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PKUSClllPTlON IN MARYLAND. 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIR, 
 
 ^uMtni 0f ikt gittti-fiegi^trii (Kuuv^ution, 
 
 consr'\rE3^Tioi5r 
 
 AND TO THE 
 
 L.EGISLATURE OF MaRYLAND, 
 
 Delivered 2At?i *& 25i?i of January, 7866. 
 
 \ ' 
 
 [reported for the BALTIMORE AMERICAN.] 
 
 WASHINGTON : 
 JOSEPH L. PEARSON, PRINTER, 
 
 Corner of 9tli & D sts. 
 
 1 868. 
 

OK 
 
 Hon. ]viontgo]m:ery bl^ih, 
 
 MADE AT THE 
 
 ANTI-KEGISTRATION CONVENTION 
 
 That met in Baltimore, Md., on the 24th of January, 1866. 
 
 Gejjtlemen of the Conyextion : I return you my 
 sincere thanks for the honor you have done me, in call- 
 ing me to preside over this important Convention. It is 
 an honor entirely unanticipated, and, therefore, I am 
 entirely unprepared to make any sufficient acknowledg- 
 ments, or to go, to any extent, into the discussion 
 of the questions which you are called here to deliberate 
 upon, I regard it as one of the great occasions upon 
 which a free people are called together to take action 
 for the interests of themselves and their posterity. 
 We have passed through a most trying rebellion. 
 We have passed through it successfully. We are still 
 a united people, and I hope we will remain so in all 
 time, [xlpplause.] It is natural that, in a struggle 
 which engaged men's passions, as this struggle has eu- 
 
 I gaged the passions of our people, when it ceased there 
 (lould be still some remains of bitterness in the hearts 
 men who have been combatants. But it is not the 
 character of the American mind to continue useless bit- 
 terness — to inculcate and deliver from father to son, 
 through generations, hatreds and useless animosities. 
 It is not the common sense, nor the common humanit}^ 
 of our nation, to indulge in such feelings. But this sub- 
 ject, its cause and character, it does not become me here 
 now to discuss. We have other matters before us. 
 It is enough to say that it is over — we recognize that it 
 is over, and as a people of common sense, and of good 
 
 If 
 
feeling, it is our duty to our fellow-citizens of all per- 
 suasions, however their sympathies may have been 
 engaged in the past, to meet them with conciliation and 
 good feeling, and strive together for the honor and glory 
 and prosperity of our good old Commonwealth. Through 
 this controversy it has not been my pleasure to mingle 
 among a more honorable class of men than I see before 
 me; [applause] men who are characterized in all their 
 walks of life as good neighbors, good friends, good fath- 
 ers, good sons; men of substance in the community, 
 animated by a common spirit of amity to make their 
 eftbrts work for the good of the country. Yet a large 
 proportion of those who are here — men who have added, 
 in times past, honor to our countrj-, filling distinguished 
 offices, and are yet able to do as great service hereafter — 
 I say there are numbers of those honorable men who are 
 to be proscribed, who are not to have their share in the 
 deliberations for the common good of their country, for 
 whose welfare they feel, I believe, as earnestly as any 
 other portion of the community. [Great applause.] 
 Among the men with whom I have been trained, we 
 have gone upon the maxim of making a good fight, whilst 
 we were at it, and, when the fight is over, of being friends 
 afterwards. I struggled for the truth, as I understood it, 
 and no man can pretend to say that I have faltered in do- 
 ing what I thought it was my dut}- to do. But I should 
 be less than a man if, when that conflict is over, and men 
 now say we are for the countr}- — that there is no longe 
 disunion party in the country — if I should indulge in a 
 bickerings or attempt to proscribe those men and not al- 
 low them to share in the common rights of the country. 
 But, it is not a matter of feeling; it is a matter of prin- 
 ciple. The President of the United States has said that 
 we must trust the people with their Government. [Ap- 
 plause.] That is the principle I go upon. When we have 
 got to the period when we cannot trust the people with 
 their Government, that is an end of all government of 
 this nature. And he applies that to the Southern States 
 
 en . 
 
 •I 
 
where tlie rebellion has been existing, and where all men, 
 whether they concurred in the original policy of seces- 
 sion or were drawn into it by their sympathies with 
 their brethren, have been arrayed against the Gov- 
 ernment. He says to his fellow-citizens, "You must 
 trust those men with the management of their local gov- 
 ernments and give them their share in the aifairs of the 
 General Government." A fortiori, if this can be said of 
 the Southern rebellious States, it can be said of the State 
 of Maryland. And yet, here in Maryland, more than 
 one-half of our white population are denied a share in the 
 government of the country. 
 
 Everybody agrees that our troubles are over — General 
 Grant, General Sherman, and Governor Andrew, in a 
 late message to the members of the General Assembly 
 of Massachusetts. And let me tell you here that I have 
 great respect for Governor Andrew. He is one of the 
 sincere men of the country. He says that everybody in 
 the South has upheld secession, but that now it is a 
 thing of the past. Such is the sentiment of the men 
 who have mingled in the war, and of the disinterested 
 men who have looked on from a distance. Why, then, 
 are our people to be disfranchised ? It is to hold politi- 
 cal power, [loud applause and hissing,] in defiance of the 
 great principle which underlies our whole form of Gov- 
 ernment — that the minority may rule the majority. And 
 ey have another scheme in view — to perpetuate that 
 e. They do not anticipate that they can keep forever 
 
 le-half of the country from sharing all power in the 
 Government; but they anticipate keeping it long enough 
 to force in as an element of political power, the black 
 race. [Long continued applause, and cries of "That's 
 the idea."] 
 
 That is they will hold power over us and other Southern 
 States by present appliances till the blacks a^e inducted 
 to be managed by the Freedmen's Bureau, and absolutely 
 controlling the whole of the States in which slavery has 
 
 existed, and so the Union, It is a very large scheme, con- 
 
 ^j^e 
 
ceived with very great skill, and by very adroit aud ambi- 
 tious men. Having this conception of the matter, I have 
 felt it my duty to separate myself, in my political action, 
 from the party with which I had been voting during the 
 war, and join another party and help it to bring the coun- 
 try together — I mean the Democratic party — [Enthusias- 
 tic cheering.] — that Democratic party wdiich it is charged 
 by our opponents is to be restored to power if these 
 Southern States are to have their riglits of franchise. If 
 tliey had no higher motive for exerting themselves in 
 behalf of the Southern Statei^, I go with them without 
 regard to their motive, because that is my object, and I 
 want to see it secured. The other party, acting upon 
 the same party interests, seek to keep those States out, 
 because they apprehend they will be voted down. It 
 made a great hurrah among my friends of the Union 
 party in Mar3'land, that I have adopted this opinion and 
 have acted upon it under the existing circumstances. 
 And the gentlemen with wliom I had been associated, 
 some of whom I had been instrumental in electing to 
 Congress, have reproached me for having loft them and 
 gone to speak for the Democratic party in jSTew York. 
 Well, what have they been doing? They have been vot- 
 ing with the Democrats in the House of Representatives. 
 They have found that the Radicals who predominate in 
 the Union party, under the discipline of old Thad 
 Stevens, who drives them where he wills, look to t 
 negro as the element to control the Government, a 
 Mr. Plielps and John L. Thomas, Jr., who represent tl' 
 constituencies of Baltimore, have now to vote with tlic 
 Democrats all the time. 
 
 As early as '62, in a letter which I addressed to a 
 Union meeting in i^Tew York, at the Cooper Institute, 
 I treated the proposition then started for the purpose of 
 inaugurating this negro regime as another form of dis- 
 union, and not less criminal than that which we were 
 fighting to put down. Afterwards, at Rockville, in my 
 own county, I made a speech which brought upon me 
 
 
the anathemas of the whole Radical faction, and con- 
 centrated upon me their wrath from that time to this. 
 And in a late struggle within the Union party of Mary- 
 land the present Governor of the State took sides with 
 me against the late Hon. Henry Winter Davis, and we 
 triumphed in nominating and electing him Governor of 
 the State. But our triumph — what does it amount to? 
 [Great laughter.] Under the driving of this party, and 
 the influence which has driven nearh' all the so-called 
 Conservatives in the House of Representatives to vote 
 with Thad. Stevens for negro suffrage, onr Governor has 
 yielded. Disfranchising the people of Maryland is for 
 the same interests that Thad. Stevens is working in the 
 House of Representatives to obtain. [Applause.] Now, 
 my friends, Mr. Swann and all his co-laborers will find 
 that they have counted without their host. The people 
 of Maryland — even those who have been registered under 
 this law — will be too honest, too patriotic, too just to their 
 fellow-citizens to follow him and Thad. Stevens to sustain 
 such registration. [Shouting and hissing.] I rely upon 
 them, and I beg of yon not to cast upon the mass 
 of the Union people with whom I have been acting, 
 and who acted with me in elevating him to power, evil 
 looks, or suppose that they have any participation with him 
 in his objects. We elevated him in opposition to the prin- 
 ciples which he now assumes to dictate ; and when they are 
 approached and appealed to, and are made know where 
 that ])olicy leads them, 3-ou will find that they will stand by 
 their fellow-citizens of the white race. [Loud cheering.] 
 There is no other political question here now. I 
 say there can be no motive in proscribing the white 
 race of this country but to put up the blacks. And when 
 it is attempted to do so; when there is no other question 
 but whether the South shall be ruled by the power at the 
 North through the negroes, and a despotism established 
 as fierce and formid'al)le as that of Napoleon's, through 
 universal suffrage — his was established that way — b}' de- 
 grading suffrage ; by making it contemptable ; by clothing 
 
persons with it who are the very tools of despotism, who 
 have never known what it is to exercise an independent 
 thought — what other object can these aristocrats have but 
 to supersede our form of government, in proscribing the 
 men who made it, and whose civilization they seek to 
 supersede. No, my friends, that is the only question; 
 and I say you may rely upon those who acted with me 
 in electing Mr. Swann, under the impression that he was 
 opposed to Thad. Stevens and those people who are seek- 
 ing to put down the white race of the South and super- 
 sede them with the black. This notion is not just 
 invented. This method of regulating suffrage in the in- 
 terests of power is as old as the Stuarts. King James the 
 2d made a trial of it — Macaulay gives the whole story in 
 his histor3\ In King James' time there were regulators 
 appointed all over E^igland, and they reduced suftVage 
 down to the lowest ebb. In the town, of Tewksbury, 
 they reduced it to thirteen votes, and yet a majority of 
 the thirteen voted against King James! And so will the 
 majority in Baltimore, however they reduce it. They 
 have reduced it to one-third of our population — less than 
 one-third — and they flatter themselves they have got it 
 secure, but they miscalculate the honesty and patriotism 
 of our people. I rely upon them, my friends. I have 
 been acting with them, and if you will act with me and 
 go to them and appeal to their generosity and true hearts, 
 you will find a response. 
 
 In a somewhat long career in politics, I never have 
 mistaken the honest impulses of the people with whom 
 I voted. I, therefore, feel the most perfect confidence 
 that when they are called to act, they will respond as 
 Andrew Johnson has responded. Every well informed 
 man sees that Andrew Johnson has been and is the 
 providential man for this crisis. He has been identified 
 with the people, springing from among them, having 
 the same interests common to our whole population, a 
 love of that Government which is the poor man's Gov- 
 ernment, and true to it in all the past, true to all itsinsti- 
 
tutions. You have watched him throughout the twenty- 
 five years of his public life, and you see that he has never 
 failed in meeting the expectations of the people. "Would 
 he, would a man born upon the Southern soil, a proud 
 man, proud of his people, of their share in the Govern- 
 ment in the past, would he condescend to degrade them 
 and degrade himself by accepting powder from the men 
 who are leading Congress today? No. He has proved 
 himself in the past a tru/ Southern man, a true man to 
 the whole country. We ask nothing but equality and 
 will take nothing less. [Loud applause.] 
 
 I will say one word more in regard to negro suffrage. 
 It seems to be supposed that if we carry out our demo- 
 cratic principles of the equality of men that we land in 
 negro suffrage. That was not so construed by the founders 
 of our Government. Mr. Jefierson, the author of the 
 Declaration of Independence, never gave it that interpre- 
 tation. He himself was the author of the plan of separat- 
 ing the races. He was always, as I have been always 
 since I knew anything, in favor of emancipation. Not 
 because of any injur}- the negro received from his con- 
 nection with us, but from the injury which the laboring 
 white man received from slavery. Mr. Jefferson taught 
 me all I ever believed on that subject. When he nego- 
 tiated the cession of the Louisiana Territory, and proposed 
 an amendment of the Constitution which would enable 
 him to add that vast territory to the Union, he proposed a 
 stipulation extending citizenship only to the white races. 
 And why? He understood that whilst we could receive 
 Louisiana, and could receive and make citizens of all the 
 white race that come among us, because we blend our 
 people with them, and thus impart and distribute by 
 social intercourse the principles upon which our Govern- 
 ment is founded. But as we cannot amalgamate with the 
 blacks, it is utterly impossible for us to make them par- 
 ticipants and equals in the Government. They are a 
 caste, and must remain so, as they cannot blend with us. 
 Their nature is tropical too. They are the creatures of 
 
10 
 
 despotism, as all men are who are sprung from those cli- 
 mates, and, by nature, go for a despotic government. As 
 a caste, then, they will remain with us to go with the des- 
 potic classes and to overrule the white man. It is impos- 
 sible therefore that they should remain among us and be 
 participators in the Government ; because, like the Indian, 
 the Chinese, and all the foreign races that cannot amal- 
 gamate and mingle and homogeni?:e with us, they are 
 of alien nature and will be a distinct people. If they 
 remain among us in our States as voters they will be the 
 creatures of the Freedmen's Bureau, regulated from 
 Washington to vote down the white suffrage of the 
 South and North. 
 
rn 
 
 THE EEGMSTRY LA_AV^. 
 
 THE RECENT CONVENTION" 
 
 -A- ComirLittee at Annapolis. 
 THE LEGISLATURE HEARS THEM. 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. MONTGOMERY BLAIK. 
 
 < m»» t i 
 
 Annapolis, January 26, 1866. 
 
 This morning, during the session of the House of 
 Delegates, a request was transmitted from Hon, Mont- 
 gomery Bhiir, chairman of the committee recently ap- 
 pointed by the Anti-Registration Convention tliat met in 
 Baltimore on the 24th instant, that the committee be al- 
 lowed to enter the House for the purpose of presenting 
 certain memorials from that Convention; which being 
 allowed, Mr. Blair said — 
 
 Mr. Sj^eaker and 31r. President^ and. Gentlemen of the 
 General Assembly of Maryland — We have been deputed 
 on the part of a great meeting of the citizens of this 
 State to represent to the Legislature the hardships under 
 which many of them labor, growing out of the recently 
 passed Registry law of the State, and the Convention, 
 who have done me the honor to select me as Chairman, 
 have, in the first place, instructed me to acknowledge the 
 deep sensibility with which they have received the honor 
 of this admission to your presence. 
 
 Whatever ma}- be the decisions of this body in re- 
 gard to the great interests which they represent, they 
 will ever be grateful for the respect to their fellow- 
 citizens who are laboring under this great deprivation. 
 I am also instructed to say, in presenting these papers to 
 the Legislature, that the people whom we represent — 
 
12 
 
 many of whom arc not laboring under the disability, Imt 
 feel as if it were their own the deprivation inflicted npou 
 their fellow-citizens — conceive that the time has come 
 when we should have amity and peace and good feeling 
 among the sons of Maryland; that the bitter strife which 
 has caused so much agony and blood is at last ended, thank 
 God ! Is there any reason why we should be any longer 
 embittered towards each other, and embittered, too, to- 
 wards those further to the South, who have taken a 
 more active part in the rebellion which has ceased ? 
 If this principle, which is established in the Consti- 
 tution and by the laws of Maryland, is to be kept and 
 enforced and adhered to, then not only, as we have 
 argued, will the majority of the people of the State of 
 Maryland be excluded frym suffrage, but nearly every 
 white man south of the Potomac. Can the people of 
 Maryland, can this honorable body, acquiesce in a prin- 
 ciple like that — the perpetual exclusion from restoration 
 and readmission into the Union of the whole white popu- 
 lation of the South'? The principle upon which this Reg- 
 istry law stands excludes thcni all. 
 
 I have met great numbers of the leading men who have 
 taken part in this struggle. They one and all say it is 
 closed. And mark this, that you observe, in the history 
 of that struggle, that the men who were instrumental in 
 initiating it were excluded from the confidence of the 
 Southern people long before it closed. It was only those 
 who were dragged into it against their will who retained 
 the confidence of the Southern people. Their Lees, and 
 Johnsons, and Humphries, and all that class of men, who 
 had opposed it and reluctantly were dragged into it — only 
 these men retained the confidence of the people of the 
 South. Mark that feature, and mark their present atti- 
 tude and conduct, and you cannot fail to see that this 
 struggle is over, and was over before Lee surrendered. 
 'Now can we, the sons of Maryland — men who have been 
 born and bred under similar institutions and participated 
 to so great an extent in the passions naturally kindled by 
 
13 
 
 this institution, and which was the leverage under which 
 these unfortunate men were dragged into rebellion against 
 their Government — can we, I sa}', with sympathy such as 
 that, countenance by our own action the exclusion of 
 these men from political power in this country? I ap- 
 peal to you — I appeal to my fellow^ citizens, with an ear- 
 nestness I have never had in any past political struggle — 
 to consider seriousl}*, as men, as Americans, as Southern 
 men, what a principle you are establishing, what a stamp 
 you are putting upon your own kindred, what a plea you 
 are giving for men who may want to deny your own 
 I'ights, for you to deny the same rights to others. So 
 much for the great considerations that appeal to the 
 heart. And to me that wisdom Avhich comes from the 
 heart is the most precious. It is inspired. 
 
 Let us look at this in another aspect, as a merely legal 
 question. We thought we had found the great instrument, 
 and cried, "Eureka!" when we discovered the method of 
 havino; a written Constitution for o^overnment. A writ- 
 ten Constitution; wdiieli should be made in times of 
 peace, when men's passions were asleep, which should 
 embody the wisdom of history and lay down the limita- 
 tions under which government should be conducted. In 
 these written instruments we have prescribed rules, with 
 a view to avoid the exasperated passion consequent 
 upon civil war, and party strife. Bills of attainder and 
 ex 2')osi facto laws, unlimited proscription of political op- 
 ponents, had taught our American fathers the necessity 
 of limiting power, so that when one party succeeded the 
 other it should not be heralded by carrying the leaders 
 of the opposition to the block. You read the history of 
 the great families of England who have conducted the 
 w^ars and controversies there, and you see how success has 
 been followed with these terrible executions and proscrip- 
 tions. They taught our fathers to put in their Constitu- 
 tions a limitation upon the power of legislative bodies 
 and conventions, so that they should pass no ex post facto 
 law or bill of attainder. I know very well that the 
 
14 
 
 Supreme Court of this State have decided that this Reg- 
 istry law is no violation of the Constiiution of the United 
 States in these particular features. They have declared, 
 in substance, that the oath we complain of is a qualifica- 
 tion, and not a punishment for previous political conduct. 
 'Now, with great deference to the wise and good men 
 who occupy the Supreme Bench of our State, looking to 
 its histor}" and the debates which led to it, I think it is 
 not a qualification in the sense that they say it was, that 
 is, similar to the qualification that excludes the negro from 
 voting. It was notoriousl}' enacted as a punishment for 
 treason, and for sympathizing with treason. The court 
 were bound to take notice of that fact. It was on the 
 face of the record. But upon that point I propose to 
 admit, having the feelings of respect I have for that tri- 
 bunal, that there was room for debate. But they say — 
 what is all-sufficient for the purpose I have here — that if 
 it was punishment, it was illegal and wrong. jSI^ow, I 
 appeal to you ; I appeal to every man who hears my voice; 
 I appeal to the nation, whether the object was not punish- 
 ment. That is indisputable — that it was done for punish- 
 ment of treason, and for sympathizing with it, justified 
 in the beginning, maintained to the end, maintained in 
 public and in private, for the purpose of disqualifying 
 men because they had conmiitted these acts. The Leg- 
 islature may take notice of that fact, that this law was 
 unconstitutional, although the Judges, being bound to 
 take that construction of law, if possible, "which is 
 consistent with the Constitution, may not be at liberty 
 to put that construction upon it. All the lawyers, and 
 there are mahy in this body, will say that this is not a 
 fanciful distinctioi]. AVe all know that acts of the Leg- 
 islature may be unconstitutional because of the purpose 
 which they have in view, although the judiciary may not 
 be able to reach them. It has been always maintained 
 by a great party in this country, that a tax upon com- 
 merce, with a view to foster manufactures, was unconsti- 
 tutional : that there was no power given to the General 
 
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