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REBELLIOUS S T A. T E S . 
 
 SPEECH 
 
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 HON. NEHEMIAH PERRY, 
 
 OF NEW JERSEY, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 FIRST SESSION, THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 
 
 Tuesday, 
 
 ( 
 
 The House having under consideration the Bill in reference to the Rebellious States. 
 Mr. PERRY said- 
 Mr. Speaker : We are about entering, nay, we have already entered, upon the fourth 
 year of the war. And this simple statement should invite reflection. It should induce 
 every man to pause, to take a careful scrutiny of the past, and to look forward with 
 profound anxiety into the opening future. If we are wise we will condescend to learn 
 from tne teachings ol the past ; from its defeats as well as its successes, from the destruc- 
 tion of our most cherished plans as well as from the consummation of our most brilliant 
 hopes and efforts ; from the dangers we have passed and the evils we have sutfered ■ in 
 fine, from our experience in every form, whether for good or ill. 
 
 We should look back upon the past, Mr. Speaker, not with any frivolous idea of vain 
 curiosity or amusement, but to draw from it lessons, so that we 'may guide the fortunes 
 of the Republic aright in the future. If we have been betrayed by treacherous rocks or 
 sands, beguiled by false landmarks or fatal currents, or misled bv ignorant or wicked 
 pilots, it is the part of wisdom to profit by our experience and not suffer ourselves to be 
 again betrayed or misled. We should scan with solicitude' the chart of the great and 
 bloody ocean upon which the bark of the Republic has been launched, and upon whose 
 surging billows it is now madly tossed. What a period of vicissitude these years have 
 been ! YV hat gigantic events have been piled in upon them in terrible confusion ! What 
 herculean efforts, what, prodigious exertions of force, what enormous strifes, what vast 
 expenditures of sorrow, and agony, and death, have they witnessed ! From our most 
 glorious battle-fields come wafted on every breeze the groans and shrieks of the wounded 
 and dying, telling with fearful eloquence not only of suffering there, but of many a wound 
 ?Jiat no medicine can cure in some far-off and once happy home. 
 
\ / 
 
 
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 Sir, in these terrible years vicissitude has trod rapidly upon vicissitude, change upon 
 change. Disaster and success, defeat and victory, have chased each other in quick 
 succession. We have vibrated between hope and fear, and have experienced quick transi- 
 tions from mourning to rejoicing. Now we have fallen prostrate in fasting and humilia- 
 tion at the feet df Him who had chastened us by reverses, and now we have thronged 
 ten thousand temples to pay Him the homage of thanksgiving for victory. .We have sunk 
 in shame and trembled with alarm over the disgrace of the first and second Bull Run. 
 We have waited in breathless suspense upon the progress of the vital campaigns in Vir- 
 ginia, with their magnificent episodes of Yorktown, Williamsburg, Hanover Court-Housc, 
 Seven Oaks, and Malvern. We have been plunged into an agony of grief and disappoint- 
 ment by the tragedies of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. We have breathed bated 
 breaths over the invasion of Maryland, the battles of Murfreesboro' and Chickamauga, 
 and the siege of Knoxville. And we have rejoiced with full hearts over the victories of 
 Antietam, New Orleans, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga. 
 
 Nor is this all. With this procession of grand military events and their alternations of 
 emotion there have been equally great vicissitudes of civil events. Sir, we have witnessed 
 the stealthy strides of unlawful power ; we have seen the theory of the abolition of slavery 
 in the Territories transformed into its abolition everywhere ; we have noted the transition 
 from emancipation with compensation to emancipation without compensation, from bills 
 striking down the rights and properties of individuals to acts crushing out the rights, the 
 institutions, and the very existence of States, as the bill we now have under consideration 
 proposes to do : we have seen the negro made first a soldier, then a citizen, then a mem- 
 ber of conventions, and we behold him now stretching out his hand to grasp the exercise 
 of the franchise and the enjoyment of political distinction. We have seen a reign of 
 terror, when every man became the spy and accuser of his neighbor ; when men were 
 hauled. to prison without knowing their accuser or their crime ; when the habeas corpus 
 was struck down by proclamation, and the cowardly act was applauded by a pliant 
 Congress ; when the will of one man was converted into law, and the law changed with 
 his capricious and fluctuating notions and ambitions ; when established constitutions 
 were brushed aside like cobwebs, and free speech and a free ballot were crushed by the 
 mailed hand of power. We have seen <: military necessity" hurl men into prison, invade 
 the sanctity of the hearth-stone, drive citizens into banishment, block up the avenues to 
 the ballot-box, and intimidate the free expression of political opinion. We have seen 
 proclamation fulminated after proclamation with indecent haste, all threatening to reduce 
 the nation to political chaos. All this we have seen, and the end is not yet. New 
 changes and still more violent vicissitudes are brewing, and more intolerable dislocations 
 are being conceived, as this bill proposes. Where and when it shall end it is for Divine 
 Providence and the American people to determine. 
 
 In reviewing the vicissitudes which I have described, the unavoidable questions that 
 present themselves are, " What has been gained in all this time ?" and " To what agency 
 may we attribute that which has been gained ?" He will be a bold man who will deny 
 that whatsoever practical results have been attained have been secured solely by our 
 armies in the field and by our Navy — by the indomitable resolution, the unshaken con- 
 stancy, the unparalleled endurance and heroism of our brave soldiers and sailors, and not 
 by our civil policy or the wisdom and ability of the Administration. What has our 
 military policy done for us, and what has our civil policy accomplished ? Let us see. 
 
 Our Army and Navy have given us New Orleans and Vicksburg, and opened the Mis- 
 sissippi river, cutting the confederacy in twain. Our armies have rescued Kentucky and 
 Tennessee. They have saved to us our Federal capital ; they have arrested and pu nished 
 the invasions of Maryland and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They gave us glorious 
 victory at Antietam, at Gettysburg, and at Chattanooga ; and they now stan d at the 
 great natural gateway to the heart of Georgia and the Southern Confederacy. This is 
 what our soldiers and sailors have done. 
 
 But what have our rulers accomplished by their civil policy ? They have not won a 
 single stronghold. They have not detached a single State nor wrested a single acre of 
 ground from the public enemy. They have not overcome a single army nor struck the 
 sword from the hand of a single rebel. On the contrary, they have again and again 
 paralyzed our heroic armies when they have been on the very verge of victory. They 
 have destroyed the best laid plans and brought to naught the labors and costly sacrifices 
 
of many a long campaign. What man is to be found so bold as to assert, or so infatuated 
 as to believe, that a single victory less would have been won if the President had never 
 issued a proclamation, or if Congress had never passed an act, except those needed to 
 form and maintain our armies in the field? Had the President and Congress been dumb 
 on all beside, our armies would have still won every victory that has been gained. Nay, 
 our victories would have been far greater and far more decisive ; for every proclamation 
 and every act has been firing the spirits of the confederates and welding them so firmly 
 together as almost to defy the frown of Deity. 
 
 But who will have the supreme folly to say that if our armies had stood still, if our 
 soldiers had not shown valor, fortitude, and skill, the whole brood of presidential fulmi- 
 nations and congressional enactments would have won us a single battle? They would 
 have been mere waste paper, a useless " war of words." x\.nd such, indeed, they have 
 been for any good results, although they have been a prolific cause of doubts and dissen- 
 sions among ourselves while they have silenced them among our enemies. In sober truth 
 they have been a clog and hinderance to our armies, and every victory that has been won 
 has been gained in spite of them. 
 
 I am conscious, Mr. Speaker, that it were a bootless task for me to undertake to con- 
 vince the present Administration of the folly of their past policy, and there is nothing to 
 justify the hope that, even if I might succeed in convincing their minds, any change 
 would be wrought upon their future course. 
 
 That task has already been attempted by one who has a hold upon the confidence and 
 affection of the people scarcely second to what was entertained for Washington and Jack- 
 son ; and it was undertaken with a breadth of mind and a comprehensiveness of judgment, 
 a power of thought and language equal to anything exhibited by the greatest statesmen 
 in the best days of the Republic. Put it was received with indifference and contempt, 
 and I do not flatter myself that anything I might say Avill meet with a different fate. If 
 the Administration rejected the comprehensive and wise plan of military operations subr 
 mitted by General McClellan to the President at his request— a plan which every subse- 
 quent event has proved to be remarkable for its forecast and prescience, and which if it 
 had been adhered to would have placed us a year ago as far in the advance as we are 
 to-day ; which would have averted innumerable reverses, saved countless lives, and 
 prevented an incalculable outlay of treasure and blood — if the Administration rejected 
 such a plan, proceeding from such a man, I have no right to expect that any counsels of 
 mine will arrest their attention or influence their action. 
 
 And as with the military plans of this general, so also with the civil policy which he 
 advised should go hand in hand with it. His advice to the Administration that they 
 should consider the rebellion as having assumed the character of war, and that it ought 
 to be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian civilization, was rejected. 
 His warnings not to convert the war into one looking to the subjugation of the peo- 
 ple of a State, and not to make it a war against populations, but only against 
 armed forces and political organizations, were unheeded. His adjurations that we should 
 not contemplate the cruel confiscations of property, or the political executions of persons, 
 or the forcible abolition of slavery, were not listened to. Ilis noble counsel that in prose- 
 cuting the war all private property and unarmed persons should be protected, subject only 
 to the necessity of military operations: that property taken for military uses should be 
 paid for, pilage and waste to be treated as high crimes, all unnecessary trespass be sternly 
 prohibited, and outrages of the soldiers upon the. citizens be sternly rebuked, was con- 
 temptuously spurned. His caution that military arrests should not be tolerated, save 
 where actual hostilities existed ; that military government should be confined to the pre- 
 servation of public order and the protection of political rights, and the military power 
 should be obedient to law and not suffered to interfere with social relations, was treated 
 with contempt. His urgent appeal to concentrate the military power against the vital 
 parts of the confederacy, so as to destroy their political structure, and not to disperse it 
 on distant and unimportant points, was disregarded. His calm and respectful admoni- 
 tion to the Administration not to declare radical views on the subject of slavery, but to 
 follow a constitutional and conservative system of policy, was derided, and made the occa- 
 sion of his disgrace and disfavor. 
 
 If no sense of obligation has saved from treatment such as this the man who twice saved 
 
the capital and gave the trembling occupants of its palaces a respite from their umanly 
 fears ; if a man of such a mold was scorned and derided for the expression of his sincere 
 convictions and his efforts for the public good, what ground is there for me to hope that 
 I can make an impression upon the impenetrable self-conceit and stubborn wilfulness «of 
 this Administration ? I have no such hope. They are, like Ephraim, joined to their idols. 
 Let them alone ! But thank Heaven they are not yet supreme ! There is a higher autho- 
 rity, and to it I make my appeal. If the Administration arc deaf, or blind, or fanatical. 
 or weak, or wilful, the people, their masters are neither. They will listen to counsel. 
 They are quick to detect error, or imposture, or imbecility, or corruption, and although 
 thej' may be misled or deceived for a time it cannot be for loug. In the end they will fol- 
 low the right, and render justice to all. They will give honor, high reward, and love to the 
 men whose counsels have been rejected, and whose splendid services have been treated witli 
 base ingratitude, and ignomy and disgrace to those who have trampled on public and 
 private rights, and sought to prostitute a holy war waged for the nation's life to the pur- 
 poses of a political faction. The American citizen is long-suffering, and his indignation 
 slow to move, and it were well if those who are now trying his forbearance to the utmost, 
 and who are sheltering themselves in fancied security from his slumbering indignation. 
 would bear in mind these apt lines : 
 
 " Patient of constitutional control. 
 He bears it with meek manliness of soul ; 
 But if authority grow wanton, woe 
 To him that treads upon his freeborn toe ; 
 One step beyond the houndary of the laws, 
 Fires him, at once, in freedom's glorious cause."' 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I have no disposition to indulge in a merely factious opposition. And if 
 I criticise severely the acts of the Administration, and reprobate, with all the earnestness 
 I can command, the policy it has adopted in conducting this war, it is because I am urged 
 on by convictions of duty that I cannot suppress. And it lias been my constant endeavor 
 to effect a change in the management of affairs and to institute a different and more bene- 
 ficent national policy. And though my opposition to the civil power of the Government 
 has been so strong, still I have not allowed myself to forget that there is also a military 
 power upon the efficiency and force of which our nation's safety greatly depends. Acting 
 upon this conviction, I have ever felt it to be my duty to stand by the citizens whom tin' 
 people have invested for a season with the- administration of affairs in :ii! the lawful and 
 necessary measures proposed by them for the increase of the numbers and efficiency of 
 our military forces, for their payment and support, and for the suppression of this rebel- 
 lion against the Union and the Constitution. I have never withheld my voice or my vote 
 for men, or money, or means to this end. And although the Administration has been 
 guilty of many acts which I believed to be wrong in principle and almost fatally so in 
 practice, although much of its policy has appeared to be madly suicidal, neither have I 
 felt it to be in a line with my duty to cripple them in the conduct of tire war, even though 
 their errors were certain to be repeated. On the contrary, I have never deviated from the 
 course I marked out for myself in the beginning ; and have supported every measure in- 
 tended to make our military and naval strength adequate to the necessities of our great 
 emergency, and I have placed in the hand of the authorities whatsoever was neeessary.to 
 the prosecution of the Avar with vigor and success. At the same time, in c; uamon with 
 the great and patriotic party with which I have the honor to act, I have reserved the right 
 to hold the Administration responsible for the right and lawful use of the means tints in- 
 trusted to them, and accountable for the perversion of the war from its legitimate objects. 
 And I shall, therefore, not hesitate to exercise my duly as a free citizen to criticise with 
 frankness and even severity, but still with candor, such of their acts as I believe to be 
 pregnant with injurious consequences to the country, and to denounce with all the energy 
 at my command, what I conceive to be their dangerous and unwarrantable intrusion? and 
 usurpations upon our free institutions. In this sp-nt I am obliged, Mr. Speaker, to raise 
 my voice in earnest remonstrance against the policy marked out by the party in power in 
 relation to confiscation, to an amnesty, and to the destruction or suspension of the exist- 
 ence of States. 
 
 On the subject of confiscation I have already on this floor expressed myself fully on a 
 former occasion, and further reflection has confirmed me in the convictions to which I then 
 gave utterance. T remain opposed, more earnestly and inflexibly than ever, to any sweep- 
 
ing act of confiscation which seizes on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, without 
 trial, and by whole descriptions and populations. I am opposed to it because I believe it 
 to be contrary to our organic law, and because, being so, it is intrinsically tyrannical 
 and oppressive, for "where law ends tyranny begins." I am opposed because it is an 
 incitement to and a premium upon rapacity at the expense of misery and distress beyond 
 our ability to imagine. But if my opposition is so strong against a confiscation of life 
 estates, infinitely greater is my detestation and contempt for the man who would introduce 
 the barbarous and inhuman proposition to entail the penalty of a parent's transgressions 
 upon his innocent offspring, upon helpless woman, upon budding childhood, upon guileless 
 infancy, upon the child unborn ! It is a horrible proposition ! It is more rigorous than 
 the punishment of murder, for the family of the most brutal murderer when he is con- 
 victed and executed are not despoiled of his property and effects. In this case the whole 
 family is punished for the crime of the individual ; and when the father is condemned his 
 wife and children are reduced to beg their bread. It makes political death a greater pun- 
 ishment than natural death, since in the latter the property of the criminal passes to his 
 children, while by the former his innocent family are robbed of their lawful inheritance. 
 
 This bill, Mr. Speaker, is full of evil, oppression, and inhumanity, and sweeps like a 
 hurricane over a whole population. Against this inhuman atrocity, then, which is now 
 proposed I lift my voice in indignant protest. It has in it no touch of human sympathy 
 or pity. It is malignant, spiteful, diabolical. It has "a devil's purpose" without being 
 redeemed by anything of an " angel's face." And if we are guilty of it I cannot believe 
 that it will propitiate the Almighty to smile upon our cause, but rather fear that it will 
 lead Him to pronounce upon us the dread sentence, " With what measure ye mete it shall 
 be measured to you again." I wash my hands of the enormity — the crime against God 
 and against human nature. 
 
 My opinions with reference to the mockery of an amnesty which the President has 
 promulgated in the proclamation annexed to his last message are equally decided. I 
 characterize it as a " mockery," and so the President seems to have regarded it, for he 
 defended it in advance by the remark, "True, the form of an oath is given, but no 
 man is forced to take it." Can it be possible that the President did not perceive that 
 the oath which he prescribed as the condition precedent to his amnesty was of a nature 
 to defeat the very object of the amnesty? that the terms of the oath were such as struck 
 down all motive to a return to loyalty, by making such return involve the destruction 
 of their property and thus made it their interest to remain in rebellion? 
 
 But, sir, my objection to the President's proclamation of amnesty proceeds from some- 
 thing higher than the fact that it is an unsubstantial mockery and defeats its own ends. 
 I object to it because the President has no right to declare a general amnesty ; or, if he 
 hid, the terms in which it is conceived are without any strain of mercy or generosity, 
 and without any inducement to those to whom it is addressed. 
 
 I am aware that the President declares in the portion of his message which is excusatory 
 of his proclamation that "the Constitution authorizes the Executive to grant or withhold 
 the pardon at his own absolute discretion." But precisely upon this point I respectfully 
 take issue with him. The language of the Constitution (article two, section one) is": 
 " lie [the President] shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against, 
 the United States.'' That is to say, when a man has been tried for an offense against the 
 United States, found guilty, and condemned by regular established process of law, the 
 President shall have power to reprieve or pardon him. Rut he \\-.\s no right to declare a 
 man free from the consequences of his acts before he shall have been tried, convicted, 
 and condemned. And if he exercises such alleged right he exceeds his power ; he causes 
 the executive to usurp upon the province of the legislative, while at the same time the 
 reprieve or pardon thus grained would be utterly void and of no effect. It is a usurpation 
 upon the legislative power, because all the provisions entering into a general liill of 
 amnesty are necessarily and solely legislative in their nature. And such was the opinion 
 of the men who formed our Government. In the preliminary stipulations to the treaty 
 of peace with Great Britain in 1183 Congress enacted and agreed 
 
 ; 'That there shall be no future confiscations made nor any prosecutions commenced against any 
 person or persons tor or by reason of the part which he or they may have taken in the present war"; 
 and that no person shall "on that acrount suffer any future loss pr damage, either in his person, 
 
liberty, or property, and that those who may be in confinement on such charges at the time of the 
 ratification of the treaty in America shall be immediately set at liberty, and the prosecutions so 
 commenced shall be discontinued." 
 
 This, Mr. Speaker, was both a legitimate and a real amnesty. But the President's 
 amnesty lacks all the full and free generosity and magnanimity which characterized the 
 amnesty offered to the malignant Tories of the Revolution by our forefathers. The one 
 is full of life and human sympathy ; the other is cold, emotionless, without any trace of 
 pity or compassion. The one was the product of the Republic in its best and purest 
 days ; the other comes from the present Administration. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, the President, as if conscious of the weakness of his case in this 
 particular, cites the confiscation acts as giving him authority to extend pardon and 
 amnesty to persons who have participated in this rebellion. But, sir, he couples with 
 his amnesty conditions that are violative of the law he cites as his authority, and destruc- 
 tive of the rights of persons and of States — conditions which neither the President had 
 a right to impose nor Congress to give him the power of requiring. 
 
 A few words, Mr. Speaker, upon the President's plan, and the bill under consideration 
 to "re-establish" State governments in the insurrectionary portions of the Union. It 
 does not command ray approbation, either by what I conceive to be its real design or by 
 its avowed ©bjecfe. It is not a statesmanlike plan, but a crude and visionary experiment, 
 not calculated to lessen our embarrassments, but certain to add to them. It is not a 
 statesmanlike measure having for its object the composition and settlement of our national 
 difficulties, but it is a political artifice intended to have a bearing upon the coming presi- 
 dential election. It is a plan which can only result in a nominal resumption of the 
 relations between these States and the Union. The operation of this scheme would be, 
 by a political fiction, to bring back the whole State into apparent but unreal relation 
 with the Union, enable it, or the fragment acting in its name, to elect United States 
 Senators, and by pretended elections to send its full complement of Representatives to 
 the House of Representatives. And here the President's design is perfectly evident, to 
 secure a majority of the delegates to the nominatiug convention of his party, and to 
 provide for his own election by the House of Representatives in the event of there not 
 being an election by the people. By this plan the narrow foothold maintained by our 
 armies in North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, and elsewhere 
 may send the pretended full delegations of those States to this House. Mr. Speaker, I 
 denominate the whole plan a political trick worthy of the most adroit and unscrupulous 
 wire-puller of our ward primary meetings. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, this plan to "re-establish" State governments is based on the 
 assumption that they have been destroyed. This, sir, I deny ; nor can they lie destroyed 
 unless the rebels are finally victorious, and establish their independence. If a foreign 
 enemy should invade us, drive out our forces, seize and occupy New Jersey or Massachu- 
 setts, governing them in the mean while by their authorities and laws, those States would 
 still exist, and our laws and constitutions, though temporarily obstructed, would yet be 
 held to have a theoretical course in them. And the instant the invaders were driven off 
 the States would resume their old relations, our laws would flow into their old channels, 
 and all would go on as before, without a single act of legislation on the part of the Gen- 
 eral Government.. And precisely similar is the case with those States now held by a 
 domestic enemy ; the States still exist ; our laws and constitutions still have theoretical 
 sway there ; our authority has been merely suspended and our mutual relations mterrup-r 
 ted by a public enemy in armed insurrection against the Union. The moment this enemy 
 is overcome, and wherever he is overcome and driven out, our old relations will be 
 instantaneously resumed, and the laws of the Federal Union will again operate, as if 
 there had been no interruption. Yes, Mr. Speaker, all the States, the rebellious as well 
 as the loyal, are all within the unbroken pale of the Union. Sir, that is the very question 
 at issue between us and the rebels ; they declare that the Union is finally and irretrievably 
 dissolved, and we declare that it is not, and, so help us Heaven, shall not be so broken 
 and disrupted. For this we are fighting. For this we are encountering unheard-of 
 expense, making the most wonderful preparations, and marshaling our heroic soldiers 
 under their gallant leaders. And if God blesses us with wise rulers and decisive victories, 
 this is what will be at length established. No, there is no authority given the President 
 to declare any State out of the Union that was ever in it. So long as the Constitution 
 
lasts the union of the several States lasts ; and although the power ot an enemy may lop 
 off one or more States, and forcibly sever the Constitution, we have no authority to do 
 what onlv the overpowering act of an enemy can do, or to admit tnat it is done until we 
 have been finally beaten in the field, and retire from the contest inglonously beaten. W e 
 may be utterly destroyed by a superior power, State after State might be overrun, our 
 eapital might be captured and destroyed, but in such a case only can our Constitution be 
 torn in fragments or our Union destroyed. When we have absolutely succumbed to_ the 
 power of an enemy, all our institutions will crumble into one fatal rum, and our glorious 
 democratic Republic be consolidated into the kingdom of a tyrant. But till his happens 
 our Union and Constitution possess a principle of perpetual vitality, no death ot a State 
 and no severance of it from the Union. The life-blood may cease to flow for a time 
 between the center and the extremities, but immediately on the removal of those hmder- 
 ances and obstructions the life-bearing current will again leap through vein and artery, 
 and the whole frame will once more rejoice in renewed health and vigor. 
 
 But Mr Speaker, we again recur to the tact that the war has already consumed three 
 entire 'year's, and is eating into a fourth. When we ask what has been accomplished to 
 bring it to a clo«e. although we can point to many glorious victories and to something 
 
 was SI"' 084 C<>n7io5. If from this we deduct the value of the property of the States in 
 rebellion and of the portions of States held by the rebel armies, the amount will be mate- 
 
 rebellion and ot the poi— - . 
 
 riallv reduced The -rand total of real and personal property in the rebellious States is 
 c;3 oV lof V- • this is exclusive of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. But as portions 
 of W 'rebellion's States are held by our armies, I make a deduction of ten per cent, 
 from the above estimate, which I believe to be a liberal estimate. Tins leaves a bal- 
 ance of ^: 574 891 400, as representing the value of property in the rebellious States. 
 Deducting this from the total amount leaves a balance of $8,509,768,605, representing the 
 value of The property of the loyal States. 
 
 The question now arises, How long will it take to sweep away the whole property of 
 the country by our expenditures, if they continue at the rate of the past three years ? A 
 few more statistics will illustrate the matter. Our present expenditures-including the 
 Minis expended by the General Government, by States, counties, towns, townships and 
 individuals-have been at least $3,000,000,000. Assuming that our expenitures will in- 
 crease in the same proportion, there will be an augmentation of our expenditures at the 
 rate of thirty-three and one third per cent, per annum upon the present amount. Accord- 
 in- to the last census, the rate of increase in the value of real and personal property m 
 tbf States and Territories has been a little over twelve and a half per cent per annum. 
 Now the problem which these figures suggest may be stated as follows : if he whole pro- 
 nertv of the loval States continues to increase at the rate of twelve and a half per cent, 
 per "annum, how long will it take our expenditures, increasing at the rate of thirty- 
 three and a third per cent, per annum, to equal our assets or resources, and thus reduce 
 s to bankruptcy ? A very simple arithmetical process supplies the answer to this problem, 
 and shows that if our expenditures and the increased value of our property each continue 
 in the same ratio as in the past, at the end of eleven years our expenditures will have been 
 nearly ernial to the total value of all the real and personal property in the oval State*. 
 Our S3 000,000.000 of expenditures, increased by an expenditure ot thirty-three and one 
 third' per rent, per annum and live per cent, interest, will have reached at the end ot 
 eleven years the gigantic sum of $20,044,000,000, while our real and personal property, 
 increased at the rate of one hundred and ^twenty-six per cent, in each decade, will amount 
 to about the same sum, or $20,253,249,279. 
 
 Here are stubborn facts pointing at national bankruptcy. We have a terrible war upon 
 us which if not speedily settled will lead us to certain rum. It is time to pause, w e 
 are only to choose between two roads. The one leads to sure destruction ; the other may 
 Si to life and to prosperity. We have been going down the one, and the prospect is 
 gloomv and foreboding. The mutterings of the storm are already audible, and salvation 
 
CONGRESS 
 
 012 028 208 6 
 
 is yet within our reach. We yet have time to choose " the good«part which can never be 
 taken away." Let me appeal to the "power behind the throne" to cast aside the idols 
 that have promised them and us so much, but have given us so little. We have begged 
 of our radical deities to give us bread, and notwithstanding their promises we have only 
 received a stone. Throw down the idols and abolish the worship ! Thus, and thus only, 
 may we see the day when all the States are again knit together in fraternal bonds and re- 
 volve in the old harmony around our beloved Union. God grant that we may live to see 
 that day. Then we may look back upon this terrible war as upon a frightful dream ; and 
 when the scars it has made are healed and the whole land is once more smiling in pros- 
 perity we will gaze with amazement at the folly and madness which precipitated the fury 
 of a war which might have been averted upon our beloved land, and which, to give a 
 doubtful boon to the negro, endangered the life of a nation. 
 
 Gibson Brothers, Printers, 271 Penna. Ave.. Washington, D. C. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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