no warfare with any body; but if you will
make war upon such principles as we have adopted, it is the worse for
you. You can not prevail.

"I have been in these political warfares for a long time; I claim to
be an old soldier in them. I stood in this Senate when there were not
five men with me to support me, and then I rose here and told those
who were inveighing like demons against the principles that they
called abolitionism, that I was an Abolitionist. To-day you are all
Abolitionists, not voluntarily, but by compulsion. I have wondered a
great deal why men did not learn more about these things than they
seem to do. Our principles are assailed now with just the same
virulence that they used to be when we were in a small minority. I do
not hold that they have triumphed thus far because of any superior
capacity on our part. Certainly not. Why is it, then, that we, from
the smallest of all beginnings, have conquered the prejudices of the
people and conquered the predominant party of this country which had
stood completely dominating the whole nation for more than forty
years? Why is it that we have conquered you, and now are triumphant
here in this Senate and almost by two-thirds in both branches, with
the whole nation at our backs? What miracle has wrought this change?
None other than the great consoling fact that justice, liberty, and
right are destined among the American people to succeed, and the gates
of hell can not prevail against them, although they are trying at this
particular time very hard to do it." [Laughter.]

On the 2d of March, the last day of the debate, Mr. Cowan first
claimed the attention of the Senate in a speech two hours in length.
He argued "that for any guilty part taken by the people in the late
war, that the sufferings and losses they endured in that war were the
natural and sufficient punishment; that after it they remain purged,
and ought to be reaedmitted to all their constitutional rights at once.
That it is due to the dignity of the United States as a great nation,
if she punishes the actual traitors who incited the rebellion, that it
be done solemnly and according to the strictest form of law, in open
courts, where the prisoners may have counsel and witnesses, so that
they may make their defense, if they have any. That according to the
Constitution and laws all the States are still in the Union; that
secession ordinances could not repeal the one, nor war set aside the
other; that the