tution and the Constitution of the United States; yet we hear no complaints here of violations of the Constitution in this respect. We ask the Government to interpose to secure us this Constitutional right. We want the passes in our mountains opened; we want deliverance and protection for a downtrodden and oppressed people, who are struggling for their independence without arms. If we had had ten thousand stand of arms and ammunition when the contest commenced, we should have asked no further assistance. We have not got them. We are a rural people; we have villages and small townsno large cities. Our population is homogeneous, industrious, frugal, brave, independent; but now harmless and powerless, and oppressed by usurpers. You may be too late in coming to our relief; or you may not come at all, though I do not doubt that you will come. They may trample us under foot; they may convert our plains into grave-yards, and the caves of our mountains into sepulchers; but they will never take us out of this Union, or make us a land of slaves-no, never! We intend to stand as firm as adamant, and as unyielding as our own majestic mountains that surround us. Yes, we will be as fixed and as immovable as are they upon their bases. We will stand as long as we can; and if we are overpowered, and liberty shall be driven from the land, we intend, before she departs, to take the flag of our country, with a stalwart arm, a patriotic heart, and an honest tread, and place it upon the summit of the loftiest and most majestic mountain. We intend to plant it there, and leave it, to indicate to the inquirer who may come in after-times the spot where the Goddess of Liberty lingered and wept for the last time before she took her flight from a people once prosperous, free, and happy. We ask the Government to come to our aid. We love the Constitution as made by our fathers. We have confidence in the integrity and capacity of the people to govern themselves. We have lived entertaining these opinions; we intend to die entertaining them. The battle has commenced. The President has placed it upon the true ground. It is an issue on the one hand for the people's Government, and its overthrow on the other. We have commenced the battle of Freedom. It is Freedom's cause. We are resisting usurpation and oppression. We will triumph; we must triumph. Right is with us. A great and fundamental principle of right, that lies at the foundation of all things, is with us. We may meet with impediments, and may meet with disasters, and here and there a defeat; but ultimately Freedom's cause must triumph; for "Freedom's battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Yes, we must triumph. Though sometimes I can not see my way clear, in matters of this kind as in matters of religion, when my facts give out, when my reason fails me, I draw largely upon my faith. My faith is strong, based on the eternal principles of right, that a thing so monstrously wrong as is this Rebellion can not triumph. Can we submit to it? Can bleeding Justice submit to it? Is the Senate, are the American people, prepared to give up the graves of Washington and Jackson to be encircled and governed and controlled by a combination of traitors and rebels? I say let the battle go onit is Freedom's cause-until the Stars and Stripes (God bless them!) shall again be unfurled upon every cross-road, and from every house-top, throughout the confederacy, North and South. Let the Union be reinstated; let the law be enforced; let the Constitution be supreme. If the Congress of the United States were to give up the tombs of Washington and Jackson, we should have rising up in our midst another Peter the Hermit, in a much more righteous cause for ours is true, while his was a delusion-who would appeal to the American people, and point to the tombs of Washington and Jackson in the possession of those who are worse than the infidel and the Turk who held the Holy Sepulcher. I believe the American people would start of their own accord, when appealed to, to redeem the graves of Washington and Jackson and Jefferson, and all the other patriots who are lying within the limits of the Southern Confederacy. I do not believe they would stop the march until again the flag of this Union would be placed over the graves of those distinguished men. There will be an uprising. Do not talk about Republicans now; do not talk about Democrats now; do not talk about Whigs or Americans now; talk about your country and the Constitution and the Union. Save that; preserve the integrity of the Government; once more place it erect among the nations of the earth; and then if we want to divide about questions that may arise in our midst we have a Government to divide in. I know it has been said that the object of this war is to make war on Southern institutions. I have been in Free States and I have been in Slave States, and I thank God that, so far as I have been, there has been one universal disclaimer of any such purpose. It is a war upon no section; it is a war upon no peculiar institution; but it is a war for the integrity of the Government, for the Constitution, and the supremacy of the laws. That is what the Nation understands by it. The people whom I represent appeal to the Government and to the Nation to give us the Constitutional protection that we need. I am proud to say that I have met with every manifestation of that kind in the Senate, with only a few dissenting voices. I am proud to say, too, that I believe old Kentucky (God bless her!) will ultimately rise and shake off the stupor which has been resting upon her; and instead of denying us the privilege of passing through her borders, and taking arms and munitions of war to enable a downtrodden people to defend themselves, will not only give us that privilege, but will join us and help us in the work. The people of Kentucky love the Union; they love the Constitution; they have no fault to find with it; but in that State they have a duplicate to the Governor of ours. When we look all round, we see how the Governors of the different States have been involved in this conspiracy, the most stupendous and gigantic conspiracy that was ever formed, and as corrupt and as foul as that attempted by Catiline in the days of Rome. We know it to be so. Have we not known men to sit at their desks in this Chamber using the Government's stationery to write treasonable letters; and while receiving their pay, sworn to support the Constitution and sustain the law, engaging in midnight conclaves to devise ways and means by which the Government and the Constitution should be overthrown? The charge was made and published in the papers. Many things we know that we can not fully prove; but we know from the regular steps that were taken in this work of breaking up the Government, or trying to break it up, that there was system, concert of action. It is a scheme more corrupt than the assassination planned and conducted by Catiline in reference to the Roman Senate. The time has arrived when we should show to the nations of the earth that we are a Nation capable of preserving our existence, and give them evidence that we will do it. I have already detained the Senate much longer than I intended when I rose, and I shall conclude in a few words more. Although the Government has met with a little reverse within a short distance of this city, no one should be discouraged and no heart should be dismayed. It ought only to prove the necessity of bringing forth and exerting still more vigorously the power of the Government in maintenance of the Constitution and the laws. Let the energies of the Government be redoubled, and let it go on with this war-not a war upon sections, not a war upon peculiar institutions anywhere; but let the Constitution and the Union be inscribed on its banners, and the supremacy and enforcement of the laws be its watchword. Then it can, it will, go on triumphantly. We must succeed. This Government must not, can not, fail. Though your flag may have trailed in the dust; though a retrograde movement may have been made; though the banner of our country may have been sullied, let it still be borne onward; and if, for the prosecution of this war in behalf of the Government and the Constitution, it is necessary to cleanse and purify that banner, I say let it be baptized in fire from the sun and bathed in a Nation's blood! The Nation must be redeemed; it must be triumphant. The Constitution, which is based upon principles immutable, and upon which rest the rights of man and the hopes and expectations of those who love freedom throughout the civilized world, must be maintained. CHAPTER VI. JOHNSON AS MILITARY GOVERNOR OF TENNESSEE-A A MOSES THE PATRIOT. N the 4th or 5th of March, 1862, the Senate ON confirmed Mr. Johnson's appointment as Military Governor of Tennessee, and resigning his seat in that body, he at once set out to enter upon this difficult and, perhaps, to him, somewhat distasteful office. With the appointment he was ranked as a brigadier-general, but he never could have felt that the position would add materially to his honor; and this step must also be placed to his sense of duty and patriotism. In accepting this doubtful trust, feelings of revenge may not have escaped Mr. Johnson, or some sense of gratification over the thought that he would now have an opportunity to control, as a master, those who had ever been disposed to regard him in an inferior light. This supposition, however it may reflect upon the idea of a magnanimous character, is not wholly unsupported by events. From his own section of the State many had been driven from their homes who would not take up arms in support of the rebellion, and for these men he felt a strong sympathy. He had aided mate |