CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



867 



not known at the polls ; let us go back to the 

 good old days when for not forty but for eighty 

 years supervisors and deputy marshals in con- 

 trol of the elections were unknown to the Fed- 

 eral statute-book. Now, oome, let u* go back.' 

 Why not? That is what we are trying to do. 



" But I want to give the reasons why the 

 South is trustworthy, and I want to call the 

 attention of the country to them. First, the 

 Southern men went to war for what they be- 

 lieved their self-preservation. They defended 

 their convictions bravely. They have surren- 

 dered ; they have abandoned their convictions ; 

 they have abandoned secession, both as a doc- 

 trine and a remedy; and a people who were 

 brave enough to defend their convictions with 

 their blood are honorable enough to keep their 

 pledges. When the Senator from New York 

 points out that eighty-five out of the ninety- 

 three Southern Senators and Representatives 

 I will not quarrel with the figures went to 

 the battle-field and shed their blood for their 

 convictions, he stated a strong reason why they 

 are trustworthy ; when he shows that twenty 

 Southern Senators on this floor were willing to 

 defend their convictions with their life, and 

 only four on that side of the Chamber, he 

 shows a large proportion of Republicans who 

 were very anxious to get up war, and very few 

 who were willing to fight in the wars. 



" But, sir, there is another reason why the 

 South ought to be trusted. I say here that 

 the South did not secede from hostility to the 

 'Union nor from hostility to the Constitution. 

 That is your assumption. You are always 

 talking about the Southern people as enemies 

 of the Union. Not a word of it is true. As I 

 said, the South was driven into secession by the 

 opposite extreme at the North, who were as 

 inimical to the Constitution as the secessionists 

 themselves. That is the truth, and every in- 

 telligent man and every honest man admits it. 

 The aggravations of the slavery question got 

 possession of their respective sections and car- 

 ried them into war, but do you suppose that 

 every Southern man who stood by his section 

 in a sectional war was hostile to the Union ? 

 Not a word of it. 



" No, sir ; the South seceded because there 

 was a war made upon what she believed to be 

 her constitutional rights by the extreme men 

 of the North. Those extreme men of the 

 North were gaining absolute power in the 

 Federal Government as the machinery by 

 which to destroy Southern property. Then 

 the Northern people said, a large nnmber of 

 the leaders and the Republican party said, that 

 if secession was desired to be accomplished it 

 should be accomplished in peace. Mr. Greeley 

 said that they wanted no union pinned together 

 by bayonets. Here is the condition in which 

 the South was placed : They believed the 

 Northern extremists would use the machinery 

 of the Government to their injury ; the people 

 of the South believed that they would protect 

 their property by forming a new union in the 



South precisely upon the basis of the old. 

 They believed they could do it in peace ; and 

 I say here there were thousands upon thou- 

 sands, yea, hundreds of thousand* of the beat 

 men of the South who believed that the only 

 way to avoid a war was to secede. They be- 

 lieved the Northern conscience wanted to get 

 rid of the responsibility for slavery ; they be- 

 lieved they had a right to protect their slave 

 property, and they thought they would accom- 

 modate the Northern conscience by leaving 

 the Union and preserving that property. They 

 believed they could do it in peace; and if they 

 had believed that a war would result they 

 never would have seceded. 



" Sir, if the South were solid from any mo- 

 tives of hostility to the Union, from any mo- 

 tives of hostility to the Constitution, from any 

 motives of hostility to the Northern people, 

 the South would be exceedingly reprehensible. 

 We were made solid in defense of our own 

 preservation ; we are now solid in defense of 

 our own honor and self-respect. We will be 

 kept solid in defense of the Constitution of our 

 fathers ns interpreted by Madison and expound- 

 ed by Webster. We would be glad, if it could 

 be, to see two national parties in this coun- 

 try, national in organization, national in prin- 

 ciples, national in hopes, and consistent with 

 the true interpretation of the Constitution ; 

 but the Northern man who after having made 

 the South solid by calumny, by wrongs piled 

 mountain high extending through years, that 

 Northern man who takes advantage of the 

 wrongs he has inflicted upon the South, and 

 thereby made them solid, who now undertakes 

 for that very reason to make the North solid 

 too, having a solid North against a solid South, 

 is a disanionist in fact; for whenever we shall 

 have a solid North and a solid South in this 

 country the Union can not last. 



" No, my good Northern Democratic breth- 

 ren, you saved the country at last : you saved 

 the Union in the hour of its peril ; not the 

 Republican party. You who had shown your 

 devotion to your flag saved the Union, and 

 now it is for you to go before your people and 

 tell them that the solid North must never be- 

 come a fact against the solid South. If so, 

 disunion will be accomplished. It is you that 

 we look to. You saved the Union, and you 

 will save the States. We could not help you 

 save the Union, btit we are here with all the 

 power that God has given us to help you pre- 

 serve and save the States of this country against 

 the only remaining enemy of either the States 

 or the Union." 



Mr. Chandler of Michigan : " Mr. President, 

 this is the fourth time since 1861 that allusion 

 has been made to & letter written by me to the 

 Governor of the State of Michigan : first it ap- 

 peared in a newspaper published in Detroit, a 

 copy of which was sent to me, and a copy was 

 likewise sent to the late Senator Powell. The 

 letter was a private note written to the Gov- 

 ernor and no copy retained. Senator Powell 



