FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   502   503   504   505   506   507   508   509   510   511   512   513   514   515   516   517   518   519   520   521   522   523   524   525   526  
527   528   529   530   531   532   533   534   535   536   537   538   539   540   541   542   543   544   545   546   547   548   549   550   551   >>   >|  
an imperative mood, he made this explicit announcement: "We are at War. * * * Whether it be a Civil War, Rebellion, Revolution, or Foreign War, it matters little. IT MUST CEASE; and I want this Administration to tell the American People WHEN it will cease!" Again, only two days afterward, he took occasion to characterize a Bill, amendatory of the enrollment Act, as "this infamous, Unconstitutional conscription Act!" C. A. White, of Ohio, was another of the malcontents who undertook, with others of the same Copperhead faith, to "maintain, that," as he expressed it, "the War in which we are at present engaged is wrong in itself; that the policy adopted by the Party in power for its prosecution is wrong; that the Union cannot be restored, or, if restored, maintained, by the exercise of the coercive power of the Government, by War; that the War is opposed to the restoration of the Union, destructive of the rights of the States and the liberties of the People. It ought, therefore, to be brought to a speedy and immediate close." It was about this time also that, emboldened by immunity from punishment for these utterances in the interest of armed Rebels, Edgerton of Indiana, was put forward to offer resolutions "for Peace, upon the basis of a restoration of the Federal Union under the Constitution as it is," etc. Thereafter, in both Senate and House, such speeches by Rebel-sympathizers, the aiders and abettors of Treason, grew more frequent and more virulent than ever. As was well said to the House, by one of the Union members from Ohio (Mr. Eckley): "A stranger, if he listened to the debates here, would think himself in the Confederate Congress. I do not believe that if these Halls were occupied to-day by Davis, Toombs, Wigfall, Rhett, and Pryor, they could add anything to the violence of assault, the falsity of accusation, or the malignity of attack, with which the Government has been assailed, and the able, patriotic, and devoted men who are charged with its Administration have been maligned, in both ends of the Capitol. The closing scenes of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, the treasonable declarations there made, contain nothing that we cannot hear, in the freedom of debate, without going to Richmond or to the camps of Treason, where most of the actors in those scenes are now in arms against us." With such a condition of things in Congress, it is not surprising that the Richmond Enquirer announced that the N
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   502   503   504   505   506   507   508   509   510   511   512   513   514   515   516   517   518   519   520   521   522   523   524   525   526  
527   528   529   530   531   532   533   534   535   536   537   538   539   540   541   542   543   544   545   546   547   548   549   550   551   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Congress

 

Government

 
restoration
 

scenes

 

Richmond

 
People
 

restored

 

Treason

 
Administration
 

Toombs


Wigfall

 

occupied

 

debates

 

virulent

 
frequent
 

sympathizers

 

aiders

 

abettors

 

members

 

Confederate


Eckley

 

stranger

 

listened

 

attack

 

debate

 

freedom

 

actors

 

surprising

 

things

 
Enquirer

announced

 

condition

 

declarations

 
treasonable
 
malignity
 
accusation
 

speeches

 

assailed

 
falsity
 

assault


violence

 
patriotic
 
Capitol
 
closing
 

Thirty

 

maligned

 
devoted
 

charged

 

punishment

 

characterize