$1? ast-works with the E 458 CONFISCATION AND EMANCIP ATION'ebtmir reach ■ 2 'sumption that '^e especial SPEECH :tut te .R75 Copy 1 / HON. EDWARD H. ROLLINS, W 1^, , _ i mum ■ i w —ii ii i _ I, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Thursday, May 22, 1862. Mr. ROLLINS, of New Hampshire, said : Mr. Speaker : It is not my purpose to en- ter upon this discussion and confine myself to the constitutional and legal aspects of this question. I do not profess to be deeply read in all the nice technicalities with which it is attempted to bewilder and obstruct our steps to a just and merited retribution upon treason and haughty and defiant rebellion. My course of life has been in other paths than among an- cient records and musty volumes of English decisions of the judges of the Crown. I prefer to live and walk in the present ; or when I do turn to look back, I choose to watch the steps of those of the great race to which we belong who moved forward and sought to use the cir- cumstances of their condition and times for their advantage and defence. I do not arrogate to ourselves a higher degree of wisdom than had the grea,t men who have gone before us, to deal with events that wheel in their courses across the steady round of our circuit, and startle nations with the glare of their train. I am grateful for the recorded heroism of these men, and am a willing student of the lessons they inscribed for us on every leaf of their lives wherein they stood stoutly up to meet new dan- gers and turn them drifting harmlessly away. 1 rejoice, too, that as were the times so were the men they bore fitted to match the events born with them ; and I do not believe that our great mother, so big with the latter, is barren of heroes to grapple with the e ■ ents of this day. The world never looked upon a crisis more awful in its magnitude and fraught with more momentous consequences than the present. A more stubborn reality never stared a people in the face than now meets us front to front, and challenges us to encounter it. For long years has the power that has begotten this monster been nourishing its strength with the vitality 'of the Republic, and sheltering itself under the guards of the Constitution that it had procured to be construed solely for its own convenience. It made decisions to be registered by the Su- preme Bench it had filled. It issued its de- crees to political conventions, and permitted them to choose whom it had designated for their candidates. It flaunted its banners em- blazoned with a popular motto, and cheated the people it juggled after they had done it- bidding. The last eight years of its adminis- tration of this Government, when Pierce and Buchanan were its ready instruments, were tha days of its reckless and headlong assaults upon plighted faith and old landmarks of adjusted differences. It flattered the occupant of the Chief Executive office in the Government with the hopes of a re-election, and used him to break down the barrier it had thirty years be- fore helped to erect, under the pretence of put- ting the question of popular institutions in the hands of the people, and then, using the same instrument, sought to force itself upon a people who hated it, by armed power and lawless cru- sades. Impunity was granted to its own out- rages, for the Administration dared not secure to the people the sovereignty it had promised, for that sovereignty would make the State free. Here was it first foiled. It could not manage the sovereigns as it had managed the Govern- ment, and freedom came off victorious in the couflict both with slavery and the Government. The man who had done its bidding, it spurned at Cincinnati, and cast him off, to choose a new servant who would be blind to all its op- erations — in whose very presence it might plot its contemplated treason. During his adminis- tration it finished its work, as it thought, and its first treason wm against the politic .hose great name it had used to make for itself op- portunities to plot its treason against the coun- e great leader of the Democ- „ might have made President, hut .. no more Presidents, and least of all It thought its time had come — that its ...nemes were nicely laid. " I call the faith of gods and men to question, ■ The power is in our hands. * * * * There wants only to begin this business ; The issue is certain. " Let the long hid seeds Of treason * * * * now shoot forth in deeds Ranker than horror." There was now no longer question what was best to do, as when the thing was first con- ceived, hut what must be done. A pretext must be sought to inflame the minds of the people, and it was seen coming in the election of a northern man by northern votes, which slavery bad conspired to briDg about. The re- turns had hardly been counted, and while the wires were hot that flashed the intelligence to the remotest hamlet, South Carolina went out of the Union. The chief heads and guiding spirits of the conspiracy came daily into the Senate, or held seats in the blind and ague- shaking old man's Cabinet. Who ever looked upon such pernicious hypocrisy of treason ? — The different governments of the rebelling States were counseled and directed by men in these Halls, hindering by their votes any at- tempt to conciliate or to arrest treason ; who waited for the time, of which they were advised, when their States should declare themselves seceded, and then taking their mock farewells, flew to take the lead in this most cursed war. Well might some Cicero have said: " fio where thou mcan'st ; the ports are open. Forth ! The camp abroad wants thee, their chief, too long ; Lead with thee all thy troops out ; purge the city ; Draw dry that noisome and pernicious sink Which, left behind thee, would infect the world. Thou, Jupiter, Drive from thy altars, and all other temples And buildings of this city, from our walls, Lives, states, and fortunes of our citizens, This liend, this fury with his 'complices. " These known traitors Unto their country, thieves of Italy, Joined in so damn'd a league of mischief, thou Wilt with perpetual plagues, alive and dead, Funish for Rome ami save her innocent head." It is time that the Republic receive no loss ; or if too late for that, to drain dry the sources upon which this treason feeds. I am amazed at what I hear, that seems to hold so sacred all the rights that by every act of rebellion has been forfeited, and should be held as lost by every law of reason and every rule of self-de- fence. No man has the hardihood to deny that we should meet and overcome the rebels in battle. The utmost energies of the nation should he exerted to crush out this treason, even to draining the country to the last man and the last dollar of its treasure. But it is said our enemy's resources must remain untouched by us, to continue to nourish and keep alive the baleful body of this treason. Almost every family in the North has lent some son or father to the service of the Government. Alas! how many never to be returned. Every household stands ready to be drained by taxes to meet the expenses of this war, and yet we hesitate to lay our finger on a lock of cotton or an ounce of sugar or a grain of rice or a leaf of tobacco, lest it is not nominated in the bond. Thousands of negro slaves are forced to dig in trenches before our lines, exposed by the chivalry of the South to shot and shell, or to stand upon the ramparts and man the guns, while their mas- ters skulk behind the works. Bills of con- scription are passed by the rebel congress im- pressing every man of certain age into mili- tary service, while the slaves remain at home to raise supplies to feed them. This has been their boast, that all their men could be spared to fight, because their negroes could perform the toil of the plantation ; and yet we doubt and hesitate to declare these meii and women who thus supply their wants free from such ser- vitude, because the bond gives them " the pound of flesh." Is there no Portia, as a " learned judge," to interpret the law ? " Tarry a little ; there is something else. This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood; The words expressly are, a pound of flesh: Take thou thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; But, in the cutting of it, if thou dost shed One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate Unto the State of Venice." The framers of the Constitution may not have contemplated times like these. It could never have entered the minds of those who made it, that such perils as now threaten the nation would ever impend. They never dream- ed that hardly seventy years would pass away before that same instrument they were framing would be invoked to shield the men who would destroy it. One traitor, viler than the rest, re- mained behind to prouounce judgment on the acts of the President, and interpret the Con- stitution for us who are struggling to preserve the life of the nation. Is there no echo to his words about this Capitol ? Pity, if there are such who repeat his arguments, that they would not follow his example further. If there is anything that will tend to make the Constitution a less sacred thing in the minds of the people, it is the use that is made of it to shield those who are in open rebellion against it. This people will not endure that their limbs shall be bound with withes, but when they find them griping they will rend them like burnt flax. Is this Constitution like an old coat of mail, through which the enemy may thrust his weapon to the heart, and leave the victim to struggle in vain to withdraw it, be- cause its head is entangled in the meshea ? I have said that those who framed the Constitu- tion contemplated no such crisis as this, where whole States would commit treason. This was beyond the reach of their thoughts. Individu- als might u give aid and comfort to the enemy," but half the nation would not rise in arms to destroy it. Our fathers laid bold of the events and circumstances of their times, and from them built for themselves a Government and transmitted it to us, to shelter us in storms, and they entailed upon us no less the duty to guard it and ourselves from whatever new dan- ger might arise. If the dykes that are already raised to keep out the flood are not high enough for this tempest, shall we shrink aside and let the sea of desolation pour in, and then find that what was built for our protection keeps the land deluged, and will not let the flood retire ? Such, in my estimation, is the drift of the argument that forbids us to deal with this rebellion in a way to finish it, because with mole eyes you cannot see the specific clause in the Constitu- tion that gives us power to strip treason of its chief means of support. Three millions of bondmen bear upon their bent necks the chief weight of this night-hatched confederacy, and the Constitution is invoked to keep them there ! These slaves have hearts — they feel ; they have minds — they think. They know what all this war is about ; and what astonishment must seize them wheu they hear, as hear they do, that while we exhaust ourselves of vigorous men and uncounted millions of treasure to meet and overcome the revolted States, we still force them to serve our desperate foe. What despair will fill their bosoms when they feel that the tide of war that surges around and above them, terminate as it may, will only bury them deeper in the gloom of servitude. When hope, like a new sun, broke upon them through the rifted clouds of war, like human beings they turned to look whence came its beams. Their dark hands were lifted to heaven, and they blessed this northern light. May they not find it is the cold gleam of an iceberg 1 If you force this despair upon them, they will seek to make their servitude endurable by faithful devotion to their masters, and by their lives and their labors they will hope to gain some favor at the hand ot those whom they serve. It is not in human nature, and they have that quality, that they should sympathize with their masters in this war. They know it is waged to perpetuate the dismal night of their servitude, and we know with what trembling timidity they offer us their aid, and how grateful they are for the privilege of serving us. At the bayonet's point they are thrust forward to meet the unerring bullets of our sharpshooters, which their masters dare not encounter. The revolver glares at them with its circle of eyes behind, and the telescopic rifle fixes its steady glare upon them before. — We refuse to take advantage of the information they would bring, though we have never known it to lead us astray, and send them hack to be whipped to death for their faithfulness ; and all this we do because we are so scrupulous of the constitutional rights of slave owners. Their constitutional rights ! They scorned them all. They have trampled the Constitu- tion beneath the bloody hoofs of war, and we still seek to pack their breast-works with the rent parchment, so that our shot shall not reach the cause and support of this rebellion. I do not like the tone of the assumption that claims for one side of this House the especial merit of being defenders of the Constitution, nor do I think the method taken to have the claim, recognised by the great body of loyal people the best that could be adopted. The frequent iteration of devotion to that great in- strument, and the oft-repeated charges of un- faithfulness upon others, are a poor and empty satisfaction to the nation, who are asking why the Republic is not saved. The revolted States are but the enemies of the Government. The people regard them in no other light; and they look to us to crush them. They will stand by those who seek to accomplish this the most effectually. If we tell them we are so ham- pered by the Constitution that, although they may overcome their enemies in the field, we must leave their implacable foe possessed of all his resources, with the poison still treasured in his fang, we teach them to disrespect that in- strument, the most sacred of all legacies, save one, of departed time. It is so sacred that whatever threatens it must be destroyed. If it be men, they must pay the forfeit with their lives and all that they possess. If it be institu- tions, they must be overthrown. This Consti- tution must be preserved. There is in it some power of self-defence, and no tissue garb of sophistry can hide it, or fine-spun threads of logic bind it to the earth. Let it grapple with its foe till in its grasp no sign of life shall animate the body of this treason. All the strong guarantees of English liberty were obtained by slow degrees as the times gave opportunity. Magna Charta was wrested from King John by the stout barons and be- came a new feature in the English constitution, which narowed the prerogative of the Crown. A law was made to punish Stafford, the supple minister of Charle3 I, with the loss of his head. Stern old Hamden scrupled not to meet the necessities of the times, and it was thought, u if justice in the whole range of its wide armory contained one weapon which could pierce the enemy of the people, that weapon his pursuers were bound before God and man to employ." It is a significant fact, that while Charles and his ministers were attempting to overthrow the constitution of his realm, Parliament forced from him stronger muniments of liberty that in peaceful reigns would have required centuries to build ; and when he attempted to violate his royal pledges it cost him his head. During the time of the civil wars the progress of liberty was not always forward. Sometimes it went backward; but after the storm had swept past, it stood far advanced. While the flux and re- flux of opinion went on, the cause of public liberty was steadily gaining, and the seeds it scattered when the suriace of human society -was turned up as with a plow-share have sprung to full growth, and dropped their fruit even here upon our shores. There can be no question that we have the right to use all the means iu our power to subdue, annihilate, root out, and forever sweep away from this earth this most monstrous re- bellion, and to scatter its seeds where the pow- er to germinate can never reach. To deny this is to outlaw ourselves from the protection given to all men by the law of self-defence. We strip ourselves of the armor which in times of unu- sual peril like the present we have a right, and it is our duty, to wear. We have wrung our energies till they are almost ready to snap to meet force with force. We realize the fabulous numbers of ancient wars in the hosts that fill our camps in almost unbroken line from the Atlantic coast to the shadow of the Rocky mountains. The tents of our soldiers, like the white caps of the ocean waves, stretch all along our shores, from the capes of the Chesapeake to the mouths of the Mississippi. The sea groans with the weight of our Navy, which none but a Neptune could have launched in so short a time. Do we realize that all this great multitude of men have been drawn from some peaceful branch of industry, and have dropped the implements of agriculture and mechanic arts to rust in idleness, while they wield the weapons of war, which they will not lay down till our enemy is conquered? If you would shorten the period when they can return once more to their natural avocations, then I say to you exhaust your enemy of all his resources, and leave him nothing, if he still persist, but the empty air to feed upon. I give to this measure of confiscation my hearty support, because I believe it will do much to accomplish the end we all profess to desire. I know full well what this bill means. Our enemies knew what confiscation means when they turned the $300,000,000 of indebt- edness of their own people to the North into their own coffers, and seized every dollar of loyal men living in their midst, and every tan- gible piece of property that Northern men had accumulated anywhere among them, all to be used in support of their unrighteous cause. And yet we are told that a measure of this kind will make our foes desperate ! To what point of desperation can they go further thau they have already reached ? To what extremes of barbarous warfare can they descend and find a lower deep? What Golgotha can exceed Manassas ? What more horrid forms can look through the smoke of battle than brandished the scalping-knife about the heads of our wounded soldiers at Pea Ridge ? What lazar- house can be more infectious than the gloomy prisons of our soldiers at Richmond ? Have they not bayoneted our soldiers, impressed Union men into their wicked service, driven loyal citizens from their homes, or left them bleeding by their own hearthstone? Do I exaggerate, or set down aught in malice ? Then listen to Senator Johnson's description of the hellish atrocities committed by these conspirators in Tennessee : " Your Government is paralyzed; your Government is powerless; that which you have called a Government is a dream, an idle thing. You thought you had a Government, but you have none. My people arc appealing to you for protection under the Constitution. They are arrested by hundreds and by thousands; they are dragged away from their homes and incarcerated in dungeons. They ask you lor protection. Why do you not give it 1 Some of them are lying chained in their lonely prison-house. The only re- sponse to their murmur is the rattling and clanking of tha chains that bind their limbs. The only response to their appeals is the grating of the hinges of their dungeon. When we ask for help under the Constitution, we are told that the Government has no power to enforce the laws. Our people are oppressed and down-trodden, and you give them no rem- edy. They were taught to love and respect the Constitu- tion of the United States. What is their condition to-day? They are hunted and pursued like the beasts of the forest "by the secession and disunion hordes who are enforcing their doctrine of coercion. Xliey ai'e shot or hung for no crime save a desire to stand by the Constitution of the Uni- ted States. Helpless children and innocent females are murdered in cold blood. Our men are hung, and their bodies left upon the gibbet. They are shot and [eft lying in the gorges of the mountains, not even thrown into the caves, there "to lie, but are left exposed to pass through all the loathsome stages of decomposition, or. to be devoured by the birds of prey. We appeal for protection, and are told by the Senator "from Indiana, and others, ' we cannot en- force the laws; we arc against the entire coercive policy.' Do you not hear their groans ? Do you not hear their cries ? Do you not hear the shrieks of oppressed and down-trodden women and children? Sir, their tones ring out so loud and clear that even listening angels look from heaven in pity." But I forbear to add more ; humanity shrinks from the contemplation of scenes like these. Confiscation will not prolong the struggle or make the rebels more determined than they now are. They caunot possibly be more bitter and revengeful than they have been. They know that they richly merit and will receive-all the penalties that follow treason. The leaders, from the outset, expected, in the event of de- feat, that they would be punished as traitors. Have they calculated upon anything less? Do they anticipate any other treatment than such as they deserve ? Is it presumed by the Rep- resentatives of the people that an act confisca- ting immediately the property of leading rebels, and of all other persons who shall not, within sixty days after public warning and proclama- tion duly given and made by the President of the United States, cease to aid, countenance, and abet this rebellion, and return to their al- legiance to the United States, can more com- pletely infuriate the rebels ? What new scheme of iniquity can they devise ? What new infer- nal machine can they invent? Their cruel desolation of the land, with its homes and fire- sides, and their fiendish destruction of human life, have thus far been limited only by their power and not by their inclination. Make them desperate ! Desperation had reached its height when they first rebelled. They were not igno- rant of the consequences that would follow if they failed, and the full retribution of their crimes should seem so awful that they will call on the rocks and mountains to hide them from its wrath. Our country! The youngest birth of time springing from between the seas to meet on either hand the hopeful gaze of the older na- tions. Good men, great men, little less than commissoned from on high, redeemed it from its youthful thrall and gave it to the world. Millions have sought its shores and found not its promise vain. Still young in years — so young that there still live venerable men who remember its infancy, and weep at its present peril — it has become a giant, so that it need not fear, though it excite the envy of its elders. The world never knew such prosperity as our people had enjoyed under its protection. All the arts that benefit mankind and adorn the age had sprung up as if indigenous to the soil. Literature and learning had achieved such tri- umphs that many nations knew not their own history till they learned it from American au- thors. The indomitable energy of our people had harnessed all the elements to do service for them, and then divulged the secret of taming them to others. But why enumerate? You read the story of our greatness everywhere, in hamlet and in town, on hillside and in valley, and on the wide-spreading prairie. And now what do we see? Parricidal hands have sought to destroy this Government, and nothing now is left for us but duly, stern, un- wavering duty. Forbearance is no longer vir- tue. It is exhausted. It is worn out by long years of exercise. We listened to its call when it besought us to hunt the despairing fugitive ; we were urged to acquiesce when it asked us to consent to the overthrow of the Missouri compromise. Our patience was invoked when we were told that. we must not coerce a State to return after she had declared herself out of the Union, ere yet the storm of iron broke on Sum- ter. And now that war is inaugurated by the thunder of rebel cannon against those walls, and we see it blazing like volcanoes on count- less battle-fields, from Manassas to New Or- leans, the same men — in my own State as well as elsewhere — who insisted that we could not coerce a State, declare that the death-knell of the Uuion is sounded the moment we adopt a measure of this kind. Their predictions have little terror to me, for I remember how the President's peoclamation was defied by States whish would not assist to suhju.gate their sisters, and which now vaunt themselves so true to the Union. I have no fear for " a war within a war," for the good sense of every loyal State will comprehend the wisdom of this measure in less time than was required to justify the wholesome ministrations of war. I do not be- lieve the counsels then given were wise ; and whatever may dictate those of to-day, I cannot largely heed them. To resist a State in its attempts to separate from the Union, was declared to be unconstitu- tional; just as now it is urged that a measure to confiscate the property of rebels is unconsti- tutional. I cannot be moved, by this repeti- tion of the old argument, from the plain dic- tates of common sense. We saved the Consti- tution by disregarding the cry one year ago, and we will impregnably fortify it to-day by stripping rebellion of its means of threatening it again. This measure proposes to take the property of all the leaders and instigators of this war, and to turn it over to the Government. To what vast sums the amount thus to be realized will swell, I cannot pretend to tell. The long array of figures which are sometimes used to frighten us to forbear, do not alarm me. I only hope that it will help to lighten the great bur- den of taxation that must be laid upon our peo- ple; and I would not greatly fear if it were sufficient to lift the entire load from their necks. If my neighbor bring a suit against me in our courts, (I am not a lawyer; I may be mistaken,) and if it is shown that it is not founded in law, or that the claim is not just, execution issues against him for all the legal costs of the action to which I have been subjected, and he finds his goods attached to satisfy the judgment. — This is a great "trial by battle." Before the issue is reached our enemy has taken our goods wherever he could find them, and uses them to cover the expenses of the war, and now turns upon us and denies that we can do the same, because it is not constitutional. Wondrous felicity of construction, that enables the ene- mies of the Constitution to shield themselves behind the bulwarks that they are attempting to batter down ! They strip us of our shield and helmet and hang them to the point of our weapons, and strike at our naked bosoms. But in despite of all this, in spite of all their own natural resources, and in spite of all they have stolen, our blows fall like tempests on their heads, and they rly like their own carrion buz- zards at the swoop of our standard-eagles. Is it contended that this bill will be inopera- tive? My an'swer is, that the Missouri rebel, the Kentucky rebel, the Maryland rebel, the Tennessee rebel, ay, the Virginia rebel and the Louisiana rebel, and the rebel of what State not? who are still fighting, or running away to fight some other day, all see us in possession of what they have left behind, and we have only to take it and it is ours. And why not ? They are seeking to destroy the Government that pro- tected them in all that they possessed, and by that act, by all the laws of justice, that protec- tion is forfeited. Should he who lingered in these Halls to plead the constitutional rights of rebels, as a rebel best might, and who crept about these passages to spy some hope of sym- pathy from congenial spirits, and spent the hot nights of July and August in seeking out some congregated haunts of conspirators, return to Kentucky, he can find ready argument to show 6 that all tbe goods and chattels that he left should still remain sacredly his own. The Arkansas poet — ah ! slavery has found its poet at last — smouched with the salutations of his painted savages, can return to his home and find the constitutional fetters still on his slaves, and his gratitude will not be wanting to those who kept them there. By refusing to pass this bill of confiscation you put a premium upon treason ; for now no man can give utterance to a word of loyalty in any State yet held by the conspirators, who is not at once dispossessed of all he has and driv- en a wanderer and an exile from his home, while if he but profess allegiance to the rebel government his property remains untouched. Faithful as he may be to his country, he sees that while he is left naked, his disloyal neigh- bor is protected in all he holds, though he gives its use to overthrow the Government under which he has accumulated all he possesses. South Carolina is secure to send all her men to the field to swell the mad hosts of our foe, for if at any time she tire in the fight, she has on- ly to return to professed allegiance and find all her institutions still unimpaired, and the prop- erty of all her citizens under safe guard, and whole to her hands. She may use it all to feed the fires of this unrighteous war, but we dare not touch a single dollar of it to turn to our own service. Missouri has been made desolate by the hordes of treason because she was so loyal. Had she given an undivided support to the confederacy of traitors, we should grant to her complete immunity. This measure proposes to give immediate effect to confiscation, with a view to end the war with all possible dispatch. It not only pro- vides that after the war is over the property of rebels, if any remain, shall be taken from them in punishment of their great crimes, but it pro- poses to exhaust and punish both at once ; to dry up the fountains upon which this rebellion feeds, and turn the supplies into our own stores, and thus make the war its own avenger and the minister of its own retributive justice. Any other plan of confiscation will only tend to pro- long the war, for if confiscation be contingent upon its close, the desperate hope of putting off the day of retribution, and the knowledge that peace will only bring to them poverty and want, will give stubbornness to the hate of these in- furiate men. Better that they should feel that all the terrible consequences of this war march in its train, and that punishment treads close upon the heels of crime. It is objected that all the powers assumed by Congress in this bill belong to the President. Do men know the fearful height to which they elevate a single man ? I would hardly be will- ing to trust him on such a dizzy eminence, though I do not believe the man lives that could walk it with a steadier step than Abraham Lin- coln ; and if it were necessary he would not shrink from the attempt. But I believe he looks to us for support, and waits anxiously for our approving voice. We say to him that he shall cause the estate and property and moneys, stocks, credits, and effects of persons in rebel- lion to be seized, to the end that they may be confiscated and condemned to the use of the United States. And if there be a doubt in his mind in relation to the unlimited powers which men say belong to him, we at once, by this act, assume our share of the responsibility and strengthen his purpose to eud the war at a blow, which, while it crushes the rebellion, at the same time destroys the support and extin- guishes the cause. I am distrustful of that policy which seeks to shift the responsibility upon other men's shoulders. If anything is fit to be done, I am willing to bear my part; and I would assist our over-burdened President by the prompt and fearless exercise of all those powers the Constitution confers upon us. But there is one species of pretended prop- erty for which a special immunity is claimed ; of which no height or depth of treason could work a forfeiture. I mean property in man. There seems to me a strange path by which to arrive at this conclusion, as if whatever is held by virtue of a violation of natural right is more sacred than that which is possessed hy that law which God ordained when He gave to man " do- minion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creep- eth upon the earth." The more monstrous the usurpation by whvjh this right of human prop- erty is claimed, the higher sanctity fences it about, and I know no other ground for this im- munity than that what is founded on a wrong no wrong can overthrow! What we possess by natural right, follow but in that straight path, and nothing can impair it. What we have seized by wrongful might, the grosser is the crime by which we seek to hold it, the surer is our grasp upon it! What we witness to day should not surprise us. This rebellion is the legitimate consequence of slavery. It has put itself upon its defence against the common sentiment of the world and against this Government, which it could no longer drag to its support. The natural con- dition of slavery is war. Its first victims are captives taken in war. It supplies its exhausted stock by fomenting war among the tribes from which it would replenish itself. True, it con- forms to the sentiment of civilization, and al- lows treaties to be made to suppress its trade, but the ships it seuds to catch the pirates are seldom found at the points where the slave- trader lurks. It appeals to the avarice of un- principled men to engage in the traffic, and then taunts the whole people with the crime. It submitted to have ingrafted upon the stat- ute-book of the Government laws punishing with death all persons engaged in the slave trade, but, while it controlled that Government, no person was convicted of the offence and paid the penalty. In times of peace it found it could not cope with freedom. In the First Congress, Virginia had twenty-three Representatives and New York thirteen. South Carolina originally counted in the lower House as five to sixty-five; now she counts as five to the whole number en- titled to seats. With a domain exceeding that of the free States, with a fertility of soil and a mildness of climate almost unequaled on the face of the earth, the slave States have not been able to keep pace in growth of population with the free States. Slavery became jealous of freedom, which, added to its intense hate, has produced this war. It is vain to tell me that the ambition of this man or that incited him to plot for the destruction of this Government — that ambition was fired by slavery. It is vain to tell me that political power was passing away from one section of the country — slavery could brook no rival ; it must sit upon the throne alone. There is no act, in the whole category of crimes that have culminated in this rebellion, that slavery did not inspire. It has sought to build a government of its own. If its success were among the things possible, slavery, and slavery alone, would be the preamble and the close of its constitution. Its laws would be framed to extend and perpetuate slavery. Its tariffs would be imposed to protect it, and its people taxed to feed it. This is the enemy we have to meet and conquer. This country has no other that it need fear; and while it lives, it will be a perpetual terror. We see its hosts fleeing, its towns surrender- ing, its sea monsters exploding and strewing its rivers with the rent fragments o. ? their iron shells. Our troops are victorious everywhere, and so rapid are the events of triumphant war that our minds are confused with the succession of dispatches that leap along the wires. And yet, what do we behold ? A frantic effort made to save from deserved destruction the source and cause of our peril, An address recently issued, quite numerous- ly signed by the members of this House, indi- cates that, in the judgment of these gentlemen, there is a pressing necessity for the reorgani- zation of the Democratic party. Their platform of principles, as enunciated and subscribed to by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vallandu; ham] and others, breathes bitter and unquali- fied nostility to the Republican party, the mem bers of which it denounces as abolitionists. It proposes to " kill abolition," while it treats armed rebellion very tenderly, hurling no wrath- ful invectives against the minions of slave r y, who^e forces are marshaled to destroy the litr- of the Republic. On the 4th of March, 1853, this party, which it is now sought to resusci- tate and reorganize, took control of the national Government from the hands of Mr. Fillmore, while peace and quiet reigned supreme through- out the land, the leaders promising that this repose should not be disturbed by any act of theirs. Having had possesion of the Gov- ernment for eight years under Pierce and Buchanan, they resigned its control to the di- rection of Abraham Lincoln, with forts, arse- nals, ships, and mints in a large section of the country in the keeping of armed rebels, civil war being thus inaugurated, and the Republic brought to the very verge of ruin. It found the nation at peace ; and left it to n, dissever- ed, in belligerent fragments. Had the election of November, 1860, resulted differently, so that these same leaders would have retained possess- ion of the Government for four years longer, and rushed the country on with like speed towards destruction, the conspirators would have secured complete possession of the Army and Navy, and all the available arms and mu- nitions of war, and there would have been lit- tle hope that the power of loyal men could prevent a permanent disruption of the Union. The overthrow of this party was not accom- plished an hour too soon. The Union will now be saved intact ; otherwise it might have perish- ed. It is now proposed to commence the work of reorganizing the Democratic party for the pur- pose of saving the Constitution and the Union, while yet the South and controlling end of the party is waging a cruel war for the destruction of both the Conrtitution and the Union. Well, let them to their labors with d licence, for the task before them is so huge that it will require most herculean efforts to accomplish the result they desire. The people will no longer be de- ceived. One year of the administration of Abraham Lincoln has scattered the enemies of the Republic like leaves before the tempest. If the success of our arms, the utter rout of our foe, can entitle a Government to the cordial support of a people, what can be asked more? But this unexampled success has endangered a peculiar institution, and the Democratic party is summoned to save it. Three days more of successes, and the danger seems more imminent; and the conservative men of all parties are called together to ignore party and save — what? not the country, surely; for the victories of our army and navy almost outrun time, and seize the event before. In the middle or' a week the Democratic party could save the nation; but at its close it requires the sacrifice of all par- ties to save the country. This rapid change of tactics must imply great danger threatening somewhere ; but the people will hardly be able to discover that the danger to the country is increased while they see the forts and arsenals '" repossessed " and the national s'andard re- turning to plant itself in every Scare of the Union. No, the danger does not threaten the country, but slavery totters to its overthrow. The great criminal, the implacable foe of the k. 8 J nation, is beaten everywhere, and then the dan- ger of the country is so great that especial at- tempts are made to save it by party and no- party organizations. But this will never do. The Union is not saved by such methods. Those are not the physicians that can heal the sick, feverish nation, who would keep the can- cer gnawing at the vitals. The old practice of nursing the disease will not answer. The pa- tient will be restored to uncommon health and strength, and in time no trace of the disease be left. This rebellion cannot be put down by soft words and lenient measures. We extend- ed the olive branch full too long, until our flag was disgraced and war commenced by the mad conspirators. We must, by all the means at our command, strike down the power of rebels to assail us, and then the work is done. They can build less iron-clad gunboats, now that we have Norfolk. They can cast less columbiads. build less steam rams, and obtain less sugar to sweeten the bitter cup of treason, now that we have New Orleans; and when we have Rich- mond and Corinth, the back-bone of the rebel- lion will be broken. The path of duty never shone so bright for a people as it does for us today. As we advance it grows brighter. The President's message recommending; emancipation was the rending of the vail. The gift of freedom to a few poor, but oh ! how grateful, recipients, has returned to bless the hearts of millions who bestowed it. A deed more rich in virtue, more fruitful in the approving of conscience, more blessed with the smiles of Almighty God, stands not oh the records of this nation. The whole ample do- main of the Territories will soon be declared free, and that for which we have labored for many years is about to be accomplished. I do not know how much may be effected by legis- lation to redeem a race from bondage whose enslavement is the crime for which we suffer. The providences of God are brought about through courses that are not always plain to mortal eye, and yet to them there is no " vari- ableness or shadow of turning," and our path to-day lies by their side. Events are marching on. Happy is that people who blind not their eyes to the " cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night." LIBRARY OF CONGRE WASHINGTON, D. C. SCAMMELL & CO. PRINTERS, CORNER OF SECOND STREET AND INDIANA AVENUE, JIJIRD FLOOR' 1862. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 012 028 253 pH8J