insurrection or disturbance occurs in a State between this and the election, may Congress when it meets declare such State in insurrection and refuse to count its votes? Is that the Senator's understanding of the effect of his proposition?

Mr. CONKLING. I am not sure that I understand the question of the Senator.

Mr. FOWLER. Does the Senator's proposition authorize Congress, when it shall meet next winter, to say that any particular State may have been in insurrection; or, in other words, that there is no regularly organized government in that State, and therefore refuse to count its votes?

Mr. CONKLING. The amendment authorizes the Senate, in the presence of the House of Representatives, to do exactly this: if votes shall be received purporting to come from a certain State, to pass upon the question first, whether when that election took place there was a constitutional government in that State, and second, whether the election was held under the auspices and authority of that goverument; so that, although there should be in Tennessee a regular government, as there is, if marauders, moss troopers, a mob, a vigilance committee, should hold an election and send electoral votes herc, the Senate would adjudicate that, although there was a regular government there, the election had not been held by force of that government, and therefore the votes were not entitled to be counted.

Returning for a moment to the honorable Senator from Michigan, his objection now is that my amendment embraces too much, that it is too strong, that it is a reflection upon the States which have not been in insurrection. I thought I heard him say last night that the objection to it was that it was "velvet-clawed." I think he used that very expression.

Mr. HOWARD. 66 Velvet-footed.' Mr. CONKLING. I beg pardon, "velvetfooted," a troop of horse shod with felt. That was the idea, that the oars were muffled, that there was not spattering enough, that the words were not valiant enough, that there was some bravery or some virtue in calling these States by name and saying something snappy and crisp with regard to them. I differ entirely with that criticism. I do not think that using strong words or having anything declamatory in a bill makes anything for it. On the contrary, when you say that no State shall be per

Mr. CONKLING. Well, Mr. President, I am very glad that the honorable Senator has reversed the current of his objection, as he has done, if I understood him correctly last night. He says now that he does not anticipate that any of the loyal States will have an insurrection. Does he anticipate, I should like to inquire of him, that those governments which we have been setting up will fall down before November?

Mr. HOWARD. No, sir.

Mr. CONKLING. Then this, as I said before, is a declaratory measure for abundant caution, to provide for possible contingencies, and that is all it is. Then why does the Senator say that it is a reflection to suppose that, within the range of possibility, things which have occurred in the loyal States in the past may be repeated in the future at some time.

Mr. FOWLER. Before the Senator from

cumstances, that includes all States. A very old lawyer in my State once said to a nervous client who was troubiing him about a contract, thinking the thing was not sufficiently described, that it did not say all that was necessary. "Never mind; when you said that you sold a horse, that meant that you sold his head and his tail and his mane and all the rest of him, just as if you wrote it all down." So I think when you say that votes shall not be counted from any State whatever, in which such a condition of things exists as is here described, that is no more velvet-footed, it is no more squeamish or mealy-mouthed than it would be if you wrote in the names of all these States and called them some hard name besides.

Now, Mr. President, there is no doubt whatever as to the meaning of this provision as it will stand in the light in which it was criticised last evening by the Senator:

Unless at the time prescribed by law for the choice of electors there shall be in such State a government recognized by Congress.

Stopping there the criticism might be that Congress had recognized the provisional gov ernments in the South, or had in time gone by recognized the old governments. Therefore the provision is:

Unless there shall be in such State a government recognized by Congress as regular and permanent and not provisional only.

Stopping there the criticism might be, "True, there may be such a government there,

but yet they may have elected these electors under the old governments which are held by those of a certain opinion to have smoldered and continued through the rebellion." To meet that the further safeguard is:

Nor unless the election for electors shall have taken place under the authority of a State government so recognized.

Does not that provide for every case? Mr. HOWARD. Will the Senator allow me to call his attention to one fact? Mr. CONKLING. Certainly.

Mr. HOWARD. It is claimed by the President of the United States, certainly a very sagacious man in some respects, as well as by his entire train of followers, including the whole of the Democratic party lately so ably represented in the New York convention, that Congress has already recognized the Johnson governments established in the ten rebellious States. Does the Senator from New York intend to leave that question open by his amendment; and does he not leave that question open for discussion; and may it not happen in the future that under such a provision the two Houses might hold that the governments established under the decrees of Johnson were the recognized governments of the rebel States? Had we not better close the door against all doubt on that point? I look upon it as one of great delicacy, not to say difficulty, in the future.

Mr. CONKLING. I hardly think the Senator would have asked that question if he had attended to the reading of the language of the amendment; but as he has asked it let us examine the language once more:

Unless at the time prescribed by law for the choice of electors there shall be in such State a government recognized by Congress as regular and permanent, and not provisional only.

Upon that language I have two points to which I should like to direct the Senator's attention."Unless there shall be in such State a government." What does that imply? A government in existence, not merely a government in theory. I have not a right to say that? Because the subsequent provision is that the election must have been held under the authority of that government. Therefore is it not merely hypercritical, but is it not going a bow-shot beyond hypercriticism for the Senator to insist that this might be held to mean the Johnson provisional governments, when, in the first place, in every one of these States the ground is occupied by a later government substituted for it, and when the amendment expressly provides that every government which has been recognized merely as provisional is denounced by its terms, and that electoral votes coming from such a government as that shall not in any event be considered.

Mr. HOWARD. The honorable Senator will not fail to observe that Mr. Johnson and his followers do not regard those governments established by him as provisional governments. They are spoken of by him and them as the permanent lawful governments of the States, and in no sense provisional. The addition of the word "only" certainly gives no force to the language.

Mr. CONKLING. The honorable Senator loses sight of the parties to this controversy. The bill is not providing in reference to governments recognized by the President; it is providing for governments recognized by Congress; and does the Senator say that Congress, even if it can be said that those governments were ever recognized at all by Congress, recognized them in any sense except as provisional and temporary governments merely? The language of the statutes, several of them, is the precise language here. I not only say that no votes shall be counted from a government which has been recognized as provisional, but I add after provisional" the word “only," and therefore, how does the Senator make headway when he argues that the President has recognized those governments? Has Congress recognized them? That is the point.

Mr. HOWARD. I do not argue that there