House, gave numerous
authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated by rebels
upon Union soldiers and citizens. "It is no longer a question of
doubt," said he, "it can not be denied that the loyal men, the Union
soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized and disloyal States
are not protected. They are murdered with impunity; they are despoiled
of their goods and their property; they are banished, scattered,
driven from the country."

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic language. "You
will carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war
that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a
war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful
shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one
we have passed through is not at all to be compared."

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. "Free
government," said he, "brought him from a poor boy to as great a man
as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washington and will
yet receive it. He will not submit to have the citadel of liberty
invaded and destroyed without using the civil and military powers to
prevent it. He will maintain the Constitution, sir, even to the
spilling of blood."

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord with his
theory by substituting the phrase "the said States" for the words
"so-called States." He also proposed some limitation of the extent to
which the _habeas corpus_ should be suspended. "When these men," said
he, "shall have fulfilled their obligations" and when the great people
themselves shall have put, by their own rightful authority, into the
fundamental law the sublime decree, the nation's will, that no State
shall deny to any mortal man the equal protection of the laws--not of
the laws of South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State,
and above all, sir, of the great law, the Constitution of our own
country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to Oregon,
and from Maine to Florida--then, sir, by assenting thereto those
States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, I labor and for that
I strive."

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, "is to be
left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the color of
authority they exercise under illegal but _de facto_ State governments
to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them any protection
ag