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 SPEECH 
 
 ON. SAMUEL M C KEE, 
 
 OF KENTUCKY, 
 
 ON 
 
 HEOOISrST.RIJCTIOjSr. 
 
 .>' 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 3, 1866. 
 
 Mr. McKEE. I ask the Clerk to read the joint resolution which I send to 
 the Clerk's desk. 
 
 The Clerk read, as follows : 
 
 Joint resolution to amend the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting conspirators 
 and men who have been or shall be engaged in rebellion from holding certain offices. 
 Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in 
 Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both Houses concurring.) That the following amend- 
 ment to the Constitution be proposed to the several State Legislatures, which, when ratified 
 by three fourths of the several States, shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of 
 the Constitution : 
 
 Article — . No person shall be qualified or shall hold the office of President or Vice Presi- 
 dent of the United States, Senator or Representative in the national Congress, or any office 
 now held uuder appointment from the President of the United States and requiring the con- 
 firmation of the Senate, who has been or shall hereafter be engaged in any armed conspiracy 
 or rebellion against the Government of the United States, or who has held or shall hereafter 
 hold any office, either civil or military, under any pretended government er conspiracy set 
 up within the same; or who has voluntarily aided, or who shall hereafter voluntarily aid, 
 "abet, or encourage any conspiracy or rebellion against the Government of the United States. 
 
 Mr. McKEE. Mr. Speaker, it is my purpose at present to submit some re- 
 marks ou the proposition just read, i know, sir, that the country is excited, 
 agituted, and perplexed on the great question of reconstruction upon which all 
 men talk, and yet, sir, if we adopt the theory of certain persons, and of a cer- 
 tain party, the term is wholly inappropriate. These men tell us the work is 
 done ; nay more, that when the conflict of arms ceased that people who had 
 hurled war upon the land were and are to-day entitled to all the rights the 
 same as if they had for four years moved on in the smooth path of obedience 
 to law. If this be true, then why talk of reconstruction ? We are told again 
 by this same party and these same men that we have no need of constitutional 
 amendments, and he wh> proposes them and the party which advocates them 
 are denounced as men who seek to destroy the Government of our fathers. 
 
 Now, sir, how does the nation find herself to-day ? A great war has swept 
 over the land, a war set on foot and carried on by an armed conspiracy for the 
 avowed purpose of destroying the Union of the States secured to us by the 
 blood of our fathers. This war against the Union, against the Constitution, 
 against freedom, and in the interest of slavery, having failed in its purpose, 
 and the armed power of the conspirators having been crushed, at the end of the 
 great struggle it appears most fit and proper to examine the f. amework of our 
 Government, see if any of its parts have been shaken, if any have been broken 
 in by the storm, to take them out, put new ones in their places, remove the 
 rotten planks and put in new bulwarks against which the storm-cloud of trea- 
 son in future may dash its winds in vain. Even while the war raged the great 
 

 loyal heart of the nation when it discovered the rotten plank tore it out of the 
 ship of atate and east it forth into the sea of oblivion. Like a skillful physi- 
 cian we went right at the root of the disease, tore it from the side of tlie 
 patient who had groaned under its smart for almost a century, and cast it out 
 forever. Yes, forever ! for freedom's voice has recorded the verdict, " The 
 curse of slavery shall never blight this fair land again." One great work has 
 been accomplished even during the struggle with arms. At the end, what do 
 we need? We need to reconstruct the Government. Not that it has been de- 
 stroyed, but to adapt it to our charged condition, and to secure to the people 
 th<> rule of that Government they risked their all to save. 
 
 I care not to argue the question or discuss the theory as to whether the 
 States lately in rebellion are dead or living States; this is not material to my 
 purpose nor to the proposition which I submit. This much I will only say. 
 That eo far as the rebellion could, it destroyed their State goverrments, and 
 certainly while it held control over the eleven seceded States claimed by the 
 now defuncted confederacy they had no State governments which the Con- 
 stitution of the United States and the power which administered it recoguized 
 as legal. Men may cry out until the end of time, "Once a State always a 
 State," but that cry will prove nothing, and cannot conceal the fact that their 
 legal governments were overthrown. The structure- set up for them by the 
 Constitution arid laws of the United States were thrown down. Disloyal ones 
 and governments foreign to our laws took their places. At the end of the 
 war these disloyal and foreign ^tat.e organizations are swept out of existence. 
 New governments must be given the people of these States. In the absence 
 of Congress th<- executive head of the nation begins the work. Has he any 
 power given him under our laws to create a civil government for any State ? 
 Yet in all these States he pulls down whom he wills and sets up whom he de- 
 sires. What provision of the Constitution or what law of Congress authorizes 
 him to appoint a provisional governor for a State? What power does he de- 
 rive from our theory of civil government to prescribe an oath for a voter and 
 make a franchise law for a State ? By what authority does he say to a Legis- 
 lature of a 'soverign State," you must ratify certain constitutional amend- 
 ments before I can accept you as being in your proper relations with the Union 
 over which I preside? Upon what law does he proceed to order a conven- 
 tion to remodel the constitution of a State which never lost its power and say 
 to that convention when assembled, you must repudiate your war debt, you 
 muct abolish slavery, before you can resume your place in the Union again ? 
 
 I make no war upon the President for these acts. These are questions for 
 his newly acquired supporters to reconcile to themselves. But I would scorn 
 to accept the most costly jewels of earth handed over into my hands by one 
 who had plucked them illegally and unlawfully from the head which wore 
 them. By the law martial he exercised these acts. For myself I found no fault 
 with them at the time, except that they perhaps fell short; but I do contend 
 that all these acts are matters that the representatives of the people, the national 
 Congress, has the right to pass upon, and that it belongs to them to determine 
 when and how these States shall again resume their proper relations in the 
 Union. 
 
 Their structures, then, having been thrown down, we must see that they are 
 set up again ; and in doing this, oppression, wrong, injustice, cruel laws, every- 
 thing which stands in freedom's pathway, must be buried with the dead of the 
 conspiracy. The great, mad scheme of armed treason having failed ; the 
 death-stroke aimed at the nation having been thrust back and in the midst of 
 war having cast out a great disturbing element, we want protection such as 
 will be a guarantee for the future ; such guarantees as will say to those who 
 sought the nation's death, you cannot seize the helm and guide the ship of state 
 again. We want, and the loyal people of the land demand, such action here 
 as will secure to us in peace the triumph we have obtained in war. 
 
 Daily almost we are told on this floor and all over the country that the law 
 which says no man who cannot take the oath commonly called the ''test oath" is 
 unconstitutional, that it is a disgrace to a free people — ay, sir. it does disgrace 
 traitors — that we had no authority to pass it, and that we have no power 
 under the Constitution to enforce it ; that red-handed traitors, if they have taken 
 
an oath to support the Constitution, have as much right to come into this Cap- 
 itol and legislate for the people a* the gallant soldier who bore the flag of his 
 country amid the smoke and thunder of the battle, and crushed out by war 
 these men who sought the life of the Republic; that these betrayers of their 
 country have equal rights and are to stand in future side by side in equal honor 
 and esteem with the war-worn veterans of four long weary years of toil and 
 battle to save the nation from destruc ion. Go tell it to these men, and they 
 will hurl it back with such scorn as will wither him who dare assert it in their 
 presence. Go tell it to the survivors of the twelve thousand heroes who in 
 the low, flat marsh of Belle Isle, passed the terrible winter of 1863 and 1864. 
 and the ghosts of the starved and freezing dead of that pen of misery will 
 confront you with the living heroes; and if shame itself does not compel you 
 to call back the assertion, then you have not the heart of a man. Go tell it to 
 the twelve hundred, who in the'same winter looked out through the iron bars 
 of "old LibbyV gloomy walls, and in sight of boxes piled up across the street, 
 stored for them by the loved ones at home with all the necesssaries of life, 
 starved and sickened for food, that the men who thus insulted them through 
 those iron bars, tauuted them and stole from them the bread for lack of which 
 so many died, are to be their lawgivers in future, and you change humanity if 
 ycu are not rebuked. Go tell it in the homes, once happy and bright, of the 
 sixty thousand starved soldiers who died in loathsome and foul prison-pens, 
 that the men committed these terrible crimes aejainst them, against humanity 
 and God, must make laws for the widow and orphan of the dead, and if your 
 heart is not seared and c >ld as death, you will see the ghosts of their lean and 
 wasted forms rise up before you and hear their sepulchral voices crying, " Back, 
 back, back ! Hide yourself along with the traitor whose cause you come to 
 plead." 
 
 If the present law which prevents these men seizing the best place and all 
 Federal offices is unauthorized and unconstitutional, then there is need that we 
 make constitutional provision itself which will say to them, " Having failed by 
 arms in your purpose to rule, you must be ruled herafter by the loyal men who 
 defeated your mad and wicked design." Let us make the substance of this law 
 a part of the Constitution itself, and then the great triumph is secured to the 
 people, that those, and those only, who are true to the nation, and who fight 
 against treason, shall have the reward given them to rule the land, and by this 
 prove that the hundreds of thousands who have gone down to their graves in 
 the death-grapple with treason have not died in vain. 
 
 Again, treason by law is declared a crime. The present head of the nation 
 has uttered the sentiment over and over again in every position he has held 
 during the war, from that of a private citizen even up to the very exalted posi- 
 tion he now holds. Shall a crime go unpunished ? Shall men guilty of this 
 the greatest of all crimes against the State, and those who are its guilty actors, 
 go free ? Shall they in future be regarded as on an equal footing with those 
 who for more than four long years perilled their lives in defense of the liberties 
 which these men sought to destroy ? Shall they be permitted, simply upon 
 taking an oath to the Constitution of the United States, to come back into 
 these Halls, from which, when they took their voluntary departure, thev swore 
 in their wrath they never would return, to stand here again and legislate for 
 the widow and orphan of the brave men whose lives were sacrificed by the in- 
 sane attempt of these men to destroy all that is great and good on the conti- 
 nent of America? Is this the punishment treason is to have meted out to it? 
 Is this what the President of the United States meant when he declared that 
 treason is a crime and must be punished? Is this the meaning of his declara- 
 tion of March 2, 1861, in the other end of this Capitol — 
 
 "Show me who has been engaged in these conspiracies, who has fired upon onr flae, 
 who has given instructions to take our forts and custom-houses and arsenals an. dock- 
 yards, and [ will show you a traitor. Were I President of the United States I would do as 
 Thomas Jefferson did in ISOtJ with Aaron Burr. I would have them arrested, and if con- 
 victed within the meaning and scope of the law, by the eternal God, I would execute 
 them " 
 
 Hear another declaration from the same voice as late as April 20, 1865, only 
 six days after the conspirators of treason had struck down by assination Abra- 
 ham Lincoln : 
 
" It is time the American people should be taught to understand that treason is a crime 
 —not in revenge, not in anger, but that treason is a crime, and should be esteemed as such 
 and punished as such." 
 
 Again, sir, I make no attack upon the President. I indose every word in 
 the two quotations which I have read, and agaiu I leave it to the unhung 
 rebels, the unpardoned traitors, the anti-war party at the North, who make 
 up the great mass of the new supporters of the President, to reconcile these 
 sentiments with the support they now extend. 
 
 In 1 his connection I know I will be pardoned for observirg that an evening 
 journal of this city, which has kept these declarations at its masthead in flam- 
 ing capitals for many months, has, since the extraordinary scenes in this capi- 
 tal of the 22d of last month, struck them out altogether. Are these declara- 
 tions to be withdrawn ? Are we to lose sight of them ? Sir, I pray God the 
 people will not forget them, but that they will proclaim them with a voice so 
 loud and deep that it will bring back the nation to the Bound, and thunder it 
 into the ear9 of power uatil they compel their fulfillment, at least upon the 
 chiefs of the conspiracy. 
 
 But let me quote once more, and let the people think over this language 
 when they view what has followed upon the close of the war. On the 10th 
 of June, 1864, at Nashville, we find the President use this langauge. For 
 language similar to this, used by members upon this floor, such members have 
 been denounced by those who now clamor for the President and his policy as 
 traitors and disunionists : 
 
 '• But, in calling a convention to restore the State, who shall restore and re-establish it ? 
 Shall the man who gave his influence and means to destoy the Government? Is he to par- 
 ticipate in the great work of reorganization ? shail he who brought this misery upon the 
 State be permitted to control its destinies? If this be so, then all this precious blood of 
 our hrave soldiers and officers, so ireely poured out, will have been wantonly spilled. All 
 the glorious victories by our noble armies will go for naught, and all the battle-fields which 
 have been sown with dead heroes during this rebellion will have been made memorable in 
 vain. Why all this carnage and devastation 1 It was that treason might be put down and 
 trailers punished Therefore I say that traitors should take aback seat in the work of 
 restoration. If there be but five thousand men in Tennessee loyal to the Constitution, loyal 
 to freedom or loyal to justice, these true and faithful men should control the work of reorgan- 
 ization and reformation absolutely. I say that the traitor has ceaBed to be a citizen, and in 
 joining the rebellion has become a public enemy." * * * " Before these 
 
 repenting rebels t an be trusted, let tb.3m bring lorth rhe fruits of repentance." 
 
 And he added : 
 
 ' ' And these leaders must feel the power of the Government. Treason must be made odi- 
 ous and traitors must be impoverished. Their great plantations must be seized and divided 
 into small farms and sold to honest, industrious men.'' 
 
 Let us see how these utterances have been followed. Have traitors a back 
 seat in the restoration of the Slates recently in rebellion ? Who is Governor 
 of the State of Mississippi? Benjamin .T. Humphreys, elected even before he 
 had his pardon in his pocket. Who of North Carolina? Jonathan Worth, 
 who beat Tlolden, whose loyalty to the South was such that the soldiers of 
 Jeff. Davis threw his printing press into ihe street. Who of the State of South 
 Carolina ? James L. Orv, who was a leader in the rebel congress. Who ruled 
 their conventions in their reorganization? Men fresh fronTthe rebel armies. 
 Who came knocking at the doors of these Halls for admission ? An unbroken 
 delegation of traitors from the Slates of South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama; 
 men who served as senators and representatives under that bastard concern of 
 Jeff. Davis. Even the unpardoned vice-president of the so-called confederacy 
 is sent as a Senator from the State of Georgia, and the sterling patriot Hill is 
 told we have no use for such men as you in Georgia, and she wants no such 
 representatives at the national capital. 
 
 Now, sir, we do not expect to hang all the traitors. The world affords no 
 parallel of a great conspiracy, such as we have had in this country, in which 
 nil the guilty actors suffered the penalty of the law. Eor myself, I shall be 
 satisfied if the President will carry out his declarations so far as to hang even 
 a few of the leading actors in this drama of blood ; but I will not be satisfied 
 to see these men and their sympathizers gain the triumph, when the war has 
 passed by the ballot which they failed to secure by the bayonet in the field. 
 
 Again, sir, we are told that we mu3t trust these people, these men who sought 
 
the life of the nation. We are told, now that they submit, that they are as loyal 
 as any people. Yes, we are told more than this ; we are now told that the men 
 who stood by the flat; of their country, and who defied treason in the darkest 
 hours of the Republic, and who now demand guarantees for the security of 
 their hard-earned labors ; and the representatives of these loyal people who 
 demand these guarantees, are dismnionists, traitors, disloyal men, and that we 
 are seeking to destroy the Government. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, if seeking to secure to those who resisted a great conspiracy, 
 and who defeated its aims, the control of the Government which their strong 
 arm has saved constitutes a disunionist, then I plead guilty to the charge. If 
 asking that traitors be punished, and have given to them the very modified 
 form of punishment which simply prohibits them from holding office under the 
 Government whose death they sought, then I hear upon me the mark of trai- 
 tor, and shall wear it to my grave as the prondest badge of honor my country 
 could bestow upon me. It to ask that the victory won by loyal arms be-se- 
 cured by a fundamental law to those who never faltered in their support of 
 the Union against armed foes, and that those foes in future shall not s'.and on 
 an equality with these brave men, then I am a disloyal man; but bear in mind, 
 sir, such a disloj'al man, such a traitor, such a disunionist as no law, no statute, 
 and no constitutional provision known in this Republic condemns either to 
 death, to exile, to imprisonment, or to disqualification from office. How stands 
 my case in comparison with the followers of Jefferson Davis? I leave the 
 country to judge as to who are the traitors. 
 
 The law defines treason as a crime and fixes the penalty ; but as no man 
 expects or desires, as history shows no case, and should not where all who 
 have engaged in such gigantic conspiracies have suffered the extreme penalty 
 of the law, and as the President himself has declared that treason is a crime, 
 must be punished, and traitors made odious, let us by this amendment punish 
 them for their crimes ; lut us make all -\ho have engaged in treason infamous 
 in the eyes of the law to all time by saying to them, you can neither make 
 laws nor can you administer them for the loyal people of this land. And 
 while I do think that the vindication of the power of the Government demands 
 the execution of certainly the leading traitors of the rebellion, justice to the 
 memory of the dead requires that their graves shall not be ruled over by men 
 who WHged a war against the nation in whose defense these heroes fell. 
 
 In my humble judgment, this is the safest and surest guarantee the nation 
 can have for the future. Men know when they enter a great conspiracy that 
 if it fails they will not have the extreme penalty of deatii inflicted upon them, 
 therefore they do not hesitate when it gets under way to enter it ; but let the 
 Constitution cut- them off forever fr^m all the offices of trust, honor, or profit, 
 and let this provision be enforced, and ambitious men will be slow to commit 
 an act which silences their voices in all that pertains to the great rights of 
 freemen forever. Let us adopt this amendment, and the men who have proved 
 unf ithfui, the men who made war upon us, can never assume control of this 
 Gcvernmeut again. Adopt this amendment, and you put the legal stamp of 
 condemnation upon them, and forever secure to the loyal the victory over 
 armt;d treason which the Army of the Union achieved and sealed by the blood 
 of more than three hundred thousand slain soldiers of the Republic. 
 
 Now, let us see how much these people are to be trusted. We must judge 
 the future by the past. What has been their past? Do they present such a 
 record as will justify this House, the Representatives of the people, the exec- 
 utive power, and the great loyal country which maintained the Government, 
 in trusting them? Their great leaders set in these Halls, held high places in 
 all departments of the Government, ond the most responsible positions in each 
 of the States which went into secession. Each and every one had sworn to 
 support the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the laws there- 
 under, and with this solemn oath resting upon their souls they plunged into a 
 rebellion having for its chief purpose the destruction of the very Government 
 they had thus pledged their honor to maintain. They then eagerly took a 
 second oath, and pledged their eternal support to a bogus confederacy in 
 direct antagonism to the Government of the United States. Four years roll 
 on — years of strife, of din and battle and war, in all its fury, by reason &i this 
 
treachery ; and theae same leaders, with their deluded followers echoing their 
 sentiments, pour out anathemas, and invectives against the freemen of the 
 North, swear and reswear and then swear once more that Ihey never will con- 
 sent to live under Federal power again ; that the war must go on until their 
 independence is achieved, or war forever; that they would continue until the 
 last of the race had gone down into bloody graves upon the battle-field rather 
 than yield ; that the honor of the sons of the South would carry on the strug- 
 gle until victory or death crowned their labors. 
 
 What has come of all their oaths; what of all their boasts; what of their 
 honor? They peijured themselves in their first oath of allegiance to the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States when they left our flag. Their boastings and 
 their honor fell back in terror, and presented a ghastly show before the ad- 
 vance of the grand Army of the Union as it swept on from Culpeper, through 
 the Wilderness, over the ramparts of Spotsylvania, across the Rapidan, and 
 thwndering at the gates of Petersburg, rolled its echoes to the rebel capital, 
 and made the great leader of treason tremble for his safety. Ay, sir, went 
 out of their souls as the heroes of liberty, with the grand shout of victory, 
 closed around their lines, and the ripling waters of the Appomattox told the 
 story, "Your vaunting words have failed." What scene do we witness then? 
 Not having taken oaths enough yet; not having pledged their honor suffi- 
 ciently often, they advance from their discomfiture, and faster than oaths can 
 be filled up, they swear anew to support the Constitution of the United States, 
 swear to support all laws of Congress and all proclamations made by the 
 President during the war in reference to slaves ; ay, further, swearing to sup- 
 port all that are to be made in future ; and having done this they coolly tell 
 us, " We are loyal men, we are to be trusted," and uniting with those who, 
 during the war, were their sympathizers in the North, and who aiding them 
 by attempts to baffle the Government, preaching against it, and denouncing it 
 as a tyranny and a usurpation, more than half fought their battles of treason. 
 Joined to a few recreants to the cause of their country and freedom, with 
 fawners at the foot of power, they have the effrontery to say to the Repre 
 sentatives of the nation in this Capitol, to the Representatives of that peo- 
 ple who crushed out treason, " You are traitors to your country if you deny 
 our right to rule." Ay, more, it is printed in their papers, not only South 
 but North, and their utterances whispered through excited crowds, led by 
 men who during the war were shut up in prison for their treason, "This 
 traitor Congress must be driven from the Halls of the nation's Capitol" if we 
 do not admit to our deliberations these unrepentant conspirators; these thrice- 
 perjured individuals; these men of honor! 
 
 And are we to be controlled by such threa f s as these? Must we fling wide 
 open our doors and bid such men, acknowledged traitors to their country's 
 laws, with fierce wrath burning in their hearts not only against us, but against 
 all who resisted them, because of their defeat, and because we dare ask a vin- 
 dication of the honored dead, because we dare propose laws to secure to the 
 living heroes the control of the land in whose peril they went forth to battle, 
 and which by their valor they saved; must we yield to them the fraits of our 
 victory, bought by four long weary years of blood ? Let others do as they 
 may, but when you ask me to give my consent and to join in the surrender, I 
 answer "Never I never! never!" 
 
 Believing this proposition to be right, I contend for it, rnd I ask the repre- 
 sentatives of the nation's defenders to consider it, to adopt it, and hold out 
 for it until we have secured its ratification. Will men hesitate to do right 
 because of a fear, because of opposition in certain quarters, a fear that it will 
 not be adopted ; that we cannot secure the required number of States in its 
 favor? There is no measure, sir, that will so firmly unite the loyal people. 
 There is nothing to the support of which they will more eagerly rally. Upon 
 this the loyal party of the nation can stand and can and will win success, 
 because it will be a success of the right, a victory over treason and crime, and 
 crowning the heroes of the struggle in peace with the laurels they so nobly 
 won in war. Dare any party go before the loyal North and contend that 
 traitors shall be allowed to make and execute laws and rule over the men by 
 whose strong arm the power of the conspiracy was crushed in war; th«y will 
 
be swept out of existence and more overwhelmingly defeated tban were tie 
 armed hosts of Jetfersou Davis. We can secure the adoption of this amend- 
 ment, "which, in my opinion, J,he country so imperatively demands. Every 
 State which was loyal during the war will pass such an amendment; then, 
 sir, if the States which went into the rebellion desire to move on again on the 
 great principle which the war has setiled, that those who stand by the Gov- 
 ernment shall rule, let them accept this, the greatest issue of the war 
 
 Bu*t we are told that these people and these States submit now ; that they 
 accept the issues of war. Do they ? How do they accept them ? By their 
 course since their armies surrendered; by their public and private acts; by 
 their fierce and bitter invectives against and denunciations of all who stood up 
 to thwart their designs; by their ostracism, politically, civilly, and socially, 
 of all Union men v ithio the limits of territory over which they lately ruled; 
 by electing the most violent rebels to all the offices in all these States, and by 
 the largest majorities, when opposed by men who have dared to stand by 
 their country ; by insulting the loyal dead and the living victor in sending up 
 to this Capitol, to take part in the national legislation of the country, the very 
 leaders of the rebellion itself, and that, too, in the face of the law which says 
 you shall not enter — even sending to our doors unpardoned rebels f Sir, if men 
 Bee submission in these things I do not. If men find an acceptance of issues in 
 these things their search is deeper and more incomprehensible than mine. 
 
 Sir, I desire peace. I have seen enough of war. For four years I lived and 
 breaihed and acted in the midst of war. I have seen it on the battlefield, 
 heard it in the groans of the dying ; have seen its fierce fires sweep around 
 my own home; have seen the soldiers of the Republic in the dark, gloomy, and 
 horrid pens of misery, where rebel bayonets compelled these heroes and de- 
 fenders of freedom to starve and freeze and sicken under a banner which 
 flaunted treason over them as, away from friends and all they held most dear, 
 life tied and their spirits went home to God; have seen it in all its horrors, and 
 want to no more. But I want a peace which, when it binds up the wounded 
 side of the Republic, will say to the widows and orphans of these dead heroes 
 of the nation, you shall enjoy the iruits of victory gained by the martyrs who 
 have fallen. I want a peace which places those gems of honor which men seek 
 to wear in their crowns forever beyond the reach of him who has dared to raise 
 his hand or lift his voice to bring dishonor upon our banner of beauty and glory, 
 or who has had it in his heart to blot out one star from that emblem of liberty 
 and freedom. I desire to see our country move on in her career of glory, but 
 I desire to see her made secure to the people who stood by and upheld ber 
 laws, and do not wish to see her destinies transferred into the hands of men 
 who sought her destruction. I desire to see those people who wandered away 
 from their duty come back into our house again, but not to rule it. When the 
 poor prodigal who without cause left his father's house, found himself starving 
 and in waut, he did not come back claiming the inheritance as these men do. 
 How would his father have met him had he come proudly boasting of hia 
 deeds, and said, all the matters over which you exercise control I have an 
 equal right to share and govern with my brother who always remained with 
 you in obedience ? Would the old man, think you, have killed the fatted calf 
 for this unrepentant son? Such is not the teaching of the Book from which 
 this parable comes. 
 
 Let these wanderers, then, accept the issues of war, the main one of which 
 is that the loyal must rule. Let them prove their faith by their works; show 
 their loyalty by their acts ; show their submission by giving their voices to se- 
 cure the great ends for which the gallant army of the Union fought. Let us 
 put this amendment before them. Upon it they may pledge their faith, and 
 when they adopt the proposition they then prove to the world that they do 
 accept the greatest of all issues, and the nation teaches a lesson to men to rebel 
 against a free Government no more forever. If they refuse to accept it, it is 
 proof that they do not accept the issues of the conflict ; that they do not admit 
 their wrong; and with their hearts still burning with fiery zeal and indigna- 
 tion against those who prevented them from carrying into effect their schemes 
 to destroy this Union are they, or so long as they hold these feelings will they 
 be, fit to resume all their rights and proper relations in this Union ? Are they 
 
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 the men to be placed upon an equal footing with those who never raised an 
 arm against their country's flag? Whether we would have the right or whe- 
 ther it would be true policy to say to them, you cannot resume your proper 
 relations in the Union until you have ratified this amendment, is a question I 
 need not answer. But should we demand such action, we have the precedent 
 of the President of the United States to guide, and 1 believe the loyal heart of 
 the uation would respond in a loud amen. 
 
 But we will be told that this kind of a restoration is incomplete; that its 
 success will not tranquilize nor satisfy the South, and that it ought not to do 
 bo ; that there are not loyal men enough in the South who are fit to represent 
 them ; that only traitors are intelligent and have qualifications such as are 
 suitable for representatives of the people. Then, sir, it is their fault and not 
 ours. Let them go unrepresented until men rise up who are fit. In this land 
 ideas are rapidly developed, and while we wait for material the interests of the 
 country will not suffer because we have not these intelligent traitors to aid us 
 in making and executing the laws of the nation. But the assertion is not true. 
 To-day there are in every district in the southern States Union men as well 
 qualified to hold Federal places of all kinds as the traitors who arrogate this 
 wisdom to themselves. In the language of a man whose home it more south- 
 ern than my own, 'Let them have the benefit of equal laws, but take from 
 them at once and forever the power and temptation to renew their assults 
 upon the life of their country. Let no Union man, high or low, court the 
 favor of traitors. He will never win it. From the first they have held him 
 as their enemy, and to the last .they will be his. Every Union man who puts 
 his trust in them will sooner or later find it out." 
 
 Let the representatives of the people do their duty and the people will 
 stand by tRem. Let us make this a part of the Constitution of our country. 
 A real, permanent triumph will then have been achieved ; the honor of the 
 nation not only vindicated, but the nation itself protected and guarantied for 
 the future; the houor of the scarred veteran, and of his dead brother soldiers en- 
 graven in colors of living light which no time can efface on their country's re- 
 cord ; the widows and orphans of the departed heroes have their tad homes— made 
 lonely by accursed treason — comforted in the great accomplished fact, written 
 in characters in the Constiution of the country, in whose defense their mar- 
 tyred husbands and fathers died, in characters which will last so long as the 
 Republic lives; the loyal rule the land they saved; the traitor s voice is hushed 
 and must be silent forever; the green grass which grows upon the patriot's 
 grave, the flowers which bloom around their resting-places shall wave in the 
 triumph of freedom, and the whirlwind and the thunder-cloud as they sweep 
 past their tombs, re-echo with tones that will shake the world; the hand that 
 lifts itself against the law is struck down ; the voice whieh advocates treason, 
 conspiracy, and rebellion shall not again be heard in the Republic forever. 
 
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