CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Ml 



punity ? Has New York no power to protect 

 In-!- citizens in the exercise of the right of suf- 

 frage? Is New York so given up to thugs 

 and shoulder-hitters I can not remember 

 tin i-o other hard names but is New York 

 siicli a hell that New York can not protect her 

 own people ; and does the ambassador from 

 New York, in his high place, say that to the 

 roimtry? If New York can protect her peo- 

 ple, why does she clamor for the national arm? 

 Is New York unable to protect her citizens ? 

 Then let New York petition this Congress and 

 say so, and we will help the poor, feeble, emas- 

 culated State of New York! Is New York 

 able to protect her citizens and yet unwilling 

 to protect them? Then New York does not 

 deserve help; then New York does not de- 

 serve to be a State. One or the other must 

 be true. If she demands the Federal arm, if 

 she demands the array and the navy, if she de- 

 mands that the soldiery shall protect her peo- 

 ple, it must be because she is either unable to 

 protect them or unwilling to protect them." 



Mr. Kernan : " She is neither." 



Mr. Hill of Georgia : " Ah, my friend, you 

 are right ; she is neither. She is able and she 

 is willing to protect her citizens in this right. 

 But let the argument progress. If the Senator 

 is right, and if in New York the national sol- 

 dier must protect her citizens in the exercise 

 of the right of suffrage, must we not do the 

 same thing in every other right? If New 

 York can not protect her people in one right, 

 can she protect them in any other right? If 

 New York must have the national arm to help 

 her protect her people in the exercise of one 

 right, I repeat, must not New York demand 

 the national arm to help her protect her peo- 

 ple in all other personal rights, and what is 

 the result? The argument comes just to this, 

 that the State of New York is unable to pro- 

 tect her people in any of their rights, and 

 therefore it is necessary for New York to have 

 the protection and the help of the National 

 Government in the protection of all. If New 

 York can not protect her people, what State 

 can? If New York, with her five million 

 people, the largest State in this Union, the 

 wealthiest State in this Union, having the 

 commercial metropolis of this great country, 

 is unable to protect her people from thugs and 

 shoulder-hitters and rat-pitters, what other 

 State is able to protect her people ? Does not 

 every man see the necessary logical result of 

 the honorable Senator's argument, that States 

 must be destroyed, that the Government must 

 absorb to itself all the power of protecting the 

 citizens of this country, all their rights, and 

 reduce the States to incompetent provinces ? 

 That is the goal of the Republican party. 

 Every hour of their history has been a direct 

 march to the destruction of the States. 



" Here is the truth, Mr. President : the whole 

 war was the result of crimination between two 

 extreme ideas. I deny that the Union, as in- 

 terpreted by Madison and expounded by Web- 



ster, was any party to the late war except as 

 a victim, a threatened victim, and a very dan- 

 gerously threatened one. It is true that the 

 war was the result of a collision of ideas and 

 interests between the extreme nationalists and 

 the extreme federalists. They brought about 

 the war ; but the slavery question entering into 

 it sectionalized it, and therefore the North be- 

 came consolidated on one side, and the South, 

 or a portion of the States of the South, consoli- 

 dated on the other. After the war arose the 

 Union became involved, and therefore it is 

 that those who fought on the side of the Fed- 

 eral Government fought for the Union, and 

 are entitled to all the benefits that result from 

 that relation, and no man will always give 

 them to them more cheerfully than myself. 

 The war being the result of this collision of 

 extremes, the consolidationists, the centraliza- 

 tionists, the monarchists (for that is what they 

 mean) had the advantage in that they had pos- 

 session of the Union, possession of its power, 

 possession of its army, and possession of its 

 navy an advantage which they acquired by 

 secession folly. The collision coming on in 

 this form, secession was crushed out in the con- 

 flict, utterly crushed out. I want the country 

 to understand that. It was utterly crushed 

 out. There is no longer any danger to this 

 country by reason of secession. It has no ad- 

 vocate in the South. It is a heresy which has 

 had its day, wrought its wrongs, and gone to 

 its grave, for which there is no resurrection, 

 unless it gets that resurrection in the home of 

 its birth, New England. 



" But, sir, that other extreme enemy of the 

 Constitution and Government and Union, as 

 expounded by Madison and Webster, was not 

 crushed out by war. It was the cardinal prin- 

 ciple of the Republican party. All good Union 

 men at the North, by reason of the condition 

 of things, being compelled to go into the Fed- 

 eral army, as others in the South of a like char- 

 acter who had no sympathy with secession 

 were compelled to go into secession, it was by 

 the aid of the Democracy of the North, of the 

 conservative men of the North who did not 

 agree to absolute nationalism, who did not 

 agree to the doctrine of consolidation, who did 

 not agree to the absolute theory of a national 

 government in the Federal head it was by the 

 aid of these Democrats and conservative men 

 that the Federal armies were enabled to tri- 

 umph and crush out secession. A united North 

 overpowered a divided South. But the men 

 who happened to be the party in power, and 

 who are the representatives of this extreme 

 idea of consolidation, took all the credit to 

 themselves ; and one of the dangers now aris- 

 ing to this country is from the fact that the 

 party which represents this central, absolute- 

 ly national idea this consolidation idea, this 

 monarchizing idea that party claims the credit 

 of having saved the Union. It gives no credit 

 to its allies whatever. What would you have 

 done without the Democrats in the war? And 



