Franklin Repository

Congress did well to decide on the first day of the session that the States lately in rebellion could not claim representation as a matter of right and that the credentials of their members elect could not go to the committee on elections. It was a wise, a necessary step, to arrest the growing sentiment in the dominions of treason, that the crime of causeless rebellion was to be without atonement or penalty.

But there are other duties of the gravest character devolving upon the faithful members of Congress. It will not do to rest with the declaration that the rebel representatives shall not be admitted. That is but the negative part of the duty--the positive remains to be performed, and it is to this task we would urge the early action of Congress.

The rebel States cannot long be denied admission, unless they shall willfully refuse to accept just conditions. All agree that there must be exactions or conditions precedent to the return of the rebellious States to full fellowship in the Union. The President and Mr. Stevens may differ as to the extent of these demands; but while conflicting theories are advanced as to the status of these States, the practical solution of the question brings all to a common centre.

In most of the rebel States provisional governments have been supplanted by Executives and legislatures chosen by the people, in pursuance of the President's assumption of supreme power in regulating a conquered people, and all the functions of local government are performed. Courts have been re-established; municipal and county officers have been qualified, and mail communication has been resumed, or soon will be, with every section of the rebellious territory. They have chosen Congressmen and Senators, and they are now at the doors of Congress. When and how shall they be admitted?

Their admission is but a question of weeks or months. Let no true man mistake the signs of the times. They mark the future too plainly for intelligence to err. The rejection of the members from the rebel States cannot be indefinite. It can now be done, and--what is more important still--it can be maintained if the loyal members of Congress will unite on a just platform, adopt the measures necessary to give it complete success, and then leave the issue with the southern people. But if Congress shall merely recognize the unfitness of southern representation without defining the atonement and guarantees to be given by treason, depend upon it, the right will lose in the struggle.

Reconstruction is now clearly in the hands of the true men in Congress, but let them not waste their power by divisions or weaken their cause by needless delay. Treason is untiring, and its means are neither few nor feeble. It could not be better served than for Congress to procrastinate. It would triumph on its own terms over unreasonable delay, as surely as it has failed in its bloody war to overthrow the government it now seeks to administer. Let the patriotic men of Congress be wise and consider; let them make common cause and act with unity and fidelity.

We do not assume to define the guarantees and the atonement to be demanded from the men whose hands are still stained with the blood of our brethren, and who come defiant and unrepentant to the doors of Congress; but it is for the loyal men who have been charged with this solemn trust, to perform it without fear or favor. They differ as to what conditions shall be accepted; but their differences must cease, or their cause will be lost. The lives of three hundred thousand heroic martyrs will have been sacrificed in vain, and the Freedom we boast as our crowning victory, will be blotted again as it is handed over to the cruel embrace of its deadly foes.

We appeal to the faithful men in Congress to accept some common ground upon which they can unite, and in behalf of which they can appeal to their country and to their God. Just as may seem the enfranchisement of the emancipated slave, we prefer to see him secure in his person, his property, his labor, his household and his equal rights before the law, to endanger his re-enslavement, more abject than before, by the triumph of Wrong over the distracted counsels of Right. Clearly as justice may demand the confiscation of rebel property to make restitution for the desolation and debt it has imposed upon the loyal people, we prefer to surrender it rather than see treason regain power unrestrained, and repudiate our national debt, or destroy our credit by the assumption of the debt incurred in fruitless effort to overthrow the Republic by the sword.

These are no idle fears. If the true men in Congress fail to harmonize in the work of re-construction, it will be accomplished by the foes of Freedom, and they will perfect it with fearful consistency. One by one their members or their States will gain admission, and when once they triumph it will be the end of loyal rule. The freedmen will be enslaved again without even the poor compensations of slavery, our National credit will belong to history, and the fruits of our bloody sacrifices will be laid at the feet of the vanquished by the victors.

The time for action is now! Let those who doubt it turn to the teachings of the few brief weeks of the session. How many have fallen? How many more are faint and feeble? Raymond ran well but a day--others reached the shadow of a season. He voted that the rebellious States were without rights as States, denied his record before his country knew it, and now would mock a bereaved nation with "glittering generalities," miscalled "exactions," and bid the traitors welcome to full power and fellowship--to consummate by faithless statesmanship what they lost by the sword. He has followers, and will have more. Doolittle responds from the Senate, and Cowan, of ill-fated Pennsylvania, answers that treason shall regain its potency unwashed of its wanton blood, and unshorn of its appalling perfidy.

Let there be union of true hearts for the sake of the Union. Let there be conditions and guarantees accepted by all, even at some sacrifice if need be, rather than peril all involved in the struggle. There are amendments to the constitution which, unless passed by Congress and their adoption enforced as a condition precedent to admission, will leave all the legitimate fruits of the war at the mercy of traitors. Define the paramount duty of States and citizens to the national authority; forbid the payment of debt incurred in rebellion against the government; enforce equal rights for all before the law; demand a just basis of representation; make the organic law protect the national faith with its creditors, and then define, by enactment, the clemency of the nation, with fixed limitations. The issue would then rest with traitors--the Executive and the loyal people could not but sustain Congress, and the contest would be over. All that should be realized as the results of the war might not be attained; but the present would bid us to a hopeful future, and all would in time be well for the Republic!

The tone of the leading press of the State in response to the memorial of the people of Chambersburg to the legislature, for partial relief from the utter destruction caused by McCausland's vandalism on the 30th of July, 1864, is most gratifying to our long-suffering citizens. A number of the leading journals of the State, which earnestly resisted any legislative relief while the war was still in progress, have spoken out with great positiveness asking the legislature to deal generously with Chambersburg. Last year most persons insisted that the resources of the State must be husbanded for the terrible struggle with treason, and others felt that however just indemnity might be considered, there was the possibility of the destruction of additional millions, to assume which would destroy the credit of the State; but now the black, desolating cloud of war has passed away, and all seem to recognize the justice of lending a helping hand to the few people of Chambersburg upon whom the fullest measure of rebel vengeance fell. They are unwilling to see our town singled out from the many in a great and prosperous commonwealth, and sacked and laid in ashes by rebel vandalism, without extending some relief to those who have thus been rendered homeless and bankrupt.

Chambersburg does not ask to be indemnified. In addition to the overwhelming destruction that fell to their hard lot on the 30th of July, 1864, they have suffered in common with all the other citizens of the border by raids and invasion and their inevitable spoliations; but they do appeal to the generosity and justice of their fellow-citizens of the State, for a helping hand to enable them in time, by frugality and industry, to recover measurably from the crushing blow. They bore it for all the loyal people of the State. The vandalism that made the flames kiss each other over our happy homes, was aimed at the whole North for its fidelity in maintaining our Nationality; but the few upon whom it fell were prostrated by the stroke. Their homes were made hideous, blackened walls to strike terror into a free people struggling for the right; but over their shapeless ruins they maintained the great common cause until victory was made complete by the valor of all actions of the State and country. Their sons and fathers have been upon almost every battle-field; they have met all the demands of an imperiled government; they have the same bereaved and broken circles which are common to all, and in addition, they have received treason's most barbarous and destructive blow, leaving naught but desolation and poverty as its fruits. It is gratifying, indeed, in the midst of our ruins to hear the kind words of generous journals and legislators, and we have abiding faith that the legislature will respond to the appeal in a generous manner.