with Mr. Crittenden's propositions, were re-ervation of their wealth; began to demand the peatedly and severally rejected in this House subjugation of the South-aye, the subjugation by the almost unanimous vote of the Republicans. Mr. Crittenden's Compromise, which received the vote of every Southern member upon this floor, excepting one from Arkansas, never on any one occasion received one solitary vote from the Republicans in the Senate or House. The so-called Adams' Amendment, moderate as that was, was carried through this chamber by the bare majority of one, after a severe struggle. Sixty-five Republicans voted to the last against it. Up to twelve o'clock on the 4th of March, peace seemed to be the policy of all parties, when Mr. Lincoln delivered his inaugural, and which left thirty millions of people in doubt whether it meant peace or war. Under this confidence in the restoration of peace, the prosperity of the country revived, Secession in the past languished, and Secession in the future was arrested by the course of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, all of which declared for the old Union. of the South. He spoke not to children, and not a man in sound of his voice but knew that the South could not be restored to obedience to the Constitution except through subjugation. The subjugation of the South and the closing up of her ports, first by force and then by law, was resolved upon, and when this policy was once established, the self-same motive of warning commerce and of threatening trade impelled the city of New York to place herself first in the ranks of the uprising which swept over the North and West. He would not now assert what subsequent acts of the Administration may make apparent, that its frequent infractions of the Constitution, its high-handed usurpations of power, formed part of a conspiracy to overturn republican institutions and establish a strong consolidated government; but rather that, in the beginning, they rushed needlessly into acts which were designed to revive the fallen fortunes of a party, and the woeful consequences of which were not then foreseen. of power and a palpable and dangerous violation of the Constitution, and every one of which acts might well have been postponed until the assembling of Congress. The national heart beat high with hope-the Whatever may have been the purpose, he elections in Rhode Island, in New York, and now asserted that every principal act of the in the western States gave abundant evidence | Administration has been a glaring usurpation that the people were resolved on the most ample, satisfactory, constitutional guarantees as the price of the restoration of the Unionthen it was that a long and agonized howl came up from defeated and disappointed politicians. The newspaper press teemed with appeals and threats to the President; the mails groaned under the weight of letters demanding a change of policy, while a secret conclave of the Governors of the States of Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and other States convened in this city and promised men and money to carry on the irrepressible conflict; and thus it was that a party in the pangs of dissolution, in the very hour and article of death, demanded vigorous measures which could restore it to life, but at the expense of civil war-and nothing else. But there was yet another canse-the passage of the ill-digested and unstatesmanlike tariff bill, (Morrill's.) About the same time the Confederate Congress adopted our tariff act of 1857 -the result was inevitable. The trade and commerce of the West began to look to the South, from which it had been directed years ago by the canals and railroads of Pennsylvania and New York, at a heavy cost to the West. They threatened to resume their ancient and accustomed channels-the water-courses of the Ohio and Mississippi, and political association and union, it is well known, inust soon follow the direction of trade. The whole responsibility of the war has been boldly assumed by the Executive, and all the powers deemed necessary for his purposes are boldly usurped, either from the States, the people, or Congress; while the judiciary, that last refuge of hope and liberty, was turned away from with contempt. Now he comes and asks Congress to support the army he has raised in plain violation of the Constitution, and to ratify his usurpation by a law ex post facto, and thus to make ourselves parties to our own degradation, and to his infractions of the su preme law of the land. Beginning with these wide breaches of the Constitution, these enormous usurpations of the most dangerous of all powers, the power of the sword, the sanctity of the telegraph was invaded, though it turns out significantly enough that the only traitor discovered, so far, is one of the appointees and special pets of the Administration. One step more will bring upon us search and seizure of the public mails, and finally, as in the days of the Russells and Sydneys of English martyrdom, the drawers and secretaries of the private citizen. Though even these tyrants had the grace to look to the forms of the law, and the execution was then judicial murder, not military slaughter. The city of New York began then to clamor Rights of property having been wantonly loudly for the repeal of the tariff act. Threat- violated, it needed but a little stretch of usurened thus with the loss of both political power pation to violate the sanctity of the person, and wealth, New England and Pennsylvania- and a victim was not wanting. A private citithat land of peace-began now, too, to demand zen of Maryland, not subject to the rules and coercion and civil war as the price of the pres-articles of war, not in a case arising in the land and naval forces, is seized in his own all this; and some ages hence the grand and house-not by process of law, but by the arbi-impartial tribunal of history will make solemn trary grasp of military power-and, torn from and diligent inquest of the authors of this terthe side of his family, is borne to Fort Mc-rible revolution. Henry, over which it had been invoked by Key Mr. Holman (Dem., Ind.) asked Mr. Vallanthat the flag of the free forever should wave. digham whether he was in favor of defendThe aid of the highest privilege which free- ing the integrity of the Union, or of recognizing dom has yet conferred upon the citizen of a the so-called seceded States as a separate nafree country, was sought to vindicate the rights tionality? of Mr. Merryman, and the Chief-Justice of the Mr. Vallandigham replied by sending up a United States, the pure-hearted and high-mind-resolution, which was read, asserting that the ed Roger B. Taney, issued the writ of habeas Federal Government is the agent of the people corpus, requiring the prisoner to be brought of the several States; that the Government before him. The result of his interference has consists of three distinct Departments, the Exalready become historical. The officer of the ecutive, Judicial, and Legislative; and that it law found the portals of the fortress barred is the duty of every one to sustain these departagainst him. He was denied admission, and it ments with all the constitutional power which was told that the officer in command had sus- may be necessary and proper for the preservapended the writ of habeas corpus. tion of the Government in its principles, vigor, and integrity, and to stand by the flag which represents the Government, the Union, and the country. Mr. Vallandigham then entered into a history of the writ of habeas corpus, which had been extorted, after six hundred years of toil and suffering, from venal judges and tyrant kings. Granted to a wronged but spirited people at Runnymede, it was again conceded by Charles II. It was a right which neither English Minister, nor Judge, nor English King or Queen, would dare to disregard; and yet that inestimable right, that dear bulwark of the citizen's rights, had been subverted and trampled under foot by an American President, and only in the seventy-third year of American Independence; yet it was such acts of usurpation which Congress was called upon to sanction. He earnestly asserted that the cause which demanded such sacrifices could not be a just cause. He recited the usurpations already practised by the Administration. The quartering of troops in private houses without the consent of their owners-the censorship of the telegraph-the subversion of the rights of citizens of certain States to keep or to bear arms;-and said the next step-and it was but a narrow one-would be the violation of the freedom of the press, and of prayer-the sacred right of petition was even now tottering under the assaults upon it. Mr. Vallandigham said he spoke freely and fearlessly as an American representative, and as an American citizen-one firmly resolved not to lose his own Constitutional liberties in the vain effort to impose those rights upon ten millions of unwilling people. He drew a fine comparison between the meeting of Congress in December last, when it was composed of thirty-four independent States, and the present Congress, from which the representatives of eleven States are absent. Their places are supplied by 75,000 soldiers, and the armed men crowding the walks and lawns of this beleaguered capital, and the sound of the drum, give frequent evidence that in times of war laws are silent. He hoped that some years, some months hence, the present generation will demand to know the cause of Mr. Holman remarked, while the gentleman censures the Administration, he and his constituents were, he supposed, for its support now. Mr. Vallandigham replied that he was responsible to his constituents for his public course, and not to the gentleman from Indiana, at whose instance the Holman gag was yesterday adopted. Mr. Stevens made no remarks, though the rules allowed him an hour to do so, but simply moved that the Committee rise, which motion prevailed. The Loan bill was then passed:-Yeas, 149; Nays, 5, namely:-Messrs. Burnet, Reid, Norton, Vallandigham, and Wood. Doc. 76. THE UNION: IT MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED. An Address delivered by DANIEL S. DICKINSON, before the Literary Societies of Amherst College, Massachusetts, July 10th, 1861. WE are admonished by "the divinity that stirs within us," as well as by all history and experience in human affairs, that there are principles which can never be subverted, truths which never die. The religion of a Saviour, who, at his nativity, was cradled on the straw pallet of destitution, who in declaring and enforcing his divine mission was sustained by obscure fishermen, who was spit upon by the rabble, persecuted by power, and betrayed by treachery to envy, has by its inherent forces subdued, civilized, and conquered a world; not by the tramp of hostile armies, the roar of artillery, or the stirring airs of martial music, but by the swell of the same heavenly har monies which aroused the drowsy shepherds at the rock-founded city of Bethlehem, proclaiming in their dulcet warblings, peace on earth and good will toward men; not by flashes of contending steel, amidst the bad passions of the battle-field, the shrieks of the dying, and the flames of subjugated cities, but by the glowing light which shot athwart the firmament and illumined the whole heavens at his advent. Thus was ushered in that memorable epoch in the world's eventful history, the Christian era-an era which closed one volume in the record of man's existence and opened another-which drew aside the dark curtain of death and degradation, exhibiting to life's worn and weary pilgrim, along the wastes of ignorance and barbarism, new domains of hope and happiness for exploration and improvement, new fields for him to subdue, and fertilize, and reap, and new triumphs for him to achieve in the cause of human regeneration. And let him who fails to estimate the priceless value of this divine reformation in a temporal sense alone, contrast the condition of man wherever Christian civilization has travelled, with a people groping amidst the degrading darkness of idolatry, or bowing beneath some imposture still more heaven-daring and impious. ment, and his capacity for its exercise, and sought release from a proud and haughty monarchy, that they might enjoy upon this continent a nation's independence, and found a system which recognized the equality of men, in which their theories were established. They trusted the future of their "lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" to the chances of a great experiment, and while the timid faltered, the treacherous betrayed, the mercenary moaned, and the unbelieving derided; far-seeing patriotism pressed forward with an eye of faith, upon its mission of progress, until hope gave place to fruition; until expectation became success, until the most formidable power of earth learned the salutary lesson, that a proud nation mighty in armed men, and strong in the terrible material of war by sea and by land, could not conquer the everlasting truth. The exper iment, so full of promise and yet so threatened with dangers, became an accomplished fact. Like a grain of mustard seed, sown in a subdued faith, it shot upward, and became an over-shadowing tree, so widespread and luxuriant, that the birds of the air could rest on Second only in interest and importance to its branches. Would that none of the evil the religion of Him who spake as never man omen had ever taken refuge there! Thus was spake, is that system of political truth which planted the germ of liberty in this holy land of proclaims the doctrine of man's equality, and freedom. It was nurtured in the warm hearts' elevates him in the scale of being to that dig- | blood of patriots and watered by the tears of nity of station which heaven destined him to widows and of orphans; but for a time it was fill. For untold centuries, despotism and king- tremulous and slender, and, like a frail reed, it craft had asserted dominion over the world's bowed before every breeze. Oh, what invocamasses. Every attempt to break the fetters tions ascended to Him "who tempers the wind which held a people in vassalage had resulted to the shorn lamb," for that cherished shoot, in riveting them more securely upon the limbs that the "winds of Heaven might not visit it of servitude. Labor had groaned under the too roughly." With the Fathers of Revolu exactions, and the spirit had prayed long and tion, it was remembered at the morning and fervently for deliverance, but in vain. The evening sacrifice. "When its leaves withered, failure of every effort to correct an organiza- they mourned, and when it rejoiced, they retion so false, and vicious, and cruel, and to re-joiced with it." But those who planted it, store the power swayed by the tyrannic few to the plundered many, had been written in human blood, until "Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell." But our fathers, imbued with the spirit of liberty, which a free respiration of the air of the new world inspired, and goaded to desperation by the exactions of oppression, rolled the stone from the door of the sepulchre, where crucified and entombed liberty was slumbering, and it arose to light and life, to cheer, and bless, and give hope to the down-trodden humanity of earth; to emancipate the immortal mind from the slavery by which it was degraded. They asserted the simplest yet sublimest of political truths, that all men were created equal. They arraigned at the bar of a Christian world, trembling, tyrannous, stultified legitimacy, while asserting its impious dogma of Heaven-descended rulers, and they repudiated and laughed to scorn the fraudulent theories, base pretensions, and vain ceremonials of its political hierarchy. They declared in the broadest sense the right of man's self-govern and watched over its spring-time with more than a father's solicitude, have gone up to loftier courts, and repose under the fadeless foliage of the tree of life. The gray-haired minister who craved for it God's blessings, has been wafted away like the prophets of old, in a chariot of fire, and the children who sported together on the grass beneath it, now slumber with their fathers. The last Revolutionary soldier who rejoiced in its pride and told with tears its early trials, "Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won," has been mustered into the service of his Lord and Master, where the tramp of cavalry, and the shock of armies, the neighing of chargers, and the blast of bugles, shall be heard no more. But the slender shoot of other times has become a giant in the world's extended forest. Its roots have sunk down deep in earth, its top has stretched beyond the clouds, and its branches have spanned the continent. Its form is graceful, its foliage is bright and beautiful, and its fruits have carried gladness to every quarter of the globe. The oppressed of other lands, finding, like the wearied dove, no rest amid the old world's desolation, have conquered the holiest instincts of the soul, the love of early home, of the birthplace, of the streams of childhood, of the graves of their beloved dead, and have sought a gathering place of affection under its protecting branches. Here they have reposed in peace and plenty, and fancied security from the struggles which cursed their native land. No groans of oppression are heard beneath it, no deadly malaria sickens in its shade, but its sheltering influences, refreshing as the dews and genial as the sunshine, have blessed and cherished all. was formed. It is destined at no distant day to become permanently the commercial centre, when France and England will pay tribute to New York, and the Rothschilds and the Barings will sell exchange on Wall street at a premium; and it requires no romantic stretch of the imagination to believe that the time is at hand, when man, regarding his own wants, yielding to his own impulses, and acting in obedience to laws more potent than the laws of a blind ambition, will ordain that the continent shall be united in political as well as natural bonds, and form but one great Uniona Free, Self-Governed, Confederated Republic, exhibiting to an admiring world the results which have been achieved for man's freedom and elevation in this western hemisphere. In ordinary times, a correct taste would suggest that, upon occasions like the present, all subjects of political concern, however measured by moderation, and seasoned with philosophy and historic truth, should be left for discussion to some appropriate forum, and those only considered which are more in sympathy with the objects of the societies of Amherst; but when the glorious edifice which protects and shelters all is threatened with the fate of the Ephesian dome, the patriotic scholar, before he sits down to his favorite banquet, will raise his voice and nerve his arm, to aid in extinguishing the flames, that he may preserve to posterity institutions without which all the learning of the schools would be but mockery, and give place to violence, and ignorance, and barbarism. This is emphatically a utilitarian and practical age, and when the foundations upon which the ark of our political safety rests are threatened, rebellion is wafted on every breeze, and the rude din of arms greets us on either hand, menacing our very existence as a great and prosperous people, letters may sympathize with the danger, and become silent in our midst as well as laws. Ah! What government has so protected its children, so ennobled man, so elevated woman, so inspired youth, so given hope and promise to budding childhood, so smoothed the descent of dreary age; has so guarded the freedom of conscience, so diffused intelligence, so fostered letters and the arts, so secured to all "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? The triumphs of freedom, moral and material, under this new dispensation, have excelled the hope of the most sanguine. From three, our population has increased to thirty millions; from thirteen feeble colonies along the Atlantic slope, to thirty-four powerful States, with numerous others in the process of formation, and on their way for admittance to the Union. Two strong European powers have withdrawn from the continent, leaving us the fruits of their possessions. Great and prosperous States and cities and towns, teeming with the elements of enterprise and social culture, and abounding with institutions of religion and learning, have arisen as if by magic, on the far distant Pacific, where we have only paused, lest to cross it might put us on our return voyage, and bring us nearer home; and the river which the ambition of our early history essayed to fix for our western limit, now runs nearest our eastern boundary. Numerous aboriginal nations have been displaced before the prevail- Bad government is the enemy of knowledge. ing current of our arts and arms, and free prin- Under its destructive reign, learning is negciples, and whoever listens may hear the pat-lected, ignorance is honored and commended, tering feet of coming millions; and whoever will look back upon the past and forward upon the future, must see that there are further races for us to civilize, educate and absorb, and that new triumphs await us in the cause of progress and civilization. Thus have we passed from infancy to childhood, from childhood to robust and buoyant youth, and from youth to vigorous manhood, and with an overgrowth so superabundant, we should neither be surprised nor alarmed that we have provoked foreign envy as well as unwilling admiration-that cankers of discontent are gnawing at our heart-strings, and that we are threatened with checks, and trials, and reverses. The continent of North America presents to the observing mind one great geographical system, every portion of which, under the present facilities for intercommunication, may be more accessible to every other than were the original States to each other at the time the confederacy VOL. II.-Doc. 21 the ener and free opinion is persecuted as an enemy of us renew our covenant, and swear upon the holy altars of our faith, to maintain and defend it and its glorious emblem, the Stars and Stripes, so replete with pleasing memories, and if there are any who distrust their own firmness, and fear they may be seduced or may fall out by the wayside, or be frightened from their purpose, let them, like Fernando Cortez, burn the means of retreat behind them, that they may remain faithful to the end. by the whole power of a patriotic people, and crushed beyond the prospect of a resurrection; and, to attain that end, the Government should be sustained in every just and reasonable effort to maintain the authority and integrity of the nation; to uphold and vindicate the supremacy of the Constitution and the majesty of the laws by all lawful means; not grudgingly sustained, with one hesitating, shuffling, unwilling step forward to save appearances, and two stealthy When the sunlight of the last autumn was ones backward to secure a seasonable retreat; supplanted by the premonitions of winter, by nor with the shallow craft of a mercenary polidrifting clouds, and eddying leaves, and the flight tician, calculating chances and balancing beof birds to a milder clime, our land was em- tween expedients, but with the generous alacrity phatically blessed. We were at peace with all and energy which have a meaning, and prove a the powers of the earth, and enjoying undis- loyal, a patriotic, and a willing heart. It is not turbed domestic repose. A beneficent Provi- a question of administration, but of a Governdence had smiled upon the labors of the hus-ment-not of politics, but of patriotism-not of bandman, and our granaries groaned under the policy, but of principles which uphold us allburden of their golden treasures. Industry a question too great for party-between the found labor and compensation, and the poor man's latch was never raised except in the sacred name of friendship, or by the authority of law. No taxation consumed, no destitution appalled, The Union was formed under the Constitution, no sickness wasted, but health and joy beamed by an association of equals; like the temple of from every face. The fruits of toil, from the Diana, every pillar which upholds its arches, North and the South, the East and the West, was the gift of a sovereign; not a sovereign were bringing to our feet contributions of the created by man's usurpation and serving upon earth, and trade, which for a time had fallen gala days to exhibit to plundered subjects the back to recover breath from previous over-ex- diadems, and diamonds, and gorgeous trappings ertion, had resumed her place "where mer- of royalty, but of a sovereign people, created chants most do congregate." The land was in the image of their Maker, and bearing in replete with gladness, and vocal with thanks- their bosoms the crown jewels of immortality. givings, of its sons and daughters, upon the In the administration of its government, and vast prairies of the West, up its sunny hill-slopes, in the relations of its members with each other, and through its smiling valleys, along its majes- cach and every one is entitled to complete equaltic rivers and down its meandering streamlets,ity; the right to enjoy unmolested all the privand its institutions of religion and learning andileges of the compact, in their full length and charity echoed back the sound: breadth, in letter and in spirit. "But bringing up the rear of this bright host, His wings, like thunder-clouds above some coast, Constitution and the laws on one hand, and misrule and anarchy on the other-between existence and destruction. Whenever and wherever there has been a departure from this plain and just stipulation, in theory or in practice, in either section, or where either has employed means or agencies calculated to disturb or irritate, or annoy the other; And where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space." there have been error and cause of grievance which demanded redress and restitution; and Yes, in the moment of our country's triumph, when rebellion has sheathed its sword, and in the plenitude of its pride, in the hey-day of lowered its front, and the obligations of the Conits hope, and in the fulness of its beauty, the stitution are again recognized by all who owe serpent which crawled into Eden, and whis- it obedience, may every true friend of the Conpered his glozing story of delusion to the un- stitution and Union unite in a common purpose suspecting victim of his guile, unable to rise and an earnest effort, in seeing that there refrom the original curse which rests upon him, mains no just cause of complaint unredressed sought to coil his snaky folds around it and in any portion of the confederacy. But there sting it to the heart. From the arts and the has been no grievance alleged, which, if true, enjoyments of peace we have been plunged deep could justify armed rebellion and disunion. in the horrors of civil war. Our once happy The Constitution, with defects and imperfecland resounds with the clangor of rebellious tions from which human creations are insepaarms, and is polluted with the dead bodies of rable, bears upon its bosom remedies for every its children, some seeking to destroy, some abuse which is practised in its name, and the struggling to maintain the common beneficent power to punish every violation of its salutary Government of all, as established by our fathers. provisions; and those who are unable to "bear This effort to divide the Union, and subvert the the ills they have," should invoke its spirit, Government, whatever may be the pretence, rather than "fly to others which they know is, in fact, a daring and dangerous crusade not of." And the Government, though it has against free institutions. It should be opposed by no means been exempt from maladministra |