ment is fated to add yet another to that long line of sepulchres which whiten the highway of the past, then my heartfelt prayer to God is, that it may be written in history, that the blood of its life was not found upon the skirts of Kentucky.-Hon. Joseph Holt, 1861.

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEE OF A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT TO EVERY STATE.

MR. PRESIDENT, in the heat and excitement of this debate, there are one or two ideas that ought not to be lost sight of. The Senator from Kentucky seems to forget, while he speaks of the delegated powers of this Government under the Constitution, that one of the powers which is delegated is that we shall guarantee to every State of this Union, a republican form of government; that when South Carolina seeks to set up a military despotism, the constitutional power with which we are clothed and the duty which is enjoined upon us is to guarantee to South Carolina a republican form of government. There is another idea that seems to be lost sight of in the talk about subjugation, and I hope that my friends on this side of the chamber will not also lose sight of it in the excitement of the debate. I undertake to say that it is not the purpose of this war, or of this administration, to subjugate any State of the Union, or the people of any State of the Union. What is the policy? It is, as I said the other day, to enable the loyal people of the several States of this Union to reconstruct themselves upon the Constitution of the United States. Virginia has led the way; Virginia, in her sovereign capacity, by the assembled loyal people of that State in convention, has organized herself upon the Constitution of the United States, and they have taken into their own hands the government of that State. Virginia has her judges, her marshals, her public officers; and to the courts of Virginia, and to the marshals and executive officers of Virginia we can entrust the enforcement of the laws the moment that the state of civil war shall have ceased in the eastern or any other portion of the State. It is not, therefore, the purpose of this Government to subjugate the people of Virginia and of Tennessee and of North Carolina and of Texas, ay, and of the Gulf States, too, when they are prepared for it; we will rally to the support of the loyal people of these States and enable them to take their government in their own hands, by wresting it out of the hands of those

military usurpers who now hold it, for they are nothing more and nothing less. That is all that is involved in this contest, and I hope on this side of the chamber we shall never again hear one of our friends talking about subjugating either a State or the people of any State of this Union, but that we shall go on aiding them to do just precisely what the loyal people of Virginia are doing, what the loyal people of Tennessee are preparing to do, what the loyal people of North Carolina stand ready to do, and what the loyal people in Georgia and Alabama and Louisiana, and last perhaps of all, the loyal people of South Carolina will do in reconstructing themselves upon the Constitution of the United States. Hon. James R. Doolittle, 1861.

MAKING WAR ON REBELS CONSTITUTIONAL.

MR. PRESIDENT, I have heard the Senator from Kentucky to-day, and I have heard him again and again, denounce the President of the United States for the usurpation of unconstitutional power. I undertake to say that without any foundation he makes such a charge of usurpation of unconsti tutional power, unless it be in a mere matter of form. He has not, in substance; and the case I put to the Senator the other day he has not answered, and I defy him to answer. I undertake to say that, as there are fifty thousand men, perhaps, in arms against the United States, in Virginia, within thirty miles of this capital, I, as an individual, though I am not President, though I am clothed with no official authority, may ask one hundred thousand of my fellow-men to volunteer to go with me, with arms in our hands, to take every one of them, and, if it be necessary, to take their lives. Why do not some of these gentlemen who talk about usurpation and trampling the Constitution under foot, stand up here and answer that position, or forever shut their mouths? I, as an individual, can do all this, though I am not President, and am clothed with no legal authority whatever, simply because I am a loyal citizen of the United States; I have a right to ask one hundred thousand men to volunteer to go with me and capture the whole of the rebels, and if it be necessary to their capture to kill half of them while I am doing it. No man can deny the correctness of the proposition. Away, then, with all this stuff, and this splitting of hairs and pettifogging here, when we are within the very

sound of the guns of these traitors and rebels, who threaten to march upon the capital and subjugate the Government. Hon. James R. Doolittle, 1861.

COERCION UNCONSTITUTIONAL.,

MR. PRESIDENT, I have tried on more than one occasion in the Senate, in parliamentary and respectful language, to express my opinions in regard to the character of our Federal system, the relations of the States to the Federal Government, to the Constitution, the bond of the Federal political system. They differed utterly from those entertained by the Senator from Oregon. Evidently, by his line of argument, he regards this as an original, not as a delegated Government, and he regards it as clothed with all those powers which belong to an original nation, not only with those powers which are delegated by the different political communities that compose it, and limited by the written Constitution that forms the bond of union. I have tried to show that, in the view that I take of our Government, this war is an unconstitutional war. I do not think the Senator from Oregon has answered my argument. He asks, what must we do? As we progress southward, and invade the country, must we not, said he, carry with us all the laws of war? I would not progress southward and invade the country. The President of the United States, as I again repeat, in my judgment, only has the power to call out the military to assist the civil authority in executing the laws; and when the question assumes the magnitude, and takes the form of a great political severance, and nearly half the members of the Confederacy withdraw themselves from it, what then? I have never held that one State, or a number of, States, have a right without cause, to break the compact of the Constitution. But what I mean to say is, that you cannot then undertake to make war in the name of the Constitution. In my opinion they are out. You may conquer them; but do not attempt to do it under what I consider false political pretences. However, sir, I will not enlarge upon that. I have developed. these ideas again and again, and I do not care to re-argue them. Hence the Senator and I start from entirely different stand-points, and his pretended replies, are no replies at all. The Senator asks me, "What would you have us do?" I have already intimated what I would have us do. I would have us stop the war. We can do it. I have tried to show that there is none of that inexorable necessity to continue

this war which the Senator seems to suppose. I do not hold that constitutional liberty on this continent is bound up in this fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest. Upon the contrary, I fear it will find its grave in it. The Senator is mistaken in supposing that we can reunite these States by war. He is mistaken in supposing that eighteen or twenty millions upon the one side can subjugate ten or twelve millions upon the other; or, if they do subjugate them, that you can restore constitutional Government as our fathers made it. You will have to govern them as territories, as suggested by the Senator, if ever they are reduced to the dominion of the United States, or, as the Senator from Vermont called them, "those rebellious provinces of this Union," in his speech to-day. Sir, I would prefer to see these States all reunited upon true constitutional principles to any other object that could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles of our fathers, the union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one unimportant life would be nothing, nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public liberty and of personal freedom. Hon. J. C. Breckinridge, 1861.

THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH.

THE Senator asked if a senator of Rome had uttered these things in the war between Carthage and that power, how would he have been treated? Sir, the war between Carthage and Rome, was altogether different from the war now waged between the United States and the Confederate States. I would have said—rather than avow the principle that one or the other must be subjugated, or perhaps both destroyedlet Carthage live and let Rome live, each pursuing its own course of policy and civilization. The Senator says that these opinions which I thus expressed and have heretofore expressed, are but brilliant treason; and that it is a tribute to the character of our institutions that I am allowed to utter them the upon Senate floor. Mr. President, if I am speaking treason I am not aware of it. I am speaking what I believe to be for the good of my country. If I am speaking treason, I am speaking it in my place in the Senate. By whose indulgence am I speaking? Not by any man's indulgence. I am speaking by the guarantees of that Constitution which seems to be here now so little respected. And, sir, when he asked what would have been done

with a Roman senator who had uttered such words, a certain Senator on this floor, whose courage has much risen of late, replies in audible terms: "he would have been hurled from the Tarpeian Rock." Sir, if ever we find an American Tarpeian Rock, and a suitable victim is to be selected, the people will turn not to me, but to that Senator who, according to the measure of his intellect and his heart, has been the chief author of the public misfortunes. He, and men like him, have brought the country to its present condition. Let him remember too, sir, that while in ancient Rome the defenders of the public liberty were sometimes torn to pieces by the people, yet their memories were cherished in grateful remembrance, while to be hurled from the Tarpeian Rock was ever the fate of usurpers and tyrants. I reply with the just indignation I ought to feel at such an insult offered on the floor of the Senate chamber, to a Senator who is speaking in his place. Mr. President, I shall not longer detain the Senate. My opinions are my own. They are honestly entertained. I do not believe that I have uttered one opinion here, in regard to this contest, that does not reflect the judgment of the people I have the honor to represent. If they do, I shall find my reward in the fearless utterance of their opinions; if they do not, I am not a man to cling to the forms of office and to the emoluments of public life, against my convictions and my principles; and I repeat what I uttered the other day, that if, indeed, the Commonweath of Kentucky, instead of attempting to mediate in this unfortunate struggle, shall throw her energies into the strife, and approve the conduct and sustain the policy of the Federal administration, in what I believe to be a war of subjugation, and which is being proved every day to be a war of subjugation and annihilation, she may take her course. I am her son, and will share her destiny, but she will be represented by some other man on the floor of this Senate. Hon. J. C. Breckinridge, 1861.

EVIL PREDICTIONS.

THE Senator from Kentucky stands up here in a manly way in opposition to what he sees is the overwhelming sentiment of the Senate, and utters reproof, malediction, and prediction combined. Well, sir, it is not every prediction that is prophecy. It is the easiest thing in the world to do; there is nothing easier, except to be mistaken when we have predicted. I confess, Mr. President, that I would not have