measure at this date, it would be impossible to execute it. Say what you will or what you may, the states are already organized, in perfect harmony with our amended National Constitution, and are in earnest cooperation with the Federal government. It would require an imperial will, an imperial person, and imperial powers greater than the Emperor of France possesses, to reduce any one of these states, with the consent of all the other states, into what you term a territorial condition. Maximilian's task, though it engages two emperors and two imperial organizations, with their forces, is thought not the most wise and hopeful political enterprise of the day. On the other hand we have no emperor, but only a stern, uncompromising, radical republican, a democrat, call him what you will, for President, who refuses in every way to be a party to any imperial transactions, and who would hand them back to Congress if they were to offer him the men and money to prosecute such imperial enterprises. Suppose that he could give place to another President, whether by election, or even assassination, where will you find in the United States a man who would want to be elected to that high place to plunge this country into a civil war for a political chimera? If there be such a one, what chance is there that he would be elected for such a purpose? That scheme, then, is at an end, and it is not now even seriously mentioned. Is there any other plan? Congress has a Reconstruction Committee, as it is called, composed of fifteen members, who have stopped the wheels. of legislation three months to enable them to submit a process or plan different from that which is now on the eve of a happy consummation. And what have they given us? One proposed amendment to the Constitution, to compel the excluded states to equalize suffrage upon the penalty of an abridgment of representation. I do not discuss its merits. Either the amendment will or will not be adopted. The expectation is, that it will fail even in Congress. In any case it implies a full restoration of the Southern states. It is, therefore, no plan or process of reconstruction at all. The Committee prove this to be the true character of the proceeding, because they fall back upon a process not of restoration, but of obstruction. The res lution which they submitted Tuesday last, and which has passed the House of Representatives, directly declares that loyal representatives shall not be admitted from loyal states until Congress shall pass a law for that purpose- - which

law, it would seem that every member who votes for it must know, cannot be enacted without the President's approval, which cannot be consistently given in view of the opinions that he is known to entertain. This concurrent resolution, then, is not a plan for reconstruction, but a plan for indefinite postponement and delay by the concurrent action of the Houses of Congress.

I know that the scriptural instruction is not always accepted as an infallible guide of faith in these latter days. I do not, therefore, ask you whether the United States government ought not now to slay the fatted calf and invite our prodigal brethren to so luxurious a feast; but I do venture to say that when this nation became disorganized five years ago by flagrant secession and rebellion, we did determine to humble the rebels and bring them back again to their constitutional seat at the family table. I know that we have humbled them, and have brought them back with humiliation and repentance sueing for restoration. I know that when Congress was convened, and when the last elections were held, which gave utterance to the popular voice, it was their expectation that without unnecessary delay that table would be set, and that all the members of the family, however prodigal they had been, would be received at the board.

There being, then, no further plan of restoration, what are the chances of carrying out the system of obstruction to which I have referred? It is as impracticable in its character as I think it is vicious. If I have read the history of this country correctly, it has settled these three things: First: No State can keep itself out of the Union or keep itself in a territorial condition under the Union. In the very beginning four states refused to enter; with wry faces they all came in afterward making the whole number of states thirteen instead of the nine first consenting. All the region east of the Mississippi rushed rapidly through a brief territorial pupilage into the Union. We bought provinces from Spain, from France, from Mexico. From the Mississippi to the Pacific they have rushed or are rushing with railroad speed, after a brief territorial existence, as states into the Union. If it were possible, we might acquire still more provinces, North or South. You cannot easily go further West. Every province that there might be gained, whether white or black, old or young, alien or native born, would also be immediately rushing, as with railroad speed, as states into the Union. Another

thing which our national history teaches is, that the states which are in the Union cannot be taken or kept out of its limits; and that is the great lesson of the rebellion. The third thing which this eventful war teaches us is, that the states which are in the Union cannot keep any states that are outside from coming in. Congress is habitually inclined to this experiment. It hesitated about Michigan and Missouri; it reeled and staggered before Texas and California; and it convulsed the nation in resisting Kansas; yet they are all in the Union, all now loyal, and most of them cheerful and happy. How many Committees of Conference did we have, how many Joint Committees did we not have, on this momentous question? How many Joint Resolutions, denying that Congress ever would consent to the admission of such unwelcome intruders? How many compromises, securing guarantees for freedom, securing guarantees for slavery, were broken and scattered, when one after the other these states came in, as if by a headlong thrust and hurled by an Almighty Providence, who was determined that the people of this continent shall be not many discordant nations, but one united and harmonious nation.

I entered Congress in 1849, when the Joint Committee of Fifteen was skilfully, and it is but just to say, honestly framed to obstruct the admission of California until the majority of the nation should compromise and silence forever the debate upon slavery. The Committee succeeded in excluding California for a period of eight months and no longer, and eventually obtained, in broken fragments, the compromise which it sought. That compromise was by its terms to be perpetual. The compromise of 1850 lingered, however, just four years and then perished, giving place to the incipient and now happily consummated adjustment of the slavery question, by the complete and universal abrogation of that institution. I left Congress in 1861, when committees and conventions clustered in and around the Capitol, demanding stipulations (which Congress refused) that fetters should be put upon New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. You can never keep states out of this Union, never, no never! If we do not like them, we may, in the words of the old proverb, "lump them." The present distrusts of future states or of existing states have no substantial ground. They are begotten of miserable perishing fears and factions. California was suspected of secret or ultimate complicity with slavery. All the men in the Union knew

the hard feelings her people entertained toward us Free-soilers, who were their most earnest advocates. We gave her ten years of proslavery, democratic rule. The ten years are now up, and she is calm, perhaps distrustful of some of us yet, because we are willing to admit the states that have sinned and repented as she did. If ever this thing of keeping out states by Joint Resolution of Congress could have had any chance of permanent success, that time has passed away. No state has ever been hindered in coming into the Union except upon questions growing out of the system of African bondage. But African bondage has now gone to the dogs, and they have made a sure finish of it. Not even enough of its shriveled skin or disjointed limbs remains to sharpen the cupidity of the race that were once called slavehollers, or of that other race which was known to the country as "doughfaces." No state, therefore, will ever, hereafter, be hindered or delayed in coming back into the Union upon the ground of slavery.

You may think that the irresistible tendency to Union which I have described may have something alarming in it. This would be a grave error. I think no such thing. I think no such thing. The people in any territory want to be a state, because it is a pleasant thing and a good thing to have the municipal powers and faculties which belong to a state within the American Union, and to provide by its own laws for the maintenance and security of life, liberty, and property. A territory wants to be a state and a member of the Federal Union, because it is a pleasant thing and a good thing to have its protection against foreign enemies, and to possess the privileges and immunities guaranteed to a state by the national Constitution. I therefore would not consent to hold a state in a territorial condition, or to deny it the advantages of fellowship in the Union a day longer than I should be compelled. Nor do I see anything calculated to excite alarm, anything transcending the political ability of our statesmen, in the present situation of the freedmen. In the beginning, practically, every state in the Union had slavery. We abolished it in several states without disorder or civil commotion, until slavery raised itself in rebellion against the government of the Union. When it took that attitude, we abolished it out and out, through and through, completely and effectually forever. This is what the American people have had the sag city and the courage to do in a period of ninety years. These American people are a great deal better and a great

deal wiser to-day than they were ninety years ago. Those of the generation that is now crowding us, will be a great deal wiser and a great deal better than we who are on the stage to-day. Do I think, therefore, that we shall lack the wisdom or the virtue to go right on and continue the work of melioration and progress, and perfect in due time the deliverance of labor from restrictions, and the annihilation of caste and class. We have accomplished what we have done, however, not with an imperial government not with a proconsular or territorial system. We have done it in states, by states, and through states, free, equal, untrammeled, and presided over by a Federal, restricted government, which will continue to the end the constitutional progress with which we so wisely began. They are settling the whole case of the African in the West Indies just as we are, and it will be done with the same results and the same beneficent effects.

I have not given prominence in these remarks to the conflict of opinion between the President and Congress in reference to the bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees. That conflict is, in its consequences, comparatively unimportant, and would excite little interest and produce little division if it stood alone. It is because it has become the occasion for revealing the difference that I have already described that it has attained the importance which seems to surround it. Both the President and Congress agree that, during the brief transition which the country is making from civil war to internal peace, the freedmen and refugees ought not to be abandoned by the nation to persecution and suffering. It was for this transition period that the Bureau of Freedmen was created by Congress, and was kept and is still kept in effective operation. Both the President and Congress, on the other hand, agree that when that transition period shall have been fully passed, and the harmonious relations between the states and the Union fully restored, that Bureau would be not only unnecessary but unconstitutional, demoralizing, and dangerous, and therefore it should cease to exist.

The President thinks that the transition stage has nearly passed, and that the original provision for the Bureau is all that is necessary to secure the end in view, while the bill submitted by Congress seems to him to give it indefinite extension in time of peace and restoration. He vetoed it for that reason. He declines to accept,