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EIGHT YEARS IN CONGRESS.

I.

A CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION.

OUTSIDE of the "home circle" of constituents to whom this volume is inscribed, it may be read by those in search of the motives and principles which actuated a constitutional opposition in time of civil war. It was either the good or bad fortune of the writer to antagonize with the administration of his own party on the territorial questions from 1856 to 1860. But this may be overlooked by unfriendly critics. The time of war being the time of danger, the unreflecting and unphilosophical may wonder how such an opposition at such a period could consist with patriotism. Do they forget how England was saved from disgrace in the Crimean war by the onslaughts of the opposition led by the London Times? May not the Government be magnified by exposing the weakness of its administration? Is there not constant need of such criticism as will strengthen the Government while it condemns the policy of its imbecile or corrupt agents? Lest the very function should cease by the incapacity of the functionary, should we be less heedful how we undignify the office by undue contempt of the officer, than how we unduly dignify the officer at the expense of the office?

Hence, in all free countries an opposition is regarded as an element of the Constitution-an estate of the realm. It cannot be dispensed with without danger to Liberty. However great may be the obligation of the country to the soldier for his valiant right arm, it owes something to those who, regardless of the frowns of power or the allurements of patronage, maintained a steadfast front against the corruptions and tyrannies incident to war.

If I may quote from a letter addressed to me on the 22d of January,

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1865, by the Hon. James Guthrie of Kentucky, in reference to the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, I would recognize the truth, that "the rebellion has left deep scars on the Constitution of the United States, and those of the States; and if some are made on the road to reunion and the restoration of peace, with renewed confidence in freedom and justice, we must leave its apology to the evils and necessities of the times." Yet in recognizing this truth now, is it a reproach to a fearless representative that he was not an indifferent spectator while such scars were being made? His duty before the war, and à fortiori during its continuance, was to proclaim the perils to constitutional freedom and federal union involved in a violent conflict. The statue of Liberty was veiled again and again, during its progress. Nor has the cessation of hostilities fully restored the freedom of the citizen. It is the writer's pride, that he never failed to protest against the eclipse of Liberty by Power. Hence, what may have seemed to a superficial observer an unpatriotic opposition, was only and truly an opposition to the arbitrary proceedings with which the war was accompanied. Such an opposition was dictated by regard for the very object which the war sought to establish. Time will vindicate both the writer and others, who, while they maintained the war for the Union, did not permit their voices for personal and public liberty to be drowned in the clangor of arms. Those who contest encroachments incident to war, are never regarded in history as enemies, but as the truest devotees of well-regulated Liberty.

The key-note to these speeches, and all efforts made by their author in and out of Congress, was struck in the heat of a debate with a member from Indiana, Mr. Julian, on the 9th of April, 1864 :-" Under no circumstances conceivable by the human mind, would I ever violate the Constitution for any purpose. To compass its destruction as a probable or possible necessity, is the very gospel of anarchy-the philosophy of dissolution." This was in reply to a Northern statesman, urging extra-constitutional means to suppress the rebellion. Almost the same language was used by the writer, to denounce the heresy of secession in the winter of 1860-'61.

In the perusal of these pages, no one will find any aid, by speech or vote, given to those who raised the standard of revolt. In his speech or "Conciliation and Nationality," the writer, while pleading for the spirit and measures of compromise, invoked at the same time that vigorous spirit of nationality, which could only exist with an unmutilated Union. He warned South Carolina, that in striving to be Augustus, her fate would be less, than Augustulus. When the resolution was introduced thanking Gen. Anderson for his defence of Fort Sumter, the writer

gave it his heartiest vote. When eulogizing Judge Douglas, after his death, at the extra session of 1861, the writer regarded it as the consummate glory of Douglas's life to have given his most emphatic utterance for the maintenance of the Government, even though its administration was committed to his old political antagonist, and although he knew that such expression imperilled the lives of a hundred thousand of his friends.

Throughout the subsequent years of the war, the writer always voted for the support of the army. Without refining as to the power to coerce a State, or to enforce the laws of the United States against individuals, he found the war flagrant. He acted for its vigorous maintenance. Whether the war was simply to preserve the rights of the General Government, by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers; or whether it was, in fact, a war of general hostility, carried on by the central government against a State, was considered by some before the war as a momentous question. But after the war came, its red right hand made a new code. The enforcement of national supremacy overwhelmed all questions of State coercion.

Why was it not compatible to favor both war and peace, without a solecism in thought or language? When this war appeared as a speck on the horizon, I pleaded and voted for conciliation. I voted for every compromise, including that of Crittenden. I preferred the bonds of Love to the armor of Force. I found in the Sermon on the Mount a wisdom beyond that of Presidents or priests. I never went so far as Charles Sumner in his speech on the "True Grandeur of Nations," when he pronounced "all international war to be civil war, and the partakers in it to be traitors to God and enemies to man; " when he quoted Cicero to show that he "preferred the unjustest peace to the justest war;" and Franklin, to show that there "never was a good war or a bad peace;" or when Mr. Sumner declared "that in our age there can be no peace that is not honorable."-(Sumner's Works, vol. i., p. 11.) But I did and do hold that in our land it was wisest, kindest, and best to agree to any compromise which Crittenden framed, Douglas advocated, and to which Davis and Toombs acceded, which would have averted these horrible calamities. In thus believing, I sought to carry out the Democratic principle which Madison laid down before the late war of 1812—" that war was only and rarely tolerable as a necessary evil, to be kept off as long, and whenever it takes place, to be closed as soon as possible." When this civil war began, I voted for the Crittenden Resolution of July 22, 1861, that it was not to be waged in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the States, but to defend

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