No more pointed rebuke, no more keen reproach (not intended for Mr.Finck personally, but for his party) could have been administered.

What the Administration or especially what Mr.Seward desired, and what Mr.Raymond was to speak for, was Republican support; and the prior indorsement of Mr.Johnson's position by the Democracy was a hinderance and not a help to the cause he had espoused.
Mr.Raymond's principal aim was to join issue with Mr.Stevens on his theory of _dead States_.

"The gentleman from Pennsylvania," said Mr.
Raymond, "believes that what we have to do is to create new States out of this conquered territory, at the proper time, many years distant, retaining them meanwhile in a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of discipline and tutelage as Congress and the Government of the United States may see fit to prescribe.

If I believed in the premises he assumes, possibly though I do not think probably, I might agree with the conclusion he has reached; but, sir, I cannot believe that these States have ever been out of the Union or that they are now out of the Union.

If they were, sir, how and when did they become so?
By what specific act, at what precise time, did any one of those States take itself out of the American Union?
Was it by the ordinance of secession?
I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of the Union is simply a nullity because it encounters the Constitution of the United States which is the supreme law of the land.
"Did the resolutions of those States," continued Mr.Raymond, "the declarations of their officials, the speeches of the members of their Legislatures, or the utterances of their press, accomplish the result desired?
Certainly not.