about Whigs or Americans now; talk about your country and the Constitution and the Union. Save that; preserve the integrity of the Government; once more place it erect among the nations of the earth; and then if we want to divide about questions that may arise in our midst we have a Government to divide in. I know it has been said that the object of this war is to make war on Southern institutions. I have been in Free States and I have been in Slave States, and I thank God that, so far as I have been, there has been one universal disclaimer of any such purpose. It is a war upon no section; it is a war upon no peculiar institution; but it is a war for the integrity of the Government, for the Constitution, and the supremacy of the laws. That is what the Nation understands by it. The people whom I represent appeal to the Government and to the Nation to give us the Constitutional protection that we need. I am proud to say that I have met with every manifestation of that kind in the Senate, with only a few dissenting voices. I am proud to say, too, that I believe old Kentucky (God bless her!) will ultimately rise and shake off the stupor which has been resting upon her; and instead of denying us. the privilege of passing through her borders, and taking arms and munitions of war to enable a downtrodden people to defend themselves, will not only give us that privilege, but will join us and help us in the work. The people of Kentucky love the Union; they love the Constitution; they have no fault to find with it; but in that State they have a duplicate to the Governor of ours. When we look all round, we see how the Governors of the different States have been involved in this conspiracy, the most stupendous and gigantic conspiracy that was ever formed, and as corrupt and as foul as that attempted by Catiline in the days of Rome. We know it to be so. Have we not known men to sit at their desks in this Chamber using the Government's stationery to write treasonable letters; and while receiving their pay, sworn to support the Constitution and sustain the law, engaging in midnight conclaves to devise ways and means by which the Government and the Constitution should be overthrown? The charge was made and published. in the papers. Many things we know that we can not fully prove; but we know from the regular steps that were taken in this work of breaking up the Government, or trying to break it up, that there was system, concert of action. It is a scheme more corrupt than the assassination planned and conducted by Catiline in reference to the Roman Senate. The time has arrived when we should show to the nations of the earth that we are a Nation capable of preserving our existence, and give them evidence that we will do it. I have already detained the Senate much longer than I intended when I rose, and I shall conclude in a few words more. Although the Government has met with a little reverse within a short distance of this city, no one should be discouraged and no heart should be dismayed. It ought only to prove the necessity of bringing forth and exerting still more vigorously the power of the Government in maintenance of the Constitution and the laws. Let the energies of the Government be redoubled, and let it go on with this war-not a war upon sections, not a war upon peculiar institutions anywhere; but let the Constitution and the Union be inscribed on its banners, and the supremacy and enforcement of the laws be its watchword. Then it can, it will, go on triumphantly. We must succeed. This Government must not, can not, fail. Though your flag may have trailed in the dust; though a retrograde movement may have been made; though the banner of our country may have been sullied, let it still be borne onward; and if, for the prosecution of this war in behalf of the Government and the Constitution, it is necessary to cleanse and purify that banner, I say let it be baptized in fire from the sun and bathed in a Nation's blood! The Nation must be redeemed; it must be triumphant. The Constitution, which is based upon principles immutable, and upon which rest the rights of man and the hopes and expectations of those who love freedom throughout the civilized world, must be maintained. CHAPTER VI. JOHNSON AS MILITARY GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE-A WONDERFUL HISTORY-MAKING TREASON ODI ON OUS THE REBEL CLERGY-THE VICE- A MOSES-THE PATRIOT. N the 4th or 5th of March, 1862, the Senate confirmed Mr. Johnson's appointment as Military Governor of Tennessee, and resigning his seat in that body, he at once set out to enter upon this difficult and, perhaps, to him, somewhat distasteful office. With the appointment he was ranked as a brigadier-general, but he never could have felt that the position would add materially to his honor; and this step must also be placed to his sense of duty and patriotism. In accepting this doubtful trust, feelings of revenge may not have escaped Mr. Johnson, or some sense of gratification over the thought that he would now have an opportunity to control, as a master, those who had ever been disposed to regard him in an inferior light. This supposition, however it may reflect upon the idea of a magnanimous character, is not wholly unsupported by events. From his own section of the State many had been driven from their homes who would not take up arms in support of the rebellion, and for these men he felt a strong sympathy. He had aided mate rially in making their refuge in Kentucky tolerable; had been instrumental in the formation of Camp Dick Robinson, where many of the Tennessee refugees had been converted into soldiers of the Union; and now he felt it his duty to favor the Administration, in the belief that he was the proper person to attempt the restoration of loyal government in his own State. At Cincinnati, in Kentucky, and other places he had made speeches, giving more than intimations of how he would deal with rebels, and his appointment, no doubt, to some extent, rested upon the belief that where vigor was demanded his hand would not be held back. How well this belief was sustained remains to be told. On the 12th of March, 1862, in company with other Tennessee refugees of note, Brigadier-General Governor Johnson arrived in Nashville, and was received "with open arms" by the Union part of the population. That night he was called upon for a speech, which he was ready to make, and in which he gave some indication of the course he should purA few days subsequently this speech was, substantially, printed and sent out as an appeal to the people of the State, and was as follows: 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 sup pressing 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 treas-* ure and arms to an extent that would previously have been |