Nor am I surprised at the audacity of the rebel leaders. Neither do I complain, or blame them. They do not disguise their real character and opinions, because they have been made sure of the executive favor. With the President resolutely on the side of Congress in this crisis, a very different exhibition of feeling and policy would have been developed in the South. The danger now at our doors would never have appeared. The prospect of another bloody war to complete the work which we supposed already accomplished would never have alarmed the country. The President, at the end of a conflict of four years, has deserted the loyal millions who crushed the rebel cause, and joined himself to that very cause which is now borrowing new life from the fertilizing sun. shine of his favor, reasserting its old heresies, and renewing its treasonable demands. This is at once the root and source of our present national troubles, the prophecy and parent of whatever calamity may come. He not only opposes the will of the nation, the policy of the nation, as expressed through Congress, but he brands as traitors before a rebel mob leading and representative men in both Houses, who are as guiltless of treason as the great majority with whom they act. Not content with the good fellowship of the men who began the war and fought us with matchless desperation to the end, he unites with them in branding loyalty itself as treason, while he employs the power and patronage of his high office in rewarding his minions, and opposing the very men who made him their standard-bearer along with Abraham Lincoln, in the faith that his loyalty was unselfish and sincere. In fact, every phase of the presidential policy, as latterly displayed, confounds the difference between loyal and disloyal men, and gives aid and comfort to the rebels by mitigating or removing the just consequences of their crimes.

Mr. Speaker, this policy, utterly fatal to the nation's peace, as I have shown, must be abandoned. The government cannot wholly undo the mistakes of the past, but it can do much for the future, and save the loyal cause, if the people who see the threatened danger will set themselves to work so resolutely as to compel a change. In God's name let this be done. Let the people speak, for the power is in their hands, and if faithful now, as they proved themselves during the war, justice will prevail. Let them thunder it in the ears of the President that the nation cannot be saved, nor the fruits of our victory gathered, if in the settlement of this bloody conflict with treason right and wrong are confounded, and public justice trampled down. This is the duty of the loyal mill

man.

ions, and here lies the danger of the hour. It is just as impossible for the country to prosper if it shall sanction the present policy of the Executive, as it is for a man to violate a law of his physical being and escape the consequences. The demands of justice are as inexorable as the demands of natural law in the material world; and the moral distinctions which God himself has established cannot be slighted with the least possible impunity by individuals or nations. There is a difference, heaven-wide, between fighting for a slave empire and fighting for freedom and the universal rights of The cause of treason and the cause of loyalty are not the same. Perjury is not as honorable as keeping a man's oath. The black flag of slavery and treason was not as noble a standard to follow as that of the Stars and Stripes. The leading traitors of the South should not have the same honorable treatment and recognition as the patriot heroes of the Union. The grandest assassins and cut-throats of history should not defraud the gallows, while ordinary murderers are hung. Jefferson Davis should not have the same honorable place in history as George Washington. Benedict Arnold was not the beau ideal of a patriot, nor was Judas Iscariot a high-souled gentleman and a man of honor," nor even "a misguided citizen of his country who engaged in a mistaken cause." The green mounds under which sleep our slaughtered heroes are not to have any moral comparison with the graves of traitors. The "throng of dead, led by Stonewall Jackson," are not to "contribute equally with the noble spirits of the North to the renown of our great Republic." Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, heaven and hell, are not mere names which signify nothing, but they pertain to the great veracities of the universe; and the throne of God itself is immovable, only because its foundations are justice.

66

RADICALISM THE NATION'S HOPE.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 16, 1866.

[At this date the course of events had forced the question of negro suffrage in the South upon the serious consideration of Congress. It was not possible longer to evade it, and the path of duty was perfectly plain. The timid policy of Conservatism, which still stood in the way, called forth this vigorous plea for political courage, in applying the principles of radical democracy to the work of governing the States lately in revolt.]

MR. SPEAKER,- The conflict going on to-day between Conservatism and Radicalism is not a new one. It only presents new phases, and more decided characteristics in its progress toward a final settlement. These elements in our political life were at war long years prior to the late rebellion. After the old questions concerning trade, currency, and the public lands had ceased to be the pivots on which our national policy turned, and were only nominally in dispute, Conservatism put them on its banner, and shouted for them as the living issues of the times, while intelligent men everywhere saw that the real and sole controversy was that very question of slavery which the leaders of parties were striving so anxiously to keep out of sight. Conservatism stubbornly closed its eyes to this truth. If it ever took the form of Radicalism it was in denouncing the agitation of the subject. It believed in conciliation and concession. It preached the gospel of compromise. Professing hostility to slavery, it paraded its readiness to yield up its convictions as a virtue. Resistance to aggression and wrong it branded as fanaticism or wickedness, while it was ever ready to purchase peace at the cost of principle. This policy of studiously deferring to the demands of arrogance and insolence, this dominating love of peace and cowardly dread of conflict, this yielding, and yielding, and yielding, to the exactions of the slave interest, naturally enough fed and pampered its spirit of rapacity, and at last armed it with the weapons of civil war. Such will be the unquestioned and unquestionable record of history; and no record could be more blasting, as it will be read in the clear light of the future. To us belongs the privilege of taking counsel from the lesson in dealing with the yet unsettled problems of the crisis.

But Radicalism assumed a directly antagonistic position. It did not believe in conciliation and compromise. It did not believe that a powerful and steadily advancing evil was to be mastered by submission to its behests, but by timely and resolute resistance. The Radicals, under whatever peculiar banner they rallied, thought it was their duty to take time by the forelock; and with prophetic ears they heard the footfalls of civil war in the distance, forewarned the country of its danger, and pointed out the way of deliverance. In the ages to come freedom will remember and cherish them as her most precious jewels; for had they been seconded in their earnest efforts to rouse the people and to lay hold of the aggressions of slavery in their incipient stages, the black tide of Southern domination which has since inundated the land might have been rolled back, and the Republic saved without the frightful surgery of war. This exalted' tribute to their sagacity, and their fidelity to their country, will be the sure award of history; and its lesson, like that of Conservatism, commends itself to our study.

But the war at length came, and with it came the same conflict between Conservatism on the one hand and Radicalism on the other. Their antagonisms put on new shapes, but were as perfectly defined as before. The proof of this is supplied by facts so well known, and so painfully remembered by all loyal men, that I need scarcely refer to them. Conservatism, in its unexampled stupidity, denied that rebels in arms against the government were its enemies, and declared them to be only misguided friends. The counsel it perpetually volunteered was that of great moderation and forbearance on our part in the conduct of the war. It denied that slavery caused the war, or should in any way be affected by it. It insisted that slavery and freedom were "twin sisters of the Constitution," equally sacred in its sight, and equally to be guarded and defended at all hazards. Its owlish vision failed to see that two civilizations had met in the shock of deadly conflict, and that slavery at last must perish. Even down to the very close of the contest, when the dullest minds could see the new heavens and the new earth which the rebellion had ushered in, Conservatism madly insisted on "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.' Its idolized party leaders and its great military heroes were all men who believed in the divinity of slavery, whose hearts were therefore on the side of the rebellion, and whose management of the war gave proof of it. And every man of ordinary sense and intelligence knows that just so long and so far as Conservative counsels prevailed, defeat and disaster followed in our steps, and that if

these counsels had not been abjured, the black flag of treason would have been unfurled over the broken columns and shattered fragments of our republican edifice. Let this also be remembered in digesting a policy for the future.

But here, again, Radicalism squarely met the issue tendered by the Conservatives. That slavery caused the war and was necessarily involved in its fortunes it accepted as a simple truism. Its theory was that the rebellion was slavery, in arms against the nation, and that to strike it was to strike treason, and to spare it was to espouse the cause of the rebels. In the very beginning of the conflict Radicalism comprehended the situation and the duty. It understood the foe, utterly scouted the idea of a "war on peace principles," and demanded the employment of all the powers of war in the accomplishment of its purpose. It understood the conflict as not simply a struggle to save the Union, but a grand and final battle for the rights of man, now and hereafter; and it believed that God would never smile upon our endeavors till we accepted it as such. Radicalism therefore demanded the repeal of all laws which had been enacted to uphold and fortify slavery. It demanded the arming of the slaves against their old tyrants. It demanded emancipation as a moral and a military necessity, and a policy of the war so broadly and systematically anti-slavery as to meet the rebel power in the full sweep of its remorseless crusade against us. Its trust was in the justice of our cause and the favor of the Almighty; and just so soon as the government turned away from its Conservative friends and joined hands with Radicalism, our arms were crowned with victories, which followed each other till the rebel power lay prostrate at our feet.

But, Mr. Speaker, the war is over. So at least we are informed by the President; and with the glad return of peace comes once more the same issue between Conservatism and Radicalism, and more clearly marked than ever before. Conservatism, true to the logic which made it the ally and handmaid of treason all through the war, now demands the indiscriminate pardon of all the rebel leaders. It recognizes the revolted States as still in the Union, in precisely the same sense as are the loyal States, and restored to all their rights as completely as if no rebellion had happened. It opposes any constitutional amendment which shall deprive the rebels of the representation of the freedmen in Congress, who have no voice as citizens, and thus sanctions this most flagrant outrage upon justice and democratic equality in the interest of unrepentant traitors. It opposes the protection of the millions of loyal colored