mestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, and insure the blessings of liberty' to the Nation. The contest between the Chief Executive and that legislative body is not for the restoration of the Union-the Union is indivisible. Congress opposes the admission of rebels to legislate upon the vital questions now before this Nation. It opposes those who are enemies to the Government. The President is laboring to force men who have been the leaders of rebellion into Congress to frame the laws of the country. The civil and political organization of the rebellious States is constitutionally within the control of Congress. It is the duty, under the Constitution, for the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy to suppress insurrection and rebellion, under the direction of Congress. Through Congress armies and navies are raised and sustained, and the duty of the President, as Commander-in-Chief, is to execute the laws of that body in carrying out the will of the people. Congress has the right to determine the conditions of peace or war, and it is the unmistakable and the sworn duty of the President to heed and enforce its solemn behests. The Constitution declares that 'it shall be the duty of the President,' as Commander-in-Chief, 'to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.' But Congress shall provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States,' to provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States, to declare war, grant letters of marque and make reprisal, and make rules for the capture on land and water, to raise and support armies, to make rules for the

government of land and naval forces, and to provide for calling out the militia.

"War has not ended. The act of Congress of July 22d, 1861, and the act of four days later, reducing the army to twenty-five thousand men within one year after the existing rebellion and insurrection, cannot be carried out, because of the continuance of rebellion. The men who participated in the rebellion are still armed insurgents. If not armed with the bayonet, they have inaugurated a warfare against freedom and the just laws. of this Government, and hold themselves in readiness to strike at the life of the Republic when they shall have obtained the power.

"Under the present policy of reconstruction the rebel States have not chosen their representatives according to law. The proclamation of May 29th, 1865, was utterly disregarded. Men excepted by it voted at the elections, and men thus excepted were elected to the most important offices. Men were elected to aid in the important work of reconstruction who had sworn an oath against the United States Government, who had fought against it, and had given no subsequent acknowledgement by returning to their allegiance, that they were not still its bitter enemies. Are such men fit to represent the vital interests of the States of this Republic within the National or State Governments? Such are not the set of men Congress desires should vitalize and develop the Union feeling in the South.

"It is a false assertion that a Republican Congress desire to humiliate the South. It is treason and hydraheaded slavery, with their correlatives, aristocracy, despotism, anarchy and rebellion-that Republican loyalty

has determined shall perish from this Nation, and with the help of a just God, will crush out from this country, destined to be the land of human rights.

"Justice, ever in harmony with freedom, demands that national crimes be punished and equitable laws established, and that the dignity, rights and privileges of loyal citizens be respected. An outraged people demand that as the Government has put down traitors in arms, traitors should be put down in law, in public judgment, and in the morals of the world.' Loyal people believe in no policy that honors, exalts, makes governors, legislators, senators and presidents of men who have sent our brothers and sons to Andersonville and Libby prisons, and made the land to flow with the blood of patriots; men who to-day are singing praises to the traitors—Jefferson Davis, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, and have erected monuments to rebels, while they curse the memory of our fallen heroes and martyred patriots. We believe the mass of the people in the insurrectionary States, freed from the vile influences of those men who led them into treason and rebellion, would be easily brought back to allegiance and become good citizens; but the leading men, those described in the Proclamation of Amnesty, are the conscious, influential traitors,' who wield their power in opposition to republican institutions and draw the masses which they control into the vortex of treason, anarchy and political crimes. Is it strange that the loyalty of the nation demands that the infamous crime. of treason' should suffer its penalty,' that 'it should be made odious,' when we behold the war that it has caused, and the men who yet avow they will accomplish the destruction of free institutions? Are not these unrepen

tant traitors guilty before the law? Should they not be disfranchised, that they may no longer continue their infernal work of ruin and death? Should not men in sympathy with Jefferson Davis and his co-fiends, men who live to plot, conspire and to undermine a government based upon justice, liberty and republicanism, be excluded from our legislatures? yea, be prohibited from the rights of loyal citizens until they have become such. These traitors, who avow that had they it in their power they would inaugurate a war to-day that would extirpate pure democracy from the land, trample upon the rights of humanity, and crush liberty with the iron heel of despotism. It has been fully demonstrated to thoughtful, candid, reasoning loyal men who have investigated the true state of affairs in the rebellious States, that it would be unsafe to permit the withdrawal of the military forces from those States. That loyal people, white and black, are hopeless of maintaining their rights without military power; that without it they would have no protection for life, liberty or property.

"In view of these facts, should not loyal men demand that the basis of pacification be justice and human rights? Should they not exact justice, and determine never to recognize any government as a republican government, but one based upon the principles which insure 'Liberty —full, broad and unconditional Liberty?' Then, and not till then, can we expect 'peace to come, and come to stay.'

The Republican party for the last four years has been fighting for the 'general liberty and security of the people.' That party, in Congress and out of Congress, are still battling for what alone will secure the general

liberty and security of the nation-justice and equal rights before the law. On the other hand, there is a powerful faction who are opposed to the principles of the Republican party, have been fighting against emancipation, the draft, confiscation, the enrollment and arming of the blacks, the proclamation of martial law, and the arrest and punishment of traitors. The men who opposed the war because they believed it would result in the destruction of their cherished plans against true democratic principles, are those who cheer loudest for the reconstruction policy of Andrew Johnson and applaud his shameless betrayal of the Republican party, and are loud in praise of his denouncement of those who in the National Congress firmly maintain republican principles and resist all attempts to force into their councils traitors who have been connected with the rebellion. What class of men support Andrew Johnson's policy in his vetoes of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills, and demand the full representation of the rebellious States in Congress, when he denounces as traitors that body whose every act has been to carry out the policy of Abraham Lincoln to 'secure the rights and liberties of the people?' Where do we find the voice of the disciples of Calhoun and the Vallandighams? Why did the rebels and copperheads, North and South, shout long and loud for the Chief Executive of the Republic when he stepped from his exalted position to mingle with a copperhead mob to condemn the leaders of the Republican party for their integrity and loyalty? Are not these admirers of the President's last acts those who said, a little while since, that 'successful coercion would be as great a crime as successful secession;' that 'if

any at