how the resolution of the venerable senator from Kentucky* was defeated, and that Southern men are responsible for that defeat-six sitting in their places and refusing to vote. His proposition was only lost by two votes; and in the end, when the seceders had gone, by only one. Well do I remember, as was described by the senator from California, the sadness, the gloom, the anguish that played over his venerable face when the result was announced; and I went across the chamber, and told him that here were men refusing to vote, and that to me was administered a rebuke by one of them for speaking to him on the subject.

"Now, the senator from Delaware tells us that if that compromise had been made, all these consequences would have been avoided. It is a mere pretence; it is false. Their object was to overturn the Government. If they could not get the control of this Government, they were willing to divide the country and govern a part of it. Talk not of compromise now. What, sir, compromise with traitors with arms in their hands! Talk about 'our Southern brethren' when they present their swords at your throats and their bayonets at your bosoms! Is this a time to talk about compromise? Let me say, and I regret that I have to say it, that there is but one way to compromise this matter, and that is to crush the leaders of this rebellion and put down treason. You have got to subdue them; you have got to conquer them; and nothing

but the sacrifice of life and blood will do it. The issue is made. The leaders of rebellion have decreed

* Mr. Crittenden.

eternal separation between you and them.

Those

leaders must be conquered, and a new set of men brought forward who are to vitalize and develop the Union feeling in the South. You must show your courage here as senators, and impart it to those who are in the field. If you were now to compromise, they would believe that they could whip you one to five, and you could not live in peace six months, or even three months. Settle the question now; settle it well; settle it finally; crush out the rebellion and punish the traitors. I want to see peace, and I believe that is the shortest way to get it. Blood must be shed, life must be sacrificed, and you may as well begin at first as last. I only regret that the Government has been so tardy in its operations. I wish the issue had been met sooner. I believe that if we had seen as much in the beginning as we see to-day, this rebellion would have been wound up and peace restored to the land by this time.

"But let us go on; let us encourage the army and the navy; let us vote the men and the means necessary to vitalize and to bring into requisition the enforcing and coercive power of the Government; let us crush out the rebellion, and anxiously look forward to the day-God grant it may come soon-when that baleful comet of fire and of blood that now hovers over this distracted people may be chased away by the benignant star of peace. Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag, the glorious flag of our country, and nail it below the cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden time, and let us gather around it, and inscribe as our motto, 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'

Let us gather around it, and while it hangs floating beneath the cross, let us exclaim, 'Christ first, our country next.' Oh, how gladly rejoiced I should be to see the dove returning to the ark with the olive-leaf, indicating that land was found, and that the mighty waters had abated. I trust the time will soon come when we can do as they did in the olden times, when the stars sang together in the morning, and all creation proclaimed the glory of God. Then let us do our duty in the Senate and in the councils of the nation, and thereby stimulate our brave officers and soldiers to do theirs in the field.

"Mr. President, I have occupied the attention of the Senate much longer than I intended. In view of the whole case, without personal unkind feeling towards the senator from Indiana, I am of opinion that duty to myself, duty to my family, duty to the Constitution, duty to the country, obedience to the public judgment, all require me to cast my vote to expel Mr. Bright from the Senate, and when the occasion arrives I shall so record my vote."

CHAPTER VI.

APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE.

"FELLOW-CITIZENS :-Tennessee assumed the form of a body politic, as one of the United States of America, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-six, at once entitled to all the privileges of the Federal Constitution, and bound by all its obligations. For nearly sixty-five years she continued in the enjoyment of all her rights, and in the performance of all her duties, one of the most loyal and devoted of the sisterhood of States. She had been honored by the elevation of two of her citizens to the highest place in the gift of the American people, and a third had been nominated for the same high office, who received a liberal though ineffective support. Her population had rapidly and largely increased, and their moral and material interests correspondingly advanced. Never was a people more prosperous, contented, and happy than the people of Tennessee under the Government of the United States, and none less burdened for the support of the authority by which they were protected. They felt their Government only in the conscious enjoyment of the benefits it conferred and the blessings it bestowed.

"Such was our enviable condition until within the

year just past, when, under what baneful influences it is not my purpose now to inquire, the authority of the Government was set at defiance, and the Constitution and laws contemned, by a rebellious, armed force. Men who, in addition to the ordinary privileges and duties of the citizen, had enjoyed largely the bounty and official patronage of the Government, and had, by repeated oaths, obligated themselves to its support, with sudden ingratitude for the bounty and disregard of their solemn obligation, engaged, deliberately and ostentatiously, in the accomplishment of its overthrow. Many, accustomed to defer to their opinions and to accept their guidance, and others, carried away by excitement or overawed by seditious clamor, arrayed themselves under their banners, thus organizing a treasonable power, which, for the time being, stifled and suppressed the authority of the Federal Government.

"In this condition of affairs it devolved upon the President, bound by his official oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and charged by the law with the duty of suppressing insurrection and domestic violence, to resist and repel this rebellious force by the military arm of the Government, and thus to re-establish the Federal authority. Congress, assembling at an early day, found him engaged in the active discharge of this momentous and responsible trust. That body came promptly to his aid, and while supplying him with treasure and arms to an extent that would previously have been considered fabulous, they, at the same time, with almost absolute unanimity, declared that this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of op