264 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



disgrace to the Republic wherever they are 

 known. John I. Davenport is chief supervisor 

 of elections in the city of New York, appointed 

 by the Circuit Court of the United States. He 

 is also the clerk of the United States Circuit 

 Court, and a United States Commissioner. 

 With all the powers of these manifold official 

 positions combined in his own person, he has 

 indeed been the autocrat of the ballot-box. In 

 the elections of 1876 he had under him one 

 thousand and seventy supervisors, twenty-five 

 hundred deputy marshals, and an indefinite 

 number of commissioners, at an expense for 

 them .and for himself of $94,587. In 1878 he 

 employed twelve hundred and twenty - five 

 supervisors, thirteen hundred and fifty deputy 

 marshals, and commissioners in proportion, for 

 all whose pay and expenses he drew upon the 

 money of the people in the Treasury. In 

 June, 1876, as clerk of the United States Cir- 

 cuit Court, he issued warrants for the arrest 

 of twenty-six hundred naturalized voters to be 

 brought before him as United States commis- 

 sioner and chief supervisor for the purpose of 

 making them surrender their naturalization 

 papers. The Federal courts themselves after- 

 ward held that the naturalization papers in 

 question were all legal and valid, but the de- 

 sired result had been accomplished. The ter- 

 ror inspired by these arrests intimidated thou- 

 sands from going to the polls. It became well 

 known that there was no personal security in 

 New York in connection with the elections, 

 and the poor, the timid, and the humble staid 

 away. The same course was pursued in 1878. 

 During the summer of that year nine thousand 

 four hundred citizens were notified that they 

 would be arrested unless they surrendered 

 their naturalization papers to the head over- 

 seer, John I. Davenport. In the month of 

 October, 1878, thirty-one hundred persons 

 were actually arrested and a reign of terror 

 inaugurated just in advance of the election. 

 The pretense that these persons held fraudu- 

 lent naturalization papers had already been 

 shown to be false, but it was necessary to 

 party success that an alarm should be raised 

 and a panic created in the minds of foreign- 

 born citizens and of the poor laboring classes 

 generally. The movement was successful, and 

 it has been estimated that ten thousand legal 

 voters remained away from the polls rather 

 than risk the jails and the prison-pens of the 

 chief supervisor and his subordinates. But it 

 was reserved for the day of election itself to 

 give free scope to the frightful powers with 

 which this band of Federal ku-klux is in- 

 vested. Those who braved the dangers which 

 environed the ballot-box, and approached it as 

 if they were still freemen, soon found their 

 mistake. They quickly ascertained that the 

 previous threats and warnings which they had 

 heard were neither idle nor unmeaning. As a 

 specimen of thousands of similar occurrences 

 on election day, I quote a statement recently 

 made by a member of the other branch of 



Congress from New York. Speaking from his 

 place on the floor, he said : 



" A neighbor of mine, who had resided in the same 

 district for seventeen years and a soldier of the Union 

 Army at that, was arrested. I was asked to go to the 

 republican headquarters in an adjoining district, 

 wnither he had been taken. The street for an entire 

 block was lined with carriages ? in which the unfor- 

 tunate citizens who had fallen into the hands of the 

 Philistines had been or were to be conveyed. When 

 I entered the building I found the front room deco- 

 rated with the paraphernalia of a political headquar- 

 ters, and filled with Eepublican politicians. In the 

 back room a United States commissioner was holding 

 court. The door was closed, watched by a Cerberus. 

 No one was allowed inside but the prisoners and the 

 Eepublican managers. After about half an hour's 

 waiting I was informed by the doorkeeper that the 

 man I was looking for was no longer there. I asked 

 whither he had been taken. ' Suppose to Fort Daven- 

 port,' was the laconic reply. 



" Sir, most likely this soldier of the Union 

 Army was with Grant in the "Wilderness, at 

 Cold Harbor, and at Petersburg; or perhaps 

 he was with Sherman in his march to the sea, 

 and as a soldier of the Army of the Tennessee 

 took part in the bloody battle of Atlanta. 

 "Wherever he was, however, and on whatever 

 field he was baptized with fire, he was assured 

 that he was offering his life for the preserva- 

 tion of the Union under the safeguards of con- 

 stitutional liberty. He was also assured that 

 human slavery should not survive the triumph 

 of the Union cause, and he rejoiced to believe 

 that his country would in fact soon be the land 

 only of the free. What must have been his 

 reflections, therefore, in November last to find, 

 in attempting to cast his ballot, that he was as 

 very a slave in the hands of a brutal overseer 

 as any negro ever driven in a cotton-field, and 

 that he had no more power under existing 

 laws to protect his personal freedom than an 

 African bondsman on the auction-block before 

 the war. Did he not, most probably, conclude 

 that one of the fruits of the war, under the 

 nurture and cultivation of the Republican 

 party, was the extension of slavery, rather than 

 its overthrow and destruction ? Was he not 

 impressed with the fact that the liberation of 

 one race had been followed by the enslave- 

 ment of another? What were his thoughts, 

 and the thoughts of his fellow victims, who 

 had also been his fellow soldiers, as they lay 

 like felons in prison, in 'Fort Davenport,' for 

 offering to vote ? How did their bitter thoughts 

 in that hour of degradation compare with their 

 glorious dreams as they often lay together 'on 

 the tented field ; when their 



" bugles sang truce; for the night-cloud had lowered, 

 And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky ; 



And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered 

 The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die." 



The President pro tempore: "The question 

 is on the amendment offered by the Senator 

 from Maine [Mr. Elaine], upon which the yeas 

 and nays have been demanded." 



The Secretary proceeded to call the roll, and 

 the result was announced yeas 25, nays 35. 



The bill was ordered to a third reading, and 



