PROTEST AGAINST FINAL ADJOURNMENT OF CONGRESS.
Remarks in the Senate, on a Resolution for the final Adjournment of the two Houses, July 12, 1862.
July 12th, the question being on the final adjournment for the Session, Mr. Sumner said:—
MR. PRESIDENT,—I do not think, in the present state of the country, the Senate ought to adjourn, and for one I enter my protest against it, and I ask for the yeas and nays that I may make it of record.
It is essential to proper legislation not only that the Senate should vote, but that it should consider measures on which it votes; and the consideration must be in proportion to their importance. Allusion is made to one measure on which the Senate has not voted,—that in charge of my friend the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade], the admission of West Virginia as a new State. Perhaps no question of greater importance has ever been presented. It concerns the whole question of Slavery; it concerns the pretension of State Rights; it concerns also the results of this war. Look at it, therefore, in any aspect you please, it is a great question. And yet the idea of Senators anxious to adjourn is, that it is to be hurried forward without any proper discussion.
There is another question, not less important. It is the bill of the Senator from New York [Mr. Harris], constituting Provisional Governments for the Rebel States,—a subject of transcendent importance, and I submit, also, of practical interest at this very moment; for it involves precisely this inquiry, Whether you are to allow a system of military governments or Congressional governments. It is a question between the military and the civil power.
Then we have the Army Bill, which my colleague has in charge. Few matters of greater importance have ever been laid before the Senate. It involves nothing less than the organization in our country of a system of conscription, so well known on the Continent of Europe, but thus far happily unknown to us; and yet, Sir, this great question, also, is to be hurried forward without any adequate discussion.
Then we have Executive business, to which I can only allude in a general way, but of vast moment, which cannot be adequately considered without days, and I might say weeks.