CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



107 



I shall confine myself to a very few general 

 observations. 



u The Senator is frank in one thing. His 

 resolution is broad. It includes all the States ; 

 it provides for an investigation whether the 

 rights of American citizens in connection with 

 the elective franchise have been violated or in- 

 terfered with in any of the States ; but he frank- 

 ly admits in the very outset of his remarks 

 that that was not his purpose, that his par- 



G)se was to assail the Democracy of the South, 

 e had two purposes in preparing this carefully 

 elaborated speech ; not to vindicate the right of 

 suffrage throughout this whole Union, but to in- 

 quire whether the Democracy of the Southern 

 btates had violated the rights of American citi- 

 zens, and then to find out what could be done 

 with them. Now, Mr. President, that is a very 

 frank, and I have no doubt a very true, state- 

 ment of the animus of this resolution. 



" Mr. President, I said that there might be 

 some doubts as to the propriety of this in- 

 vestigation. I repeat it. There may be such 

 doubts, especially to-day. Here is a short ses- 

 sion of Congress. We have, excluding the re- 

 cess that we always take, less perhaps than 

 two months within which to dispose of the 

 appropriation bills and the other measures of 

 legislation that necessarily require the attention 

 of Congress if the business of the session is to 

 be disposed of and no extra session is to be 

 called. And now, sir, the Senator proposes 

 an investigation that I defy any committee that 

 can be formed to make with anything like 

 thoroughness, nay, in any satisfactory manner, 

 with anything like justice either to those who 

 are implicated or to those who may be impli- 

 cated, within the time that remains of this ses- 

 sion of the Senate. It is a simple impossibility. 

 I have therefore wondered why this resolution 

 was introduced, unless it was to be made a 

 string upon which to hang speeches to arouse 

 sectional hatred in one portion of this Union 

 against an almost defenseless people in another 

 portion of the Union. 



"Now, Mr. President, this assault of the Sen- 

 ator from Maine is not an assault simply, how- 

 ever, upon the people of the South. I said five 

 months ago in a speech what I beg pardon 

 for repeating here that it did seem to me as 

 clear as anything in American politics could be, 

 that there was a deliberately formed purpose, 

 under pretext that there was a solid South, to 

 create a solid North to rule not only the solid 

 South, but to rule one half nearly, if not more, 

 of the people of the North. I thought so then ; 

 I think so yet. I thought then, and I think now, 

 that a purpose more unpatriotic, more unjust, 

 more fraught with ruin to this country never 

 entered the brain of man. That is my belief. 



" Why, Mr. President, of what is it that the 

 Senator from Maine complains? That there 

 were not enough Republican votes at the South. 

 That is the amount of it ; and how does he 

 make that out ? He assumes, without one shad- 

 ow of proof produced here, that the negroes 



of the South were prevented from voting, or 

 forced to vote the Democratic ticket. He as- 

 sumes, therefore, that owing to those causes 

 the negroes of the South are not represented 

 by the members of the House of Representa- 

 tives who come from that section of the Union, 

 or by the Senators on this floor who represent 

 Southern States. What right has the Senator 

 from Maine to say that the negroes of the South 

 are not represented by the chosen Representa- 

 tives of the South and the chosen Senators of 

 the South? What right has he to vote those 

 negroes himself on one side, and say that the 

 men who have the credentials of election here 

 do not represent their constituents ? Why, Mr, 

 President, it is a bare assumption on his part 

 that he has no right whatever to make. 



" But, again, the Senator ought to have 

 thought of this when he was framing his four- 

 teenth and fifteenth amendments, or when he 

 was assisting in framing them. There were 

 men then, men of his own party too, who told 

 him with long foresight that in the end prop- 

 erty and intelligence and education will rule 

 the land, and ignorance can not. Mr. Presi- 

 dent, there were men of his own party who 

 foresaw that those people who have the intelli- 

 gence, the education, and the property will not 

 be ruled by those who have neither; and in 

 that it is not necessary to separate the commu- 

 nity into white people and into colored people. 

 Not at all is it necessary to do that. No, Mr. 

 President, the result of these constitutional 

 amendments was easy enough to be foreseen. 

 I am not here to-day to justify the violation 

 of the rights of any man, however humble he 

 may be, whatever may be the color of his skin, 

 whatever may be the poverty of his situation. 

 I am here for no such purpose as that. If I 

 know my own heart, I am as much in favor of 

 respecting the rights of every man under the 

 Constitution as the Senator from Maine or any 

 other Senator on this floor ; but I do know that 

 property, intelligence, education, will assert 

 their influence everywhere on the face of this 

 globe. 



"Now, Mr. President, let me say one word 

 more on this subject. Who was it that drew 

 the color line between the whites and the ne- 

 groes in the South? Let me tell you, sir, that 

 millions of money, of the money of the people 

 of the United States, were expended by your 

 agents, the Freedman's Bureau agents, in get- 

 ting every colored man in the South into loyal 

 leagues and swearing him never to vote for a 

 Democrat. That is where the color line began 

 to be drawn. That institution, which took 

 charge of the negro at the ballot-box, took 

 charge of him in the cotton-field, took charge 

 of him everywhere, supervised every contract 

 that he made, allowed no contract to be made 

 unless it had the approval of the agents of the 

 Freedman's Bureau, and spent the money and 

 property called ' captured and abandoned prop- 

 erty 1 that was surrendered to it, and many 

 millions of money directly appropriated out of 



