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votes in favor of the Union at the election. | disregard of law, a determination to force every After that, this portion of the State, East Ten- Union man in the State to swear to the support nessee, called a convention, and the convention of a constitution he abhors, to yield his money published an address, in which they sum up and property to aid a cause he detests, and to some of the grievances which we have been become the object of scorn and derision, as bearing in that portion of the country. They well as the victim of intolerable and relentless oppression."

say:

"The Memphis Appeal, a prominent disunion paper, published a false account of our proceedings, under the head 'The Traitors in Council,' and styled us, who represented every county but two in East Tennessee, the little batch of disaffected traitors who hover around the noxious atmosphere of Andrew Johnson's home.' Our meeting was telegraphed to the New Orleans Delta, and it was falsely said that we had passed a resolution recommending submission if seventy thousand votes were not cast against secession. The despatch added that the Southern Rights men are determined to hold possession of the State, though they should be in a minority.'

They had fifty-five thousand men and $5,000,000 to sustain them, the State authorities with them, and made the declaration that they intended to hold the State though they should be in a minority. This shows the advance of tyranny and usurpation. By way of showing the Senate some of the wrongs borne and submitted to by that people who are loyal to the Government-who have been deprived of the arms furnished by the Government for their protection-withheld by this little man Harris, the Governor of the State-I will read a few paragraphs from the address:

"It has passed laws declaring it treason to say or do any thing in favor of the Government of the United States or against the Confederate States; and such a law is now before, and we apprehend will soon be passed by, the Legislature of Tennessee.

"It has involved the Southern States in a war whose success is hopeless, and which must ultimately lead to the ruin of the people.

"Its bigoted, overbearing, and intolerant spirit has already subjected the people of East Tennessee to many petty grievances; our people have been insulted; our flags have been fired upon and torn down; our houses have been rudely entered; our families have been subjected to insult; our peaceable meetings interrupted; our women and children shot at by a merciless soldiery; our towns pillaged; our citizens robbed, and some of them assassinated and murdered.

"No effort has been spared to deter the Union men of East Tennessee from the expression of their free thoughts. The penalties of treason have been threatened against them, and murder and assassination have been openly encouraged by leading secession journals. As secession has been thus overbearing and intolerant while in the minority in East Tennessee, nothing better can be expected of the pretended majority than wild, unconstitutional, and oppressive legislation; an utter contempt and VOL. II.-Doc. 35

These are some of the wrongs that we are enduring in that section of Tennessee; not near all of them, but a few which I have presented that the country may know what we are submitting to. Since I left my home, having only one way to leave the State, through two or three passes coming out through Cumberland Gap, I have been advised that they had even sent their armies to blockade these passes in the mountains, as they say, to prevent Johnson from returning with arms and munitions to place in the hands of the people to vindicate their rights, repel invasion, and put down domestic insurrection and rebellion. Yes, sir, there they stand in arms, environing a population of three hundred and twenty-five thousand loyal, brave, patriotic, and unsubdued people; but yet powerless, and not in a condition to vindicate their rights. Hence I come to the Government, and I do not ask it as a suppliant, but I demand it as a Constitutional right, that you give us protection, give us arms, and munitions; and if they cannot be got there in any other way, to take them there with an invading army, and deliver the people from the oppression to which they are now subjected. We claim to be the State. The other divisions may have seceded and gone off; and if this Government will stand by and permit those portions of the State to go off, and not enforce the laws and protect the loyal citizens there, we cannot help it; but we still claim to be the State, and if two-thirds have fallen off, or have been sunk by an earthquake, it does not change our relation to this Government. If the Government will let them go and not give us protection, the fault is not ours; but if you give us protection we intend to stand as a State, as a part of this Confederacy, holding to the Stars and Stripes, the flag of our country. We demand it according to law; we demand it upon the guarantees of the Constitution. You are bound to guarantee to us a republican form of government, and we ask it as a Constitutional right. We do not ask you to interfere as a party, as your feelings or prejudices may be one way or another in reference to the parties of the country; but we ask you to interfere as a Government, according to the Constitution. Of course we want your sympathy, and your regard, and your respect; but we ask your interference on Constitutional grounds.

The amendments to the Constitution, which constitute the Bill of Rights, declare that “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Our people are denied this right secured to

them in their own Constitution and the Constitution of the United States; yet we hear no complaints here of violations of the Constitution in this respect. We ask the Government to interpose to secure us this constitutional right. We want the passes in our mountains opened, we want deliverance and protection for a down-trodden and oppressed people who are struggling for their independence without arms. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should have asked no further assistance. We have not got them. We are a rural people; we have villages and small towns-no large cities. Our population is homogeneous, industrious, frugal, brave, independent; but now harmless, and powerless, and oppressed by usurpers. You may be too late in coming to our relief; or you may not come at all, though I do not doubt that you will come; they may trample us under foot; they may convert our plains into graveyards, and the caves of our mountains into sepulchres; but they will never take us out of this Union, or make us a land of slaves-no, never! We intend to stand as firm as adamant, and as unyielding as our own majestic mountains that surround us. Yes, we will be as fixed and as immovable as are they upon their bases. We will stand as long as we can; and if we are overpowered and liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend before she departs to take the flag of our country, with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest tread, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after times, the spot where the Goddess of Liberty lingered and wept for the last time, before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free, and happy.

We ask the Government to come to our aid. We love the Constitution as made by our fathers. We have confidence in the integrity and capacity of the people to govern themselves. We have lived entertaining these opinions; we intend to die entertaining them. The battle has commenced. The President has placed it upon the true ground. It is an issue on the one hand for the people's Government, and its overthrow on the other. We have commenced the battle of freedom. It is freedom's cause. We are resisting usurpation and oppression. We will triumph; we must triumph. Right is with us. A great and fundamental principle of right, that lies at the foundation of all things, is with us. We may meet with impediments, and may meet with disasters, and here and there a defeat; but ultimately freedom's cause must triumph, for

"Freedom's battle once begun,

Bequeathed from bleeding wire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won."

Yes, we must triumph. Though sometimes I cannot see my way clear in matters of this kind, as in matters of religion, when my facts

give out, when my reason fails me, I draw largely upon my faith. My faith is strong, based on the eternal principles of right, that a thing so monstrously wrong as this rebellion cannot triumph. Can we submit to it? Is the Senate, are the American people, prepared to give up the graves of Washington and Jackson, to be encircled and governed and controlled by a combination of traitors and rebels? I say, let the battle go on-it is freedom's cause-until the Stars and Stripes (God bless them!) shall again be unfurled upon every cross-road, and from every house-top throughout the Confederacy, North and South. Let the Union be reinstated; let the law be enforced; let the Constitution be supreme.

If the Congress of the United States were to give up the tombs of Washington and Jackson, we should have rising up in our midst another Peter the Hermit, in a much more righteous cause-for ours is true, while his was a delusion-who would appeal to the American people, and point to the tombs of Washington and Jackson, in the possession of those who are worse than the infidel and the Turk who held the Holy Sepulchre. I believe the American people would start of their own accord, when appealed to, to redeem the graves of Washington and Jackson and Jefferson, and all the other patriots who are lying within the limits of the Southern Confederacy. I do not believe they would stop the march until again the flag of this Union would be placed over the graves of those distinguished men. There will be an uprising. Do not talk about Republicans now; do not talk about Democrats now; do not talk about Whigs or Americans now: talk about your country and the Constitution and the Union. Save that; preserve the integrity of the Government; once more place it erect among the nations of the earth; and then if we want to divide about questions that may arise in our midst, we have a Government to divide in.

I know it has been said that the object of this war is to make war on Southern institutions. I have been in free States and I have been in slave States; and I thank God that, so far as I have seen, there has been one universal disclaimer of any such purpose. It is a war upon no section; it is a war upon no peculiar institution; but it is a war for the integrity of the Government, for the Constitution and the supremacy of the laws. That is what the nation understands by it.

The people whom I represent appeal to the Government and to the nation to give us the constitutional protection that we need. I am proud to say that I have met with every manifestation of that kind in the Senate, with only a few dissenting voices. I am proud to say, too, that I believe Old Kentucky (God bless her!) will ultimately rise and shake off the stupor which has been resting upon her; and instead of denying us the privilege of passing through her borders, and taking arms and mu

nitions of war to enable a down-trodden people to defend themselves, will not only give us that privilege, but will join us and help us in the work. The people of Kentucky love the Union; they love the Constitution; they have no fault to find with it; but in that State they have a duplicate to the Governor of ours. When we look all around, we see how the Governors of the different States have been involved in this conspiracy-the most stupendous and gigantic conspiracy that was ever formed, and as corrupt and as foul as that attempted by Catiline in the days of Rome. We know it to be so. Have we not known inen to sit at their desks in this chamber, using the Government's stationery to write treasonable letters; and while receiving their pay, sworn to support the Constitution and sustain the law, engaging in midnight conclaves to devise ways and means by which the Government and the Constitution should be overthrown? The charge was made and published in the papers. Many things we know that we cannot put our finger upon; but we know from the regular steps that were taken in this work of breaking up the Government, or trying to break it up, that there was system, concert of action. It is a scheme more corrupt than the assassination planned and conducted by Catiline in reference to the Roman Senate. The time has arrived when we should show to the nations of the earth that we are a nation capable of preserving our existence, and give them evidence that we will do it.

I have already detained the Senate much longer than I intended when I rose, and I shall conclude in a few words more. Although the Government has met with a little reverse within a short distance of this city, no one should be discouraged and no heart should be dismayed. It ought only to prove the necessity of bringing forth and exerting still more vigorously the power of the Government in maintenance of the Constitution and the laws. Let the energies of the Government be redoubled, and let it go on with this war-not a war upon sections, not a war upon peculiar institutions any where; but let the Constitution and the Union be its frontispiece, and the supremacy and enforcement of the laws its watchword. Then it can, it will, go on triumphantly. We must succeed. This Government must not, cannot fall. Though your flag may have trailed in the dust; though a retrograde movement may have been made; though the banner of our country may have been sullied, let it still be borne onward; and if, for the prosecution of this war in behalf of the Government and the Constitution, it is necessary to cleanse and purify the banner, I say, let it be baptized in fire from the sun and bathed in a nation's blood! The nation must be redeemed; it must be triumphant. The Constitution-which is based upon principles immutable, and upon which rest the rights of man and the hopes and expectations of those who love freedom throughout the civilized worldmust be maintained.

Doc. 130.

THE PEACE PROPOSITION. THE following is the Peace Proposition, offered by Mr. Cox, of Ohio, in the House of Representatives, on the 29th of July, 1861: Mr. Cox. I ask leave to offer the following resolution:

66

WHEREAS, it is the part of rational beings to terminate their differences by rational methods, and inasmuch as the differences between the United States authorities and the seceding States has resulted in a civil war, characterized by bitter hostility and extreme atrocity; and although the party in the seceded States are guilty of breaking the national unity and resisting the national authority; yet,

"Be it resolved, First. That while we make undiminished and increased exertions by our navy and army to maintain the integrity and stability of this Government, the common laws of war, consisting of those maxims of humanity, moderation, and honor, which are a part of the international code, ought to be observed by both parties, and for a stronger reason than exists between two alien nations, inasmuch as the two parties have a common ancestry, history, prosperity, glory, Government, and Union, and are now unhappily engaged in lacerating their common country. Second. That, resulting from these premises, while there ought to be left open, as between two alien nations, the same means for preventing the war being carried to outrageous extremities, there ought also to be left open some means for the restoration of peace and union. Third. That, to this endthe restoration of peace and union on the basis of the Constitution-there be appointed a committee of one member from each State, who shall report to this House, at its next session, such amendments to the Constitution of the United States as shall assuage all grievances, and bring about a reconstruction of the national unity; and that, for the preparation of such adjustment and the conference requisite for that purpose, there be appointed a commission of seven citizens of the United States, consisting of Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, Millard Fillmore, of New York, Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, Martin Van Buren, of New York, Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, and James Guthrie, of Kentucky, who shall request from the socalled Confederate States the appointment of a similar commission, and who shall meet and confer on the subject in the city of Louisville on the first Monday of September next. And that the committee appointed from this House notify said commissioners of their appointment and function, and report their action to the next session as an amendment of the Constitution of the United States, to be proposed by Congress to the States for their ratification, according to the fifth article of said Constitution."

Mr. Washburne, (interrupting its reading.) I

object to the introduction of that resolution. | There is no longer a necessity for the President We have had enough of it read.

Mr. Cox. I move to suspend the rules to enable me to introduce it.

The reading of the resolution was resumed and completed.

Mr. Potter. I wish to ask the gentleman from Ohio if he is willing to insert, among the proposed commissioners, the name of James Buchanan? (Laughter.)

Mr. Cox. No, sir; not at all. I call for the yeas and nays on the motion to suspend the rules.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

to assume authority not granted when Congress is in session, with power to grant all needed authority. The Constitution makes ample provision for its own maintenance, and this rebellion can be put down in pursuance of the Constitution. Among other things, that instrument declares that Congress shall have power to declare war, to make rules concerning captures on land and water, to raise and support armies, and make rules for their government; to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union and suppress insurrection, and to make all the laws necessary for carrying

Mr. Roscoe Conklin. I move that the House into execution these powers. The Constitution do now adjourn.

The motion was not agreed to.

The question was taken, [on the motion to suspend the rules,] and it was decided in the negative-yeas 41, nays, 85.

Doc. 131.

also authorizes a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion, whenever the public safety requires it. When war is declared, or the militia called forth to execute the laws of the Union, or to suppress an insurrection, whatever is necessary to accomplish the just ends of the war, or of calling forth the militia, may be lawfully done. With

REMARKS OF MESSRS. TRUMBULL AND the declaration of war, or the calling forth the

CARLILE

ON THE BILL TO SUPPRESS INSURRECTION, IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JULY 30. MR. TRUMBULL said: The object of this bill is to confer certain powers on the military authorities in cases of insurrection and rebellion, and to regulate, as far as practicable, by law, the exercise of such powers; to provide for putting down this rebellion in a constitutional and legal manner. The rebellion having arisen during the recess of Congress, imposed on the President, who is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and whose duty it is to see that the laws are faithfully executed, the necessity of exerting his whole constitutional power to preserve the Constitution from overthrow and the Government from destruction. It may be that in the exercise of this high duty the President has assumed authority and done acts which no positive law directly authorized, but whatever he has done which was necessary to preserve the Constitution and the Government from destruction till Congress could be convened and act, was not only not forbidden, but proper and right. On the great principle of self-defence and self preservation, I am prepared to justify the Administration for all it has done to save the republic from the blow which wicked rebels were aiming at its very life, and which, unless warded off, might have been fatal to its existence. In such a case I care not whether I can find in strict law the precise warrant for what has been done. The great law of self-preservation overrides all others, and at such a time it is enough for me that the Administration has acted in good faith for the safety of the State, without unnecessary encroachments on the rights of the citizen. When Congress meets, it becomes its bounden duty to clothe the Executive with all the powers necessary to save the Government from overthrow.

militia to execute the laws or to suppress insurrection, all the incidents to war and hostilities necessarily and lawfully follow. How far it is necessary to destroy the persons of enemies or rebels, or to ravage and lay waste their country, must depend upon the necessities of the case, to be judged of by the political and not the judicial power of the Government. The Government is to decide when that which amounts to a rebellion exists, and to interfere to suppress it with all the incidents to such interference. The Supreme Court of the United States expressly says, in the case of Luther against Borden, 7 Howard 45, "Unquestionably a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrection too strong to be controlled by the civil authority. The power is essential to the existence of every government, and essential to the preservation of order and free institutions."

Mr. Carlile (Va.) moved to strike out the eighth section, which provides that the military commander cause suspected persons to be brought before him and administer the oath of allegiance, and on his refusal to take the oath he may detain him as a prisoner. He said, giving great power to the military commander might do great injury. Men were disposed to aid this effort to overthrow the Government and pay no attention to the oath. He was free to say, if he should be so unfortunate as to be taken prisoner by the enemies of his country, and could only preserve his life by taking the oath, and if he believed it his duty to his country and family to preserve his life, then he should not regard the oath as a binding obligation, morally or legally. He contended that the President is justified in what he has done in suspending the writ of habeas corpus. It was rebellion to overthrow republican institutions to preserve any peculiar institution. In regard to arrests, he said there were to-day many of

the best citizens of Western Virginia imprisoned | care of the clothes of the soldiers, and rations in jails and held by secessionists. It was important that the Government should do something to remedy this great evil.

-N. Y. World, July 31.

Doo. 132.

were being served out to the men who worked for the support of the children. But by the evacuation of Hampton, rendered necessary by the withdrawal of troops, leaving me scarcely 5,000 men outside the Fort, including the force at Newport News, all these black people were obliged to break up their homes at Hamp

GEN. BUTLER ON THE "CONTRABAND." ton, fleeing across the creek within my lines.

HEAD-QUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF VIRGINIA,
FORTRESS MONROE, July 30, 1861.

for protection and support. Indeed, it was a most distressing sight to see these poor creatures, who had trusted to the protection of the arms of the United States, and who aided the troops of the United States in their enterprise, to be thus obliged to flee from their homes, and the homes of their masters who had desertthem, and become fugitives from fear of the return of the rebel soldiery, who had threatened to shoot the men who had wrought for us, and to carry off the women who had served us, to a worse than Egyptian_bondage. I have, therefore, now within the Peninsula, this side of Hampton Creek, 900 negroes, 300 of whom are able-bodied men, 30 of whom are men substantially past hard labor, 175 women 225 children under the age of 10 years, and 170 between 10 and 18 years, and many more coming in. The questions which this state of facts presents are very embarrassing.

First, What shall be done with them? and, Second, What is their state and condition? Upon these questions I desire the instructions of the Department.

Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War:-
SIR: By an order received on the morning
of the 26th July from Major-General Dix, by a
telegraphic order from Lieut.-General Scott, I
was commanded to forward, of the troops of
this department, four regiments and a half, in-ed
cluding Col. Baker's California regiment, to
Washington, via Baltimore. This order reached
me at 2 o'clock A. M., by special boat from Bal-
timore. Believing that it emanated, because of
some pressing exigency for the defence of
Washington, I issued my orders before day-
break for the embarkation of the troops, send-
ing those who were among the very best regi-
ments I had. In the course of the following
day they were all embarked for Baltimore,
with the exception of some 400, for whom I
had not transportation, although I had all the
transport force in the hands of the quartermas-
ter here, to aid the Bay line of steamers, which,
by the same order from the Lieut.-General, was
directed to furnish transportation. Up to and
at the time of the order I had been preparing
for an advance movement, by which I hoped to
cripple the resources of the enemy at Yorktown,
and especially by seizing a large quantity of
negroes who were being pressed into their ser-
vice in building the intrenchments there. I had
five days previously been enabled to mount for
the first time, the first company of light artil-
lery, which I had been empowered to raise,
and they had but a single rifled cannon, an iron
six-pounder. Of course, every thing must and
did yield to the supposed exigency and the or-
ders. This ordering away the troops from this
department, while it weakened the posts at
Newport News, necessitated the withdrawal of
the troops from Hampton, where I was then
throwing up intrenched works to enable me to
hold the town with a small force, while I ad-
vanced up the York or James River. In the
village of Hampton there were a large number
of negroes, composed in a great measure of
women and children of the men who had fled
thither within my lines for protection, who had
escaped from maurauding parties of rebels who
had been gathering up able-bodied blacks to aid
them in constructing their batteries on the
James and York Rivers. I had employed the men'
in Hampton in throwing up intrenchments, and
they were working zealously and efficiently at
that duty, saving our soldiers from that labor
under the gleam of the mid-day sun. The
women were earning substantially their own
subsistence in washing, marketing, and taking

The first question, however, may perhaps be answered by considering the last. Are these men, women, and children, slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What their status was under the Constitution and laws, we all know. What has been the effect of rebellion and a state of war upon that status? When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was in so far met, as I then and still believe, on a legal and constitutional basis. But now a new series of questions arises. Passing by women, the children, certainly, cannot be treated on that basis; if property, they must be considered the incumbrance rather than the auxiliary of an army, and, of course, in no possible legal relation could be treated as contraband. Are they property? If they were so, they have been left by their masters and owners, deserted, thrown away, abandoned, like the wrecked vessel upon the ocean. former possessors and owners have causelessly, traitorously, rebelliously, and, to carry out the figure, practically abandoned them to be swallowed up by the winter storm of starvation. If property, do they not become the property of the salvors? but we, their salvors, do not need and will not hold such property, and will assume no such ownership: has not, therefore, all proprietary relation ceased? Have they not

Their

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