the future. They have proposed that it shall be a part of the Constitution,

Ist. That no State shall deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

2d. That the representation of any State in Congress shall be determined by the ratio which the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, who are entitled by the laws thereof to vote, bears to the whole number of such citizens in the State. So that just in proportion as the right of suffrage is extended to the male citizens twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or is restricted, shall the representation be increased or diminished.

3d. That no person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States, or a legislative, executive, or judicial officer of a State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof; but Congress may, by a vote of two thirds of each House, remove such disability.

4th. The public debt of the United States shall never be repudiated, and the Rebel debt shall never be paid.

5th. Congress shall have power to enforce these provisions by appropriate legislation.

These propositions appeal to the common and moral sense of the nation, as every way worthy to become a part of our fundamental law. They are conditions with which any State lately in rebellion can comply without humiliation or disgrace; which no State, if sincere in its professions of returning loyalty, would hesitate to adopt. These conditions were cheerfully adopted by the loyal men of Tennessee, though the President, seconded by the Rebels in that State, made every possible effort to prevent it, and Congress immediately declared that State entitled to representation, and the members elect were admitted to their seats. These conditions embraced in the Constitutional Amendment, and proposed to the late Rebel States, form the Congressional policy. Whenever any other of the sinful eleven complies with the same conditions, it can come in as did Tennessee.

And now, fellow-citizens, the two policies are before you. It is for you to determine which shall be adopted as the basis of

restoration and peace. In the settlement of these great issues, you must vote with one of two parties, for there can be no third party. The President has joined the Democratic party, and that has joined with the Rebels of the South. The great Union party and its glorious army kept the two parties apart for four years and a half; we fired bullets to the front and ballots to the rear; we conquered them both in the field and at the polls; but now that our army is withdrawn, the two wings are reunited. They joined in Philadelphia, and Andrew Johnson is their leader. The great Union party now stands face to face with the motley crew. With which will you cast in your lot, fellow-citizens?

Remember the noble history of the Union party. No party ever had so proud a record. The Union party saved the republic from the most powerful and bloody conspiracy ever formed since Satan fell from heaven. It broke the shackles from the limbs of four million slaves, and redeemed the fair fame of the nation. It carried its arms to victory on a thousand battlefields. It scattered every army that bore a Rebel banner. It has enrolled among its members the old Republican party of freedom; all the loyal Democrats who followed Douglas, or loved their country more than their party; all the soldiers who suffered and conquered. The two hundred and fifty thousand heroes who fell on the field of honor were Union men, and, could they rise from their bloody graves to-day, would vote with the Union party.

The Democratic party is composed of all who conspired to destroy the republic, and of all those who fought to make treason triumphant. It broke ten thousand oaths, and to its perjury added murder, starvation, and assassination. It declared through its mouthpieces in Ohio, in 1861, that if the Union men of Ohio should ever attempt to enter a Southern State to suppress the Rebellion by arms, they must first pass over the dead bodies of two hundred thousand Ohio Democrats. In the mid-fury of the struggle it declared the war a failure, and demanded a cessation of hostilities. In the Democratic party is enrolled every man who led a Rebel army or voluntarily carried a Rebel musket; every man who resisted the draft, who called the Union soldiers "Lincoln's hirelings,' "negro worshippers," or any other vile name. Booth, Wirz, Harold, and Payne were Democrats. Every Rebel guerilla and jayhawker, every man who ran to Canada to avoid the draft,

every bounty-jumper, every deserter, every cowardly sneak that ran from danger and disgraced his flag, every man who loves slavery and hates liberty, every man who helped massacre loyal negroes at Fort Pillow, or loyal whites at New Orleans, every Knight of the Golden Circle, every incendiary who helped burn Northern steamboats and Northern hotels, and every villain, of whatever name or crime, who loves power more than justice, slavery more than freedom, is a Democrat and an indorser of Andrew Johnson.

Fellow-citizens, I cannot doubt the issue of such a contest. I have boundless faith in the loyal people, and I beseech you, by all the proud achievements of the past five years, by the immortal memories of the heroic dead, by the love you bore to the starved and slaughtered thousands who perished for their country and are sleeping in unknown graves, by all the high and holy considerations of loyalty, justice, and truth, to pause not in the work you have begun till the Union, crowned with victory and established by justice, shall enter upon its high career of freedom and peace.

RECONSTRUCTION.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS.

THE Scheme of Reconstruction proposed by the joint committee of the two houses consisted of the Fourteenth Amendment, and two bills, entitled, "A Bill to provide for restoring the States lately in Insurrection to their full Political Rights," and "A Bill declaring certain Persons ineligible to Office under the Government of the United States." The first of these bills proposed that whenever the Fourteenth Amendment should become part of the Constitution of the United States, and any State lately in insurrection should have ratified the same, and should have modified its Constitution and laws in conformity therewith, the Senators and Representatives from such State, if found duly elected and qualified, might after having taken the required oaths of office, be admitted into Congress as such. The other bill requires no analysis. Neither one of these bills was voted upon. Accordingly, the Fourteenth Amendment alone was the Congressional plan of reconstruction, in 1866; and, as Mr. Garfield states in several of his speeches, the State political campaigns of that year were conducted by the Republicans upon that platform.

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In the mean time the Amendment had gone to the States for their action. When Congress met in December, 1866, this was the view presented all of the Rebel States but Tennessee had rejected the Amendment; Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky had likewise rejected it; twenty-one States had ratified it, and three had taken no action. The States lately in rebellion took their action, as Mr. Garfield says more than once, under the lead of President Johnson, and by the consent of the Democratic party. More than a year before, the States had been “reconstructed" according to the ideas of the President, and fully organized and equipped. State governments were now in existence and in operation in all those States.

The next step that the Republicans took was to bring forward and carry through Congress the so-called "Military Reconstruction Measures"; namely, " An Act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States," March 2, 1867, and the "Supplemental Recon

struction Act," March 23, 1867. These acts, both of which were carried over the President's veto, swept away the so-called State governments in the ten States, divided them up into military districts, each under a general of the United States army, established a military government, and made the restoration of the States conditional upon the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the acceptance, so far as the ten States were concerned, of negro suffrage. These acts, together with the various supplemental acts passed from time to time, contain the plan upon which the reconstruction of the ten States was finally effected.

The Reconstruction Act proper, March 2, 1867, entitled, “An Act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States," having declared in its preamble that "no legal State government, or adequate protection for life or property, now exists in the Rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas," and that "it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established," went on to enact: (1.) "That said Rebel States shall be divided into [five] military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States." (2.) That the President shall "assign to the command of each of said districts an officer of the army not below the rank of brigadier-general," to be supported by a sufficient military force. (3.) That it shall be the duty of said officer "to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence,” etc. (4.) That all persons put under military arrest shall "be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or unusual punishment be inflicted." (5.) "That when the people of any one of said Rebel States shall have formed a constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, . . . . and when such constitution shall be ratified, . . . . and when such constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of its legislature elected under said constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and known as Article Fourteen, and when said article shall have become a part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oaths prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State." (6.) "That until the people of said Rebel States shall be by law admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States, any civil governments which may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only." Such was the framework of this law: the provisions concerning the qualifications of delegates and of electors