two years after the war had closed, shattering the Union again into fragments, blotting the names of ten great Southern states from its roll, and dividing their territory into five Military Districts under the control of belted satraps.
When this measure was vetoed by the President, it came accompanied by a message whose words will be forever etched in fire on the darkest page of the Nation's life.
Amid hisses, curses, jeers, and cat-calls, the Clerk of the House read its burning words:
"The power thus given to the commanding officer over the people of each district is that of an absolute monarch. His mere will is to take the place of law. He may make a criminal code of his own; he can make it as bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of acting on the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises.
"Here is a bill of attainder against nine millions of people at once. It is based upon an accusation so vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and found to be true upon no credible evidence. Not one of the nine millions was heard in his own defense. The representatives even of the doomed parties were excluded from all participation in the trial. The conviction is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever inflicted on large masses of men. It disfranchises them by hundreds of thousands and degrades them all—even those who are admitted to be guiltless—from the rank of freemen to the condition of slaves.
"Such power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for more than five hundred years, and in all that time no people who speak the English tongue have borne such servitude."
