r recruits to be brought
in here for the purpose of overthrowing the ground we had taken upon
this important question whether these poor people shall have relief or
not. Now, I wish to say that I am willing to extend courtesy to our
old associates on this floor under other circumstances; but when you
extend this kind of courtesy to them, the result is death and
destruction to three million people, trampled under the feet of their
former masters. My courtesy is extended to those poor men, and I would
not wait a moment that their enemies may be brought in here in order
to prevent our doing any thing for their relief, joining with the
President, who is determined, if we may judge by his acts, that no
measure having for its object any relief shall be extended to them.

"Did you hear the fact stated here the other day, that bills were
drawn with a view to escape the anathemas of your President, and were
exhibited to him, and he asked 'if he had any objection to them to
look them over well, because if we can, consistent with the object
aimed at, make them clear of any objection you may have, we will do
it?'

"I said, sir, that he seemed to have meditated a controversy with
Congress from the beginning, and he has. He has treated our majorities
as hostile to the people; two thirds of both branches of Congress have
been treated by him as mere factionists, disunionists, enemies to the
country, bent upon its destruction, bargaining with the enemy to
destroy the Government. This is the way the President has treated
Congress, and every bill they have passed, which promised any relief
to the men whom we are bound to protect, has been trampled under the
Executive heel; and even when members of this body did what I say they
ought not to have done--for I do not approve of my brother Trumbull's
going up to the President, when he has a measure pending here as a
Senator, to ask the President, in the first place, whether he will
approve of it or not; even when he was asked if he objected to this
measure, and made no objection, he still undertakes to veto it.

"If Congress should recede from the position they have taken to claim
jurisdiction over this great question of reaedmitting these States,
from that hour they surrender all the power that the Constitution
places in their hands and that they were sworn to support, and they
are the mere slaves of an accidental Executive; of a man who formerly
associated with us upon this floor; who was