March 31, 1864

The Senate, as m Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of the joint resolution (S. No. 10) proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

The joint resolution, as originally introduced by Mr. Henderson, proposed the following artilj cles as amendments to the Constitution of the h United States, which, when adopted by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution:

Art, 1. Slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall not exist in tlie United States. Art 2 The Congress, wheneveramajoiityof the members elected to each Hou e shall deem it necessary, may propose amendments to the Constitution, or, on tin: application of the Legislatures of a majority of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which m either case shall bo vnlidj to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, or by conventions, in two thirds thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by Congress.

The Committee on the Judiciary proposed an amendment to strike out all after the resolving clause and insert the following:

(Two thirds of both Houses concun inpr,) That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States a& an amendment to the Constitution of the {Tinted States, which, when mtified by ihree fourths ol «-aul Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a pan of the said Constitution, namely:

Article Xfll.

Sec. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for ciime, whereof the patty shall have been duly convicted, shall exist withm the United States, or any place subject to then jimsdiction.

Sf c -2 Congi ess shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Yesterday Mr. Davis moved to amend the amendment by striking out all after the word that," and inserting:

The States ofMaine New Ilampshiie and Veimontare formed into and shall constitute one State of the United States, to be called North New England; and the States ot Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode island, including the Providence Plantations, ate formetf into and constitute one Suite of the United States, to be called South New England; and Congies* shall pu ss all laws neer ary and pioper lo give full eflect to this amendment of the Constitution.

Mr. SAULSBURY. Mr. President, the joint resolution now before the Senate, reported by the Committee on the Judiciary, proposes an amendment to the Constitution to provide that'' neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for ciime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." I engage in the discussion of this proposed amendment to the Constitution, not from any desire to treat of a subject not only distasteful to myself, but which I believe is distasteful to the country, but from a sense of duty to those whom I represent.

We have grown, Mr. President, vain enough to imagine that had we been the creators of the universe and of all things that exist therein, we could improve upon the workmanship of the Almighty. Had such been the case, no Eve would have plucked the forbidden fruit; no Adam would have been doomed to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow; the earth would not have been so cursed ns to bring forth briers and thistles; the air would have been always balmy; the food of man would have been manna; every cedar would have been as those of Lebanon, and every twig as the majestic tree of the forest. No tornado s blast, no earthquake shock would have affrighted or alarmed the world, or destroyed any portion of the human race. Vernal flowers would have bloomed throughout the year; nothing but happiness, universal happiness, would have ever existed. But, sir, we were not the creators of the universe or of existence anywhere, and we must look at questions in a practical light, view them according to the circumstances by which we are surrounded and by the light of current e^ cnts. In that light I propose to view the question now before the Senate.

Slavery had existed under some form or other from the first period of recorded history. Itdates back even beyond the period of Abraham, the father of the faithful, in whose seed all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. We find that immediately after the flood the Almighty, for purposes inscrutable to us, condemned a whole race to servitude: "Vayomer Orur Knoan Efet •flfoatim Yeahio Le echot "And he said, Cursed be Canaan; slave of slaves he shall be to his brethren."

It continued among all people until the advent of the Christian era. It was recognized in that new dispensation which was to supersede the old. It has the sanction of God s own apostle; for when Paul sent "back Onesimus to Philemon, whom did he send? A freeman? No, sir. He sent his Sov os [doulos,] a slave born as such, not even his andrapndnn, who was such by captivity in war. Among all people and in a!i ages has this institution, if such it is to be called, existed and had the countenance of wise and good men, and even of the Christian church itself until these modern times, up at least to the nineteenth century. It exists in this country, and has existed from the beginning.

Mr. President, m 1783 fhcrc existed on the Atlantic slope of what was once the United States of America, and which I trust will yet in the providence of God again become the United States of America, thirteen independent, free, absolute political sovereignties. In the treaty between Great Britain and the colonies which recognized their independence, those colonies were distinctly named, each one, and each was recognized as an independent and sovereign State. They had in fact been independent since the 4th of July, 1776; and before their recognition by the mother country they had entered into Articles of Confederation by which they were to be governed. Although I am no secessionist, and never have been, and never expect to be, it may be refreshing m these times to call the attention of tiie Senate and of the country to one very important fact in this connection, and that is that the Articles of Confederation were entered into not for any temporary purpose; they were articles existing between all the thirteen original colonies, and the Union thereby formed was declared to be a perpetual Union, and the faith of each and of all was pledged to the maintenance and the preservation of that perpetual Union. Sir, we are sprung from a race of secessionists, however much we may discard the name now, and however excited may be our feelings toward those deluded brethren who have undertaken to assert the right of secession and to act upon it, in our judgment without sufficient cause, unwisely for themselves, injuriously to us, injuriously to the world both now and throughout future time. In those A rticics of Confederation it is declared thus;

Whereas the delegates of the United States of America in Congress a embjed did. on tite 35th day of November, in the ye tr of our Lend J 777. and ni the second 3 0 11 of the independence ot Anierea, agico to certain aruclc 5 of cont edeiation and pci pciuM union between the .States ot Hampshire, M i aehu ett Bay. Rhode I land and 1 iovi denee Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jet ey Pennsylvania, Delaware, IVlai iand Virginia. North Carolina, South (Jaiohna, and Georgia, 111 the words loUowing, namely:"

Then, after reciting the Articles of Confederation, the convention of ratification goes on to declare: u And whereas il hath pleased the great Governor of the world 10 incline the heart* of the Legislatures we respectively lepte ent in Confess to apjuove ol, and to authorize us to ratify, tiie said article* of confederation and perpetual union. Know ye, that we the underpinned delegates, bv virtue of the power and authority to us given lot that purpose, do bv these pie ent 111 the name and m behalf of 0111 re peetive constituents, fully and emitel) lumyaHd confirm each and eveivot the --aid at tide-, or confederation and perpetual union, and all and Miiuuiar the matters and things therein contained, and we do tuithei :-oieinniv plight and engage the faith of oat respective constituent!, that they rluill abide In the detenu uiation* of {he United State*, in Congress a cmbied on all questions which by tiie said Confederation are -ntnnitted totliem; and that fne aifiele^ thereof shall be inviolably obs ei v d by the States we icp ctively represent, and th it the union shall be popdAnd yet, sir* in nine short years, in violation of the solemn stipulations contained in the Articles of Confederation, and in violation of that spirit of union to the preservation of which the faith of each and every one of those States, and of the people theieofjWas pledged, what do we find? AH tiie other States seceding from New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. Have we followed the example which ourfatheis set us in treating of the great question which now agitates and which for three years past hasaijitated tiie public mind? Have we done asjohn Ctuincy Adams said would be wise, in 1801), in a public address in New York, that when the aftectionsof the people of one portion of the country became alienated from tiie other, and nothing could keep together the alienated parts but force, then we! should recur to the early precedents in our history, follow those examples, endeavor to reunite the whole by peaceful and wise remedies? No, sir, but war desolates the land and nothing, it seems, but blood cm satisfy the people.

Mr. Piesidem at tJi Mune the coloniesdechued themselves free of the parent counti y slavery existed in every one of them. It had been transplanted from other shores, transplanted here to a great extent against the remonstrances of the colonies themselves. When the Declaration of Independence was formed, which is often quoted as evidence that these modern doctrines in reference to slavery are the correct doctrines, every one of the colonies which helped to frame that declaration was a slaveholding colony, and most of the men who were members of that Congress were slaveholders. Because they insei ted in the beginning of that declaration a general speculative truth that "all men are created equal," it is said that was an acknowledgment by them that slavery itself was wrong. Why, Mr. President, how absurd! The authors of the very instrument, themselves slaveholders, declaring to the world that they were criminals, and up to the time of their death, by holding slaves m bondage, continued to he criminals No, sir. They were speaking not of the rights of the subject race in their own midst, but of those rights to free and independent government which distinct political communities had, and that as against other distinct political communities a separate people had a t ight to govern itself, and derived that right from their Creator. It might with as much reason be contended that because in the preamble to the Constitution it is said" We, the people of the United States," that thereby is meant that the negro race, the slaves at that day, helped to form the Constitution of the United States because they are persons. But in the sense m which the instrument was formed they constitute no people, having no voice in the Government under which they live.

Slavery being transplanted to thiscountry, and the slave trade continued too in the Constitution of the United States by the ft timers of that instrument for twenty years, and that by the vote of some two or three of the New England States, wc are told in the face of these facts that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution of the United States were opposed to the existence of slavery, that they bore testimony ngamsf ir, and that the desire expressed now by some of us that it should not be interfered with is a departure from the wisdom and the policy of the fathers.

Why, sir, in that instrument they not only continued the foreign slave trade for twenty years, but they guarded and protected the right of the master to his slave by provisions which if they had been faithfully observed these unhappy times would not now be upon us. They provided for the return of the escaped fugitive and in the language of Justice Story that provision was essential to the formation of the Union, and unless it had been ineoi porated in the Constitution no Union could have been formed.

But, sir, the, i fathers left the matter not there; but during the iiisi Administration, dmmg the ps iiod that Washington was President of the United States, to cat t y out in good faith this provision of the Fcdt tal Const .tution, the first fugitive slave act was formed. He, who among men was the foremost of aM men, whose memorynot only the people of this country have honored, but whose memory is dear to freemen everywhere throughout the world, gave the sanction of his greatnamc to the first fugitive slave law that was formed, lie did not pi oiess to bo wiser than the Almighty, nor better than Paul, who returned tiie slave to his master; atid although men dare not, even in these deluded days, and amid the wild cxcitc-, meat which now a es through the North, arraign his memory or stain his character, they cannot withdraw him from the class to which he belonged, the class of slaveholders, and the attempt now to repeal the fugitive slave act is only an attempt to repeal that which, had he been living at the pies-' ent day, would luwe received his sanction, if we can judge by his act when he signed the bill of. 1793.

Mr. President, the question before the Senate is whether the resolution proposed by the Committee on the Judiciary shall he adopted by this body and the proposed constitutional amendments be submitted to the States. I may be about to announce a heresy, but if it be heresy I firmly believe in the truth of it, that it fne Seitateof the United S ates were to adopt this joint rof olulion and were to submit it to all tin' Stages ot this Union, and if thiee fourths of the State* Miouid, ratify the amendment, it would not be binding on any State whose interest was affected by it if that State protested against it. I know the popular doctrine is, that if a convention is called by two thirds of the States and proposesanyamendmen ts whatever to the Constitution, which amendments are ratified by three fourths of the States, such amendments then become the supreme law of the land, and are binding on each and every State.— those who had not assented to them as well as those who had. Such is not the opinion which I entertain of this matter. I may be in error; I know my view is against the popular opinion; but let us test it and see who is right and who is wrong. Who framed this Constitntion? Who made it?

The preamble to the Constitution commences, We, the people of the United States and hence some say that this is a popular Government; and they would have you believe that it has the same effect as though the people in mass meeting had framed it. Sir, that clause of the Constitution is susceptible of a rendering perfectly legitimate which would do away with this idea, even if the preamble to the Constitution could govern its provisions, and that is, "We, the people of the States united," who are but the people of the United States. Sir, that Constitution was framed by the States, by the people of the States, who elected delegates to their conventions or Legislatures. It was submitted separately to each State. It never was submitted to the people of the United States as an aggregate body. It was not even submitted to the Congress of the United States elected by the people from the particular States. It was not submitted to a general convention of delegates elected in the different States, but it was submitted directly and immediately to the States themselves. It was to bind no State, and had no effect in any State except those States which, in their independent and separate character, ratified it.

Our seceding fathers withdrew not en m asse from the old Articles ofConfedeiation. The State which I have the honor in part to represent, although now one of the least populous in the Union, was the first seceder. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other States followed, unul finally New Hampshire made secession complete from the other States by ratifying that Constitution. New York, Virginia Noith Carolina and Rhode Island were left to determine the great issue of peaceable separation or forcible opposition to it. They were left to try the power of military coercion or to exclaim that their wayward sisters might depart in peace. New York and Virginia soon seceded from the old Confederation and came in, and finally North Carolina; but Rhode Island would not whip them back again.

1 am not going to discuss the question of the power of the Federal Government to coerce States back into the Union. This is not the time to discuss any such question. It has been discussed heretofore. We are now engaged in war, and we must look to the great and momentous issues of wdi and to the circumstances by which we are surrounded. I do not propose to enter into any discussion of that character; but I will say this, as a historical and legal truth, that there was as much authority in Rhode Island and these other States, when the nine left them, to coerce them back and make them live up to their plighted faith, for the preservation of this "perpetual Union," to which their honors were plighted, as there is in the Federal Government to coerce any of the seceded States back a ain Those, however, were practical days. Practical men lived in those days. They put sued a different plan, and a" more perfect Union" was formed than that created by the At tides of Confederation If out of all this tumble war and the struggles between the several States a more perfect Union shall be formed, a Union in which the lights of the citizen and of the States? shall be respected, and m which civil liberty shall be preserved, no one will be m te 1 rejoiced than myself.

But, Mr, I denied the proposition that K was competent for three fourths of the States by an amendment of the Constitution to say roany dissenting State, "This shall be your Constitution, and you shall live in this Union notwithstanding we have interfered with your independent control over your domestic rights." Let us test the doctrine.

1 shall not test it in reference 10 the subject of slavery; for notwithstanding what may be the opinion of some of my honorable friends here and some portion of the people at large, for the question of slavery I care not. I am iy t so fond of the principle of human bondage, or of bondage of any kind, that I advocate it for the love of it. I have no interest or very little in the institution of slavery more than any member on this floor has. Could I have had my way, could I have been the creator and governor of all things, perhaps no bondman would have ever trod the soil; the infants, even, would have been cherubs, and the men would have been archangels. We vainly imagine that we could have made all things better. look at the subject of slavery only in a practical light and m its* legal constitutional aspects. Convince me that your policy is authorized by the Constitution of the United States and by the rights of the States, and will conduce to the advancement of the white race and the improvement of the negro race, and 1 will support it. Senators on the other side have as much fondness for the system of human slavery as I have, although we differ in our theories in reference to it. 1 look at it in a practical light; they in a theoretical light. 1 regard it neither as unconstitutional, illegal, immoral, impious, or sinful in any aspect of the case, but in perfect accordance with the ways of Providence to man.

Mr. President, if the ratification of your proposed amendment by three fourths of the States can give it the validity of a constitutional provision, obligatory upon a protesting State, then would a ratification by three fourths of the people in reference to any other matter, except that simple one that each State shall have two Senators, be obligatory. I know that the popular theory isthataconvention can frame a constitution, and if three fourths of the States ratify it it is obligatory in reference to anything and everything they do; that absolute sovereignty is with them notonly m reference to the purposes of general government, but absolute sovereignty in respect to every right which the people of the States have. I have not so n nd either the Constitution of my country or the teachings of those who framed that Constitution. If that be so, then I ask you, could three fourths of the States say that you should have no manufactories, that you should plant no corn, that you should not have property m anything else which is the subject of property?

I go further. If it would be competent for them to make such a provision as this the paramount law of the land, as the constitution of that land, and if this theory be true, that omnipotent power, so far as the purposes of government are concerned, resides with three fourths of the States, then they could blot out of existence any State in this Union. Does any gentleman suppose that it would be competent for a convention to so frame the Constitution, and for three fourths of the States to ratify it, that property should not be held in any State of this Union, or that all existing property should be swept away? Would it be competent for such a convention, with such a ratification, to provide that all the mills and factories of New England should never run more, and that no property should exist in anything which was the product or the manufacture of those mills sand factories?

Sir, property is not regulated and was not intended to be regulated by the Constitution of the United States. Property is the creature of the law of the State and whenever this Government undertakes, either by legislative enactment or operating through and by three fourths of the States, to say to the people of any State," We will say what shall be property and what shall not be property within your midst; that subject shall be regulated by a Federal Constitution or by a Federal law," they violate the purposes and objects for which the Constitution was framed, and do that which, if they had proclaimed had been their object in the beginning, would have prevented the formationof that Constitution and of the Union. Sir, my motives may bemisinterpretedand my views may be erroneous. They are honestly entertained. It may be said that I wish to justify what has been done by the seceded States, and that I may want their example followed. It i^ vain in these days for any man to attempt to declare what his own honest purposes are. A too willing public lends a too ready ear to misconstruction and misrepresentation, f want secession to be imitated! What have I or my people to gain by any such thing as that? It was ruin and desolation to us. We were happy, contented, and free, in the enjoyment of all our constitutional rights, until it took place. Since then we have been bondmen; and such is the fate which threatens us in the future, if the policy of those now in power shall continue to govern this country. What, good could separation bring to us on the border, exposed to and in front of hostile people? We have never courted and never desired such a thing; but we are resolved, even amid the din of arms, to cling zealously to our constitutional rights, and to adhere to those fundamental principles of government which are essential to our safety.

But, sir, to recur again to the argument, I submit to Senators this question: if you weretopropose an amendment to the Constitution in the form you do this, and that amendment should be ratified by three fourths of the States, that the State of Delaware and the State of Maryland should hereafter exist and be but one State, would that be binding upon the people of Delaware and the people of Maryland, unless they assented to it? 1 hold it would be a justifiable cause for secession. The popular theory would be that it niig htbe done; forever) in the earlier moments of this great struggle, a Secretary of War, whom I never heard accused of looking into a law book, or reading the Constitution of his country, did devise a scheme in his first report for uniting Delaware find some portion of Maryland into one State, and some portions of Maryland and Virginia into another. He was going to do the thing speedily; and therefore, inasmuch as he was honored with the high position of Secretary of War, I presume there must be men in this country who think like him, and think that if such a thing is not competent by a simple act of the national Legislature it is competent by a national convention, or by an amendment of the Constitution by the ratification of three fourths of the States, so as to effect that result.-

The Constitution of the United States is a contract made for the government of the people of the whole United States. It is a contract to which, in the language of Mr. Madison, the States themselves are parties, and it is to be construed just as any other contract is to be construed, by its own terms and by the surrounding circumstances showing the objects and the purposes for which it was formed. What were those purposes? To form si union among the States for common purposes, not to give them the control over the domestic relations existing in the States, not to regulate the right and title to property in the States; but there were great common purposes to be subserved by the formation of this Union which could be better subserved by the States in the aggregate than by the States separately. They were intrusted with the interests of the States so far as intercourse with foreign nations were concerned, with the regulation of commerce, with the coinage of money, anil "many other things. But the framers of that instrument show in it the object which they had in forming it, because they delegate the powers which the Federal Government should have, and then declare that the powers not therein delegated, and not prohibited to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.

Do any suppose 'if, at the time of the formation of that Constitution, it had been suggested that, by allowing it to be amended by the ratification of three fourths of the States, a future convention would undertake to invade the rights of the States and to determine what should be property in the States, or to regulate the relation of parent and child, husband and wife, master and slave, within those States, that the fathers would ever have entered into such an agreement? Why, sir, even with the omission from that Constitution of the provision which provides for the rendition of fugitive slaves, we are told by so high an authority as Justice Story, the Constitution could not have been framed. Do you suppose that men who were so tenacious of their rights— men who had waged a long seven years war for the achievement or preservation of those rights, after all their experience ill that bloody conflict— would ever have committed to any body of men, present or in the future, the power to regulate the relation of parent and child or husband and wife?

Sir, if you can go into the States and attempt to regulate the relation of master and slave, you can go into a State and attempt to regulate the relation between parent and child or husband and wife. If you have a right to go into a State and say that one particular species of property which has heretofore been property shall not in the future be property, you have a right to say that any other subject of property heretofore shall not be property in the future; and you have& right to say in that case, by way of amendment, that there shall be no such thing as property at all. It will not do to answer me by saying that no convention of the States would do this; that three fourths of the States could not be found to ratify any such provision as that. Why, sir, the thing is just as likely now to be done in the future as it was likely, when that Constitution was framed, that in seventy five years a dominant party in this country would attempt to invade a State to determine the question of what should be property by abolishing an existing institution.

But, sir, this provision goes further. It is not only prospective in charactersoas to affect future rights, but it absolutely proposes by an amendment of the Constitution to sweep away and blot out hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of property in the States. That is the destruction or property. It operates for the destruction of property, because if this amendment becomes incorporated in the Constitution and is submitted to, that property ceases. Then I ask, where is the difference in principle between the destruction of this amount of property invested in slaves and the destruction of that amount oT property invested in manufactures, in agriculture, or in the mechanic arts?

Again, can a convention frame an amendment, or can Congress propose an amendment to the Constitution, which, being ratified by three fout ths of the States, shall become the supreme law of the land, by which there shall he made an equal distribution of property throughoutthe United States? Can they do that? Let it be known that it is within the power of three fourths of the States to do that, and a party may rise up in the country most clamorous for the exercise of that power. I apprehend, however, it will be admitted that a convention of three fourths of the States cannot propose an amendment, which, being ratified by three fourths of the States, can do any of the things that I have mentioned.

But it may be said it can only be done in reference to slavery. What more power has a ratification of a proposed amendment to the Constitution, by three fourths of the States, over the question of slavery than it has over any other description of property? Show me the distinction. Slaves were as much property in the eye of the framers of that instrument, in the eye of the existing Constitution, as any other species of property. If three fourths of the States have a right to destroy property in slaves they have a right to destroy it in anything else. Their power is just as extensive, and no more, in reference to this species of property as any other; for I presume we are not to be asked to amend the Constitution upon humanitarian grounds.

The sinfulness of slavery or the evil of slavery among those with whom it exists is not to be invoked as affording power, in the absence of anything else, to make this proposed change. If that be the source whence is derived the authority to make this amendment to the Constitution it is an authority against which I cannot argue, for the simple reason that I and my antagonist never could agree. In my judgment he advocates a sickly sentiment, I a practical question. He professes to be wiser than the Almighty, under whose providence this system of human bondage has been allowed to exist in all ages of the past; wiser than the Saviour of the world, who when he was on earth never interfered with the law of slavery, although he walked up and down the plains of Judea, where there were slaves, and the law of whose people recognized the existence of slavery—the law that was given to them from Mount Sinai, amid lightning and thunder, amid smoke and flame; and recognizing the existence not only of this relation but the rightfulness of it. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor s wife, his servant, (slave,) his ox, his ass, nor anything thatishis." What is the meaning of "servant?" Among the people to whom that law was given there were hired servants; there were bondmen and bondmaids. Efet, the original in the Hebrew language, which means a slave, means a slave born as such, justas miveh as £ot Aos [doulos,] in Greek, means a slave born as such, I cannot argue with such an antagonist, because he sets his judgment up against the history of the race and of, mankind in all past ages.

I presume, therefore, that this amendment, if it is adopted, must be upon the ground thatin the opinion of Senators, three fourths of the States would have the right to ratify it and incorporate it in the fundamental law of the land. I have no right to question the honesty of the opinion of any Senator who so thinks, and I do notquestion it. I only claim for my own opinion the same honesty that I yield to others.

But, Mr. President, we are told that the reason why this amendment should be made is, that slavery has caused the present national difficulties; that if it had not been for the existence of slavery there would be no war. The honorable chairman of the Judiciary Committee tells us that even if the present troubles have been brought on by the interference of northern fanatics with the institution of slavery, then if slavery had not existed there would have been nothing for them, to interfere with, and the rebellion would not have taken place; that if it was brought on by the desire of the people of the South to strengthen and encourage the institution, then if it had not existed the rebellion would not have taken place; and he seems to think that to it we owe the loss of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and most of the ills under which we are now suffering. He therefore propose as the great remedy, I presume not only to heal our present troubles, but as a bond of peace in the future, that the institution of slavery shall be wiped out by a change of the Constitution.

If there had been no fire, so large a portion of the city of New York as was burned down in 1835 would not have been burned down. If there was no water, there would be no overflowing floods. If there was no sun in the heavens, no man would fall prostrate to the earth and die from the heat of that sun. Let the Senator con ret all the ills of life. Let him quench the fire that warms all the human race, and i o ineendiaiy then could bum our dwellings; let him dry up the fountains of the deep and close the windows of heaven that there shall be no more water; let him pluck the sun from on high that his heat shall no more cause death.

But, sir, I hold that if you adopt this amendment, and you could get three fouithsof the States to ratify it, it would not be obligatory upon the others for another reason; and that is, that you cannot propose this amendment to all the States, as contemplated by the Constitution of the United States. There are confessedly some eight or nine of these States now out of the Union, over which the Federal Government does not pretend to exercise control. What is the meaning of the clause that the Congress of the United States may propose amendments, which, when ratified by three fourths of the States, shall become a pal t of the Constitution? It means that you shall propose those amendments, not to a portion of the States, but to all the States, so that all the States may have the power to act upon them. I ask you, suppose we were at peace to day suppose this revolution had never occurred, and it had been considered proper and necessary by a majority of the peopleof the United States to change their fundamental law by making amendments to the Constitution; suppose, in reference to this matter or in reference to any other matter, you had adopted a joint resolution proposing those amendments, and you submitted them to three fourths of the States, and not to the other one fourth, and that they had been ratified by three fourths of the States would you tell me that they would be a part and parcel of the Constitution because they were ratified by three fourthsof the States?

Hence occurs the principle with which I started, that the Constitution of the United States is the same as any other contract. It is a contract between the States, who, in the language of Mr. Madison, are parties to if and the plain, evident, honest import of this clause of the Constitution giving the power of ratification to three fourths of the States is and must he so understood by all right thinking men, that all the States shall have the power of passing upon that proposed amendment, of ratifyingor rejecting it, and that if any State is denied that privilege, if your amendment is not proposed to any State, it cannot operate upon that State, because it would be in violation of the just terms and fair interpretation of the Constitution. The correctness of this principle would not be denied at all in reference to a contract between parties in a court.

Then I say you cannot propose to or have your proposition acted on by a portion of the States, because you have actually declared them a hostile power, and are engaged in a war with them. You have recognized as between you and those very States belligerent rights. This only shows the impropriety of this proposition at the present time. If you wish to make an amendment to the Constitution of the United States which shall be binding and obligatory in all future time upon the parties to that Constitution, why not wait till peace is restored; why not wait till passion ceases to inflame the breast and madness to warp the judgment and craze the brain of men? The fundamental law of a great people should never be changed amid theshook of arms. Reason should sit calmly on her throne; judgment should be brought to the "line" before acting on such a question.

But sir I oppose this proposed amendmenton another ground. It is impossible for it to be ratified by a vote of three fourths of the States. The enatoi from Illinois, the chairman of the Committee on the Judicial y, said it would require twenty eight States, and he named the States which he supposed would vote to ratify it. He included all the adhering States with the exception of my own, and he thought she could not stand against it. Let me tell the honorable Senator that if the resolution is passed, I do not suppose my State will be in the way of it; not because she will approve of it; not because the majority of her people will not be honestly opposed to it and would not vote against it, but because you do not intend that they shall ever act upon it. The Senator said that Maryland had inaugurated this policy, and she would be in favor of it. J have some acquaintance with the people of that State. She will agree to it, just as the Senator, if met by a highwayman 5 solitary, alone, and unarmed, presenting a pistol at .his head and demanding his purse, would agree to give it up.

But he expects to receive accessions from Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Louisiana in favor of this proposed amendment. I appeal to the honorable Senator, would he have an amendment to the Constitution and get up in his place in the Senate of the United States and declare that that was an amendment adopted by the people of Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, or Louisiana, if the election were to be held at the present time? Does the Senator believe that if the people of those States were free to act, and could pass upon his proposed amendmentaccording to their wish or judgment, there would be one man in ten who would vote to ratify it? It is impossible for the Senator so to believe.

What is your government in Arkansas, in Louisiana, and in Tennessee? Take away your soldiers, and there would be scarcely one man in fifty in either of those States that would either approve your amendment or recognize your authority. And yet the Senator would affect the N rights of nearly one half of what was once this jl Union by going through say it in no disrej1 spect to the honorable Senator, but I say it because J believe it and think it—going through the jj funic of an election under military control and restraint, and then come in the presence of the Senate of the United States and before the people of the country and of the world, and proclaim that the people of three fourths of the States of tlv Union, m the spirit which their fathers intended them to act and in the free exercise of their judgments and their opinions as guarantied to them j1 by their fathers, have agreed to amend their Conji stitution and forever hereafter wipe out the foul blot of slavery!

Mr. President, nothing is to dp gained by this except one thing, and that you may accomplish, n You may succeed hysuchan amendment as this, by an election not by an election, but by a farce enacted in the border States and by a worse farce enacted in some of the seceded States—you may succeed in abolishing slavery in the States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. That is what you can do. You can succeed in injuring those who never tried to injure you; but unless you conquer the South, unless you subjugate them unless you make them pass under the yoke as you avow yourpurpose to do, unless you take bodily hold of their slaves and draw them within your lines and keep them there, you have accomplished nothing. You have regarded them as belligerents, and consequently the slave you take to day from them and put your uniform upon, if he is recaptured by them, is not free, though proclamations and legislative enactments may so declare, but is a slave still and not only a slave by reason of the fact that he is in possession of his original master, but, by asound principle of the law of nations, the jus postliminii, he reverts to his original owner.

But, sir, I shall not pursue the speech of the Senator from Illinois, to which I have referred simply to show in a few words the unsoundness of the principle which he assumes, that because slavery exists and people intermeddle with it and have brought on this state of affairs, or because those who were interested in it were unreasonable in their demands and thereby contributed to such a result, that therefore slavery must be wiped out. There is nothing good m life which by that mode of argumentation and reasoning the honorable Senator could not wipe out and abolish forever. The very food which man eats is often the agency which destroys life; and the reasoning would be just as sound to say that food must be destroyed because it has killed men as that slavery must be abolished because intermeddlera with it have brought about the present state of affairs.

I believe that there has been wrong on both sides of this question; that the abolitionists of this country and what are sometimes called the fire eaters of the South, the secessionists perse, have been cooperators and coworkers in the same damnable cause; that history will judge them both criminal, and humanity in all ages of the world will curse their memory. Had political abolitionists refrained from intermeddling with the just rights of the South in respect to slavery, there would have been no secessionists. Abolitionists, therefore, are the realdisunionists, and primarily responsible for our present troubles. But, sir, while discussing the authority of this measure, I do not mean to be led into a question of party politics.

As was said in reference to another matter, the subject of military interference with elections, by the honorable Senator from Michigan, [Mr. Howard,] the time is unpropitious for such a measure as this. Wait in hope until the day of peace returns, and then, if it is found necessary or wise in the judgment of the people of this country to attempt changes in theirorganie law, apply yourselves to that high office in the same spirit, with the same singleness of purpose, with the same honesty of intention, with the same fairness of disposition, and with the same lofty patriotism in which it was formed by your fathers.

Mr. CLARK. Mr. President, i do not propose to discuss at large the power of Congress to propose this amendment to the States. 1 find in the Constitution as it now stands this provision: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necs us aiy shall propose amendments to this Constitution, o>. on tin- application of the Legislature^ of two thrnh ot the several States-, shall call a convention for proposing amendment", which, ni either ease, shall be valid to all intents arid purposes, a- part of this Co ulitutiun when ratified h\ the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States," &c.

I understand that course to be now proposed. I understand that Congress is about to propose to the States certain amendments t) this Constitution. 1 understand that when those amendments shall be ratified, if they ever are, by three fourths of the States, they will be, in the language of the Constitution now," valid to all intents and purposes." But, says the Senator from Delaware, you cannot amend the Constitution in this particular; the framers of the Constitution did not anticipate that such an amendment would he proposed. Has the Senator from Delaware carefully considered the provisions of this Constitution. The framers of the Constitution said that you might amend it in this way and it should be valid to all intents and purposes except in three particulars: one was in regard to the slave trade; another was in regard to the capitation tax; and the third was m regard to the equal representation of the States in this branch of Congress. Why, sir, article five of this Constitution shows conclusively that the framers of the Constitution had tb$ subject of slavery directly under their thought and control when they said, you shall not amend it in regard to the slave trade for twenty years but was silent as to everything else in regard to it, and you way amend it. There is no provision here that you shall not abolish domestic servitude. There was and is a provision that you should not touch the slave trade within twenty years, but you might abolish slavery. The implication is clear and forcible that you may do it whenever two thirds of both Houses of Congress see fit to propose the amendment and thtee fourths of the States to accept it.

But, Mr. President, I do not propose to pursue this constitutional argument, i propose to show that the great evils of slavery as it now exists in these United States have arisen from this very Constitution. Yes, sir, slavery in the United States owes its giant growth to the Constitution; not that it was created byit, foritexisted before, but that it was planted in it, fenced round and protected by it, so that no national power could weed it out short of an amendment to the Constitution. Sir, this fearful destruction of life, this devastation of homes, this marching and struggling of slaughtering armies, these graves by Manassas and Malvern Hill, by the Rappahannock and Rupidan, by theChickahominy and the Chickamuuga* by Cedar and Lookout and South Mountains, at Shilohand Murfrccsboro', at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, at Wagner and James s Island, at Antietam and Gettysburg; these hospitals with their rows of sickened and maimed inmates; these deadhouses out of which is carted away the dead soldier, often unattended, to lestin the soil hi; gave his life to defend; these" widows' weeds," these orphans' tears," are but the terrible harvest from the immunities, the protection and the culture secured by the Constitution to the accursed institution. And there is another harvest, too, where by the shores, and in the bays, the rivers, and tiio roadsteads, 111 the caverns of the" deep blue sea," lies many a sailor boy cut down by this terrible reaper.

Mr. President, lam not now about to call to account or blame the founders of this Government. They were wise and patriotic men. They were statesmen of broad and patriotic views. They had great difficulties to contend with, and in the main they managed them with admirable skill and judgment. They did tlie best they could, ay well, perhaps, as any men could then have done. The form of government which they conceived and presented to the American people, withits admirable division of State and national powers; with itsgranted and reserved rights; its checks and its balances; its restraints and ample resources; its generally clearly marked division of legislative, judicial, and executive functions; its protection of the Iibei ties of the people, with its guards againstthe abuse of power, has excited the admiration of the world. Commentators have examined and -illustrated it; nations have copied it generations have blessed it. It was one of the crowning glories of Washington s life that he presided over the Convention which devised and reported it to the people for their adoption.

The general peace and prosperity of the country under its administration; the wonderful development of its resources, never half appreciated until now; the expansion of its territory; the increase of its population; its advancement in intellectual and moral culture, as well as political power, all attest the value of the work they achieved.

Still it was not perfect. It could not be so. It was of human wisdom, looking sharply to the future, but sometimes failing to4t pierce the vail," and unable to provide for all the emergencies which misdirected combined and hellish passion or ambition should create. Nay, il rather bore within itself the seeds of weakness and disease, and seemed food and incitement to those very passions which it had most to dread.

Mr, President, the honorable Senator from Maryland who sits nearest me, [Mr. Johnson,] with great force and justice the other day declared that "our present difficulties were the awful retributions of Providence upon a stupendous crime." They are so; butjequally true is it that they are but the normal growth and harvest of our own planting. Had there been no recognition of slavery in the Constitution; had its idea and substance not been admitted or allowed there; had it received no countenance or protection from the national Go v- ernment; had the Constitution provided for its gradual extinction in the old States and its utter exclusion from the new, slavery would not now have sought the overthrow of that Constitution which has ever been its best and strongest protector.

When Washington laid aside the robesof office, he besought his countrymen to cherish the Union they had formed. Alas! that the section of the country in which he lived, his own Virginia, should have been the first battle field with those in arms to overthrow it; and that his own home cannot now be safely visited by Union lovingmen without throwing out a picket guard to protect their liberties and their lives.

Alas! that in Richmond, the capital of his own State, men should be imprisoned and starved till their eye balls glare upon vacancy, because they will fight for the supremacy of that Constitution which he so counseled them to cherish and defend; and this, because in the very instrument which formed that Union there was wrapped up a very Pandora s box of evil.

Mr. President, certain things in the material world cannot exist together in the same place and at the same time. Fne cannot dwell with water. Thrown together they hiss and sputter until one is extinguished or the other evapoiates in steam. So of acids and alkaline salts. They foam and effervesce until one is destroyed or both are neutralized. In the moral and political world there is the same law of antagonisms: vice repels virtue and virtue abhois vice; innocence ptecludesguilt and guilt shuts out the very idea of innocence; government represses anarchy and anarchy ovcrthiows government; tyranny destroys liberty while liberty prostrates tyranny; freedom strikes at slavery and (slavery seizes her chains and endeavors to bind them upon freedom. Neither will nor can rest in the presence of the other. Both will struggle for the mastery until one or the other must succumb; aTid in the contest they are" like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."

The framers of the Constitution forgot, or overlooked, or disregarded this hnv in human affairs. They attempted to form a more perfect Union, and yet in that very bond of Union they admitted antagonistic forces which have well nigh rent that Union asunder. They established justice upon a foundation apparently stable, but with a material in it so unfitted for the structure that it has well nigh toppled the whole to destruction. They thought to insure domestic tranquillity by planting together seeds of discord, which have ripened to an awful harvest of civil vvai and blood. Seeking liberty to themselves and posterity, but denying it to an inferior and subject race, they have nearly lost it to both.

Can a man take fire in his bosom and not be burned?" No more can man admit the idea of human bondage into the charter of a free Government and not find it in the end a blackened scroll crumbling to ashes in his grasp.

Sir, Mr. Madison, with scrupulous care, excluded the word "slave" from the Constitution, but by a fatal mistake allowed the thing itself to remain, lie chased away the shadow but left the substance, with the same fatuity that would induce a parent to call an asp or a scorpion a pretty bird, and leave it to sting his offspring to death. True it may bo and is that he and his compeers thought slavery would gradually die out, but they little knew the terrific vitality of the fiend which should so grow and strengthen that in seventyfive short years of the nation s life it should wind itself in and about it with the grasp of an anaconda, and with impious breath claim it was of divine sanction and origin.

Here is the lasuo clearly made up ami plainly stated. Slavery says," I am of God and eternal and absolute right;" Liberty cries You are of your father the devil, and his works you do." Now, can these two warring forces exist together, and did not the framers of the Constitution when they admitted into the charter of free# government the idea of human bondage put into it an element of unrest, strife, and death?

Let us consider. Slavery procures its recognition and admission into the Constitution. It has achieved a great and almost fatal work. It has nestled into the very, bosom of the nation s life. It has secured the nation s protection. It has allied with its defense the nation s arm. It has an anchorage ground from which no political gales can drive it; a fortress where no hostile arm can assault it, and whence it can go forth to secure new triumphs as the nation advances in territorial power. True hernameis notin the Constitution; but, alas! she is there—there in vigor and strength—and in the very first article of that instrument she provides for her representation in Congress, where her voice and her votes have been of signal potency. She gained at a bound the legislative hall, and ever since has sat and hissed and writhed about the nation s limbs. True, again, her name was not in the instrument, but her power was there.

For years before she had freighted ships from Africa to these shores, laden with human beings, to endure the tortures of the middle passage, and if they escaped those to be forever bondmen and bondwomen. She said these men "have no rights which the white man is bound to respect;" and she demanded in that instrument that this inhuman traffic should not be prohibited to iler for twenty years and more, and that she might have time and leisure and opportunity to fill the land with slaves before any prohibition beyond a nominal tax could he laid upon the trade. Was slavery to die out? So said and so I think believed the fathers; but why, then, this provision for an unlimited supply of victims for twenty years, upon which she could feed and fatten and increase? True, again, her name was not in the instrument. But see, slaves will run away. Man, black or white, does not love bondage; God has made him free, and if chains are put upon him, upon opportunity given he will slip them off and escape. Who shall return him? Shall he he free?" In nowise says the Constitution; "he shall not thereby "—that is, by running away to another State—" be discharged such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Delivered up? By whom? By the United States, said those who interpreted the law. And thus by this Constitution slavery assumed monstrous functions and powers. She could sit by the sea side and, reaching her hundred arms across the Atlantic, sweep the wretched coasts of Africa and draw to herself the miserable beings whom she could seize and fetter. She could then turn inland, and if any of her panting, sweating, bleeding victims escaped from her house of bondage she could demand the aid of the Government with all its power to return the fugitive to her clutch; and then she could ascend into the halls of legislation to demand new guarantees and to lash with her" scorpion s tail "all who questioned herright or spoke of her with other than .the most obsequious respect.

Such was slavery in and by the Constitution. Such are now its provisions in regard to her, save that the tune for her to carry on her cruel foreign slave trade has expired.

Shall she keep her position? Or shall she be cast out as a demon, and forever prevented from again entering the halls of justice, the Houses of Congress, or the national domain?

To determine more fully and clearly this qaestion I propose to examine for a little while the history of slavery in connection with this Government; not to go into detail or particular acts, but into great national, historic transactions, which may serve to show how carefully she has used the power which #he gained by her recognition m the Constitution.

And here I accuse her of divers and sundry grievous misdoings for which she richly deserves to die, and for which now in the righteous retributions of Providence she must suffer.

Slavery is intrinsically and by nature grasping and encroaching. Eler animus necessarily is hostile to freedom and free territory; and hence, though the Cramers of the Government had apptopnatcd the territory of the United States to the erection of free Slates, no sooner was she installed in the Constitution andVermont was admitted as a free State, than she looked about for more slave States, and Kentucky was born of Virginia, under the Constitution, a slave State.

"To secure the blessings of liberty," says the preamble, was the Constitution ordained and established. How did slavery then pervert its end and aim! And to day there is no State among the non seceding States so wedded to this institution as this first born slave State Kentucky. Halting in her patriotism, limping in her support of the Government, divided betwixt her love for the Union and her love for slavery, preferring to sacrifice her white sons to subdue rebellion rather than put her slaves in the Army, she is a most melancholy spectacle, showing to the world how low this accursed weight could drag down the gallant old State, how, torpedo like it could benumb its energies, paralyze its efforts, and divide and arm its citizens against themselves.

Look at these two States of Vermontand Kentucky ill this struggle. How nobly did thcGiecn Mountaineers" march to the music and keep the step of the Union 1" How cravenly and unpatriotieally did the gallant Kentuckians mount the platform of neutrality, and leave the old flag to be borne and upheld by other hands! They have nothing to choose between patriots and rebels! Mr. President, why was it, and why is it so' Plainly and simply because Vermont had no slaves, and Kentucky had. Amend the Constitution, make slavery impossible in Kentucky, she will be more patriotic, and will in the end rest happy, quiet, and prosperous in the Union, and receive an untold gain.

If all the new States admitted after the formation of the Constitution had been free States, slavery never could have increased as it has, nay, must rather have diminished, and we should have escaped this cruel civil war. But under the Constitution shu f ry ran a race with freedom to secure a slave State as often as there was admitted a free State; yes, and more; for the firsthalf century of the Go ernmentsix fi ee States were admitted and nine slave States; Vermont in 1791; Ohio in 1802; Indiana in 1816; Illinois in 1818; Maine in 18 20 Michigan in 1837; Kentucky in 1792; Tennessee in 1796; Louisiana in 1812; Mississippi in 3817; Alabama in 1819; Missouri in 18 21 Arkansas in 1 36 Florida in 1845; Texas in 184a.

Mr. President, 1 would amend the Constitution and banish slavery from the United States for that. She has spread herself since thefoimution of the Constitution over millions of square miles and among millions of people. She has excluded from that territory free schools and those institutions of learning which are accessible to the poor, and thus kept the people in comparative ignorance. She has degraded labor and increased poverty and vice. She has reared an aristocracy and trampled down the masses. She has denied oftentimes in those States to citizens of other States their rights under the Constitution. She has shut up to them the liberty of speech and the press. She has assaulted them, imprisoned them, lynched them, expatriated them, murdered them, for no crime, but because they testified against her. She lias dehaned from that territory most of the improvements which mark a free "people. She has perverted knowledge. She has opened in partsof it the foreign slave trade, and obstructed the punishment of the kidnapper and the pirate. In other parts she has degraded the people to the infamous business of raising negroes for sale, and living upon their increase. She has practiced concubinage, destroyed the sanctity of marriage, and sundered and broken the domestic ties. She has bound men, women, and children, robbed them, beat them, bruised and mangled them, burned and otherwise murdered them. To their cries she has turned a deaf ear, to their complaints shut the courts, and taken from them the power to testify against their oppressors. She has compelled them to submit in silence and labor in tears. She has forbidden their instruction, and mocked them with the pretense she was christianizing them through suffering.

She has devised and set up the doctrine of State rights, denying that her people owed allegiance to the national Government, thus weakening their attachment to it and sapping its foundations.'

She has claimed to nullify the acts of Congress and to yield obedience to those only which she chose to obey.

She agreed to a division of the national domain by the line of 3 i° 30', abided by it till she had appropriated the part assigned to her, then abrogated it, and filled Kansas with fraud, violence, and blood to secure the rest.

She stole into Texas, caused it to rebel against Mexico, and then erected it into a slave State in the Union, and made the nation pay the debts of the adventure.

She made war again on Mexico for more territory; and when California, a part of the territory obtained by the war, asked to be admitted as a free State, she refused her assent until appeased by new compromises.

She went into the court, and, lc Squ it like a toad 1 she whispered into the car of the Chief Magistrate that the negro had no" rights which the white man was bound to respect." She caused the com? to deny him the lights of a citizen, and, breaking down the old landmarks, drive him from the justice hall a castaway without aid and without hope. Failing to elect a President agreeable to herself, she prepared to revolt. She sent assassins to murder the Chief Magistrate elect on his way to the capital. She Emptied the Treasury; she sent away the Army and the Navy; she transferred arms from the North to the southern arsenals, and stole them when they reached there; she beleaguered and assaulted and captured the fortifications of the United States; she threatened the capital; she burned bridges to obstruct nctthe, ai i arrival of succor; she shot down Union soldiers in the streets of Baltimore; she has set armies in the field, and she now seeks the nation s life and the destruction of the Government. To this end she lias waged this war of rebellion three long years, and will continue to wage it till subdued by superior force and arms.

Air, President, this rebellion is slavery in arms; and slavery is the ward if not the child of the Constitution. Right well has the guardian discharged the trust. But the creature thus protected and warmed into life has stolen to the bosom of Us protector and aimed its dagger at the life of the Government. Sir, it is time this disastrous relation should cease. Let the letters of guardianship be revoked. Reviewing this history and recounting this catalogue of crimes, let Senators, Mr. President, tell me if slavery should longer be tolerated m our Government. Should it not cease to exist? Should not the Constitution be amended so as to entirely forbid and prohibit it? Nay, sir, can any one for a moment suppose the wise framers of the Constitution would not have provided some means for its extinction could they have anticipated the hideous proportions it would assume or the atrocities it would commit and the destruction it would threaten

And here let no one tell me that it is already dead, for it is not so. it is wounded, s ck and it may be of little value, but it is not dead; it is vital in every part, and cannot but by annihilation die. It exists in Virginia, it exists in Kentucky, it exists all through the States where it formerly existed unless it has been extirpated by the action of one or two States—Arkansas, Virginia, possibly, and Louisiana; but itis not dead; and if you do not make a final finish of it it will rise again to toiment and to punish you for the loss of this opportunity.

1 would not only, jr like the Senator from Massachusetts, smite it on every occasion, but, as the son of Jesse did to the giantof Gath, I would cut off its head with its own sword. I would so fight this rebellion as to finish it, and 1 would make its future existence forever impossible by the adoption of the proposed amendment of the Constitution.

There is, Mr. President, an essential difference: between the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery. The act of Congress of the 17th July, 1862 set free certain classes of sla es The President s proclamation of January 1 1SG3 proclaimed freedom to tho e of certain districts. Both were measures of emancipation. They concerned the persons of slaves, and not the institution of slave! y. Whatever be then force end extent, no one pietends they altered or abolished the laws of servitude in any of the slave States. They rescued some of its victims, but they left the institution othei wise untouched. They let out some of the prisoners, but did not tear down the hated prison. They emancipated, let go from the hand, but they left Ifte hand unlopped, to clutch again such unfortunate creatures as it could lay hold upon. This amendment of the Constitution is of wider scope and more searching operation. It goes deep into the soil, and upturns the roots of this poisonous plant to dry and wither. It notonly sets free the present slave, but it provides for the future, and makes slavery impossible so longasthis provision shall remain a part of the Constitution. Sir, this amendment will be most propitious. On all the slaveaccursed soil it shall plant new institutions of freedom, and a new or regenerated people shall rise up, with an undying, ever strengthening fealty to that Government which has bestowed nothing but benefits and blessings.

Even to old Virginia, beat down the rebellion and make her a free State, prosperity would -return. Her people would learn to labor, and she would respectitsdignity. Commerce would c over her bays and glide into her noble rivers; products would fill her marts and luxuriant grains wave in all her fields. With amilU climate arich soil, abundant harbors bays rivers and water courses with rich and undeveloped mineral resources, she would become the land of abundance, and on every hand would grow villages and towns, with schools and churches, and all the institutions of a higher civilization.

But, sir, I am told that this is not the time for such an amendment of the Constitution. Pray when, sir, will it come? Will it be when the President has issued more and more calls for two or three hundred thousand men of the country s bravest and best? Will it be when more fathers and husbands and sons have fallen, and their graves are thicker by the banks of the rivers and streamlets and hillsides? Will it be when there are more scenes like this I hold in my hand —an artist s picture, a photograph of an actuality —of a quiet spot by the side of a river, with the moon shining upon the water, and a lonely sentinel keeping guard, and here in the open space the head boards marking the burial places of many a soldier boy, and an open grave to receive another inmate, and underneath the words, "All quiet on the Potomac?" [Exhibiting a photograph to the Senate.] Will it be when such scenes of quiet are more numerous, not only along the Potomac but by the Rapidan, the Chickahominy, the Stone, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Big Black, and the Red? Sir, note, in my judgment, is the time, and the fitting time. Never until now could this amendment have been carried, and now I hope and believe it can." Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."

Maddened by its profits, its growth, and its strength, to preserve and perpetuate slavery, to found an empire on its hateful basis, eleven of the slave States have revolted from and armed themselves against this Government. In theory and law no State can secede from this Union. They are bound m indissoluble constitutional ties; but actually, and in fact, these States have broken away from the Union; they are practically out of it; they take no part in it, and we have no control over them, except so far as we have taken and now hold the country by force of arms. They are revolted States. There remains to us the right to compel them to submit, to reduce them under the sway of the Constitution and the laws, and we mean to do it. But what has been the effect of this revolt and separation on slavery?

Slavery s strongest and safest guarantees were in the Constitution, and its supporters wqi o mad when they cast away and threw off those guarantees. Remaining m the Union, no one would probably have moved for an amendment of the Constitution. Loyal to the Government, hostile armies would not have set free their slaves, nor laws now necessary and expedient have authorized their employment against their masters in arms. But now, sir, every free State will gladly, it is hoped and believed, vote for the proposed amendment. Most would rejoice to do it; while numbers of the slave States, aghast at the miseries of secession and the horrors of this cruel civil war, recognizing slavery as the cause of all this distill bance and all these woes, would he among the foremost to sweep it forever away.

Now, sir, is the time to do it. And not only is now the time, but the necessity and the duty of doing it are upon us. We can have no permanent peace nor restored Union until it is done. Therearexhose who cry "The Union as it was and the Constitution as it is!" But I am free and bold t& confess that I am for a Union without slavery, and an amended Constitution making it forever impossible. This revolt was to preserve slavery, and we shall fail of our whole duty if we do notremove the inciting cause. To restore this Union with slavery in it when we have subdued the rebel armies, would be again to build your house on its smoking ruins when you had not put out the fire which burned it down.

If the dire calamities now befalling us be the retributions of Providence upon- a stupendous crime," what mad folly to hug that crime, and seek to avoid its future punishment!" Let my people go." But Pharaoh would not let them go; and then came sufferings, and plagues, and the smiting of the first born Oh! how many of our first horn have been smitten and fallen. Let us 5 be wise and heed the teaching. There is a Providence in the great events now transpiring. The people see the hand. It points the way. They are filled with hope and faith. They follow the" pillar and the cloud, and will struggle and endure. I know, Mr. President, that the suppression of the rebellion will necessarily wound and maim slavery. I know that every victory over the rebels ia a victory also over the cause of the rebellion, and I know, too, that the arming of the slaves will make the future enslaving of these men and their kindred well nigh impossible; but slavery will still exist, not in much vigor or strength, but in the root and principle. This amendment will dig out the root and repudiate the principle.

Mr. President, in a quiet church yard near his home, is the grave of a soldier who returned to die. At the head of his grave is a marble slab, and on it these few but expressive words, "Mustered out." Let both Houses of Congress, by a two thirds vote, recommend this amend went abolishing slavery, and let three fourths of the States, burying slavery by their ratification, come and write its epitaph on the Constitution, Mustered The soldier was" mustered out," we trust, to enlist again in the shining cohorts in advance of eai th s extreme picket line, but let this be 44 mustered out" to go, like Judas, to its own place.

The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. Sherman.) The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Davis] to the amendment reported by the committee.

Mr. DAVIS. I withdraw that amendment, and offer this one which I now send to the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment of the Senator from Kentucky as now modified will be read.

The Secretary read the amendment to the a mendmcnt, which was to strike out all after the word "namely, "m line eight of the committee s amendment, and insert:

No negro, or person whose mother or grandmother Is or was ft negro, shall bo a uitixrn of tlx; United States, or l o eligible to any civil or military office, or to any place of trust or profit under the United Status

Mr. DAVIS called for the yeas and nays, and they were ordered, and taken with the following result;

YKAH —Messrs TJuckalcw, Carlile, Davis, Powell, Riddle, and Saulsbury— 5

NAYS Messrs Brown, Chandler, Clark, Cowan, Dixon, Oooliitlc, FepMMiden, Foster, Hale, Harlan, Harm, Henderson, Howard, Howe, Johnson, Lane of Indiana, MePoutjail, Morgan Morrill I Pomeroy, itam cy Sherman, Sumner, Ten JEyuk, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, and Wilson—

Mr JOHNSON (when his name was called) voted" yea;" but before theresultwasannounced said: lam not sure that I understood the proposition on which I voted in the affirmative.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is a proposition to strike out the amendment reported by the committee, and to insert the amendment of the Senator from Kentucky in heu of it.

Air. JOHNSON. Then I vote "nay." 1 thought it was an independent proposition.

Mr. VAN WINKLE. I wish to state that my colleague [Mr. Willey] has gone away, supposing that no vote would be taken this afternoon.

The PRESIDING OFFICER announced the vote—yeas (j, nays 28; not a quorum voting.

Mr. TRUMBULL. I move that the Sergeantat Arros be directed to request the attendance of .absent Senators.

Mr. FESSENDEN. That is perfectly useless, let me suggest to the Senator, because they are not obliged to come. It is now after four o clock and I move an adjournment.

Mr. TRUMBULL. I do not think it is useless, on the ground that the Senator from Maine suggests, that they are notobliged to come. Certainly Senators will not wait to be compelled to be brought to the Senate when they are notified that we are without a quorum. I should think when they were so notified they would attend. At any rate, we might as well make the effort to secure their attendance

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine submits a motion to adjourn; it is not debatable.

Mr. FESSENDEN. I withdraw the motion.

Mr. CHANDLER. I renew it.

M>\ TRUMBULL. The Senator from Michigan has hardly got the floor for that purpose, I think.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is entitled to the floor.

Mr. TRUMBULL. 1 will not persist in the motion iftheieisan indisposition in the Senate to take measures to secure the presence of a quorum; but I think we ought to have an understanding that Senators shall stay here to transact the pub lie, business. If we be left every day without a quorum at this hour of the day, I do not know when we shall be able to get through.

Mr. FESSENDE NT The only understanding wo can have is the understanding that gentlemen shall stay here until the Senate adjourns, and not go away and leave us m this condition. We have no power to compel their attendance, and by the attempt to do so now we should only waste considerable time and then adjourn. I think theonly remedy is to call the yeas and nays, and let it appear on the record who are the absentees, who prevent the business of the Senate from being done, and then leave it to the sense of gentlemen at this period of the session whether they will remain or not.

Mr. JOHNSON. I desire to address the Senate upon the constitutional amendment which is proposed. It is too late in the day now, and I am so situated that I shall be unable to do it tomorrow, because 1 am under an engagement in the Supreme Court of the United States. I now move that the Senate adjourn, intending, if the Senate will permit mc, to address them on Saturday, if they sit on Saturday, or on Monday. 1 move now that the Senate adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate adjourned,