some capacity which you have not. My judgment is, that you will keep sufficiently far ahead not to be disturbed by them; but, if they get ahead of you, they will leave the road behind.

There is another consideration. You cannot just now -I do not know what may be the condition of things fifty or one hundred years hence

but you of Maryland cannot just now afford to part with the black people. They are capable of performing a great deal of labor. You need them to cultivate your lands, to develop your resources; and you cannot, without loss, pursue a policy which drives them from your State. If you continue as a slave State, with a free region South and a free region North, the negroes will escape, and you will be left with a greatly reduced laboring population. While you continue as a slave State, the free laborers of the North and of Europe will not come here. Any man who is not driven into exile as it were, who has a home in a free State, and is obliged to labor with his hands for the means of subsistence, does not migrate to a slave State. In a free State,-I speak of my own State, because there I know more of the people than I know of the people in any other State, labor is not only rewarded, but it is honored. The dignity of labor is taught in every public school; it is instilled by the example of every father and of every mother; it is the belief of the churches; it is the universal public sentiment, that a laboring man is " a man for a' that." But in a slave State, where slavery is the controlling power, -I suppose it is not so in the city of Baltimore, where there is a large predominance of free popula

tion, and a public sentiment controlled by free opinion, but in a slave State, and in a slaveholding community, labor is considered degrading, and a laboring man is not regarded as a respectable man. Therefore a man trained in a free State, and dependent upon his own hands for his means of subsistence, does not go into a slave State.

If, then, you continue the institution of slavery, your present laborers will escape, and new ones will not come, and your nine thousand square miles of territory will be comparatively a waste; your mines will not be developed; your water-power will not be improved. On the other hand, if you abolish slavery, and proceed to educate your children, black and white, make labor respectable, you not only retain the productive power of this people, but you bring other laborers to you, and you build up a great commonwealth upon this central shore of the Atlantic. I saw, the other day, a statement that you had by estimate six thousand million of tons of coal underlying the surface of Maryland. Six thousand million of tons, at a dollar per ton, will pay the present debt of the United States twice over. I do not know but that we shall come here to get the coal at twenty-five cents a ton to pay our debt.

When I look at your natural facilities, your advantages, I am astonished that you have not more fully developed them in the past; and I can attribute the neglect only to the institution of slavery. While in my own State, on Cape Cod, on the elbow which extends from Barnstable all the way round to Provincetown (as every one who looks at the

map sees), fifty or sixty miles, there is not a foot of fruitful land; and yet along this narrow cape you find people not only in the possession of a competency, but living in luxury. On this cape there is a fact which has no parallel on the continent,-a garden, the soil of which was imported from Oporto. When we thrive on sand, and import the soil in which we raise our vegetables, what ought you to do here?

300

RIGHTS OF THE REBEL STATES.

SPEECH UPON THE "BILL TO GUARANTEE TO CERTAIN STATES, WHOSE GOVERNMENTS HAVE BEEN USURPED OR OVERTHROWN, A REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT," DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 4, 1864.

MR.

R. SPEAKER,- Before any steps can be safely taken for the organization of local governments, either by or for the people inhabiting the territory included within the eleven once-existing States, but now rebellious districts, of the Union, it is necessary for Congress and the country to come to an understanding of the legal and constitutional relations subsisting between those people and the Government of the United States.

It is my chief purpose - indeed, I may say that it is my only purpose-to contribute something, if happily I may, to the attainment of that common understanding; but, before I proceed to a discussion of the questions involved in the bill now under consideration, I beg the indulgence of the House while I allude briefly to the remarks made by the gentleman from Ohio, my colleague upon the committee that reported this bill [Mr. Ashley], in reference to the policy of the President in Louisiana and Arkansas, and to the conduct of General Banks, in his administration of the Department of the Gulf.

It ought to attract observation, that, since this rebellion opened, the Thirty-seventh Congress commenced its existence, and ceased to exist; that this Congress is now closing the fifth month of its first session; and that up to this time no efficient, indeed no legislative steps whatever, have been taken by which the executive is to be guided in the affairs of the people occupying the territory that has been reclaimed from rebel domination. Under these circumstances, I think it due to the country that this House, at least, should do nothing which conveys any reflection upon his policy, unless that policy be clearly and manifestly in contravention of the Constitution, or of the well-ascertained and admitted principles of the government.

When the Mississippi River was opened to navigation; when the subordinates of the rebel government were separated from the capital of the so-called Confederacy; when the populous parts of Louisiana were torn from rebel dominion, and the State of Arkansas, in various ways, indicated that there was an existing opinion among the people in favor of a return to the allegiance which was due from them to this government,-the executive had but one of three courses before him: either to be silent, to be inactive; to govern by military authority alone; or to establish a civil government, or at least to take initiatory steps for the establishment of such a government. It was unquestionably his right and duty, in the absence of all legislative action, to govern these districts of country by military power as fast and as far as they were reclaimed.

I agree with what has been so often said upon this