280 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



"The Republican party and the Northern 

 people preach no crusade against the South. 

 I will say nothing of the past beyond a single 

 fact. When the war was over no man who 

 fought against his flag was punished even by 

 imprisonment. No estate was confiscated. 

 Every man was left free to enjoy life, liberty, 

 and the pursuit of happiness. After the South- 

 ern States were restored to their relations in 

 the Union no man was ever disfranchised by 

 national authority not one. If this statement 

 is denied, I invite any Senator to correct me. 

 I repeat it. After the Southern State govern- 

 ments were rebuilded and the States were re- 

 stored to their relations in the Union by na- 

 tional authority, not one man for one moment 

 was ever denied the right to vote, or hindered 

 in the right. From the time that Mississippi 

 was restored there never has been an hour 

 when Jefferson Davis might not vote as freely 

 as the honorable Senator in his State of Illi- 

 nois. The North, burdened with taxes, draped 

 in mourning, dotted over with new-made graves 

 tenanted by her bravest and her best, sought to 

 inflict no penalty upon those who had stricken 

 her with the greatest, and, as she believed, the 

 guiltiest rebellion that ever crimsoned the an- 

 nals of the human race. As an example of 

 generosity and magnanimity, the conduct of 

 the nation in victory was the grandest the 

 world has ever seen. The same spirit pre- 

 vails now. Yet our ears are larumed with the 

 charge that the Republicans of the North seek 

 to revive and intensify the wounds and pangs 

 and passions of the war, and that the Southern 

 Democrats seek to bury them in oblivion of 

 kind forgetfulness. 



" We can test the truth of these assertions 

 right before our eyes. Let us test them. 

 Twenty-seven States adhered to the Union in 

 the dark hour. Those States send to Congress 

 two hundred and sixty-nine Senators and Rep- 

 resentatives. Of these two hundred and sixty- 

 nine Senators and Representatives, fifty-four, 

 and only fifty-four, were soldiers in the armies 

 of the Union. The eleven States which were 

 disloyal send ninety-three Senators and Repre- 

 sentatives to Congress. Of these, eighty-five 

 were soldiers in the armies of the rebellion, 

 and at least three more held high civil station 

 in the rebelh'on, making in all eighty-eight out 

 of. ninety-three. Let me state the same fact, 

 dividing the Houses. There are but four Sen- 

 ators here who fought in the Union Army. 

 They all sit here now ; and there are but four. 

 Twenty Senators sit here who fought in the 

 army of the rebellion, and three more Senators 

 sit here who held high civil command in the 

 Confederacy. In the House there are fifty 

 Union soldiers from twenty-seven States, and 

 sixty-five Confederate soldiers from eleven 

 States. Who, I ask you, Senators, tried by 

 this record, is keeping up party divisions on 

 the issues and hatreds of the war? 



"The South is solid. Throughout all its 

 borders it has no seat here save two in which 



a Republican sits. The Senator from Missis- 

 sippi [Mr. Bruce] and the Senator from Louisi- 

 ana [Mr. Kellogg] are still spared, and whisper 

 says that an enterprise is afoot to deprive one 

 of these Senators of his seat. The South is 

 emphatically solid. Can you wonder if the 

 North soon becomes solid too? Do you not 

 see that the doings witnessed now in Congress 

 fill the North with alarm and distrust of the 

 patriotism and good faith of men from the 

 South ? Forty-two Democrats have seats on 

 this floor ; forty -three if you add the honorable 

 Senator from Illinois [Mr. Davis]. He does 

 not belong to the Democratic party, although 

 I must say, after reading his speech the other 

 day, that a Democrat who asks anything more 

 of him is an insatiate monster. If you count 

 the Senator from Illinois, there are forty-three 

 Democrats in this Chamber. Twenty-three is 

 a clear majority of all, and twenty-three hap- 

 pens to be exactly the number of Senators 

 from the South who were leaders in the late 

 rebellion. Do you anticipate my object in 

 stating these numbers? For fear you do not, 

 let me explain. Forty-two Senators rule the 

 Senate; twenty -three Senators rule the cau- 

 cus: a majority rules the Senate; a caucus 

 rules the majority; and the twenty-three 

 Southern Senators rule the caucus. The same 

 thing in the same way, governed by the same 

 elements, is true in the House. 



"This present assault upon the purity and 

 fairness of elections, upon the Constitution, 

 upon the executive department, and upon the 

 rights of the people not the rights of a king, 

 not on such rights as we heard the distinguished 

 presiding officer, whom I am glad now to dis- 

 cover in his seat, dilate upon of a morning some 

 weeks ago ; not the divine right of kings, but 

 the unborn rights of the people the present 

 assault upon them could never have been inau- 

 gurated without the action of the twenty-three 

 Southern Senators here, and the Southern Rep- 

 resentatives there [pointing to the House]. 

 The people of the North know this and see it. 

 They see the lead and control of the Demo- 

 cratic party again where it was before the war, 

 in the hands of the South. 'By their fruits 

 ye shall know them.' The honorable Senator 

 from Alabama [Mr. Morgan], educated no doubt 

 by experience in political appearances and spec- 

 tacular effects, said the other day that he pre- 

 ferred the Democrats from the North should 

 go first in this debate. I admired his sagacity. 

 It was the skill of an experienced tactician to 

 deploy the Northern levies as the sappers and 

 miners; it was very becoming certainly. It 

 was not from cruelty, or to make them food 

 for powder, that he set them in the fore-front 

 of the battle; he thought it would appear bet- 

 ter for the Northern auxiliaries to go first and 

 tunnel the citadel. Good, excellent, as far as 

 it went ; but it did not go very far in mislead- 

 ing anybody; putting the tail foremost and 

 the head in the sand only showed the species 

 and habits of the bird. 



