CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



justice, then I shall begin to have some faith 

 that our Southern brothers, who it seems have 

 not yet forgotten the old manners and ways of 

 semi-barbarous times, have thought better of 

 it ; and then I shall begin to have some faith 

 that whatever irregularities or wrongs may 

 exist in the autonomy of any of those States 

 will be properly corrected. 



"Mr. President, as I have said, this is the 

 first time, I think, in human history when any 

 man has raised his voice to condemn what he 

 calls despotism on the part of the Govern- 

 ment, where, when you look to find what that 

 despotism is, you find on one side the Govern- 

 ment exerting all the power that it is able to 

 exert to protect human life and human lib- 

 erty, instead of, as in the despotism we have 

 read of, exerting all the power that it possesses 

 to imprison and to get men out of the way 

 and to destroy them and exile them, or kill 

 them in spite of the law and against the law. 

 That is what the White-Leaguers are endeavor- 

 ing to do, and it is to resist that aggression 

 upon government and good order and upon 

 liberty that the forces of the Government are 

 brought together. That is the difference, and 

 it is a difference, I must say, that I think nat- 

 urally grows out of the condition of things 

 that existed in the Southern States. It is a 

 difference that would not be tolerated, that 

 could not exist, in fact, in any Northern State 

 where society is homogeneous and intelligent 

 and educated ; and it is a difference that neces- 

 sarily almost grows out of the circumstance 

 that a hundred years of slavery, a hundred 

 years of oppression and of wrong, have created 

 such a state of opinion in the" body of the gov- 

 erning classes in those States that whatever 

 they see is done that does not suit them is to 

 be redressed at their own free-will without 

 any regard to law at all. 



" Now, Mr. President, I am as anxious as the 

 honorable Senator from Ohio is that we shall 

 have this information. I am anxious on the 

 particular topic to which he refers to know 

 whether the White League and its aiders and 

 abettors in Louisiana undertook in defiance of 

 the laws of the State of Louisiana, with which 

 the United States have something to do with 

 respect to the organization of the State, and to 

 which in such respects we are not strangers 

 by any means to set up a Legislature which 

 the statutes of that State forbade them to set 

 up and to turn out and to ignore the only per- 

 sons to whom the law intrusted the duty of 

 receiving the certificates of election, counting 

 them, calling the roll of the men who were 

 certified, and organizing that body of people. 

 That is what I wish to know, and if I am 

 rightly informed we shall then have the spec- 

 tacle of the use of power to repress an illegal 

 but organized mob that, in defiance of law, in 

 defiance of justice, in defiance of usage, under- 

 took to set itself up as a Legislature to the ex- 

 clusion of the right one. If that should hap- 

 pen to be the case, I trust that the honorable 



Senator from Ohio and the honorable Senators 

 from Missouri and Delaware, and all the other 

 honorable Senators of that ilk, will be as glad 

 as I shall be to know that such an operation was 

 prevented by the exercise of legitimate consti- 

 tutional power; for I suppose these lovers of 

 liberty on the other side of the Chamber, 

 though they seem to have somewhat queer no- 

 tions of what liberty is, have not yet got so far 

 as to be willing to maintain that it is not the 

 business of constituted power to resist illegal 

 aggressions, and therefore that it would not be 

 the right thing for the Government of the 

 United States to uphold the rightful Legislature 

 of the State of Louisiana. If it should turn out 

 that those whose friends are here found main- 

 taining their cause were themselves the illegal 

 and wrongful aggressors, not having a shadow 

 of right to stand upon under the laws of Loui- 

 siana, then I hope we shall have taken back in 

 this august presence of all those talks about 

 despotism and Caesarism and oppression which 

 we have heard so much of to-day. But per- 

 haps it is too early to anticipate what is to be 

 the fact." 



Mr. Thurman: "Mr. President, during the 

 five years that I have held a seat in the Sen- 

 ate, speaking from recollection, according to 

 the very best of my memory, I have heard 

 precisely the same speech that has just been 

 delivered by the Senator from Vermont (Mr. 

 Edmunds) at least half a dozen times, and I 

 have no doubt the people of Vermont have 

 heard in every parish and corner of that State 

 this same creed of hatred preached by that 

 Senator. What is it, sir ? It is that there is 

 a difference that necessarily exists down South 

 between the black and the white races, out of 

 which these troubles arise, if I understand the 

 Senator's proposition, and that therefore that 

 fact, which should make us do all that we 

 could to conciliate, shall be a reason for the 

 General Government usurping powers not con- 

 ferred upon it by the Constitution and putting 

 the people of the South, or at least the white 

 peopleof the South, under the heel of a' des- 

 potism worse than exists in any portion of this 

 globe. That is the real solution which the 

 Senator from Vermont would give to this diffi- 

 culty, which he declares is necessary and in- 

 evitable. 



" What have the Ku-klux outrages or the 

 White League to do with the subject-matter 

 before the Senate in the resolution which is 

 now under consideration ? Suppose there have 

 been murders ; call them murders, and gross 

 njurders, if you please ; call them assassina- 

 tions ; use the choice language of your vocab- 

 ulary whenever you speak of the people of the 

 South ; denounce the people of the South as 

 assassins, thugs, Ku-klux, as you do; do all 

 that ; and suppose that such were the fact : 

 what has that to do with the question whether 

 the armies of the United States were yesterday 

 used to organize a Legislature of a State with- 

 out any authority of the Constitution or the 



