would not withhold nor give grudgingly even my last dollar to the prosecution of this righteous war; righteous, if prosecuted for the ends for which it was begun, the noblest war this country could wage; compared with which, the Revolution itself was not only on a small scale, but for ends less grand and momentous. I differ from some of my friends here as to the nature and object of this war. It is a pleasant thing to say this is a war for liberty. It sounds well; it soothes the ear; it stirs the blood: but it is not true. That is not the fundamental idea of this war. Liberty we have had, sometimes to license. The fundamental idea, the idea of highest moral dignity, in the prosecution of this war, is the upholding of civil order and law and the Constitution, which is the nation's supreme law, its bond of unity, and its breath of life; the noblest product of human thought; the framework of an empire capable of almost infinite expansion, in which central power was reconciled with local independence, the gentlest restraint with the highest security, the broadest equality with the firmest order, the amplest protection with the slightest burden. The thought of to-day is not liberty, as commonly understood, the absence of restraint; but the law in which true liberty is enthroned and made possible.

I repeat, Mr. Speaker, I do not groan under the burdens the country has been and will be called to bear in the just prosecution of the war. It may be (though that question is now one of history only), it may be, that, by early mutual restraint and by moderate counsels, the war might have been averted. But it was not

begun by this Government.

After the first shot at

Sumter, it was an inevitable necessity, a war of selfdefence. I am yet in favor of vigorously prosecuting the war until the ends for which it was instituted are attained, or their attainment clearly seen to be impossible. I am for prosecuting it by the use of all just means and instruments, all means and instruments which have the sanction of public law as it has been tempered by civilization and Christianity.

But to the money aspect of the question: the bill, without disturbing the present army at all, without diminution of its numbers, authorizes the President of the United States to enlist one hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand, or three hundred thousand men of African descent; and every new man you put into your army, according to the estimates of intelligent gentlemen on the floor of this House, costs you from seven hundred to a thousand dollars; and if you raise one hundred and fifty thousand men, as was proposed by the gentleman from Pennsylvania originally, you increase your expenses one hundred to one hundred and fifty millions a year.

Mr. STEVENS. The gentleman will allow me a word. I understand him to say, that this bill proposes to raise an additional army, without any diminution in the number of the present army. Now, the preamble to the bill which I introduced stated expressly, that it was upon the ground, that, within a few months, the terms of enlistment of several hundred thousand of the troops now in the field would expire; and this proposes to supply their places.

Mr. THOMAS. That was in the preamble of the original bill introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania; but the bill reported as from the War Department, and now before the House, has no such provision. The authority vested in the President, according to his construction of our statutes, is to raise an army of a million men. I do not complain of that construction. There is no provision in this bill for the diminution of that number; and that number is not to be diminished, at any rate, until June next. I may add, a bill has been introduced in the other end of the Capitol for the recruiting of this army, and supplying its losses.

Mr. Speaker, let me now turn to another feature of this bill, the term of enlistment. It provides for the enlistment of men for a period of five years. Why five years? I think there is more significance in that word "five" in this bill than in all other words written in it. Its possible objects are not written. Do you mean to say to the country, that it is your expectation, your reasonable expectation, and the basis on which you propose to make enlistments for your army, that this war is to continue for a period of five years longer? Do you mean to say to the country, that on the vast scale on which the war is now prosecuted, and at the expense of treasure and of life at which it is prosecuted, you expect to carry it on for five years more? If such be your expectation, it is just and manly to say so. If such be not your expectation, pray add nothing to the anxiety and alarm of the people.

Mr. Speaker, if the object of this war is restoration, that involves a state of things, present or future, which

will soon be developed and felt. A war for restoration proceeds upon the ground, that you will find in the rebel States, as your army advances and protection is made possible, men who are ready to rally again under the blessed flag of the Union, and to return to their allegiance to the National Government. If that feeling exists, and is developed, certainly it will be developed before the lapse of five years; never, indeed, by this instrumentality; never! But if the object of this war is not restoration; if the purpose and object of this war are, as is sometimes declared in the heated and brilliant rhetoric of gentlemen on your left, subjugation, extermination, the re-colonization of the whole rebel territory, then your term of enlistment is altogether too short, altogether too short.

If, Mr. Speaker, the object be extermination, there is not one of these pages, snatched prematurely from his mother's arms or cradle, who will live to see the end. You have been waging the war two years, and yet the number of inhabitants in the rebel States to-day is larger than it was when the war was begun. You cannot, probably, if you would, and you would not if you could, carry on a war with a fierceness and severity that would destroy life as rapidly as it germinates. Men, in war even, will marry, and women be given in marriage; children will be born to them, and their mothers will hold them to their flowing breasts as the storm sweeps by. The angel of life will triumph over the angel of death. Such is the blessed economy of God. The extermination of eight millions of people, with the use of all our power and all our resources, is

a moral and physical impossibility. Of this war, if it is carried on for extermination, neither you nor I, Mr. Speaker, may hope to see its close but in one way, to us the way of deepest humiliation, the intervention of other nations to stay its ravages. Who talks of a war of extermination is simply mad.

I proceed, Mr. Speaker, to a consideration of the material of which you propose to make up this army. If I understand myself, I entertain very little prejudice and no unkindness toward the colored race. I may believe, I do believe, as a matter of fact, that, in the sterner stuff, they are an inferior race; in some of the gentler qualities, our superiors; and, in my judg ment, the moral condemnation of slavery is the sterner for that fact. I have more respect, or rather less aversion, hate, for Roman or Grecian slavery, which subdued equals to its service, not inferiors; not men to whom Nature had not given equal power of self-reliance and self-protection. But I also believe, that as society now exists, where these races are brought together in numbers approaching equality, the relations that will exist between them, will be, perhaps must be, to some extent, relation of dependence and pupilage on the one part, and government and protection on the other; but not involving necessarily any feature of chattel slavery.

Now, I do not enter into the philosophy of races. As a practical man, I take and deal with things as they are. Looking at the existing relations in different parts of the country between the two races, I believe, after much reflection and careful consideration, that as matter of wisdom, for the good of both, and especially for