various plans," said Mr. Brandegee, "which have been
discussed in this hall for the past two years, to my mind it seems the
plainest, the most appropriate, the freest from constitutional
objection, and the best calculated to accomplish the master aims of
reconstruction.

"It begins the work of reconstruction at the right end, and employs
the right tools for its accomplishment. It begins at the point where
Grant left off the work, at Appomattox Court-house, and it holds those
revolted communities in the grasp of war until the rebellion shall
have laid down its spirit, as two years ago it formally laid down its
arms."

Mr. Le Blond characterized the Committee on Reconstruction as "the
maelstrom committee, which swallows up every thing that is good and
gives out every thing that is evil."

"There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech,
"but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on the part
of the American people to defend themselves.

"I do not desire war; but as one American citizen, I do prefer war to
cowardly submission and total destruction of the fundamental
principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, nothing but the
strong arm of the American people, wielded upon the bloody
battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the American people
again."

"Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, "that in this Congress we can find
men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the right of trial
by jury, the great privilege of _habeas corpus_; men who are willing
to reverse the axiom that the military should be subordinate to the
civil power, and to establish the abhorred doctrine resisted by the
brave and free men of every age, that the military should be superior
to the civil authority?"

"It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, "that the change proposed to
be made by this bill in the management of the Southern States is so
violent as gentlemen on the other side would have us suppose. They
seem to believe that now the people of those States govern themselves;
but the truth is, since the suppression of the rebellion, that is,
since the surrender of the rebel armies in 1865, the government of
those States have been virtually in the hands of the President of the
United States.

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States from the
people to the officers of the army, but only from the President to
those officers."

Mr. Farnsworth, who next addressed the