ad their convictions been mine, I, too, would doubtless
have done as they did. With my convictions I could not. But I was a
Representative. War existed--by whose act no matter--not by mine. The
President, the Senate, the House, and the country all said that there
should be war. * * * I belonged to that school of politics which teaches
that, when we are at war, the government--I do not mean the Executive
alone, but the government--is entitled to demand and have, without
resistance, such number of men, and such amount of money and supplies
generally, as may be necessary for the war, until an appeal can be had
to the people. Before that tribunal alone, in the first instance,
must the question of the continuance of the war be tried. This was Mr.
Calhoun's opinion * * * in the Mexican war. Speaking of that war in
1847, he said: "Every Senator knows that I was opposed to the war; but
none but myself knows the depth of that opposition. With my conception
of its character and consequences, it was impossible for me to vote for
it. * * * But, after war was declared, by authority of the government,
I acquiesced in what I could not prevent, and what it was impossible for
me to arrest; and I then felt it to be my duty to limit my efforts to
give such direction to the war as would, as far as possible, prevent
the evils and dangers with which it threatened the country and its
institutions."

Sir, I adopt all this as my position and my defence, though, perhaps, in
a civil war, I might fairly go farther in opposition. I could not, with
my convictions, vote men and money for this war, and I would not, as a
Representative, vote against them. I meant that, without opposition, the
President might take all the men and all the money he should demand, and
then to hold him to a strict responsibility before the people for the
results. Not believing the soldiers responsible for the war or its
purposes or its consequences, I have never withheld my vote where
their separate interests were concerned. But I have denounced from the
beginning the usurpations and the infractions, one and all, of law and
constitution, by the President and those under him; their repeated and
persistent arbitrary arrests, the suspension of _habeas corpus_, the
violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press,
and of speech, and all the other multiplied wrongs and outrages upon
public liberty and private right, which have made this country one of
the wo