reforms in any other direction could make much headway, if no man should ever espouse them till the people are found prepared to accept them without opposition or dissent.

Again, Mr. Speaker, it should not be forgotten that the proposed amendment, should it prevail, must fail of its purpose till after the census of 1870. If I am not mistaken, there could be no new allotment of representatives among the Southern States prior to that time. If I am mistaken, and the Constitution will permit us to take another census whenever we choose, it will not make any practical difference, as no one proposes that measure, and if adopted, the reapportionment under the new census could not take effect sooner than the time I have named. In all these intervening years, therefore, these rebel States must have their full representation under the existing basis, or else their representatives must be kept out of Congress. If they should be admitted, prior to the passage of the amendment, there would be no coercive authority in the hands of the Executive or Congress to constrain any State to ratify the amendment, and it could not be ratified. If the Southern Representatives should not be admitted, then the evils of unequal representation would be avoided, so long as they are kept out. The object of the amendment, therefore, namely, the reduction of rebel representation in Congress and the extension of suffrage to the whole people of the South, could not be secured before the year 1870, or 1872, if the next census shall be taken at the regular time; and then it would remain for the Southern States to say whether they would give the ballot to the negroes, or still cling to that unchristian spirit of caste and lust of power which have so long been the higher law of the South. If I am correct in making these statements, much of the alleged practical significance of the proposed amendment is made to disappear, and we are thus the better prepared to demand the amendment really necessary and effective, or else such congressional action as shall grant suffrage to the people of the South, irrespective of color. Should both these measures for the present be found impracticable, I do not see that any great interest of the country will suffer in consequence, while the regular march of events and the great tidal force of public opinion will at length open the way for such action, in some form, as shall be required by the national exigency.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I deny that the rebels of the South, who are the rulers of the South, would grant the ballot to the negro if the proposed amendment were now in full force. They would not do it, because their love of domination, their contempt for free

labor, and their scorn of an enslaved and downtrodden race are as intense as ever. They hate the negro now, not simply as the ally of the Yankee in foiling their treason, but as the author of all their misfortunes, who, having been villainously misused by them, is of course villainously despised. They hate him with a rancor that feeds unceasingly upon every memory of their humiliation and defeat. They confront him with a hatred so remorseless, withering, consuming, that it crops out to-day in every quarter of the South in deeds of outrage, violence, and crime, which find no parallel even in the atrocities practiced in that section under the old codes of slavery, which were codes of murder and all minor crimes. Can any gentleman read the late report of General Schurz, and listen to the testimony of the great cloud of concurring witnesses whose voices are now filling the land, respecting the popular feeling in the South, and then believe that the rebel class will ever, under any inducements, voluntarily give equal political rights to the freedmen? The leaders of Southern opinion openly declare that they would rather die than give the ballot to their former slaves. While it would give their section an increased representation in Congress, that representation would be secured by the votes of negroes and abolitionists, whose darling purpose would be to Yankeeize and abolitionize the entire South, and put the old slave dynasty hopelessly under their feet. And the old slave dynasty understands this perfectly. They know that negro suffrage, by checking rebel rapacity and restoring order, and thus rendering emigration from the North and from Europe a safe and practicable thing, will reorganize the whole structure of society in their region, and thus doom their pride and sloth to a hopeless conflict with the energy and enterprise of free labor. Do you tell me that men are governed by their own interests, and that the ruling class in the South, finding no other way to serve those interests, will extend suffrage to the negroes? I answer, that long-cherished and traditionary prejudices and passions are stronger than interest. It was always the true interest of the South to abolish her slavery, but she waged a horrid war to save and eternize it. She could always have increased her power in Congress by its abolition, but she loved her domination over the negro more than she loved polit-. ical power. It was the interest of the Northern States, long ago, to unite in checking the aggressions and the further spread of slavery in the Union, and thereby to hasten the employment of peaceable measures in the South for its abandonment; but the Northern States, on the contrary, became the allies of the slave breeders in

I

fortifying and extending their rule on this Continent. It was the interest of our first parents not to sin, but the devil proved too much for them. Sir, the argument of interest will not do. Passion is stronger than interest, because, being blind, it does not perceive the best good. Before I agree to intrust the freedmen to the interest of their old masters, I want to know that they understand what their interest is, and that they have so far outlived their prejudices that they will follow it. think no gentleman on this floor can feel sure on these points. What we want, what the nation needs for its own salvation, is a constitutional amendment, or a law of Congress, which shall guarantee the ballot to the freedman of the South. This is not simply his equal political right as a citizen, but his natural right as a man. As I have argued on another occasion, a voice in the government which deals with property, liberty, and life, is not a "privilege," but a right, and as natural, as indefeasible as the right to life itself. Government cannot rightfully withhold it, but is as sacredly bound to secure it to all men, regardless of race or color, as it is bound to secure other rights which are accorded to them by common consent as natural. In this view I am very glad to find myself sustained by some of the ablest men in this House. Our fathers affirmed, as a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Sir, let us not shrink from the practical vindication of this truth. Let us recognize no such anomaly in our free system of government as a disfranchised citizen, innocent of crime, but prize the franchise as so sacred that a man without it shall everywhere, and of necessity, wear the brand of a convicted enemy of society. Let us not preach a mere lip-democracy, while we confess by our acts our faith in the maxims of despotism. Let us not, with the warnings of the past before us, still continue to deny the very gospel of our political salvation, and arm the absolutists of the Old World with weapons fatal to every just theory of republicanism. Let us not make enemies and outlaws of four million people, among whom no traitor or sympathizer with treason has ever yet been found; who were eager to help us from the very beginning of our struggle, and as soon as we were ready gladly furnished nearly two hundred thousand soldiers to aid in saving the nation's life; and who, if allowed justice at our hands, will be found in the future, as they have been in the past, our effective auxiliaries and most faithful friends. Above all, let us

remember, for our own sake as well as that of the colored "race, that Justice is omnipotent; that her demands must be met to the uttermost farthing, and cannot be slighted without offending the Most High; and that if, when our pathway is lighted up by the fires of a stupendous civil war, which the whole world interprets as the avenger of these wronged millions, we now turn a deaf ear to their cries, our guilt as a nation, and our retribution, will find no precedent in the annals of mankind.

THE PUNISHMENT OF REBEL LEADERS.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, APRIL 30, 1866.

[The Faculty of Washington College, Virginia, last year (1870) proposed so to amend its charter as "to express in fit conjunction the immortal names of Washington and Lee, whose lives were so similar in their perfect renown.' "This was perfectly natural, in so far as the government has done nothing to brand treason as a crime, while making haste to remove the political disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment. Let the reader consider the state of the South since the close of the war, growing constantly worse, and culminating in the widespread horrors of organized secret murder by the Ku-Klux, and then say whether this lawlessness would have had free course if the principles and policy here so earnestly pressed had been carried out?]

THE House had under consideration the following resolution :

Resolved (as the deliberate judgment of this House), That the speedy trial of Jefferson Davis, either by a civil or military tribunal, for the crime of treason and the other crimes of which he stands charged, and his prompt execution, if found guilty, are imperatively demanded by the people of the United States, in order that treason may be adequately branded by the nation, traitors made infamous, and the repetition of their crimes, as far as possible, be prevented.

MR. JULIAN said:

MR. SPEAKER, — In demanding the punishment of the chief rebel conspirators I beg not to be misunderstood. I do not ask for vengeance. I feel sure there is no man in the country, however intense his loyalty, who would inflict the slightest unnecessary suffering, or any form of cruelty, upon even the most flagitious of the confederate leaders. What the nation desires, and all it asks, is the ordinary administration of justice against the most extraordinary national criminals. The treason spun from their brains, and deliberately fashioned into the bloody warp and woof of a four years' war, and the winding-sheet of a half million of men, ought to be branded by the nation as a crime. It ought to be made "odious" and "infamous." The Constitution provides for its punishment; and I am just as unwilling to see the Constitution set aside and made void in this respect, in the interest of vanquished rebel leaders, as I was to see it trampled under foot by their armed legions while the war continued. Indeed, the