sentatives of the United States have
or have not something to say in relation to the condition of the late
Confederate States, and whether it is proper to admit Senators and
Representatives from them? If the President is right in his
assumption--for the assumption is a very clear one--that we have
nothing to say, we ought to admit these men at once, if they come here
with proper credentials, and not keep them waiting outside the door."

Mr. Sherman said: "In my judgment, the events that transpired
yesterday are too fresh in the mind of every Senator not to have had
some influence upon him, and I think it as well to allow the influence
of those events to pass away. I do not wish now myself, nor do I wish
any Senator here, to reply to what was said yesterday by the President
of the United States. I would prefer that the Senate of the United
States, the only legislative body which can deliberate fully and
freely without any limitation on the right of debate, should
deliberate, reflect, and act calmly after the excitement of the events
of the last two or three days has passed off."

Mr. Howe, of Wisconsin, remarked: "If there be passion and excitement
in the country at this present time, I do not hold myself as an
individual responsible for any share of it; and I am here to say that
if I know myself--and if I do not know myself nobody about me knows
me--I am as competent to consider this particular question to-day as I
was the day before yesterday or last week, and, so far as my judgment
informs me, quite as competent to consider it as I expect to be next
week or the week after. And when the Senator from Ohio asks me to vote
against proceeding to the consideration of any measure, either because
I distrust my own fitness to consider it, or distrust the fitness of
my associates about me, I must respectfully decline, not because I
care particularly whether we take up this measure to-day or another
day, but because I ask the Senate to vindicate their own course as
individual men, and to say that they are not to be swept from the seat
of judgment by what is said, or can be said, by the first magistrate
of the nation, or by the lowest and the last magistrate of the
nation."

The Senate, by a vote of 26 to 19, agreed to proceed to consider the
concurrent resolution proposed by the Committee of Fifteen, which had
already passed the House of Representatives.

Mr. Fessenden advocated the resolution in a speech of considerable
le