History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"Another of the consequences of this doctrine, as it seems to me, would be our inability to talk of loyal men in the South. Loyal to what? Loyal to a foreign, independent Power, as the United States would become under those circumstances? Certainly not. Simply disloyal to their own Government, and deserters, or whatever you may choose to call them, from that to which they would owe allegiance, to a foreign and independent State.

"Now, there is another consequence of the doctrine which I shall not dwell upon, but simply suggest. If that confederacy was an independent Power, a separate nation, it had the right to contract debts; and we, having overthrown and conquered that independent Power, according to the theory of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, would become the successors, the inheritors, of its debts and assets, and we must pay them."

Mr. Raymond set forth his theory of the conditions and relations of the late rebel States in the following language: "I certainly do not think these States are to be dealt with by us as provinces—as simply so much territory—held to us by no other ties than those of conquest. I think we are to deal with them as States having State governments, still subject to the jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws of the United States, still under the constitutional control of the National Government; and that in our dealings with them we are to be guided and governed, not simply by our sovereign will and pleasure as conquerors, but by the restrictions and limitations of the Constitution of the United States, precisely as we are restrained and limited in our dealings with all other States of the American Union."

In answer to the question how we are to deal with the late rebel States, Mr. Raymond remarked: "I think we have a full and perfect right to require certain conditions in the nature of guarantees for the future, and that right rests, primarily and technically, on the surrender we may and must require at their hands. The rebellion has been defeated. A defeat always implies a surrender, and, in a political sense, a surrender implies more than the transfer of the arms used on the field of battle. It implies, in the case of civil war, a surrender of the principles and doctrines, of all the weapons and agencies, by which the war has been carried on. The military surrender was made on the field of battle, to our generals, as the agents and representatives of the Commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States.

"Now, there must be at the end of the war, a similar surrender on the political field of controversy. That surrender is due as an act of justice from the defeated party to the victorious party. It is due, also, and we have a right to exact it, as a guarantee for the future. Why do we demand the surrender of their arms by the vanquished in every battle? We do it that they may not renew the contest. Why do we seek, in this and all similar cases, a surrender of the principles for which they fought? It is that they may never again be made the basis of controversy and rebellion against the Government of the United States.

"Now, what are those principles which should be thus surrendered? The principle of State sovereignty is one of them. It was the corner-stone of the rebellion—at once its animating spirit and its fundamental basis. Deeply ingrained as it was in the Southern heart, it must be surrendered. The ordinances in which it was embodied must not only be repealed, the principle itself must be abandoned, and the ordinances, so far as this war is concerned, be declared null and void, and that declaration must be embodied in their fundamental constitutions."

The speech was here interrupted by Mr. Bingham, who insisted that the adoption of the principle in the State constitutions would not be sufficient guarantee. Adoption in the Constitution of the United States was essential to its permanent effective force.

Mr. Raymond thought the Constitution of the United States as plain as possible in its declaration against the doctrine of State sovereignty. If any more explicit denial could be got into the Constitution, he would favor it.

"Another thing," said Mr. Raymond, "to be surrendered by the defeated rebellion is the obligation to pay the rebel war debt. We have the right to require this repudiation of their debt, because the money represented by that debt was one of the weapons with which they carried on the war against the Government of the United States.

"There is another thing which we have the right to require, and that is the prohibition of slavery. We have the right to require them to do this, not only in their State constitutions, but in the Constitution of the United States. And we have required it, and it has been conceded. They have also conceded that Congress may make such laws as may be requisite to carry that prohibition into effect, which includes such legislation as may be required to secure for them protection of their civil and personal rights—their 'right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'"