same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came-shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword; as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Reconstruction.

By HENRY WINTER DAVIS, of Maryland.

(Born 1817, died 1865.)

HAT is the nature of this case with which we have to deal, the evil we must remedy, the danger we must avert? In other words, what is that monster of political wrong which is called secession? It is not, Mr. Speaker, domestic violence, within the meaning of that clause of the Constitution; for the violence was the act of the people of those States through their Governments, and was the offspring of their free and unforced will. It is not invasion, in the meaning of the Constitution; for no State has been invaded against the will of the Government of the State by any power except the United States marching to overthrow the usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, the act of the people of the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act. And, therefore, it must be either a legal revolution, which makes them independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country; or it is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection of Governments which do not recognize the Constitution of the United States, which the Constitution does not recognize, and, therefore, not republican governments of the States in rebellion. The latter is the view which all parties take of it. I do not understand that any gentleman on the other side of the House says that any rebel Government which does not recognize the Constitution of the United States, and which is not recognized by Congress, is a State Government within the meaning of the Constitution. Still less can it be said that there is a State Government, republican or unrepublican, in the State of Tennessee, where there is no Government of any kind, no civil authority, no organized form of administration except that represented by the flag of the United States, obeying the will and under the orders of the military officer in command. * * Those that are here represented are the only Governments existing within the limits of the United States. Those that are not here represented are not Governments of the States, republican under

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the Constitution. And if they be not, then they are military usurpations, inaugurated as the permanent Governments of the States, contrary to the supreme law of the land, arrayed in arms against the Government of the United States; and it is the duty, the first and highest duty, of the Government to suppress and expel them. Congress must either expel or recognize and support them. If it does not guarantee them, it is bound to expel them; and they who are not ready to suppress are bound to recognize them.

We are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of the authority of the State Governments. When that shall have been accomplished, there will be no form of State authority in existence which Congress can recognize. Our success will be the overthrow of all semblance of government in the rebe! States. The Government of the United States is then, in fact, the only government existing in those States, and it is there charged to guarantee them republican governments.

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaranteeing a republican government confer under such circumstances upon Congress? What right does it give? What laws may it pass? What objects may it accomplish? What conditions may it insist upon, and what judgment may it exercise in determining what it will do? The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right to pass all laws necessary and proper to guarantee. The duty of guaranteeing means the duty to accomplish the result. It means that the republican government shall exist. It means that every opposition to republican government shall be put down. means that everything inconsistent with the permanent continuance of republican government shall be weeded out. It' places in the hands of Congress to say what is and what is not with all the light of experience and all the lessons of the past inconsistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance of republican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy is radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and enduring peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of republican government and it have. the manliness to say so there is no power, judicial or executive, in the United States that can even question this judgment of the people; and they can do it only by sending other Representatives here to undo our work. The very language of the Constitution, and the necessary logic of the case, involve that consequence. The denial of the right of secession means that all the territory of the United States shall remain under the jurisdiction of the Constitution. If there can be no State Government which does not recognize the Constitution, and which the authorities of the United States do not recognize, then there are these alternatives, and these only: the rebel States must be governed by Congress till they submit and form a State Government under the Constitution; or

Congress must recognize State Governments which do not recognize either Congress or the Constitution of the United States; or there must be an entire absence of all government in the rebel States and that is anarchy. To recognize a Government which does not recognize the Constitution is absurd, for a Government is not a Constitution; and the recognition of a State Government means the acknowledgment of men as governors and legislators and judges, actually invested with power to make laws, to judge of crimes, to convict the citizens of other States, to demand the surrender of fugitives from justice, to arm and command the militia, to require the United States to repress all opposition to its authority, and to protect it against invasion—against our own armies; whose Senators and Representatives are entitled to seats in Congress, and whose electoral votes must be counted in the election of the President of a Government which they disown and defy. To accept the alternative of anarchy as the constitutional condition of a State is to assert the failure of the Constitution and the end of republican government. Until, therefore, Congress recognize a State Government, organized under its auspices, there is no Government in the rebel States except the authority of Congress. * * When military opposition shall have been suppressed, not merely paralyzed, driven into a corner, pushed back, but gone, the horrid vision of civil war vanished from the South, then call upon the people to reorganize in their own way, subject to the conditions that we think essential to our permanent peace, and to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion — a republican government in the form that the people of the United States can agree to.

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Now, for that purpose there are three modes indicated. One is to remove the cause of the war by an alteration of the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting slavery everywhere within its limits. That, sir, goes to the root of the matter, and should consecrate the nation's triumph. But there are thirtyfour States; three-fourths of them would be twenty-six. I believe there are twenty-five States represented in this Congress; so that we on that basis cannot change the Constitution. It is, therefore, a condition precedent in that view of the case that more States shall have governments organized within them. If it be assumed that the basis of calculation shall be three-fourths of the States now represented in Congress, I agree to that construction of the Constitution. * But, under any circumstances, even upon that basis it will be difficult to find three-fourths of the States with New Jersey, or Kentucky, or Maryland, or Delaware, or other States that might be mentioned, opposed to it, under existing auspices to adopt such a clause of the Constitution after we shall have agreed to it. If adopted it still leaves all laws necessary to the ascertainment of the will of the people, and all restrictions on the return to power of the

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