release of prisoners, and in obtaining pardons for the least undeserving, but by what I have always believed to be gross deceptions practiced on the President. I found that through the use of money paid to pardonbrokers and feed attorneys, aided by the influence of subordinates in the employment of the administration, pardons were more readily procured for the most vindictive and obnoxious traitors, than for those who had sinned the least but had no money wherewith to purchase a release. I found these same pardoned rebels flaunting their pardons in the faces of those whose generosity or misplaced confidence had recommended them, and assuming a superiority over those to whom they had in humility appealed for aid. I saw men in the State of Virginia, upon whom the Constitution itself had set its seal of condemnation and declared unworthy of holding office, rushing with impetuous haste into the legislative halls in utter disregard of its plainest provisions, trampling under foot the constitutional oath prescribed, and then and there exercising dictatorial and tyrannical power by hurling headlong from office better men than themselves, who had been released by the governor of the commonwealth for their loyalty to the government of the United States, and substituting for them those only who had given evidence of their loyalty to the rebellion. I saw them in the social as well as the political circles availing themselves of their superior numbers, assigning all loyal men and women to a position of absolute inferiority, and demanding for themselves, as if by Divine right, the favor to control and rule with an iron rod. I saw them educating the masses of the people to look upon every demonstration of loyalty, either during or since the war, as degrading and infamous, until the interposition of the national authorities was found necessary to set aside elections of public officers known to have been selected for their services to the rebellious government; to suspend the publication of various papers published through the state for their obnoxious and disloyal sentiments scattered among the people. All this I saw from men who but yesterday were sworn citizens of another government, warring against the government of the United States, and struggling to overthrow the great Republican Empire of the world; and I thought the time had arrived when the law should be appealed to, and justice should be enforced upon a people who in the beginning had forsworn their obligations, treacherously and sacrilegiously abandoned their posts of duty, and in the end were insensible to the mercy that had been extended to them, oblivious to all marks of kindness, and were still bent on mischief to the country, and ruin to all who did not tamely submit to their outrageous oppressions and to their despotic demands.

It was under these circumstances that I prepared the following suggestions, in the form of political axioms, for the public press, that the national authorities might be recalled to the great duties they had to perform for the future peace and safety of the republic, and for the permanent security of the rights of loyalty, which I am happy to say have not been without effect.

MR. BOTTS'S AXIOMS.

A few plain political axioms that can not be successfully disputed or denied, and which serve to solve the perplexed problem of the status of the states and the people of the states lately in rebellion against the authority of the United States:

1st. The right of secession is not only not authorized, but is expressly forbidden by the Constitution of the United States.

2d. It follows, that all ordinances of secession adopted by the states lately in rebellion were null and void in law.

3d. That the allegiance of the citizen is due to his state, and that there are thirty-six different allegiances in the United States, and not one man owing allegiance to the great central government, which is supreme over all, is a proposition too absurd to be argued.

4th. From which it results that no state has been out of the Union, and could not be carried out otherwise than by successful revolution; and to admit that any of the rebellious states are or have been out of the Union, would necessarily amount to an admission that the Union had been dissolved, and that we had been engaged in a foreign and not a civil war; all of which would materially impair the virtue and efficacy of that instrument, which is recognized and claimed as the supreme law of the land.

5th. But while no body of men, however constituted, could take a state out of the Union except by force of arms, yet any attempt to do so by those owing allegiance to the United States assuredly constituted the great crime of high treason, if any such crime still exists under our institutions.

6th. The right of expatriation or denationalization, however, has never been denied to the people of this country; and while they could not take a state out of the Union, it can not be denied that the citizens of the rebellious states could take themselves out at pleasure, either individually or collectively.

7th. Nor can it be disputed that the late so-called Confederate States

did for four years constitute a government "de facto;" and it follows that all those who assisted in creating that de facto government, by voting in convention for an ordinance of secession or signing the same, or who voluntarily took the oath of allegiance to or held office, civil or military, under the said "de facto" government, which offices could only be held by citizens of a government then hostile to and at war with the United States, thereby alienated themselves from the government of the United States, and, by thus renouncing their allegiance, disclaimed all pretensions to its protection, and are therefore aliens to this government, and can only be restored to the rights of citizenship through the established laws of naturalization, or by a special act of legislation.

8th. There can be no difference in law or in fact in the political status of those Southern persons who have taken the oath of allegiance to the "de facto" government of the so-called Emperor Maximilian, and those who have taken a similar oath, or otherwise made themselves citizens of the "de facto" government of the so-called President Davis.

9th. These being the natural, lawful, and unavoidable consequences of secession, alienation, and treason, it follows that the functions of government in those states lately in rebellion have been suspended by the unconstitutional action of those temporarily in authority in those states; and that these state governments can only be restored through the action of the law-making power of the United States; and upon the suppression of the rebellion and the restoration of peace, the right to govern and control these states naturally, constitutionally, and inherently devolves on the loyal citizens thereof, who have fallen heirs to the estate, and who can not lawfully be subjected to the power and control of alien enemies to them and to the country; and that these loyal citizens have also a natural, constitutional, and inherent right, under the sanction of said law-making power, to resume their original position in the government and councils of the nation; and, therefore, all representatives to Congress who present themselves with the proper evidence of election, and who are prepared, honestly and in good faith, to comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States, should be admitted without unnecessary delay to a participation in the legislation of the nation; and to withhold this right is to place the loyal on the same platform with the disloyal—the friends on a footing with the enemies of the country.

10th. The President is clothed with the power to grant reprieves and pardons to those who have committed offenses against the United States; but as none are legally offenders, and as no man in this country can be

legally punished for any offense, no matter how atrocious or aggravated the crime, until he has been tried and convicted of the offense with which he stands charged, so no reprieve or pardon (the exercise of which powers commence simultaneously) can be constitutionally granted before the party or parties have been tried and convicted according to law; and, therefore, all pardons heretofore granted to those lately in rebellion have been premature, and are null and void.

11th. It is patent to observing men that all attempts at reconstruction in many of the states, through the misplaced confidence and unappreciated kindness and magnanimity of the President, through the action of those who have occupied the relations of alien enemies to the United States, have not only failed in their anticipated effects, but are in many respects unsafe as a precedent, pernicious in their results, dangerous to our institutions, and should be commenced "de novo."

12th. Therefore, in all such states as have not, in the opinion of the law-making power, been finally reconstructed, it will be right and proper that a military or provisional governor of loyal antecedents should be appointed (except for the State of Virginia), with instructions to call a convention, to be composed of loyal men only, to be elected by those who are authorized to vote by their existing State Constitutions.

13th. The State of Virginia, although a large majority of her people were in rebellion, has been continuously and without interruption, through the action of a portion of her loyal citizens, recognized as a state government by every department of the government of the United States; with a governor regularly elected under the Constitution of 1851; with her representatives admitted to seats in each branch of Congress during the rebellion, she therefore stands in a different relation to the government from those States that have disclaimed all right to such representation, and that have had provisional governors since the war appointed by the President. 14th. But inasmuch as the Constitution of Virginia, now in operation, declares that the House of Delegates shall consist of not less than eighty, nor more than one hundred and four members, and the Senate shall never be less than one fourth that number; and inasmuch as the first Legislature that assembled under that provision of the Constitution consisted of only fourteen in one house and six in the other, and as the present Legislature now in session at Richmond was authorized and convened by the said "town council" (as it has been aptly termed in the Senate of the United States), which possessed no such authority; and as the present Legislature is composed, in a large part, of those who were expressly forbidden by the

Constitution under which they profess to act to hold any office whatever; and inasmuch as such Constitution imperatively requires an oath to be administered to each one before he shall be qualified to serve as a member of the Legislature, which oath has never been administered to any one member of the body, but has been totally disregarded and set aside; and inasmuch as they have proceeded without authority to remove all disabilities imposed upon themselves by the Constitution, and have at the same time endeavored, by their legislative action, to make treason a virtue to be rewarded, and loyalty to the United States a crime to be punished, by removing from office every loyal citizen whom they could reach, and substituting in their stead those who have figured conspicuously in the rebel service, and who are disqualified by the Constitution from holding the offices which they have been selected to fill; therefore, it is clear that there has been no constitutionally organized legislative body in Virginia since their present Constitution was adopted in the year 1864, and that, by necessary consequence, all acts, and parts of acts, resolutions, elections, appointments, and other proceedings adopted by either of the bodies styling themselves "The Legislature of Virginia" since the adoption of the Alexandria Constitution, have been in violation of the plainest provisional requirements of that Constitution, and are absolutely null and void, and

of no effect.

15th. In this condition of things it is imperatively necessary that the restoration of that state to its national rights should be commenced "de novo" by the call of a Legislature by the governor of the state, to be composed of loyal men only, under such restrictions upon the eligibility to office as the Constitution provides, and under such enlargement of the qualification of suffrage as the military authorities may prescribe (that state being still under military control), as will render an election practicable.

THE GARNETT LETTERS-THE FIRST LETTER.

The following letter will explain itself. It was addressed to a gentleman that I knew to be a warm personal friend, and I had supposed sympathized in all my political views, but in this it seems I was mistaken. Whether the fault was mine or his, it is not proper here to inquire; but I addressed the letter to him through the public prints-having first asked his permission to do so-in reply to one just received from him.

This letter was intended as an explanation of the above axioms, and as illustrative of my views of the political sentiment and condition of Virginia at the time.