11

self in the service of the most corrupt tyranny; and tyranny
has been thus furnished with new opportunities of indulging
its malignity and revenge; of gratifying its envy of the rich
and good; of increasing its means to reward favorites, and
secure retainers for the worst deeds." In 1862 they declared
the penalty of treason to be death and freedom to the slaves
of the traitor; or imprisonment and fine, and freedom to his
slaves. But no provision has been made whereby civil and
political rights were to be forfeited; and it is too late to at-
tempt to do so now, even by constitutional amendment.

The reconstruction committee do not pretend to claim the
forfeiture of civil and political rights by virtue of the Consti-
tution and laws of the United States. For though rather in-
consistently, they call the people of the late Confederate
States, at one time "insurgents, rebels and traitors," and as
such, of course, answerable only to the laws of the United
States, yet at other times, they call them "public enemies of
the United States, conquered in war," and under the Com-
mittee's interpretation of the law of Nation governing the
rebels of a civil war, that not only all civil and political privi-
leges, but even the lives, liberty and property of all those
people, are at the absolute disposal of their conquerors, sub-
ject only to their ideas of the requirements of humanity, cer-
tainly, enlightened civilization and Christianity have done
little to relieve war of the horrible barbarities of ignor-
ant and despotic times, if any such law is now recognized in
civilized countries, as applicable to a constitutional republic.

Vattel states the law of Nations thus : "If a town which
made part of a republic, or a limited monarch, and enjoyed a
right of sending deputies to a Supreme Council or the General
Assembly of the State, be justly conquered by an absolute
monarch, she must never more think of such privileges; they
are what the Constitution of the new State to which she is an-
nexed does not permit." but the United States government
has not the power or right of "an absolute monarch," nor is
"a right of sending deputies to the Supreme Council or Gen-
eral Assembly of the States" prohibited by the Constitution
of that Government.

The non-intercourse Act of 13, July, 1861, fixed the legal
relations between the United States and the Confederate States.
The Supreme Court of the United States in the decision of
cases necessarily involving those relations and depending upon
them, expressly assert that "since that time, there has existed
between the United Statee and the Confederate States, civil,
territorial war." After the passage of the non-intercourse
Act by Congress, and after the civil war existed as decided by
the Supreme Court, Congress, by a unanimous vote in one
House, and with but two negatives in the other, declared to
the people of the United States, and to the World, the object
of the war.