CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



177 



Judiciary Committee a year or two ago, and 

 reported the bill giving this power of appoint- 

 ment to the circuit judges upon consideration, 

 as being that body of men who would be most 

 removed from the intensity of local politics in 

 any particular State or town where the district 

 judges happened to live, and would be there- 

 fore more fair and impartial persons to act in- 

 dependently and rightly upon such subjects ; 

 and I thought that provision had the approval 

 of my friend from Illinois." 



Mr. Norwood, of Georgia, said: "If the 

 honorable Senator will pardon me a moment, 

 was not the bill he refers to limited to cities 

 with a population of twenty thousand? " 



Mr. Edmunds : " Yes, sir ; that is the only 

 law there is on the subject, except this one, of 

 course." 



Mr. Norwood: "And this bill applies to 

 every precinct in the country. Does not the 

 Senator see the vast difference between the 

 powers that would be exercised by the circuit 

 judges then, and the powers that are to be ex- 

 ercised now, when, instead of its being limited 

 to cities having a population of over twenty 

 thousand, it goes into every precinct, however 

 small and however distant? " 



Mr. Edmunds : . " Yes ; I do see a vast 

 numerical difference, but the difference is not 

 one of principle. You might as well argue, if 

 it is right for a circuit judge to try one cause, 

 when there were twenty to be tried, he would 

 not be a competent man to try those, as to 

 argue that the circuit judge is unfit to perform 

 this duty." 



Mr. Casserly : " Mr. President, the Senator 

 from Vermont has come somewhat late into 

 the 'fray, very much astonished as well as ex- 

 ceedingly suspicious. I will first refer to his 

 astonishment. 



" He is astonished that objections now should 

 be made to investing the appointment of eight, 

 ten, or twelve thousand officers of election, all 

 over the country, in nine circuit judges, and 

 that arguments should be made in favor of 

 giving that extraordinary power to sixty or 

 seventy district judges. The source of his as- 

 tonishment is, that when the bill to which the 

 present measure is propesed as an amendment 

 was passing through the Senate, no objection 

 was made by the opponents of the bill to giv- 

 ing the power of appointment to the circuit 

 judges. It would seem, too, that he has been 

 looking through the Globe, in order to make 

 certain of what he said. Did his researches en- 

 able him to refresh his memory as to the char- 

 acter of the measure I speak now of both 

 measures, the bill of 1870 and the bill of 1871 

 and as to the circumstances under which 

 they were introduced into this body, and put 

 through ? 



" Sir, he knows just as well as anybody in 

 the Senate, and perhaps a great deal better 

 than most, what were the features of those 

 bills, of each of them and of both of them, 

 against which the main opposition was pre- 



VOL. XII. 12 A. 



sented. He knows (whether we were right or 

 wrong) that we opposed each of those bills 

 upon grounds of such magnitude as to make 

 the question of the power which should ap- 

 point these supervisors utterly insignificant by 

 comparison, utterly immaterial as to whether 

 it was reposed in the circuit or in the district 

 judges. 



" Sir, we dealt with those bills as bills that 

 struck down, at a blow, the whole power of 

 the State over its own elections ; as bills that 

 put it into the power of the Administration 

 party of this country to destroy at its will, to 

 any extent or to the whole extent, the free- 

 dom of election in the States. Does he not 

 know that our judgment was that each of 

 those bills was filled, not only with unconstitu- 

 tional, but with odious and oppressive details ? 

 Does he remember the objection that was 

 made to the original bill, and never attempted 

 to be answered, that it put it into the power 

 of any man, though he were a convict who 

 had just come out of State's prison, after 

 serving his time, upon an ex parte affidavit, to 

 break up the election at any poll in the coun- 

 try? Does he remember that that bill con- 

 tained a provision enabling the President to 

 appoint any number of deputy commanders- 

 in-chief of the army and navy, to use the 

 army and navy with the same power and the 

 same freedom with which he could use them ? 



" "Why, sir, it was 'a bill, as we regarded it 

 I speak of each of them filled from the first 

 line to the last, almost, with such provisions 

 as it seemed to us impossible the Senate 

 could ever adopt. When we had to deal with 

 causes of complaint so pressing and so grave, 

 it would have been the height of folly in us 

 to pause by the way to discuss whether the 

 appointment of your congressional supervisors 

 of election should be vested in the circuit 

 judges or in the district judges. 



"In the second of those bills the enormous 

 power was given to these supervisors to super- 

 vise and to overlook the elections for State 

 officers. There was no pretence, and there 

 could be none, that Congress had, under any 

 view of the Constitution, the slightest au- 

 thority to interfere with those elections ; but, 

 under a mere bald, transparent pretence that 

 it might be necessary in order to carry out the 

 congressional control of elections for Repre- 

 sentatives and Delegates in Congress, these 

 congressional supervisors were authorized to 

 regulate the polling, to scrutinize the polling, 

 and overhaul the ballot-boxes in which votes 

 were received, and only were received for 

 those officers, and only those officers were to 

 be voted for under the exclusive authority of 

 the State. 



" Why, sir, we should have been justly ridic- 

 ulous if, when we were dealing with such a 

 measure as that, we spent our breath in com- 

 plaining that the appointment of officers, armed 

 with such extraordinary powers as these^ su- 

 pervisors were armed with, should be given 



