Court, you think, can not try any questions that are likely to arise on your reconstruction policy.

And this brings me to consider for a minute the remarkable bill requiring two-thirds of the Supreme Court to concur before an act of Congress can be decided unconstitutional. What is the effect of that? In the first place it gives an unconstitutional law two-thirds of a majority over the Constitution itself. The question is whether an act of Congress is the law, or whether the Constitution is the law; and on that question you propose to give the Constitution one chance and the unconstitutional act of Congress two chances. Then, if my rights in a case in the Supreme Court depend upon the Constitution and your rights depend upon an act of Congress, three judges can give you a decision, while I must have six to carry my case. As has been expressed, a two-pound weight has been put in one end of the scale of justice and a one-pound weight in the other; and you expect this country to approve that, do you? You expect honest men who are fit to sit on juries to say that such legislation as that is right. For a thousand years the courts have come down with our race on the doctrine that a majority must decide; and now, for political and partisan purposes, because you dare not trust your legislation to go before that tribunal which the fathers and the Constitution established to settle it, you attempt to strip that court of the authority and the power with which the fathers clothed it. It is an admission bold and patent before the world that your legislation is vicious.

I do not know how far this process of education of which my colleague speaks is to go. I speak of the edu cation that has carried the majority up to my friend from Massachusetts. I shall not refer to that further, for I shall be interrupted if I do; but the process of education is going on. I said in the Senate, a year or two ago, that the course of things is this the Senator from Massachusetts

steps out boldly, declares his doctrine, and then he is approached, and finally he governs. Believing that he is in the right-I concede that belief to him as a Senatorhis place in this body and before this country to-day is a very proud one. He was told somewhat sneeringly two years ago that among his party friends he stood alone, and to-day they all stand upon his position. This is a compliment and indorsement of sagacity and intelligence that but few men receive in the course of public life. But how far is this education to go? We hear the cracks of the whip. The threat is that "if the Southern people do not acquiesce in this we will give them a still more terrible penalty." Where is it to come from? That argument has no weight with me. A threat to carry this into a still greater wrong shall not where my conscience requires me to stand. If you say that in case the Southern States do not agree to your propositions you will go beyond them and still further outrage the right, the responsibility in all history will be with the majority that now governs the legislation of this country. On every side you chide the Southern States. because they did not indorse the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. If they have no constitutional governments, what do you chide them for? If they have no legal State governments and no legal Legislatures, what railing accusation is this you bring against them, for they can not ratify a constitutional amendment if they have no legal existence.

deter me from standing

My colleague, in the course of his speech, referred to a statement made by him in a speech recently delivered in this city, that the Democrats stood upon the policy of paying for the slaves of the South. In party warfare, Mr. President, I concede always to the opposite party the right to define their own positions, and I take them as truthfully defining their positions, and I do not even attribute to the opposite party political opinions which

they disclaim for themselves. I have no right to do it, and I say my colleague has no right to attribute to the great Democracy of this country—a grand party, a party whose power and intelligence have had a mighty influence in the past, and is to wield a great influence in the future of this country-doctrines and purposes which that party disclaims for itself. We have a right to stand where we define our own platform. I think it is a most remarkable thing that any Republican gentleman should say that the Democracy are in favor of paying for manumitted slaves. There are only two cases where such a measure has been seriously urged before Congress, and upon that point I ask the attention of the Senate for a single minute.

In 1862 Mr. Lincoln sent a special message to Congress, proposing that they should adopt a joint resolution, which he drew and sent down to Congress, to buy up the slaves of the loyal people. My distinguished friend from New York [Mr. Conkling] was then a member of the House of Representatives, and he was the honored mouth-piece of the Administration in favor of this policy on that occasion. He introduced into the House the resolution sent down by Mr. Lincoln, and here it is; I will read it:

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to. such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system."

Are Democrats to be charged now with being in favor of buying up negroes? What was the answer made by Indiana on the day that resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives? Mr. Voorhees, then a Representative from Indiana, said: "If there is any border slave State man here who is in doubt whether he wants

his State to sell its slaves to this Government or not, I represent a people that is in no doubt as to whether they want to become purchasers. It takes two to make a bargain; and I repudiate, once and forever, for the people whom I represent on this floor, any part or parcel in such a contract." And he went on to argue against the proposition.

But, Mr. President, who is it that brings the charge against us of wanting to pay for negroes? There is only one case in the history of this Government where money has been taken out of the national treasury to pay for negroes, and that was to buy up the negroes of the District of Columbia at $300 a head; and the party in majority passed that law, and it was approved by Mr. Lincoln. Then who has the right to charge against the Democracy of this country a purpose to pay for slave property? The Democracy has never recognized such property in negroes as required or authorized the Government to pay money out of the national treasury for

them.

Mr. President, my colleague has spoken of a columnthe column of Congressional Reconstruction-and has said it is not hewn of a single stone, but is composed of many blocks." Sir, I think he is right. Its foundation is the hard flint stone of military rule, brought from the quarries of Austria, and upon that foundation rests the block from Africa, and it is thence carried to the topmost point with fragments of our broken institutions. That column will not stand. It will fall and its architects will be crushed beneath its ruins. In its stead the people will uphold thirty-seven stately and beautiful columns, pure and white as Parian marble, upon which shall rest forever the grand structure of the American Union.

V. CAMPAIGN SPEECH OF '68.

FROM THE JOINT DEBATE WITH GOVERNOR BAKER.

Portland, Ind., September 13, 1868.

My competitor says the issue is whether loyal men shall govern the country-in other words, whether the rebels. shall be restored to power. I want to know if the Democrats have yet restored the rebels to power. Not a man-not a single man. Now, my competitor's argument is that a party ought not to receive your support if it be in favor of restoring to political rights the rebels of the South. The Democrats have restored none yet. President Johnson's pardon does not restore political rights. It simply relieves the party from liability to punishment. My competitor refers to Wade Hampton's speaking of what was conceded to the people of the South in the New York Convention. And who was Wade Hampton? A brave, capable, daring general of the South, who fought our soldiers on many a battle-field. He was a brave man, and commanded well; but when the war was over Wade Hampton said: "Our cause is lost, and our banner is dragged in the dust; you and I must turn round once more and live under the old banner; we must obey the laws of the United States again." This is the appeal he made to his countrymen at the close of the war. If it was right, you ought not to have lost confidence in him, even if he was in the Convention at New York.

But who was in the Chicago Convention? Who was there? I am not now speaking of the nineteen Negroes that represented nineteen districts in that Convention. [Laughter.] I am now speaking of the most eloquent orator they had; of the most popular speaker in the Convention; of one who, in the Convention, boasted that he was an original Secessionist. I speak of Governor Brown, of the State of Georgia, who was Governor of Georgia at