CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



and control elections ; bat the question is, 

 whether under the conditions of the existing 

 law it may not be possible for an Executive 

 who shall so desire to so distribute and so use 

 the soldiery as to destroy the freedom of elec- 

 tions. It is not to confront a present danger 

 which threatens imminently to interfere with 

 elections, but it is to remove from the present 

 or imy future Executive the temptation which 

 the possession of this power would offer, should 

 ho desire so to do, to destroy the liberties of 

 this people, and erect upon the ruins of the Re- 

 public a despotism supported by the arms of a 

 soldiery. Is this a vain and chimerical fear ? 

 The Senator from Maine seems so to regard it ; 

 nnd yet, if we look back at the history of every 

 free people who have ever lost their liberties, 

 we shall find that without one solitary excep- 

 tion their liberties have been destroyed through 

 the operation of the military, through the 

 agency of its commander, or under the direc- 

 tion of an ambitious prince or ruler. 



" Mr. President, I will state frankly and fully 

 that it is not in the utterances of Senators and 

 Representatives discussing the policy of a party 

 that we are to find those opinions upon which 

 we can most rely in the settlement of so vital 

 a principle as this. I do not profess myself to 

 be above that silent influence which is exerted 

 by political policy in forming opinions upon 

 questions which press upon us for immediate 

 solution ; and, whether it be with regard to the 

 use of troops to enforce the fugitive slave law 

 or the various acts which were passed about 

 the time Kansas was erected into a separate 

 State, I am free to state that the parties held 

 positions on those questions which are now 

 precisely reversed. But, sir, I wish to go back 

 to a period antecedent to this ; I wish to view 

 the question in the light of the declarations of 

 those Senators who were part and parcel of 

 this Constitution, of those who were contem- 

 poraneous with its formation ; and I aver on 

 this floor, without the fear of successful con- 

 tradiction, that in the debates, both in the con- 

 vention which framed the Constitution and in 

 the State conventions which approved and 

 ratified it, this question of a standing army and 

 its possible use in controlling and dominating 

 elections was, without distinction of party, the 

 point which elicited most interest and most de- 

 bate, and, whether in Federal Massachusetts or 

 in Republican Virginia, those who stood high- 

 est in the councils of each of those States bore 

 united testimony to the dangers to liberty which 

 were involved in the presence of a standing 

 army. It is not, therefore, out of place that I 

 should solicit the attention of the Senate to 

 the discussions which accompanied the adop- 

 tion of the Constitution as furnishing opinions 

 on which we can best rely as to the dangers 

 that lurk in this feature of the question which 

 we are now discussing. 



" I have before me authorities from the de- 

 bates which were held on this subject in va- 

 rious States, New York, Massachusetts, and 



Virginia, notably the latter, where the contem- 

 poraneous opinion of those men who took an 

 active part in the formation of this instrument, 

 with one consent, declared that the liberties of 

 no people could be regarded as safe in the 

 presence of a military force wielded by the 

 ruler of that country. I will not detain the 

 Senate by reciting them in extenso. I simply 

 remark that Hamilton himself, who was the 

 head and front of the Federalists of that day, 

 and who was accused of a strong leaning to 

 monarchical government, admitted the dangers 

 which lurked in the weakness of our Constitu- 

 tion in that regard. But it was George Mason 

 of Virginia who more than any one else was 

 instrumental in framing and shaping this in- 

 strument, who gave utterance to that sentiment 

 which has lived from that time to the present, 

 and is now accepted as an axiom among all 

 lovers of civil liberty, that ' the liberty of the 

 people has been destroyed only by those who 

 are military commanders.' 



"It is but a puerile effort (if Senators will 

 pardon me for using the term) when a Senator 

 on this floor rises in his place, and, instead of 

 attacking the principles which underlie this 

 great question, devotes himself for half an hour 

 to the attempt to ridicule the arguments of 

 those who oppose him by stating the fact that 

 only one soldier to a county is to be found 

 throughout the States east of the Mississippi. 

 It is an admission on the part of that Senator 

 of the poverty of his case when he can find no 

 stronger argument to use in opposition to the 

 bill which is now before this body. It is not 

 that Senators here fear the presence of one or 

 two or fifty men who may be in their respec- 

 tive States, but it is that a provision of law 

 now exists which renders it possible that not 

 only those who are there, but others, may be 

 brought there if the exigency requires it, and 

 the condition of the public mind or the exigen- 

 cies of party necessity demand that they should 

 be so used to dominate and control elections. 

 In other words, the presence of the military at 

 the polls is absolutely incompatible with free 

 government ; and I announce that as the prin- 

 ciple upon which this bill, with this clause of 

 which we hear so much, has been based." 



Mr. Voorhees of Indiana : "In the present 

 instance we have vastly more than the mere 

 menace or threat of future subjugation by vir- 

 tue of the laws under discussion. We are not 

 left to conjecture what will be done hereafter. 

 Already these laws have been executed over 

 the prostrate forms and liberties of American 

 citizens in a manner and to an extent which 

 would arouse any people in Europe to revolt, 

 except, perhaps, the serfs of Russia. I speak 

 not now of the South, which has so long been 

 considered a legitimate prey to the spoiler, but 

 of the great, dominant, and stalwart North. 

 Look to New York, that mighty emporium of 

 the wealth and commerce of the western hemi- 

 sphere. Scenes have been enacted there with- 

 in the last few years which bring shame and 



