^LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J laA. U (p.^ I # Ux^^ITED STATES OF AMERICA.! -■a^^i) Extra Session of the 46th Congress. SPEECHES HON. JAMES A. GARFIELD, OF OHIO, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, the extra session, march is to JULY 1, 1879. WASH IN aTON 18 79. ^i^|<5- -of^'i BxTEA Session of the 46th Congress. SPEECHES OF HOI^. JAMES A. GARFIELD, OF OHIO IN THE HOUSE OF EEPRESENTATIVES, AT THE EXTEA SESSIOl^, MAECH 18 TO JULY 1, 1879. WASHINGTON 1879. I. THE APPROPRIATION BILLS. 1. FIEST AEMY BILL. EEVOLUTION IN CONGEESS. Saturday, Alareh 29, 1879. The Honso being in Committee of the 'Whole, aud having under consideration the Ibill (H. E. No. 1) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880, and for other purjjoses — Mr. Gaefield said: Mr. Chaieman : I have no hope of being able to convey to the mem- bers of this House ray own conviction of the very great gravity and solemnity of the crisis which this decision of the Chair and of the Com- mittee of the Whole has brought upon this country. I wish I could be proved a false prophet in reference to the result of this action. I wish I could be overwhelmed with the i^roof that I am utterly mistaken in. my views. But no view I have ever taken has entered more deeply and more seriously into my conviction than this, that the House has to-day resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Gov- ernment of the United States. I do not know that this intention exists in the minds of half the Eepresentatives who occupy the other side of this Hall. I hope it does not. I am ready to believe it does not exist to any great extent. But I affirm that the consequence of the pro- gramme just adopted, if persisted in, will be nothing less than the total subversion of this government. THE QUESTION STATED. Let me in tlie outset state, as carefully as I may, the precise situation. At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done in accord- ance with the usages of the House and Senate, except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the sujiport of the gov- ernment were agreed to in both Houses as to every matter of detail con- cerning the approiiriations x^roper. We were assured by the committees of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjust- ing all dilferences in reference to the amount of money to be appropriated and the objects of its appropriation. But the House of Eepresentatives proposed three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one ujion the Army appropriation bill, and two upon the legislative appropriation bill. The three grouped together are briefly these : First, the substantial modification of certain sections of the law relating to the use of the Army; second, the' repeal of the jurors' test oatli; and third, the repeal of the laws regulating elections of members of Congress. These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the House; but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an ordi- nary proceeding, one which occurs, frequently in all legislative bodies. The Senate said to us through their conferees, "We are ready to pass the appropriation bills; but we are unwilling to pass as riders the three legislative measures you ask us to pass." Thereupon the House, through its conference committee, made the following declaration — and in order that I may do exact justice, I read from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. BeckJ, on the report of the conference com- mittee : The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined tliat unless those lights were secured to the people — alluding to the three points I have named — in the Inll sent to the Senate, they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make appropriations to carry on the government, if tlie dominant majority in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to theiir repeal. Then, after stating that if the position they had taken comi)elled an extra session, the new Congress would offer the repealing bills separately, and forecasting what would happen when the new House should be under no necessity of coercing the Senate, he said : If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise of the )>ower vested in him, should see fit to vero tlie hills thus presented to him, * * * then I have no douht those same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation hills, and it will be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of govern- ment and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the representa- tives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges. * * * Whether that coiu'se is right or wrong, it will be adopted, and I have no doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation bills. That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the close of the Congress now dead. Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman] — and I may properly refer to Senators of a Congress not noAv in existence — re^iewing the situation, declared, in still more succinct terms : We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say that we Avill not grant the money of tlie peo})le unless there is a redress of grievances. These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence \)j the majority in the House. The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed the deepest anxiety-to avoid an extra session and to avert the catastrophe thus threatened — the stoppage of the go\ernmeut. They ]ioiiited out the danger to the country and its business interests of an" extra session of Congress, and expressed their willingness to consent to any com- promise consistent with tlieir views of duty which should be ottered — not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair adjustiiuMit — and asked to be met in a si)irit of just accommodation on the other side. Unfortu- nately no spirit of adjustment was manifested in reply to their advances. And now the new Congress is ass('ml)led ; and afterteu days of caucus deliberation, the House of Kepresentatives has resolved, substantially, to reaffirm the positions of its predecessors, except that the suggestion of Senator Beck to otter the independent legislation in a separate bill has been abandoned. By a construction of the rules of the House far more violent than any heretofore given, a part of this independent legis- lation is placed on the pending bill for the su])port-of tlie Anny; and this House has determined to begin its career by the extremest form of coercive legislation. In my remarks to-day I shall confine myself almost exclusively to the one phase of the controversy presented iii this bill. Mr. Atkixs. Will the honorable gentleman allow me to interrupt him a moment? Mr. Garfield. With pleasure. Mr. Atkins. Do I understand you to state that in the conference committee no proposition was made other than the one suggested in the legislation proposed to be attached to the bill by the House conferees ? Mr. Garfield. I did not undertake to state what was done in con- ference except as reported by Senator Beck, for I was not a member of the committee. Mr. Atkixs. I thought you did. Mr. Garfield. No ; I only declared what was proposed on the floor of the House and Senate. Mt. Atkins. With the gentleman's permission I will state that the proposition the House made in conference committee was substantially the proposition now before the House and here offered to be attached to these bills. Mr. Garfield. I take it for granted that what my friend on the other side says is strictly true; but not even that proposition was re- l^orted to either House. The question, Mr. Chairman, may be asked, why make any special resistance to the clauses of legislation in this bill which a good many gentlemen on this side declared at the last session they cared but little about, and regarded as of very little practical importance, be- cause for years there had been no actual use for any part of these laws, and they had no expectation there would be any f It may be asked, why make any controversy on either side ? So far as we are concerned, Mr. Chairman, I desire to say this : we recognize the other side as accomplished parliamentarians and strategists, who have adopted with skill and adroitness their plan of assault. You have placed in the front, one of the least objectionable of your measiu^es ; but your whole i)ro- gramme has been announced, and we reply to your whole order of battle. The logic of your position compels us to meet you as promptly on the skirmish line as afterward when our entrenchments are assailed ; and, therefore, at the outset, we plant our case upon the general ground uj)on wliich we have chosen to defend it. THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT. And here, sir, I wish to make a brief digression, in which I hope no gentleman will consider my discussion as controversial or personal. I had occasion, at a late hoiu' of the last Congress, to say something on what may. be called the voluntary element in our institutions. I spoke of the distribution of the powers of government. First, to the nation;- second, to the States ; and, third, the reservation of ijower to the people themselves. I called attention to the fact that under our form of government the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not dele- gated to the nation nor to the States, but are reserved to the third estate — the people themselves. I called attention to the interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire made the declara- tion that it was the chief object of the existence of the German Govern- ment to defend and maintain the religion of Jesus Christ — an object in reference to which our Congress is absolutely forbidden by the Consti- tution to legislate at all. Congress can establish no religion ; indeed, can make no law respecting it, because in the view of our fathers — the founders of our government — religion was too precious a right to intrust its interests by delegation to any government. Its maintenance was left to the voluntary action of the i)eople themselves. 6 In continuation of that thought, I wisli now to speak of the vohmtary element inside our government^a topic that I have not heard discussed, but one which aj)pears to me of vital importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions. Mr. Chairman, viewed frOra the stand-point of a foreigner, our govern- ment may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why would a foreigner call it the feeblest ? He can point out a half dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of course, all governments may be overturned by the sword ; but there are several ways in which ours may be annihilated without the tiring of a gun. For examjile, if the people of the United States should say we will elect no Representative to the House of Representatives — of course this is a violent supposition — but suppose they do not, is there any remedy '? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever ? In two years there would be no House of Representatives ; of course no support of the government, and no government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their legislatures, we will elect no Senators. Such absten- tion alone would absolutely destroy this government ; and oiu* system provides no i)rocess of compulsion to prevent it. Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, and a majority of one in this body or in the Senate, should tirndy baud themselves together and say we will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session during our two years of existence; the government would perish; and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it. Or, again if a majority of one in either body should declare that they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to sui)i)ort the government by approi)riations, can you find in the whole range of our judicial or our executive authority hdj remedy whatever ? A Senator or a member of this House is free, and may vote "No" on every proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not so with executive and judicial officers. They have no power to destroy this governmant. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But against the people who create Represent- atives, against the legislatures who create Senators, against Senators and Representatives in these Halls, there is no ])Ower of imi)eachment; there is no remedy, if by abstention or by adverse votes they refuse to support the government. At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise as our fathers were should have left a whole side of their fabric o])en to these deadly assaults ; but on a closer view of the case their wisdom will api)ear. What was their reliance ? This : the sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed sovereign, in whom resides "the State's collected will," and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of country and by a deep sense of obliga- tion to perform every i)ublic duty, being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their representatives to ex})ress that will in the forms of law, it would have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these great voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the government. Public opinion — that great ocean of thought from whose level all heights and all depths are measured — was trusted as a power amply able, and always willing, to guard all the ai>]>roaches on that side of the Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation. Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never been siicli a refusal to exercise those primary functions of sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the government; nor have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two centuries in the history of any English- speaking nation, it is suggested and threatened that these voluntary powers of Congress shall be used for the destruction of the government. I want it distinctly understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people to-day, is this : That if this House cannot have its own way in certain matters not connected with appropriations, it will so use, or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the govern- ment. Now, Mr. Chau-man, it has been said on the other side, that when a demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs the risk of stopping and destroying the government is the one that re- sists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this denial good. FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS. Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this republic can be law without consent — the free consent of the House, the free consent of the Senate, the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the fi'ee consent of two-thuxls of these bodies. Will any man deny that ? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation of all our institutions ? And yet the programme announced two weeks ago was that, if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House, the government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this government ; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, shall exercise his plain Constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to "destroy the government. This is the proposition which we confront j and we denounce it as revolution. It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you demand, as a measure of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every faii^-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended upon his resistance. Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legis- lation ; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of the fundamental principle of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that unite to make laws. In opening this debate I challenge all comers to show a single instance in our history where this consent has been thus coerced. This is the great, the paramount issue which dwarfs all others into insignificance. THE ORIGIN OF THE LAW SOUaHT TO BE MODLFIED. I now turn aside, for a moment, from the line of my arj^iment to say that it is not a little surprising that our friends on the other side shoukl have gone into this great contest on so weak a cause as the one embraced in the pending amendment to this bill. Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder. As a chip, it is of small account to you or to us ; but when it represents the integrity of the Constitution and is as- sailed by revolution, we light for it as for a Kohinoor of i^iu'est water. [Api)lausc.] The distinguished and venerable gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Ste- phens] spoke of this law, which is sought to be repealed, as "odious and dangerous." It has been denounced as a piece of i)artisan war legisla- tion to enable the Army to control elections. Do gentlemen know its history? Do they know whereof they affirm? Who made this law which is denounced as so great an oft'ense as to jus- tify the destruction of the government rather than let it remain on the statute-book'? Its first draft was introduced into the Senate by a promi- nent Democrat from the State of Kentucky, Mr. Powell, who made an able speech in its favor. It was reported against by a Kepublican com- mittee of that body, whose printed report I hold in my hand. It en- countered weeks of debate, was amended and passed, and then came into the House. Every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it on its final passage. Every Senator who voted against it was a Eepublican, Xo Democrat voted against it. Who were the Democrats that voted for it! Let me read some of the names: Hendricks, of Indiana; Davis, of Kentucky; Johnson, of Maryland; McDougall, of California; Powell, of Kentucky; Richardson, of Illinois, and Saulsbury, of Delaware. Of Republican Senators thirteen voted against it ; only ten voted for it. The bill then came to the House of Representatives and was put upon its passage here. How did the vote stand in this body? Every Demo- crat present at the time in the House of Representatives of the Thirty- eighth Congress, voted for it. The total vote in its favor in the House was 113; and of these 58 were Democrats. And who were they ? The magnates of the party. The distinguished Speaker of this House, Mr. Samuel J. Randall, voted for it. The distinguished chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the last House, Mr. Eernando AVood, voted for it. The distinguished member from my own State who now holds a seat in the other end of the Capitol, Mr. George H. Pendleton, voted for it. Messrs. Cox and Cottroth, Kernan and Morrison, who are still in Congress, voted for it. Every Democrat of consjiicuous name and fame in that House voted for the bill, and not one against it. There were but few Republicans who voted against it. I was one of the few. Thaddeus Stevens and Judge Kelley voted against it. What was the controversy? Wliat was the object of the bill? It was alleged by Democrats that in those days of war there were inter- ferences with the proper freedom of elections in the border States. We denied the charge ; but lest there might be some infraction of the free- dom of elections, many Republicans, unwilling that there should be even the semblance of interference witli that freedom, voted for it. This law is an expression of their purpose that the Army shoukl not be used at any election, except for the purpose of keeping the peace. 9 Those Eepublicaus wlio voted against it did so on the groiiud that there was no cause for such legislation ; that it was a slander ujion the gov- ernment and the Army to say that they were interfering with the proper freedom of elections. I was among that number Mr. Carlisle. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? Mr. Garfield. Certainly Mr. Carlisle. I ask if the Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives did not vote for that proposition because it came in the form of a substitute for another proposition that was still more objectionable? Mr. Garfield. The gentleman is quite mistaken. The original bill was introduced by a gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Powell; it was amended in its course through the Senate ; but the votes to which I have referred were the final votes on its passage after all the amendments had been made ; and, what was more, a Republican Senator moved to recon- sider it, hoping that he might thereby kill it. And after several days' delay and debate it was again passed, every Democrat again voting for it. In the House there was no debate, and therefore no expression of the reasons why anybody voted for it. Each man voted according to his convictions, I supjiose. Mr. Stephexs. Will the gentleman yield to me ? Mr. Garfield. I yield to the venerable gentleman from Georgia for a question. Mr. Stephens. I simply ask if the country is likely to be revolutionized and the gov- ernment destroyed by the repealing a law that the gentleman himself voted against ? [Laughter on the Democratic side.] Mr. Garfield. I think not. That is not the element of revolution, as I will show the gentleman. The proposition now is, that after four- teen years have passed, and not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking that this law be repealed, while not one memorial has found its way to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic Eepresentatives declare that if they are not per- mitted to force upon another house and upon the Executive, against their consent, the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal will be considered a suflicient ground for starving this government to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution. [Applause on the Eepublican side.] Mr. Fern.v^'do Wood. I desire to ask the gentleman from Ohio a question. Mr. Garfield. Certainly. Mr. Ferxado Wood. Before he leaves that part of his remarks to which the gentle- man from Keutucky [Mr. Carlisle] has referred, I desire to ask the gentleman whether he wishes to make the impression upon the House that the bill introduced by Senator Powell, of Kentucky, and which resulted finally in the law of 1865, was the bill that passed the Senate, that passed the House, and for which he says the present Si^eaker of this House and myself voted ? Mr. Garfield. I have not intimated that there were no amendments. On the contrary I have said that it was amended in the Senate. One amendment permitted the use of the Army to repel armed enemies of the United States from the polls. Mr. Fernando Wood. So far as I am personally concerned, I deny that I ever voted for a bill except as a substitute for a more pernicious and objectionable measuie. [Much laughter on the Republican side.] Mr. Garfield. What I have said is a matter of record. And I say again the gentleman voted for this law; and every Democrat in the Sen- ate and in the House who voted at all, voted for this law just as it now stands ; and without their votes it could not have passed. ISTo amend- ments whatever were oftered in the House, and there was no other bill on the subject before the House. 10 Mr. Fkrnando Wood. I desire to submit another question to my triend, Mr. Garfield. Oertaiuly. Mr. Fernando Wood. It is whether, in 18fi.''), at the time of the passage of this law, Avheu the war had not really subsifled, whether there was not in a portion of this country a condition of things rendering it almost impossible to exercise the elective franchise nnless there was some degree of military interference? [Great laughter. ] And furtlier, whether, after the experience of fourteen years since the war has sub- sided, that gentleman is yet prepared to continue a war measure in a time of x)rofound peace in this country? Mr. Garfield. No tloiibt tlie patriotic gentleman from New York [Mr. Fernando Wood] took all tlie.se things into consideration when he A'Oted for tliis law; and I may have been nnpatriotic in voting against it at that time; hut he and I must stand by our records, as they were made. THE NEW REBELLION. Let it be understood that I am not discussing the merits of this law. I have merely turned aside from the line of my argument to show the inconsistency of the other side in proposing to stop the government if they cannot force tlie repeal of a law which they themselves made. I am discussing a method of revolution against the Constitution now ju'oposed by this House, and to that issue 1 hold gentlemen in this debate, and challenge them to reply. And now, Mr. Chairman, I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while I offer a suggestion, which I make with reluctance. They will bear me witness that I have, in many ways, shown my desire that the wounds of the war should be healed; that the grass which has grown green over the graves of the dead of both armies might symbol- ize the returning spring of friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms against each other. But I am compelled, by the conduct of the other side, to refer to a chap- ter of cur recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and drauuitic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Eepublicans, "If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your government to death''; but the peojde of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfidly elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the L" nited States. Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recog-^ nized it as courageous and manly to avow your pur])ose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have finally renounced your jmrpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain the governimiut. In that belief you have been i)ermitted to return to power in the two Houses. To-day, after eighteen years of defeat, the book of your domination is again opened, and your first act awakens every unhappy memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which- your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that re- corded your last act of power in 1801, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page, not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field, but you say, if all the legislative powers of the government do not con- sent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you. will not 11 shoot our government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter, but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you cannot coerce an independent branch of this government, against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the government to death. [Great applause on the Kepublican side.] Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any gi^eat difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this government ; you have it in your power, by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Constitution with the paralysis of death ; and you have declared your purpose to do this, if you cannot break down that fundamental principle of free consent which, up to this, hour has always ruled in the legislation of this government. Mr. Dav^is, of North Carolina. Will the gentlemau allow me to ask him a question? Mr. Garfield. Certainly. Mr. Davis, of North Carolina. Do I luiderstaud the fientleman to say that the refusal to permit the Army at the polls will be the death of this government? [De- risive cries of "Oh ! " " Oh! " on the Republican side. ] That is the logic of the gentle- man's argument, if it means anything. But we say that it will be the preservation of this government to keep the military power from destroying liberty at the poUs. Mr. Garfield. I have too much respect for the intellect of the gen- tleman from North Carolina to believe that he thinks that is my argu- ment. He does not say he thinks so. On the contrary, I am sure that every clear-minded man on this floor knows that such is not my argument. The position on the other side is simply this : that unless some inde- pendent branch of the legislative power of this government is forced against its will to vote for or to approve what it does not freely consent to, you will use the voluntary power in your hands to starve the govern- ment to death. Mr. Davis, of North Carolina. Will the gentleman permit me to ask him another question ? Do I understand him to assume that we are forcing some branch of the government to do what it does not wish to do? How do we know that, or how does the gentleman know it? Does the gentleman, when he speaks of "the government," mean to say that it is not the government of the majority, or does he assume that the majority is on his side? Mr. Garfield. I am perfectly protected against the suggestion of the gentleman. I read in the outset declarations of leading members of his party in both branches of Congress asserting this in'ogramme and declaring the intention of carrying it through to the end, in spite of the Senate and in spite of an Executive veto, which they anticipate. The method here proposed iuvites, possibly compels, a veto. COERCION OF THE PRESIDENT. Touching this question of executive action, I remind the gentleman that in 1856 the national Democratic convention, in session at Cincinnati, and still later, the national Democratic convention of 1800, affirmed the right of the veto as one of the sacred rights guaranteed by oui- govern- ment. Here is the resolution : That we are decidedly opposed to taking from the President the qualified veto power by which he is enabled, under restrictions and responsibilities amply sufficitnt to guard the public interests, to suspend the passage of a bill whose merits cannot secure the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives until the judg- ment of the people can be obtained thereon. 12 The doctriue is that any measure which canuot be passed over a veto by a two-thirds vote has no right to become a law, and the only mode of redress is an appeal to the people at the next election. That has been the Democratic doctriue Irom the earliest days, notably so from Jack- son's time until now. In leaving this topic, let me ask what would you have said if, in 1861, the Democratic members of the Senate, being then a majority of that body, instead of taking the heroic course and going out to battle, had simply said, "We will put on an appropriation bill an amendment de- claring the right of any State to secede from the Union at pleasure, and forbidding the President or any officer of the Army or Navy of the United States from interfering with any State in its work of secession ? " Suppose they had said to the President, '' Unless you consent to the in- corporation of this provision in an appropriation bill we will refuse sup- plies to the government." Perhaps they could then have killed the government by starvation ; but even in the madness of that hour the leaders of rebellion did not think it worthy their manhood to put their fight on that dishonorable ground. They planted themselves on the higher plane of battle and fought it out to defeat. Now, by a method which the wildest secessionist scorned to adopt, it is proposed to make this new assault ui)on the life of the republic. Gentlemen, we have calmly surveyed this neAv field of conflict; we have tried to count the cost of the struggle, as we did that of 1801 before we took up your gage of battle. Though no human foresight could fore- cast the awful loss of blood and treasure, yet in the name of liberty and union we accepted the issue and fought it out to the end. We made the appeal to our august sovereign, to the omnipotent public opinion of America, to determine whether the Union should perish at your hands. You know the result. And now lawfully, in the exercise of our right as Eepreseutatives, we take up the gage you have this day thrown down, and appeal again to our common sovereign to determine whether you shall be permitted to destroy the principle of free consent in legislation under the threat of starving the government to death. We are ready to pass these bills for the support of the go^ eminent at any hour when you will ofier them in the ordinary way, by the methods prescribed by the Constitution. If you offer those' other propositions of legislation as separate measures we wiU meet you in the fraternal spirit of fair debate and will discuss theu* merits. Some of your measui"es many of us will vote for in separate bills. But you shallnot coerce any independent branch of this government, even by the threat of starva- tion, to consent to surrender its lawful powers until the question has been appealed to the sovereign and decided in your favor. On this ground we plant ourselves, and here we mil stand to the end. PROTECTION OF THE NATIONAL BALLOT-BOX REFUSED. Let it be remembered that the avowed object of this new revolution is to destroy all the defenses which the nation has placed around its baUot-box to guard the fountain of its own life. You say that the United States shall not employ even its civil power to keep peace at the polls. You say that the marshals shall liave no power either to arrest rioters or criminals who seek to destroy the freedom and purity of the ballot- box. I remind you that you have not always shown this great zeal in keep- ing the civil officers of the general government out of the States. Only six years before the war, your law authorized marshals of the United 13 States to enter all our hamlets and households to hunt for fugitive slaves. Not only that, it empowered the marshals to summon the 2)osse comitatus, to command aU bystanders to join in the chase and aid in remanding to eternal bondage the fleeing slave. And your Democratic Attorney- General, in his opinion published in 1854, declared that the marshal of the United States might summon to his aid the whole able-bodied force of his precinct, all bystanders, including not only the citizens gener- ally, " but any and all organized armed forces, whether militia of the State, or officers, soldiers, sailors, and marines of the United States," to join in the chase and hunt down the fugitive. Now, gentlemen, if, for the piu'pose of making eternal slavery the lot of an American, you could send your marshals, summon your posse, and use the armed force of the United States, with what face or grace can you tell us that this govern- ment cannot lawfully employ the same marshals with their armed posse of citizens, to maintain the purity of oiu- own elections and keep the peace at our own polls. You have made the issue and we have accepted it. In the name of the Constitution and on behalf of good government and public justice, wx make the appeal to our common sovereign. For the x^resent I refrain from discussing the merits of the election laws. I have sought only to state the first fundamental ground of our opposition to this revolutionary method of legislation by coercion. [Great applause.] Mr. Sparks. Before the ffeutlenian from Ohio takes his seat I hope he will give to the House the name of the Attoruey-General of the Uuited States to whom he re- ferred. Mr. Garfield. I refer to Caleb Gushing, the Democratic Attorney- General of President Pierce. 2. CLOSE OF DEBATE ON FIRST ARMY BILL. At the conclusion of the general debate on the sixth section of the Army appropria- tion bill, Friday, April 4, 1879, Mr. Garfield said : Mr. Chairman : During the last four days, some fifteen or twenty gentlemen have paid their special attention to the argument I made last Satiu-day, and have announced its complete demolition. Now that the general debate has closed, I will notice the principal points of attack by which this work of destruction has been accomplished. In the first place, every man, save one, who has replied to me, has alleged that I held it was revolutionary to place tliis general legislation upon an appropriation bill. One gentleman went so far as to fill a page of the Record with citations from the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record to show that for many years riders had been placed upon appropriation bills. If gentlemen find any pleasure in setting up a man of straw and knocking it down again, they have en- joyed themselves. I never claimed that it was either revolutionary or unconstitutional for this House to put a rider on an appropriation bill. No man on this side of the House has claimed that. The most that has been said is that it is considered a bad jiarliamentary practice ; and all parties in this country have said that repeatedly. The gentleman fioin Kentucky [Mr. Blackburn] evidently thought he was making a telling point against me when he cited the fact that, in 1872, I insisted upon the adoption of a conference report on an approri- ation bill that had a rider on it; and he alleged that I said it was revo- 14 liitionary for his party to resist it. Let me refresh his memory. I said then and I say now tliat it was revohitionary for tlie minority party to refuse to let the appropriation bill be voted on. For fonr days they said we shonld not vote at all on the snndry civil appropriation bill because there was a rider on it, put there not by the House but by the Senate. I was sorry the rider was put on, and moved to non-concur in the amendments when they came to the House. But when the minority on this floor said that we should not act on the bill at all, because the rider was put upon it, I said and now say it was unjustifiable parliamentary obstruction. We do not filibuster. We do not struggle to prevent a vote on this bill. I will be loyal to the House of which I am a member, and maintain now, as I did then, the right of the majority to bring an appropriation bill to a vote. * You ha-s^e a right — however unwise and indecent it may be as a matter of parliamentary practice — you have a perfect right to put this rider on this bill and pass it. When you send it to the Senate, that body has a ]>orfect right to pass it. It is your constitutional right and theirs to pass it; for the free consent of each bodj^ is the basis of the law-making power. When it goes to the President of the United States, it is his constitu- tional right to approve it ; and if he does, it will then be a law, which you and I nnist obey. But it is equally his constitutional riglit to dis- approve it ; and should he do so, then, gentlemen, unless two-thirds of this body and two-thirds of the Senate pass it, notwithstanding the ob- jections of the President, it is not only not your right to make it a law, but it will be the flattest violation of the Constitution, the sheerest usurpation of power to attemiit to make it a law in any other way. Without these conditions you cannot make it a law. AYhat, then, is the proposition you have ofl'ered ! You say that there are certain odious laws that you want to take olf the statute-book. I say repeal them, if you can do so constitutionally. But you declare that you will compel consent to your will by refusing the necessary support — not to the President, not to any man — but to the government itself. This proposition I denounce as revolution, and no man has resi)onded to the charge either by argument or denial. No member on this side brought the question into this chamber. The issue was not raised by us. Who brought it here ? The proclamation of yoiu" caucus, the declaration of your conference committees. They announced it in the last House as their programme. They said you would combine these measures of legislation together and send them to the President in a separate bill, and if he did not aj^prove them j^ou would never vote the su])i)lies for the government. You threatened the President in advance before you allowed him an opportunity to say yes or no. You entered this Hall fnlminating threats against him in a high-sounding proclamation. You " thundered in the index." It remains to be seen whether, in the body of your work, and in its concluding i)aragrai)hs, your thunder will be as terrible as it was in the opening chapter. By adopting the programme of tlie last House you have made it yonr own ; but you have put the measures in their most oft'ensive form by tacking them all to the two great appropriation bills. Another equally groundless charge against me and my associates, is that we have threatened your bills with an executive veto. I repel the charge as wholly untrue in fact. I said nothing that can be tortured into such a threat. It would i)e indecent on my part ; it would be inde- cent for any of us even to speak of what the executive intends to do ; 15 for none of us have the right to know. But you, in advance, proclaimed to the country and to him that if he dares to exercise his constitutional right of refusing his consent, you will refuse to vote the sujiplies for the government; in other words, you will starve it to death. That is the proposition we have debated. My distinguished friend from Virginia [Mr. Tucker], who has come nearer meeting this case with argument than any other man on that side, has made a point which I respect as an evidence of the gallantry of liis intellect. He says that under our Constitution we can vote sup- plies to the Army but for two years ; that we may impose conditions upon our supplies, and if these be refused the Army ceases to exist after the 30th of June next. In short, that the annual Army bill is the act of reconstituting the Army. He is mistaken in one vital point. The Army is an organization created by general laws; and so far as the creation of officers and grades is concerned, it is independent of the appropriation bills. The supplies, of course, come through appropriation bills. I grant that that if supplies are refused to the Array, it must perish of inanition. It becomes a skeleton; but its anatomy was created by general law, and it would remain a skeleton, your monument of starvation. The gentle- man from Virginia says, " Unless you let us append a condition which we regard a redress of grievances, we will let the Army be annihilated on the 30th day of next June, by withholding supplies."- That is legiti- mate argument ; that is a frank declaration of your policy. Let us ex- amine the proposition. What is the "grievance" of which the gentle- man complains? He uses the word "grievance" in the old English sense, as though the King were thrusting himself in the way of the nation by making a war contrary to the nation's wish. But his "griev- ance" is a law of the land — a law made by the representatives of the people — by all the forms of consent known to the Constitution. It is his "grievance" that he cannot get rid of this law by the ordinary and Constitutional method of repeal. [Applause.] When he can get rid of any law by the union of all consents required to make or unmake a law, he gets rid of it la^-fully, whether it be a gTievance or a blessing. But his method is first to call a law a "grievance," and then try to get rid of it in defiance of the processes which the Constitution prescribes for the law-making power of the nation. I denounce his method as unconstitutional and revolutionary, and one that will result in far greater e\il than that of which he complains. If he goes to the American people with the proposition to annihilate our Army on the 30th day of June next, unless the President, contrary to his conscience, contrary to his sense of duty, shall sign whatever Congress may send him [Here the hammer fell.] * Mr. Keifer obtained the floor, and yielded his time to Mr. Garfield. Mr. Garfeeld. T say, if the gentleman from Virginia puts that propo- sition before the Ainerican i)eople, we wiU debate it in the forum of every jiatriotic heart and will abide the result. If the party which, after eighteen years' banishment fi'om i)ower, has come back, as tlie gentleman from Kentucky |Mr. Blackburn] said yesterday, to its "birthright of power," or "heritage," as it is recorded in the Eecord of this morning, is to signalize its return by striking down the gallant and faithful Army of the "United States, the people" of this country will not be slow to understand that there are reminiscences of that Army which these gentle- men would willingly forget, by burying both the Army and the memo- ries of its great service to the Union in one grave. [Applause.] 16 We do not seek to revive the imliappy memories of the war ; but we are unwilling to see the Army perish at the hands of Congress, even if its continued existence should occasionally awaken the memory of its former glories. Now, let it be understood once for all, that we do not deny, we have never denied your right to make such rules for this House as you please. Under those rules, as you make or construe them, you may put all your legislation upon these bills as "riders." But we say that, whatever your rules may be, you must make or repeal a law in accordance with the Constitution, by the triple consent to which I referred the other day, or you must do it by "\dolence. Now, as my friend from Connecticut [Mr. Hawley] well said, if you can elect a President and a Congress in 1880, you have only to wait two years, and you have the three consents. You can then, without revolu- tion, tear down this statute and all the rest. You can follow out the programme which some of your members have suggested, and tear out one by one the records of the last eighteen years. Some of them are glorious with the unquenchable light of liberty ; some of them stand as the noblest troi)hies of freedom. With full power in your hands, you can destroy them. But we ask you to restrain your rage against them until you have the lawful power to smite them down. My fiiend from Yu-ginia, whom I know to be a master and lover of mathematics, has formulated his argument into an equation: "Eight equals duty plus power." Now, I say to the gentleman that his sense of duty resides in his own breast ; but power, the other factor of the second member of his equation, must be found, not in his conciousness, but in the Constitution of the United States. His notions of duty lead him to tear down the laws which the Eepublic enacted to protect the purity of national elections and to use such force as may be necessary to keep the peace while the national voice is finding expression at the polls. That, I say, is his notion of duty, of which he is sole arbiter ; but when he comes to su])eradd power, in order to complete his "right" as a legis- lator, I hope he will not evoke that i)0wer out of his conciousness, but will seek for it in the great charter, the Constitution of the United States. According to his own algebra, he must have both these elements be- fore he can claim the " right" to overturn these laws which he denounces as grievances. Now, Mr. Chairman, let me add a word in conclusion, lest I may be misunderstood. I said last session, and I have said since, that if you want this whole statute concerning the use of the Army at the polls torn from your books, I will help you to do it. If you will offer a naked proposition to repeal those two sections of the Eevised Statutes named in the sixth section of this bill, I will vote with you. But you do not ask a repeal of those sections. Why "? They impose restrictions upon the use of the Aimy, limiting its functions and ])unishing its oflticers for any infraction of these limitations ; but you seek to strike out a negative clause, thereby making new and aflirmative legislation of the most sweep- ing and dangerous character. Your pro])osed modification of the law affects not the Army alone, but the whole civil i)ower of the United States. " Civil officers " are included in these sections ; and if the proi>osed amendment l)e adopted, you deny, to every civil officer of the United States, any power whatever to summon the armed posse to help him enforce the j^rocesses of the law. If you i)ass the section in that form, you impose restrictions upon the civil authorities of the United States never before proi)osed in any Con- gress by any legislator since this government began. I say, therefore, 17 in the shape you propose this, it is much the worst of all your " riders." In the be,2:inniug of this contest we understood that you desired only to ji'et the Army away from tlie polls. As that Avould still leave the civil officers full power to keep the ]ieace at the polls, I thought it was the least important and the least dangerous of your demands ; but as you have put it here, it is tlie most dangerous. If you re-enact it in the shape presented, it becomes a later law than the supervisors and marshals law, and 2)ro tanto repeals the latter. As it stands now in the statute-book, it is the earlier statute, and is j;ro tanto itself repealed by the marshals law of 1S71, and is therefore harmless so far as it relates to civil officers. But if you put it in here, you deny the power of the marshals of the U'nited States to perform their duties whenever a riot may require the use of an armed i)osse. The gentleman from Maryland [My. McLane] said, the other day, there was nothing in the Constitution which empowered any officer of the United States to keep the peace in the States. A single sentence, Mr. Chairman, before your hammer falls. I ask that gentleman to tell us wliether the United States has no power to keep the peace in the great post-office in Baltimore City, so that the postmaster may attend to his duties ; whether we have not the power to keep the peace along the line of every railroad that carries our mails, or where any post- rider of the "star vservice" carries tlie mail on his saddle; whether we have not the right, if need be, to line the post-road with troojis, and to bring the guns of the Xavy to bear to protect any custom-house or light-house of the United States ! And yet, if the gentleinan's theory be corre(;t, we cannot enforce a single civil process of this government by the aid of an armed posse without making it a i^enitentiary offense on the i)art of the o Ulcer who does it. [Applause on the Kej)ublican side.l 3. LEGISLATIVE APPKOPKIATION BILL. NATIONAL ELECTIONS SHOULD BE PROTECTED BY NATIONAL AU- THORITY. The House, being in Coniniittee of tlic Whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the legislative appropriation bill, on the 26th of April, 1879 — Mr. Garfield said : Mr. Chairman, I move as an amendment to the pending bill to strike out lines 2000 to 20G4 inclusive, commencing with the pro\'iso. I had intended to speak somewhat elaborately uj^on this bill, but I have preferred to give way for the sake of allowing those who had not spoken an opportunity to be heard. I would not rise now to ask the attention of the House at all but for the sake of correcting a few plain misapprehensions and evasions in this debate. The gentleman who has just taken his seat, [Mr. Ewing] has said that I have led in an attemi)t to raise sectional feeling in the JS'orth against the patriotic people of the South. It is the old and absurd cry of a sectional Korth and a national South ; that is, the thirty million people of the JSTorth, and their Eepresentatives, of whom he is one, are sectional, passionate, unkind ; and the fifteen million of " national- minded and patriotic" people of the South are suffering from the narrow and unjust sectionalism of the thirty million among whom my colleague and I live! 2g 18 The gentleman reminds me of wliat he was pleased to call a patriotic sentiment of mine, uttered at the last session of Congress, when I said what I am glad to have remembered, that in my judgment the man or ]tolitic;d party who souglit to raise sectional issues and revive the un- 1.. ippy passions that ouglit to sleep in the graves of our dead on both sides was not patriotic, nor would he find an echo to his sentiments in the hearts of the best people of this ciountry. 1 said that deliberately, with all the meaning that the words import. The blin of " Kovohition in Congress," and said if the geutlemau believed that doctrine now he had underiioue a mental revolution / 19 Mr. G.vr.FiELD. Tlie .2:entlemaii slioiikl not confine his reading to the title. If he had read my speecli as \vell as its title, he wonld have read that in 1872, in the debate to wlucli he referred, the Democratic party on this floor said we shonld not consider an approi)riation hill at all. I said to thein, " Yon have a right to vote against it; yon have a right to filibus- ter to get a chance to speak on it if need bs; but when you say that the majority shall not act on an appropriation bill at all, because there is a rider on it, that is parliamentary revolution"; and so I say to-day, and the gentleman quoted that as tliougli it were inconsistent with my present jiosition, which is as that of 1871*, that to refuse to act on the appropria- tions is revolutioimry. In 1872 the Democracy said the appropriation bi 11 should not be acted on at all because a rider was on it. ISTow they say the appropriation bills shall not be acted upon at all unless there are "riders" on them. I resisted their position then, and I resist it now. There is another point which I must touch to show the evasions which have been resorted to in this debate. The other side seeks to go before tlie country on ]ik'as like this which stands as the heading of the speech of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker J: "Elections by the people must be free from tlie ])ower and presence of the standing Army." They seek to make the people believe that Democrats in Con- gress are struggling to get the bayonets away from the breasts of the voters, and that Ave are striving to keep the Army at the polls. The Democratic press is everywhere stating the issue in this way, that the Kepublicans are defending an odious law, enacted amid the passions of the war, to authorize the use of the Army at State elections. ISTow, " mark how plain a tale shall put that down." On this side, this proposition was made: If you find fault with tha law of 18G5 we will help you repeal it altogether. On the motion of the distinguished gentleman from IVlichigan, [Mr. Conger] every liepublican on this floO'r who voted at all, when the Army bill was here, voted to repeal in toto the law of 18G5, which you complained of to the people as putting the bayonets at the breasts of the voters ; and every Democrat, who sits here and voted at all, voted "Xo." You would not rejieal the law, but you told the people we were trying to keep it on the statute-books, and yon were trying to get it off. Now, Mr. Chairjnan, our vote on that subject has put us beyond all cavil on this high aud unassailal»le ground. We are willing and we have voted to repeal the whole of that law, and we even went so far as to put that repeal on the Army bill, and you voted against it. Now, never again go to the people and say you tried to repeal the odious law of 1865 and the Eepublicans would not let you. My colleague [Mr. Ewing], who has just taken his seat, says that the sections sought to be repealed by the bill now before us, authorize unwarrantable and unconstitutional interference with elections in the States. He says that the supervisors and marshals are intruders at the election of Congressmen ; that they have no constitutional right to be there, even as witnesses. Gentlemen, I never believed in State rights to the extent you did and do ; but there is one thing concerning whijh I have always thought that the States came very near beina' sovereign. I suppose that all our States claim the right to have a legislature of two hous( s, each house wifh a right to make its own rules, sit in its own separate chamber, pass measures according to its own rules, ancl regu- late the conduct of its own clerks. Y'et, gentlemen, if you will read from sections 14 to 19 of the Ee vised Statutes, you will find that the following has been done : The supreme power of the United States, by force of national law, has gone into the legislature of every State in 20 this Union, and said to them, " There is a certain Tuesday, the second Tuesday after you have organized, when you shall not lix your own time of meeting ; when you shall not even adjourn over. You shall meet at twelve o'clock. When you meet you shall not vote by ballot ; you shall vote viva voce. Your clerk shall call the roll. You shall vote for a Senator." The law prescribes how the clerks of both houses shall make the entries in their journals. If there is no election, the clerk shall certify it ; and then this national authority says : "If there is no election by the separate vote of the two houses the second day, I t^ke your two houses and consolidate them into one. I abolish the distinc • tion between senator and representative, put them into one hall and hold them in joint session from day to day, and they shall vote as one body until a Senator is elected." Who does all that to State legislatures ? It is doue by a law of the United States passed in July, 1800; and no Democrat has denounced it as unconstitutional ; no State legislature has made any opposition to it ; and every one of the seventy-six Senators now at the other end of this Capitol, holds his seat in pursuance of the operation of that law. ]S"ow, if we do all that unchallenged to the legislature of a sovereign State, who will say that we cannot go among our own citizens and super- vise and protect our own ballot-boxes where men are to be elected to seats on this floor I Yonr constitutional question is given away when yoii admit the super\isions there, as you do in this bill; still more decisively it is given away by the universal acquiescence in the law for electing Senators. The great danger which threatens this country is, that our sover- eign may be dethroned or destroyed by corruption. In any monarchy of the world, if the sovereign be slain or become lunatic, it is easy to jnit another iu his place, for the sovereign is a person. But our sovereign is the whole body of voters. If you kill or corrupt or render lunatic our sovereign, there is no successor, no regent to take his place. The source of our sovereign's supreme danger, the point where his life is vulnerable, is at the ballot-box, where his will is declared ; and if Ave cannot stand by that cradle of our sovereign's heir-apparent and protect it to the uttermost against all assassins and assailants, we have no government and no safety for the future. [Applause.] Mr. EwrxG. I hojie the House will allow inc to ask the jxputleman a qnostion and him to rci)ly. I nsk the fjeutleman, may we therefore authorize United States super- visors to inspect the officers of the house aud senate of each State as to the manner of election when electing a United States Senator, and appoint marshals to back up the supervisors, ami send out the Army to hack up the marshals ? Mr. Garfield. Xot at all. The gentleman from ]S"ew Jersey [Mr. EobesonJ answered that by anticipation. Our Constitution adopted the legislatures of the States as our agents to elect Senators at the times and in the manner which Congress may by lawolice force to run elections. [Applause on the Democratic side and counter-cheers on the Republican side.] There are, I believe, about forty thousand polling- places in tlie United States. If our Army roster was full — officers, soldiers and cam)) followers — we would not have over twenty-five thousand in all. And if there were a law for using the Army as a police force at the polls, we should have about three-fourths of one soldier to each polling place. Xow, if anybody proposes to deploy our Army in that way I do not know where the lunatic lives. I speak for myself, and of course for everybody who thinlcs as I do, and for nobody else. We hold two things: first, that we will not, if we can help it, let vital and righteous laws be repealed or ludlified as the condition of getting an appropria- tion to support the government. We have resisted, and will resist to the end, all such measures. And, in the second place, even under the pressure of party feeling and party opposition, we will do no act and cast no vote that will ])lace us really or apparently in any attitude inconsistent with the old and recognized principles and traditions of English and American liberty, namely, that civil, not military, force is the usual, the safe, the American method of keeping peace at the polls. That no one may misunderstand me, let me put the case thus: Sup- I)osesome one should offer the following as a substitute for this section: Be it enacted, er, that it should not be confined to two polit- ical parties. There may be two, three, four, or five parties — there are ])erhaps that many in the country — and if you let the idea of party poli- tics get into the law of juries at all, you ought to go through the whole list of parties, to be just or fair. Let me ask how many clerks of national courts there are whose politics you can really ascertain without an inquest? There are a great many of these clerks who have held their positions during the lives of half a dozen political parties, and who have no political parti- sanship in them, and who make it a part of their daily bread to keep out of politics. Some of these clerks were in oflice before the Eepubli(?au party was born, and do not know to which party they belong, Now, in order to execute this proposed law, you must find out what their polit- ical opinions are; you must, in fact, make them partisan before you can appoint a commissioner or impanel a jury. I beg gentlemen to let this amendment of mine pass, in the interest of law and justice. I hope that the fact that we have been looking into each other's faces and fighting a political battle, has not put the ma- jority into such an attitude that they will reject everything proposed by me or my associates. I should be glad for the sake of justice to see the House agree to this amendment. In reply to Mr. McMahon, Mr. Gaefield said : Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has referred to the electoral commis- sion. He will remember that there was not, in that law, a word which referred to one political party or the other. It was the sense of decency and fair play between the two parties which, after the law was passed, led them voluntarily to put men of both parties upon that commis- sion. The Republican Senate put upon it a fair share of Democrats, and the Democratic House put upon it a proper share of Eepul)licans. But the law said not a word about selecting men from o])posite political parties to serve upon the commission. The law was just as this law ought to be — free from the recognition of party politics. 6. JUDICIAL APPEOPEIATION BILL. NULLIFICATION. Tlie House having under consideration the conference report of the two Houses on the judicial appropriation bill, June 19, 187^ — Mr. Garfield said: Mr. Speaker, we do not insist that this House is obliged to vote all the money which some of us may think necessary lor any given purpose. If the majority ofier to appropriate for a par- 32 tieular purpose a parfc onlj- of tlio money needed, we would not be jus- titied in voting against the bill merely because the amount is insuffi- cient, for it might be your purpose to supply the deficiency hereafter. But it is certainly an objectionable mode of legislation so to cut down the appropriation bills as to make a deficiency inevitable. This bill is open to that objection; it does not appropriate enough; for it wliolly omits a part of the usual supplies. But that objection alone would not l^revent this side from voting for it. The feature of the bill which is most objectionable, and to which we do not and cannot agree, has been well stated by my colleague [Mr. ZVIonroe]. The bill goes beyond appropriations, and proposes by law to lay hold of the executive department of this government and affirm- atively prevent its officers from enforcing certain laws of the land. That is the attem])t which we resist and shall continue to resist. Tiie objec- tionable provision is now made definite and unmistakable in this confer- ence report. The language of the clause as it first passed the House was somewhat vague, but here it is plain, and we perfectly understand its import. If any doubt remained, my colleague who presented the re- port [Mr. McMahon] remov^ed it, by declaring the i>urpose of the clause. The issue is narrowed down to this : The gentleman tells us that he and his associates are determined that tliere shall be appointed no marshals, deputy marshals, or assistant marshals to execute the laws of the Union, as embodied in title 2G of the Eevised Statutes ; that they have devised and agreed on this (;lause in the conference between the two Houses so as to prevent the enforcement of tliat part of tlie existing law. This makes a shari) issue which everybody can understand. Xow, assuming that the gentlemen on the other side do not like these provisions of law relating to elections (and we understand that to be their urranimous sentiment), they ought to propose amendments to them. My colleague who presents this report says that the law has been used for i^artisan purposes ; that marshals, deputy marshals, and assist- ant marslials have been appointed merely to advocate and advance the political interest of one party at the elections. If that be so, it is a just criticism of the law, and an amendment ought to be olfered to correct such an abuse. If my colleague will offer an amendment, or allow us to offer an amendment, so as to put the appointment of deputy and assist- ant marshals who are to serve in connection with Congressional elections on the same basis as the appointment of supervisors — that is, that they shall be appointed by the courts, and shall be chosen in equal numbers from the difi'erent political parties — we will aid liim, and the abuse of which he complains can be corrected. But that is not in the line of the gentleman's purpose nor that of his party. The}^ do wish not to better the law, but to annul it. They do not wish the law executed, so long as they have not the' power to make the appointments and execute it in their own way. Recent events have shown them that they cannot repeal these statutes. In the present situation of parties and opinions in Con- gress it is impossible to repeal them. Those who wish to repeal them liave not the constitutional majority to do so. They can no more remove them from the statute-book than they van enact a law without a- majority of votes. In short, they have not tlie constitutional majority to repeal these laws. Xot being able constitutionally to repeal them, gentlemen on the other side say, " We will prevent their enforcenu'ut." And, in attemi)tiug this, they attack tlie government in a very vital i)art. They know that the whole (country, without regard to party, needs to have the courts of the United States open to all suitors. They know that 33 ustice ought to be admiuistered in every district and circuit court of the United States. They know that United States prisoners are locked up, some under sentence of our courts, others awaiting trial; and that the Constitution provides that all who are held under charges shall have a speedy trial. The great duty, the imperative obligation, to provide for the speedy and prompt administration of justice rests upon members of Congress, Re- j)ublicans and Democrats alike. But the majority of this House have segregated from all the other appropriations of the year this one for the judicial expenses of the government, and now offer an appropriation of two and a half millions of dollars, and say, not to us alone, but through lis to the nation and to all the officers of the nation, that this money of the people, which has been paid into the National Treasury for the very purj)ose of uuiintaiuing the courts, shall not be used for that purpose, only on condition that the Democratic party shall be permitted to couple with it a provision that certain laws of the land which they cannot repeal shall not be enforced ; nay, more, that for the coming year these laws shall be nidlifled. In short, we are told that we must submit to the nullification of the election laws, or the courts of the United States shall be closed, the prisoners awaiting trial shall be discharged or shall be held untried, against the constitutional provision in their behalf, and that no provision shall be made even to feed them. It is to be made un- lawful to try them, unlawful to keep them, and it is unlawful to dis- charge them. With these hard conditions you have fettered the appro- priations, the use of which reaches to the very vitals of national justice. You say, " Take these appropriations coupled with the nullification of certain laws, or you shall not have them at all." Gentlemen, we earnestly desire to go home. We have borne the biu'- den of this long, weary, and profitless session until we are anxious to go to our homes and rest and give the country rest. But we cannot, even under the i^ersuasive heat of the dog-star and the pressure of this weary and distasteful work, accept the dishonor which this bill offers. It is a moral bribe to us to consent to the nullification of laws which you seek not to improve but to destroy. We cannot, we will not, consent. You have retained in this bill a clause which, if it becomes a law, will place the President of the United States between two fires — the fire of this law if he disobeys it, and the fire of Heaven if he violates his oath by obeying it. Mr. McMahon. Will my colleague allow me to ask Mm liow tlie President is at all interfered with? Mr. Garfield. I will answer. The President has taken an oath that he will see to it that the lav\^s be faithfully executed. You do not repeal the election laws, but you make it imiiossible for him to execute them without violating another. You seek to place him in reach of your impeachment on the one hand or, on the other, compel him to neglect his duty and violate his oath. We have no legal or moral right to put the Chief Executive in such an attitude. The wisdom of the Old Testament proverb, "in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," may be fitly applied in this case. I do not see that there is the slightest probability you can catch a bird in this net. Mr. House. Do I understand the gentleman from Ohio as threatening us with another veto ? Mr. Speaker, we have heard of war and rumors of war in another quar- ter; but this House, this body, whose members come directly from the 3 G 34 people — tlie only real sovereigns in this conntry — lias not only not coiue to blows, bnt so far as I know have not come to threats. Mr. House. The geutlemau talks about blows. Mr. Gaepield. I say, neither blows nor threats. I am certainly in- dnlging: in no threats. I only say yon otter a bill for the approval of the Execntive which if he approves puts him in a i)osition where he will be involved in a conHict between the Constitution and the law you make. Mr. HorsE. What a very frank answer. Mr. Garfield. It is both frank and just. I appeal to you, gentlemen, whether this kind of legislation meets the approval of your best judg- ment. Now, I had some hope, when we were told yesterday by my colleague I Mr. McMahon] that the amendment which had come from the Senate was left open so as to enable the conference committee to soften the asperities of this bill — I had some hope that we should see our way through the entanglement by finding a bill which gentlemen on this side could support, and that we might then adjourn, shake hands, and go home. Bnt I am compelled for the present to bid farewell to that pleas- ing prospect. We stay. [Applause from the Eepublican side.] II. DEFEl^SE OF UNIO^ SOLDIERS OF THE SECEDED STATES. The Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union having under consideration. a proposition to abolish the Southern Claims Commission, April 15, 1879 — Mr. Gaefilld said : Mr. CLairmaii,the geueral doctrine of belligerency in a territorial war is one of conrse understood by everybody to include technically as enemies, all of the inhabitants of the hostile territory. That doctrine is recognized by lawyers everywhere. But nobody, so far as I know, unless it be the gentleman from Wisconsin, has ever denied that, during our late war and since, the Supreme Court has repeat- edly determined that the question of loyalty could not be raised against a claimant, if a pardon had been granted him by the President or Con- gress ; that by a pardon disloyalty is wiped out, so far as his legal rights before the court are concerned. This is an answer to all that has been said on that point. The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Bragg] agrees with me that the amendiuent of the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Young] ought not to be adopted. He thhiks, however, that the Southern Claims Commission ought to be abolished, because he says it was a mistake from the first to pay any loyal claims from the South. On that point I take issue with him; and I wish to refer to some official statistics which I prepared at the last session, in view of a statement then made and now repeated in this debate. It was said by the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Ellis] that 91) per cent, of all the people of the seceded States were disloyal, in our sense of that word ; that almost every Southern man who amounted tj anything belonged to that category. I desire to traverse that propo- sition by some facts. Leaving out of view all the border States, do gen- tlemen know that there were, from the States that went into secession and rebellion, military organizations amounting to fifty regiments and seven companies of white men who were regularly mustered into our Army and who fought bravely under our flag? I have the official record in my hand. Pass'ing to the border Southern States, which did not se- cedej but whose people were divided, do gentlemen know that in the State of Kentucky alone more white soldiers fought under our flag than if apoleon took into the battle of Waterloo ? more than all the allied armies which Wellington commanded at that battle? Do they not know that Missouri furnished one hundred and eighteen regiments of white soldiers to the Union Army ; that the Southern States furnished one hundred and eighty-six thousand colored troops to the Union Army, and that of these ninety thousand were from the States which seceded, and twenty thousand from the State of Kentucky ? I say that from the States that seceded and went into the rebellion 50,700 white soldiers fought in our ranks and under our flag. And this statement does not include the thousands of individual men who came into our hues, and joined :N'orth- ern regiments. To say that these men were enemies and had no legal rights, and that tiie governmeut should not pay them or their families all proper claims for supplies and other property taken from them by the government thev were defending, is a proposition I had hoped no man on either side of this House would make ; and I am glad to know that the gentlemen who fought against us in the field do not make it. *= 35 36 Kot one of them has yet indorsed it. It remains for one of our own sol diers, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Bragg], to say that there ought to be nothing paid to any man, however loyal, if he came from the South. I am sure that even this House, consisting so largely of Con- federate soldiers, will denounce this proposition as in the highest degree inequitable and unjust. Let the Southern Claims Commission continue until it has acted on the cases now before it, and then let us muster it out ; for the cases not already presented are barred by the statute of limitation. Let us not enlarge the claim business, but let us complete it ; and most of all, let us not so change the law as to abolish the dis- tinction between loyal and disloyal claims, making the latter payable, which the law has never done. III. 1. EESUMPTION AND THE CUREENCY. The Committee of the Whole on the state of the Uuiou having under consideration an amendment to nse the reserve i^rovided by law for the redemption of fractional currency, April 10, 1879 — Mr. Garfield said: Mr. Chairman, my colleague [Mr. McMahonJ has gone into the whole merits of this question on the point of order. I shall only follow his example to a very small extent. The attempt of my colleague, in the speech he has just made, to set himself, in contrast with me and many others on this side, as the special champion and friend of the soldier, is qnite too thin a disguise to deceive anybody. He will remember, as will the Honse, that this side tried, again and again, to pass a measure authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to extend the sales of 4 per cent, bonds suflQcient to cover this whole case. We brought the House to a vote on that proposition at least twice at the last session, and but for the resistance on the other side it would have prevailed, and the soldiers would have been paid. The responsibility for not paying them rests with those who resisted that measure, not with those who proposed it. We have been selling these 4 per cent, bonds to assure resumption ; and that is the law. I think it might fairly be the law that they should be issued to provide for payment of soldiers' pensions. There is another thing which, perhaps, my colleague did not remember. Under a law of last session we issued bonds to the extent of a quarter of a million of dollars to endow a private institution for the blind, in one of the States of this Union, the endowment being $10,000 a year ; and to keep it out of the power of Congress to repeal the act the bonds thus issued were made a part of the permanent debt of the United States, in order to endow an institution in a State — an institution not national in its character. But gentlemen are unwilling to increase the 4 per cent, bonded debt of the United States to pay pensions of our soldiers already provided by law. Now, I have simply made the point of order, that is all ; and no man can torture anything 1 have said on this point of order into an unwill- ingness that the soldiers shall have their pensions, or that all necessary legislation shall be had to make the payment prompt and full to se- cure all their rights. It is altogether too late in the day to tell the soldiers that gentlemen on this side who have remembered them in a thousand ways (my colleague, to say the least, has not remembered them in more) are not their friends. I made this point (and I have no concealments about it) because I look upon this amendment as the entering wedge to a general imrpose to break down the system of reserves on which the maintenance of re- sumi^tion depends. Mr. McMahon. My colleague will permit me to ask him how the issue of $10,000,000 of the $346,000,000 authorized by law is going to break down the specie reserve which amounts to $236,000,000 ? Mr. Garfield. That is what I am about to tell the gentleman. I say, at the outset, that our whole body of legislation relating to resump- tion makes, together a connected chain ; and Whichever link you strike, Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. 37 38 Such legislation as this tends at least to weaken that chain. Now, my colleague, whose financial knowledge Avould not have been doubted if he had not made this speech, amazed me veiy much by saying that the subsidiary coinage and the subsidiary currency are no part of the general problem of resumption. Why, does he not know perfectly well that the subsidiaiy currenc}' in the form of these scrip notes or in coin goes to make up the volume of our circulating medium just as much as greenbacks, just as much as gold? The great currency question em- braces everything that circulates as money ; and it AAill not do to say that the subsidiary coinage has nothing to do with the general ijrojio- sition. It has very much to do with it. Subsidiary currency in any form circulates far more rapidly" than dollar bills, and dollar bills more rapidly than five-dollar bills, and these more rapidly than tens. Just in proi>ortion to the smallness of tlie denomination of the bill is its cir- culation rapid. Here was a pro]>osition to hasteu tlie issue of subsi- diary coin. As the law first stood, the silver could only be issued on the presentation of the scrip, the silver being jiaid in exchange there- for. In order to facilitate the process, Congress provided that, as there was a rush to make the exchange, i)eople might deposit greenbacks and recei\e silver coin in place of it, but that the greenbacks thus deposited sliould be held to redeem according to law the scrip as it might come in. This reserve, therefore, of which my colleague speaks, is a reserve laid away as a provision against the demand for the scrip, in place of which the silver coin has already been issued. Mr. Warner. Will my frieud periuit lue to ask liim a (^uestiou? Mr. Garfield. Certainly. Mr. Warner. Is it not perfectly well iiiHlerstood that the fractional currency, against whi(;h I understand it is claimed this ,$10,000,000 is held, is now out of exist- ence, or at least that only a small part of it remains for redemption? Mr. CtAefield. I will answer my colleague. Estimates have been made on that sul)ject. All agree that a certain portion of the scrip is l)robal)ly destroyed, and will never be presented for redemption. What that proportion is nobody knows. The amount, however, of any circu- lating medium which is actually destroyed, is much smaller than people suppose. I will give a single instance. There is a bank in my district which was in actual operation nearly fifty years, under the State laws, and when the new banking system was adopted, it undertook to Avind up its old business; that is, being solvent, to redeem all its old bills. They have gone on redeeming and redeeming, and the last time I talked with tlie cashier he told me that less than two per cent, of the whole issue, covering a period of forty years of State banking, was still out; and even then almost every week, 'fifteen, twenty, or thirty dollars of old bills came back; showing that the destruction of outstanding circulating paper money is far less than tlie people suppose. Now, tlie highest estimate which has been made is that perhaps $10,00(),0()0 of tlie fracti(mal scrip is destroyed and will never come in. And here is outstanding at least $15,000,000 not yet brougiit in. I saw the i)apcrs yesterday of a single party who took $G,000 of this scrip to the Treasury. We have sometimes six, eight, or ten thousand dollars a day brought in. The time will doubtless come when it will be safe to reduce this reserve, leaving enough to cover what is outstanding and will not come in, and let the rest go into circulation. But to say now that the whole $10,000,000 sliall go into circulation, leaving none to protect this issue, is to break down one of the stated reserves of the government to meet its obligations. 39 Mr. McMaiion. Will the gentleman from Ohio allow me to put a question to him? Mr. Garfield. Certainly. Mr. McMahon. Under the specie-resumption law — and I do not wish to argue, I only want to state it — under the specie-resumption law the Secretary of the Treasury was ordered to redeem fractional currency in silver coin. Now, in July, 1876, we authorized him to pay out $10,000,000 of silver coin and to take in $10,000,000 of green- hacks. We authorized him to redeem this fractional cuiTency outstanding in green- backs, and he has never done it. Mr. Garfield. How does my colleague know that? Mr. McMahon. I say it because the debt statement shows it; I have it here, and I read on page 4 of the Treasury report, currency assets, "United States notes, special fund for redemption of fractional currency, $10,000,000." Now it never Avas in con- tcmphition of the gentlemen who passed that law in 1876 that when that $10,000,000 was taken in it should be kept. That was a little private scheme of contraction of Mr. Sherman himself. Our order to him was to pay out m redemption of fi-actional currency. Instead of that he is redeeming coustantlv iu silver coin and keeping the $10,000,000 in. Mr. Garfield. I will answer my colleague. I am not responsible for the Secretary's execution of his duty under that law. But 1 should say if I were the Secretary I would be bound by the law and by the reason of the case to hold a su fticient amount of that fund for the ample protec- tion of all the outstanding scrip which would be likely to come in. Perhaps the Secretary has kept more than is needed; and if he has, it is perfectly proper for Congress to ascertain, after a fair examination, how much of that he can spare, and then let it out. I will agree to that at any time. But my colleague adopts no such method; he says simply let it all go, and he proi)oses to make this sweeping change of law and give up the whole reserve for that purpose, and therefore to that extent, or at least to some extent, breaks over the line of our reserves. Now I have said all I desire to say on that subject except a single word in conclusion. My colleague pained me by a single expression in his speech. Nothing has ever occurred between him and me which entitles either of us to say discourteous and indecent things about the other; and when my colleague said that though I owed more allegiance to the soldier than perhaps to any other class, yet that I appeared to act as though I owed my chief allegiance to Wall street, he said what he had no more right to say, either as a matter of fact or a matter of fair inference, than I would have a right to say he owes his chief allegiance to the groggeries and whisky-shops of Dayton ; and as I would not say that, I do not think he was entitled to say the other. Mr. McMahon. In answer to the gentleman I say this : I have followed with in- terest the public career of the gentleman, and if iu all the discussions which have ever taken place in this House or this country on haancial qiiestions he can show one vote or one speech that was not based upon the idea of speedy resumption, no matter at what cost to the great mass of the people, even when his own party separated fi-om him upon that question in the Forty-third Cougr ess, when he was in a minority in his own party upon this question — if he can show on e vote which he ever cast iu favor of what was regarded then by the majority of his own party in the AVest as the interest of the people on this question, I wiirtake m y statement back. That is all that it covered. Mr. Garfield. I will relieve my colleague upon that point. He could not certainly praise me any more according to my notions of legislative praise than "to say what he has said. If I ever did cast a vote that was not in favor of the resumption of speci e payments, that was not against all schemes to delay and prevent it, I cast a vote that my conscience and my judgment disapproved of. [Applause.] And I venture to say 1 have cast as many votes as any man on this floor against Wall street and the business of gold-gambling which has been destroyed by resump- tion ; that gold-gambhng in Wall street which locked up one hundred 40 millions of the business capital of this conntry for fifteen years, away from all profitable investment, and converted Wall street into a hell of gamblers with the business of this country up and down. And if every vote of mine in favor of honest money has not been a blow at gambling in Wall street, then it has not had the effect I intended. Mr. BiUGHT. I desire to ask the geutlemau from Oliio a question. Have not the operations of Wall street been simply transferred to the Treasury of the United States? Mr. Garfield. In answer to the gentleman from Tennessee, I will say that I hope there has been enough of the gold and silver in this conntry that had hitherto been lodged in Wall street for gold-gaiid)liug pnr- ]>oses trausferred to the Treasury of the United States to break down the bulls and bears of Wall street permanently, and to maintain the sui)remacy of honest money. [Applause.] 2. THE NEW SILVER BILL. The House haviuo- under consideration a bill to authorize the unlimited coinage of silver, and to give the profits thereof to the owners of bullion, May 17, lb79 — Mr. Garfield said : Mr. S])eaker, we have probably never legislated on any question the influence of which reaches further, both territorially and in time, and touches more interests, more vital interests, than are tonched by this and sinnlar bills. No man can doubt that within recent years, and notably within recent months, the leading thinkers of the civilized world have l^ecome alarmed at the attitude of tlie two precious metals in relation to each other; and many leading thinkers are becoming clearly of the o])inion that by some wise, judicious arrangement both the pre- cious metals must be kept in service for the currency of the world. And this opinion has been very ra])idly gaining ground within the last six months, to such an extent that England, which for more than half a century has stoutly adhered to the single gold standard, is now seriously meditating how she may harnsss both tbese metals to the monetary car of the world. And yet, outside of this Capitol, I do not this day know of a single great and recognized advocate of bimetallic money who regards it prudent or safe for any nation largely to increase the coinage standard of silver coin at the present time beyond the limits fixed by existing laws. France and the states of the Latm Union, that have long believed in bi-metallism, maintained it against all coiners and have done all in their power to advocate it throughout the world, dare not coin a single silver coin and have not done so since ISTi. The most strenuous advocates of bi-metallism in those countries say it would be ruinous to bi-metallism for France or the Latin Union to coin any more silver at present. The remaining stock of German silver now for sale, amounting to from forty to seventy-five millions of dollars, is a standing menace to the exchanges and silver coinage of Europe. One month ago the leading financial journal of London proposed that the Bank of Eng- land buy one-half of the ( Jerman surplus and hold ic five years on con- dition that tlie German Government shall hold the other half off the market. The time is ripe for some wise and prudent arrangement among the nations to save silver from a disastrous break-down. Yet we, who during the past two years, have coined far more silver dollars than we ever before coined since the foundation of the govern- ment — ten times as many as we coined during half a century of oiu" 41 national life — are to-day ignoring and defying the enliglitened, universal opinion of bi-metallists, and saying that the United States, singlehanded and alone, can enter the field and settle the mighty issue alone. We are justifying the old proverb that "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." It is sheer madness, Mr. Speaker. I once saw a dog on a great stack of hay that had been floated out into the wild, overflowed stream of a river, with its stack-pen and foundation still holding together, but ready to be wrecked. For a Uttle while the animal appeared to be perfectly hapi)y. His hay-stack was there and the pen around it, and he seemed to think the world bright, and his happiness secure, while the sun- shine fell softly on his head and his hay. But by and bj' , he began to discover that the house and the barn and their surroundings were not all there as they were when he went to sleep the night before; and he began to see that he could not command aU the prospect and peace- fully dominate the scene as he had done before. So with this House. We assume to manage this mighty question which has been launched on the wild current that sweeps over the whole world, and we bark from our legislative hay-stacks, as though we commanded the whole world. [ Apiflause.] In the name of common sense and sanity, let us take some account of the flood ; let us understand that a deluge means something, and try, if we can, to get our bearings before we undertake to settle the aftairs of all mankind by a vote of this House. Today we are coining one-third of all the silver that is being coined in the round world. China is coining another third; and all other nations are using the remaing one-tfiird for subsidiary coin. And if we want to take rank with China and part company with all of the civilized nations of the Western World, let us pass this bill, and then " bay the moon " as we float down the whirling channel to take our place among the silver monometallists of Asia. What this country needs above all other things, is that this Congress shall pass the appropriation bills, adjourn, and go home [applause on the Eei)ublicau side], and let the forces of business and good order and brotherhood, working ia their natural and orderly way, bring us into light and stability and peace. And we want time to adjust this great international question. Now, while I am speaking, the Administration is opening negotiations with all the western nations, to see if there can- not be some international arrangement whereby this question of bi-met- allism may be wisely settled. We tried it by international monetary conference. It was a preliminary reconnaissance, and [Here the hammer fell.] IV. THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AN OBJECT OF NATIONAL CARE. The House liaving uuder coiisideratiou a liill to provide for a comuii-ssion to survey the Mississippi Elver, June 21, 1879— Mr. CtAEFIELD said: Mr. Speaker, I should oppose this bill, very decidedly, if it committed us at tliis time to any plan or theory of raanagfiug' the Mississippi River; and I think the remarks of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Baker], warning us against committal in any such direction, are wise. But I have looked the bill over with what care I could, and it does not seem to me tliat by its passage we commit ourselves to anything further than the purpose to obtain a(;curate ofticial information touching the present condition and needs of this great stream. I admit that we have already had examinations and explorations of the Mississippi, some of them sci- eutihc and very valuable ; but everybody will concede that one important experiment has been made, in recent years, which, though against the opinion of the majority of engineers, has proven apparently a great success : I mean the jetty system at the mouth of that river. I say "apparently," because it is possible that in the long run it may not X)nne a success; but at the present moment it .appears to be a great and striking snccess in the manageAient of the mouths of that river. If it i)rove to be iiermanentlj^ so, all our calculations and, indeed, all our theories concerning the improvement and management of otlier portions of that river need to be reconsidered in view of the new light that the jetty system will throw upon the question. Hence a proposition to turn on the light, to get information, and to get it from the best scientific ad^'isers that we can call to our aid, is a step in the right direction. I have always favored measures which will result in giving us information upon all questions about which we are called upon to legislate. What shall be done with this knowledge when it comes, will be for our suc- cessors to say. We do not commit ourselves or them to any scheme at this time. But for myself, I believe that one of the grandest ol our ma- terial national interests — one that is national in the largest material sense of that word — is the Mississippi River and its navigable tributa- ries. It is the most gigantic single natural feature of our continent, far transcending the glory of the ancient Nile or of any other river on the earth. The statesmanship of America must grapple the problem of this mighty stream. It is too vast for any State to handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage. And I be- lieve the time will come when the liberal-minded statesmanship of this country will devise a wise and comprehensive system, that will harness the powers of this great river to the material interests of America, so that not only all the people who live on its banks and the banks of its confluents, but all the citizens of the republic, wliether dwellers in the central "valley or on the slope of either ocean, will recognize the impor- tance of preserving ami perfecting this great natural and material bond of national union between the North and the South — a bond to be so strengthened by commerce and intercourse that it can never be severed. [Aijplause.] One of our early Presidents went so far as even to exceed Ms early l^reconceived opinions of the constitutional power of the Executive, in 42 43 order to buy from France a mighty empire to be added to the Union ; and he did it for this reason chiefly, that the yonng EepubUc could not permanently endure as a nation without owning and controlling the mouths of the Mississippi. Nearly the wliole continent west of that river was bought, to make the Union perpetual by bringing every foot of the shore of the Mississippi under our flag. If I did not think it almost unworthy of so great a theme, I would say that if there had been no patriotic impulse higher than anj^ consideration of material welfare whicli moved twenty millions of Americans to resist the attempt to break the Union in pieces, and impelled them to hold it together by all the cost of l)k)od and treasure that our late war required, if there had been no liigher national sentiment inspiring them, the immense material stake which the people of the great North and West and center of this country had in the free use of that river from its sources to its mouth, that their commerce might go southward to the sea under the one flag, iinvexed by conflicting nationalities, this material stake alone would have made all the people of the upper valley of the Mississippi resist to the last the dismemberment of the Union. This great river, which our fathers made such sacrifices to acquire, and which the present generation made so much costlier sacrifices to redeem from disunion and to hold within the grasp of the nation, we have held, not in obedience to mere sentiment alone, not with a view of keeping it as a vast and worthless waste of water, but to utilize it by making it the servant of all the people of this country. How shall we utilize it, unless at some time, and in some wise way, we bridle it by the skill of man and make it subser^ient to the interests of commerce "? Now, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, there is another reason why I am in favor of this measure. I rejoice in any occasion which enables Eepresentatives from the North and from the South to unite in an unpartisan efltbrt to jiromote a great national interest. I Applause.] Such an occasion is good for us both. And when we can do it without the sacrifice of our convictions, and can benefit millions of our fellow-citizens, and thereby strengthen the bonds of the Union, we ought to do it with rejoicing; for, in so doing, we shall inspire our people with larger and more generous views, and help to confirm for them and for our posterity to oiu" latest generations, the indissoluble Union and the permanent grandeur of this Eepublic. I shall vote for this bill. [Applause on both sides of the House.] THE EEYIVED DOCTEIKE OF STATE SOVEEEIGNTY. The House being in Committee of tlie Whole on the marshals' apj)ropriatiou bill, Jnne 27, 1879— Air. Garfield said: Mr. Chairman, "to this favor" it has come at last. The great fleet that set out on the 18th of March, with all its freightage and armament, is so shattered that now all the valuables it carried are embarked in this little craft, to meet whatever fate the sea and the storm may offer. This little bill contains the residuum of almost everything that has been the subject of controversy at the present session. I will not discuss it in detail, but will speak only of its central feature, and especially of the opinions which the discussion of that feature has brought to the siu-face during the present session. The majority in this Congress have adopted what I consider very extreme and dangerous opinions on certain im- portant constitutional questions. They have not only drifted back to their old attitude on the subject of State sovereignty, but they have pushed that doctrine much further than most of their predecessors ever went before, except diuing the period immediately i)receding the late war. So extreme are some of these utterances, that nothing short of actual quotations from the Eecord will do their authors justice. I therefore shall read several extracts from debates at the present session of Con- gress, and group them in the order of the topics discussed. Senator Wallace (Congressional Eecord, June 3, pages 3 and o) says: The Federal CTOverimient has no voters; it can make none, it can constitutionally control none. * ^ * When it asserts the power to create and hold '^iialional elec- tions" or to regulate the conduct of the voter on election day, or to maintain equal snffrafjt, it tramples under foot the very basis of the Federal system and seeks to build a consolidated govemnient from a democratic repuljlic. This is the plain purpose of the men now in control of the Federal Government, and to this end the teachings of leading Eexjublicans now are shaped. There are no national voters. Voters who vote for national Eepresentath-es are (iualitied by State constitutions and State laws, and national citizenship is not re- ([uii-ed of a voter of the State by any provision of the Federal Constitution nor in l)ractice. * * * * # * # If there be such a thing, then, as a "national election," it Avants the first element of an election — a national voter. The Federal Government, or (if it suits our friends on the other side better) the nation, has no voters. It cannot create them, it cannot qualify them. Eepresentative Clark, of Missouri (Eecord, April 26, page 60), says: The United States has no voters. Senator Maxey, Texas (Eecord, April 21, page 72), says: It follows as surely as "grass grows and water runs" that, under our Constitution, the entire control of elections nnist be under the State whose voters assemble ; whose right to vote is not drawn from the Constitution of the United States, but existed and was freely exercised long before its adoption. 44 45 Senator Williams, Kentucky (Eecord, April 25, page 8), says: The legislatirres of tlie States and the people of the several districts are the constitu- ency of Senators and Representatives in Congress. They receive their commissions from the governor, and when they resign (which is very seldom) they send their resig- nations to the governor and not to the President. They are State officers and not Federal officers. Senator Whyte (Eecord, May 21, page 14) says: There are no elections of United States officers and no voters of the United States. The voters are voters of the States, they are the people of the States, and their mem- bers of the House of Representatives are chosen by the electors of the States to repre- sent the people of the States, whose agents they are. Mr. McLane. Do I understand him to say that the Government of the United States has the right to keep the peace anywhere within a State ? Do I understand him to say that there is any ''peace of the'United States" at all recognized by the Su^jreme Court of the United States ? Mr. Robeson. Certainly I do. — (Record, April 4, page 14.) Mr. McLane (Record, April 4, page 15) says : I believe that the provision of law which we are about to repeal is unconstitutional ; that is to say, that it is unconstitutional for the United States to "keep the peace" anywhere in the States, either at the polls or elsewhere ; and if it were constitutional, I believe in common with gentlemen on this side of the House that it would be highly inexpedient to exercise that power. When that law used the phrase "to keep the peace" it could only mean the peace of the States. It is not a possible tiling to have a breach of the United States peace at the polls. Senator Whyte (Record, May 21, page 18) says : Sovereignty is lodged with the States, where it had its home long l)efore the Con- stitution was created. The Constitution is the creature of that sovereignty. The Federal Government has no inherent sovereignty. All its sovereign powers are drawn from the States. ■,■ ^ The States were in existence long before the Union, and the latter took its birth from their power. w* * * * * * The State governments are supreme by inherent power originally conceded to them by the people as to the control of local legislation and administration. The Federal Government has no part or lot in this vast mass of inherent sovereign power, and its interference therewith is utterly unwarrantable. Senator Wallace (Record, June 3, pp. 3 and 4) says : ' Thus we have every branch of the Federal Government, House, Senate, the execu- tive and judiciary departments, standing upon the State governments, and all resting finally upon the people of the States, quaUfied as voters by State constitutions and State laws. Senator Whyte (Record, May 21, p. 15) says : No Mr. President ; it never was declared that we were a nation. 'if * ^ * * * * In the formation and adoption of the Constitution the States were the factors. These are the declarations of seven distinguished members of the present Congress. The doctrines set forth in the above quotations may be fairly regarded as the doctrines of the Democracy as represented in this Capitol. Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; sec- ond, the United States has no voters ; third, the States have the exclu- sive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the Senators and Representatives in Congress are State oflflcers, or, as they have been called during the present session, " embassadors " or " agents' of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace anywhere within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep ; sixth, the United States is not a nation endowed with sovereign power, but is a 46 confederacy of States ; seventh, the States are sovereio'uties possessing inherent supreme powers; thej' are older than the Union, and as in- dependent sovereignties the State governments created the Union and determined and limited the powers of the General Government. These declaratioifs embody the sum total of the constitutional doc- trines which the Democracy has avowed during this extra session of Congress. Tliey forjn a body of doctrines which I do not hesitate to say are more extreme than was ever before held on this subject, except per- haps at the very crisis of secession and rebellion. And they have not been put forth as abstract theories of government. Trne to the logic of their convictions, tlic majority have sought to put them in practice by affirmative acts of legislation. Let me enumerate these attempts. First, they have denounced as unconstitntional all attempts of the United States to supervise, regulate, or protect national elections, and have tried to repeal all laws on the national statute-book enacted for that purpose. Second, following the advice given by Calhoun in his political testament to his party, they have tried to repeal all those portions of the venerated judiciary act of 1789, the act of 1833 against nnllification, the act of 18GI, and the acts amendatory thereof, "s\iiich provide for carrying to the Supreme Court of the United States all controversies that relate to the duties and authority of any officer acting under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Third. They have attempted to prevent the President from enforcing the laws of the Union, by refusing necessarj^ supplies and by forbidding the nse of the Army to suppress violent resistance to the laws, by wliich, if they had succeeded, they would have left the citizens and the author- ities of the States free to obey or disobey the laws of the Union as they might choose. This, I believe, Mr. Chairman, is a fair summary both of the principles and the attempted practice to which the majority of this House has treated the country during the extra session. Before quitting this topic, it is worth while to notice the fact that the attempt made in one of the bills now pending in this House, to curtail the jurisdiction of the national courts, is in the direct line of the teach- iugs of John C.Calhoun. In his ''Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States," published by authority of the Legis- lature of South Carolina in 1851, he sets forth at great length tlie doc- trine that ours is not a national government, but a confederacy of sov- ereign States, and then proceeds to point out what he considers the dangerous departures which the government has made from his theory of the Constitution. The first and most dangerous of these departures he declares to be the ale — the oidy sonrce of inherent power. We insist n/.'>