"Executive Mansion, Washington, March 15, 1884.

"His Excellency Michael Hahn, Governor of Louisiana: "Until farther orders, you are hereby invested with the powers exercised hitherto by the Military Governor of Louisiana.

This Michael Hahn is no officer of the United States. The President, without law, without the advice and consent of the Senate, by a private note not even countersigned by the Secretary of State, makes him dictator of Louisiana. The bill provided for the civil administration of the laws of the State till it should be in a fit temper to govern itself, repealing all laws recognizing slavery, and making all men equal before the law. These beneficent provisions the President has annulled. People will die, and marry, and transfer property, and buy and sell, and to these acts of civil life courts and officers of the law are necessary. Congress legislated for these necessary things, and the President deprives them of the protection of the law. The President's purpose to instruct his military governors to "proceed according to the bill"-a make-shift to calm the disappointment its defeat has occasioned is not merely a grave usurpation, but a transparent delusion. He can not "proceed according to the bill" after preventing it from becoming a law. Whatever is done will be at his will and pleasure, by persons responsible to no law, and more interested to secure the interests and execute the will of the President than of the people, and the will of Congress is to be "held for naught," unless "the loyal people of the rebel States choose to adopt it." If they should graciously prefer the stringent bill to the easy proclamation, still the registration will be made under no legal sanction; it will give no assurance that a majority of the people of the States have taken the oath; if administered, it will be without legal authority, and void; no indictment will lie for false swearing at the election, or for admitting bad, or for rejecting good votes. It will be the farce of Louisiana and Arkansas acted over again, under the forms of this bill, but not by authority of law.

But when we come to the guarantees of future peace which Congress meant to exact, the forms as well as the substance of the bill must yield to the President's will that none should be imposed. It was the solemn resolve of Congress to protect the loyal men of the nation against three great dangers: (1) the return to

power of the guilty leaders of the rebellion; (2) the continuance of slavery; and (3) the burden of the rebel debt. Congress required assent to those provisions of the Convention of the State, and, if refused, it was to be dissolved. The President "holds for naught" that resolve of Congress, because he is unwilling "to be inflexibly committed to any one plan of restoration;" and the people of the United States are not to be allowed to protect themselves unless their enemies agree to it. The order to proceed according to the bill is therefore merely at the will of the rebel States, and they have the option to reject it and accept the proclamation of the 8th of December, and demand the President's recognition. Mark the contrast! The bill requires a majority, the proclamation is satisfied with one tenth; the bill requires one oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains votes by registering, the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the bill governs the rebel States by law, equalizing all before it, the proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military governors and provost - marshals; the bill forbids electors for President, the proclamation and defeat of the bill threaten us with civil war for the admission or exclusion of such votes; the bill exacted exclusion of dangerous enemies from power, and the relief of the nation from the rebel debt, and the prohibition of slavery forever, so that the suppression of the rebellion will double our resources to bear or pay the national debt, free the masses from the old domination of the rebel leaders, and eradicate the cause of the war; the proclamation secures neither of these guar

antees.

It is silent respecting the rebel debt and the political exclusion of rebel leaders, leaving slavery exactly where it was by law at the outbreak of the rebellion, and adds no guarantees even of the freedom of the slaves the President undertook to manumit. It is summed up in an illegal oath, without a sanction, and therefore void. The oath is to support all proclamations of the President during the rebellion having reference to slaves. Any government is to be accepted at the hands of one tenth of the people not contravening that oath. Now that oath neither secures the abolition of slavery, nor adds any security to the freedom of the slaves whom the President declared free. It does not secure the abolition of slavery, for the proclamation of freedom merely pro

fessed to free certain slaves, while it recognized the institution. Every Constitution of the rebel States at the outbreak of the rebellion may be adopted, without the change of a letter, for none of them contravene that proclamation, none of them establish slavery.

It adds no security to the freedom of the slaves, for their title is the proclamation of freedom. If it be unconstitutional, an oath to support it is void. Whether constitutional or not, the oath is without authority of law, and therefore void. If it be valid, and observed, it exacts no enactment by the State, either in law or Constitution, to add a State guarantee to the proclamation title; and the right of a slave to freedom is an open question before the State courts on the relative authority of the State law and the proclamation. If the oath binds the one tenth who take it, it is not exacted of the other nine tenths who succeed to the control of the State government, so that it is annulled instantly by the act of recognition. What the State courts would say of the proclamation who can doubt? But the master would not go into court, he would seize his slave. What the Supreme Court would say who can tell? When and how is the question to get there? No habeas corpus lies for him in a United States court; and the President defeated with this bill its extension of that writ to this

case.

Such are the fruits of this rash and fatal act of the President, a blow at the friends of his administration, at the rights of humanity, and at the principles of republican government.

The President has greatly presumed on the forbearance which the supporters of his administration have so long practiced, in view of the arduous conflict in which we are engaged, and the reckless ferocity of our political opponents.

But he must understand that our support is of a cause, and not of a man; that the authority of Congress is paramount, and must be respected; that the whole body of the Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him of rash and unconstitutional legislation; and that, if he wishes our support, he must confine himself to his executive duties to obey and execute-not to make the laws; to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization to the Congress.

If the supporters of the government fail to insist on this, they become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke,

and are justly liable to the indignation of the people whose rights and security committed to their keeping they sacrifice.

Let them consider the remedy for these usurpations, and, having found, fearlessly execute it.

B. F. WADE, Chairman of Senate Committee.

H. WINTER DAVIS,

Chairman of Committee of House of Representatives on the Rebellious States.

VICTORY THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS.

On the 14th of October, 1864, the new Constitution of Maryland, submitted by the State Convention in June, abolishing slavery in the State, was approved and adopted by the people. Mr. Davis thus lived to see accomplished the work of emancipation, in which he had taken great interest, and in the advocacy of which he had also had an active part.

But an opposition to him in the ranks of the Union party in his own district, which had been confined at first to a few, had been increased by the policy he had advocated and by his votes on some occasions in Congress, and had not been diminished by the tone he had sometimes used toward such opponents. His opposition to the renomination of Mr. Lincoln, and to certain measures of his administration, had had the same effect in this district, and it had lately been increased among others by the publication of the "Wade-Davis Manifesto." It was asserted by some of the opponents of Mr. Davis that, while he thus did not completely support the administration, and furnished (by the Manifesto) arguments against it during the canvass, he was in some things more extreme than the Republican party; that his votes in Congress actually drove away Southern trade from Baltimore, and that his course and proposed action now tended to exasperate instead of winning back the States now (then) in rebellion.

Besides these allegations, a good deal of the opposition to Mr. Davis must be traced to the personal animosities and bitterness of feeling which in Baltimore of late years had been the invariable consequence of a difference, not merely of party and political views, but of opinions also, as to the line of party conduct even among its own adherents. It was farther asserted by some that Mr. Davis was then, and would shortly declare himself, in favor of "negro suffrage," whenever he thought the necessities of the political situation demanded its adoption.

Upon all these grounds and assertions, this opposition to him, which had proved itself important two years before, when he was last nominated for Congress, now showed signs of carrying with it the control of the Union party. This was confirmed in September by the defeat, for the