CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



177 



tion, on March 23d, a message was received 

 from the President of the United States. 



Mr. Conkling, of New York : " I move that 

 the message lie on the table and be printed." 



The motion was agreed to. 



Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, said : "I have two 

 or three objections to the resolution. The first 

 is, that Congress has no constitutional power 

 whatever to pass such a law. The second is, 

 that if Congress did pass such a law it would be 

 as impotent to execute it as, and more so than, 

 the State authorities and the State courts. In 

 the third place, in view of the state of society 

 existing in Kentucky after the termination of 

 the great civil war, and after the people were 

 deprived, without authority of the Constitu- 

 tion, by a usurped power of Congress, of a 

 thousand millions of their property, though 

 there had been a pledge to them, a positive, 

 reiterated pledge to them, by Congress, by the 

 Executive, by the members of the Cabinet, 

 that the war was waged only to put down 

 armed rebellion, and not to invade the States, 

 or their governments, or their institutions, or 

 their property; and after again they were 

 pledged to the payment of $10,000,000 for 

 their property twice over, and you put a repu- 

 diation of this pledge in an amendment, a pre- 

 tended and surreptitious amendment of the 

 Constitution ; I say as to a people thus out- 

 raged, as have been the people of Kentucky 

 by their own Government, against all its pro- 

 fessions of good faith, it is not strange that 

 disorder should exist to some extent in that 

 State, and that it should take time and reflec- 

 tion and sober reason to bring the people of 

 the State to their correction ; and that is the 

 only corrective." 



Mr. Blair, of Missouri, said : " I shall con- 

 clude what I have to say by expressing my 

 opinion about this policy of the Republican 

 party, not only in the reconstruction measures 

 themselves, but in the continued series of ag- 

 gressions in that line of policy which are never 

 intermitted. One encroachment after another 

 follows close upon the heels of its predecessor. 

 They claim to go one point, and that they will 

 be satisfied with that advantage ; but it is only 

 a stepping-stone to still further and greater 

 usurpations. And, sir, I have to say that, in 

 my judgment, this whole reconstruction busi- 

 ness was a bald and flagrant usurpation and 

 lawless outrage upon our written Constitution, 

 intended to obliterate State lines, State power, 

 and State pride, and to centralize the whole 

 powers of Government here at the centre of 

 the country. The contrivers of these measures 

 have now thrown off the mask, and, embold- 

 ened by the result of the last presidential 

 election, which they claim affirmed the meas- 

 ures which they had already passed, they by 

 fraud imposed upon the people of the United 

 States the fifteenth amendment. The laws by 

 which that amendment are sought to be car- 

 ried out are not warranted even by the amend- 

 ment itself, nor is the present measure now 

 VOL. XL 12 A 



pending in Congress warranted by the four- 

 teenth amendment, under which it seeks to 

 shelter itself. 



" I shall, perhaps, be told that these senti- 

 ments are revolutionary. Everybody who 

 maintains that this Congress has not the power 

 to sweep away the Constitution when it pleases 

 is denounced as revolutionary. When they 

 with one stroke, in the reconstruction meas- 

 ures, swept away the fifth and sixth amend- 

 ments to the Constitution, securing persons 

 and property, securing the right of trial by 

 jury, securing a trial, according to due proces's 

 of law, of every one charged with crime, and 

 substituting in its place the drum-head court- 

 martial, all who maintained that this was un- 

 constitutional and that Congress had no power 

 to do this act, that there was no authority in 

 any public body in the United States to do it, 

 were denounced as revolutionists. "When we 

 declared that Congress had no power to pass 

 a bill of attainder, by which whole communi- 

 ties of people were convicted and punished 

 without due process of law, although the Con- 

 stitution of the United States declares in so 

 many words that * Congress shall pass no bill 

 of attainder or ex post facto law,' we were 

 denounced as revolutionists. And so also, 

 when we proclaimed that Congress could not, 

 in defiance of the express letter of the Consti- 

 tution, pass an ex post facto law, a law fixing 

 a different punishment than that which had 

 been previously affixed for an offence after the 

 offence was committed; when we declared 

 that Congress had no power to pass such a 

 law, that it was forbidden by the express lan- 

 guage of the Constitution, that any law in de- 

 fiance and in derogation of the express prohi- 

 bitions of the Constitution was null and void, 

 we were responded to, 'That is revolution- 

 ary.' 



" Now, sir, let me tell the Senators that these 

 rights belonged to the people of our blood 

 before the Constitution was made. Every man 

 who has read English history, and especially 

 those who are descended from the people f 

 that race, has pondered over the history of 

 the struggle, which for a thousand years has 

 lasted, to secure these rights and to guard 

 them against tyranny and despotism. Men 

 have suffered death on the battle-field and 

 upon the scaffold and at the stake and in dun- 

 geons rather than yield up these rights to the 

 arbitrary kings who reigned over those people ; 

 and they have always succeeded in maintain- 

 ing them, though for a brief period they might 

 be trampled under foot, and they often made 

 their rulers pay the penalty for their crimes 

 in attempting to destroy and take away these 

 precious boons, these guarantees of their per- 

 sonal freedom and security. One king laid 

 his head upon the block, and his race and 

 descendants were exiled and died wanderers 

 away from their homes because they attempted 

 to rob the people of these precious charters of 

 their liberties. We have always read those 



