,
that these indications in the preservation of our Government had come
somewhat sooner. I cannot help feeling that such expressions cannot
now be of as much use to the country as they might once have been. If
we could have had from that side of the House such indications of an
interest in the preservation of the Union, such heartfelt sympathy with
the friends of the Government for the preservation of the Union, such
hearty denunciations for all those who were seeking its destruction,
while the war was raging, I am sure we might have been spared some
years of war, some millions of money and rivers of blood and tears."
This utterance was sharpened and made significant by the manner and by
the accent of Mr. Raymond. No more pointed rebuke, no more keen
reproach (not intended for Mr. Finck personally, but for his party)
could have been administered. What the Administration or especially
what Mr. Seward desired, and what Mr. Raymond was to speak for, was
Republican support; and the prior indorsement of Mr. Johnson's position
by the Democracy was a hinderance and not a help to the cause he had
espoused.

Mr. Raymond's principal aim was to join issue with Mr. Stevens on his
theory of _dead States_. "The gentleman from Pennsylvania," said Mr.
Raymond, "believes that what we have to do is to create new States
out of this conquered territory, at the proper time, many years
distant, retaining them meanwhile in a territorial condition, and
subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage
as Congress and the Government of the United States may see fit to
prescribe. If I believed in the premises he assumes, possibly though
I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has
reached; but, sir, I cannot believe that these States have ever been
out of the Union or that they are now out of the Union. If they were,
sir, how and when did they become so? By what specific act, at what
precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the
American Union? Was it by the ordinance of secession? I think we
all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of the
Union is simply a nullity because it encounters the Constitution of
the United States which is the supreme law of the land.

"Did the resolutions of those States," continued Mr. Raymond, "the
declarations of their officials, the speeches of the members of their
Legislatures, or the utterances of their press, accomplish t