Whitelaw Reid: “Nor am I here to apologize for my part in making the nation that was in the wrong and beaten in the late war pay for it…”

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

Is that the feast to be set before the laboring men of this country?

We are all washed under, and the most of us only live peaceable lives by the sufferance of our Rebel neighbors.

Congress is supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution.