Valley Spirit

On Tuesday last the confiscation bill being up for consideration in the U. S. Senate, Mr. Cowan delivered the following able speech in opposition to it. The Senator, it will be seen, like the great statesmen who adorned the Senate a few years since--Webster, Clay, Wright and Benton--takes the Constitution, which he has sworn to support, for his guide, and eloquently pleads for its observance. Our Western Pennsylvania Senator stands like a rock, against whose flinty ribs the waves of fanaticism lash themselves into foam, without moving it from its solid base and centre.

Mr. McDougal having concluded his speech, Mr. Cowan said:

I agree with the Senator from California in considering this one of the more important bills before Congress, and as upon which the fate of the American Republic may depend. We are now standing squarely face to face with questions which are most pregnant with results for the future. Shall we stand or fall by the Constitution, or leaving it, enter for the future upon the wide field of revolution? Shall we attempt to go back to those doctrines which marked the middle ages, and introduce now into this country feuds like those which intervening centuries have not sufficed to remove? These are the great questions which are in this bill--every one of them. This bill proposes to go forward and strip the whole population of the South of their property and reduce them to poverty--and while yet 400,000 of them have arms in their hands. If there is anything calculated to make that entire people our enemies always, it will be the promulgation of such an act as this. Will they yield to us sooner in view of such a destruction? What would we ourselves do under any such circumstances? I need hardly ask the question of men who have descended from sires who refused to pay a petty tax on tea, and from grandsires who raised a revolution rather than pay twenty shillings ship money--that I think was the amount demanded from Hampden--a revolution which cost King Charles his head. No such sweeping measure as this has ever been enacted. Even in the days of William the Conqueror, the proud Norman and his barons were content with the fiefs and castles of the Saxon leaders. They did not dare to strip the people of their property, nor even much increase their burdens. They knew that, victorious as they were, they would have involved themselves in a far more dangerous struggle, in which every peasant would have been a principal combatant. The English in their contest with, and bills of attainder against, the Irish never attempted to touch the possessions of the common people, but only the property of the nobles. This bill goes further, and attempts to confiscate another species of property, which cannot be put into the coffers of the conqueror. I mean the property in slaves. I don't intend to stop to discuss the question of property of this kind. [illegible line] South seems to agree as to this kind of property with wonderful unanimity, and to resent any interference with it. This bill proposes to liberate 3,000,000 of slaves--truly the most stupendous stroke for universal emancipation ever attempted in the world. Indeed, I think it virtually liberates the whole 4,000,000. What is to be the effect of this upon the war? Shall we be stronger, or shall we find that we have only doubled the number of those in arms against us? They have now no cause for rebellion. Will not this bill furnish them one? Let the loyal men of that section, who know them, answer this question. I will abide their answer. I submit again that no deliberate assembly in the world ever before sat in judgment on so stupendous an issue. Yet, as if to blind us still more, this bill has a proposition of still greater magnitude, and, if possible of still greater difficulty; that is to take these millions and transfer them to some tropical clime, and to protect them there with all the rights and guaranties of freemen. And this is all provided for in a single sentence of nine lines. Truly we must have recently transported ourselves from the practical domain of facts, and set down in the romantic regions of Eastern fiction. Do the advocates of this measure propose to confer upon the President the gold-making touch of Midas? Nothing short of the ring and lamp of Alladin, with their attendant genii, would insure the success of such a scheme, unless it is believed that the Treasury Note possesses the magic power. And even under that supposition, I think that the owners of those Southern climes, and the Transportation Companies, ought to be consulted in regard to the legal tender clause. I presume it is not suppossed [sic] that this modern exodus will be supported on the way by quails and manna; and yet I am free to say that it will require some such miraculous interposition as that which favored the Israelites in their journey out of Egypt. But, sir, is it not strange that this scheme should be so coolly presented for our consideration, and urged to its final consummation with a kind of surprise that any one should oppose it? It is certainly due to ourselves, and due to the country, that we should not make haste to engage in such gigantic schemes. Then, again, there is a further consideration involved in this bill, and one of greater moment, which is that it is in direct conflict with the Constitution of the United States, requiring of us, if we pass it, to set aside and ignore that instrument in its most valuable and fundamental provisions, those which guarantee the life and property of the citizen, and those which define the limits and boundaries of the several Departments of this Government. Pass this bill and all that is left of the Constitution is not worth much, certainly not worth this terrible war which we are now waging for it--for be it remembered that this war is waged solely for the preservation of the Constitution.

I am aware that some think that the Constitution is a restraint upon the free action of the nation in conduct of this war, which they suppose could be carried on a great deal better without it. I have no hesitation in saying that no greater mistake has ever been made anywhere than is made by such people. I am afraid it will amount to a confession that they have not carefully examined the full scope of its provisions. The greatest danger is that these propositions, at the first glance, seem possible and even plausible. They are not the rolling breakers which every one may see, but the sunken rocks, which are all the more dangerous because they are hidden; therefore, I am opposed to this bill, and I will give my reason, and show, if I can, why I think that in all its main provisions it is unnecessary, impolitic, inexpedient, unconstitutional, and, I may add, utterly and totally useless; and I think I can show that the Government has all the power under the Constitution which is necessary to put down this rebellion and punish the Rebels, and that there is not in reality any necessity for straining any of its provisions in any way. I shall adress [sic] myself to this first proposition, which is that Congress can forfeit the property of the rebels for a term longer than their lives by any enactment either direct or indirect. All persons now in rebellion, having levied war against the United States are guilty of treason within the exact definition of that crime in the Constitution. But the second section of that same clause provides that no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, forfeitures, etc., except during the life of the person attained. Therefore, any law made for the guidance of the Courts must conform to this provision, and no greater penalty can be imposed than it will warrant. The power assumed in this bill is also obnoxious to the provisions of the Constitution. If it be assumed that Congress can make any forfeiture of the property of rebels without allowing the means of defense in the Courts, people will do well to remember that our government is not an absolute power. The powers of the Government are limited and defined, and expressly delegated, and Congress has no power to punish any person except for contempt. If we had half a dozen of the most traitorous rebels here to-day, we could not punish them; we could not bid the sergeant at arms take them out and hang them. Nay, more, the President himself and all his army could not lead them away from these halls--for here they would be within the domain of the law, and within its provisions, and the only way would be to deliver them over to the proper judges, and each one might require to have a separate Judge. And I may say further, that it is in this limitation of the powers of the Government, that its great merit consists; on this account we love, cherish, and revere it, and we are now at war to defend and preserve it. Again, the Constitution says "that no bill of attainder--ex post facto--law shall be passed." Bills of attainder were resorted to in England to punish persons who were out of reach of the Courts in many cases, even after they were dead. They condemned the accused to death, if not dead, forfeited the estates and corrupted the blood of the children and heirs. Bills, however, like the one under circumstances which did not inflict capital punishment, were called act of pains and penalties, which, though perhaps they do not come within the express letter of the Constitution, still are contrary to its spirit, as they seek to remove the persons from the power of the courts; and passing a number of bills of pains and penalties you produce the same effect as a bill of attainder. No warrant can be found for any Legislature to undertake to pass any such bills. But I now propose to go further and argue that the exercise of such a power, even if it had been granted, would be both mischievous and impolitic, and our fathers did wisely and well in refusing it. Their great principle was to punish the guilty alone, and not to involve a whole family, because in many cases the family would be innocent. Suppose this measure passes, and these people are to be overthrown. It does seem to me you give them every possible motive for revenge and hate. Their women and children will hate you, and their children's children down to the latest generation will curse you. And if they should rebel again have you not sown the seeds of many rebellions by this one measure? All this might make no difference if these were alien enemies, and were engaged in a war for conquest. But it is not so. We have here in Congress made a solemn declaration that it is not a war of conquest or subjugation, but for the preservation of the Constitution and the Union, and I am for standing by that declaration. We have been told and believe that many of these men now serving in the rebel army are there by force. Are they to be hung on the same scafforld [sic] as the willing traitor? This bill makes no difference. The victim of force in the beginning would end by being the victim of wrong and justice. Again, thousands of these people have been duped into rebellion by being told that we were all Abolitionists. Shall there be no provision for these men who have thus believed this because it was asserted by Southern demagogues, and as they thought proved by Northern knaves? This bill distinguishes not the house of the planter from the negro hovel of the slave, and makes no difference between the broad acres of the one, and the little garden of the other. But even if your bill is carried into operation, who will buy your confiscated estate? What kind of neighborhood will exist between the former owners and your purchasers? The tradition of wrong will sit at the hearthstone of that family for ages, like a hideous specter ever inciting to revenge and rebellion. You might as well try to attract purchasers by promising them a good title to an Irish feud, or a Corsican vendetta. Such titles have never been good. You might as well expect capital to seek the margin of a volcano, where the lava had not ceased to flow. That which is taken by war must be held by war.

Mr. EDITOR: To an unpretending observer of passing events there are no bright prospects for the future of our country. Nothing but darkness and doubt are visible to an eye "wide awake" to the continued supreme folly of abolition madness at a time like the present, or to a mind fully alive to its baneful effects upon the cause of the Union on the one hand, and on the other, the great argumentative aid it affords rebel speakers and writers in keeping their people in the dark as to the real intentions of the Government. We will not say here that our own eyes are sometimes obscured as to its "ultimate" intentions. For our only hope, at this time, rests on the ability of Abraham Lincoln to withstand the mad clamours of radical abolitionism, which is, next to secession, more to be abhored than any other curse in the land. But recent events would seem to indicate that the said Abraham is gradually softening towards an idea on whose wings alone he so triumphantly rode into the presidential chair. While the writer of this is quite satisfactorily disappointed with the course of Mr. Lincoln, though it might, to the great benefit of the country, have been much more unequivocal in many respects, and less tardy in developing its real intentions, if indeed they are even now fully developed, it must not be forgotten that the moderate republicans either understood the President to be a conservative man, thereby most wofully [sic] deceiving the radicals, or the President himself has been compelled to yield to sentiments which are and always have been at war with his former oft-expressed opinions. Be this as it may the conduct of the party as a whole just operated sufficiently upon the fears and excitement of the moment to enable Southern traitors to carry their States out of the Union. Now, is it to be expected, so long as the radicals are at perfect liberty to abuse the Border States, and the Union men of the South generally, even more violently than they were in the habit of abusing the South before secession, is it to be expected that there can be that unity of feeling between the States yet in the Union which the uninterrupted success of the war for the Constitution and the Union so absolutely demands? The fearful broils which the unhallowed attacks of abolitionism are now provoking from Border State men in Congress, unmistakably prove the original cause of the present dreadful rebellion. And as the abolitionists succeed in their determination to also to drive [sic] these men out of the Union so will the difficulties to crush the rebellion increase. Yet with all these facts in full view there are new tests of loyalty prescribed. A man must pay his portion of the expenses of the war not only without a grumble but "cheerfully" if he wants to raise his loyalty above suspicion, although it is a well established fact, even according to republican showing, that the incubus of abolitionism, by its roguery and folly, will increase the expenses of the war beyond calculation, compared with what an honest and economical administration of affairs would have made them. The man who expects such humiliation from the people betrays an ignorance of human nature as mean and cowardly as the noisy stay-at-home abolitionists show in their devilish attacks upon those who are imperilling their lives for their country. The man who can take it on himself to dictate such tests of loyalty under such circumstances must either be a knave or a fool, must either have a "finger in the pie" of roguery or else be bordering on a species of mental bereavement.

A TAX-PAYER