ngly, on that day, March 8, the consideration of the bill being
resumed, Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, addressed the House, He viewed
the bill as beneficent in its provisions, since it made no
discriminations against the Southern rebels, but granted them, as well
as the negro, the rights of citizenship.

"A question might naturally arise whether we ought again to trust
those who have once betrayed us; whether we ought to give them the
benefits of a compact they have once repudiated. Yet the spirit of
forgiveness is so inherent in the American bosom, that no party in the
country proposes to withhold from these people the advantages of
citizenship; and this is saying much. With a debt that may require
centuries to pay; with so many living and mutilated witnesses of the
horrors of war; with so many saddened homes, so many of the widowed
and fatherless pleading for justice, for retribution, if not revenge,
it speaks well for the cause of Christian civilization in America that
no party in the country proposes to deprive the authors of such
immeasurable calamity of the advantages of citizenship.

"But the election must be made. Some public legislative act is
necessary to show the world that those who have forfeited all claims
upon the Government are not to be held to the strict rigor of the law
of their own invoking, the decision of the tribunal of their own
choosing; that they are to be welcomed back as the prodigal son,
whenever they are ready to return as the prodigal son.

"The act under consideration makes that election. Its terms embrace
the late rebels, and it gives them the rights, privileges, and
immunities of citizens of the United States, though it does not
propose to exempt them from punishment for their past crimes.

"I might consent that the glorious deeds of the last five years should
be blotted from the country's history; that the trophies won on a
hundred battle-fields, the sublime visible evidences of the heroic
devotion of America's citizen soldiery, should be burned on the altar
of reconstruction. I might consent that the cemetery at Gettysburg
should be razed to the ground; that its soil should be submitted to
the plow, and that the lamentation of the bereaved should give place
to the lowing of cattle. But there is a point beyond which I will
neither be forced nor persuaded. I will never consent that the
Government shall desert its allies in the South, and surrender their
rights and interests to the