286 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



yet it was amusing to hear the distinguished 

 Senator from New York the other day in his 

 own way describing the Democratic party as 

 consisting of a Northern tail and a Southern 

 head. What would you have done without 

 that tail in the war ? If the conservative Union 

 men North and South could have left the war 

 to be fought out by the advocates of secession 

 on the one hand and the advocates of consoli- 

 dation on the other, there would have been 

 some other party in control of this country 

 for the last eighteen years. 



"But, as I say, the respective sections be- 

 came involved without regard to the individ- 

 ual opinions of their people. This national 

 party, this party of absolutism, is not only the 

 party in power by reason of its representation 

 that it saved the Union, and taking all the 

 credit of saving the Union, but it claims all the 

 credit of having suppressed the rebellion, and 

 demands that it shall be esteemed as the seces- 

 sionists shall be hated. 



" These two sources of strength to the Re- 

 publican party are now endangering the States. 

 Why, sir, every step of the Republican party is 

 to the destruction of the States. Take the 

 very measures now under consideration. What 

 are they? In 1862, for purposes which every 

 man can explain, a test oath was prescribed 

 for jurors. In 1865 a clause was put in an 

 army bill authorizing the use of troops to keep 

 the peace at the polls. Neither of these stat- 

 utes was ever known on our statute-book be- 

 fore ; they did not exist in the early days of 

 the Republic; they never existed until they 

 were enacted during the war. In 1870 and 

 1871 your election laws were passed. They 

 never existed before. Up to that time all par- 

 ties had agreed that the States were both able 

 and willing to take care of the elections and 

 protect their citizens. Now, I put it to every 

 intelligent man, what stronger indication of a 

 desire to grasp power, what stronger indica- 

 tion of a purpose to crush oat the States than 

 the attempt to drive intelligence and virtue 

 and property from the jury-box and use the 

 army at the elections, and to place in the Fed- 

 eral Government power by supervisors and 

 deputy marshals to take absolute control of 

 the States in their elections, things that were 

 never done before ? 



" If either one of the laws which we now 

 propose to repeal had been proposed for enac- 

 tion in any administration of this Government 

 from the days of Washington to 1860, it would 

 have ruined the man that made the proposi- 

 tion. No man could have stood before the in- 

 dignation of the American people who would 

 have proposed to place upon the statute-book 

 a law keeping intelligence and virtue from the 

 jury-box, a law surrounding the polls with the 

 army and the navy, or a law giving to the 

 Federal Government absolute control of the 

 elections, and, as my friend from Kentucky 

 [Mr. Beck] suggests, fixing the Congressional 

 elections to come off on the same day with 



Presidential elections and State elections, so as 

 to control all. 



" I have given this subject careful considera- 

 tion. I wish to do no man injustice ; but, with 

 a full sense of responsibility to my country, I 

 affirm to-day that this heated contest we have 

 had here for six weeks has no meaning, has no 

 purpose, and can have no result but the abso- 

 lute control of the States by force through the 

 Federal Government to perpetuate the Repub- 

 lican party in power, whether the people will 

 it or not ; and if the President shall use the veto 

 power, conferred upon him for a high conser- 

 vative purpose, to aid these party schemes, and 

 the people shall not rise in their indignation 

 and drive from power these men who thus 

 abuse power and disregard their duty, the 

 Union will be destroyed in the destruction of 

 the States. 



" I grant you that the people of the North 

 ought to have solid arguments on this subject. 

 I grant what the Senator from New York in- 

 timated, that gush will not do ; simply talking 

 about shaking hands and locking arms does 

 not amount to much. That will do for chil- 

 dren and Sunday-school teachers. Statesmen 

 want facts ; statesmen want arguments ; states- 

 men want reasons why the Southern people are 

 not the enemies of the Government, and there- 

 fore ought to be friends and can be safely trust- 

 ed. I propose to give some of those reasons. 



"The laws that are now proposed to be re- 

 pealed have been made the occasions for all 

 kinds of intimations from the leaders of the 

 Republican party that the South is not worthy 

 to be trusted. How on earth can a proposi- 

 tion to repeal a law which was unknown to 

 the country for the first seventy-five years of 

 the existence of the Government be an evi- 

 dence of disloyalty? How is it any evidence 

 that we are not to be trusted because we want 

 intelligence and virtue in the jury-box ? How 

 is it an evidence that we are not to be trusted 

 because we want the absence of the army from 

 the polls when the army was never known at 

 the polls in the days of our fathers ? How is 

 it that we are to be declared disloyal because 

 we are in favor of taking away from the Fed- 

 eral Government the control of the elections 

 through the deputy marshals and the supervi- 

 sors ? United States deputy marshals and su- 

 pervisors in elections were never known to 

 the history of this country for the first eighty 

 years of its government. Are we disloyal be- 

 cause we want what Washington had, what 

 Jefferson had, what Madison had, what Jack- 

 son had ? The President in his message says 

 that he invites us back to the good old habits 

 and customs of the country, and he says that 

 the habit of tacking legislation to appropria- 

 tion bills was unknown in the first forty years 

 of the Government, and invites us back to 

 those good old days. I mean to accept his in- 

 vitation. I say to the President, ' Come sir, 

 let us go back to the good old days when for 

 not forty but seventy-five years troops were 



