This is one of a series of measures passed by Congress during the last four months on the subject of reconstruction.  The message returning the act of the 2d of March last states at length my objections to the passage of that measure.  They apply equally well to the bill now before me, and I am content merely to refer to them and to reiterate my conviction that they are sound and unanswerable.

There are some points peculiar to this bill, which I will proceed at once to consider.

The first section purports to declare “the true intent and meaning,” in some particulars, of the two prior acts upon this subject.

It is declared that the intent of those acts was, first, that the existing governments in the ten “rebel States” “were not legal State governments,” and, second, “that thereafter said governments, if continued, were to be continued subject in all respects to the military commanders of the respective districts and to the paramount authority of Congress.”

Congress may by a declaratory act fix upon a prior act a construction altogether at variance with its apparent meaning, and from the time, at least, when such a construction is fixed the original act will be construed to mean exactly what it is stated to mean by the declaratory statute.  There will be, then, from the time this bill may become a law no doubt, no question, as to the relation in which the “existing governments” in those States, called in the original act “the provisional governments,” stand toward the military authority.  As those relations stood before the declaratory act, these “governments,” it is true, were made subject to absolute military authority in many important respects, but not in all, the language of the act being “subject to the military authority of the United States, as hereinafter prescribed.”  By the sixth section of the original act these governments were made “in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States.”

Now by this declaratory act it appears that Congress did not by the original act intend to limit the military authority to any particulars or subjects therein “prescribed,” but meant to make it universal.  Thus over all of these ten States this military government is now declared to have unlimited authority.  It is no longer confined to the preservation of the public peace, the administration of criminal law, the registration of voters, and the superintendence of elections, but “in all respects” is asserted to be paramount to the existing civil governments.

It is impossible to conceive any state of society more intolerable than this; and yet it is to this condition that 12,000,000 American citizens are reduced by the Congress of the United States.  Over every foot of the immense territory occupied by these American citizens the Constitution of the United States is theoretically in full operation.  It binds all the people there and should protect them; yet they are denied every one of its sacred guaranties.