CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



207 



ministered to the colored people when we 

 have a thorough Republican, a true man, an 

 excellent lawyer, a man of unspotted reputa- 

 tion, to preside as judge, and a Northern man, 

 who is a citizen of Mississippi in full accord 

 with the Republican party, and in the full 

 confidence of the colored people, as prosecut- 

 ing attorney ? 



"I undertake to say that justice is admin- 

 istered there, and that there is no complaint 

 in all that district of country that justice is 

 not administered ; that colored men sit upon 

 juries, and it is frequently the case that the 

 jury is entirely composed of colored men. 

 Colored men are overseers of the roads. A 

 colored man is the sheriff of Issaquena County, 

 appointed by myself. A colored man is elected 

 sheriff of Issaquena County ; a colored man 

 is elected sheriff of Adams County ; a colored 

 man is elected sheriff of Jefferson County, 

 and colored men are officers in several other 

 counties in the State of Mississippi ; and yet 

 it is said justice cannot be administered there, 

 when every judge who sits upon the bench is 

 a Republican, appointed by a Republican Gov- 

 ernor and confirmed by a Republican Senate. 



"I repel the charge that justice is not ad- 

 ministered in Mississippi. I assert that the 

 Governor of Mississippi, when he delivered 

 his message to the Legislature in January, and 

 declared that the condition of Mississippi was 

 peace, told the truth ; that when he wrote to 

 me on the 15th of May, the present month, 

 declaring that the condition of Mississippi 

 to-day was peace, that peace reigns through- 

 outlier borders, the Governor, who is a North- 

 ern man, but who is a citizen of Mississippi 

 interested in our society, identified with us, a 

 part of us, a man whom we all respect, and 

 who is entitled to our respect, told the truth. 



"I stated the fact that I did not think there 

 was any necessity for the suspension of the 

 writ^ of habeas corpm, that the condition of 

 Mississippi to-day was one of repose ; that if 

 Congress would allow the people there to do 

 something toward going forward in the recon- 

 struction of the State, and not attempt to do 

 every thing by legislation, allow time to do its 

 work, and the effect of this new order of things 

 to adjust itself, everything would be in Missis- 

 sippi as we would desire it ; and that this in- 

 tervention, and this violent legislation that is 

 calculated to disturb the repose of the State 

 and engender hostilities between the races in 

 the State, is an intervention that no man who 

 is interested in the peace and prosperity of 

 this country, either North or South, would de- 

 sire to see." 



Mr. Stevenson, of Kentucky, said : " The 

 Senator from Indiana asks why the South did 

 not in 1866 or 1867 return loyal men as her 

 representatives. Was not Judge Sharkey a 

 loyal man ? Did he not resist the rebellion ? 

 Was he not a Union man in the broadest sense 

 during the darkest hours of that conflict ? Old 

 and venerable as he was, honored for his 



learning, revered for his virtues, and distin- 

 guished throughout the land as a jurist sans 

 peur et sans reproche, that old man, almost 

 singly and alone, breasted in his own native 

 Mississippi the storm of rebellion; and how 

 did the Republican party repay him ? When 

 he came, bearing the sign-manual of Missis- 

 sippi that he was her chosen Senator of the 

 United States, bringing proof of his loyalty, 

 known far and wide for his patriotism, how 

 did you receive him? When Alexander H. 

 Stephens, the bitter opponent of secession, 

 when it occurred, sought admittance into this 

 Chamber as the regularly-elected Senator 

 from Georgia, how did" you receive him? 

 With what respect did you honor the consti- 

 tutional claims of Mississippi and Georgia for 

 representation in the persons of their selected 

 and distinguished sons ? Did you treat them 

 as sovereigns in this confederacy? Did you 

 extend your fraternal arms and welcome them 

 back as representatives of a restored Union ? 

 No, Senators, no ! Dead to the teachings of 

 that love illustrated in the parable of the 

 prodigal son, who, though he had erred, was 

 welcomed back to the paternal mansion of his 

 early love, you preferred the guidance of an 

 extreme party standard, whose success is 

 above patriotism, and which prefers in its 

 merciless abuse of usurped power to crush 

 out all returning obedience of the Southern 

 people to the Federal Government or its laws. 



" You still persevere in your unhallowed 

 warfare upon this down-trodden people. With 

 all your courts open, with hundreds of indict- 

 ments pending for the punishment of these 

 secret, illegal combinations, with a people 

 denied all participation in the government, 

 broken in fortune, beggared by their reverses, 

 with persons once their slaves now their law- 

 givers and official superiors, backed by the 

 Army and supported by the Government of 

 the United States, you propose still to clothe 

 the President of the United States, and every 

 military satrap or subordinate belonging to 

 the Army and stationed in the South, in a 

 period of peace, and during a presidential 

 election, with the dictatorial power at his dis- 

 cretion to suspend this writ of habeas corpus, 

 and to imprison these unfortunate people at 

 pleasure. Nay, more, you attempt by select- 

 ing isolated instances of violence and outrage 

 in the South, and scattering them in speeches 

 broadcast through the land, by charges that 

 Gordon, Hampton, Butler, in all respects your 

 peers, are members of this secret organiza- 

 tion, charged falsely to be a political one, to 

 rekindle the expiring embers of the late civil 

 war, and in this way you hope to arouse a 

 sectional hatred that will keep you still in 

 power. 



" And yet the Senator from Indiana tells us 

 the Republican party wants peace. Can these 

 oppressions continue, can the guarantees of 

 constitutional liberty be ruthlessly disregarded 

 and the apprehension of freemen not be 



