Now, if the Constitution means any thing, it means that in no emergency shall the States of this Union lose the power to control their own militia, for their own State purposes, except when it is merged in the actual service of the United States. By this bill you leave no power in the States to officer or direct their militia. The troops of Ohio may be mingled miscellaneously with those from Maine. There is a wise reason why the militia should be considered and kept as an institution of the States. You will find that reason in the very genius and structure of the federal system. We cannot, in these times, too often recur to the early expounders of the Constitution. I hold to the Jeffersonian and Madisonian construction of that instrument, with respect to the rights of States. Nowhere do I find the tenets of this school so correctly yet so familiarly expounded as in the Private Correspondence of Mr. Madison, published for private distribution by my friend J. C. McGuire, of this city, and to whom I am indebted for the volume before me. Mr. Madison (page 119) defines the relations implied by the terms Union, Federal, National, and State, in a letter written in September, 1829, wherein he says:

"That the Constitution of the United States was created by the people composing the respective States, who alone had the right; that they organized the Government into legislative, executive, and judiciary departments, delegating thereto certain portions of power, to be exercised over the whole, and reserving the other portions to themselves respectively. As these distinct portions of power were to be exercised by the General Government and by the State Governments, by each within limited spheres; and as, of course, controversies concerning the boundaries of their power would happen, it was provided that they should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, so constituted as to be as impartial as it could be made by the mode of appointment and responsibility for the judges. Is there, then, no remedy for usurpations in which the Supreme Court of the United States concur? Yes, constitutional remedies; remonstrances and instructions; recurring elections and impeachments; amendment of Constitution, as provided by itself, and exemplified in the 11th article limiting the suability of the States. These are resources of the States against the General Government, resulting from the relations of the States to that Government, while no corresponding control exists in the general over the individual governments, all of whose functionaries are independent of the United States in their appointment and responsibility. In all the views that may be taken of questions between the State Governments and the General Government, the awful consequences of a final rupture and dissolution of the Union should never for a moment be lost sight of. Such a prospect must be deprecated, must be shuddered at by every friend to his country, to liberty, to the happiness of man. For, in the event of a dissolution of the Union, an impossibility of ever renewing it is brought home to every mind by the difficulties encountered in establishing it. The propensity of all communities to divide, when not pressed into a unity by external danger, is a truth well understood. There is no instance of a people, inhabiting even a small island, if remote from foreign danger, and sometimes in spite of that pressure, who are not divided into alien, rival, hostile tribes. The happy union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world. Woe to the ambition that would meditate the destruction of either."

I trust and pray that this House will not, by passing this bill, hazard the fearful consequences of a further disruption of the Federal ties, by intrenching upon the rights of the States; that at least they will seek first, as Mr. Madison suggests, the judiciary, as the arbiter of these mooted questions of power, before embarking this troubled people upon new seas of blood, amidst other and worse storms of conflicting passion.

Not alone to Jefferson and Madison, or the Supreme Court, will I go for the rule of construction as to the Constitution. Even that great apos

tle of consolidation, Hamilton, in order to secure the adoption of the Constitution by his own State of New York, presented this exposition of our Government:

"If the State Governments were to be abolished, the question would wear a different face; but this idea is inadmissible. They are absolutely necessary to the system. Their existence must form a leading principle in the most perfect constitution we could form. I insist that it can never be the interest or desire of the national legislature (much less the President) to destroy the State Governments. It can derive no advantage from such a result; but, on the contrary, would lose an indispensable support, a necessary aid, in executing the laws and conveying the influences of government to the doors of the people. The Union is dependent on the will of the State Governments for its Chief Magistrate and its Senate. The blow aimed at the members must give a fatal wound to the head, and the destruction of the States must be at once political suicide. Can the National Government be guilty of this madness? And again I have stated to the committee abundant reasons to prove the entire safety of the State Governments and of the people. I wish the committee to remember that the Constitution, under examination, is framed upon truly republican principles, and that, as it is expressly designed to provide for the common protection and general welfare of the United States, it must be utterly repugnant to this Constitution to subvert the State Governments or oppress the people."

*

This doctrine of State rights, Mr. Speaker, does not carry us into secession, for, according to the doctrine laid down by Jefferson, Madison, and others, there is a line drawn, beyond which State rights cannot go, but within which there is perfect immunity to the exercise of powers by the States in their separate and sovereign capacity. If the State is aggrieved, it can neither nullify nor secede. Mr. Jefferson, in his letter to Cartright, referred to in the "Private Correspondence," denied the right of any number of single States to arrest the execution of a law of Congress, or secede from the Federal system. A Convention of the States, under the Constitution, he hailed as the peaceable remedy for all the conflicting claims of power in our compound Government." In the future complications to which this and similar bills will give rise, I can see no other than the Madisonian remedy for our safety and regeneration-A CONVENTION OF THE STATES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION.

I believe that this bill not only subverts the State Governments, but that it will suppress the people. It breaks down the barrier which the people erected against consolidated power; for never in the history of this or any other Government has such a stupendous power been reposed in one man, as the power reposed by this bill in the President of the United States. It makes this Government, so guarded in its delegation of power, so full of reservations to the source of all power, the people, an irresponsible despotism, worse than that of France, and more tyrannical than that of Russia. You have already given to this Administration the purse; you now throw the sword into the scale, and nothing is left to the people but abject submission or resistance. It becomes Congress to see to it before it intrusts such a power to any one man: first, whether it is constitutional; and, if constitutional, whether it is expedient to intrust it to the present Chief Magistrate of the country. For my part, sir, I do not trust the present Chief Magistrate. I have my reasons for it. These reasons spring out of his conduct with regard to the slavery question. Again and again, beginning, with his inaugural message, down to the last conference which he had with the border State members of Congress, who now sit around me, he asseverated that he would not interfere in any way with the

constitutional rights of the States with regard to negro slavery. He said that he had no right and no inclination thus to interfere; and he kept his word for a brief time. But abolition pressure was brought to bear upon him. Abolitionists improved every opportunity to poison his mind, and to salute his ear with their flatteries. They made him believe that he was the saviour of the black race. In the very face of his own declarations to the contrary, and after he had promised solemnly to the border State Congressmen, in a public conference with them, that he would do nothing to injure either the sensibilities or the interests of their States with regard to slavery, he issued that proclamation which has been so fatal to the army, fatal to "a united North," fatal to the Government, and will be, I fear, fatal to this Union, unless gentlemen on the other side come up boldly and manfully and demand of him to repudiate it forever. Let them prepare him for the retraction by the repeal of their confiscation measures as useless, impotent, and unconstitutional. Let the President then follow them and withdraw his proclamation. Let us start anew. Go back to the Crittenden resolutions, or if you cannot, by war, restore the Federal authority, try some other mode. Withdraw the negro entirely from your counsels and conduct, and make one grand effort to preserve this Government of white men. Will you do it? If you would resolve thus to act, you would need no conscription to increase and inspirit your army. You would then invigorate the public heart. You would restore again the public confidence. There is your path. Will you follow it? I believe that you will get no men under this bill. You will get no men through your despicable and irresponsible provost marshals. This bill will only make trouble. I fear more than I dare say. I fear you do not expect to get men under this bill. If the bill means any thing in reason, it is a bill to enslave the people of the North, and not a bill to put down the rebellion. It gives you the power to annihilate the ballot box, destroy personal liberty, and scatter your spies and informers all over the country as thick as the locusts of Egypt. I protest against it as a needless torture to the citizen, and as a cruel insult to the patriotism of a proud and free people. I wish I could see in this bill any thing good. It will simply irritate the people of the North. It will not bring about that harmony among them which is indispensable to the success of an army against this rebellion.

You have tried many expedients against our warning, and failed. At first you had the whole North, twenty millions of people, forgetting their divisions and sustaining the Government on the plain question for the restoration of the Constitution. You had victories on that policy. Your organs, like the "Tribune," boasted, after the fall of Sumter, that

"All party prejudices and passions were forgotten, and the new Administration, strengthened by an assurance of popular confidence, stood before the world the unquestioned representative of the whole loyal people of the Union."

Who and what has changed all that? Your President and his abolition advisers and policy. The proclamation sounded; and lo! the rebellion was to fall. "The war would not last till Christmas," said the zealots of the hour. "By a single blow the President has palsied the rebellion," they said again. Fatal delusions! But will you learn

nothing? This bill will prove more impotent against the South and more mischievous in the North than your proclamations and confiscations.

A good deal has been said about the Democratic party not being loyal. Why, sir, we went from this Hall at the close of the last session of Congress and found the President's call for volunteers among the people. We went before our constituents and asked for soldiers to fill the new regiments called for by the Governors in pursuance of that call. My colleague over the way [Mr. HARRISON] will bear me witness with what zeal we endeavored to fill our quotas in order to save our respective counties from a draft. In my own county, at the capital of the State, we succeeded in raising the requisite number, and there was no draft. My colleagues [Mr. WHITE, Mr. MORRIS, Mr. NOBLE, and others] found it not hard by their appeals to fill the call in their localities. This, however, was before the proclamation. When that masterpiece of folly and treachery was issued, further enlistments became almost impossible. We could then make no more speeches for recruits. Why? We had told the people that this was a war for the Union and for the Constitution. When it was thus perverted by base treachery and falsehood from this, its proper purpose, we took our appeal directly to the people, and denounced the treachery and unveiled the falsehood of this Administration. The people understood and indorsed us. I might refer you to resolutions passed by the Democratic Convention of Ohio, wherein we said to the people that the Democracy were willing to join hand in hand with any citizen of the State to strengthen and invigorate the Government and suppress the rebellion. They deprecated the divisions and distractions which the abolitionists were forcing upon the country as hostile to its best interests.

NEGRO SOLDIERS.

NEGROES IN THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR-OBJECT OF THE BILL-EFFECT ON EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS-DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT TO THE WAR.

Delivered on January 30, 1863.

Mr. Cox said: I want to call the attention of the House, and especially of the present occupant of the chair [Mr. MCPHERSON], to the remarks made by him in reference to the employment of negroes in the Revolutionary war. I regret, sir, that you have been elevated to the chair at this inopportune time; but I have no doubt that you can retire with grace, to repel any thing that I might say that is either untrue in history, or that involves a false inference. If I understand you, sir, you argue that there was a settled policy in revolutionary times for the reception of negroes into our service. That is not correct. A careful reading of history will show it. [Mr. MCPHERSON here left the chair, calling Mr. SHEFFIELD thereto.] I am perfectly willing, Mr. Speaker, to agree with the gentleman, that negroes were here and there used in the Revolution. There were a number of instances where some were employed-not

in regiments or brigades, as it is claimed here; but many blacks, and perhaps several companies, were used in various States during the Revolution. The most conspicuous instance was that of Rhode Island. She called over three hundred at one time, when there was an overpowering necessity for every man in that little colony to be raised; but, sir, these were sporadic cases, here and there a negro; here and there, and but rarely, a company. There was no system of colonial policy by which black men were organized. There were some black men in the army in despite of law and orders against it; some who were enlisted when there was no law on the subject; and in a few cases, there were black men enlisted under the law of certain of the colonies; but I believe all this was done under the protest of the Continental Congress.

Mr. MCPHERSON. I do not wish to interrupt the gentleman; but I shall be very glad to have a few minutes, after he has finished his speech, to give my version of the facts of the case.

Mr. Cox. The only authentic return, which research can discover, of negroes employed in the Revolution, is one made on the 24th of August, 1778, on the call of the Continental Congress, and the whole number of negroes present in the army then, of all conditions and grades of service, was seven hundred and fifty-five, of which five hundred and eighty-six were reported as present. I know not how they were used particularly; but doubtless they were used as servants, or bootblacks, or teamsters, or private soldiers. If the gentleman has any thing more authentic, I would like to see it. But, as I see my friend from Massachusetts [Mr. DAWES] listening with some interest, I will call attention to the revolutionary policy of Massachusetts. The Governor of that State has gone home with a carte blanche in his pocket to raise negro soldiers-if I may use that white term with reference to this black business.

Mr. ALDRICH (in his seat). Carte black.

Mr. Cox. Yes, very black. I know it is the supposition among persons who do not understand the meaning of this matter, that the object of Governor Andrew is to raise all the negroes he can, and ship them out of his State. I know that he refused to have other negroes come into his State from the South. Now, sir, Massachusetts has a very peculiar record in reference to this matter in the Revolution. As early as 1774 this subject was so talked about as to be brought to the notice of the Continental Congress. It was talked about by some of the humanitarians of that day. They wanted to use the negroes, not so much for the purpose of defending colonial independence as for the purpose of fighting for ne gro liberty. There were men then not unlike the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. LOVEJOY]. Yesterday, when trying to disguise the fact that he was for waging this war for negro liberty, before he got through the paragraph he confessed the whole truth by saying:

"But,' say gentlemen, 'you want to do away with slavery.' 'Certainly.' 'Why?' 'Because in suppressing the rebellion and preserving the Union, it is necessary as a means, and not as an end; although God knows the means are just such means as I desire to be used. We gain a double object.' 'That I never deny.'

"A double object," is it? I think, sir, that the dominant portion of the party on the other side have had a double object from the beginning. A double object in this matter means duplicity. At the extra session of