Union prisoners of war were never equaled in atrocity since the creation of man.

For more than thirty years past there is no crime known among men which it has not committed under the sanction of law. It has bound men and women in chains, even the children of the slave-masters, and sold them in the public shambles like beasts. Under the plea of Christianizing them. it has enslaved, beaten, maimed, and robbed millions of men for whose salvation the Man of Sorrows died. It so constituted its courts that the complaints and appeals of these people could not be heard, by reason of the decision "that black men had no rights which white men were bound to respect." It has for many years defied the government and trampled upon the national Constitution by kidnapping, imprisoning, mobbing and murdering white citizens of the United States guilty of no offense except protesting against its terrible crimes. It has silenced every free pulpit within its control, and debauched thousands which ought to have been independent. It has denied the masses of poor white children within its power the privilege of free schools, and made free speech and a free press impossible within its domain; while ignorance, poverty, and vice are almost universal wherever it dominates. Such is slavery, our mortal enemy, and these are but a tithe of its crimes. No nation could adopt a code of laws which would sanction such enormities, and live. No man deserves the name of statesman who would consent that such a monster should live in the republic for a single hour.

CAN SLAVERY BE ABOLISHED IN STATES BY CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT?

Mr. Speaker, if slavery is wrong and criminal, as the great body of enlightened and Christian men admit, it is certainly our duty to abolish it, if we have the power. Have we the power? The fifth article of the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:

"The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by convention in three-fourths thereof, as one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year 1808 shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

The question which first presents itself in examining this provision of the Constitution is, what constitutes twothirds of both Houses? or, what, in the eye of the Constitution, is two-thirds of the House of Representatives? Is it two-thirds of the entire number of members to which all the States, including the States in rebellion, would be entitled, if they were all now represented, or is it two-thirds of the members who have been elected and qualified?

This question would have entered largely into the discussion of the subject now under consideration, had not your predecessor, Mr. Speaker, decided, and this House sustained him in declaring, that a MAJORITY of the members ELECTED and RECOGNIZED by the House made a constitutional quorum.

It has, so far as the action of this body can dispose of the question, been authoritatively settled, and settled, as I think it should have been, by declaring that a majority of the members ELECTED and QUALIFIED constitutes a quorum, and that two-thirds of a quorum can constitutionally pass this amendment. The question having been thus disposed of, I do not care to make an argument in support of a proposition thus authoritatively settled.

My colleague from the First District (Mr. Pendleton), in a speech which he made at the last session against the passage of this amendment, raised the question as to the constitutional power of Congress to propose, and three-fourths of the legislatures of the States to adopt, an amendment of the character of the one now under consideration. He claimed that, though Congress passed the proposed amendment by the requisite two-thirds, and three-fourths of the legislatures of the several States adopted it, or, indeed all the States save one, it would not legally become a part of the national Constitution. These are his words:

"But neither three-fourths of the States, nor all the States save one, can abolish slavery in that dissenting State, because it lies within the domain reserved entirely to each State for itself, and upon it the other States cannot enter."

Is this position defensible? If I read the Constitution aright, and understand the force of language, the section which I have just quoted is to-day free from all limitations and conditions save two, one of which provides that the suffrage of the several States in the Senate shall be equal, and that no State shall lose this equality by any amendment of the Constitution without its consent; the other relates to taxation. These are the only conditions and limitations.

In myjudgment, Congress may propose, and three-fourths of the States may adopt, any amendment republican in its character and consistent with the continued existence of the nation, save in the two particulars just named.

If they cannot, then is the clause of the Constitution just quoted a dead letter, the States sovereign, the government a confederation, and the United States not a nation.

THE STATE SOVEREIGNTY HERESY EXPOSED.

The extent to which this question of State rights and State sovereignty has aided this terrible rebellion, and manacled and weakened the arm of the National Government can hardly be estimated. Certainly, doctrines so at war with the fundamental principles of the Constitution could not be accepted and acted upon by any considerable number of our citizens without eventually culminating in rebellion and civil war.

This fatal heresy doubtless carried many men of character and culture into the rebellion who were sincerely attached to the Union. If we may credit the recently published private letters of General Lee, written in the spring of 1861, to his sister and friends, and never intended for publication, he was induced to unite his fortunes with the insurgents by the so-called secession of Virginia, under the belief that his first and highest allegiance was due to his State. Sir, I know how hard it is for loyal men to credit this. To thinking men, nothing seems more absurd than the political heresy called States rights, in the sense which makes each State sovereign and the National Government the mere agent and creature of the States. Why, sir, the unity of the people of the United States antedates the Revolution. The original thirteen colonies were never in fact DISUNITED. The man who had the right of citizenship in Virginia had the same right in New York. As one people they declared their independence, and as one people, after a seven years' war, conquered it. But the unity and citizenship of the people existed before the Revolution, and before the national Constitution. In fact, this unity gave birth to the Constitution. Without this unity and pre-existing nationality - if I may so express myself-the Constitution would never have been formed. The men who carried us through the revolutionary struggle never intended, when establishing this government, to destroy that unity or lose their national citizenship. Least of all did they intend that we should become aliens to each other and citizens of petty, independent, sovereign States. In order to make fruitful the blessings which they had promised themselves from independence, and to secure the unity and national citizenship for which they periled life, fortune and honor, they made the national Constitution. They had tried a confederation. It did not secure them such a Union as they had fought for, and they determined to "form a more perfect Union." For this purpose they met in national convention, and formed a national constitution. They then submitted it to the electors of the States for their adoption or rejection. They did not submit it to the States as States, nor to the governments of the several States, but to the citizens of the United States residing in all the States. This was the only way in which they could have submitted it and been consistent with the declaration made in the preamble, which says "that we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, do ordain and establish this Constitution," etc. The whole people were represented in this convention. Through their representatives they pledged each other that whenever the people of NINE States shall ratify and approve the Constitution submitted to them, it should be the Constitution of the nation.

In the light of these facts, to claim that our government is a confederation and the States sovereign, is an absurdity too transparent for serious argument. Not only is the letter of the Constitution against such a doctrine, but history also. Since the adoption of the national Constitution TWENTY-TWo States have been admitted into the Union, and clothed with part of the national sovereignty. The territory out of which twenty-one of these States were formed was the common territory of the nation. It has been acquired by cession, conquest or purchase. The sovereignty of the National Government over it was undisputed. The people who settled upon it were citizens of the United States. These twenty-one States were organized by the concurrent action of the citizens of the United States and the National Government. Without the consent of Congress they would have remained Territories. What an absurdity to claim that the citizens of the New England States, or of all the States, or of any section of the Union, may settle upon the territory of the United States, form State governments, with barely inhabitants enough to secure one Representative in the House under the apportionment, secure admission as a State, and then assume to be a sovereign and master of the National Government, with power to secede and unite with another and hostile government at pleasure, and to treat all citizens of the United States as alien enemies who do not think it their duty to unite with them. This is the doctrine which deluded many men into this rebellion, and which seems to delude some men here with the idea that the national Constitution cannot be amended so as to abolish slavery, even if all the States in the Union demanded it save Delaware. Under this theory of State sovereignty, States like Florida and Arkansas, erected on the national domain, may, as soon as they