ourselves vastly more than we are injuring those whom we defraud. I say that the inequality of rights before the law, which is now a part of our system, is more dangerous to us than to the black man whom it disfranchises. It is like a foreign substance in the body, a thorn in the flesh; it will wound and disease the body politic.

I remember that this question of suffrage caused one of the greatest civil wars in the history of Rome. Ninety years before Christ, when Rome was near the climax of her glory, just before the dawn of the Augustan age, twelve peoples of Italy, to whom the franchise was denied, rose in rebellion against Rome; and after three years and ten months of bloody war they compelled Rome to make her first capitulation for three hundred years. For three hundred years the Roman eagle had been carried triumphantly over every battle-field; but when iron Rome, with all her pride and glory, met men who were fighting for the right of suffrage, she was compelled to succumb, and give the ballot to the twelve peoples to save herself from dissolution. Let us learn wisdom from that lesson, and extend the suffrage to people who may one day bring us more disaster than foreign or domestic war has yet done.

I must refer for a moment to the proposition of my friend from Connecticut, who asks us to imbed in the imperishable bulwarks of the Constitution an amendment that will forbid. secession in the future. I want no such change of the Constitution. The Rebels never had, by the Constitution, the right to secede. If we have not settled that question by war, it can never be settled by a court. The court of war is higher than any other tribunal. As the Governor of Ohio has so well said, "These things have been decided in the dread court of last resort for peoples and nations. By as much as the shock of armed hosts is more grand than the intellectual tilt of lawyers, as the God of battles is a more awful judge than any earthly court, by so much does the dignity of this contest and the finality of this decision exceed that of any human tribunal." I care not what provision might be in the Constitution; if any States of this Union desire to rebel and break up the Union, and are able to do it, they will do it in spite of the Constitution. All I want, therefore, is so to amend our Constitution and administer our laws as to secure liberty and loyalty among the citizens of the Rebel States.

1 Mr. Deming.

I am not among those who believe that all men in the South are enemies in the eye of the law. Their property was enemy's property" when it was transported and used contrary to the laws of the government; but all are not therefore enemies of the government. Judge Sprague, in the Amy Warwick case,1 distinctly declared that they were only enemics in a technical sense; and in reference to property, Justice Nelson, in 1862, declared distinctly that men who resided within the limits of the rebellious States were not therefore to be considered as enemies. He distinctly declared that the question of their property being enemy's property depended upon the use made of it. If the attempt was made to take and transport the property in opposition to law, then it fell under the technical category of enemy's property, and not otherwise. I take it for granted that the farm of Andrew Johnson, in Tennessee, was never enemy's property. If he had undertaken to violate the revenue laws in the use of his property, it would have become such.

I remember that the long range of mountains stretching from Western Virginia, through Tennessee and Georgia, to the sandhills of Mississippi, stood like a promontory in the fiery ruin with which the Rebellion had involved the republic. I remember that East Tennessee, with its loyal thousands, stood like a rock in the sea of treason. I remember that thirty-five thousand brave men from Tennessee stood beside us to assist in putting down the Rebellion. They are not enemies of the country, and never were; and it is cruelly wicked, by any fiction of the law, to call them so. To those patriotic men of Tennessee let me say, I want you to show that there is behind you a loyal State government, based on the will of loyal people, and that districts of loyal constituents have sent you here. When you do that, you shall have my vote in favor of your admission. But the burden of proof is on your shoulders.

Mr. Speaker, let us learn a lesson from the dealings of God with the Jewish nation. When his chosen people, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, had crossed the Red Sea and traversed the gloomy wilderness with its thundering Sinai, its bloody battles, disastrous defeats, and glorious victories, when near the end of their perilous pilgrimage they listened to the last words of blessing and warning from their great leader, before he was buried with immortal honors by the angel of the Lord, when at last the victorious host, sadly joyful, stood on the banks

1 2 Sprague's Decisions, 123.

of the Jordan, their enemies drowned in the sea or slain in the wilderness, they paused, and, having reviewed the history of God's dealings with them, made solemn preparation to pass over and possess the land of promise. By the command of God, given through Moses and enforced by his great successor, the ark of the covenant, containing the tables of the Law and the sacred memorials of their pilgrimage, was borne by chosen men two thousand cubits in advance of the people. On the farther shore stood Ebal and Gerizim, the mounts of cursing and blessing, from which, in the hearing of all the people, were pronounced the curses of God against injustice and disobedience, and his blessing upon justice and obedience. On the shore, between the mountains and in the midst of the people, a monument was erected, and on it was written the words of the law, "to be a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever and ever." Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have left our three hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, — to "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." When we spurned his counsels, we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now, at last, we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the "irreversible guaranties" of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written, not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen!

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AMERICAN SHIPPING.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 1, 1866, AND MAY 25, 1870.

PENDING a bill providing that no ship or vessel which had been recorded or registered as an American vessel pursuant to law, and which had afterward been licensed or otherwise authorized to sail under a foreign flag or the protection of a foreign government during the existence of the rebellion, should be deemed or registered as an American vessel, or should have the rights and privileges of American vessels, except under an act of Congress authorizing such registry, Mr. Garfield made the following remarks, February 1, 1866.

R. SPEAKER, - Without having examined carefully the navigation laws of this country, I have looked into them enough to be satisfied of one or two things, which I desire to suggest to this House before the vote is taken on the passage of this bill.

In the first place, we have navigation laws borrowed from those monuments of tyranny, the Navigation Laws of Great Britain, which, more than any other laws ever enacted by Parliament, were the cause of the American Revolution. Among other features of these laws is one that forbids the buying of a vessel from a foreign country and sailing it under our flag, if it is a foreign bottom, no matter how cheaply we may purchase it, or under what circumstances we may obtain it. Unless we ourselves lay out upon it more money than the original cost of building the bottom abroad, we cannot sail it under the American flag. That, of course, shuts out all foreign-built vessels, however valuable they may be at any time. But I am not discussing that subject now, nor will I enter into a consideration of it at this time.

The question now under consideration is this. During this great war, when we were unable to protect our shipping on the

high seas, to protect our ships sailing under our own flag, there were many patriotic American citizens who simply registered their vessels for sailing under a foreign flag, that they might carry on their commerce without having their property destroyed by the pirates infesting the seas: Now, when eight hundred thousand tons of American shipping has thus been transferred by registry or by sale to foreign flags, it is proposed that none of it shall ever be registered again with the rights and privileges of American vessels, except by express act of Congress. One fifth of our tonnage has left us, and by this bill will be wholly excluded from our merchant marine.

Now, one gentleman has spoken of these vessels as deserters in the same way precisely that we speak of deserters from our army. I care far more about our tonnage on the sea than I care about the individual shipper who took a register under a foreign flag. It is not now a question with me what the status of the shipper himself may be. I do not propose to injure all the interests of our merchant marine for the purpose of spiting a few of our speculators. It seems to me it would show a great want of proper policy on our part to do so.

MR. LYNCH. What I did say was this: that it would be impolitic for any government to encourage the desertion of its citizens with their property during a period of war, those citizens identifying their interests for the time being with the interests of the enemy. My remarks had no reference whatever to "skippers." I did say, and I now repeat, that every man who, during the war, put his vessel under a foreign flag identified his interests with those of the foreigners who were assisting in the destruction of our commerce; and if we encourage such desertion, and pay a premium upon it, some of our citizens will always desert us with their property in time of war. I hold that we should not give encouragement to conduct of this sort.

Mr. Speaker, if in time of war I own a piece of property which I cannot keep safe in this country, and the keeping of which will ruin me pecuniarily, I ask whether the Congress of my country should prohibit me from selling that property to foreigners, or, if I have sold it, prohibit me from repurchasing it and using it here where I first acquired that property? If I sell to a Canadian, or any other foreigner, an engine which I own, and which I have used perhaps to operate a saw-mill on the Ohio, is it right that I should be prohibited from repurchas1 Mr. Lynch, of Maine.