LIBRARY OF CONGRESS if lljlllllfli 111 ili liilHillllll ii II Hi ill mil III liiiiiiiil 014 541 546 9 326 C75 OPV 1 Oil the Ameiidiiieiil lo Admit Alabama. ^ S r E E C II HON. JOHN CONNESS, OF CALIFORNIA, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JUNE 6, 18C8, IN llEPLY TO MR. DOOLITTLE. The Senate having under consideration the bill | (H. R. No. 1058) to admit the States of North Caro- I Una, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, and Ala- bama to representation in Congress- Mr. CONNESS said: Mr. President: There were some things in connection with the pending amendment which I thought during the discussion yesterday I should like to have said, and, perhaps, would like to say now, though I am so much the more anxious tor the passage of the bill proposing to admit those States that I would readily forego at any time anything that I might have to say if we could come to a vote upon it. Yet, if the debate is to go on to the consumption of this day or still further, I will trespass upon the Senate for a few minutes. I regret, Mr. President, very deeply, to wit- ness the opposition that proceeds particularly from this side of the Chamber to the amend- ment offered by the honorable Senator from Massachusetts, because I cannot see for the life of me a good reason for objecting to the admission of Alabama at this time. Of course we all differ or are apt to differ, indeed too apt to differ, I think, in this Chamber, and partic- ularly on our side of it, I will say, upon propo- sitions of policy and doctrine. I regret that Senators here representing the great national, patriotic party of the Union, which maintained the war and fought it, who stand now before the country and the world under all the respons- ibility that can attach to a party engaged in conducting a Government, so often ditfer upon questions of doctrine and policy. The oppo- sition to this amendment in the Chamber comes from two classes. One class is ably, actively, astutely represented by some of the Senators I see sitting before me. I allude particularly to the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BfcKAi.Ew] and the Senator from Indiana, [Mr. Hexuuicks.] Upon all occasions when it becomes the interest of the party they rep- " / 1 / ■ ■ ■' resent to advocate their policy, (which, how- ever, they do not give much of their time to, but attack ours,) they are ever in the fore- ground : and their associates on the other side of the Chamber permit their leadership, as 1 think, with grewt good judgment, for they are cool, cautious, and able. These leaders, with all the other members of their party on the opposite side of the Chamber, are agaiiAt this amendment. They are against the bill ; they are against it in whole and in every part. They opposed the first reconstruction bill ; they opposed the second; they opposed the third; an(l they will oppose every proposition which proposes to readmit the southern States upon the basis of equal suffrage ; and yet honorable Senators ou this side of the Chamber allow them often to dictate a policy to divide and distribute our forces, while they never vote apart. It is of no consequence, Mr. President, whether it be a legislative or a judicial question that the hon- orable Senators vote upon, atrial to determine political policy contained in a bill before this body, or a trial of the President of the United States, they vote conscientiously of course, but, wonderfully, vote together. The solid phalan.x is never broken. I like them, sir ; 1- like wisdom, boldness, perceptive sense, and they exhibit all here; but sometimes I have been astonished that some of our friends did not perceive it and did not know that they were the serpent in the garden — they will par- don lue for the comparison — who mean to please while they mean to destroy, while we conscientious folks and legal men are able to si)lit a 4air without breaking either side ; and sometimes I have been tempted to think that the ability to doit, existing here so extensively and so certainly, often induces the practice of the attempt just to see how it can be done and who can do it. So, sir, Alabama cannot be admitted with the other southern States in the same bill, but F3X6 we are told it must be presented as a separate proposition in a separate bill. Mr. President, i ask you the question, what Senator is there on this side of the Chamber who will refuse to vote for the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts admitting Alabama at the same time with the other States, who will consent to vote for it if it stands alone ? Suppose, as we have been told — and this prophecy has been made a great many times — that the President shall veto the bill now before us and send it back here ; suppose that the amendment now pending be lost and that a separate bill for the admission of Alabama shall also be passed by a majority or more and sent to him for his signature, will he not return them both with a veto ? Will he treat one any better than the other? And when the bill for the admission ©f Alabama standing alone shall be returned by him to this body, what Senator who would not waive all question and vote for it incor- porated with a bill admitting the other States, will then vote for it over his veto ? Mr. President, can it be possible ; is it true at this period and time that there is any Sena- tor on what I claim to be the loyal side of the Senate — and loyalty has a meaning though it is so much used — who will refuse to sustain a bill for the admission of Alabama under the constitution made in that State, because it is either in or out of a bill proposing to admit the other States? If it be so, then it only proves that as a party, a majority party charged with conducting this Government at this great crisis, it is a failure ; and, sir, that being the case, it deserves to be routed, horse, foot, and dragoons, by that party for which I have no political respect, led by those astute leaders on the other side of the Chamber. When my friend from New Jersey [Mr. Fre- j-iNGHUYSEx] was on the floor he told us that there were Senators here who would not and could not vote for this bill if it came back with a veto from the President, the amend- ment of the Senator from Massachusetts hav- ing been adopted ; and my honorable friend from Michigan, [Mr. Howard,] who is always brave and true, reiterated the opinion, and although he was ready to vote for it, it was his opinion that that was the real state of the case in the Senate ; and many others followed. When the debate had taken this turn my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buckai.ewJ rose and oifered his arguments, and the Sen- ator from Indiana [Mr. Hendricks] joined him as usual. They said that this wm in the nature of a contract. Why, said the Senator from Indiana, several times, if not in this debate heretofore, what did you mean by sub- mitting the question to the peoj)le of Alabama if you were not prepared to abide by their decision? It was not for the purpose of abiding by their decision that we submitted itj it was for the purpose of developing a consti- tution ; it was for the purpose of organizing government; it was for the purpose of organ- izing loyalty and allowing that State to be rep- resented in this Chamber and to resume all her practical relations with the Government. Well, sir, in the process of submitting the question, it happened that under our law, unwisely passed, I think — 1 do not know how I voted upon it, and I do not care ; I think, however, I voted against it — the requisite num- ber of votes was not polled for the constitution to result in its adoption. Does that bind this • Congress? Did we not make the law? May we not amend it? Have we not asserted from the beginning our entire and complete power over this sub- ject? Might we not have admitted Alabama without the process that she took at all ? Might we not have admitted Alabama, if we chose and deemed it worthy of us, under the so-called Johnson constitution? Certainly. The power was here ; it abides here still ; and we may either^amend or change the law, or act, not- withstanding the law, as we shall see fit. Why? Because we represent the sovereign power of this Government and people that maintained the standard of the nation and the integrity of its Government against rebellion, and because we mean to hold fast to that position until the entire work is done and well done. Sir, among our friends that come to our house to meet us, do we raise the question of who shall first enter? Who that has a heart and a judgment does not welcome all ; and why should we not welcome all? I will give no time to the question of the causes that led to the failure of the vote in Alabama. It is enough that it technically failed; but it is true, as stated by my honor- able friend from Indiana near me, [Mr. Mok- Tox,] that there were eighty odd thousand votes cast for the constitution ; it is true that they have made such a constitution as we would choose that they should make ; it is true that they ask to be admitted, and that their safety demands that they be admitted. If the Senate will indulge me at this point, I will read some dispatches just received from Ala- bama. The first one is addressed to the hon- orable Senator from Massachusetts, who has offered the amendment, and is in these words: MONTGOMKRY, ALABAMA, June (>, 18(53. Tho loyalists of Alabama, witli one voice, begScn- ators to support your aiucndinent. Hon. IIknry Wilson, United Suites Senate. This is signed by more than half a dozen of the leading men of that State. I will read another dispatch received to-day: MoNTiiOMKKY, Alaiiama, June (S, 18G8, Republicans arc intensely anxious for tho adop- tion of Wilson's amendniout. Hon. 11. M. Ueynolus. Tlie honorable Senator from Perinsylvanift, in this discussion, was almost facetious in his attacks upon llie reconstruction laws. It is bnt what he has iterated and reiterated here many times before, though he rarely repeats himself; but the lino of discussion has drawn him into it. lie said that the better way to have done would have been to send an exact pattern of a constitution down to these States, a kind of a last upon which a political boot should be made, and then we should have the thing according to pattern. I do not know whether his support of the pattern of that kind sent by Andrew Johnson down into these States when he made his celebrated proclamations, Eut this in his head or not. 1 do not know ut that that pattern, which particularly and prominently allowed every rebel to vote, so pleased him that he got the idea of pattern in his head from that, and then said what he did while up. The only conditions that we imposed upon the people of the South were conditions which became necessary b}' their crimes and falsity to good faith and loyalty. Why, sir, it was preposterous that a local government could be organized in any of those States after the war by allowing the men who had laid down their arms to take up the ballot and vote, and they alone, under which this Government could live, and it was as impossible as that devils could reign in Heaven, and as unnatural. Therefore it became necessary to put the bal- lot in other hands ; and the fault, the great and grevi^us fault of reconstruction, has been that the power of the Government from the time the war ceased was not kept closely applied to the rebels so that they should not be let up until they were taught obt;dience to law and to order, respect for property and life and the rights of otlier men. But, sir, unfor- tunately, in a day of the cruelest misfortune, our President, elected by the party that we represent here, determined to make a wide dltference with us. lie determined to engage in the business of reconstruction single-handed — no, sir, not single-handed, but without theaid of our hands, without the aid of the men who had given him his power, but with the aid of the rebels of the South, the Democrats of the North who had opposed the war, and the plun- der-seeking Republicans, wherever they could be found, to build up a party that should elect him OFSomeone like him for tlmnextfouryears President of the United States. That was what he undertook to do, and that was why the Sen- ator from Wisconsin [Mr. Dooi.itti.k] deserted liis party — I was going to say basely betrayed i — and joined the President to do. Ah, Mr. President, does any one think, can the Senator make the simplest creature in the land believe, ilr.it if the President had been true to his faith, true to his trusb^.to the people, true to his obli- gations to the parly that elected him, and gone on I with us, the Senator would have left him then? I Nay, sir, he would have clutched to his coat- tails, he would have still followed the flesh- pots of presidential patronage, and he would have been here the loudest of the loud pro- claiming for .Johnson and reorganized, recon- structed liberty in the South ; and we should have had some of that physical eloquence that he so often gives us specimens of here when, with a jiile-driving power, he drives down his propositions beneath him, often smashing them into pieces, and when, sir, he almost impiously — he will excuse my language, but the facts justify it — intersperses his appeals to the Sen- ate with appeals to Almighty God. Mr. President, the honorable Senator pro- fesses to be a Christian man, and has often told us how much he reveres the Christian religion ; but, sir, he has joined idols ; he has aban- doned his faith ; he has abandoned the princi- ples upon which Christianity is founded and for which it was established in the world. If Christianity, by its great Master and Teacher, was not brought to men of the earth for the purpose of defending the weak and lowly, for the purpose of lifting them up in the scale of being, for the purpose of teaching some of that equality on earth which is certain in Heaven, then, sir, I undertake to say for myself that it is a deception and a snare. The Senator pro- fesses the doctrine and violates it shockingly, impiously, wickedly, at every turn. He ri.ses here and gives us dissertations on the inequality of men, the impossibility of tiie negro being the equal of the Caucasian. Mr. President, the distinction was not made by their Maker. We are not told that there are dividing places in Heaven for classes and castes and colors and shades. There is not a Christian church in the world of all the denominations that docs not admit them to be upon the same plane; but the Senator, while he boasts his Christianity, violates its most sacred purposes and princi- ples. > 1 was reminded yesterday when he had nearly a mule's load of books around him, that there was one which ho might have added with advantage to himself. 1 hold it in my hand. It is a simple and old book. There are sup- posed to be truths in it, and the honorable Sen- ator professes to believe them. While he was denouncing the inequality of" men and boasting it loudly, 1 opened it at a place where a man I who was known in his day and generation, ami j is not forgotten yet, had spoken. His name , was Paul, anil on an occasion when he met I the Athenians, who thought themselves the j greatest of all the earth, who boasted their j superiority and eloquence, and who called I every outsider a I)arl)arian or an uncivilized j semi-barl)aria!i — they were like the honorable 1 Senator in everything but that they were great in art — Paul stood up among the Athenians and spake thus : " Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' Hill and said, ' Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all thing ye are too superstitious.' " ****** " 'God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; '"Neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, seeing hegivethto all, life, and breath, and all things; " ' And hath made of one blood all nations of men or to dwell on all the face of the earth.' " Mr. DOOLITTLE. Read the next sen- tence. Mr. CONNESS. The next sentence, Mr. President, the honorable Senator can read, and if he will read and study and pay attention to the spirit as well as the letter, he will leave the rotten faction and party that he has joined and come back to the men who have heart and blood and courage in advocacy of human right. But there is another thing the Senator is in the habit of doing when he speaks here; and I have heard him do it I may say a hundred times. He calls up that great and beloved man now gone, our late President, as a witness, and he makes him responsible again and again for this vilest plan to organize rebellion polit- ically. Sir, the man who left his residence when his health was failing him and went down to the front and witnessed the proceedings during the last ten days of the existence of the armed forces of rebellion, had his heart and his soul in his country's cause too deeply to ever trust one of the men who was on the other side in that conflict. It is true that he was a generous and charitable man, and, like us, would not use unnecessary severity against any person whatever, not even against his active enemies. But think you, sir, that if he had lived he would not have guarded with jealous care and fidelity, and organized the patriotism of the country, and preserved its Government so as to make it impossible to be again attacked so successfully as it had been? No man can doubt that. The honorable Senator has treated us time and again to what he has called the "Lincoln- Johnson policy." "Lincoln-Johnson!" I have heard that a great many times from him. He used to come up here with a hand-organ and grind out ad libihim "the Lincoln-John- son policy;" but if Johnson had stayed with us he hud never turned musician ! I do not know what the honorable Senator's mission is, whether it is music, statesmanship, theology, or what not. I may have something to say about that by and by. He has a habit here, too, of speaking of the elections whenever through any cause whatever in any part of the country there is a scorning triumph of the party that he has now joined, but ho will permit mc to say, does not honor, for deserters always have a character, and it abides with them and stays with them like the shirt of Nessus ; there is no reorganization or reconstruction for them. The man who fails his comrades, the man through whom a cause is lost, has no friends, and for the best reason in the world, he is not worthy of them; and there is a common instinct that all mankind have,^without the trouble of reasoning, which teaches them that very wholesome fact. If an election occurs in California, though the result was brought about by the shameless acts of faction in our own party, by means of which the men whom he has joined have made a temporary success, he heralds it here again ana again and claims that those bad principles and those heinous policies that he now stands the advocate of have been indorsed. If the proposition has been submitted in any one or more of the northern States to give the ballot to the colored man, and through the monstrous and wicked prejudice which the existence of that brutal institution of slavery has sown, grown and built up among us, the proposition be rejected, the honorable Senator comes here and speaks loud and claims that it is a victory for him and his party! Well, sir, when a man or a party boasts of a victory like that, won with the seeds of injustice deeply in it, he or it has only to wait a little while to be destroyed. As sure as right is better than wrong as an abstract principle, so sure will any man or party binding up within its policies, error, and wickedness, fall thereby. But the honorable Senator finds nothing in the Christian religion to engage tiim as an active missionary on the side of right, but he has gone out and counted his forces, and he calculated with his friend, the President, that the Democrats of the North, the rebels of the South, and the class that I denominated a^ the plunder-seeking Kepublicans wherever they are found, would make an overshadowing and overpowering party, and he joined it at once. Of course, he cannot immediately retreat; he has committed himself; but he does not tell us of how unfortunate he has been individually in his advocacy of these monstrosities. His State, not like mine by a local and party feud, but upon a fair election, spewed him out of its mouth. Its people have not said, "Well done, good and faithful servant," but they have said, "Go hence;" and I heard — I sup- pose it is not true — that the honorable Senator was going to I^lorida. • He ought to reiitember that that is not the latitude for the Caucasian race. I rather think if he were there, par- ticularly if the ballot should be maintained in the hand of the negro, he would overcome his scruples and go back to his old doctrine read by the honorable Senator from New Hamp- shire to-day and say, "I was mistaken for a while; the savage of Africa built up and intel- lectually strengthened and born again in America is capable of establishing here in the tropics a republic that will rival the great Repub- lic of the North ;" and I suppose he would add, "and of the temperate zone," for I believe he always puts that in. I like to be accurate. But not a word falls from his lips of how his partners have gone from him. When, in 18G5 he met his party associates in a confer- ence in a room not far from here, I remember well, before a word was spoken about the desertion of Mr. Johnson from his party, that Senator's speeches, and I remember well the speeches made by his asso(*iate for awhile who was a Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Cowan,] and I remember well the cooperation of the gentle and amiable Senator from Con- necticut, [Mr. Dixox.] There were a few more, but this trio were the leaders. They were evidently the marked and chosen leaders, chosen blindly and foolishly by the Presi- dent. I remember the speeches they made in that conference, and how certain it was then that they were deserters, that they intended treason to our parly and to our cause. What has been the history of every man who went with the honorable Senator on that occasion ? He might well put tliat hand-organ down on some occasion, and go to one of the poets, and read thus : " When I remember all The friends, so link'd together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one, Who treads alono Sonic banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Who.-;e garlands dead. And all but he departed." I shall not speak, sir, of the dead ; they have passed away; but where, is the Senator from Pennsylvania, and where will be the Sen- ator from Connecticut, and where will be the man who made music for them all? And where will he be, sadder yet, in the estimation of his countrymen? Where will he be fifty years hence? Where will he be ^^lcn a cen- tury sliall have come which shall render prac- tical on earth some of the teachings of the Christian doctrine and m.ake all forget their individual power, their superiority where they have it, and in place of trying to put their feet upon the neck of their fellows, who are already too low down, they shall be engaged in lilting up — nay, sir, shall have lifted up the lowly — where then will his record be? If he shall make answer to me he will do it with party twaddle, he will do it with that same old instru- ment, tiie crank of which he has turned here so often, and which has been made to play a certain number and order of tunes, and which the merest fool in creation can j)lay as well, if he be able to turn the crank, as any of the great artists that have been known in that delightful profession. j The honorable Senator says we violated the 1 1 pledges of pardon that the President gave. I The President gave pardons, it is true, but who I pardoned him? is there any party in this ; land that are entitled to respect that have par- I doned him for the great crime of deserting us, 1 that have parduned him for the falsehood i spoken when he said to those poor, deluded I men in Nashville, "I will be your Moses," ij meaning to be understood that he would be ij their leader and their light and their strength ; and when in detestable contrast with those sentiments only a short time after, with our good President dead and he in power, in one of the rooms of the Treasury building he had the audacity and the shamelessness, address- ing a number of colored men who called upon him, to tell them that they should be protected in their right to labor — they should be protected in their right to work. Yes, sir; their former i masters were to be allowed to make contracts with them and to refuse to pay them for their labor, and the colored man to whom he gave the former promise was to be protected in his right to labor without the pay! There is such a thing sometimes as justice on earth, and sometimes men escape it. Without wishing to be harsh to the President, to whom I feel no personal ill-will, I think, if he were secured a while in the same right to labor, that it would be according to a high philosophy, the doctrine of compensation, eminently just and deserved. The military governor of Tennessee, at Nash- ville, holding a temporary place, said, " I will be your leader;" the President of the United j States, representing all the power of the Re- I public, said "You shall be protected in the j right to work," and at that time my Christian I friend from Wisconsin was engaged in helping the President to maintain the latter promise ! ! He brings in a petition here, signed by a I thousand of the white men of Alabama, repre- I senting, as he says, "the intellect and moral j power" of that country. I do not know about the intellect; but if they represent the moral power, then there is a certain dignitary, who is said to have his chief abode in the infernal j regions, who is liie custodian and chief of all j that power, and there is no God ! Moral power, I sir I What a shocking misuse of terms! Men, I who, that the riglit might be secured to buy and sell human flesh, bodies and souls eter- nally, made war against the only Government that otVered security to the liberties of man- kind ; men who, in making that war, violaied all the usages of honorable warfare, butchered those whom they had in their power disarmed f^nd overpowered, and made toys of their bones ! Right here, Mr. President, let me tell very briefly an incident of an excursion party, l.ong after the battle of Bull Run, and after the bones of our poor fellows had whitened on the surface of the soil, an excursion party on horseback came out from Richmond. Let it be spoken but in shame, that they were com- posed mainly of what are called ladies ; that they wheeled their horses and went back with trophies consisting of bones of human beings, their country people, the children of the same God, who had been slain by their fathers and brothers ; and one lady, to be more dis- tinguished than the rest, carried a skull orf on her riding-whip as a garland and trophy. The Senator speaks of the moral power such people represent 1 I will not spend any time in undertaking to show, nor is it necessary to say, that every man of them who signed that petition, in all human probability, has a history either as bad as or worse than tiiis man Perry, fi'om South Carolina; and yet they come here to petition, to misstate facts, to denounce their fellows, to ask us to reinstate them in power that they may proceed to the full completion of the work which they failed to do by other means. Mr. President, let me say before I go further, lest any man shall say or think that 1 would do a cruel or ungenerous act toward one of these persons, that there was no man in the nation at the end of the war, and there is no man in it now, who is so ready to receive them back when they are prepared to come back as American citizens, loving the flag, believing in the system of government, ceasing to tyran- nize over and destroy the men that they the other day enslaved, when they shall have come to acknowledge that a man from Massachusetts or New York may take his money and his household gods and go into any State of the Union and live in peace and security. But, Mr. President, it is not so now ; and this peti- tion that the Senator has presented denounces such of us as say that it is not so. There was in this gallery awhile ago a brave fellow who left my State and came here to take the fortunes of war for his country just after he had left college, and who undertook to set- tle in the South. In his character he is as gentle as a woman, in his moral and upright bearing he is a pattern in society. Ilis very lineaments impress you with his nobility. He engaged in business ; he has tried to live in the South, but he could not do it. To use his own words, gentle and truthful as he is, " no stand- ard of character, no matter how elevated ; no purity of life, no matter how simple and true, IS a passport there to any favor. 1 was warned to leave again and again. I had determined to sell my life dearly if forced to do so, and I prepared means of defense in my households 1 escaped a physical conflict, but finally bad to leave." Tt is not constitutional, says th