l
jury; that the privilege of _habeas corpus_ shall not be denied in time
of peace, and that no bill of attainder shall be passed even against a
single individual. Yet the system of measures established by these acts
of Congress does totally subvert and destroy the form as well as the
substance of republican government in the ten States to which they
apply. It binds them hand and foot in absolute slavery, and subjects
them to a strange and hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to
be abused than any other now known among civilized men. It tramples down
all those rights in which the essence of liberty consists, and which a
free government is always most careful to protect. It denies the _habeas
corpus_ and the trial by jury. Personal freedom, property, and life, if
assailed by the passion, the prejudice, or the rapacity of the ruler,
have no security whatever. It has the effect of a bill of attainder or
bill of pains and penalties, not upon a few individuals, but upon whole
masses, including the millions who inhabit the subject States, and even
their unborn children. These wrongs, being expressly forbidden, can not
be constitutionally inflicted upon any portion of our people, no matter
how they may have come within our jurisdiction, and no matter whether
they live in States, Territories, or districts.

I have no desire to save from the proper and just consequences of their
great crime those who engaged in rebellion against the Government, but
as a mode of punishment the measures under consideration are the most
unreasonable that could be invented. Many of those people are perfectly
innocent; many kept their fidelity to the Union untainted to the last;
many were incapable of any legal offense; a large proportion even of the
persons able to bear arms were forced into rebellion against their will,
and of those who are guilty with their own consent the degrees of guilt
are as various as the shades of their character and temper. But these
acts of Congress confound them all together in one common doom.
Indiscriminate vengeance upon classes, sects, and parties, or upon whole
communities, for offenses committed by a portion of them against the
governments to which they owed obedience was common in the barbarous
ages of the world; but Christianity and civilization have made such
progress that recourse to a punishment so cruel and unjust would meet
with the condemnation of all unprejudiced and right-minded men. The
punitive