fiscation by law. By these means, I say, you have lost the hearts of the people. Why do not the people have the same enthusiasm in the war that they had at first? Then they put a million of men into the field. The country is still in peril, in more peril than at first, and why is not an army of two million men now put into the field? It is only because of the bad policy by which you have established the dogmas of the Abolitionists, of emancipation of slavery throughout the country. It is that which has induced them to lose confidence in you. It is not for the country, it is not for the white man, it is for the negro this war is to be waged; and for that war I am not. The logical conclusion from the impolitic course we have pursued is, that we have lost the hearts of the people.

"You say that this bill is framed on the idea that the people will no longer volunteer-that the people will no longer stand a draft. Why not? Because the people will not do one thing or another; they will neither volunteer nor stand a draft, and you are obliged by law to coerce them. That is the condition in which we are placed; and this bill is nothing more than the logical conclusion of what we have previously done. We have created a necessity for it. The people are no longer with us, and therefore we must force the people by coercive and penal laws, by new jurisdictions, provostmarshals scattered through the land, and by a new sort of military judicature to which the people have not been accustomed. And knowing that you have an unwilling people to deal with, you make that law as coercive as possible, and accompany it with every sort of inquisitorial and compulsory power, judicial and executive, in order to insure obedience, willing or unwilling, to that law. Is not that our condition fairly considered?

"There is but one sort of consistency which deserves the respect of honest men, and that is to let your acts be consistent with your convictions at the time you are called upon to vote. It is not what we did yesterday that we are to consider alone. We have lived through a time of trial and of trouble. Have we learned nothing? Up to this time I fear we have learned very little. Our lessons have been very severe, and the fear of more dangerous lessons hereafter ought to instruct us. The life of the country is attacked, and that life is upon your hands, and its preservation depends in a great measure upon your wisdom, upon your solemn deliberations, and your solemn consideration of all the mighty questions upon us.

"If we want to get back the Union, how must we do it? We must change our policy. This will not answer your purpose. You must get back what you have lost. You have lost the heart of the people, and the confidence of the people. The people's affections are turned away from us; and will they bear more exactions and burdens laid upon them? No, sir; you are mistaken in the remedy. Your only

remedy is to regain the confidence and heart of the people, to substitute for the distrust which now exists confidence that your object is a national one, and not a mere public one; not the abolition of slavery, but the salvation of the country. Get that back, and you do not want this bill; fail to get it back, and this bill will be just as inoperative as if there was not a word written upon it.

"You say a draft will not do; that a draft will not be submitted to. I know nothing about that. Will, then, this more exacting provision be submitted to? In a country like ours, laws which do not carry along with them the assent of the people are but blank paper. Have you not cause to fear that unless you win back the hearts of the people, and their confidence, this bill will do no good? You are mistaking the disease altogether. The disease of the public heart is loss of confidence in us, members of Congress. It is the Abolition element here which has destroyed everything; that has clouded the great ideas of nationality-the pride of the American heart.

"That is the disease of the public heart, and you should endeavor to administer measures which will reclaim it, and that will heal discontent. And yet in the last moments of our existence you are endeavoring to consummate a policy which the people have condemned, and to put the people beyond the means of redress. The remedy, and the sole remedy, is by reversion, by retracing our steps, and making this again a national war. Then you will not want this bill, nor will you want a draft. You will have volunteers enough. I do not speak rashly, because you had volunteers enough, and more than you knew what to do with, when you stood upon that ground. But you chose to change that ground. Political Abolitionists thought the time had come for them to introduce the sword and the spear into the public arena, and to make use of this war to carry out the ends which they have long cherished-the abolition of slavery.

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These, Mr. Speaker, are my views of the discouragements which now exist in the country, and these are my views of the remedy, and the only remedy, which can be efficacious. This bill would have done well enough at the time the resolution I offered here passed. It would have passed, not with all the provisions which now accompany it, but the principle would have been adopted, and the whole power of the nation would have been placed in the hands of the the Government to be used, if necessary, for the defence of the country. But the disease assumed another shape. The political body has become infected with poison, and the mind of the people, poisoned with distrust of us, disapproves of our measures. There is a disease, and there is no mortal remedy for it but one. We must administer that remedy to ourselves; we must change our steps. We must no longer be Democrats, no longer be Abolitionists; but we must, if we would save our country and save

ourselves, be patriots merely, and not hesitate or falter about undoing what we have already done, whenever we discover that its operation and effect has been different from what we anticipated. Have not your anticipations failed in regard to the measures you have heretofore adopted? Have not your acts been such as to make the people believe that whatever may have been the principles upon which this war was begun, it is now used for the overthrow of slavery. As candid men, is not that the object of the war?

"There is a little tweedledum and tweedledee about this matter. One says the war is not to overthrow slavery—it is to save the Union. Another says, if you do not destroy slavery, the Union is worth nothing. The argument here is exactly the argument of the Jesuit-fix your mind and attention upon one object which you think a lawful one, and then all the means are lawful. One object is the abolition of slavery; but that is not lawful. No, says one, but the salvation of the Union is constitutional. Direct your attention to that, and you may abolish slavery. This is the doctrine which makes the end justify the means. One says that abolition is his object, and that he goes for it because abolition is necessary for the salvation of the Union. Have we found it so? Has it conduced in any way to save the Union? Will your three hundred thousand black men tend to save the Union? Have you brought them out as soldiers? We know better. They are no soldiers, and you cannot during this war make soldiers of them. I put out of sight the question as to their capacity as a military people, or what they may become by a course of education; but you cannot in two, three, or ten years, make efficient soldiers of them.

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Again: will your white soldiers serve with them? The whole country suspects that this is an Abolition movement. You do not know what to do with the runaway negroes which infest you, and are calling on you for the bread which they left behind when they left their

homes and families. You do not know what to do with them. You can have some color for

feeding them or for setting them free, but when you hold out the pretence that you mean to make soldiers of them, it is all a delusion. It is a pretence for abolitionism. It is a pretence for placing negroes on an equality with your own white soldiers. It will either raise to an equality with white soldiers those whom they regard as an inferior race, or else it will level them down to an equality with negroes. That is the whole effect of it.

"I do not know that I differ with my honorable friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Thomas) as to the principles which he advocates, that this Government has a right to the employment of all the force it can command in this exigency and peril. I will not say that this bill, so far as regards the enrollment of the men liable to military duty in the country, and subVOL. III.-19 A

jecting them to be called out for military service, does not come within the power given to Congress to raise and support armies. I will not contest that question with him here, at any rate. But I do not think that the Constitution intended at all, as my friend from Massachusetts seems to think, that Congress should have the power of enlisting negroes. They were regarded as property, and it was not intended that a man's property should be taken from him. They fall within another category. The gentleman says they may be employed if it be necessary to save the republic. He postpones the employment of negro soldiers until the last. I differ with him in this. I believe that that time has not only not come, but that it never can come. It never can be expedient in this country to raise an army of negroes so long as we remain of the proud free race to which we belong. Instead of being a source of power, the negro in our army would be a source of weakness and discontent, and his presence would drive from the field men a thousand times more capable of defending the country than he himself can be made. The principle for which the gentleman contends, therefore, can never apply here; nor does he apply it. I want to show that it has no application. A negro army is a weakness to your country. It unnerves the white man's hand. It unnerves the white man's heart. White men will not fight by the side of negroes."

Mr. Vallandigham, of Ohio, offered the following amendment:

Strike out of section twenty-five, in line ten, after the word "law," the words, "such persons shall be subject to summary arrest by the provost-marshal, and shall be delivered to the civil authorities," and insert instead thereof as follows:

Every person so offending shall be subject to arrest upon warrant issued from some civil officer or court of competent jurisdiction, upon oath or affirmation specifying the offence, and upon trial and conviction.

It was rejected. Yeas, 57; nays, 101.

Mr. Cox, of Ohio, moved to amend, by inserting the word "white" in the first line after the word "able bodied." It was rejected. Yeas, 52; nays, 85.

and it was passed by the following vote: Some amendments were made to the bill,

YEAS-Messrs. Aldrich, Alley, Arnold, Ashley, Babbitt, Bailey, Baker, Baxter, Beaman, Bingham, Jacob B. Blair, Samuel S. Blair, Blake, William G. Brown, Buffinton, Calvert, Campbell, Casey, Chamberlain, Clark, Colfax, Frederick A. Conkling, Roscoe Conkling, Crisfield, Cutler, Davis, Dawes, Delano, Diven, Dunn, senden, Thomas A. D. Fessenden, Fisher, Flanders, Edgerton, Edwards, Eliot, Ely, Fenton, Samuel C. FesFranchot, Frank, Gooch, Goodwin, Granger, Gurley, Hahn, Haight, Hale, Harrison, Hickman, Hooper, Horton, Hutchins, Julian, Kelley, Francis W. Kellogg, Loomis, Lovejoy, Low, McIndoe, McKean, McKnight, William Kellogg, Killinger, Lansing, Leary, Lehman, McPherson, Marston, Maynard, Mitchell, Moorhead, Anson P. Morrill, Justin S. Morrill, Nixon, Olin, Patton, Timothy G. Phelps, Pike, Pomeroy, Porter, Alexander H. Rice, John H. Rice, Riddle, Edward H. RolShellabarger, Sherman, Sloan, Spaulding, Stevens, lins, Sargeant, Sedgwick, Segar, Shanks, Sheffield, Stratton, Benjamin F. Thomas, Francis Thomas, Train,

bills at the Treasury. If the banks do not redeem them in currency when asked for their redemption, they may be protested and presented at the Treasury, and the Treasury is to pay them, and to pay them in full, whether the stocks left upon deposit are able to meet them or not. Besides this investment, the property put into these associations is itself to be clear of taxation.

Now, Mr. President, it is to be further understood, and is an integral part of the very system, without which it is good for nothing, that the circulation of the existing banks of the country is to be withdrawn. Measures are to be taken with those banks that shall induce or compel them to take home their circulation and put it out no more, so that this shall be a national currency. Unless this latter part of the scheme is secured, its great professed object of making a uniform national currency throughout the United States is not and cannot be effected. It therefore implies all this, and we must understand that if we enter upon this proposition and entertain this plan, we are to take measures in order to perfect it to do the other thing; that is, to destroy, put out of existence, the circulation of the present State banks.

"The Supreme Court, in the case of McCullough vs. Maryland, decided that the United States had the right to make a United States Bank, with branches in different States, and they said the States could not tax that United States Bank. Why? Because the exercise of that power in the extreme would destroy it, and therefore you would make it out that the Congress had a power to establish a bank; but after all, it was subject to the power of the States to put it down. In the case of Kentucky, the Supreme Court decided that the long-continued usage in this country in States to make banks was constitutional, and that a State had a right to make a bank of issue. There were other questions in that case which it is not necessary now to bring in here. It was decided that a State had a right, not to make a bank to issue the State paper, but a bank to issue paper currency.

"Now, sir, if a State has that right, it has that right certainly independent of the consent of Congress. Does it hold it at the will of Congress? Certainly not. The United States, in making a United States Bank, held it independent of State action, and it was so decided. If the State has this right, and has it independent of the consent of Congress, it cannot have that right if the United States can tax it out of existence. Hence, I say the United States has no more power to tax a State institution out of existence than a State has to tax a United States institution out of existence. I should like to see that answered. I have sometimes proposed that question, but I have never received any answer to it. In most of the States, the State of New York, for instance, almost all their banks are founded upon their

own State stocks. It is a part of their financial system to make their stocks valuable, and to enable them to make internal improvements. All these State banks are more or less connected with and ramified in with the business of their several States. Can they be taxed out of existence by the United States? Why, sir, you might just as well tell me that the United States, under the power of taxation, could go on and extinguish all the schools in New England by taxing its schools, its colleges, and its academies, and their books and their buildings and the salaries of the professors, and in that way destroy them under the very general principle of the power of universal taxation. I shall not dwell any longer upon that point. I have stated my view upon it.

"But, Mr. President, there is another principle involved in this measure, and I am looking at it now in its great national aspects, as a national principle, without regard to the time. I say it is to establish corporations in all the States and Territories, entirely independent of any power of visitation by those States or Territories. This, to say the least of it, is an extremely questionable power. What may be the number of these institutions? As the capital is to be $300,000,000, that will make three thousand banks of $100,000 each; and the bill provides that they may be made $50,000 banks, which will make six thousand $50,000 banks. I believe we have now, in what are called the loyal States, between thirteen and fourteen hundred banks altogether; and this bill proposes to make at least three thousand, or perhaps six thousand of these bank corporations, established all over the States.

"That is not all. It is proposed that there shall be no other banks but these; the whole banking capital is to be put into these banks, and the whole of that property is removed from all State taxation. I ask gentlemen to reflect on what will be the effect in their different States of closing up the present banks, and taking the capital belonging to the stockholders, putting it into the banks under this bill, and removing the whole of it from all the forms of State taxation-State, county, city, and town. Many of our States derive their school fund from what they obtain from these State banks. I believe it is so in New Hampshire. They have their school fund in that way.

"The next point to which I desire to call attention is the propriety of our undertaking as a nation to say that we will be responsible for the ultimate redemption of these bills by the securities that are deposited. I am aware that the honorable senator who is the parent of the bill here thinks he has got in it something very valuable, in the provision about the liability of individual stockholders, and requiring twenty-five per cent. of the amount of their circulation to be kept on hand. All these things, to my mind, are hardly worth the paper on which they are written; they are good for nothing at all. How can you follow the re

sponsibility of stockholders? The very stocks are assignable; they are personal property. They are bought and sold in the market every day for more or less, according to their worth. Although one of these banks may start with some very responsible men when it first sets up, the moment it becomes at all doubtful or troublesome it quickly passes off into the hands of men who have no responsibility. You can never pursue it in that way. As to the provision that they shall retain twenty-five per cent. on their circulation on hand, that is their own money; it is not United States money. The fact is just this: whenever your bonds that you hold for your security to redeem these bills depreciate essentially, the bank will wind up, and they will do it without any sort of disparagement or any dishonesty. The stockholders will say at once to themselves,' We have noticed the fall of these stocks; we know that they are very much down; we will not redeem any more of these bills; we will leave them to be redeemed by the Government; we gave them $100,000 and deposited it with them in bonds; they only allowed us $90,000; that is all we have had of them; we leave these notes in their hands to redeem; we will let them redeem them; we gave them a great deal more than they ever gave us, and let them redeem them.' When would that occur? Why, sir, in great national calamities such as those under which we already suffer by the unfortunate proceedings of this war, we know that public stocks rise and fall with the prosperity or decline of the nation.

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Again, I will take the very reverse of this state of things. Suppose we should close this unfortunate controversy and return to peace. The moment you are at peace every man wants all the money he has got to go into business. He has lent it to the United States, taken this, that, or the other sort of stock, in order to have it earn something while this public controversy and difficulty was going on. The moment that is ended he wants his money to go into business again in our cities and towns-importing and the like. He immediately cashes these bonds, and a very large portion of these bonds will at once be thrown on the market at a discount the moment you are at peace. In either of these cases, whether from public calamity or from peace, there comes a deterioration upon the value of these bonds; these banks are wound up, the bills are protested and presented to the Treasury here in bundles for payment. What will you do? It is said in the bill that they are to be paid here. You may take the stocks the bank left as security and go and sell them in the market, and thus get money to pay them. If they have deteriorated so much that the banks do not want to pay their bills, it will be a pretty hard bargain for us to pay them with those bonds. We should have to sell at as much discount as they. Besides, we do not get rid of anything in that way. We have to anticipate our bonds.

They run twenty years. We have got to pay these notes when they are presented; and if we sell our bonds at a discount in the market to get some money to redeem them with, we have got to meet that bond in the end, have we not? We do not get rid of it at all; but we are compelled to get the money about twenty years before it is due. I do not see the policy, the expediency, or the profit of such a bargain.

"The next aspect to which I will call attention is this: we once had, or twice had, a United States Bank. The history of the last one is within the recollection of most of those who hear me. That bank had a capital of $35,000,000. The proposition now is to make United States banks with a capital of $300,000,000. The United States took $7,000,000 of that stock. They paid nothing in, but put in their stock for it on time. They had directors of their own appointed to keep watch of that bank. They had the right to borrow money at that bank. The bank was bound to loan it to them at a certain rate and limitation. They went on with that bank during the whole period of its existence. They took their dividends from year to year by extinguishing the payment of interest on their bonds; and at the close of the whole they received back their stock and ten per cent. upon it of accumulated profits that had not been divided. Everybody concerned in it was paid; the stock was paid back; and the United States made that money.

Now, sir, why did that institution go down; or rather, why was it not renewed and enlarged and adapted to the condition of the country? It was because it was said to be a dangerous political engine in the hands of whatever political party existed at the time; that it would be used as a great machine in the different States by the favor which the Government would give it, or the control which they would exercise over it; and it was dangerous, as it was said then, and I think it was demonstrable.

"Mr. President, look at the proposition now before us in this aspect. It provides that the Secretary of the Treasury shall nominate the Comptroller of the Currency. He can be appointed by the President only on the nomination of the Secretary of the Treasury; and he is given any number (not limited at all) of clerks and agents. There are established, if you please, three thousand of these banks under this bill, of $100,000 each, scattered through all the country. They can be visited by agents appointed here under this bill, and inspected from time to time and reported upon. The Secretary is authorized to make such of them as he thinks proper depositories of the public revenue, and he is to distribute this stock, one half of the $300,000,000 to the different States, according to their representative population, and the other half according to the banking resources of the country; there is no