REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IN THE REBEL

LIOUS STATES.

ON the 22d of March, 1864, the House refused to recommit the Bill for the Government of the Rebellious States reported from the Select Committee, and the question being upon ordering the bill to be engrossed and read a third time, Mr. Davis, as Chairman of the Select Committee, addressed the House as follows:

MR. SPEAKER,—The bill which I am directed by the Committee on the Rebellious States to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government in States whose governments have been overthrown. It prescribes such conditions as will secure not merely civil government to the people of the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion.

The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder; of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation.

The vote of gentlemen upon this measure will be regarded by the country with no ordinary interest. Their vote will be taken to express their opinion on the necessity of ending slavery with the rebellion, and their willingness to assume the responsibility of adopting the legislative measures without which that result can not be assured, and may wholly fail of accomplishment. Their vote will be held to show whether they think the measure now proposed, or any which may be moved as a substitute, is an adequate and proper measure to accomplish that purpose. It is entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion; and the relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion toward the United States, not less of those who think that the rebellion has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the

protection of the Constitution, and that Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them as conquered enemies, than of that other class who think that they have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though incapable of exercising political privileges under the Constitution, but that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Constitution to guarantee republican governments in the States, and that this is the proper time and the proper mode of exercising it. It is also entitled to the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of the House, who honestly and deliberately express their judgment that slavery is dead. To them it puts the question whether it is not advisable to bury it out of our sight, that its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our propriety.

It does not address itself to that class of gentlemen upon the other side of the House, if there be any, nor to that class of the people of the country who look for political alliance to the men who head the rebellion in the South, and say to them, let us

"Once more

Erect the standard there of ancient knight,

Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge.

It purports, sir, not to exercise a revolutionary authority, but to be an execution of the Constitution of the United States, of the fourth section of the fourth article of that Constitution, which not merely confers the power upon Congress, but imposes upon Congress the duty of guaranteeing to every State in this Union a republican form of government. That clause vests in the Congress of the United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited political jurisdiction, paramount over courts, subject only to the judgment of the people of the United States, embracing within its scope every legislative measure necessary and proper to make it effectual; and what is necessary and proper the Constitution refers, in the first place, to our judgment, subject to no revision but that of the people. It recognizes no other tribunal. It recognizes the judgment of no court. It refers to no authority except the judgment and will of the majority of Congress, and of the people on that judg ment, if any appeal from it. It is one of that class of plenary powers of a political character conferred on Congress by the Constitution, such as the authority to admit new States into the Union, the authority to make rules and regulations for the government of the Territories of the United States. With reference to that

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class of cases, the Supreme Court, renouncing all right to judge on political questions, has said that these sections vested in the Congress of the United States plenary power over the subject-matters mentioned, subject only to the limitations contained in those sections. In the section to which I refer there is, and almost from the very nature of the case there can be, no limitation. It is intended to meet all the emergencies of the national life. It is intended to apply to events which human imagination could scarcely have pictured. And yet the great wisdom of the framers of the Constitution has in no particular been rendered more remarkably apparent--although their imagination could scarcely have reached the belief in the possibility of events that are to us familiar as household words-than in their having laid by, in the arsenal of the Constitution, the weapons to deal with this great danger.

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What is the nature of this case with which we have to deal― the evil we must remedy, the danger we must avert? In other words, what is that monster of political wrong which is called secession? It is not, Mr. Speaker, domestic violence within the meaning of that clause of the Constitution, for the violence was the act of the people of the States through their government, and was the offspring of their free and unforced will. It is not invasion in the meaning of the Constitution, for no State has been invaded against the will of the government of the State by any power except the United States marching to overthrow the usurpers of its territory. It is, therefore, the act of the people of the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act. And therefore it must be either a legal revolution which makes them independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection of governments which do not recognize the Constitution of the United States, which the Constitution does not recognize, and, therefore, not republican governments of the States in rebellion. The latter is the view which all parties take of it. I do not understand that any gentleman on the other side of the House says. that any rebel government which does not recognize the Constitution of the United States, and which is not recognized by Congress, is a State government within the meaning of the Constitution. Still less can it be said that there is a State government, republican or unrepublican, in the State of Tennessee, where there is no government of any kind, no civil authority, no organized

form of administration except that represented by the flag of the United States, obeying the will, and under the orders of the military officer in command. It is the language of the President of the United States in every proclamation, of Congress in every lawon the statute-book, of both houses in their forms of proceedings, and of the courts of the United States in their administration of the law. It is the result of every principle of law, of every suggestion of political philosophy, that there can be no republican government within the limits of the United States that does not recognize, but does repudiate, the Constitution, and which the President and the Congress of the United States do not, on their part, recognize. Those that are here represented are the only governments existing within the limits of the United States. Those that are not here represented are not governments of the States, republican under the Constitution. And if they be not, then they are military usurpations, inaugurated as the permanent governments of the States, contrary to the supreme law of the land, arrayed in arms against the government of the United States; and it is the duty, the first and highest duty, of the government to suppress and expel them. Congress must either expel, or recognize and support them. If it do not guarantee them, it is bound to expel them; and they who are not ready to suppress them are bound to recognize them.

The Supreme Court of the United States, in declining jurisdiction of political questions such as these in the famous Rhode Island cases, declared by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, in the presidency of John Tyler, during the Southern domination, in support of the acts of John Tyler, that a military government, established as the permanent government of a State, is not a republican government in the meaning of the Constitution, and that it is the duty of Congress to suppress it. That duty Congress is now executing by its armies. He farther said in that case that it is the exclusive prerogative of Congress-of Congress, and not of the President-to determine what is and what is not the established government of the State; and, to come to that conclusion, it must judge of what is and what is not a republican government, and its judgment is conclusive on the Supreme Court, which can not judge of the fact for itself, but accepts the fact declared by the political department of the government.

We are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of

the authority of the State government. When that shall have been accomplished, there will be no form of State authority in existence which Congress can recognize. Our success will be the overthrow of all semblance of government in the rebel States. The government of the United States is then, in fact, the only government existing in those States, and it is there charged to guarantee them republican governments.

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaranteeing a republican government confer, under such circumstances, upon Congress? What right does it give? What laws may it pass? What objects may it accomplish? What conditions may it insist upon, and what judgment may it exercise in determining what it will do? The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right to pass all laws necessary and proper to guarantee. The duty of guaranteeing means the duty to accomplish the result. It means that the republican government shall exist. It means that every opposition to republican government shall be put down. It means that every thing inconsistent with the permanent continuance of republican government shall be weeded out. It places in the hands of Congress the right to say what is and what is not, with all the light of experience and all the lessons of the past, inconsistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance of republican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy is radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and enduring peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of republican government, and it have the manliness to say so, there is no power, judicial or executive, in the United States, that can even question this judgment but the PEOPLE; and they can do it only by sending other representatives here to undo our work. The very language of the Constitution and the necessary logic of the case involves that consequence. The denial of the right of secession means that all the territory of the United States shall remain under the jurisdiction of the Constitution. If there can be no State government which does not recognize the Constitution, and which the authorities of the United States do not recognize, then there are these alternatives, and these only: The rebel States must be governed by Congress till they submit and form a State government under the Constitution; or Congress must recognize State governments which do not recognize either Congress or the Constitution of the United States; or there must be an en