secution 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 North was "distracted,
exhausted, and impoverished," and would, "through the agency of a strong
conservative element in the Free States," soon treat with the Rebels "on
acceptable terms."

Things indeed had reached such a pass, in the House of Representatives
especially, that it was felt they could not much longer go on in this
manner; that an example must be made of some one or other of these
Copperheads. But the very knowledge of the existence of such a feeling
of just and patriotic irritation against the continued free utterance of
such sentiments in the Halls of Congress, seemed only to make some of
them still more defiant. And, when the 8th of April dawned, it was
known among all the