Immediately after the recess the Reconstruction debate was resumed, and an able speech made by Mr. Spalding of Ohio, reviewing the subject generally rather than specifically replying to Mr. Raymond. Representing one of the districts of the Western Reserve (the most radical section of the United States), it is interesting to see what Mr. Spalding declared would be satisfactory to the mass of his constituents as conditions precedent to the re-admission of the rebel States. He laid down five requirements: First, "to give a qualified right of suffrage to the freedmen in the District of Columbia;" second, to "so amend the Constitution of the United States that people of color shall not be counted with the population in making up the ratio of representation in Congress, except in those States where they are permitted to exercise the elective franchise;" third, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting nullification and secession;" fourth, "to insert a provision in the Constitution prohibiting the repudiation of the National debt and also prohibiting the assumption of the rebel debt;" fifth, to provide in the Constitution that "no person who has at any time taken up arms against the United States shall ever be admitted to a seat in the Senate or House of Representatives."

On the eighth day of January, two days after the re-assembling of Congress, Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio specifically answered the speech of Mr. Raymond. He spoke with care and preparation, as was his habit. He wasted no words, but in clear, crisp sentences subjected the whole question to the rigid test of logic. "I shall inquire," said Mr. Shellabarger, "whether the Constitution deals with States. I shall discuss the question whether an organized rebellion against a government is an organized State in that government; whether that which cannot become a State until all its officers have sworn to support the Constitution, remains a State after they have all sworn to overthrow that Constitution. If I find it does continue to be a State after that, then I shall strive to ascertain whether it will so continue to be a Government—a State—after, by means of universal treason, it has ceased to have any constitution, laws, legislatures, courts, or citizens in it."

"If, in debating this question," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "I debate axioms, my apology is that there are not other questions to debate in Reconstruction. If," said he with well-timed sarcasm, "in the discussion, I make self-evident things obscure or incomprehensible, my defense shall be that I am conforming to the usages of Congress. I will not inquire whether any subject of this Government, by reason of the revolt, passed from under its sovereignty or ceased to owe it allegiance; nor shall I inquire whether any territory passed from under that jurisdiction, because I know of no one who thinks that any of these things did occur. I shall not consider, whether, by the Rebellion, any State lost its territorial character or its defined boundaries or subdivisions, for I know of no one who would obliterate these geographical qualities of the States. These questions, however much discussed, are in no practical sense before Congress."

"What is before Congress?" asked Mr. Shellabarger. "I at once define and affirm it in a single sentence. It is, under our Constitution, possible to, and the late Rebellion did in fact, so overthrow and usurp, in the insurrectionary States, the loyal State Governments, as that during such usurpation such States and their people ceased to have any of the rights or powers of Government as States of the Union, and this loss of the rights and powers of Government was such that the United States may, and ought to, assume and exercise local powers of the lost State Governments, and may control the re-admission of such States to their powers of Government in this Union, subject to, and in accordance with, the obligation to guarantee to each State a republican form of Government."

Upon the broad proposition thus laid down by Mr. Shellabarger, he proceeded to submit an argument which, for closeness, compactness, consistency and strength had rarely, if ever, been surpassed in the Congress of the United States. Other speeches have gained greater celebrity, but it may well be doubted whether any speech in the House of Representatives ever made a more enduring impression, or exerted greater convincing power, upon the minds of those to whom it was addressed. It was a far more valuable exposition of the Reconstruction question than that given by Mr. Stevens. It was absolutely without acrimony, it contained no harsh word, it made no personal reflection; but the whole duty of the United States, and the whole power of the United States to do its duty, were set forth with absolute precision of logic. The Reconstruction debate continued for a long time and many able speeches were contributed to it. While much of value was added to that which Mr. Shellabarger had stated, no position taken by him was ever shaken.

Mr. Raymond had asked repeatedly and with great emphasis what specific act had deprived these rebellious States of their rights as States of the Union. Mr. Shellabarger gave an answer to that question, which, as a caustic summary, is worthy to be quoted in full. "I answer him," said the member from Ohio, "in the words of the Supreme Court, 'The causeless waging against their own Government of a war which all the world acknowledge to have been the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race.' That war was waged by these people as States, and it went through long, dreary years. In it they threw off and defied the authority of your Constitution, your laws, and your Government. They obliterated from their State constitutions and laws every vestige of recognition of your Government. They discarded all their official oaths, and took, in their places, oaths to support your enemies' government. They seized, in their States, all the Nation's property. Their senators and representatives in your Congress insulted, bantered, defied and then left you. They expelled from their land or assassinated every inhabitant of known loyalty. They betrayed and surrendered your arms. They passed sequestration and other Acts in flagitious violation of the law of nations, making every citizen of the United States an alien enemy, and placing in the treasury of their rebellion all money and property due such citizens. They framed iniquity and universal murder into law. For years they besieged your Capital and sent your bleeding armies in rout back here upon the very sanctuaries of your national power. Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea. They carved the bones of your unburied heroes into ornaments and drank from goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons, organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried to your cities, and the yellow-fever to your wives and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destroyed, in the four years of horrid war, another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe in marching-column. And then to give to the infernal drama a fitting close, and to concentrate into one crime all that is criminal in crime and all that is detestable in barbarism, they murdered the President of the United States."

"I allude to these horrid events," continued Mr. Shellabarger, "not to revive frightful memories, or to bring back the impulses towards the perpetual severance of this people which they provoke. I allude to them to remind us how utter was the overthrow and the obliteration of all government, divine and human, how total was the wreck of all constitutions and laws, political, civil and international. I allude to them to condense their monstrous enormities of guilt into one crime, and to point the gentleman from New York to it and tell him that that was the specific act."

Mr. Voorhees of Indiana followed on the day succeeding Mr. Shellabarger's speech, in support of a series of resolutions which he had offered on the same day that Mr. Raymond addressed the House, and further embarrassing Mr. Raymond by the proffer of Democratic support, and proportionately discouraging the Republicans from coming forward in aid of the Administration. The resolutions of Mr. Voorhees declared in effect that "the President's message is regarded by the House as an able, judicious and patriotic State paper;" that "the principles therein advocated are the safest and most practicable that can be applied to our disordered domestic affairs;" that "no State or number of States confederated together can in any manner sunder their connection with the Federal Union;" and that "the President is entitled to the thanks of Congress and the country for his faithful, wise and successful efforts to restore civil government, law and order to the States lately in rebellion." Mr. Voorhees made an exhaustive speech in support of these resolutions, indicating very plainly the purpose of the Democratic party to combine in support of the President. He was answered promptly and eloquently, though not without some display of temper, by Mr. Bingham of Ohio, who at the close of his speech moved a substitute for the series of propositions made by Mr. Voorhees—simply declaring that "this House has an abiding confidence in the President, and that in the future as in the past, he will co-operate with Congress in restoring to equal position and rights with the other States in the Union, the States lately in insurrection."

Up to this period there had been no outbreak of the Republican party against the President. There had been coolness and general distrust, with resentment and anger on the part of many, but the hope of his co-operation with the party had not yet been entirely abandoned. Mr. Bingham's resolution represented this hope, if not expectation, but the Republican members of the House were not willing to make so emphatic a declaration of their confidence as that resolution would imply; and when Mr. Bingham demanded the previous question he was interrupted by Mr. Stevens, who suggested that the whole subject be referred to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. Mr. Bingham changed his motion accordingly; and the roll being called, the series of resolutions offered by Mr. Voorhees, with the substitute of Mr. Bingham, were sent to the Committee on Reconstruction by 107 ayes against 32 noes. Mr. Raymond and his colleague, Mr. William A. Darling, were the only Republicans who voted with the Democrats. The act was simple in a parliamentary sense, but its significance was unmistakable. A House, four-fifths of whose members were Republicans, had refused to pass a resolution expressing confidence in the President who, fourteen months before, had received the vote of every Republican in the Nation. From that day, January 9th, 1866, the relation of the dominant party in Congress to the President was changed. It may not be said that all hope of reconciliation was abandoned, but friendly co-operation to any common end became extremely difficult.

Mr. Raymond was bitterly disappointed. Few members had ever entered the House with greater personal prestige or with stronger assurance of success. He had come with a high ambition—an ambition justified by his talent and training. He had come with the expectation of a Congressional career as successful as that already achieved in his editorial life. But he met a defeat which hardly fell short of a disaster. He had made a good reply to Mr. Stevens, had indeed gained much credit by it, and when he returned home for the holidays he had reason to believe that he had made a brilliant beginning in the parliamentary field. But the speech of Mr. Shellabarger had destroyed his argument, and had given a rallying-point for the Republicans, so incontestably strong as to hold the entire party in allegiance to principle rather than in allegiance to the Administration. If any thing had been needed to complete Mr. Raymond's discomfiture after the speech of Mr. Shellabarger, it was supplied in the speech of Mr. Voorhees. He had been ranked among the most virulent opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, had been bitterly denunciatory of the war policy of the Government, and was regarded as a leader of that section of the Democratic party to which the most odious epithets of disloyalty had been popularly applied. Mr. Raymond, in speaking of the defeat, always said that he could have effected a serious division in the ranks of Republican members if he could have had the benefit of the hostility of Mr. Voorhees and other anti-war Democrats.