offence cometh. If we shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of
God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed
time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South
this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came,
shall we discern there any departure from those Divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope,
fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago,
so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with
all nations.

HENRY WINTER DAVIS,

OF MARYLAND. (BORN 1817, DIED 1865.)

ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE FIRST REPUBLICAN THEORY;

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 22, 1864.

MR. SPEAKER:

The bill which I am directed by the committee on the rebellious States
to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government
in States whose governments have been overthrown. It prescribes such
conditions as will secure not only civil government to the people of
the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United
States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion. The bill
challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the
rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder;
of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and
who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will
allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation. * * * It is
entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House,
whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion, and the
relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion
toward the United State