CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



227 



tee. I think there is no intelligent popular 

 sentiment in the country which demands or 

 justifies the enactment of a law of this kind. 

 I think it is an attempt to force popular senti- 

 ment. It is addressed to the passions of the 

 people of the country. It is based upon no 

 existing necessities in the land. There is no- 

 where such a condition of insubordination as 

 either calls for it, or can be relieved or cured 

 by it." 



Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, said : " If you adopt 

 this report, you will to-day perpetuate a law 

 which will exclude the Attorney-General of 

 the United States from the jury-box, which 

 will exclude men, however high in position, 

 who have joined your party, pardon and am- 

 nesty to the contrary notwithstanding. Gen- 

 eral Longstreet, under this bill, if it shall be- 

 come a law, will not be able to sit upon a jury 

 to settle a controversy between his neighbors, 

 although he may hold the highest office in the 

 land. No man, Radical or Democrat, who 

 ever fed a Confederate soldier, or one about to 

 unite with that army, can, under this bill, sit 

 in the jury-box. I say that there is not a Fed- 

 eral officer in this House, I do not believe I 

 need except even the gentleman from Massa- 

 chusetts (Mr. Butler), who, during all the years 

 of war, did not do some act of kindness that 

 he was not compelled to do to some poor, suf- 

 fering Confederate soldier, and that would ex- 

 clude him from every Federal jury from Maine 

 to California, if the judge saw fit to do so. 



"That is what this House now proposes to 

 do by concurring in this report, and the coun- 

 try ought to know it. That is the known and 

 obvious effect of this bill as it is now amended 

 by the committee of conference. The bill 

 originally never would have been passed by 

 this House, as I have stated, but for the fact 

 that that provision of law was struck out ; 

 and the gentlemen who now 'go back ' on the 

 House, and yield to the Senate, who succumb 

 to the malignants in both branches of Con- 

 gress, have, in my judgment, been recreant to 

 their duty, and ought to be held up before the 

 country as men who have abandoned the rights 

 and privileges of this House and of the people. 

 My experience as a lawyer may induce me to 

 place a higher estimate on the importance of 

 insisting on the repeal of this law. When the 

 numerous classes of cases provided for in the 

 bill become, for the first time, subjects of Fed- 

 eral jurisdiction, then many others may attach 

 to it. I know that if you give a man a fair 

 and an honest jury, and, if he has a good case, 

 he is sure to be protected, no matter who is 

 judge. But by this bill you propose to allow 

 a corrupt judge (and the judge may be corrupt; 

 there have been, as all Southern men know too 

 well, corrupt judges) to strike down the jury- 

 panel whenever he pleases ; to discard and set 

 aside any man, whether he sympathized during 

 the war with the Federal or the Confederate 

 cause, if years ago he gave a meal to a starv- 

 ing Confederate, to put him upon his oath in 



order to ascertain that fact, and thus exclude 

 him ^from a jury. Allow this to be done, I 

 say, in the class of cases provided for in this 

 bill, and there is an end of liberty regulated 

 by law. The old, time-honored trial by jury, 

 which men have regarded for centuries past 

 as the great palladium of civil liberty, will be 

 swept away." 



Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts, said: "The 

 bill now presents itself with three features 

 which, in my judgment, are worth preserving. 

 First, the right to punish through the courts 

 of the United States crimes against citizens of 

 the United States to prevent the exercise of 

 their rights ; second, the power of the Presi- 

 dent to use the strong arm of military power 

 to suppress all outrages and wrong upon citi- 

 zens; and, third, a definition of what are the 

 powers of the General Government, because 

 this amendment, as reported by the committee, 

 has in it, in my judgment, some virtue in this : 

 it goes further in the direction of interfering 

 with the individual rights of citizens by law 

 of Congress than ever I attempted to do or 

 desired to do, and makes a precedent for us in 

 the future. I attempted heretofore to report 

 a bill which would allow men, who did the act 

 of depriving a citizen of his right, to be pun- 

 ished in courts of the United States. I thought 

 the constitutional power was with us to do 

 that. 



"Now, my friends, who have constitutional 

 scruples about doing that, have reported an 

 amendment to give a remedy by taking the 

 property of a citizen of the United States be- 

 cause he knows somebody who has committed 

 an offence, or is about to commit an offence, 

 or happens to know about an offence about to 

 be committed, and has not prevented it. For 

 gentlemen who have constitutional scruples, 

 this is going further than any thing I have 

 done or know. I have known men in my time 

 who mistook dyspepsia for conscience. (Laugh- 

 ter.) I have known men who mistook their 

 doubts and qualms for constitutional law, who 

 are quite willing to go very far, if they do not 

 happen to go under the lead they do not like, 

 and, if you give them their own head, will go 

 farther than the farthest. So far as this par- 

 ticular provision is concerned, now substituted 

 for what is known as the Sherman amendment, 

 I look upon it as utterly useless, a mere illusion 

 and delusion." 



The question was taken upon agreeing to 

 the report of the committee of conference ; 

 and it was decided as follows : 



YEAS Messrs. Averill, Barber, Barry, Beatty, Big- 

 by, Bingham. Austin Blair, George M. Brooks, 

 Buckley, Buffinton, Burchard, Benfamin F. Butler, 

 Coburn, Conger, Cook, Cotton, Creely, Dawes, Don- 

 nan, Dunnell, Eames, Elliott, Farwell, Charles Fos- 

 ter, Garneld, Hale, Halsey, Harmer, George E. Har- 

 ris, Havens, Hawley, John W. Hazleton, Hill, Hoar, 

 Hooper, Kelley, Ketcham, Killinger. Lamport, Lan- 

 sing, Lowe, Maynard, McJunkin, Mercur, Merriam, 

 Monroe, Morey, Leonard Myers, Negley, Orr, Pack- 

 ard. Packer, Palmer, Peck, Pendleton. Perce, Aaron 

 F. Perry, Platt, Poland, Porter, Barney, Ellis H. 



