musket; all that would be necessary to make a conquest over
them would be found in the commissary department. Order out the bread
and butter and peace would be restored."

Mr. Shanklin warned the House of the danger of establishing military
governments in the South. "You may be in the plenitude of power
to-day," he said, in conclusion, "and you may be ousted to-morrow. And
I hope, if you do not cease these outrages upon the people of the
country, such as you propose here, such as are attempting to be
inflicted by your Freedmen's Bureau and your Civil Rights Bills, that
the time will not be long before that army which the gentleman from
Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] seemed to think could not be raised--an army
armed with ballots, and not with bayonet--will march to the polls and
hurl the advocates of this and its kindred measures out of their
places, and fill them with men who appreciate more highly and justly
the rights of citizens and of freemen, with statesmen whose minds can
grasp our whole country and its rights and its wants, and whose hearts
are in sympathy with the noble, the brave, and the just, whether they
live in the sunny South or the ice-bound regions of the North."

"I hail this measure," said Mr. Thayer, "as interrupting this baleful
calm, which, if not disturbed by a proper exercise of legislative
power upon this subject, may be succeeded by disaster and collision.
It furnishes at least an initial point from which we can start in the
consideration and adjustment of the great question of reconstruction.
I regard this as a measure which lays the grasp of Congress upon this
great question--a grasp which is to hold on to it until it shall be
finally settled. I regard it as a measure which is to take that great
question out of that sea of embarrassment and sluggish inactivity in
which, through the course which the President has thought proper to
pursue, it now rests."

"For our neglect," said Mr. Harding, of Illinois, "to exert the
military power of the Government, we are responsible for the blood and
suffering which disgrace this republic. Let us go back, then, or
rather let us come up to where we were before, and exercise
jurisdiction over the territory conquered from the rebels, which
jurisdiction the President has given up to those rebels, to the great
suffering and injury of the Government and of loyal people."

"Let it be remembered all the time," said Mr. Shellabarger, "that your
country has a right to