of civil war, a new birth and a glorious transfiguration. Then, the people of the North and the people of the South will again become one people, united in interests, in pursuits, in intelligence, in religion, and in patriotic devotion to our common country."

As regards the particular provisions of the bill before us, I need not occupy much of the time of this House. It has been printed, and gentlemen have had the opportunity of examining it for themselves. It has been prepared with much care, and with the assistance of some of the best lawyers in the Union. The first and second sections of the bill provide the methods by which the title of rebel land-owners shall vest in the United States under the acts of Congress now in force on the subject of confiscation and revenue. I shall not discuss the power of the government thus to acquire the title to this land, for it cannot be controverted without overturning all the legislation of the last Congress on the subject of confiscation, internal revenue, and the collection of taxes in insurrectionary districts. I have, in fact, already argued the question of power, in what I have said of our relations to the rebels as belligerents.

The third section provides for the survey of the lands in ques. tion as nearly as may be in forty-acre lots. This is deemed necessary from the fact that in several of the insurrectionary districts the old system of irregular surveys exists, and not the present or rectangular system. The section also provides for the appointment of necessary officers and their compensation, and contemplates the application and use of the machinery of the General Land Office within such districts.

The fourth section gives a homestead of eighty acres to all soldiers who shall have served in the army or navy two years, and forty acres to all persons who shall have aided in the military service against the rebels for any period of time, either as soldiers or laborers. It also extends the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862 over these lands, thus avoiding any new and cumbersome regulations, and exacts a continuous residence of five years to consummate the title.

The fifth section provides that after keeping the lands open for homesteads for five years, those remaining vacant shall be sold at public sale. It prohibits the sacrifice of them by fixing a minimum price, which they must bring. It also requires the purchaser to comply with the Preëmption Act of 1841, prior to his receiving a patent, thus demanding a residence on the land, and precluding an accumulation of it in the hands of speculators. These safeguards

look to the benefit of the mass, and not the interests of a few, even after homesteads have been selected. This section also provides that proof of loyalty shall be made by all persons claiming rights under the bill.

The sixth section, as will be seen, requires no comment. The seventh requires persons selecting improved lands to pay for whatever may be found of value on them, after an appraisement by persons regularly appointed for the purpose, and to pay the costs occasioned by the proceeding. The effect will be that the expenses created by the act will be paid into the Treasury of the United States, and may exceed the expenditures which will be connected with its operations.

The eighth section establishes an obviously just if not necessary rule of construction as to persons of color, giving them equal rights with white men, and extends the inchoate rights of a settler to his heirs, or widow, who may complete payments and make proof.

The ninth section places the execution of the act in the Department of the Interior, or that more immediately connected with the land system; and the last section repeals all laws inconsistent with the provisions of this act. I will only add, that the act has nothing to do with real estate in towns, cities, and villages, which will, of course, continue to be sold as heretofore.

These, Mr. Speaker, are the material provisions of the bill. They embody principles which I have endeavored to vindicate, by argument and by fact. If I am right, then every moment of delay is a golden opportunity wasted forever. Under the present policy of the government every passing day bears witness to the transfer of thousands of acres of forfeited lands to speculators. According to Judge Underwood, more than two hundred millions of dollars' worth of property in the State of Virginia alone, chiefly real estate, should be confiscated by the government. Thousands of acres are now being sold in the vicinity of this city. In September last, the President of the United States issued instructions. to the tax commissioners of South Carolina, providing for the sale of 40,845 acres, of which 24,316 acres were to be sold to the highest bidder, in tracts of 320 acres. The remainder was to be sold to the heads of African families, for such sums, not less than one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, as the government should see fit to demand. These sales are portions of a lot of 76,775 acres offered on the 9th of last March, when 16,479 acres were sold to speculators; making an aggregate of 40,795 acres which will have been sold in large tracts, leaving for the negro

only 16,479 acres, which he may buy, if he can raise the money to pay the price fixed by the government. Such transactions as these, in Port Royal, where so much has been hoped for the freedman, are most significant. If any people have a divine right to these tropical lands, they are the slaves who have bought them, over and over, by their sweat and toil and blood, through centuries of oppression. Degraded and embruted by servitude, mere children in knowledge and self-help, we require them to compete for their homesteads with the sharpened faculties of the white speculator, schooled in avarice by generations of money getting, who believes the almighty dollar is the only living and true God, and would "run into the mouth of hell after a bale of cotton." Sir, our government is false to its trust, infidel to its mission, if it shall lend its high sanction to such wanton injustice and wrong. Had I the power I would give a free home on the forfeited lands of rebels to every bondman in the insurrectionary districts. Let the government, at least, give him an equal chance with our own race, in the settlement and enjoyment of his native land. Less than this would be a mockery of justice and an insult both to decency and humanity. He is excluded from the Northern States and Territories by their uncongenial climate, by his attachments to his birthplace, and by Anglo-Saxon domination and enterprise. Let the government, which has so long connived at his oppression, now make sure to him a free homestead on the land of his oppressor. Let us deal justly with the African, and thereby lay claim to justice for ourselves. Let us remember, in the language of our patriotic Chief Magistrate, that "We cannot escape history. We of this Congress and of this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free; honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just, a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

RADICALISM AND

CONSERVATISM

TRUTH OF HISTORY VINDICATED.

THE

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, FEBRUARY 7, 1865.

[This parallel between Radicalism and Conservatism, drawn after the government had fairly changed its base, is believed to be as just as it was timely. A cordial and handsome tribute to the anti-slavery pioneers fitly closes the review.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, - Perhaps no task could be more instructive or profitable, in these culminating days of the rebellion, than a review of the shifting phases of thought and policy which have guided the administration in its endeavors to crush it. Such a retrospect will help us vindicate the real truth of history, both as, to measures and men. It will bring out, in the strongest colors, the contrast between Radicalism and Conservatism, as rival political forces, each maintaining a varying control over the conduct of the war. It will, at the same time, point out and emphasize those pregnant lessons of the struggle which may best supply the government with counsel in its further prosecution. The faithful performance of this task demands plainness of speech; and I shall not shrink from my accustomed use of it, in the interests of truth and freedom.

At the beginning of this war, Mr. Chairman, neither of the parties to it comprehended its character and magnitude. Its actual history has been an immeasurable surprise to both, and to the whole civilized world. The rebels evidently expected to make short work of it. Judging us by our habitual and long-continued submission to Southern domination, and confiding in the multiplied assurances of sympathy and help which they had received from their faithful allies in the North, they regarded the work of dismemberment as neither difficult nor expensive. They did not dream of the grand results which have proceeded from their mad enterprise. Nor does their delusion seem to have been at all strange or unnatural. Certainly, it was not more remarkable than the infatuation of the administration, and its conservative friends. The government understood the conflict as little, and misunderstood it

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as absolutely, as its foes. This, sir, is one of the lessons of the war which I think it worth while to have remembered. This revolt, it was believed, was simply a new and enlarged edition of Southern bluster. The government did not realize the inexorable necessity of actual war, because it lacked the moral vision to perceive the real nature of the contest. To every suggestion of so dire an event it turned an averted face and a deaf ear. It hoped to restore order by making a show of war, without actually calling into play the terrible enginery of war. It trusted in the form, without the power of war, just as some people have trusted in the form, without the power of godliness. It will be remembered that just before the battle of Ball's Bluff, General McClellan ordered Colonel Stone to "make a slight demonstration against the rebels," which might have the effect to drive them from Leesburg." The government seems to have pursued a like policy in dealing with the rebellion itself. "A slight demonstration," it was believed, would "have the effect" to arrest the rebels in their madness, and reëstablish order and peace in about "sixty days," without allowing them to be seriously hurt, and without unchaining the tiger of war at all. The philosophy of General Patterson, who kindly advised that the war on our part should be "conducted on peace principles," was by no means out of fashion with our rulers, and the conservative leaders of opinion generally. Even the Commander-inchief of our army and navy scouted the idea of putting down the rebellion by military power. He thought the country was to be saved by giving up the principles it had fairly won by the ballot in the year 1860, and to the maintenance of which the new administration was solemnly pledged. He believed in "conciliation," in "compromise," the meanest word in the whole vocabulary of our politics, except, perhaps, the word "conservative," and had far less faith in the help of bullets and bayonets in managing the rebels than in the power of our brotherly love to melt their susceptible hearts, and woo them back, gently and lovingly, to a sense of their madness and their crime. Our distinguished Secretary of State declared that "none but a despotic or imperial government would seek to subjugate thoroughly disaffected sovereignties. The policy of coercing the revolted States was disavowed by the President himself in his message to Congress of July, 1861.

Nor did the Legislative Department of the government, at that time, disagree with the Executive. On the 22d day of July of the same year, - and I it with sorrow and shame, on the very say morning following the first battle of Bull Run, the House of Rep