Charles H. McCarthy

“ No one will deny that we have a right to subdue by arms and to reduce to quietude and submission a rebel State, that is, the people of a State in insurrection. But how absurd to make this concession, and at the same time to deny to us the constitutional power to occupy and hold the territory and its people in our military grasp—an occupation just as necessary to the end in view as the firing of cannon, the charging of cavalry, or any other operation in the field. ”

“ Can this government stand, if it indulges constitutional constructions by which men in open rebellion against it are to be accounted, man for man, the equals of those who maintain their loyalty to it? Are they to be accounted even better citizens, and more worthy of consideration, than those who merely neglect to vote? If so, their treason against the Constitution enhances their constitutional value. Without braving these absurd conclusions, we cannot deny that the body which consents to the admission of West Virginia is the legislature of Virginia. ”

“ It is the most astounding spectacle in history that in the Southern States, with more than half of the population opposed to it, a great revolution was effected against their wishes and against their votes, without a battle, a riot, or a protest in behalf of the beneficent Government of their fathers—a revolution whose opponents hastened to lead it, without a martyr to the cause they deserted except the nameless heroes of the mountains of Tennessee, or a confessor of the faith they had avowed save the illustrious Petigru of South Carolina! ”

“ Again, the admission of the new State turns that much slave soil, to free, and thus is a certain and irrevocable encroachment upon the cause of the rebellion. The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and secession in favor of the Constitution. ”

“ Does the authority to ‘guaranty to each State in this Union a republican form of government’ authorize this Union to set up a government, to create a government, or to make a government? Is the maker of a note the man who guaranties its payment? There is no man in the Senate who knows better the definition and legal significance of the word ‘guaranty’ than the Senator from Ohio, and none, I am sure, is more familiar, too, with the power that was intended to be conferred by this provision of the Constitution. ”

“ We cannot reorganize the civil government of our city, and still less that of our State, and get rid of the fearful incubus of martial law now pressing down our energies by its arbitrary influence, unless we believe, give utterance to and establish the fundamental principle of our national government: “all men are created free and equal.” We know of no better way to effect this than by calling a convention as soon as possible, to declare the simple fact that Louisiana now is and will forever be a free State. ”

“ Sir, I know that our loyal people will never be guilty of the infamy of inviting the blacks to unite with them in fighting our battles, and after our triumph—a triumph which we never could have achieved but for their generous coöperation and aid—deny those loyal blacks political rights while consenting that pardoned but unrepentant white rebels shall again be clothed with the entire political power of these States. ”

“ If in delivering Mexico he should model its States in form and principle to adapt them to our Union and add a new Southern constellation to its benignant sky while rounding off our possessions on the continent at the Isthmus, and opening the way to blending the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, thus embracing our Republic in the arms of the ocean, he would complete the work of Jefferson, who first set one foot of our colossal Government on the Pacific by a stride from the Gulf of Mexico. ”

“ When a State, by its perverted functionaries, has declared itself out of the Union, we avail ourselves of all the sound and loyal elements of the State—all who own allegiance to and claim protection of the Constitution—to form a State government as nearly as may be upon the former model, and claiming to be the very State which has been in part overthrown by the successful rebellion. ”

“ I have been unable to perceive any point on which the act of Congress conflicts with the Constitution. By the erection of the new State, the geographical boundary heretofore existing between the free and slave States will be broken, and the advantage of this upon every point of consideration surpasses all objections which have occurred to me on the question of expediency. Many prophetic dangers and evils might be specified, but it is safe to suppose that those who come after us will be as wise as ourselves, and if what we deem evils be really such, they will be avoided. ”

“ The great mass of the people should not be taxed to pay a debt to aid in carrying on a rebellion which they in fact, if left to themselves, were opposed to. Let those who have given their means for the obligations of the State look to that power they tried to establish in violation of law, Constitution, and will of the people. They must meet their fate. It is their misfortune, and cannot be recognized by the people of any State professing themselves loyal to the Government of the United States and in the Union.... ”

“ In my judgment, it is not safe to confide the vast authority of State governments to the doubtful loyalty of the rebel States until armed rebellion shall have been trampled into the dust, until every armed rebel shall have vanished from the State, until there shall be in the South no hope of independence and no fear of subjection, until the United States is bearded by no military power and the laws can be executed by courts and sheriffs without the ever-present menace of military authority. ”

“ It allows the meager and almost contemptible proportion of less than one sixth of the voting population to govern the whole State, and to have the influence of the whole State in our legislation here, while we know that if the military forces were withdrawn that privileged one sixth part would be swept away like chaff before the hurricane breath of the enraged majority. Sir, such a government is the merest bubble, especially if unsustained by military power. ”

“ They grew out of monarchical systems of government, and had no relation to the republican forms created by our Constitution. Under our system there can be no suicide of a State. Individual citizens by rebellion and disloyalty may forfeit their political rights, but the State as an entity commits no treason and forfeits no rights to existence. Under our Constitution the State cannot die. It is the duty of the Federal Government to see that it does not die—that it shall never cease to exist. If the State be invaded from without, the duty of the General Government is to protect and defend it. ”

“ To permit any executive officer to declare its law, and set it in motion, and place it under the control of a minority—a mere tithe of its citizens—with power to send delegates to Congress with representation unimpaired and unaffected—even though he should reenact a part of its abrogated Constitution—would be, as I think, a monstrous anomaly, a violation of fundamental principles, and a precedent fraught with great danger to republican liberty.... ”

“ The party in possession of the powers of the Government is revolutionary. It seeks to use those powers to destroy the Government, to change its form, to change its spirit. It seeks under the forms of law to make a new Government, a new Union, to ingraft upon it new principles, new theories, and to use the powers of the law against all who will not be persuaded. It is in rebellion against the Constitution; it is in treasonable conspiracy against the Government. ”

“ Where is the authority to declare State governments overthrown? Where is the authority to reconstruct them? Where is the authority to appoint a governor; to call a convention to remodel their constitutions; to fix the qualifications of its members; to prescribe the conditions of their organic law; and until a new constitution shall be made, to administer by Federal officers such parts of the old constitution and laws as the governor, or the President, or Congress may select?...
At this point he quoted Madison on the guaranty clause, a subject elaborated in the Senate by Carlile, of Virginia. ”

“ It was that treason might be put down and traitors punished. Therefore I say that traitors should take a back seat in the work of restoration. If there be but five thousand men in Tennessee loyal to the Constitution, loyal to freedom, loyal to justice, these true and faithful men should control the work of reorganization and reformation absolutely. I say that the traitor has ceased to be a citizen, and in joining the rebellion has become a public enemy. He forfeited his right to vote with loyal men when he renounced his citizenship and sought to destroy our Government.... ”

“ Let it be engraven on every mind that treason is a crime, and traitors shall suffer its penalty.... I do not harbor bitter or resentful feelings towards any.... When the question of exercising mercy comes before me it will be considered calmly, judicially—remembering that I am the Executive of the Nation. I know men love to have their names spoken of in connection with acts of mercy, and how easy it is to yield to that impulse. But we must never forget that what may be mercy to the individual is cruelty to the State. ”

“ Is the forfeiture, he asked, of the estates and property of traitors, whether they consist of lands or slaves, required for these purposes? “Vae Victis” is not the maxim of a humane conqueror. Though he would not exclude the idea of mercy, he was not clear as to “the wisdom of a proclamation of amnesty in advance as a measure of pacification, without limits as to time, and where submission after conquest, and when it is no longer a virtue but a necessity, is to be rewarded with the same impunity as a voluntary return to duty before that time.” ”

“ We have such power and we are to treat them simply as provinces to be conquered, and as a nation fighting in hostility to us until we do conquer them. To me it is a great absurdity to say that men, by millions, in arms, shall claim the protection of the provisions of the Constitution and laws made for loyal men, while they do not obey one of those laws, but repudiate their binding effect. There never was a principle more clear than that every obligation, whether in a national or civil point of view, in order to be binding, must be reciprocal ”

“ But the reverses before Richmond, and the formidable power and dimensions of the insurrection, which extended through all the slave States and had combined most of them in a confederacy to destroy the Union, impelled the Administration to adopt extraordinary measures to preserve the national existence. The slaves, if not armed and disciplined, were in the service of those who were, not only as field laborers and producers, but thousands of them were in attendance upon the armies in the field, employed as waiters and teamsters, and the fortifications and intrenchments were constructed by them. ”

“ Henderson said that the only question with him was how could he best get these States performing their legitimate functions in the Union again. If, as the Massachusetts Senator maintained, the act of secession took the States out, why could not the act of loyal men bring them back? If secession, he argued, was potent enough to take a State out, and that was mere revolution, why could not the loyal men perfect a revolution on the side of Government as well as rebels perfect a revolution on the side of secession, outrage and wrong? ”

“ No one will pretend that such a community is in the Union in fact, for that would be to make an admission and in the same breath to contradict it. De facto, such a community, and, if it be bounded by State lines, such a State, is as completely out of the Union as is Canada or Mexico, from the moment it assumes the attitude of hostility until it is subdued and conquered by our arms, or until it voluntarily lays down its arms, ejects its hostile government and returns in fact to its once friendly sentiments and friendly relations to the Federal Government. ”