did not know at first whether to rejoice or not, when they saw what tools you had to work with; but your true friends, who have their eyes open, are full of joy, and all the rest will fall into line as soon as the great truth becomes apparent to them."

"God bless you a thousand times for your indomitable resistance to the admission of Louisiana with her caste system! This afternoon some forty gentlemen dined at Bird's room, and all, nemine dissentiente, approved it, and with full praise."

Joel P. Bishop, the learned law-writer, and author of a much used work on Criminal Law, wrote from Boston :

66

Blessings on you! You have done in this Louisiana matter an excellent work, for which some of your friends thank you less now than they will by-and-by."

Hon. Charles W. Slack, an Antislavery journalist, wrote from Boston:

"Thanks! - hearty, cordial, continued thanks! persistent opposition to Louisiana.

for your brave and

"There is a very much larger share of the community who will sustain you than at first thought may be supposed.

"The idea of negro suffrage in the disloyal States grows daily in favor and advocacy among business men."

William S. Robinson, the journalist, known as "Warrington," wrote:-

"I cannot sit down to my work this morning, albeit pressed for time, without giving you the homage of my sincere admiration and respect for killing Louisiana, at least pro tempore. Thanks! thanks! thanks!"

General William L. Burt, afterwards Postmaster of Boston, who had served in Louisiana during the Rebellion, wrote:

-

---

"I congratulate you upon your defeat of the Louisiana Bill. Your action was not only justifiable, but commendable, doubly so in view of the fact of your concession upon the Reconstruction Bill. The complaints made

....

by the Administration, or its friends, of the means you took to prevent the fraud upon you and the people, are a compliment, first, to your sagacity, and, secondly, to your skill and ability. You will be vindicated a hundred times before December."

Colonel Albert J. Wright, having great influence in the local politics of Boston, wrote:

"Something must be done in Boston. Some of your admiring friends here, who at first, in the midst of the muddle of telegraphic despatches, had some misgivings in regard to your action on 'Reconstruction' questions before the Senate, have had their eyes opened, and now feel that you have rendered a great service to the country in battling manfully for the rights of humanity, - that you have done right, and saved us from a new disaster. Of course we must have a great meeting at the Music Hall, and give you an ovation: nothing less will satisfy us."

F. B. Sanborn wrote from Concord, Massachusetts:

"Allow me to add my congratulations to those of your other friends on your successful opposition to the Louisiana scheme of Reconstruction. I look upon you as the real destroyer of that fine web of intrigue and absurdity so carefully spun."

Henry O. Stone wrote from Framingham, Massachusetts :

"Although an humble and obscure individual, I cannot refrain from thanking you for your persistent resistance to the admission into Congress of the Louisiana claimants. I feel as if you ought to have personal acknowledgment from every one in Massachusetts who can appreciate your just and patriotic motives and wise statesmanship. I know you will be accused of factious opposition to the Administration and the President; but there are those who believe your opposition comes from a desire to do justice, not only to the blacks, but to the poor whites, and to establish the Government upon the only permanent and safe foundation on true democratic principles."

Hon. Adin Thayer wrote from Worcester :

"I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your heroic and successful opposition to the Louisiana fraud. Nothing you have ever done better deserves the gratitude of the country and of mankind."

Elizur Wright, one of our earliest Abolitionists, wrote from Bos

ton:

"Your keeping out the sham State of Louisiana is worth, in my estimation, any three average military victories. I would give the United States Treasury half I am worth to have Congress, the next thing it does on the subject, decide black suffrage as the 'inexorable condition' of readmission."

Rev. A. P. Marvin wrote from Winchendon, Massachusetts:

"I have just risen from reading in the telegraphic despatch of the noble stand made by you in the Senate last night, by which the admission of

Louisiana is staved off for the present. I have often fervently thanked God that you were in your present position, and enabled to do so much to prevent evil and accomplish good, but never more earnestly than now. I know it must be hard to withstand so many of the supporters of the Administration, but the battle must be fought on the very question involved in this measure. It will not only be wicked and infamous, but suicidal, for us to let the greater part of the rank and file of the Rebels come back and be voters, while we exclude our colored countrymen. I hope strength will be given to you, according to your day; as to your zeal, courage, ability, and prudence, nothing is wanting."

Rev. George C. Beckwith, Secretary of the American Peace Society, wrote from Boston:

"I have just been reading, with my wife, some account of your course on the Louisiana question; and we can't help sending you our thanks for your persistent efforts to avert the very possible evils likely to come from a wrong decision in this case. God grant you success in preventing here a precedent that may lead to irretrievable mischief!"

Rev. George B. Cheever, the constant Abolitionist, wrote from New York:

:

"Permit me the pleasure of congratulating you on the firm and noble stand you are maintaining in the Senate for the rights of loyal men in Louisiana, irrespective of color, and for the prerogative of Congress, as well as its obligation, to settle the government of that State as a republican government. Your efforts are so much the more admirable and important as they are opposed by mistaken Senators, such as Trumbull and Doolittle, and by some of our editors, as of the Times. The heart of the country goes with you, not with your opponents. It would be a terrible disaster to have the precedent set of a State readmitted to the Union with the sacrifice of the rights of the blacks. Your resolutions of Saturday, as well as the amendment you proposed, were admirable. The victory will be worth everything, if you can carry something of that kind."

A. P. Hayden wrote from New York:

"I cannot let this opportunity pass of thanking you for the manner in which you have stood by the colored people of Louisiana, — almost the only out-and-out Loyalists of that State. I agree with you that any settlement of the question that will not put the ballot into their hands will create mischief that will take a long time to remedy. When I read in this morning's Tribune of the vote to postpone the Louisiana matter until December, I felt as if a great moral as well as political battle had been won by our side."

Dr. J. B. Smith, giving expression to the feelings of colored citizens in a letter from Boston, said:

"I know of no words of any language adequate to convey to you the gratitude I feel in my inmost soul towards you for your efforts and final success in defeating the bill for the readmission of Louisiana as a State into the Union, with the present flagrantly unjust and proscriptive laws and Constitution. The white people of this country have been so accustomed to regard and treat us as their natural inferiors, that we dread the very thought of submitting to them the adjustment of our rights after their own are made secure. What is not gained for us now will not be obtained for a quarter of a century after peace is declared."

Frederick Douglass, the watchful orator of his race, wrote from Rochester, New York:

"The friends of Freedom all over the country have looked to you, and confided in you, of all men in the United States Senate, during all this terrible war. They will look to you all the more, now that peace dawns, and the final settlement of our national troubles is at hand. God grant you strength equal to your day and your duties! is my prayer and that of millions."

In harmony with these expressions, the following resolution was adopted unanimously by the Worcester Freedom Club, and communicated to Mr. Sumner:

"Resolved, That the Worcester Freedom Club' tenders to the Hon. Charles Sumner their gratitude as freemen, for the able manner in which he met the question for the admission of Louisiana, and for his noble defence of the Equality of all men before the Law.'"

Evidently Mr. Sumner was not alone. The right of colored fellowcitizens was recognized as next in order for discussion and judgment. The Antislavery fires were flaming forth anew.

GUARANTY OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENTS

IN THE REBEL STATES.

RESOLUTIONS IN THE SENATE, FEBRUARY 25, 1865.

WHILE the resolution recognizing the existing State government of Louisiana was under consideration, Mr. Sumner introduced the following resolutions, which, on his motion, were ordered to be printed. He gave notice that at the proper time he should move them as a substitute for the pending resolution. But before the proper time the Louisiana resolution was postponed, and it fell with the session.

RESOLUTIONS declaring the duty of the United States to guaranty Republican Governments in the Rebel States, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence; so that the new Governments shall be founded on the consent of the governed, and the Equality of all persons before the Law.

RESOL

ESOLVED, That it is the duty of the United States, by Act of Congress, at the earliest practicable moment consistent with the common defence and the general welfare, to reestablish republican governments in those States where loyal governments have been vacated by the existing Rebellion, and thus, to the full extent of their power, fulfil the requirement of the Constitution, that "the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government."

2. That this important duty is positively imposed