CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



137 



property, and military organizations must be 

 invoked, why not encourage the States to or- 

 ganize, discipline, and arm and equip their 

 militia organizations ? I am frank to say that 

 I shall favor a liberal appropriation at the next 

 session of Congress for that purpose. 



" What are the real and true uses of our reg- 

 ular army in time of peace? Simply to furnish 

 a small force to take care of our ordnance and 

 forts upon our ocean front, and to protect the 

 border settlements on our Indian frontiers, and 

 to repel the cattle-thieves upon the Lower Rio 

 Grande. Now, just what force is necessary to 

 perform that service it is our duty to amply 

 provide for ; and when I say amply I mean it. 

 I would accouter the United States soldier with 

 all the improved modern appointments, arms, 

 etc., so that when he meets the enemy upon 

 the field of battle he cannot reflect upon a par- 

 simonious and unfeeling Government because 

 of the unequal means of defense with which he 

 is supplied. 



u This bill provides to supply a force of twen- 

 ty thousand men ; that is, it proposes not to 

 recruit the army above the number of enlisted 

 men on the army rolls on the first day of this 

 month, which, from the most reliable data, is 

 not over twenty thousand enlisted men. 



"I wish to make one other remark in refer- 

 ence to this bill. It is in reference to a restric- 

 tion that was placed on the last army appro- 

 priation bill, controlling the use of the army. 

 The Committee on Appropriations did not 

 deem that, in view of recent events, in view 

 of the action of the President in carrying out 

 the Constitution, in carrying out the time- 

 honored doctrine of non-interference by the 

 General Government with the States, but al- 

 lowing the States to regulate their own affairs 

 in their own way, subject only to the provi- 

 sions of the Federal Constitution, the commit- 

 tee did not feel that, in view of recent events, 

 and of the action of the President in so prompt- 

 ly removing the troops from Louisiana and 

 South Carolina, we should express a want of 

 confidence in his policy, and his determination 

 to allow the people of the States to regulate 

 their own affairs in their own way. 



" Nothing less than the inexorable demand 

 of civil liberty and free government for the 

 Southern States would have induced the Demo- 

 cratic House of Representatives of the Forty- 

 fourth Congress to refuse the ordinary annual 

 appropriation for the maintenance of the regu- 

 lar army of this country. Not, sir, that I 

 would be understood as intimating, much less 

 preferring, the charge that the temper and dis- 

 position of our regular army is inimical to civil 

 liberty or local self-government ; for, with the 

 exception of a few officers high in command, 

 the army has exhibited no political bias, nor 

 been guilty of any voluntary oppressions of the 

 people, or of defiance of the civil authority, 

 which, alas, has been of too frequent occur- 

 rence in the last decade. No, no, sir; the 

 army is not to blame. It is created to obey. 



Obedience is the first and paramount duty of 

 a soldier ; and although the solemn authority 

 of the courts has been defied, judges and gov- 

 ernors have been deposed and stripped of the 

 insignia of office, and the doors of State-houses 

 have been closed by armed soldiers against the 

 rightful entrance of the legally and duly elect- 

 ed representatives of the people, and many 

 other similar outrages have been committed 

 by detachments of regular soldiers, under the 

 immediate command of their officers, acting 

 under orders of superior officers, yet the coun- 

 try well knows that the responsibility for all 

 the wrongs to public liberty lies at the door of 

 the lat Executive, and in no manner attaches 

 to the army proper. 



" But while Congress and the people acquit 

 the army of all responsibility for these great 

 wrongs, it nevertheless was used in the hands 

 of the Executive as an involuntary instrument 

 to perpetrate these wrongs against constitu- 

 tional law and free government. Hence the 

 advocate of home rule and independent State 

 action, limited only by the Federal Constitution, 

 felt in the closing hours of the Forty-fourth 

 Congress the absolute necessity of embodying 

 in the army, appropriation bill a restriction, 

 denying the use of the money so appropriated 

 for the maintenance of the army, if employed 

 to uphold the State governments of either of 

 the rival governors of Louisiana and of South 

 Carolina. That action, though violently op- 

 posed by the Republican side of the House at 

 the time, found a precedent in the action taken 

 by the Republicans of this House in the Thirty- 

 fourth Congress, in reference to the use of 

 troops to uphold the State government of Kan- 

 sas, attempted to be set up by the pro-slavery 

 party of that State in 1854. 



" But the independent and responsible course 

 which the last House chose to adopt in refer- 

 ence to this subject is derived from a much 

 higher, more powerful and ancient source than 

 the Republican Representatives of the Thirty- 

 fourth Congress. It is coeval with represen- 

 tative government. It springs from the very 

 nature of free government itself. In England 

 for centuries the Commons withheld supplies 

 from the Crown whenever redress of grievance 

 could not be otherwise attained. It is as old, 

 then, as free government in the mother-country, 

 and, indeed, was about the only expression of 

 true and unrestricted freedom which the peo- 

 ple of the realm enjoyed. In this country it 

 is the resultant power which springs from the 

 great American doctrine of non-intervention 

 and popular sovereignty which lies at the base 

 of our free States. What disciple of free gov- 

 ernment will rise and gainsay the right to with- 

 hold supplies even from our gallant 'army, if 

 that army by a usurping Executive is to be 

 employed for the overthrow of the State gov- 

 ernments established by the people in their 

 sovereign right, and the erection on their ruins 

 of the governments of pretenders and usurpers ? 



"Mr. Chairman, it is not necessary to recur 



