History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech, "but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on the part of the American people to defend themselves.

"I do not desire war; but as one American citizen, I do prefer war to cowardly submission and total destruction of the fundamental principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, nothing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded upon the bloody battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the American people again."

"Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, "that in this Congress we can find men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the right of trial by jury, the great privilege of habeas corpus; men who are willing to reverse the axiom that the military should be subordinate to the civil power, and to establish the abhorred doctrine resisted by the brave and free men of every age, that the military should be superior to the civil authority?"

"It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, "that the change proposed to be made by this bill in the management of the Southern States is so violent as gentlemen on the other side would have us suppose. They seem to believe that now the people of those States govern themselves; but the truth is, since the suppression of the rebellion, that is, since the surrender of the rebel armies in 1865, the government of those States have been virtually in the hands of the President of the United States.

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States from the people to the officers of the army, but only from the President to those officers."

Mr. Farnsworth, who next addressed the House, gave numerous authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated by rebels upon Union soldiers and citizens. "It is no longer a question of doubt," said he, "it can not be denied that the loyal men, the Union soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized and disloyal States are not protected. They are murdered with impunity; they are despoiled of their goods and their property; they are banished, scattered, driven from the country."

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic language. "You will carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at all to be compared."

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. "Free government," said he, "brought him from a poor boy to as great a man as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washington and will yet receive it. He will not submit to have the citadel of liberty invaded and destroyed without using the civil and military powers to prevent it. He will maintain the Constitution, sir, even to the spilling of blood."

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord with his theory by substituting the phrase "the said States" for the words "so-called States." He also proposed some limitation of the extent to which the habeas corpus should be suspended. "When these men," said he, "shall have fulfilled their obligations" and when the great people themselves shall have put, by their own rightful authority, into the fundamental law the sublime decree, the nation's will, that no State shall deny to any mortal man the equal protection of the laws—not of the laws of South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State, and above all, sir, of the great law, the Constitution of our own country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to Oregon, and from Maine to Florida—then, sir, by assenting thereto those States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, I labor and for that I strive."

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, "is to be left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the color of authority they exercise under illegal but de facto State governments to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them any protection against murder and all the wrongs that rebels can inflict on loyal men, we can not, dare not refuse to pass this bill."