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CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the same body, of people whose rights their 

 predecessors defended in 1860 and 1861, the old 

 aristocracy of white men and nothing else, and 

 white men of one political opinion and nothing 

 else. So they will be again in solid array as they 

 were fourteen or fifteen years ago to do the 

 same thing. I think I can say for one, and for 

 the people whom I in part represent, that they 

 are quite welcome to begin. 



"It is high time, Mr. President, that the 

 people of this country (and by that term I mean 

 the whole people, those who have become peo- 

 ple under the amendments of the Constitu- 

 tion as well as those who were citizens before) 

 should ascertain now and forever whether these 

 amendments for liberty and for human rights 

 are to live and have a vitality, or whether, to 

 use a Western and a Democratic phrase, they 

 are to be frozen out, and frozen out by Ku-klux 

 for which there were apologists in this Cham- 

 ber, in respect to whom there were denials by 

 the minority in this Chamber of the existence 

 of any such body, and in respect of whose con- 

 duct in assassinations and murders, which the 

 honorable Senator from Ohio so gently calls 

 * homicides without authority of law ' a 

 most sweet and gentle phrase, one that would 

 not touch the coat-tails of any murderer in the 

 South with the slightest derogation and men 

 stood up in this Chamber and with similar 

 gentle phrases characterized that widespread 

 conspiracy of four years ago. And now, when 

 by a new name 'Ku-klux' has transferred it- 

 self to ' White League,' and a military organ- 

 ization, created, organized, ramified, extend- 

 ed, for the sole purpose of making war upon 

 their fellow-men because they stand up to as- 

 sert the rights that the Constitution of their 

 country and the laws of God have given them, 

 are again extending their hands and their forces 

 everywhere, we find the same old story repeat- 

 ed by the same old allies or their successors, 

 that these assassinations, and murders, and cru- 

 elties, when they come to the ultimate termina- 

 tion of death, are * homicides without author- 

 ity of law ! ' And from another Senator, they 

 are ' the spirit of liberty resisting oppression 

 and despotism ; ' and, as the Senator from Ohio 

 puts it himself, a statement of these circum- 

 stances that are known here of all men is only 

 the cry of despotism endeavoring to shield it- 

 self in its war upon liberty by saying that it 

 does it in defense, of law and order! 



u Mr. President, the despotisms of which we 

 have any account in human aifairs, until this of 

 most recent times, have been despotisms whose 

 forces were put in play against the rights of 

 men, against the preservation of life, against 

 the defense of liberty; and yet here we have 

 what the honorable Senator styles a despot- 

 ism which exerts the power of government 

 to protect defenseless and innocent men against 

 an organized conspiracy to deprive them of 

 liberty, and of life, and of right, because they 

 happen to assert their right to be citizens of 

 this republic as well as the white race. The 



honorable Senators, so far as I am concerned, 

 are quite welcome to open an issue of that 

 kind to the people of this country. It is a 

 momentous one, there is no doubt ; it involves 

 in its solution large sacrifices, it involves in its 

 solution still larger consequences ; but I think 

 I can tell Senators that they need not rely upon 

 what they suppose to be a triumph at the elec- 

 tions if they suppose they are going to cover up 

 or to maintain for a single year any excuse for 

 or recognition of that state of things which the 

 Southern * White League ' is the exponent of, 

 and which its dreadful and unpunished crimes 

 are one of the means of carrying its notions 

 into execution, without an expression of opin- 

 ion by the people of the United States I will 

 not say of the North or of the South, but I will 

 say without an expression of that portion of 

 the people of the United States who fifteen 

 years ago rallied to the unity and the liberty 

 of the Government and its citizens, which they 

 will learn to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction 

 has not fallen asleep for any great length of 

 time. I can tell Senators 1 think with some 

 safety that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fif- 

 teenth amendments of the Constitution of the 

 United States are intended to be, and will be, 

 whether we all live to see it or not, just as 

 firmly planted in practice in this country as 

 they are now in theory ; and ' it will not do,' 

 to use a phrase so favorite with my honorable 

 friend from Ohio, for him or any other Senator 

 to say that the people of this country, who 

 love law and order and liberty combined, are 

 going to sit down and see thousands and tens 

 of thousands of their fellow-citizens in any 

 part of this country made the victims of op- 

 pression and assassination and every species of 

 wrong, merely because of the fact that they 

 wish in an innocent and a lawful way to assert 

 their constitutional rights, without resisting it. 

 " So, then, Mr. President, the question is not 

 precisely whether despotism is to cover itself 

 up by acting under a pretense of supporting 

 law, but the question is whether a powerful 

 government, armed by the Constitution with 

 the authority to maintain itself and protect 

 every constitutional right of every citizen, shall 

 exert its power in order that every right of 

 every citizen may be respected, and that an 

 honest and an innocent man who lives in any 

 State shall have a right to call upon the Gov- 

 ernment of his country to protect him in the 

 rights that the Constitution of that country 

 has made sacred to him. 



" When I see, Mr. President, as I have not 

 yet seen, that the people, as they call them- 

 selves, the White-Leaguers, or the white Demo- 

 crats, or the white Conservatives, or whatever 

 they may be, of any State in this Union, when 

 they find that any of their associates have com- 

 mitted assassination or murder or wrong upon 

 their fellow-citizens for no cause but opinion's 

 sake, turn upon him as in Ohio they would turn 

 upon him, or in Vermont, without respect of 

 party, and bring him under the heavy hand of 



