It came from the people rather than from the political leaders.

Ten States, more than one-fourth of the whole number, remain without representation.

The seats of fifty members in the House and twenty members in the Senate are yet vacant, not by their own consent, nor by a failure of election, but by the refusal of Congress to accept their credentials.

The ten Confederate States which stood knocking at the door of Congress for the right of representation, were fully aware, as was well stated by a leading Republican, that the key to unlock the door had been placed in their own hands.

This course on the part of the Southern States was simply a declaration of defiance to Congress.

It was as if they had said in so many words: "We are entitled to representation in Congress, and we propose to resume it on our own terms; and therefore we reject your conditions with scorn.

We will not consent to your Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

We will not consent that the freedom of the negro shall be made secure by endowing him with citizenship.

We demand that without giving negroes the right to vote, they shall yet be counted in the basis of representation, thus increasing our political power when we re-enter Congress beyond that which we enjoyed before we rebelled, and beyond…

We decline to give any guarantee for the validity of the public debt.

We decline to guarantee the sacredness of pensions to soldiers disabled in the War for the Union.

We decline to pledge ourselves that the debts incurred in aid of the Rebellion shall not in the future be paid by our States.

We decline, in brief, to assent to any of the conditions or provisions of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, and we deny your right to amend it without our consent.

The response throughout the North, in the mouths of the loyal people, was in effect: "If these rebel States are not willing now to resume representation on the terms offered, let them stay out until their anger ceases and their reason…

They came spontaneously, as if by inspiration, from the mass of the people, and were based on that instinctive sense of justice which the multitude rarely fails to exhibit.

It was naturally inferred and was subsequently proved, that the Southern States would not have dared to take this hostile attitude except with the encouragement and the unqualified support of the President.

I believe on the contrary, that they will eventually uphold all those who have patriotism and courage to stand by the Constitution and who place their confidence in the people.

It met the spirit of defiance on the part of the South with an answer so decisive, that the misguided people of that section were rapidly undeceived as to their power to command the situation, even with all the aid the President could…

The American people demand that we shall do something, and quickly.

Already fifteen hundred Union men have been massacred in cold blood (more than the entire population of some of the towns in my district), whose only crime has been loyalty to your flag. . . .

Is this what the loyal North has been fighting for?

Thousands of loyal white men, driven like partridges over the mountains, homeless, houseless, penniless, to-day throng this capital.

They fill the hotels, they crowd the avenues, they gather in these marble corridors, they look down from these galleries, and with supplicating eye ask protection from the flag that hangs above the Speaker's chair--a flag which thus far…

You have already inaugurated enough here to destroy any government that was ever founded. . . .

The wonder excited by the raising of the vast army which saved the Union from destruction was even surpassed by the wonder excited by its prompt and peaceful dissolution.