the eulogies delivered upon the late Hon. Solomon Foot, for the use of his widow and family, to report it back and recommend its pasI ask for its present consideration. There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the following resolution:

sage.

Resolved, That one thousand extra copies of the addresses and funeral sermon delivered in the Senate on the death of Hon. Solomon Foot, a Senator from the State of Vermont, heretofore ordered to be printed for the use of the Senate, be printed for the use of the widow and family of the deceased.

The resolution was agreed to.

DEPOSITS OF PUBLIC MONEY.

Mr. GRIMES submitted the following resőlution; which was considered by unanimous consent, and agreed to:

Resolved, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to inquire into the expediency of providing by law that no public moneys shall be deposited by any public officers elsewhere than in the office of the sub-Treasurer in any city where there is a sub-Treasury, nor elsewhere than in the Treasury of the United States in the city of Washington.

NEW YORK POST OFFICE.

Mr. DIXON. I move that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of House joint resolution No. 66, in relation to the courts and post office in the city of New York.

Mr. CHANDLER. I would ask if the House joint resolution No. 116 was not the unfinished business of yesterday at the close of the morning hour.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. It is not the practice of the Senate, when a motion is made to take up a bill, to give precedence to the unfinished business of the morning hour. The question is on the motion of the Senator from Connecticut to take up House joint resolution No. 66, relative to the courts and post office of New York city.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, proceeded to consider the joint resolution, which proposes to appoint the mayor and postmaster of the city of New York, the district attorney for the United States at New York city, the president

of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, and Jackson S. Shultz, of New York city, a commission to select a proper site for a building for the post office and for the accommodation of the United States courts in the city of New York. They are to report to the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Interior, at their earliest convenience, the selection upon which they, or a majority of them, may agree, and the price at which the site can be purchased by the Government for the purposes contemplated in the resolution; and if the report shall meet the approbation of the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Interior, they shall communicate it, with such additional suggestions as they think proper, to Congress.

The first amendment reported by the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads was in line six, after Jackson S. Shultz," to insert "Charles H. Russell, and Moses Taylor."

The amendment was agreed to.

The next amendment was after the word "resolution," in line fourteen, to insert "if a new site should be selected;" so that the clause will read:

That they report to the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Interior, at their earliest convenience, the selection upon which they or a majority of them may agree, and the price at which such site can be purchased by the Government for the purposes contemplated in this resolution, if a new site should be selected.

The amendment was agreed to. The joint resolution was reported to the Senate as amended, and the amendments were concurred in. The amendments were ordered to be engrossed and the joint resolution to be read a third time. It was read the third time and passed.

ASIATIC CHOLERA.

Mr. CHANDLER. I now move to take up House joint resolution No. 116.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (H. R.

Again, he said:

"It is an epidemic instead of a contagion. It exists in the air; and hence there was great propriety in the jest of some Senator the other day who proposed to refer the whole subject to the ventilation committee."

Now, sir, that is a question that had never been settled until yesterday. The most eminent surgeons on earth had been in doubt as to whether it was contagious, infectious, or atmospheric. That point being settled, and probably settled to the satisfaction of the Senate, they may deem that no further action is necessary upon this resolution. As I remarked

yesterday, the Committee on Commerce have

had this resolution under consideration for two months. There was a great diversity of opinion in the committee as to the propriety of action on the subject. The medical profession, not having been aware that the point was settled, appointed a convention in Baltimore, which assembled on Friday last, I believe. In that medical convention were eminent men from Canada and other British Provinces, from New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and the most eminent medical talent in the United States. They deemed the subject of sufficient importance to send a delegation from that convention here to advocate the passage of some such measure as this. A meeting of the Committee on Commerce was called, which was attended by all the members except the Senator from Maryland, [Mr. CRESWELL;] and they unanimously decided to recommend the Senate to adopt this plan, which that delegation said would be effective.

I made the suggestion to the man of that delegation who seemed to have the most experience on this subject that this disease was by many considered not to be contagious, but rather infectious or atmospheric. He replied that last fall they had in the harbor of New York one hundred and fifty cases of Asiatic cholera, but the board of health put their hands upon it and held it in the bay, and not a single case reached the city of New York, although the train was laid, and New York city was never in a better condition for its reception and for its terrific ravages than it was at that time. The opinion of these medical men differs materially from the opinion of the Senator from Pennsylvania, and yet I have no doubt the Senator from Pennsylvania must be correct. I never knew him to be wrong in anything-politics, religion, law, or anything else. He knows this thing to be so, and of course it is settled; and I suppose the Senate will adopt the learned opinion of the Senator from Penn

If

sylvania and reject the opinion of the medical convention which assembled at Baltimore! I leave the case in the hands of the Senate. they think that the knowledge and information of the Senator from Pennsylvania is greater than that of the convention that visited the East during this summer to investigate this subject, and greater than that of the convention which assembled in Baltimore, and greater than that of the medical faculty of the world, I hope they will adopt the views of the Senator from Pennsylvania and reject those of the medical faculty. The Senate will vote upon this question as they see fit.

Mr. MORRILL. I should like to have the original resolution, as it came from the House, read. I believe it has not yet been read. The Secretary read as follows:

Resolved, &c., That the President be, and he hereby is, authorized to make and carry into effect such orders and regulations of quarantine as in his opinion may be deemed necessary and proper, in aid of State or municipal authorities, to guard against the introduction of the cholera into the ports of the United States; and the President is further authorized to empower the military and naval commanders in ports and places in the States that have been or are in insurrection to enforce such quarantine regulations as may be deemed necessary for the purpose of guarding against the introduction of cholera or yellow fever, and to provide for the proper care and treatment of patients. And such an amount of money as may be necessary to carry into effect this joint resolution is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.

Mr. MORRILL. Perhaps the attention of the Senate should be called to the action of the House of Representatives in contrast with the action of the Senate committee. It will be seen that the resolution from the House, for which the Senate committee substitutes its own resolution, provides for a method of treating this subject in cooperation with the States. The President is authorized to make rules and regulations to cooperate with the State and local authorities. That is the chief feature of the House resolution. The resolution reported by the Committee on Commerce of the Senate, which is proposed as a substitute for that, inaugurates a system independent of the local authorities and independent of the States; and it is different in some other respects. The object of the two resolutions, of course, is the same, to prevent the spread of the cholera.

The question which I desire the Senate should understand and should consider is, whether it is advisable to invest the President and his Secretaries with the powers of quarantine and sanitary regulation over the whole country. The statement of that question will show the Senate at once the importance of this measure and the magnitude of the undertaking; and they must judge for themselves as to the probability of its being effective. A measure authorizing the President and his Cabinet to use the war power of the country and the Treasury of the country to make, in the first place, a system broad enough to quarantine all the ports on the coast, and a sanitary system or a cordon of sanitary posts extensive enough to guard your whole frontier, and also to be effective in all the cities and towns throughout the whole country, the Senate will see at once will be very comprehensive and very extensive, and involves the exercise of very extensive powers; and whether so spread out and so acting independent of the States-to raise no question now of the right to do so-by any possibility, within a reasonable time, it could be made effective as a practical question, it seems to me admits of very serious doubt. I ought to say, therefore, calling the attention of the Senate to these two propositions, that it seemed to me that the measure, as it came from the House of Repre sentatives, was preferable in two particulars: first, that it avoids all questions of authority; and secondly, that it proposes to coöperate with the systems already in existence. The city of New York, the great metropolis, for instance, has a very effective system to-day of quarantine and health police, more so than could be perfected by this Government in twelve months if it should set to work to-day to do it. Now, are we to act independent of that, or to cooperate with it? Just as you

settle that question so will you settle whether you will amend the resolution as it comes from the House, and adopt the proposition of the committee, or concur in the resolution as it came from the House.

I was in favor of the House resolution because it proposed to confer with the States and with the cities and avail itself of the local systems of quarantine and health police, organized and as they have existed for fifty years. It may be said that our authorities can avail themselves of that; but that is not the theory of the bill. The theory of the bill is that it is to be independent, that a system is to be organized here by these Secretaries, and that it is to be carried out over the whole country. It seems to me that you will lose entirely the efficiency which is desirable and which you would secure if, instead of that, you coöperated with the systems already in force.

For these reasons-not to argue the question in any way, but merely to make suggestions-because of the doubt on the question of authority, and especially because efficiency will come from coöperating with the States, it seemed to me that the House resolution was preferable; but of course I rise to make no hostility to the measure. It seemed, however, to me to be advisable, as nobody had stated the precise position in which the measure was presented to the Senate, that I should make this statement.

Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President, it appears to me that the amendment which the Committee on Commerce have recommended to this joint resolution very much improves it as sent from the House of Representatives. The honorable Senator from Maine has correctly stated the essential difference between the two propo sitions, that of the House being to authorize the President to act in aid of the State and local authorities, and which proposition, therefore, necessarily implies the consent of the State and the municipal authorities who are invested by local regulations with present power over the subject, while the Senate amendment proposes to make a uniform system of quarantine under the paramount regulations of the General Government, which shall be coextensive, irrespective of State and municipal lines and boundaries, with the disease which it is sought by both processes to exclude from the conntry; and the simple question is, which is the most likely to attain the desired end?

Now, I think it must be admitted by my friend from Maine that the cholera will not pay any regard to State lines. It does not know anything about State rights; it does not recognize the distinction between Federal and State authority; and, therefore, while one regulation may exist in New York which shall require a quarantine, if you please, of thirty days, another may exist at Jersey City which only requires a quarantine of ten days, another at New London, in Connecticut, or at Newport, in Rhode Island, having a different length of time and a different process of security; so that the result is without uniformity, that a regulation which is enforced with safety and security in one city, operating to the temporary disadvantage and injury of its commerce and disturbance of its trade, is evaded in an adjacent city to the advantage of its commerce and its trade, and by means of which the pestilence which we all seek to exclude is introduced into the country.

It appears to me that this is a subject which concerns the general welfare of the people of the United States, irrespective of State or local organizations and irrespective of State boundaries. It concerns the general welfare, and therefore, in my judgment, it is the highest duty of the General Government to promote that general welfare if anything can be done by exercising its paramount authority over the subject. My friend from Maine suggests that there is doubt as to the authority of the United States. I think he will reconsider that doubt and change his opinion, if it be his opinion that we have not the power, when he recurs to the

cases which have been decided on the subject of the introduction of passengers, known as the passenger tax cases, in which the Supreme Court of the United States held, and rightly || held, that the States, while Congress undertakes to regulate commerce at all, have no authority to regulate the admission of persons or merchandise from foreign countries into this. Therefore this concerns, in the most eminent and exact sense, that power which is granted by the Constitution of the United States to us under the head of the regulation of commerce; and inasmuch as we must all agree that it concerns us all, inland States and inland districts as well as the sea-board ones, ought we notassuming that we can frame and pass any law which will have any prospect of attaining the result to go as far as prudence and as courage will allow to accomplish it? Most certainly we should.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The morning hour having expired, it becomes the duty of the Chair to call up the unfinished business of yesterday.

Mr. CHANDLER. I hope the unfinished business will be permitted to lie over informally. I think this will not take long.

Mr. SHERMAN. It is very manifest that this will take time.

Mr. CHANDLER. I think but very little. Mr. EDMUNDS. I will not occupy three minutes.

Mr. SHERMAN. I will not interrupt the Senator from Vermont in the midst of his speech.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. If there be no objection the unfinished business of yesterday will be laid aside in order to proceed with the joint resolution now before the Senate. No objection being made, it is laid aside informally.

Mr. EDMUNDS. I think it was made manifest before the Committee on Commerce-and it is a subject so serious that I cannot regard it in the jocose light that my friend from Pennsylvania did yesterday-it was made manifest before the Committee on Commerce by the concurrent testimony of many doctors, who for once did not disagree, that cholera is the subject of preventive regulations; that it is capable, in a very large degree at least, of being excluded from districts, territories, and countries by the enforcement of sanitary and quarantine regulations; and a very eminent instance of that fact and a very strong proof of it is found in what we know of the history of cholera in Europe last fall. The quarantine in the Italian ports on the Mediterranean was very strictly enforced, and consequently the cholera passing from the East went by those Italian ports to the ports of France, and at last first reached the Italian territory by way of the railroad from Paris, having gone completely around the seaboard and returned into that country from the interior, where the quarantine regulations were not enforced. Therefore it behooves us most certainly to try the experiment, and to try it upon that scale of uniformity and of severity which is commensurate with the danger of this pestilence, which certainly is as dangerous as any pestilence or any evil can possibly be.

It has appeared to me, with all deference to my friend from Maine, that we ought to go to the length of intrusting these large powers to the Government as we did in the case of the rinderpest, which is a case in point as to the power, and to authorize the Secretaries of War and the Navy and the Treasury to put in force with uniformity and impartiality a system which will operate for the protection of the whole country.

Mr. SUMNER. Mr. President, I must say that in reflecting upon this question I find that I traveled with my friend from Maine through his inquiries and his doubts, but it was only to arrive substantially at the conclusion of my friend from Vermont. I thought that the criticism of my friend from Maine was in many respects, at least on its face, just; I went along with him, and yet I hesitated in adopting the conclusion which he seemed to intimate. I

doubt, if we proceed under the House resolu tion, whether we shall do the work thoroughly. I doubt whether that resolution can be made sufficiently effective for the occasion. Indeed, I may go further and say I am satisfied, all things considered, that it cannot be effective for the occasion. We then have the substitute proposed by the committee of our own body. Against that there is certainly this remark to be made, that it is novel. I am not aware that any such proposition has ever before been brought forward. It has, therefore, to meet the argument of novelty; but when you consider it, certainly it has in its favor the great argument of efficiency. If adopted, it will be effective for the purpose. But then the ques tion remains behind, to which the Senator from Maine has directed our attention, whether this proposition of the committee is not something more than even a novelty, whether it is not a departure perhaps from the just principles of our institutions. I am not inclined to say that it is anything more than a novelty. I admit that it is such. It does invest the Government with large and perhaps unprecedented powers in order to meet a peculiar case where a stringent remedy must be applied.

But, as the chairman of the Committee on Commerce suggests to me, the powers are temporary. I am not ready to say that such powers cannot be intrusted to the Government. I be-. lieve they can be; but while I agree in that, and am ready to vote for intrusting these powers to the Government, yet, if I can have the attention of my friend, the chairman of the committee, I should like to ask him why these powers are to be placed under the direction of the Secretary of War rather, for instance, than of the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. CHANDLER. They are placed jointly in threc Secretaries, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. SUMNER. I do not mean to express any decisive opinion on the question, but I mean to call the attention of the Senate to it, that it may go for what it is worth. The language is:

That it shall be the duty of the Secretary of War, with the coöperation of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Treasury, whose concurrent action shall be directed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to adopt an efficient and uniform system of quarantine against the introduction into this country of the Asiatic cholera through its ports of entry, &c.

With the permission of

exclusive control with reference to the quarantine. We are now, to a certain extent, to dispossess it and put the War Department in the frout. If Senators are disposed to do so; if my honorable friend, the chairman of the committee, thinks, after having his attention called to it, that upon the whole it is advisable that the War Department should be put in the front, and that the others should but follow up in the rear, I am not going to raise any question, because I start with the idea that this bill must be made effective for the purpose. I believe the House bill cannot be effective for the purpose; and therefore I am ready to accept the bill of the committee, if after having called attention to this point the committee feel that upon the whole it is advisable to proceed with the bill in its present form.

Mr. MORRILL. I did not intend to do more than to call the attention of the Senate to the bill coming from the Committee on Commerce, of which I happen to be a member. Having dissented from the bill, I thought it was perhaps advisable that I should state the distinction between the proposition which came from the other House and that reported by the committee. As the Senator from Massachusetts apprehends, the measure proposed by the committee is a war measure. There is no question of that. It addresses itself to the war power; it seeks to find its authority nowhere else; and I think it will be difficult for anybody to find an authority so broad as is contemplated by it; outside of the war power, with which, in the last four or five years, we have become so familiar. It proceeds on the idea of using the war power; and in aid of the war power it puts at the disposal of the Government the entire means of the Treasury. They are not appropriated in so many words, but these Secretaries are empowered to use all the means at their command. Of course that includes the military and naval forces, and, in aid of them, the resources of the Treasury.

I did not care to raise the questions which the honorable Senator from Massachusetts has so rightly apprehended. It was on account of the extraordinary powers to which he has referred that I shrank from the consideration of the bill, I admit. I thought it inadvisable, and I intimated some doubt about the power to which the honorable Senator from Vermont has so properly alluded. After a proclamation of peace, which has come to us, the effect of which I never could exactly understand, and which I think it will be left to future historians and commentators to define, and after peace has come to us in a general way, why we should pass a bill putting at the discretion of the President of the United States, through the Secre tary of War and the Secretary of the Navy, the entire military and naval power of the country to fight the cholera, is what I cannot exactly comprehend as a question of constitutional power. The measure reported by the committee, I say, proceeds upon that idea, and invokes that authority, and does not find its authority anywhere else.

My honorable friend from Vermont suggests for my consideration that the authority is clearly justifiable upon the ground of the decision of the Supreme Court in the passenger cases so familiar to the country and to the Senate. But let me suggest to him whether there is an analogy between the facts of the cases. There we were proceeding under the commercial authority of the Government-not under the war power, but under the power to regulate commerce. The fact was, in those cases, as the honorable Senator doubtless recollects, that the States of New York and Massachusetts had imposed a tax of one dollar a head upon persons who should be imported into this country under the regulations of commerce prescribed by Congress. The United States, in whom is the supreme authority over questions of commerce, having regulated the importation of such persons, of course the States could not interpose. The States were in direct conflict with the asserted and conceded authority of the Government of the Uni

ted States. That was a case not like this, of war, but a case of commerce. I therefore submit to my honorable friend whether the cases are at all analogous, whether the facts justify the comparison; and I suggest to him that this is more analogous to the license cases. Under the authority of Congress importers were authorized to import into this country from abroad ardent spirits, and having brought them in under the authority of Congress they claimed the right to sell them, and they claimed that the sale was authorized, and that under their police powers the States had no right to interfere with the disposition which they should choose to make; but there the court drew the distinction between the authority of the State and the authority of the General Government: and whereas they said that over foreign commerce the jurisdiction of the General Government is supreme and exclusive, yet when once the foreign article has been introduced within the limits and jurisdiction of the State entirely, the State may then apply to it its police regulations, either of health, sanitary regulations, or what not, and may impose such conditions and limitations on the article so imported under the authority of the Government of the United States as the State, in its own judgment, having exclusive jurisdiction of all matters of police in its own State, shall determine to be necessary for the protection of its own people. Now, apply that doctrine to this case. We are to fight the cholera; where? I concede that we may fight it on our exterior limits, either by weapons of war or through the agency of the Treasury Department, as suggested by the honorable Senator from Massachusetts; but can you enter the States and fight it over the railroads and the turnpikes and the common highways, and in the cities and the towns, and visit the houses and take possession of all the cities and towns in any district of country? For that is what is implied in cordons for sanitary purposes. You absolutely for the time being have the custody socially, politically, civilly, economically, in every sense which is intimate, of the entire American people, houses, lanes, streets, everything as perfectly as the police regulations of the several States and the cities and towns. Can you do that? If so under what power? If we were in a state of war, there is nothing which we could not do against a foreign enemy. I doubt whether we can do it against an enemy such as the cholera ; but against the enemy that invades, you can do any or all of these; but can you do any one of them in this case under the war power? I question very much whether it can be done. Certainly it cannot be done under the authority suggested here, under the power to regulate commerce. The cholera is not commercial in its character; it is pervasive, and it invades everywhere and knows no Federal or local lines. I agree with my honorable friend from Vermont that it knows no State boundaries nor any boundary whatever.

My honorable friend from Vermont suggested -I do not know that he meant to be committed to it something about the general welfare. Whether he intends to draw the authority for this bill from that provision of the Constitution which speaks of the general welfare, I do not know. I hardly think there is anything in the history of the country which authorizes so broad an interpretation of that provision of the Constitution. But the answer to that suggestion would be that this bill does not proceed on that idea. Suppose, however, that any specific authority could be drawn, or ever had been drawn, from the phrase of the Constitution relative to the general welfare, which I am not aware there ever was, would anybody contend that, under the language of the Constitution in regard to providing for the general welfare, a general system for doctoring the American people against cholera, for that is what it is, could be provided by Congress? The power involved in this bill assumes, if it is effective, to go the whole extent of doctoring the American people upon the great emergency of the cholera, providing dry and wet nurses of all

descriptions, medicines, sanitary regulations, cordons, and what not; there is no limitation. Whatever is needed to be done in the premises to prevent the introduction of cholera, and control it after it is here, is to be done by authority of the General Government, by physicians, by police regulations, &c. Whatever may be done, may be done, and is to be done, in contemplation of this bill, by authority of the General Government.

So much for the authority. I rose in the first place simply to suggest what was obvious upon the reading of the two measures, that the proposition of the House of Representatives proceeded upon the idea of the General Government doing something in aid of the State institutions which already exist, sanitary and otherwise, in the several States, as it very properly may to render those local and State institutions effective. There are a thousand ways in which that may be done. The Government has now in all the States a great variety of hospital stores and other stores which might very properly be delivered over to the State authorities. In that way the aid of the Government might be very efficient; but I have no faith at all in the operation of the measure reported by our committee. If you take the matter out of the hands of the State authorities; if you undertake to inaugurate a system here at Washington which is to supplant their regulations and be independent of them, I have no belief that you will render the scheme efficient. That is my difficulty.

Mr. EDMUNDS. Mr. President

Mr. SHERMAN. I must interpose and call for the regular order of business. This debate is evidently going to be much longer than was anticipated.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The unfinished business having been laid aside informally, is liable to be called up at any moment.

POST OFFICE APPROPRIATION BILL. The Senate resumed the consideration of the bill (H. R. No. 280) making appropriations for the service of the Post Office Department during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1867, and for other purposes, the pending question being on the amendment of Mr. TRUMBULL, to add the following as an additional section to the bill:

SEC.. And be it further enacted, That no person exercising or performing, or undertaking to exercise or perform, the duties of any office which by law is required to be filled by the advice and consent of the Senate, shall, before confirmation by the Senate receive any salary or compensation for his services, unless such person be commissioned by the President to fill up a vacancy which has happened by death, resignation, or expiration of term, during the recess of the Senate and since its last adjournment.

Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, the country clearly understands why the amendment proposed by the Senator from Illinois upon this bill is moved. It grows out of an apprehension, of which there are significant signs, that executive patronage is to be used to influence the action of the country, to influence the public sentiment upon the great question of reconstruction. It seems to me that it is legitimate and proper upon this proposition that the action of the President, the condition of the country, and the relations of the men who made him President of the United States should now be discussed.

I propose, Mr. President, to notice very briefly one or two of the observations made yesterday by the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. DooLITTLE] and by the Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. CowAN.] The Senator from Pennsylvania set out with the declaration that the President had been charged by me with a betrayal of the Republican party. When I indicated to him that I had made no such charge, the Senator repeated it and reasserted it. Sir, the record shows that I made no such charge against the President of the United States. I have endeavored at all times and on all occasions, in public and in private, to prevent any disagreement between the President and Congress, any disruption of the ties which bound him to the men who brought him into power.

A year ago, within thirty days after the assas

sination of Mr. Lincoln, 1 learned from various sources that there was a class of public men among us who hoped to have a new cast of the Administration, a reorganization, a reconstruction of political parties. It was more than hinted by some of these persons that the radicals would be "sloughed off," that the extreme men of the rebel States would be "sloughed off," and that there would be a great political organization composed of conservative men. The belief was expressed by these managers that the President of the United States would be the founder of a great party, as were Jefferson and Jackson. It was a new era, just the lucky moment to found a great party of the future-a party that would take care of its founders.

Sir, I confess these hints gave me some anxiety, some alarm for the country. I am among those who believe in the faith and creed, in the motives, objects, and purposes of that political organization which made Mr. Lincoln President in 1860, which carried the country through the fire and blood of civil war, and reëlected Mr. Lincoln in 1864. I believe it to be a liberty-loving and patriotic organization, composed of the noblest, the truest men of our country, and that an overwhelming majority of the thoughtful, reflecting, conscientious, Bible-reading, and God-fearing men of the country are in its ranks. Every sentiment that great organization has ever breathed has been for liberty, for patriotism, for justice, for humanity, for the elevation of every being who breathes God's air or walks His earth. I do not claim that its public men are better than the public men of other parties who have gone before us or of other parties that have existed in our time; but the great masses, the rank and file, the men who give the votes, are swayed and controlled by as lofty motives as ever animated the bosom of humanity. Thus believing, I felt it to be the duty of patriotism and of liberty to labor by day and by night to prevent a rupture and to preserve the integrity of that political organization that held the control of nearly all the States and of the national Government. Animated by that desire, during the last autumn, for six weeks, before vast throngs of men in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, I maintained everywhere that there need be no difference among us, that there must be no rupture, that there should be none. I came here in December animated by that spirit, resolved that no word or act of mine should precipitate a disruption of the great Union party of the country. It was only when the civil rights bill, the dearest measure I ever yet supported in the twelve sessions I have been here, was vetoed; it was only when the 22d of February speech was made and a determination avowed to maintain the President's policy against any policy that might be devised by the Congress of the United States, that I thought the disruption of the ties that bound the President to the great Union party of the country possible if not probable.

He

The Senator from Pennsylvania said another thing, which, as he was replying to some remarks of mine, I choose to notice now. spoke of the hate that animated some of our people. Sir, I can say before my conscience and my God that during these thirty years of struggle between the irrepressible forces of antislavery and slavery in America, I have never entertained one sentiment of unkindness toward my countrymen of the slave holding States. As I have gazed upon the graves of neighbors and of kindred who have fallen in this war, I have never had a feeling of revenge. I have felt that this struggle, which was a contest of ideas, of thoughts, of acts, and of blood, was a logical and philosophical contest. It was a contest between men trained in the spirit of liberty; that spirit which embraces in its affections all the children of men of every clime and race; that spirit which pulls not the highest down, but lifts the lowest up, on the one hand, and on the other the dark, malignant spirit of slavery, which shrivels the mind and debases the

soul. For two hundred years the one side had been trained to the love of freedom, justice, and humanity, and the other had been trained in the spirit of caste. It was a contest of giants; it was the "irrepressible conflict;" and it came to blows; and when it did come to blows it rocked the continent with its power. We have triumphed. Slavery dies a traitor's death, and leaves a traitor's name in the history of the Republic. Liberty, patriotism, justice, humanity, all that is noble, all that inspires men to lofty deeds were with us in that contest. I look upon the contest as one that could not well be avoided. We have triumphed; and I want no more blood, no more confiscations. I want none of their houses, or their lands, nor anything that is theirs. From the day that Kirby Smith surrendered his army to this hour, no person from the rebel States has asked a favor from me that I have not freely given. I mean to give act, vote, and thought to elevate, improve, and build up that war-blasted section of the country. What I say of myself I can, I am sure, say of the great masses of the State I represent. We would build the church, erect the school-house, send the teacher, send capital, send skill, do everything to build up the war worn and waste places in the rebel States.

The Senator from Pennsylvania, as usual with him, was very boastful; he was prophetic. I have heard that Senator make predictions before. I remember that during the late long and bloody war that Senator, who opposed many of the measures advocated by the majority on this floor and sustained by the Adminis tration, often predicted the direst disasters from the enactment of those measures. When the confiscation bill was pending he opposed it. When the proposition was made to make free the slaves captured from the rebels in the places our Army should take possession of or who should come within the lines of our Army, the Senator declared it a disruption of the Union and a desecration of the sacred charter of the Constitution. The Senator gave his vote against that measure recommended by President Lincoln to aid the loyal States in emancipation; and yet he told us yesterday that he supported the President now, as he did once before, and we had to submit before, and we would have to submit now. The Senator opposed the repeal of that dark act that blackened the legislation of the country-the fugitive slave law. To that measure of humanity, of justice, of the organization of labor-the Freedmen's Bureau-that Senator gave his persistent opposition. To the act allowing the negro to give testimony, an act of simple justice, that Senator gave his opposition. To the act to make free the wives and children of the men who were fighting the battles of the country, that Senator also gave his opposition. In fact, most of the leading measures of the Administration of Mr. Lincoln met, as is well known, his stern opposition, and those measures were carried by those of us here whom he then branded as radicals, and whom he now continues to brand as radicals.

The Senator told us that he belongs to one wing of the party and that we radicals belong to the other. I must say I would like to see the wing of the party to which that Senator belongs in the State of Pennsylvania. If he belongs to the very tip of the tail of the party in Pennsylvania I have yet to see it. The Senator well knows that during the past three years he has had the sturdy opposition of the Republican press of Pennsylvania and of the Republican masses of Pennsylvania. I remember, in 1863, when the contest, so important to the country, between Judge Woodward, the representative of opposition to the war, on the one hand, and Governor Curtin, who had contributed so much to carry on the war, on the other, stirred Pennsylvania to its profoundest depths, that the Senator took no part in the contest. I remember, in 1864, when the contest was between Mr. Lincoln, whose friend he now professes to be, and the nominee of the Chicago platform party, he had little voice or counsel to give, except very severe criticisms

upon the Administration, and not very stinted laudations of General McClellan. To-day all the Republican presses but one in Pennsylvania support the general policy of Congress. There are one or two others that give a sort of divided support to Congress and to the President. I will not remind the Senator of the action of the Republican convention a few weeks ago, or of the action of the Legislature of his own State. Surely their action is an indication of the temper of the people of his great Commonwealth.

The Senator tells us now that we radicals do not belong to the Republican organization. Sir, they have a delegation from Pennsylvania in the other House, and no one man among them of the Republicans stands where that Senator stands. In truth, every indication in that State shows that at least ninety-nine out of every one hundred of the Republicans of that State are with Congress. We radicals do not belong to the party! I should like to see the party with the radicals weeded out.

Why, sir, I have not a doubt of the fact that in the free States to-day there is not a representative or a senatorial district in which the Johnson men can elect a man opposed to Congress to their State Legislature without the votes of Democrats. Here are thirty-nine Republican Senators. How many of them are outside of the ranks of the branded radicals? There are one hundred and forty Republicans in the House. How many of them are outside of the ranks of the radicals? Sir, you can put all the Johnson men in the Senate and House of Representatives on one side of one of the street cars on the avenue. They could be packed on the front and rear, and they could carry their market baskets, too. [Laughter.] Of one hundred and eighty members they have, perhaps, ten, and they are stronger here, by far, than they are in any portion of the free States to-day.

Sir, let any one of these much reproached radicals start for his home, and from the moment he leaves yonder depot until he reaches his home he will receive an ovation, hearty God's blessings, from almost everybody, and he may travel for days and never hear a word said in favor of "my policy" from any party or set of men. The Senator from New York [Mr. HARRIS] went home the other day, and I venture to say he met nothing but approving smiles and applauding words from the men who made this Administration. There is not one per cent. of the Republicans of New York who do not approve of the votes he has given in this Congress. And when the other Senator from New York the other day gave his vote in favor of the civil rights bill, it brought the instantaneous applause of the galleries, and it was repeated by the hundreds of thousands of the Union men of the great State of New York. So it is with all these Senators about me and of the members of the House of Representatives. They never had so much the confidence, the respect, and the love of the people as they have now, and if any one man of them is specially singled out for opprobrium he is from that moment dearer to the people than ever before.

Although I do not like to make predictions, I will venture to say, in answer to what was said by the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Wisconsin, that in almost every State the Republican party is stronger now

than it was a year ago. We gave seventy-eight thousand majority for Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson in 1864 in Massachusetts. I would pledge my life that we can give one hundred thousand majority for impartial suffrage in Massachusetts now, and that where we have one Republican against it we have fifty Democrats for it. I will make this suggestion to the Senator from Pennsylvania-and he and I will remember it when we meet, if we live, in December next-that he will find that not more than an average of one per cent. of the Republican party of the country has been led off into any stray movements.

Do the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from Wisconsin believe that they can

go to the country-appeal to the Republicans to elect Representatives or elect Legislatures against us? They will not elect, in the free States, a single Republican against us, unless they do it with the aid of those who are ever opposed to us. I say to our friends in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and everywhere else, that these Senators, who tell us they are fighting within our ranks, mean to go beyond our ranks; they mean to make combinations with the men who stood on the Chicago platform in 1864, and with the traitors whose bayonets were in front of our legions in the rebel States. Without that countenance and that support, there is nothing of them, and can be nothing of them. Sir, how is it with Wisconsin? One paper there, started within a few weeks, supports the policy advocated by the Senator from Wisconsin. The Legislature, with scarcely a dissenting vote among the Republicans, have spoken in condemnation of their Senator, and asked him to resign his seat.

Mr. HOWE. With the leave of the Senator, I should like to correct him on one point. He does not quite do justice to the Union party of Wisconsin. He enumerates one paper there that supports the policy of the President and of my colleague and of the Senator from Pennsylvania. I believe there is no Union paper of that kind. There is a paper which was started a few weeks ago, and I suppose it is the one alluded to by the Senator from Massachusetts, which supports the person of the President and of my colleague very actively; but I believe it has never ventured to support their policy. It regrets the defeat of the Freedmen's Bureau bill and the defeat of the civil rights bill.

Mr. WILSON. I am much obliged to the Senator for the correction he has made. Then it appears that none of the old journals of the party sustain "my policy" or support the Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. DOOLITTLE.] We all know that that Senator is a gentleman of talent and personal character, for whom we have great respect. It is a great thing for a people to pronounce against such a Senator or to pass a vote asking him to resign his seat. It requires an immense pressure coming from the body of the people, and can only come from men actuated by the purest motives and loftiest purposes. The fact that it is done is only another evidence of the depth and strength of the feelings of the people in favor of giving equal, universal, and impartial liberty to the four million men whom we have made free by this war. I tell you, sir, if there be one thing down deep in the heart and soul of the American people, it is the purpose to see that these poor bondmen are free in fact as well as in are as well 15.in Lincoln, in his immortal proclamation of emancipation, pledged the faith and the power of the Government to make them free. They have passed a constitutional amendment clothing us with full powers to make them free; and they have resolved upon it, and they will not be baffled. They have vowed it on bended knee before Almighty God. I tell the Senators from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that it is that motive animating the heart and impelling the action of our people that makes them doubtful of the policy of the President. It is no hostility to the President; it is no personal hostility to the Senator from Wisconsin, for I think he is among that class of men who would excite personal hostility as little as almost any man I know.

name.

The action of the people of Wisconsin in regard to the Senator is the most striking evidence of our time of the love of the people for liberty, justice, and humanity. Does the Senator expect to go before these people and have them reverse their action? Does he believe he can elect a single member to Congress from that State by the votes of the Republicans who will support the policy indicated by the President and oppose the action of Congress? Does he believe he can elect a Representative in his State by Republican votes to the Legislature that will do it? Every victory won by that

Senator and by the Senator from Pennsylvania over us is to be won by coöperation with the men who stood on the Chicago platform in 1864, pronounced the war a failure, and denounced Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant.

Sir, I know not what we have done that God should send afflictions upon us. I know not why the hearts of loyal, devoted, and true men that have been wrung with anguish during five years of bloody strife should be made longer sorrowful! We put this Administration in power. We took Mr. Johnson, placed him on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln, when he had not a vote in America to give us. We did not nominate him because he would give us strength or power. He had proved true to the country when his State, section, and political friends proved false; he rendered service to the country, and we recognized it. We had hundreds

of able men in the field and in the civil councils, but we passed by them and nominated him. We put aside the ever faithful Hannibal Hamlin, by the votes of his own New England, to nominate Mr. Johnson. We put this Administration in power, and it went into power to do precisely this: to put down this rebellion; to cement the Union; to put down slavery, to exterminate it root and branch; to make the bondmen citizens of the Republic, and clothe them with the rights of manhood. Sir, I say to the Senator from Wisconsin, who talks so much of suffrage, that one year ago, after the surrender of Kirby Smith, it was in the power of the Administration to impose just such terms as it believed the good of the country required upon the rebel States. They were defeated, conquered, humiliated. They expected some punishment for their crime of treason. They expected the bondmen would be put under the protection of just and equal laws. Many of their leading men not only expected suffrage, but were ready for it. A systematic effort was made last spring to tone down the sentiment of the country. Sir, had the Administration seized that glorious opportunity we could have established impartial suffrage; we could have proclaimed universal amnesty; these seats would have been filled; and law and order, harmony and peace, would have reigned all over the country.

But the Senator from Wisconsin told us that this Administration was pursuing precisely the policy of Mr. Lincoln. I deny it altogether. Mr. Lincoln organized Tennessee by the loyal men of Tennessee. Traitors had to take the back seat. He organized Louisiana by the loyal men of Louisiana, although their numbers were not many. In the State of Louisiana they made a constitution emancipating slaves, leaving it titel to tsuse ge; est a day's to the Legislature to fix suffrage; established

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work, and they made liberal provisions for education. They made one of the most liberal constitutions ever framed in America. Our friends told us that their Legislature would give suffrage, and the moment we had the relations restored here that suffrage would come to the freed people. Some of us thought so, and if we had admitted them and the war had continued, I do not doubt it would have been so. What is the result under this Administration? They have elected two Senators in place of the men elected by the Legislature under Mr. Lincoln. They have elected five Representatives, all of them rebels. Not one of them can take the oath. All their State officers are rebels.

Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana were organized under Mr. Lincoln by the loyal men of those States. They went for freedom. They adopted a progressive policy; not so fast as we desired, nor so far, but still it was all in the right direction. Some of us thought it would be safe to admit their Senators and Representatives; others thought otherwise. I am content with the result. But what has been the organization under this Administration? Mr. Lincoln, with Mr. Johnson's approval, organized the States that he organized with loyal men. He compelled the rebels to take, as Mr. Johnson well said, "the back seats.” The Legislature elected by the loyal men of Virginia in the days

of Mr. Lincoln selected Mr: Underwood and Mr. Segar to represent the State in the Senate of the United States. Both of these gentlemen now are and have been devotedly loyal to the Union. Of the delegation of eight members to the House chosen under the reconstruction policy of Mr. Johnson, two signed the secession ordinance and were active rebels during the rebellion. Mr. Chandler, of the Norfolk district, has ever been loyal. Three only of the delegation, I am assured, can conscientiously take the prescribed oath. The three judges of the court of appeals, recently appointed by Governor Peirpoint, and sixteen judges of the circuit court were active rebels to the end of the war. One only of the nineteen judicial nominations made by Governor Peirpoint was a loyal man, and he was rejected by the Legislature, receiving only nine votes. Every State officer elected by the Legislature of Virginia at its recent session was an active rebel. No Union man stood any chance whatever to receive any office at the hands of that Legislature.

North Carolina was organized by the election of Governor Worth, a rebel, over Governor Holden, professedly loyal, the election of a Legislature that elected two United States Senators who cannot take the required oath, and by the election of an unbroken delegation of disloyal men to the House of Representatives. South Carolina was reconstructed by the election of Mr. Orr, a disloyal civilian, over Wade Hampton, a disloyal soldier; by the election of Perry and Manning, identified with the rebellion, to the Senate of the United States, and a delegation to the House of Representatives, none of whom can take the oath, unless it be Governor Aiken.

Reconstructed Georgia sends the rebel vice president, Alexander H. Stephens, and the unrepentant rebel, Herschel V. Johnson to the Senate, and an entire delegation of traitors to the House of Representatives. Unrepentant rebels reorganized the government of Florida, elected a-disloyalist for Governor, one Senator and her Representative, and sent Governor Marvin, a loyal man, to fill the term that expires on the 4th of March next. Judge Marvin was elected Senator for that brief period as a matter of policy, but he has not the shadow of a chance for reelection. Reconstructed Alabama made Robert M. Patton, a bitter secessionist, Governor, and elected Lewis E. Parsons and George S. Houston Senators of the United States, although it was admitted that they could not take the prescribed oath of office; Langdon, a bitter rebel; Freeman, a colonel in the rebel army; Battle, a brigadier general in the rebel army; and two other secessionists, one of whom was a member of the rebel congress, to the Congress of the United States.

Reorganized Mississippi elected General Humphries, of the rebel army, Governor over Mr. Fisher, supposed to be partially loyal; Governor Sharkey, who may be able to take the oath, and General Alcorn, of the rebel service, Senators of the United States; Colonel Reynolds, of the rebel army, Mr. Pierson, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. West, so compromised by the rebellion that they cannot take the oath of office, and Mr. Peyton, a consistent Union man, to the House of Representatives.

Louisiana, reorganized under Mr. Lincoln by her few loyal men, passed under the policy of Mr. Johnson into the hands of her leading secessionists. Her Legislature, pronounced by Governor Wells in a recent telegraphic dispatch to the President to be in favor of reactionary measures, elected Mr. Hunt and Mr. Boyce, who registered themselves when General Butler had command of New Orleans as enemies of the country, United States Senators, to crowd out Mr. Hahn and Mr. Cutler, elected by her loyal Legislature. She elected to the House of Representatives, Mr. Martin, a register of voters under the rebel government; Jacob Barker, editor of the Advocate, twice suppressed for disloyalty; Robert C. Wickliffe, of the rebel army, who was captured