tions, in this chamber, would have saved every State in the Union, but South Carolina." Mr. Douglas followed Mr. Pugh on this occasion, and remarked: "The Senator has said that if the Crittenden proposition could have passed, early in the session, it would have saved all the States, except South Carolina. I firmly believe it would. "I can confirm the Senator's declaration that Senator Davis himself, when on the Committee of Thirteen, was ready at all times to compromise on the Crittenden proposition. I will go further, and say that Mr. Toombs was also." It was stated in the public prints, early in November, 1861, when actual war had been on foot but a few months, that Mr. Lincoln made known his "regrets that he did not urge the adoption of the Crittenden Compromise." The following passage is an extract from a letter addressed by him, from Washington, to Mr. Hays, of Chicago, dated December 29, 1860: Many of the Republican leaders desire a dissolution of the Union, and urge war as a means of accomplishing disunion; while others are Union men in good faith. We have now reached a point where a compro mise on the basis of mutual concession or disunion and war is inevitable." In another letter of Mr. Douglas, addressed to Mr. Taylor, of New York, and dated on the same day, he wrote: "We are now drifting rapidly into civil war, which must end in disunion. This can only be prevented by amendments to the Constitution, which will take the slavery question out of Congress. Whether this can be done, depends upon the Republicans. Many of their leaders desire disunion on party grounds, and here is the difficulty. God grant us safe deliverance, is my prayer.' A Senator from Ohio (Mr. Pugh) declared in his place, on the day preceding the final adjournment of Congress (March 3, 1861), that the resolutions had "been petitioned for by a larger number of electors of the United States, than any proposition that was ever before Congress." Mr. Douglas, in a letter dated at Washington, February 2, 1861, and addressed to a paper in Tennessee, says, with the purpose of dissuading the people of that State from taking part with secession: "You must remember that there are disunionists among the party leaders at the North as well as at the South; men whose hostility to slavery is stronger than their fidelity to the Constitution, and who believe that the disruption of the Union would draw * * * after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrection, and finally, the utter extermination of slavery in all the Southern States. The Northern disunionists, like the disunionists of the South, are violently opposed to all comproefforts at conciliation, whereby peace should mises and Constitutional amendments, or be restored and the Union preserved. They are striving to break up the Union, under the pretense of unbounded devotion to it. They are struggling to overthrow the Constitution, while professing undying attachsacrifice to maintain it. ment to it, and a willingness to make any issue "They are trying to plunge the country into civil war, as the surest means of destroying the Union, upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting the public property. If they can defeat any adjustment or compromise, by which the points at may be satisfactorily settled, and keep up the irritation, so as to induce the border feel certain of the accomplishment of their States to follow the cotton States, they will ultimate designs. Nothing will gratify them so much, or contribute so effectually to their the Border States. Every State that withsuccess, as the secession of Tennessee and draws from the Union increases the reladefeat a satisfactory adjustment." tive power of the Northern abolitionists to In a debate in the Senate on the state of the Union, on the 10th December, 1860, when affairs had so nearly ripened into open secession, Mr. Dixon, of Connecticut, declared that the true way to restore har mony was by cheerfully and honestly assuring to every section its constitutional rights. No section professes to ask more. No section ought to offer less." He added, that three-quarters of his constituents would uphold him in this position. Whereupon, Mr. Davis' colleague, Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said: "If the same spirit could prevail which actuates the Senator who has things might be produced in twenty days." just now taken his seat, a different state of Congressional Globe, December 11, 1860. in reply to a speech of Mr. Seward: Mr. Douglas declared, February 29, 1860, "I repeat that their resistance (that of the Republican or Radical party) to carrying out in good faith the settlement of 1820, their defeat of the bill for extending it to the Pacific Ocean, was the sole cause of the agitation of 1850, and gave rise to the necessity of establishing the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the Territories. Hence, I am not willing to sit here and allow the Senator from New York, with all the weight of authority he has with the powerful party of which he is the head, to arraign me and the party to which I belong with the responsibility for that agitation which rests solely upon him and his associates." The following passage is an extract of a speech, delivered by a very eminent citizen of New York, the late Judge Wm. Duer, at Oswego, in that State, August 6, 1860: "The Republican party is a conspiracy, under the forms, but in violation of the spirit of the Constitution of the United States, to exclude the citizens of 'slaveholding States from all share in the government of the country, and to compel them to adopt their institutions to the opinions of the citizens of the free States.'" How the Leading Radicals treated the Crisis. Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, in his message, January 5, 1861, remarked: "And the single question now presented to the nation is this: shall a reactionary spirit, unfriendly to liberty, be permitted to subvert democratic-republican government, organized under constitutional forms?" judgment and advice, and will end in thin "Z. CHANDLER. The Boston Courier, of January 25, 1861, "Senator Wilson has just returned from Massachusetts; says the Republicans there are stronger than ever in their faith. He states that the Democrats and Bell and Everett men told him that now was the time to settle the question of slavery. The secession movement in South Carolina" (and similar causes referred to) "confirmed his constituents in their determination to dispose of the question now and forever. When asked how they would dispose of it, the Senator intimated that remained to be seen. In other words, the Governor of Massachusetts was afraid to do any thing to abate the disunion spirit, for fear that a patriotic reaction might overwhelm him and his coconspirators of the Radical party. In evidence, beyond what has already appeared, to support this statement, among a mass of similar testimony, the following may suffice. Mr. Wade, a Senator from Ohio, made the following declarations in a published speech: (These extracts are made from Carpenter's "Logic of History," a book published at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1864.) "And, after all this, to talk of a Union! Sir, I have said you have no Union. I say you have no Union to-day worthy of the name. I am here a conservative man, knowing, as I do, that the only salvation to your Union (that is, according to the re-edited by him: solve of Mr. Wade and others) is that you divest it entirely from all the taints of slavery. If we can't have that, then I go for no Union at all, but I go for a fight." "WASHINGTON, February 11, 1861. "MY DEAR GOVERNOR: Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed to you on Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to send delegates to the Peace Compromise Congress. They admit that we were right and they were wrong; that no Republican State should have sent delegates; but they are here, and can't get away. Ohio, Indiana, and Rhode Island are coming in, and there is some danger of Illinois; and now they beg us, for God's sake, to come to their rescue, and save the Republican party from rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none. The whole thing was gotten up against my Mr. Thurlow Weed, than whom no one could be more conversant with the whole subject, declared in the Albany Journal, "The chief architects of the rebellion, before it broke out, avowed that they were aided in their designs by the ultra Abolitionists of the North. This was too true, for without such aid the South could never have been united against the Union." Mr. Andrew Johnson, now President of the United States, declared, in a speech, just before the rebellion broke into open violence: "There are two parties in existence who want dissolution. Slavery and a Southern Confederacy is the hobby. Sumner wants to break up the Government, and so do the Abolitionists generally. They hold that, if it survives, the Union can not endure. Secessionists argue that, if the Union continues, slavery is lost. Abolitionists want no compromise; but they regard peaceable secession as a humbug. "The two occupy the same ground. Why, find abolition is dissolution; dissolution is seces- | why it should not justify the secession of sion; one is the other. Both are striving 5,000,000 of Southerners from the Union in to accomplish the same object." The South Encouraged to Dissolution. Mr. Ben. Wade announced in a speech in the Senate, as it is reported in the Congressional Globe, third session, Thirty-fourth Congress, page 25, bolder disunion doctrine than was ever avowed by Messrs. Davis or Yancey: But Southern gentlemen stand here and in almost all their speeches, speak of the dissolution of the Union, as an element of every argument, as though it were a peculiar condescension on their part that they permitted the Union to stand at all. If they do not feel interested in upholding the Union-if it really trenches on their rights -if it endangers their institutions to such an extent that they can not feel secure under it if their interests are violently assailed by means of the Union, I am not one of those who expect that they will long continue under it. I am not one of those who would ask them to continue in such a Union. It would be doing violence to the platform of the party to which I belong. We have adopted the old Declaration of Independence as the basis of our political movements, which declares that any people when their government ceases to protect their rights-when it is so subverted from the true purposes of government as to oppose them-have the right to recur to fundamental principles, and, if need be, to destroy the government under which they live, and to erect on its ruins another more conducive to their welfare. I hold that they have this right. I will not blame any people for exercising it, whenever they think the contingency has come. * * * You can not forcibly hold men in this Union, for the attempt to do so, it seems to me, would subvert the first principles of the Government under which we live." January 12, 1848, the late President Lincoln in App., Congressional Globe, first session, Thirtieth Congress, page 94, proclaimed in Congress that, "Any people, any where, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the people of an existing government may choose to exercise it." December 17, 1860, Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, says: 1861." November 9, 1860, the same journal says: "Whenever a considerable section of our Union is all deliberately resolved to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep them in. We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets." November 26, 1860, the same journal again says: "If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peaceably from the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to do so. Any attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence-contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based." March 2, 1861, nearly six weeks before the assault upon Fort Sumter, the same journal again said: "We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, is sound and just; and that, if the slave States, the cotton States, or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have a moral right to do so." Of course Southern members of Congress must have had the opportunity of knowing the private opinions of Northern members of the two branches, and, probably, of those members of the administration, whose views of the situation more or less coincided with those of the Secretary of the Treasury. Even General Scott, at the head of the military force of the Union, on the 3d of March, 1861, the day after Mr. Greeley's announcement of his views, in his published letter to Mr. Seward, proposed as his final and apparently favorite alternative, in "the highly disordered condition of our (so late) happy and glorious Union, say to the se ceded States-wayward sisters, depart in peace !" Negro Suffrage. VOTES ON, IN Congress, on the 18th of MARCH, 1864. The House passed, without a division, a bill in the usual form, to provide a tempoorary government for the Territory of Montana. March 31-The Senate considered it, when Mr. Wilkinson moved to strike from the second line of the fifth section (defining "If the Declaration of Independence jus the qualifications of voters), the words tified the secession from the British Empire" white male inhabitant" and insert the of 3,000,000 colonists in 1776, we do n see words: "male citizen of the United States, and those who have declared their intention | frage clause, similar to that in the act to become such;" which was agreed to- organizing Idaho, which confined suffrage yeas 22, nays 17, as follows: to white males at first election; the qualifications of voters, afterward, to be determined by the Territorial Legislature. YEAS-Messrs. Brown, Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Conness, Dixon, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Harris, Howard, Howe, Morgan, Morrill, Pomeroy, Sumner, Wade, Wilkinson, Wilson-22. NAYS-Messrs. Buckalew, Carlile, Cowan, Davis, Harding, Henderson, Johnson, Lane (of Indiana), Nesmith, Powell, Riddle, Saulsbury, Sherman, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Willey-17. The House disagreed to the amendments of the Senate, and a Committee of Conference recommended that it recede from its disagreement to the above, among other amendments of the Senate. The recommendation was rejected by the House on the 15th of April, when, on a motion to adhere to its amendments, and ask another Committee of Conference, Mr. Webster moved instructions: "And that said committee be instructed to agree to no report that authorizes any other than free white male citizens, and those who have declared their intention to become such, to vote." Which was agreed to-yeas 75, nays 67, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. James C. Allen, Wm. J. Allen, Baily, Augustus C. Baldwin, Francis P. Blair, Bliss, Brooks, James S. Brown, Wm. G. Brown, Chanler, Clay, Coffroth, Cox, Cravens, Creswell, Henry Winter Davis, Dawson, Denison, Eden, Eldridge, Finck, Ganson, Grider, Hall, Harding, Benjamin G. Harris, Herrick, Holman, Hutchins, William Johnson, Kalbfleisch, Kernan, Knapp, Law, Lazear, Long, Mallory, Marcy, McBride, Mc Dowell, McKinney, Wm. H. Miller, James R. ton, Radford, Saml. J. Randall, W. H. Randall, Robinson, Rogers, James S. Rollins, Ross, Scott, Smith, Smithers, Stebbins, John B. Steele, Wm. G. Steele, Strouse, Stuart, Sweat, Thomas, Tracy, Voorhees, Webster, Whaley, Wheeler, Chilton A. White, Joseph W. White, Winfield, Fernando Wood, Yeaman-75. Morris, Morrison, Nelson, Noble, Odell, Pendle NAYS-Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Anderson, Ashley, John D. Baldwin, Baxter, Beaman, Blaine, Boutwell, Boyd, Broomall, Ambrose W. Clark, Cobb, Cole, Dawes, Deming, Driggs, Dumont, Fransworth, Frank, Gooch, Grinnell, Higby, Hooper, Hotchkiss, Asahel W. Hubbard, John H. Hubbard, Jenckes, Julian, Kelley, Francis W. Kellogg, Orlando Kellogg, Loan Longyear, Marvin, McClurg, McIndoe, Samuel, F. Miller, Morrill, Daniel Morris, Leonard Myers, Norton, Charles O'Neill, Orth, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Pomeroy, Price, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Edward H. Rollins, Schenck, Shannon, Sloan, Stevens, Thayer, Upson, Van Valkenburgh, Elihu B. Washburne, William B. Washburn, Williams, Wilder, Wilson, Windom, Woodbridge-67. The Senate declined a further conference on these terms, when a free conference was had, which resulted in the passage of a suf In the Senate, May 26, 1864, the bill for the registration of voters in the city of Washington being under consideration, Mr. Sumner moved to amend the bill by adding this proviso: Provided, That there shall be no exclusion of any person from the registry on account of color." May 27-Mr. Harlan moved to amend the amendment by making the word " son" read" persons," and adding the words per "Who have borne arms in the military service of the United States, and have been honorably discharged therefrom." Which was agreed to-yeas 26, nays 12, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Conness, Dixon, Fessenden, Foot, Lane (of Indiana), Lane (of Kansas), Morgan, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Harris, Johnson, Morrill, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Wilson-26. NAYS- Messrs. Buckalew, Carlile, Cowan, Davis, Hendricks, McDougall, Powell, Richardson, Saulsbury, Sumner, Van Winkle, Wilkinson-12. words to the last proviso: May 28-Mr. Sumner moved to add these แ And provided further, That all persons, without distinction of color, who shall, within the year next preceding the election, have paid a tax on any estate, or been assessed with a part of the revenue of said District, or been exempt from taxation, having taxable estate, and who can read and write with facility, shall enjoy the privilege of an elector. But no person now entitled to vote in the said District, continuing to reside therein, shall be disfranchised hereby.' Which was rejected-yeas 8, nays 27, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Clark, Lane (of Kansas), Morgan, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Sumner, Wilkinson-8. NAYS-Messrs. Buckalew, Carlile, Collamer Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Harris, Hendricks, Hicks, Johnson, Lane (of Indiana), Mc Dougall, Morrill, Powell, Saulsbury, Sherman, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Willey, Wilson-27. The other proposition of Mr. Sumner, amended on motion of Mr. Harlan, was then rejected-yeas 18, nays 20, as follows. YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Chandler, Clark, Dixon, Foot, Foster, Hale, Harlan, Howard, Howe, Lane (of Kansas), Morgan, Pomeroy Ramsey, Sherman, Sumner, Wilkinson, Wilson-18. NAYS-Messrs. Buckalew, Carlile, Cowan, Davis, Grimes, Harris, Hendricks, Hicks, Johnson, Lane (of Indiana), McDougall, Morrill, Chanler, Cooper, Dawson, Eldridge, Finck, Glossafter-brenner, Aaron Harding, Hise, Hogan, Chester D. Hubbard, Humphrey, Hunter, Kerr, Kuykendall, Latham, Leftwich, McCullough, Niblack, Nicholson, Noell, Phelps, Radford, S. J. Randall, W. H. Randall, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Shanklin, Strouse, Taber, Nathaniel G. Taylor, Nelson Taylor, Trimble, Andrew H. Ward, Winfield-38. Whereupon the Speaker of the House declared the bill a law. Nesmith, Powell, Richardson, Saulsbury, Ten NAYS-Messrs. Ancona, Bergen, Campbell, Eyck, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Willey-20. The bill then passed the Senate, and ward the House, without amendment. An act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, was vetoed by the President. This act provided that each and every male person, excepting paupers and persons under guardianship, of the age of twenty-one years and upward, who has not been convicted of any infamous crime or offense, and excepting persons who may have voluntarily given aid and comfort to the rebels in the late rebellion, and who shall have been born or naturalized in the United States, and who shall have resided in the said District for the period of one year, and three months in the ward or election precinct in which he shall offer to vote, next preceding any election therein, shall be entitled to the elective franchise, and shall be deemed an elector and entitled to vote at any election in said District, without any distinction on account of color or race. On the 7th of January, 1866, the President vetoed it. Same day, the Senate passed it, notwithstanding the President's objections, by a two-thirds vote-yeas 29, nays 10, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Anthony, Cattell, Chandler, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Edmunds, Fessenden, Fogg, Fowler, Frelinghuysen, Grimes, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Poland, Ramsey, Ross, Sherman, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Willey, Wil liams-29. NAYS-Messrs. Cowan, Dixon, Doolittle, Fos ter, Hendricks, Johnson, Nesmith, Norton, Patter 8on, Van Winkle-10. January 8 The House passed it--yeas 113, nays 38, as follows: YEAS-Messrs. Alley, Allison, Ames, Arnell, Delos R. Ashley, James M. Ashley, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barker, Baxter, Beaman, Ben jamin, Bidwell, Bingham, Blaine, Boutwell, Brandegee, Bromwell, Broomall, Buckland, Bundy, Reader, W. Clarke, Sidney Clarke, Cobb, Cook, Cullom, Culver, Darling, Dawes, Defrees, Delano, Deming, Dixon, Dodge, Donnelly, Driggs, Eckley, Eggleston, Farnsworth, Farquhar, Ferry, Garfield, Grinnell, Abner C. Harding, Hart, Hawkins, Hayes, Henderson, Higby, Hill, Holmes, Hooper, John H. Hubbard, James R. Hubbell, Ingersoll, Jenckes, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Ketcham, Koontz, George V. Lawrence, William Lawrence, Loan, Longyear, Lynch, Marston, Marvin, Maynard, McClurg, McRuer, Mercur, Miller, Morrill, Moulton, Myers, Newell O'Neill, Orth, Paine, Patterson, Perham, Pike, Plants, Price, Raymond, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Sawyer, Schenck, Scofield, Spalding, Starr, Stokes, Thayer, Francis Thomas, John L. Thomas, jr., Trowbridge, Upson, Van Aernam, Burt Van Horn, Hamilton Ward, Warner, Elihu B. Washburne, Welker, Wentworth, Williams, James F. Wilson, Stephen F. Wilson, Windom, and Speaker Colfax113. In the Senate, Messrs. Brown, Harris, Pomeroy, Sprague and Wilson, who voted for the bill originally, did not vote on this vote. Messrs. Buckalew, Davis, Riddle and Saulsbury, who voted against the bill originally, did not vote on this vote. Mr. Johnson, who did not vote on the original bill, voted against it now. In the House, Messrs. Anderson, Blow, Conkling, Eliot, Griswold, Hale, Hotchkiss, Demas Hubbard, jr., Hubbard, Laflin, McIndoe, Moorhead, Morris, Pomeroy, Rollins, Shellabarger, Sloan, Stevens, R. T. Van Horn, W. B. Washburn and Woodbridge, who voted for the bill originally, did not vote on this vote. Messrs. Benjamin, Cullom, Darling, Farqu har, Plants and J.L.Thomas, jr., who did not vote on the bill originally, voted for it now. Messrs. Boyer, Denison, Goodyear, Harris, E. N. Hubbell, LeBlond, Marshall, McKee, Rousseau, Sitgreaves, Stillwell, Thornton and Whaley, who voted against the bill originally, did not vote now. Messrs. Humphrey, McCullough, Trimble and Winfield, who did not vote originally, voted against the bill now. the bill to amend the organic acts of the In the Senate, January 10, 1861, pending Territories, This substitute was adopted: "That from and after the passage of this act there shall be no denial of the elective franchise in any of the Territories of the United States, now or hereafter to be organized, to any citizen thereof, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and all acts or parts of acts, either of Congress or the legislative assemblies of said Territories inconsistent with the provisions of this act, are hereby declared null and void." The vote was-yeas 24, nays 8, as follows: YEAS Messrs. Anthony, Conness, Cragin, Creswell, Edmunds, Fessenden, Fogg, Foster, Fowler, Grimes, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Poland, Sherman, Stewart, Sumner, Wade, Willey, Wil liams-24. NAYS-Messrs. Buckalew, Hendricks, Johnson, Norton, Patterson, Riddle, Saulsbury, Van Winkle-8. Same day-The House concurred-yeas 104, nays 38, as follows: |