The bill which I am directed by the committee on the rebellious States to report is one which provides for the restoration of civil government in States whose governments have been overthrown.  It prescribes such conditions as will secure not only civil government to the people of the rebellious States, but will also secure to the people of the United States permanent peace after the suppression of the rebellion.  The bill challenges the support of all who consider slavery the cause of the rebellion, and that in it the embers of rebellion will always smoulder; of those who think that freedom and permanent peace are inseparable, and who are determined, so far as their constitutional authority will allow them, to secure these fruits by adequate legislation. * * * It is entitled to the support of all gentlemen upon this side of the House, whatever their views may be of the nature of the rebellion, and the relation in which it has placed the people and States in rebellion toward the United States; not less of those who think that the rebellion has placed the citizens of the rebel States beyond the protection of the Constitution, and that Congress, therefore, has supreme power over them as conquered enemies, than of that other class who think that they have not ceased to be citizens and States of the United States, though incapable of exercising political privileges under the Constitution, but that Congress is charged with a high political power by the Constitution to guarantee republican governments in the States, and that this is the proper time and the proper mode of exercising it.  It is also entitled to the favorable consideration of gentlemen upon the other side of the House who honestly and deliberately express their judgment that slavery is dead.  To them it puts the question whether it is not advisable to bury it out of sight, that its ghost may no longer stalk abroad to frighten us from our propriety. * * *

What is the nature of this case with which we have to deal, the evil we must remedy, the danger we must avert?  In other words, what is that monster of political wrong which is called secession?  It is not, Mr. Speaker, domestic violence, within the meaning of that clause of the Constitution, for the violence was the act of the people of those States through their governments, and was the offspring of their free and unforced will.  It is not invasion, in the meaning of the Constitution, for no State has been invaded against the will of the government of the State by any power except the United States marching to overthrow the usurpers of its territory.  It is, therefore, the act of the people of the States, carrying with it all the consequences of such an act.  And therefore it must be either a legal revolution, which makes them independent, and makes of the United States a foreign country, or it is a usurpation against the authority of the United States, the erection of governments which do not recognize the Constitution of the United States, which the Constitution does