nt to
allow Congress to lay a duty on exports: "Its importance can not well
be overstated. It is very obvious that for many years the South will
not pay much under our internal revenue laws. The only article on
which we can raise any considerable amount is cotton. It will be grown
largely at once. With ten cents a pound export duty, it would be
furnished cheaper to foreign markets than they could obtain it from
any other part of the world. The late war has shown that. Two million
bales exported, at five hundred pounds to the bale, would yield
$100,000,000. This seems to be the chief revenue we shall ever derive
from the South. Besides, it would be a protection to that amount to
our domestic manufactures. Other proposed amendments--to make all laws
uniform, to prohibit the assumption of the rebel debt--are of vital
importance, and the only thing that can prevent the combined forces of
copper-heads and secessionists from legislating against the interests
of the Union whenever they may obtain an accidental majority.

"But this is not all that we ought to do before these inveterate
rebels are invited to participate in our legislation. We have turned,
or are about to turn, loose four million slaves, without a hut to
shelter them or a cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery
have prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the
commonest laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of
life. This Congress is bound to provide for them until they can take
care of themselves. If we do not furnish them with homesteads, and
hedge them around with protective laws; if we leave them to the
legislation of their late masters, we had better have left them in
bondage. Their condition would be worse than that of our prisoners at
Andersonville. If we fail in this great duty now, when we have the
power, we shall deserve and receive the execration of history and of
all future ages.

"Two things are of vital importance: 1. So to establish a principle
that none of the rebel States shall be counted in any of the
amendments of the Constitution until they are duly admitted into the
family of States by the law-making power of their conqueror. For more
than six months the amendment of the Constitution abolishing slavery
has been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States
that acted on its passage by Congress, and which had Legislatures, or
which were States capable of acting, or required to act, o