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 THE SOUTH FAITHFUL TO HER DUTIES. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. MATT W, RANSOM, 
 
 OF NOETH CAROLINA, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATE, 
 
 FEBRUARY 17, 1875. 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 1875. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 4 
 
 http://archive.org/details/southfaithfultohOOrans 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. MATT W. EANSOM. 
 
 The Senate having under consideration the resolution for the admission of P. B. 
 S. Pinchback as Senator from Louisiana — 
 
 Mr. RANSOM said : 
 
 Mr. President : After the long and anxious night we have passed, 
 the light of morning pours through the eastern windows of the Capi- 
 tol. I trust it is the auspicious dawn of a brighter day for the Re- 
 public. I approach this debate with extreme anxiety. Never before 
 did 1 feel so deeply the want of those great abilities that can assert 
 and vindicate the truth; for never before were questions of pro- 
 founder magnitude presented to the American Senate. 
 
 For nearly three years I have sat silently in this Chamber, with the 
 hope that by pursuing a course, as I thought, of impartial and patri- 
 otic duty toward all and every part of the country, I might have 
 some influence in satisfying northern Senators that the South desired 
 peace with the North and a restored and fraternal Union of all the 
 States of the Republic. I came from the true State of North Carolina 
 to the Senate of the United States with a sacred purpose to reconcile 
 the once divided people of my country, to harmonize all sectional 
 differences and disputes, to bury in oblivion every bitter recollection 
 of war, and to convince the people of the North that our people of 
 the South sincerely desired to live with them in concord under the 
 common protection of a constitutional and united Government. Be- 
 fore this greatest and best desire of my life, the desire of having a 
 part in restoring the Union of the States firmly in the hearts of all 
 our people, all other passions sank into insignificance. This was the 
 great object of my political existence. To accomplish it, no sacrifice 
 seemed too dear, except the dishonor of my State and the South. I 
 knew this inestimable blessing to my country could only be consum- 
 mated by our doing full justice to the North and by the North doing 
 full justice to us, and I had faith that both sections would be equal 
 to that great duty. If this faith was right,! saw for my country the 
 grandest destiny upon earth ; if it was false, I beheld in the future 
 nothing but appalling darkness. For, unless this Union is based 
 upon the foundations of justice and the affections of all the people, 
 nothing but force can maintain it ; and a Union habitually supported 
 by force ceases to be a free government and becomes a despotism, the 
 stronger and the sterner in proportion to the extent of territory and the 
 magnitude of the interests it dominates. I had too, and still have, 
 this thought, one that to many of you may appear strange and un- 
 natural, but still sincere and true and ardently cultivated in my 
 bosom, that as I had fought for the South and its cause had failed 
 and the Union had been established, it became me as a true man to 
 
 ?5 
 
 <L 
 
render to the Government of my country, now embraced by me, the 
 same devotion — for I could have no greater— "that I had exhibited to 
 the South. 
 
 With these sentiments, Mr. President, I took the oath of office on 
 the right of the chair which you now occupy. With any others in 
 my breast I never would have taken a seat in this Chamber. I felt 
 the pride of a man when these thoughts stirred within me. I knew 
 that they did not lessen in any sense my duty, my love, my very soul 
 for the people of the South. I felt that these sentiments were com- 
 patible with their highest honor, and that in entertaining and acting 
 upon them here I but represented their own generous and patriotic 
 sensibility. I knew we had passed a dark and stormy night, but I 
 also knew that political justice was the great element which, like the 
 sun in the morning, would dispel from the hearts of our people every 
 cloud and memory of the tempest. 
 
 With these convictions I have thought most anxiously, day and 
 night, upon my duty since the commencement of this debate. It is 
 true I have had no doubt at any time — I could not possibly have a 
 doubt — as to the character of the events that have transpired at New 
 Orleans. Unless the lessons of human history and the principles of 
 free government had been suddenly eclipsed in my judgment, I could 
 have on that subject but one opinion. But my anxiety has been in 
 reference to the right course for me to pursue in meeting the issues 
 that have arisen in this discussion. I have considered that subject 
 with the deepest concern. I have devoted to it the best thought I 
 possess. I have brought to it as pure patriotism as I can feel, and 
 I am profoundly thankful that a paramount regard for the purposes 
 which I have declared to animate me as a Senator imperatively com- 
 mands me not to depart a hair's breadth from the line of those pur- 
 poses in consequence of any of the provocations given in this discus- 
 sion. Acting under this high duty, I feel that I owe it to the noble 
 State that honors me with her confidence, to the people of the South 
 who have my sympathy and affection, and to the country at whose 
 altars I minister, to surrender the natural and just resentments ex- 
 cited by unprovoked assaults of a personal and sectional character, as 
 another offering to the peace of my country, and to speak this day 
 without passion or prejudice for the safety and honor of the nation. 
 Yes, sir, I am thankful, profoundly thankful that my wish for har- 
 mony is too deeply cherished, my resolution to reconcile and restore 
 too firmly fixed, to be shaken by unjust utterances here or else- 
 where. 
 
 If at any time during the progress of this debate an intelligent 
 stranger had entered this Chamber and listened to the speeches of 
 republican Senators he would have been profoundly impressed with 
 their statements in reference to the South. Hearing the repeated 
 accusations that that people were ruthlessly violating every principle 
 of justice and humanity, that their hands were red with innocent 
 blood, and that they were organizing a conspiracy to subvert by 
 armed force the authority of the National Government and to estab- 
 lish a revolution on its ruins, he would naturally have been shocked 
 at the startling enormity of the charge and in all probability would 
 examine the foundations upon which it was based. Inquiring into the 
 history, condition, intelligence, and character of this denounced peo- 
 ple, he would behold them numbering eight million beings, occupying 
 a territory that extends from the Potomac and the Ohio to the Gulf ' 
 of Mexico, and from the Atlantic Ocean across the great Mississippi 
 to the very boundaries of civilization, embracing in its area twelve 
 States, subdivided into more than a thousand counties. All over 
 
these States he would see public and private schools, seminaries of 
 learning, colleges and universities. Throughout their length and 
 breadth are the churches and the altars of all religious denomina- 
 tions. Long and frequent lines of railroads permeate and traverse 
 every portion of their surface. The United States mails are dis- 
 tributed throughout every township in their limits. The press of 
 the country, that great luminary which, with the sun, scatters its 
 daily beams over the world, penetrates with diversified and opposing 
 rays every corner of this vast domain. The lines of the electric tele- 
 graph flash intelligence to all the people. The great highways of 
 commerce unite all their interest with the North and the world. 
 Visitors by thousands from the East, the North, and the West, for 
 curiosity, for health, or profit daily cross their lines and pass over 
 their country. Tourists from Europe, attracted by the climate and 
 interested in the history of the people, linger among the beautiful 
 scenes of nature or visit the shrines and spots in that stricken land 
 that are consecrated to deathless fame. The earnest seeker for truth 
 would fail to find in any of these incidents cause for or proof of a 
 dark and hidden conspiracy greater in proportion, but not less 
 damning in its character, than the accursed conception which made 
 the name of Catiline an immortal infamy. 
 
 Mr. President, not in India, not in South America, not in Mexico, 
 not in Jamaica, not in Eome in the last and bloodiest days of her de- 
 cline, not in lawless and impious modern Italy, has there ever been 
 found a people so lost, so blind, so callous to every sense of justice 
 and humanity as the people of the South are, if one-half that has 
 been charged in this Chamber be true. And yet we behold that peo- 
 ple surrounded by and possessed of all the incidents of the highest 
 type of civilization. 
 
 If Senators will examine their own hearts, if they will weigh this 
 question with calm judgment, they will find that they have deceived 
 themselves. They will find that they express what in their deepest 
 convictions they do not feel. 
 
 I do not intend to irritate or to give offense in what I shall say here. 
 If any person thinks so he mistakes me. I wish to pour oil on these 
 troubled waters. I desire to heal these wounds. I seek to cure this 
 malady. I do'not intend to aggravate or continue it. I am speaking 
 to-day with all the solemnity of a man who defends a great people, 
 and if I should utter one word that might retard, or prevent, or in 
 any way hinder a thorough reconciliation between the sections, I 
 should deplore the day that I was born. I ask Senators now to think 
 with me on this question. It has been a custom in this Senate — which 
 is the most deliberate, the most courteous, the most refined, the most 
 exalted legislative body upon the earth, where every propriety of 
 speech, every courtesy of manner, every sentiment of duty is strictly 
 observed, where Senators are tender of the feelings of brother Sen- 
 ators — to speak of the southern people as traitors, as red-handed 
 murderers, as stained with barbarism, as having attempted the dark- 
 est and the bloodiest horror in human history. Senators, it is but 
 just to you for me to say that when you so speak you do not utter 
 your own convictions. You are obliged to say you do not in jus- 
 tice to yourselves. For if you think that the southern people, eight 
 millions of them, the leaders of them, are traitors, murderers, and 
 assassins, how dare you, in the light of your duty to your country, to 
 your families, and to your God, consent to embrace them as country- 
 men and brothers ? You did not believe it ; you do not believe it. 
 You know you do not believe it. 
 
Perhaps there is something in the history of this southern people 
 that justifies this frightful suspicion and fills the minds of Senators 
 with alarm and dread. That cannot be. For they are the children 
 of the brave English ancestors who for love of civil and religious 
 liberty left the shores of Europe and settled the New World. They 
 are the immediate descendants of the bold and wise men who helped 
 to establish American independence and to frame this grand and 
 magnificent Government. Their illustrious fathers have certainly 
 handed down to them the passion for liberty and the principle of 
 constitutional freedom. We have inherited it for eight hundred 
 years from our ancestors ; but those ancestors have not transmitted 
 any taint of or example for secret treasons. In the English heart the 
 spirit of conspiracy never found a congenial home. It is the growth 
 of other soils. But have not recent events, you will say, furnished 
 reasonable grounds for these apprehensions of a secret colossal or- 
 ganization hostile to the Government ? Has not the South just 
 emerged from a gigantic war which menaced the very existence of the 
 Union ? That is very true ; but remember that it was open, bold, de- 
 fiant war — threatened for years, proclaimed here, published to the 
 world ; declared by the press, from the pulpit, and the hustings ; the 
 opinion of mankind and the blessings of Heaven invoked in its be- 
 half, and the lives of a people offered to vindicate its justice. It was 
 no concealed, hidden, mysterious, masked conspiracy. Had it been, 
 never, never could it have enlisted the devoted hearts of the noble 
 people who sacrificed everything but honor around its shrine. Its 
 purposes were spoken here ; they were never concealed or denied. 
 Its councils were in the light of heaven. Its lines of battle stretched 
 across the continent. Brave hearts in broad day were its defenses, 
 and around it clustered the hopes and pride of a pure and patriotic 
 people. Are courage, truth, honor, constancy, fortitude, and un- 
 sullied virtue evidences that the people who possess them will descend 
 from that high estate, and, forgetful of all duty, resort to the lowest 
 practices of cowardice and crime ? If this be true, human character 
 is indeed worthless, national honor a mockery and an imposture. 
 
 Senators, if you will think for a moment ; if you will reflect upon 
 the character of the people whom you denounce, their history, their 
 associations, the language they speak, their great ancestors, their 
 brotherhood with you for nearly a century, and their position now, 
 you cannot believe this calumny. Do you, can you, believe that a 
 people from whom have sprung in each succeeding generation for 
 one hundred years a line of statesmen, diviues, scholars, and heroes 
 inferior to none in any portion of the Union have suddenly descended 
 under the shadow of your civilization to the depth of barbarism J ? 
 Does history or human experience justify any such conclusion ? 
 
 And yet you call now upon the public opinion of the world to 
 believe that one-half of your whole nation, brothers in blood with 
 you, sharers of the same inheritance of our fathers, honored Ameri- 
 can freemen, educated, virtuous, and associated with you — you call 
 uj>on the world to believe that they are now guilty and habitually 
 guilty of darker crimes than have ever been committed in human 
 history. And instead of devoting our energies, our patriotism, our 
 intelligence, and our virtues here to develop, reform, and improve 
 this great country, we are now carrying on a war on the floor of the 
 Senate with each other almost as bitter, and I fear not quite as manly, 
 as that in which we were engaged a few years ago upon the Potomac 
 and the Susquehanna. 
 
 Senators this is wrong. Before God, it is wicked. Cannot we stop 
 
it? An incident in history occurs tome now which I do. not know 
 that I have thought of for twenty years. I remember the story, 
 told I think by Thucydides, of the two Greek generals who had not 
 spoken for years. A bitter and hereditary feud separated them. The 
 Persians were at the gates of Athens. The lines of battle were drawn 
 in front of the city. The Persian hosts, vastly superior in number, 
 confronted the thin line of the Greeks, and the great fear with the 
 city was tbat the dissension between the two generals might cause 
 defeat and ruin. Just before the battle commenced, the historian 
 says, from either wiug of the Greek lines the rival leaders were seen 
 approaching in frout of their troops, and simultaneously reaching the 
 center impulsively seized each other's hands and exclaimed — I remem- 
 ber the old Greek words — Y-aTadanTU/iev x°^Vv — " Let us bury our an- 
 ger." Need I repeat that victory shone upon that godlike act of patri- 
 otism? 
 
 They buried their anger ; and why cannot you and I, the North 
 and the Sottth, shake hands and bury our anger ? I think I know 
 the South. I was born south of the Potomac. My ancestors have 
 lived there for two hundred years. I was raised there ; I was educated 
 tbere. I hardly know any other place. Everything I have is there. 
 I love her people and am with them. I see them at home. I see them 
 in Louisiana. I see them in Texas. I know them in Virginia. I am 
 in the very bosom of the South, and I think the sentiment that I utter 
 here to-day is the sentiment of her people. I do not think — I know 
 it is their sentiment. 
 
 Mr. President, the charge made on this floor that the " expression 
 and operation of Union sentiments from southern representatives are 
 confined to this Chamber, that one set of opinions prevail in the Sen- 
 ate and another at home," is as absurd as unjust. The telegraph takes 
 the words from your lips if they are worthy to go, and bears them 
 immediately to the Gulf. The Eecord carries them all over the 
 country. And every Senator understands as well as I do — you, Mr. 
 President, understand it perfectly, and I say it in no disparagement ; 
 it is what every public man ought to understand, it is what every 
 public man ought to appreciate — you know that public men are not 
 apt to avow sentiments that they suppose to be unpopular at home. 
 If the Senate will pardon me, as this imputation has been made by 
 two Senators in this debate and may have some weight, I will ask 
 the Clerk to read the extract on the first page of the book I send to 
 him. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read as follows : 
 
 I thank God there are flowers enough in this beautiful land of the South to strew 
 upon the graves of those who fell alike in the Gray and the Blue, and there are 
 hearts pure and large enough and hands gentle and generous enough to perform 
 the holy duty. 
 
 Mr. RANSOM. In May, 1870, 1 was honored by the ladies of North 
 Carolina with a request to deliver a memorial address over the con- 
 federate dead in the capital of the State. And before thousands of 
 our people I felt it my duty at that time, five years ago, to utter 
 those sentiments. 
 
 Mr. President, can it be said that tbe operation and influence of 
 Union sentiments are confined to the Senate Chamber? I know 
 the Senate will pardon me, for there is nothing like making a clean 
 breast when you want to bring conviction. I spoke those words 
 when the ink was not dry upon the paper which proclaimed to the 
 southern people that their friends had not been allowed to honor the 
 graves of the confederate soldiers at Arlington! 
 
8 
 
 I knew very well that day's injustice had consecrated a sorrow 
 to immortality. I knew that as long as letters and language en- 
 dured, whenever the good read of that act, their hearts in tender 
 thought would go to the heights of Arlington and in imagination 
 scatter upon those bleak graves with the tears of sympathy the immor- 
 telles of affection. 
 
 I will be obliged to the Clerk if he will read a protion of the 
 paragraph in the second column of the paper which I send to the 
 desk. It is in reference to a speech delivered by me in Salisbury, 
 North Carolina, two years ago — since I have been in the Senate. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read as follows : 
 
 On this ground the speaker foresaw the early return of a day of thorough rec- 
 onciliation between the sections lately engaged in deadly conflict and still es- 
 tranged by the yet lingering passion kindled by the war and kept alive by the arts 
 of the demagogue, fie eould see the returning sense of justice, the growth of 
 a more fraternal feeling, and a consciousness of mutual dependence and co-opera- 
 tion for the grand purpose of building up and maintaining the mighty nation it 
 seemed the purpose of Providence to have founded. 
 
 It was a speech for the nation to hear, for it was so full of wise counsel and 
 hopeful suggestion that its influence would be most happily felt in allaying sec- 
 tional animosities and kindling afresh the fire of a common patriotism. 
 
 Mr. RANSOM. That is the comment of a leading newspaper upon 
 a feeble effort made in that part of North Carolina known as the re- 
 bellious section of the State. The character of that people in the 
 American Revolution won from Colonel Tarltonof the British army 
 the expression that it was the " Hornet's-nest of America." I think 
 that I would have spoken those sentiments had they cost me my 
 popularity, had they cost me my position ; but you see what the 
 newspaper says about them, and papers generally reflect public opin- 
 ion. Mr. President, may I say that my presence here to-day is the 
 best proof that these sentiments are approved by the people of my 
 State? 
 
 But, Mr. President, I hope you will pardon me for another personal 
 allusion. I do not make these allusions as affecting me. I speak of 
 them as the expressions of a representative of his State. One of my 
 first acts in this body, one of the first places in which my name 
 appears upon the record, is where I was appointed on the committee 
 of conference with the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. West] and the 
 Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Logan.] There was a disagreement be- 
 tween the Senate and the House upon an amendment appropriating 
 about a million dollars to erect permanent and durable monuments 
 over the graves of Union soldiers. The amendment was attached to 
 the Army appropriation bill by the Senate. I remember well telling 
 my friend from New Jersey [Mr. STOCKTON] what my course would 
 be on it. The Senator from Louisiana is in his seat and I know he 
 will say that I was the first and last man to enforce the adoption of 
 that amendment. I received the thanks of the Senator from Illinois 
 [Mr. Logax] and the thanks of the Senator from Louisiana, and of a 
 gallant Union general of the House ; and that is the cause of my being 
 at present on the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate of the 
 United States. I felt it to be my duty as an American Senator, as a 
 patriot, to give that vote, although I knew that a hundred thousand of 
 the bravest and truest men who ever walked the earth, my comrades in 
 arms, lay buried from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, almost without 
 a stone to mark their graves from the common dust. When did the 
 Senator from Indiana manifest more constancy to the Union ? But let 
 me not be misunderstood. I did not think that I dishonored or sullied 
 the memory or the ashes of my dead comrades by that deed. If I had I 
 would have seen the stars torn from their beautiful spheres before I 
 would have consented to an act that was unjust to their great virtues 
 and character; and you would not have respected me if I had. 
 
Senators, when that cause expired the sold iers of the southern ar- 
 mies, following the example of their great leader, laid down their 
 arms and with their arms their hostilities to the Union forever. 
 Never were truer words spoken than when General Grant said at the 
 close of the war just after the surrender — I read from his report: 
 
 General Lee's great influence throughout the whole South caused his example to 
 be followed, and to-day the result is that the armies lately under his leadership are 
 at their homes, desiring peace and quiet, and their arms are in the hands ot our 
 ordnance officers. 
 
 There is the testimony of a soldier and of your President to the 
 disposition and to the conduct .of southern soldiers after the war. Let 
 those who sometimes throw out taunts about our courage see what he 
 who had a right to speak said about us. The concluding lines of 
 General Grant's report are as follows : 
 
 Let them hope — 
 
 Meaning the northern soldiers — 
 for perpetual peace and harmony with that enemy, whose manhood, however mis- 
 taken the cause, drew forth sucli herculean deeds' of valor. 
 
 The swords that were then sheathed, the muskets that were then 
 grounded, were never again to be lifted against the nation ; and, fur- 
 ther, I must say — God forgive me if I am wrong in saying it — the 
 swords that were then victorious, the bayonets that were then bright 
 with triumph, should never, never have been used against the liber- 
 ties of those who had laid down their arms. 
 
 Nor can I furnish any better evidence of the condition and the temper 
 of the southern people after the war than this extract from General 
 Grant's report, made upon the state of the South some months after 
 the surrender : 
 
 I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present 
 situation of affairs in good faith. The questions which have heretofore divided the 
 sentiment of the people of the two sections — slavery and State rights, or the right 
 of a State to secede from the Union — they regard as having been settled forever by 
 the highest tribunal — arms — that man can resort to. I was pleased to learn from 
 the leading men whom I met that they not only accepted the decision arrived at as 
 final, but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and time has been given 
 for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole country, 
 they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and in 
 the council. 
 
 My observations lead me to the conclusion that the citizens of the Southern 
 States are anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as pos- 
 sible ; that while reconstructing they want and require protection from the Gov- 
 ernment ; that they are in earnest in wishing to do what they think is required, by 
 the Government not humiliating to them as citizens, and that if such a course 
 were pointed out they would pursue it in good faith. It is to be regretted that 
 there cannot be a greater commingling at this time between the citizens of the 
 two sections, and particularly of those intrusted with the law-making power. 
 
 In some instances, I am sorry to say. the freedman's mind does not seem to be 
 disabused of the idea that a freedman has the right to live without care or pro- 
 vision for the future. The effect of the belief in division of lands is idleness and 
 accumulation in camps, towns, and cities. In such cases I think it will be found 
 that vice and disease will tend to the extermination or great reduction of the col- 
 ored race. It cannot be expected that the opinions held by them at the South for 
 years can be changed in a day, and therefore the freedmen require for a few years 
 not only laws to protect them, but the fostering care of those who will give them 
 good counsel and on whom they rely. 
 
 In these words of General Grant will be found a conclusive anawer 
 to many of the accusations that are now brought against our people. 
 
 I was not present when the discussion took place between my 
 friend the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Gordox] and the distinguished 
 Senator from Vermont, [Mr. Edmunds ;] I did not hear the Senator 
 
10 # 
 
 when lie alluded to the name of General Lee. I regret that I did not, 
 and for a very different reason from what that Senator may suppose. 
 The mention of that name, Mr. President, can never give me any- 
 thing but pleasure. If for a moment at any time in this debate I 
 had lost sight of my duty; if I had permitted personal resentment 
 and sectional passions to obscure the path I should tread ; if I had 
 forgotten the high character that should attach to a Senator of my 
 country, let me assure the Senator that he could have mentioned no 
 name with more talismanic power to bring me back to the line of 
 my own and my country's honor. The very memory of the name of 
 Lee now reminds me that this is not the place nor the time to vindi- 
 cate a life that has passed to the tribunal of history ; but I will say 
 that name now inspires me with higher and purer devotion to my 
 country. It elevates me above sectional lines, it lifts me over local 
 and temporary prejudices, it animates me to embrace the nation in 
 the sentiment of patriotism, and it commands me to be constant in 
 laboring to unite the American people. Far from feeling any morti- 
 fication at the Senator's allusion, I thank him for presenting to my 
 mind an image of transcendent virtue, which can never cease to ex- 
 cite my highest aspirations for excellence. 
 
 Mr. President, there was not a soldier in the Army of the Potomac 
 who did not render to that grand impersonation of courage, dignity, 
 virtue, and manly and Christian grace the homage of a soldier's 
 respect. It was my fortune at Appomattox Court House to see Gen- 
 eral Lee and General Grant side by side. That scene can never fade 
 from my memory. I see them now as they then stood. I remember 
 both — the one for his majestic serenity under defeat, the other for his 
 quiet magnanimity in victory ; qualities which, if exercised by the 
 American people, would long since have restored every heart within 
 its limits to affection for the Union. 
 
 But, what is there in the condition of the South upon which a 
 probable or possible ground for the charge of hostility to the national 
 authority can rest ? Where is the motive for it to be located ? What 
 result is it expected to accomplish ? With what reason could it be 
 presented to the people of the South? Where is the argument, the 
 inducement, the incitement to such peril ? The slaves are free, and 
 no intelligent human being at the South would see them return to 
 bondage. Is that the truth ? I speak it here to-day when the clock is at 
 sixteen minutes after ten in the face of the American Senate, and the 
 people from the Potomac down to Mexico will read it. Their rights 
 to citizenship and the ballot are immutably secured — fixed as firmly 
 as the foundations of the Government. They are sacredly and invi- 
 olately intrenched in the Constitution, and can only perish with Amer- 
 ican liberty. The idea of secession does not exist ; it expired with 
 the war ; it is buried, and for it there is no resurrection. The Union 
 is established permanently, perpetually, indissolubly, and nowhere ■■ 
 in the South is there a desire that it should be impaired. 
 
 Disunion has ceased to be a word in our language ; it has dissolved, 
 it has vanished, it has gone; no trace of it is left. Until I heard it in 
 this debate my ear has not caught that sound since the roar of the 
 cannon was hushed. I hope never to hear it- again. Its echoes will 
 never come up from the South. I pray and believe that it is obliter- 
 ated, extinguished, annihilated forever. What possible, conceivable 
 interest can the South have in war or in revolution ? I hope Senators 
 will put that question to themselves and as reasonable meu ask 
 what interest can we have in war or revolution. What has the 
 South to gain ? Nay, what has she not to lose by it ? Where are - 
 
11 
 
 her resources for the conflict? Have Senators reflected that more 
 than one-half of all the subsistence now consumed by the South is 
 purchased from the North ? There is not meat enough in the South- 
 ern States to feed Lee's army sixty days ; Where are the prepara- 
 tions and provisions for war? Is not our whole trade conducted 
 with the North ? We have no direct trade with Europe. In the 
 event of civil war — and, Mr. President, you have considered this ques- 
 tion well — what would become of our cotton crop, the great and only 
 resource of the South, now worth over $200,000,000 annually ? Shut 
 up by blockade within our lines, it would be valueless. Where would 
 we find our markets — from whence derive our supplies ? As long as 
 we are at peace and in the Union we have friends and supporters at 
 the North, but the moment we lift our hands against the Govern- 
 ment or bring on civil war we know that the whole North would be 
 united to crush us. Sir, peace is the only safety and hope of the 
 South. War 'knows no laws, and if we were again madly to rush to 
 arms, how long would it be before one-third of our population would 
 be armed and arrayed against us and our wives and children exposed 
 to the dangers of savage cruelty ? The people of the South shrink from 
 civil war with unutterable horror. They would regard it as the 
 direst calamity that ever cursed a people. They can see nothing in 
 it but imbittered and intenser ruin. They desire, they seek, they 
 cultivate peace j their duty is peace, their prosperity is peace, their 
 honor is peace, their liberty is peace, their aspiration is peace; and 
 there is no intelligent, thoughtful man in the South who does not 
 comprehend it. 
 
 Senators cannot believe seriously what they say. Danger of con- 
 vulsion, revolution, civil war, the overthrow of the Government ! If 
 they so think, let me assure them that the serious business men 
 of this country and of Europe do not sympathize in their panic. If, 
 these fears, these dangers were real, if they had any foundation, I 
 think you would find American securities tumbling rapidly down- 
 ward. You would see gold advance with unprecedented excitement. 
 You would behold the merchants and manufacturers and traders of 
 the North rushing wildly to the South to gather up their imperiled 
 credits. The universal repose of all business interests in this coun- 
 try, our credit at home and in foreign countries, the habitual com- 
 munications of trade in all its branches between the North and South, 
 all refute and condemn this wild cry of alarm. I arn gratified to see 
 that the panic of the Senate has not reached Wall street, nor Paris, 
 nor London, nor Berlin, nor the thoughtful, sober business men of 
 this country. For once the politicians are more sensitive than the capi- 
 talists. During the unhppy conflict betweena the sections the 
 Government kept constantly in the field to meet the contending forces 
 of the South over a half million soldiers trained to war. The 
 shock of the conflict made the earth tremble and now we see the 
 whole people of the South, whose forces resisted the power of the 
 Government for four years, kept quiet by not more than two thousand 
 men distributed over half the country. 
 
 Will any Senator deny, if these statements were true, that this 
 people who are so shamefully calumniated as abandoned, desperate, 
 and fatally hostile to the Government could sweep every vestige of 
 Federal authority in the South from existence in a month ? Is not 
 the national authority maintained in absolute supremacy in every 
 part of the Southern States? Is not the presence of the American 
 flag everywhere respected? Did not the rebellion of Penn in Louisi- 
 ana, bristling, as has been charged, with fiery war, retire and disarm 
 
12 
 
 itself upon the first appearance of national authority ? Where is the 
 menace, the peril to the nation's peace in all this ? What kind of 
 opposition, of hostility, of clanger to the Government and the laws 
 of the country is that which now for ten years has not once raised 
 its voice or lifted its hand against their authority f Will Senators 
 tell me what interest the southern people can have in separation 
 from the North or in the disturbance and upheaval of the Government, 
 that they should contemplate these results ? That fatal effort has 
 cost us the loss of untold millions, the lives of our best sons, years of 
 anguish and suffering, and now casts dark shadows far, far into the 
 future. Is it supposed that we are blind, stupid, infatuated enough to 
 fancy that we can consummate by subtle and insidious subterfuges, by 
 secret and occult societies, by unlawful, skulking combinations, by 
 expert and hateful wiles, what we signally failed to accomplish by a 
 common, united, determined, manly struggle of all our people when 
 we had faith and invoked the blessing of God upon our arms ? 
 
 Do Senators know so little of the character of the southern people 
 as to imagine that they surrendered their armies and submitted to 
 the nation's power until they exhausted every resource, gave up 
 every hope, and abandoned every purpose of resistance ? Can any 
 one believe that that proud, brave, generous people, capable of every 
 manly and honorable sacrifice, cherishing the jewel of their honor 
 with more than eastern idolatry, now, when they have nothing left but 
 its unstained sentiment, would ever consent to sully and tarnish for 
 the gratification of base prejudices, of unjust resentments, of cruel 
 hatreds, the name they have kept so bright! They know little, they 
 know nothing of our proud manhood, who can think that the South, 
 would surrender its inheritance of valor, truth, and uncalculating honor 
 to any consideration, to any passion beneath it. When they returned 
 to the Union, when they renewed their loyalty to the Government, 
 they embraced it as a duty and nobly conceived that their highest 
 glory lay in maintaining their faith without a blemish. But, thank 
 Heaven, to prove their truth to this faith they have not, they never 
 can think it necessary, they can never think it right to disown, to 
 repudiate, to dishonor the principles that once animated their hearts. 
 Upon the altars of their country, for peace and with the hope of lib- 
 erty, they have burned their passions, their prejudices, their policies ; 
 but their sacred memories, their hallowed affections, their holy duties 
 to their past, they still cherish with increased devotion. 
 
 Mr. President, what interest has the South in further disturbance, 
 hostility, agitation ? Do not the great rivers of commerce flow 
 through both sections ? They cannot be divided. Do not the great 
 railway lines bind us in links of iron and bonds of interest together ? 
 Do we not hope to see the rich streams of your wealth flow down to our 
 beautiful but desolated fields ? Do we not desire your support and 
 defense against foreign dangers ? Do we not ardently, prayerfully 
 desire harmony, peace, fraternal peace, with you as neighbors and as 
 brothers ? Can you think after fifteen years of war, suffering, agony, 
 and torture the South does not long for repose, tranquillity, and the 
 subsidence of the bitter waters of strife ? Let the last messenger 
 from that sad ark bring back to us the green leaves of hope. 
 
 Is it not enough for atonement, is it not enough for all ends, that 
 we have surrendered to necessities $3,000,000,000 in slave property, 
 that we have lost $3,000,000,000 more in other values ? These are not 
 my estimates. They are the estimates of the committee which in 1872 
 went to the Southern States to inquire into their condition. Is it not 
 enough that our recent slaves are now our political equals ; that we 
 
13 
 
 have been "steeped in poverty to the very lips;" that our "utmost 
 hopes have been given to captivity ; " that we have been tried with 
 every affliction ; that our bosoms are brimful of sorrow ? And still we 
 have found in our souls some drops of patience. What greater sacri- 
 fice is required? I know of none other that we can make, unless it be 
 base and abject submission to unlawful power and the confession be- 
 fore mankind that we are unworthy the name of men, and are ready 
 to kiss the rod and the feet that smite and oppress us. Senators, this 
 can never be. We cannot, we will not do this, We will not consent 
 to our own degradation — never, never. We would be unworthy asso- 
 ciates, we would not be fit to breathe the free air of a republic, if we 
 would consent to it; and there is not an honest man or a good woman 
 under the sun who would respect us for a moment if we could consent 
 to it. 
 
 Will you penetrate our hearts, and undertake to eradicate from 
 them the sentiments and feelings of education and association ? Will 
 you thrust your hands into our bosoms, and tear from them the images 
 impressed there by our fathers and our mothers ? Will you enter the 
 chambers of the mind, to uproot its convictions and strike from its 
 tablets the very memory of long-cherished opinions ? No, Senators, 
 this must be the work of time, the slow process of experience. The 
 human head and heart are not material ; you cannot change them 
 as you do the grounds and the scenery around the Capitol. God has 
 planted in them his laws of truth and duty, and they can be erased 
 only by reason and time. Do not drive the South to the terrible 
 alternative of despotism or anarchy. Do not present that deadly 
 dilemma, with its double ruin, to our people — 
 
 Which way I turn is hell — 
 
 And in the lowest deep a lower deep still 
 Threatening to devour me, opens wide 
 To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. 
 
 How long can the North survive the slavery and ruin of the South ? 
 This country cannot endure with one-half of its limbs and body 
 paralyzed and decaying. The genius of ancient Greece was taxed to 
 invent the most cruel and appropriate punishment for the murderer 
 who had slain his own brother. The unhappy felon was doomed to 
 have the dead body of his victim chained to his own living limbs and 
 to carry the frightful burden wherever he moved. The penalty was 
 greater than the crime. The wretched and accursed fratricide found 
 relief only in death by contagion from the mortified corpse to 
 which he was fastened. And such would be the fate, the just fate, of 
 the Northern States if they should persist in the unnatural and unhal- 
 lowed work of crushing out the liberties of the South and extinguish- 
 ing her yet vital sparks. The yoke that oppresses our necks will 
 extend its mortal fetters around your proud steps and bring down 
 both to a common grave if not a common infamy. 
 
 I shall not follow some examples that have been set me in this 
 debate. I cannot consent to place the defense of the South upon 
 the defects or misfortunes of other sections of the country. I must 
 put her defense and her honor upon higher ground. Whenever I 
 feel that I am obliged to defend the South by priminating and recrim- 
 inating the North, I shall retire from this Chamber, and ask the 
 proud State that I represent to send another here to do that work. 4 
 
 Nor shall I deem it any part of my duty here, of my duty any- 
 where, to ransack the sources of unjust misrepresentation to give 
 them the appearance of respectability by their development on the 
 
14 
 
 floor of the Senate ; nor shall I at any time feel at liberty to go into 
 the proud States of this Union to see if, -with envious or malignant eye, 
 I cannot find something that shall blacken their bright names or 
 mortify their just pride. Nor, sir, shoixld I feel altogether justified 
 in constructing an argument to be listened to by the American Sen- 
 ate and read by the American people composed of extracts taken 
 here and there from the heated furnace of journalism. Nor should I 
 consider that I served my country when I undertook to enlighten her 
 counsels or direct her legislation by the uncertain and unsteady light 
 that I had collected up from the passionate expressions, the intem- 
 perate sentences, the inconsiderate words of a few rash men scattered 
 over the extent of half a continent ; and least of all should I think or 
 feel that I did justice to my country's history or reflected honor on 
 her character or credit on my own name by going back over the rec- 
 ords of her people or of her States, in whatever section they may be, 
 to drag from their resting-places the errors or the follies of the past. 
 No, sir ; I shall not descend into the grave to see if I cannot bring to 
 light from the tomb of the dead past something that may gratify 
 malignant and insatiate passions. I shall shun that cowardly instinct 
 of the hateful beast that finds its subsistence in the buried remains of 
 nobler creatures and delights to feed on the dead forms it feared and 
 shrank from while living. If my purpose was to destroy the fame 
 of the American Eepublic ; if I desired to diminish and circumscribe 
 her beneficent influences all over the world ; if I hoped to plant per- 
 petual discord between her great sections ; if my aim was to engage 
 her statesmen and patriots in endless and bitter strife, such is the 
 course I should adopt. I desire no such work. It is not consistent 
 with any principle of my life to devote the time and ability of a Sen- 
 ator to the unprofitable and uncommendable task of discovering and 
 exposing the faults and the vices of any sister State of this Union. 
 I shall be content to believe that in the intense light of our civiliza- 
 tion the people of each State can take best care of its own domestic 
 affairs in the way that to them seems right and proper. I shall not, 
 sir, come down to the language of aspersion against the character of 
 any State or the character of her people. I have no ambition to 
 prove that any one of the States has less title than another to the 
 respect and admiration of the American people. I desire to see all 
 of them great, good, and happy. If I behold any of her sister States 
 advancing with grander strides and exhibiting more enterprise, virtue, 
 or patriotism than North Carolina, I shall hold up that State as an 
 example to our own people, and commend for their imitation her vir- 
 tues and her glory. I shall not endeavor to detract one laurel from 
 her brow or cast a shadow on the excellence of her character. I 
 shall claim a part of her glory as my own, as a common renown in 
 which every American has a share. If I shall unhappily see any State 
 depressed, downcast, and wandering away from ' the orbit of her 
 usefulness and dignity, far, far be it from me or mine to strike, to 
 wound, to humiliate her ; but her adversities shall excite my kindest 
 consideration, and I will endeavor to support and strengthen her, and 
 employ all constitutional means to restore her to health, prosperity, 
 and honor. 
 
 What, sir, is the meaning of " sister States ? " Is it an empty sound ? 
 Is it an epithet of irony ? The Greeks, by a strange figure of speech, 
 called the " Furies " Eumenides — the " Gracious." Are we to copy 
 the fiction of their language into reality, and convert the " sister 
 States '? into the " States of Discord." In the name of a common 
 country and by the sanctities of a common suffering, I protest against 
 
15 
 
 this family war. Cannot the States be indeed sisters in the full sense 
 of that sacred word ; sisters in interest, sympathy, affection, and duty, 
 giving one to all and all to one support, assistance, and mutual confi- 
 dence ? In an unhappy hour they were torn apart and divided, and 
 now after years of war and sorrow shall they not be again united in 
 peace forever ? Heaven forbid that discord should relight her con- 
 suming fires in their bosoms. 
 
 The honorable Senator from New York, who has discussed the pend- 
 ing question with his usual ability — and he always contributes to any 
 subject the light of uncommon learning and the interest of a master's 
 style — has discovered the secrets of all the troubles in the Southern 
 States, has found the key that unlocks the hidden mysteries to what- 
 ever of lawlessness prevails in that unhappy section. Most earnestly 
 the Senator informs us that opposition to negro suffrage, to colored 
 citizenship, to manhood rights under the Constitution is the one cause 
 for whatever is to be found in the South of aberration from the path 
 of peace and law. Mr. President, has not the Senator confounded cause 
 with effect? If the Senator's vision, usually so acute, had looked quite 
 through the question, must he not have seen that negro suffrage, ne- 
 gro citizenship, and not opposition to these principles, was the cause 
 of the anomalies at the South ? Does the honorable Senator see no 
 cause for unusual disturbance in the political elements from the fact 
 that four millions of ignorant, uneducated, untrained people, totally 
 unaccustomed to any self-government and utterly incapable of com- 
 prehending the principles or appreciating the duties that attach to 
 this great function, have been suddenly invested with more than the 
 balance of power in the Southern States ? Does the Senator find in 
 this ascendant fact no cause, no sufficient cause, for convulsion and 
 upheaval in the political systems of the South ? Does the intelligent 
 Senator suppose that this unparalleled transformation could take 
 place without producing shocks to the harmony of our polity ? Is 
 human government in the opinion of the Senator so unlike everything 
 in the material universe that this vast and unwieldy mass of blind 
 power could be instantly thrown on its wheels and not revers'e or 
 destroy their revolutions ? If the Indian Ocean should be suddenly 
 emptied into the Atlantic, boundless as are its capacities, the immense 
 accession could not be withstood, and a tidal wave would in all prob- 
 ability submerge a continent. Elastic and vital as is the circumam- 
 bient air, the sudden passage of a colder or a more heated current 
 produces tornadoes and simooms that sweep over a hemisphere. 
 
 Is human government here in the American Eepublic superior to 
 all laws of cause and effect, and are its genius and energy equal to any 
 strain that may be placed upon it ? The accession of a new planet 
 in the measureless heavens would make the very suns tremble and 
 stagger in their spheres ; and yet the honorable Senator, with his 
 acute and sensitive observation, can discover in the disorder of the 
 southern planets no influence of that foreign body which counter- 
 balances their established order and disarranges all the laws of their 
 being. He would not be reckoned a faithful astronomer who, watch- 
 ing the heavens, should behold the beautiful constellation of the 
 Southern Cross eclipsed by some "burning comet" of " pestilence and 
 war," and then should hold up his hands in holy horror and exclaim 
 against the malignant influence of the stars. Sir, the Senator ad- 
 vances yet a step further in this line of his argument, and declares 
 that so desperate and extreme was the hostility to the constitutional 
 rights of the colored man, his enemies resolved that the recon- 
 struction acts and the constitutional amendments embodying their 
 
16 
 
 rights should be a failure, even at the point of producing a revolu- 
 tion at the South and overwhelming law, order, peace, liberty, and 
 everything valuable in its ruins. It may be true, Mr. President, that 
 the wrongs inflicted on the South were cruel enough to suggest to 
 the Senator's mind the image of the blind giant, seizing the pillars of 
 the temple and burying the oppressor and the oppressed in a common 
 calamity. But let me assure the Senator that the people of the South 
 have too clear a conception of their duty, too deep a sense of their 
 obligation to the age and the country, and a too abiding hope in the 
 ultimate triumph of justice, to have blindly despaired of the return 
 of reason and madly rushed to their own destruction and infamy, 
 in order to defeat a policy which, if successful, whatever motives 
 prompted its adoption or whatever their opinions of its justice or wis- 
 dom, would result in their political ascendency and the physical 
 regeneration of their country. 
 
 Let me assure the Senator that he has yet much to learn of south 
 ern character if he for one moment imagines that under the im- 
 pression of passion or delusion they would imperil their lives and 
 honor and the happiness and safety of their wives and children 
 to revenge a fancied wrong, to mitigate a temporary evil, or to grat- 
 ify a prejudice and resentment. In all candor let me ask the dis- 
 tinguished Senator if he really believes that the people of the South 
 were so opposed, so hostile, so antagonistic to negro suffrage and cit- 
 izenship as to commit suicide to defeat its success, as to annihilate 
 everything of worth to accomplish its failure. I say I ask the Sen- 
 ator, if he so believes, does he think it quite right, quite just, quite 
 patriotic, to have imposed on a brave and generous people a bur- 
 den that they would surrender their lives and all that is dearer than 
 life sooner than bear ? Does the Senator think that such a sacrifice 
 of the white people of the South would have been right ? I cannot 
 believe he does. 
 
 Let me inform the Senator that the proposition to bestow suffrage 
 and citizenship upon four millions of human beings just emerging 
 front slavery, and known ^to possess not the first qualification or 
 requisite for the proper discharge of that highest power, did shock 
 the moral sense and the patriotic emotion of the southern people to 
 their deepest foundations. They could not realize the fact that the 
 intelligent, virtuous, and patriotic peojile of the North could in- 
 trust the sacred responsibilities of the ballot and the higher duties 
 of popular rulers to a class of persons, who no one was found insane 
 enough to believe were in any sense fitted for the exercise of these 
 inestimable rights and privileges. 
 
 The southern people were appalled at the danger which, like some 
 mighty avalanche, was thus in a moment suspended over their rights, 
 their social happiness, and their liberties. They with all sincerity 
 regarded it as the most perilous experiment ever attempted at any 
 time by a civilized people not entirely dissolved from all moral alle- 
 giance to the opinion of mankind. But, sir, they never proposed,, 
 they never conceived the supreme madness of attempting to avert these 
 threatened and probable evils by the certain and purposed destruction 
 by their own hands of all the muniments of law, society, civilization, 
 and freedom. No; the South never looked to anarchy or chaos as 
 their desperate deliverance from negro supremacy. They feared too 
 deeply that these terrible curses would be the result of that l'eckless 
 experiment. They never dreamed of precipitating that awful crisis. 
 On the contrary they determined with the most patriotic fidelity to 
 stand by the covenants of a constitution which had been imposed by 
 
17 
 
 power upon them, and to give the new departures from the great 
 original the fairest trial and the most favorable test which the life of 
 the country could bear. They saw the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 amendments intrenched, imbedded, incorporated in the body and very 
 life of the Constitution. They saw no possibility of any reversal of 
 the popular judgment thus embodied in the organic law of the Repub- 
 lic. And in perfect good faith the people of the South resolved to 
 make the best of their situation and to do everything in their power 
 to carry into proper effect and enforcement the laws of the country. 
 They determined to respect the rights of the black man, to cultivate 
 his friendship, to conciliate his confidence, to promote his welfare, to 
 elevate him by education, by counsel, by example, and by counte- 
 nance and support up to the high duties of an American citizen. This 
 was the general sentiment, wish, and purpose of the southern people 
 after the reconstruction of the States. The history of that period 
 attests its truth; it is illustrated in the acts of State Legislatures, 
 the resolves of popular assemblies, and the common expression of the 
 people and the press. 
 
 I regret to say what was the fate of this sincere and honest effort 
 on the part of southern whites to live in political peace and prosper- 
 ity with the colored race. Our offerings were spurned, our tenders 
 mocked, our generosity ridiculed, and every effort we made, every word 
 we spoke only united, intensified, exasperated the great body of col- 
 ored voters yet more against us. This was not the fault of the negro, 
 and the southern people have been too generous to charge him with 
 it. The sin of its failure lies at the feet of those who for mercenary 
 ends arrayed him, to the common iujury of both, against the white man. 
 We still labor, we still hope, we still faithfully strive to conquer 
 his prejudices and convince him that we do not intend to destroy 
 his rights or impair his happiness. But, while this has been our 
 course — sincere, faithful, and determined — pursued with fidelity but 
 not with confidence, let me say to the honorable Senator from New 
 York that hatred of suffrage and equal rights of black men has not 
 ruled the hour. We have no " unquenched resentment and preju- 
 dice," but we all have iH our hearts kindly, anxious solicitude, deep 
 concern, and a Christian humanity for the black man. 
 
 Sir, we have no prejudice of race, but we have a sentiment born 
 with us, coeval with human creation, running through every age and 
 felt in every clime — a sentiment as ineradicable as life, as inexorable as 
 fact, as permanent as nature, as strong as the attraction of gravity, 
 as invincible and irrepressible as the flow of the tides or the revolu- 
 tion of the seasons — that the white race is the leading, progressive, 
 dominant race upon the earth. This is not prejudice of race. It is 
 pride of race, character of race, dignity of race. It is not an unjust 
 and arbitrary habit of the mind or the heart ; it is an honorable con- 
 viction, founded in the experience of mankind from the beginning, 
 and always maintained in every stage of human history. Not to ad- 
 mit it is to convict this nation of the grossest wrong and cruelty ever 
 exercised in its treatment of the Indian tribes. Any other theory 
 would make our forefathers ruthless robbers and their descendants 
 the bloody successors to their crimes. Sir, I deny that this is so. 
 
 I say no man can read the world's history — no man can take up 
 the map of the habitable globe to-day and fail to see the proof of 
 this assertion. Look at the atlas of all the States and peoples upon 
 the earth ; run your eye back along down the long vistas of all the 
 generations that have gone before us ; consider the Assyrian, the Bab- 
 ylonian, the Greek, the Roman, the English, the French, the German, 
 
 2 R 
 
18 
 
 and all the people who are known in history ; consider well all the 
 nations of the earth and all the races of men, and tell me if you find 
 civilization, art, science, enlightened government, happy society, law, 
 order, progress, or true humanity among any but the white race. The 
 Persians were white, the Greeks were white, the Romans were white, 
 their conquerors were white, the Britons, the Savons, the Normans, 
 the Swiss, the Germans, the Russians, the Franks, the Northmen of 
 Europe, were all white. Demosthenes, Cicero, Alexander, Caesar, Co- 
 lumbus, Bacon, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Washington, Fulton, and 
 Morse ; the great scholars, the great captains, the great poets, the great 
 orators, the painters, the sculptors, the inventors to whom we are in- 
 debted for steam and the telegraph ; the great patriots, the great 
 philosophers, the great characters of the Bible, the children of Israel, 
 and also the conquerors of the earth, the philosophers, the benefac- 
 tors, the masters of law, the masters of medicine, the constructors of 
 human languages, the framers of good government, in every age and 
 period of human life have belonged to the white race. 
 
 With these lights before us was it the " prejudice of race," the 
 hatred, the unquenched resentment against the negro that inspired 
 us ? No, sir ; but we could not eradicate our convictions, we could 
 not falsify history, we could not surrender all that was high and 
 noble and valuable to the mad idea of negro supremacy in the 
 South. The descendants of Locke, Milton, and Hampden; the coun- 
 trymen of Washington, Webster, and Story; the proud sons of fathers 
 and mothers who had cherished and preserved liberty and law and 
 honor with their lives and with every sacrifice for hundreds of years 
 could not surrender all the heritages and the memories and the 
 lessons of their own race, and look to the dark land of the sun for 
 their rulers and exemplars. They saw Europe, the country of white 
 men, radiant with civilization and learning and beauty. They saw 
 America, his home in the New World, bright with liberty, prog- 
 ress, and Christian glory ; and they could but see Africa in its dark 
 and arid night, unbroken in successive barbarism and ignorance, and 
 all the rays of civilization for five hundred years battling around its 
 coasts and notable to penetrate its dense and deathly deserts a mile 
 from the shore. Could we hesitate, ought we to have hesitated 
 about our duty ? 
 
 We resolved to be just, to be kiud, to be humane to the black man, 
 to respect his equal rights before the law, to give him every oppor- 
 tunity for improvement and advancement ; but never, never to give 
 up to him the proud inheritances of our race, the love of civil and 
 religious liberty, the administration of justice, the lights of knowl- 
 edge, the virtues of our fathers, and all the inestimable blessings of a 
 Christian civilization. Far from incurring your censure for this, we are 
 entitled to your commendation. In your mistaken policy of recon- 
 struction you struck down the white race and you exalted the black. 
 In your amendments to the Constitution there are no discrimi- 
 nations against the black man, but there were and are cruel exclu- 
 sions, impediments, disabilities on the white man. You disqualified 
 from holding office, and voting too, during the progress of reconstruc- 
 tion every man in the South who having ever held any public office 
 of trust and honor had aided the rebellion. This disabling clause in- 
 cluded all the experienced, trusted, able men of the South who had 
 administered her governments. It left the government of that 
 country in the hands of the inexperienced, embarrassed as they must 
 be with the difficult element of negro suffrage, misled by designing 
 and corrupt men. See what immense power you placed in the hands 
 
19 
 
 of four millions of blacks in the Southern States. Is there any pre- 
 cedent or parallel to it in the annals of human government ? It is 
 the first, the only time in the history of the human family that slaves 
 have been made the political rulers of their former masters. Sena- 
 tors, when you put the chains and fetters of your disabling clause 
 upon the white men of the South and excluded them from participa- 
 tion in the Government and invested the black man with all the 
 rights and powers and privileges of the citizen unimpaired, did you 
 not commit an act of cruel proscription against the white people of 
 the South ? You bound the southern people in inexorable contact 
 and collision with blind, untrained negro suffrage. You lashed Ma- 
 zeppa hand and foot to the wild steed of the desert, and left rider 
 and horse to the vultures who pursued their ruin. 
 
 It is true we had fought you boldly and bravely ; but the war was 
 over; we had made peace; we wished to be brothers again. And now 
 I ask if there was any just reason that the negroes of the South, 
 whom your fathers no less than mine had made slaves, who had con- 
 tributed nothing to the discovery and conquest of this continent, who 
 had given no aid in the establishment of our liberties, who had ex- 
 hibited no capacity for civil government or for social order, and who 
 had none of the qualifications of education or experience for self- 
 administration — I ask you if there was any just reason that these 
 people should be given political supremacy, political advantage, po- 
 litical rank over a proscribed people who for eighty years had been 
 your brothers, whose fathers had fought with yours at Bunker Hill, 
 Yorktown, and New Orleans, and who could array against four years 
 of civil war, against four years of alienation, four generations of pa- 
 triotic, unselfish, illustrious devotion to the nation, its liberties and 
 its glory ? 
 
 Yet, Senators, here to-day, in the face of all that may be said about 
 these four years of hostile and confronting war by men threatening 
 disunion, men trying to tear down the Government, by men shedding 
 oceans of blood, I present to you eighty years of our devotion to the 
 country. I show you these houses builded by our fathers. I walk 
 this Capitol, and as I enter the Eotunda I see four pictures illustrating 
 southern history. As I go out upon the eastern square of the Capitol 
 I see the statue to the Father of his Country, with that immortal in- 
 scription — 
 
 Istud simulacrum 
 Ad magnum exemplum libertatis 
 Nee sine ipsa duratuium. 
 
 As I go to my home and pass down the Potomac the toll of the 
 bell tells me that there sleeps Washington, a southern man. As I 
 go by way of Baltimore aud down to Fortress Monroe, I see the 
 Ripraps, the work of Calhoun. Though his name has been stricken 
 from the fort he projected, I tell you, you can never tear it from the 
 pages of American history. As long as those stones he planted there 
 beat back the waves to the sea, the morning gun and the twilight 
 cannon will echo that name ; and there is not a gallant tar on the 
 proud decks of your Navy who, as long as he respects and loves free 
 trade and sailors' rights, will not remember the name and honor the 
 patriot who defended them in this Chamber and the other end of the 
 Capitol. 
 
 I repeat again, I would impair no right of the colored mau. I 
 would protect him faithfully in every right secured to him by the 
 Constitution, and especially by the thirteenth, fourteenth, and 
 fifteenth amendments. I would protect him in his liberty, his citi- 
 
20 
 
 zenship, his right to vote. I would go further, and educate hini and 
 elevate him to the high position of all the duties and capacities of 
 an American citizen. I would take him by the hand and lift him up 
 and sustain him. I would never oppress or depress him because he is 
 poor, ignorant, and a colored man. I would give him every oppor- 
 tunity of improving his physical, mental, and moral condition ; and 
 I would oppose and denounce any man or any party who would un- 
 dertake to proscribe him and deny him these rights and these priv- 
 ileges. The laws, the Constitution of my country, guarantee to the 
 negro these rights, and I will never violate them. But while I would 
 endeavor most faithfully to do full and complete justice to the colored 
 man, let me once for all say that I never could consent that the white 
 people of the South, the white people of the country, should subordi- 
 nate their rights, their attainments, their capacities, their prestiges 
 to the colored man. On this subject my convictions are firmly fixed — 
 immutably fixed and settled. 
 
 The capacity of the colored man for self-government is not yet de- 
 termined ; his capacity to attain and to utilize high intellectual cul- 
 ture has not been proved ; his moral nature has not yet been fully 
 developed ; his disposition and his ability to maintain enlightened 
 Christian civilization are yet in doubt, and to commit to him the des- 
 tinies of the South, its fate, its future, with all its hopes and possi- 
 bilities, would be an act of madness far beyond a#iy language of mine 
 to describe. It is a great mistake to think that the j>eople of the 
 South are unjust, unkind, or inimical in any sense to the colored race. 
 We have felt too deeply the weights and burdens of oppression to 
 desire to impose them on others. Our own experience has taught us 
 profound, sincere sympathy for an oppressed people. We know what 
 political vassalage is, and nothing could provoke us to inflict it on a 
 weak and defenseless race. The yoke has been too bitter and galling 
 on our necks for us to be willing to place it on the necks of others. 
 We certainly now know the value of freedom, the blessing of free 
 government, the happiness of equal laws, and we would be the last 
 people on earth to deprive any human beings of these inestimable 
 rights. Nor, sir, if we desired it, could we afford to be unjust or un- 
 generous to the colored people at the South. The greatest misfor- 
 tune under which the South suffers is the ignorance of the northern 
 people in reference to our real condition. You know but little of 
 our Avauts arid necessities. You do not understand our true situa- 
 tion. You are not the jurors of the vicinage. You are strangers, 
 undertaking to compose and settle a question the first and sim- 
 plest elements of which you do not understand. If you fully com- 
 prehended the state of things at the South you would know that there 
 is a mutual dependence now and likely to be for a long time between 
 the races. The blacks are poor and generally own no land. The 
 whites possess all the land, and without labor they find their land 
 valueless ; hence the necessity of mutual concession, forbearance, and 
 kindness ; and I measure deliberately my words when I declare that 
 to no laboring class has capital — land — ever made such concessions as 
 have been made to the colored people at the South. The land-owner 
 is compelled by every motive of interest and duty to treat the colored 
 laborer with extreme kindness and fairness. 
 
 The competition among the land-owners for tenants and labor- 
 ers to cultivate their lands is excited and constant ; and the great 
 object of the planters is not, as has been most untruly alleged, to 
 drive the negroes from their homes, but it has been and will be to 
 get negroes to settle on and work their lands. I am perfectly well 
 
21 
 
 satisfied that any systematic attempt to intimidate the blacks by 
 threats to drive them from the plantations for opinion's sake would 
 result in utter and ridiculous failure. They would not leave one 
 plantation before they would be gladly invited and welcomed to 
 another. Every effort in the South in the direction of any combina- 
 tion to control or regulate our labor system has signally failed. The 
 interests of the land-owners themselves always defeat any such en- 
 terprise. And such will always be the case — the necessary state of 
 things in any country in which labor is scarce and land is plentiful. 
 
 There is another fact in the history of the negro at the South that 
 constitutes a great safeguard to his interests and some protection to 
 his rights. It is well known that the colored man will not remain 
 where he is not well treated. The planter who practices injustice or 
 cruelty or oppression on the colored man soon finds his plantation 
 depopulated and his fields a desert, and I promise my friend from New 
 York that "resentments and prejudices" do not long survive defeats 
 of this character. And then, sir, over and above all of these considera- 
 tions, far above all of them, is the sense of justice of the honorable 
 men of the South. That sense of justice would scorn to wrong the 
 colored man. Enlightened public opinion at the South demands and 
 exacts fair dealing with the blacks. No white man at the South can 
 maintain a respectable position in society who is habitually cruel or 
 unjust to the colored people ; and the calumny that they do not 
 receive justice in our courts is gross and flagrant. In the name of 
 that learned and honorable profession to wdiich it is my pride to be- 
 long, and which in all ages of the world has proved the fearless advo- 
 cate of the oppressed and the manly defender of right, whose history 
 is the record of justice and liberty, I protest against this cruel libel 
 on the lawyers, the judges, the courts of the South. 'I appeal to that 
 common law of honor known among the profession, wherever the 
 English language is spoken, to disbelieve and refute the calumny. 
 
 Think you, Senators, that the bar that took its stamp from Mar- 
 shall, Iredell, Gaston, Badger, and Pinckney w r ould descend from its 
 high estate to become the persecutors of poor helpless blacks ? 
 
 Mr. President, there is a matter sometimes intimated, sometimes 
 charged, sometimes advanced in one direction and sometimes demon- 
 strated in another, that I feel it part of my duty to answer. I think 
 it is my duty to do it, and I hope it will not be thought to be inap- 
 propriate here. We have been told that there will be in the next 
 Congress eighty-eight confederate soldiers. I ask the Clerk to read 
 the first paragraph from an address delivered by General Burnside a 
 day or two ago. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read' as follows: 
 
 Some of our people are naturally enough alarmed at the election to Congress by 
 the southern people of a large number of the ex-officers of that army. Now, com- 
 rades, it seems to me that a little consideration will show that there is no great 
 cause for alarm. These ex-officers, it should be remembered, are under paroles of 
 honor. While we all believe that the most sacred earthly duty of an American 
 citizen is that of loyalty to the Republic, yet we must not lose sight of the fact that 
 a soldier, in his individual capacity of a soldier, can realize no contingency that 
 would make him violate his parole. 
 
 Mr. EANSOM. Mr. President, I desire to send from this Chamber my 
 thanks to General Burnside, the Senator-elect from Rhode Island, for 
 that manly sentiment in behalf of the men w r hom he so lately met 
 bravely in battle. I tell you that there is with us, if it can be, a higher 
 sentiment of honor and duty even than the parole of wdiich he speaks. 
 And here, let me say that since the surrender at Appomattox we 
 have been accustomed at the South, the soldiers and the people, 
 
to look upon the soldiers of the North as our best friends. It is 
 true that for four years we met them in battle after battle, and 
 that blows were given and blows received such as the god of war has 
 seldom witnessed. But when the strife was ended we felt that the 
 soldiers of both armies were and would be forever friends. Next in our 
 hearts to our. own loved comrades were the gallant adversaries with 
 whom we had striven in honorable conflict; the ashes of our 
 noble dead mingled in the same field with the honored dust of 
 the brave men of the North, and their common memories were the 
 sacred trust of our affection and sorrow. Between the survivors there 
 existed that brave sympathy which in all ages has done so much 
 honor to a soldier's character. On both sides they knew the convic- 
 tions which inspire men when they take their lives in their hands 
 and offer them to the service of their country. They knew that 
 nothing but the highest and purest sense of duty can animate and 
 sustain a soldier through a long and bloody war. They knew a 
 soldier's devotion to honor. They remembered the lines of a hundred 
 battles upon which the brave men of the North met the brave men of 
 the South, and along which no soldier ever refused to a wounded 
 adversary the last drop of water in his canteen or to divide the last 
 cracker in his haversack. They remembered their common dangers, 
 privations, and patriotism. They felt a mutual admiration for their 
 virtues, and they had the common memory of gallant and devoted 
 achievement. There was between them that high respect which 
 courage always inspires, and both had won too much glory for either 
 to envy the trophies of the other. I need not say that in their brave 
 hearts there was no place for hatred or revenge. When the arms 
 were grounded and the flags furled and laid away all antagonism 
 ceased, and one generous desire for peace and fraternal union pervaded 
 all ranks of the dissolving armies. Hands that had lately met in 
 deadly conflict were now grasped with friendly fervor, and tears of 
 regret and of joy flowed freely down cheeks scarred with the furrows 
 of war. Can it ever be forgotten that in that unhappy struggle 
 brothers were arrayed on opposing sides, and that when the contest 
 was over they met as brothers again. May I not say that it was a 
 conflict between brothers, sons of the same glorious mother, and 
 when it was over they were brothers once more. 
 
 Since the surrender at Appomattox I have met hundreds, yes thou- 
 sands of your gallant men, the men who fought for the Union, aud I 
 have yet to meet the first soldier who did not grasp my extended and 
 open hand with the cordial clasp of friendship and patriotism. I 
 cannot, I will not permit these feelings, these sentiments, honorable 
 alike to the gallant men of both causes, to be disturbed by any words 
 that may be spoken here. No party excitement, no intense zeal, no 
 heated denuuciation, no intemperate expressions, no sectional animos- 
 ities shall obscure or obliterate the just, hopeful, patriotic impressions 
 which these noble facts have left on my mind. I prefer to cherish and 
 preserve them in undimmed and glowing brightness — 
 
 Within the book and volume of my brain, 
 
 Unmix'd with baser matter. 
 
 Instead of sectional passions, divisions, strifes, let the blood, the 
 tears, the affections of American soldiers, be they from the North or 
 from the South, form a bow of peace that shall stand forever as the 
 bond and arch of a united people. Upon it there will be drops of 
 sorrow, but it will be radiant with honor and patriotic duty and hope. 
 
 We have been told by the press aud we have heard here that in 
 the next Con<jrress there will be more than eightv confederate sol- 
 
23 
 
 diers. Let that fact, Mr. President, give the country no alarm, no 
 excitement. Yon will find these representatives conservative, pa- 
 triotic, and national, eminently desirous of being just and generous 
 to the whole country, and resolved to demonstrate their fidelity to 
 the Government and to prove to the world that they are as true and 
 honorable defenders of the Union and the Constitution as they were 
 gallant and devoted soldiers of the confederacy. If the soil or the 
 honor of the nation were to be assailed by a foreign or domestic foe you 
 would see them with their noble comrades rushing to its defense, il- 
 lustrating the same courage and constancy which they displayed for 
 their own altars and furnishing the world an example of the invinci- 
 ble prowess of American arms when united. I pray the calamity of 
 war may not befall this country ; I pray God to avert it from us ; but 
 if unhappily it should come, the American people will witness the un- 
 surpassed valor and patriotism of southern soldiers, and will embrace 
 with gratitude and affection their countrymen whom they now dis- 
 trust and denounce. Deploring war as among the greatest if not the 
 greatest scourge, if my country should summon her sons to her de- 
 fense I would go as far to protect her rights and her honor, and I 
 would advance with the same sense of duty and the same devotion, 
 that I hope animated me in the struggle of the South. 
 
 How, Mr. President, as a man sworn to support the Constitution 
 and the Union, could I have in my heart one spot hostile or indif- 
 ferent to either? Surrounded by the afflictions and deep harass- 
 nients of my section, and deprecating war from the bottom of my 
 heart, I have at times almost wished for it with some foreign foe, 
 that in the united sacrifices of the South and the North all the bitter 
 memories of the civil conflict and all the animosities of section might 
 be buried and forgotten. 
 
 Mr. President, there is another subject upon which the South is 
 gravely misunderstood. We are represented as hostile, cherishing 
 bitter, deadly, low hate to northern people. I do not know how to 
 discuss it. We desire northern people to come among us. We wish 
 them to come. If there is anything in the world now that is more 
 desirable at the South except peace than good northern settlers, I do 
 not know what it is. I know of nothing that we so welcome, nothing 
 that is so cheerfully embraced. Sir, I will say that the present un- 
 happy condition of the South might have been very different if good 
 northern people had come in place of many who came only to curse us. 
 
 The condition of the South might have been far different. I can 
 imagine a large mimber of intelligent, virtuous, patriotic citizens from 
 the North, animated by love of enterprise and attracted by our beau- 
 tiful climate and soil, coming to the South to make their homes with 
 us. I can see them bringing with them the thrifty industries of 
 northern habits. I can see in them a firm adherence to their own 
 opinions, tempered with a just tolerance for our convictions. I 
 can see them bringing their pure and happy families, the beloved 
 pledges of their attachment, to their new homes. I can see them 
 benevolently striving to mitigate the calamities that surround their 
 southern neighbors. I can see them laboring to restore and estab- 
 lish friendship and kindness between the white and black races. I 
 can see them persuading our people to adopt their improved system 
 of common schools, and teaching us by the example of their success 
 to divide our large estates into small and flourishing farms. I can 
 see them leading us to utilize all the grand resources of our forests, 
 our mines, our rivers, our water-powers, and all the unequaled produc- 
 tion sand fruits of our generous soil. I can see them building beau- 
 
24 
 
 tiful villages, erecting comfortable homes, raising stately churches, 
 and opening up new avenues of commerce all over the South. And I 
 can see the ardent, frank, brave, generous southerner taking these 
 honorable, useful comers by the hand, welcoming them to the land of 
 his birth, and to the hospitalities of his heart. I can see springing up 
 by their common efforts a cordial, sympathetic, indissoluble union 
 of interest and sentiment, and the growth of a progressive, happy, 
 honorable community. I can see there a true and perfect forgetful- 
 ness and oblivion of all the bitter memories of past conflicts, and a 
 united love and affection for a Government founded by their fathers 
 and illustrated by a common glory. On such a scene my eyes would 
 delight to rest, my heart rejoice to repose. Descendants of those who 
 landed at Plymouth and Manhattan, and of those who settled on 
 the James and the Cape Fear, again meeting, after years of terrible 
 conflict, to enjoy peace, and to live under a free Government of equal 
 laws. 
 
 But, unfortunately, the South presents a very different scene. The 
 class of northern citizens whom I have described did not come in 
 large numbers to the South. Among those who came after the war 
 were many honorable and worthy men, who have remained with us 
 and to-day, without exception, enjoy the confidence and respect of 
 the southern people. 
 
 In my own State there are many such meu, for whom I have great 
 respect and kindness, and who I believe entertain confidence and at- 
 tachment to me. There is at Elizabeth City, No^th Carolina, a colony 
 of northern men of two hundred prosperous, contented, patriotic 
 people, very generally belonging to the republican party. 
 
 I do not desire to put party in this speech. If I could write it 
 and leave the word out, I would do so. There is something to me in 
 the condition of our country far above party. The honor of my 
 country, the perpetuity of this Union, the preservation of its liberties, 
 are far, transcendently above party. No party ties, associations, or 
 fetters could bind me for a moment where my duty to the South was 
 concerned. A northern colony is on the Eoanoke, near Jamesville ; 
 another is at Eidgeway's, in Warren County ; another at Henderson, in 
 Granville County ; another at Ealeigk, the capital of the State ; another 
 at Beaufort, another in Guilford County, another on the Cape Fear, and 
 they are all doing well and are greatly respected. 
 
 Sir, we have been asked in this debate to name the northern man 
 who had been honored by the South with high position, and the 
 question was put with an air of triumph, indicating that it could not 
 be answered. Sir, let me tell Senators what I supposed was obliged 
 to be known to all the world, that the noble Commonwealth of Vir- 
 ginia, the " Mother of States," elected to her executive office — the 
 highest position in her gift — Hon. Gilbert C. Walker, a northern man 
 by birth and education, a Union man during all the war, aud not a 
 resident of the State of Virginia until its conclusion. Governor 
 Walker is my answer, my example, and my illustration. Of him it is 
 feeble praise to say that he is a gentleman without reproach, a 
 patriot without fear, a statesman without sectional prejudice, and 
 an American citizen with a warm, honest heart. These qualities 
 gave him the confidence of that illustrious people. He deserved 
 it ; and now he is to represent the capital district of that grand 
 State in the next Congress of the United States, aud there is no 
 more honored or loved name among that intelligent and patriotic 
 people. Virginia makes the sou of New York, the citizen of Illinois, 
 who fought against her on her own sacred soil, her governor and her 
 
25 
 
 Representative in Congress. There is the reply to the unjust charge 
 that the South is unfair in any sense to men of worth, come from 
 what State they may. 
 
 Bat unfortunately many who came to the South were not like 
 Governor Walker. Another and a widely different class flocked to our 
 borders as the great armies dissolved and the work of restoration be- 
 gan. They were not of the Adamses, the Hancocks, the Websters of 
 Massachusetts. They were not of the Hamiltons, the Clintons, the 
 Wrights of New York. They were not of the patriot statesmen of 
 Pennsylvania. They were not of the steadfast, vigorous character 
 of Ohio. They were not of the bold, honest freemen of the West. 
 They were not of the intrepid, generous pioneers of the Pacific slope. 
 Without character or position in the States that gave them birth, 
 with no ties of property or association there, without respect for 
 themselves and with no regard for the rights or feelings of others, 
 they saw in the prostrate South a field for enterprise congenial to 
 their natures and pursuits. They came as the vultures come. They 
 entered the despoiled and wasted garden of the South only to plant 
 in it a curse darker and deadlier than the ruins of war. There 
 they planted no cheerful fruits, there they cultivated no gentle 
 flowers, but there they sowed with a profuse hand the thorns and 
 thistles of hate and bitter passion. They spared no sacred relic of 
 time, they respected no cherished custom of our fathers. To the 
 demon passion of a groveling avarice they sacrificed every sentiment 
 of justice and humanity, and to that base idolatry they were alone 
 faithful. Finding the unhappy colored man just emerging from 
 slavery, they used him as the ladder to political preferment, and pros- 
 tituted the position so acquired to the vilest venality and peculation. 
 Whatever was necessary to the accomplishment of their rapacious 
 purposes was accomplished boldly and without remorse. Restrained 
 by no conscience, recognizing the white people of the South as 
 the victims of conquest, and the colored race as the convenient in- . 
 struments of their oppression, they sacrificed both to their personal 
 aggrandizement. To unite the negro race against the white people, 
 and thus secure the possession of power, they deliberately alienated 
 the blacks from the whites, and wrought them into a compact, un- 
 broken, and inflamed mass, desperately opposed to anything the 
 whites could propose for their common benefit. They exasperated 
 this antagonism of race to the highest and last pitch of intensity. 
 They arrayed the blacks against the whites in almost deadly division. 
 
 Not content with this fearful exploit, they maliciously set to work to 
 excite the poor and uneducated against those who had education, prop- 
 erty, or position. They aroused every prejudice of class and appealed 
 to every passion of discontent. From the most degraded walks of 
 life they selected the accomplices of their schemes of public wrong 
 and exalted them to high and respectable offices and places. Aided 
 by the United States Army and constantly supported and encouraged 
 by congressional legislation, they united with southern men, some of 
 whom were corrupt and others misguided, and obtained official power, 
 patronage, and place all over the Southern States. Military rule, 
 commonly the terror of a civilized people, proved in this time a mercy 
 and a j)rotection to Virginia. She was spared the spoliation and 
 humiliation that befell her ouce proud sisters. No sooner were they 
 securely fixed in power than that unparalleled carnival of venality, 
 peculation, waste, and spoil began that has shocked the moral sense of 
 the civilized world and brought reproach upon the age in which we 
 live and the country where it transpired. 
 
26 
 
 In two years the debts of the Southern States were increased two hun- 
 dred millions. Every available resource, revenue, and assets of these 
 afflicted States were converted into nioney,and went the same dark 
 road to enrich the office-holder and beggar the people. Funds sacredly 
 dedicated to educate the children of the people did not escape the com- 
 mon fate of spoliation. Public justice was shamelessly bartered in 
 the streets. Offices, laws, and honors were sold after the manner 
 that the pretorian guard sold the crown of the Roman Empire to 
 Julianus, the most corrupt and infamous of usurpers. The National 
 Government even did not escape the general contamination. You 
 beheld with patriotic shame the precious privileges of admission to 
 the lofty schools for the soldiers and sailors of the Republic bartered 
 and sold ; a price in money fixed upon those exalted duties. How 
 long will honor survive when the youth who is to guide the nation's 
 armies and sail her proud navies knows that his commission was 
 bought, and that the representatives of his people are purchasable 
 with money? Young man, blush to wear the star of a soldier, that 
 should be won with a soldier's duty, when bought with the base 
 coin that stains your country's honor ! 
 
 In the presence of this spoliation and dishonor of a people the 
 cruelties of Verres in Sicily, the wrougs of Hastings in India, sink 
 into trifling misdemeanors. In the grand eclipse of the last six 
 years these historic enormities are but feeble spots on the dark pict- 
 ure. History has drawn in her darkest colors, poetry and eloquence 
 have arrayed in their gloomiest outlines, painting has elaborated 
 with her somber skill, the rapacity and ruthless extortions of Cortez 
 and Pizarro ; and though their perishing forms have moldered for 
 more than a century, the moral sense of mankind has kept alive 
 their memories for universal execration and their accursed example 
 as a dreadful warning to the transcendent in wickedness. But what 
 were their deeds compared with the spoliation, the corruption, the 
 misrule that prevailed in the Southern States under the governments 
 that sprang up after the reconstruction acts ? Far be it from me, 
 Mr. President, to include in this class whom I have thus feebly endeav- 
 ored to describe the large majority of northern men who come South. 
 Among them are many excellent and worthy persons, whose coming 
 to the South promises much good to our section ; men of character, of 
 virtuous habits, of patriotic impulses, belonging to both parties — 
 republican and democrat. We welcome these men among us with- 
 out regard to their party sympathies ; we acknowledge their useful- 
 ness. I only denounce those who, in unison with bad men of the 
 South, bave brought this ruin upon our States. In this denunciation 
 I shall not be guilty of that injustice which has been perpetrated on 
 the other side of this Chamber. Far be it from my purpose, because 
 a few extremely wicked and corrupt men have despoiled my section, 
 to cast a stigma upon a large and estimable class of useful and patri- 
 otic citizens. That would be as unjust, as cruel, and as untrue as the 
 attempt to make the whole southern people or the people of any 
 southern State responsible for the excesses, the outrages, the crimes, 
 that have been committed by a few individuals, in a few isolated 
 spots, in a few unhappy localities over the South. 
 
 But, sir, other imputations are brought here against the South, all 
 calculated to create prejudice against her people. Frequent allusions 
 have been made in this debate to what Senators are pleased to call 
 "southern chivalry," in terms of derision and reproach. I shall not 
 discuss with Senators the propriety of their criticisms. That is a ques- 
 tion of taste, about which we may well differ. I trust sincerely that 
 
27 
 
 the day is not far distant when a just corrective of a custom I do not 
 defend, and which has been greatly abused, shall be found in an en- 
 lightened Christian public sentiment. To that humane arbitrament I 
 hope always to be able to defer. But, sir, to whatever tribunal I shall 
 feel called upon to refer that responsibility, which seems in some quar- 
 ters to give so much offense, I trust I shall be scrupulously careful to 
 observe, in all controversies, every law of courtesy and kindness, and 
 never so far to forget what is due to myself and equally due to others as 
 to substitute in intellectual combat for the parliamentary weapons of 
 reason and argument the use of opprobrious epithets, harsh aspersions, 
 violent crimination and recrimination. I shall leave such means of 
 warfare to be employed byfthose to whose tastes and sentiments they 
 are more compatible. While I should regard them as the feeblest in- 
 struments of assault upon the position of others, I should certainly 
 feel that they were the weakest armor for my own character or honor. 
 Holding myself strictly accountable for all that I may utter in this 
 Chamber or elsewhere, I shall not dispute with any champion the 
 laurels that are to be won on the field of personal or partisan abuse. 
 Those who are ambitious of that palm may wear it. 
 
 But if by these references to " southern chivalry " Senators intend 
 to impute to the people of the South any want of those high qualities 
 of honor, virtue, truth, courage, and dignity of character which have 
 been asserted to belong to them, or the absence of those gentler hu- 
 manities of charity, courtesy, generosity, and all the graces of Chris- 
 tian life, I meet the Senators on the threshold of their accusation, 
 and I tell them before the world that this impeachment of the char- 
 acter of our people is groundless and injurious ; as unjust to those 
 who make it as it is to the brave, honest, noble people who are thus 
 misunderstood, misrepresented, and defamed. I repel the aspersion 
 with the indignant scorn of an injured and outraged people. I repel 
 it in the name of eight millions of living, virtuous freemen ; I repel 
 it in the name of twelve generations of gallant patriots ; I protest 
 against it by the solemn judgment of history ; I refute it by the 
 character of the living and the dead ; I appeal from it in its error 
 and madness to the universal and concurrent testimony of mankind. 
 I hurl it to the ground ; I trample it in the dust. There is not an 
 event in the nation's annals connected with the South that does not 
 condemn and rebuke the odious sentiment. It can find no habitation 
 or sympathy in the heart of the civilized world; it can find no lodg- 
 ment in one solitary, isolated spot of authentic tradition ; it will be 
 banished and driven away from the face of men in despair of finding 
 a home where truth and j ustice reside . Branded with infamy all over, 
 it must seek a resting place only in bosoms from which the dark 
 passions of hate and fury have forever excluded the light. 
 
 Before the Eepublic has attained little more than a man's life 
 have we reached a development of passion that France did not 
 mature for nearly a thousand years ? Are we in the early youth of 
 the nation about to discover the worst symptom of the insane mala- 
 dies that assailed France in tile revolution? Have we so soon 
 fallen on the dark scene in the drama of nations which marked the 
 declining days of the Roman Empire? Is all truth confounded be- 
 fore our eyes, and are the very vestiges of justice obliterated from 
 our hearts ? What unheard-of madness has destroyed the conscious- 
 ness of fact in our minds and the sensibility of conscience within us? 
 Has the storm of sectional strife drowned the voice of history? Are 
 the living records of the age erased by the intensity of party heat? 
 Has memory been dethroned from the human mind and her proud 
 
28 
 
 scepter surrendered to prejudice ? For such must be our melancholy 
 condition when we can believe that the " South is degenerate." Else 
 from your graves, immortal founders of the Eepublic, and rebuke the 
 impious calumny! Great Father of your Country, I invoke your hal 
 lowed name to silence it forever. Illustrious author of the "Declara- 
 tion," has thy glory been so soon extinguished? Father of the Consti- 
 tution, has thy honored name perished amid the blows inflicted on thy 
 great work ? Hero of New Orleans, has the bright fame of your vic- 
 tory over a foreign foe been eclipsed by a more recent victory over 
 the liberties of the State you defended? Has the 8th of January, 
 1815, been blotted out by the 4th of January, 1875? 
 
 When did the South become degenerate ? When her sons unaided 
 and alone bore the " Lone star " westward and carved an empire State 
 from the heritage of the Montezumas ? Or did her courage expire on 
 the blazing heights of Buena Vista, and did Taylor and Bragg and 
 Crittenden dim its luster ? Was her honor lost by Scott or Lee in the 
 valleys, on the hills, or before the walls of Mexico, or was her bright 
 sword tarnished when Butler and the Palmetto Regiment left on the 
 field of Churubusco the example that was to be no more gloriously fol- 
 lowed by the six hundred at Balaklava ? Are we to be told of south- 
 ern degeneracy in the Halls of this Capitol, where the echoes of the 
 mighty words of Clay and Calhoun still ring in our ears and the 
 proud images of Marshall and Taney stand guard at the altars of 
 justice; where ten Presidents of the United States rise before our 
 eyes to attest its falsehood, and a train of heroes, statesmen, jurists, 
 with an endless line of patriots, proclaim its injustice ? Senators, 
 before you can believe it, you must tear from American history 
 its brightest pages; you must pull down the Capitol, remove its 
 monuments, and obliterate its name. Go to the uttermost limits of the 
 earth, follow the remotest waves of the sea, stand on any spot in the 
 A^ast breadth of your country, and look up and behold the flag of the 
 Eepublic, and the starry banner that blazes over your head will recall 
 at the " dawn's early light and the twilight's last gleaming " the 
 genius and soul of the southern patriot from whom it derived its 
 dearest inspiration. But Senators will exclaim this is the South as 
 she was, not as she is; the South years ago when she stood with the 
 North in the Union, not the South during and since the war, shorn 
 of her strength and beauty. 
 
 I am admonished not to tread on ground on which the smothered 
 fires are not yet extinguished; but though I walked barefooted 
 and blindfolded over burning plowshares, in this I ought not to 
 hesitate; for he who with a right heart bravely treads the path of 
 truth and duty has nothing to fear. Yes, Senators, duty more sacred 
 than life commands me to ask on what field in the late ever-to-be-de- 
 plored war did the South betray anything but the highest qualities 
 of the best of men? Where were the evidences of her decline and 
 degeneracy? Ask your noble patriots who met her no less noble sons 
 on a hundred ensanguined fields ? Eead the reports of your generals 
 and all contemporaneous history and»you will look in vain for but one 
 response. I will draw no contrasts between those brave armies, 
 those true, devoted men on either side. I only wish their great strug- 
 gle had been a united effort to expand the area of free institutions, 
 to extend the light of American civilization, to enlarge and magnify 
 all the beneficent influences of American liberty. While I shed 
 tears over the loss of the gallant men of both armies I rejoice in their 
 common bravery, truth, fortitude, and splendid achievements, and 
 still more in the fact that no one but Americans could have resisted 
 
29 
 
 as we did and that none but Americans could have persevered as you 
 did*, yet I hut speak the simple truth before the world and before 
 Heaven when I declare that human history from the beginning has 
 failed to furnish a brighter example of all the devoted qualities of 
 soldiers' duty than was daily exhibited in the army of the South. I 
 need not recall those -who formed that glittering line of bayonets on 
 Marye's burning hill ; who met the red storm of blood and fire at 
 Chancellorsville; who stepped like bridegrooms to a marriage feast 
 up the stony ridge at Gettysburgh, and meeting death from foemen 
 worthy of their steel, fell back like the sullen roar of broken waters. 
 I need not recall those noble spirits who drew their expiring breath 
 in the mortal trenches at Petersburgh or who bore their wasted 
 forms and looked for the last time upon earth upon the bleak hills 
 of Appomattox. 
 
 No, Senators, we are worthy to be your countrymen, worthy to be 
 the patriot-brothers of your own ever-glorious and honored men who 
 prevailed against us. Instead of carping and criminating and taunt- 
 ing, let us biiry deep and forever every recollection of that war that 
 does not revive the common honor and courage and Christian humanity 
 of the North, and the South, and the whole American people. If there 
 be any cloud upon the arms of either, thank God there is glory enough 
 for the arms of both, and that glory belongs to the American people. 
 Are not the victories of Pompey and Csesar the common renown of 
 Eomef Are not the "red rose "and the "white rose "now intertwined 
 in the crown of England's history ? Is it indelicate for me to remind 
 you that the noble Greeks, the Athenians and the Spartans, erected 
 monuments of perishable wood to celebrate victories over their coun- 
 trymen ? They built them for their triumphs over foreign foes of en- 
 during marble and brass. The brave Romans, whose conquering 
 legions made the world their empire, never permitted a triumph to 
 any victor in their civil wars. Those nations of antiquity would not 
 perpetuate their own strifes. Shall this Christian Union be less mag- 
 nanimous than the republics of the idolatrous ages ? 
 
 The Southern States tender you their faithful support of the Gov- 
 ernment ; they offer yoir their treasure in peace, their valor in war, 
 their resolution to pay their part of the national debt, incurred for 
 their coercion ; they desire to extend to you the trust and affection 
 of warm and loyal hearts, and for all this they give you the pledge 
 of an honor that was never broken. What more can you wish ? Will 
 you refuse these proffered duties ; will you repel these priceless offer- 
 ings ; will you insult this generous spirit ? Will you treat with in- 
 credulity and disdain these honorable conciliations ? Will you return 
 for them alienation, taunt, and mockery? Or will you receive them 
 with just confidence, with reciprocal affection, with unreserved pa- 
 triotism ? What more do you desire ? Do you hope to see us descend 
 to self-abasement and self-degradation? Do you expect us to dis- 
 honor our history, to deny our convictions, to humble and debase our 
 manhood, to forget our duty, and to cover our names with inexpia- 
 ble shame, by false, cowardly, serrile pretenses and professions 
 that would shock every sentiment of truth in our bosoms? Let me 
 tell you, Senator8 r this can never, never be. These proud States will 
 not come on bended knees and bow their majestic forms on the steps 
 of this Capitol, mortified, humiliated, prostrated in the dust. Better, a 
 thousand times better, that the stars on the flag of the Republic which 
 bear the names of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia 
 be blotted out forever, like the lost Pleiad from the constellation, than 
 become pale and feeble satellites to represent dishonored and de- 
 graded sisters! 
 
30 
 
 What will be the sentiment of the great people of the North ? What 
 will he the opinion of the world, when it is known that northern 
 Representatives in Congress rejected with scorn and contempt every 
 effort of the South for peace and justice f In what characters will 
 history record the fact, that after four years of bloodiest war and the 
 expenditure of countless millions to preserve the Union, the North 
 persistently declined with contumely and crimination every expres- 
 sion of friendship, every offer of peace, every tender of good-will, 
 every aspiration for fraternal restoration that the people of the South 
 could with justice, with propriety, and truth make ? That will be a 
 startling page in history which transmits to future ages that all our 
 sentiments and hopes and wishes and exertions for conciliation were 
 answered with doubt, distrust, reproof, and bitter calumniation. I 
 cannot, I will not believe this condition is to continue. Between the 
 North and the South there is now no just cause of quarrel, no ground 
 for separation, no necessity for hostility. No great moral sentiment, 
 no transcendent material interest now divides us. But every argu- 
 ment of reason, every motive of interest, every obligation of duty, 
 every consideration of honor, every sentiment of patriotism — all de- 
 mand and enforce peace and perpetual harmony between the sections. 
 
 But, Senators, peace at the price of our honor is impossible. That 
 sacrifice will never be made. Abuse, denunciation, aspersion, are not 
 the instruments of reconciliation. Silence under them, submission to 
 them, concurrence in them would be the highest crime. The people 
 who consent to their own dishonor deserve to be slaves. Heaven 
 save us from this deepest wrong to ourselves. 
 
 If with all the lights before us, with the lessons of the great past, 
 the instructions of our forefathers, in the noonday of the nineteenth 
 century, in the blaze of its civilization, we could so far forget our 
 duty, our love of country, our own self-respect, and our regard for 
 the opinion of the world as to consent for the sake of a temporary 
 repose to the violation of our consciences, to the concealment of our 
 opinions, to the suppression of the truth, and descend to the base and 
 abject confession that the calumnies on our people were true, we should 
 deserve the supremest curse of mankind for having attained the most 
 exquisite refinement in infamy and for having discovered new and 
 profounder depths of hypocrisy and falsehood. By the eternal love 
 of truth that binds man to his Maker we protest, and we will protest 
 to the end, against the injustice that would destroy our character. 
 "We can bear our poverty ; fortitude and patience will overcome our 
 privations. Energy will restore our desolated fields, industry will re- 
 pair our lost homes, economy will recover our wasted wealth, time 
 will heal our great sorrows ; but for lost and abandoned character 
 there is no future, no regeneration. No people have ever survived 
 the death of their character. Nothing can relume that luster when 
 once extinguished. Let us thank God that the people of the South, 
 in the wreck and darkness of their disasters, still cherish and defend 
 with deep and fervent devotion their honor. It is the cloud of light 
 by day and the pillar of fire by night that will preserve them in the 
 wilderness of their troubles. No people who love truth, who respect 
 virtue, who cultivate courage, who defend freedom, who reverence 
 religion, can ever be enslaved or degraded. 
 
 Mr. President, if I desired to see the two great divisions of the 
 Republic — the North and the South — forever alienated and antago- 
 nistic, if I desired to reopen and deepen and widen the bitter gulf 
 between them, if I wished to plant the ineradicable seeds of hatred, 
 revenge, and vindictive passions in the hearts of their people, I 
 
31 
 
 should puisne the course of the republican Senators on this floor, who 
 have denounced without remorse the people of the South. I speak 
 not of the injustice of the indiscriminate aspersion of eight millions 
 of people; but I refer to the thoughtless impolicy of that aspersion. 
 If Senators desire sincerely the harmony of the sections, is relent- 
 less vituperation the road that leads in that direction ? Do they not 
 consider that if there be, as they charge, those at the South who 
 are not reconciled to the Union ; if there be discontented, unhappy, 
 misguided men among us who yet desire to continue the strife of the 
 sections, do they not perceive that this unjust, sweeping imputa- 
 tion and impeachment of our whole people lays the foundation for 
 hostile argument to the Union and the North? Sir, let me in all can- 
 dor ask what reply is to be made to the restless and passionate dema- 
 gogue at the South, ay, to the just and honest son of that devoted sec- 
 tion, Avho shall demand of me, " AVith what propriety do you ask us to 
 unite in heart with those who delight to abuse and to vilify us ? We 
 are doing all that honorable and good men can do for peace and 
 union, and we are met with denunciation and calumny. It seems 
 that nothing can satisfy the animosity of our enemies. Our ruin 
 has only excited them to more cruel wrongs, and when they have ex- 
 hausted all our resources, they propose to destroy our reputation." 
 I confess that such statements are difficult to answer, and were 
 all the northern people like those who so misunderstand and misrep- 
 resent us, I should have but little hope for the future of my country. 
 But happily the great mass of the North, in my judgment, respect our 
 motives and are beginning to earnestly desire our deliverance. Ten 
 years of devoted suffering at the South, and the immense difficulties 
 that surround our situation, are beginning to enlighten the northern 
 mind to our true condition. Their sympathies are being excited, 
 their sense of justice aroused, their sensibility to their own interests 
 awakened, their love of good government and fear of its overthrow 
 alarmed, and their confidence reversed in the wisdom and patriotism 
 of those who now, at the expiration of a decade since the last gun 
 was fired, resort to the " soldier and the sword " for the establishment 
 of law and order. 
 
 But to those who in patriotic sincerity ask, " How I can daily hear 
 the unjust abuse of our people and still labor and hope for reconcilia- 
 tion and justice without yielding to indignant resentment?" I will 
 say that before the South lies a great duty, a duty far above the pas- 
 sions of the day ; a duty whose influence is to descend to distant gen- 
 erations — the duty of preserving constitutional liberty and of vindi- 
 cating and maintaining in undiminished glory the character of the 
 southern people. The success of that duty must not be imperiled 
 by resentment or excitement. In the presence of such interests the 
 ordinary emotions of the human heart stand rebuked, aud the highest 
 and noblest sentiments of our souls and the most exalted powers of 
 the mind are summoned to exertion. Before such a duty the sacrifice 
 of passion is a glory, the conquest of our nature sublime honor. 
 Nothing can secure its accomplishment but disciplined virtue and 
 patriotism ; the subordination of impulse to that chastened wisdom 
 and devotion which, relying on justice, truth, and reason for defense, 
 leave far beneath them the disordered tempers that are excited in 
 the inferior conflicts of life. By the fate of our people, before the 
 sacred magnitude of our duty, what are personal or party irritations ? 
 I disown and dismiss them as not approaching the dignity of our 
 defense. My faith is in the justice of our cause and the ultimate 
 triumph of truth and right. No, sir, I do not put the defense of the 
 
32 
 
 South upon the crimination of the North. I place it on higher 
 ground. I found her vindication not on imputation, aspersion, denun- 
 ciation of another section, but I plant it firmly on her own character 
 and reputation, upon her integrity and truth, upon her honor and 
 virtue, upon the history of her patriotic services and the candor, 
 manliness, and good faith with which she has always acted. 
 
 Sir^' I have received since this debate commenced paper after paper, 
 extract upon extract, letter on letter, with statement and account 
 in summary and in detail of violations of the law at the North and 
 of unjust expressions to the South. I have no use for such material. 
 I discard it altogether. This is not the place for it. Aggression on 
 the North is no justification for wrong at the South, and the South 
 holds such a policy of argument in scorn and contempt. Justice to 
 her character demands that any imputation on her good name should 
 be met and repelled, and she will meet and repel it with indignant 
 truth. Sir, what is to be accomplished by this mutual and recip- 
 rocal denunciation of the sections ? Will it elevate our character 
 abroad "? Will it dignify it at home ? Will it confer a blessing upon 
 any American citizen? I had much rather see mutual and recip- 
 rocal forbearance and commendation ; mutual and reciprocal desire 
 for the improvement of the sections ; mutual and reciprocal purpose 
 to render justice to all parts of the country, and a mutual and recip- 
 rocal union of interest, rights, duties, and sentiments for the common 
 benefit and glory of all. No, sir ; I shall send no firebrands to the 
 South to incense and inflame her proud people. I shall send no pois- 
 oned arrows to the North to rankle in the bosom of her peace. I shall 
 endeavor to hold up the light of truth to both sections, that each 
 may see in the other much to commend and something to forgive 
 and forget. And shall unjust assault be made upon any State of 
 this Union, be it North or South, I shall spring to her defense with 
 whatever of courage or ability I may have. 
 
 Mr. President, an immense drag-net has been cast over the entire 
 South to discover some fact, some circumstance, some fragment of 
 evidence that might give color to the charge that the southern peo- 
 ple were unfriendly to the Government of the United States, utterly 
 regardless of their duty as citizens, and generally violent and law- 
 less. Telescopes of every magnitude have swept the whole southern 
 horizon ; microscopes of the largest magnifying power have been 
 brought to bear upon the condition of the South and every atom 
 subjected to their influence to find some speck of latent rebellion 
 among the various and differing tempers of an impulsive people. 
 The inquisition has been thorough and complete. Nothing has es- 
 caped the vigilance of our watchful guardians. Nothing has been 
 too high for their reach, nothing too low for their supervision. Their 
 analysis of all the alleged |poisons in the prostrate system of the South 
 has been acute, jealous, and comprehensive. Their opportunities for 
 conducting this searching and expanded examination have fully 
 equaled their anxieties. Agents, spies, detectives, informers — the 
 mercenary and corrupt instruments of power — have gone all over the 
 South to discover, invent, and expose the denounced crimes. Eleven 
 thousand postmasters in the Southern States are the sentinels of the 
 administration party. The revenue officers by hundreds watch with 
 jealous care the party's interest. The judges, the attorneys, the mar- 
 shals, the clerks, and all the officers and their assistants and subor- 
 dinates in the United States courts are the vigilant guardians of the 
 nation's laws and peace. Senators, Members of Congress, governors 
 of States, members of State Legislatures, and almost every office- 
 
33 
 
 holder in the South, faithfully collect and develop every fact, inci- 
 dent, and circumstance that tends to prove this accusation of their 
 party and upon which they seem to think its existence depends. Able 
 committees have been appointed by Congress to investigate these 
 conditions of the South. Military detachments, are stationed all over 
 the suspected districts of the South. The press, too. with the hundred 
 hands of Briareus and with the hundred eyes of Argus, observe and 
 report every occurrence of general interest. Light blazes all over the 
 scene. Nothing is left in obscurity or doubt. The eyes not only of the 
 Administration but of the whole country are concentrated on the South . 
 And now, with all of the evidence before us,'let us determine the truth 
 of this indictment of the Government against the country. 
 
 I do not propose, Mr. President, to rely upon the presumption of 
 innocence until crime is proved; that just, humane, wise rule of our 
 law, established and approved in all enlightened jurisprudence for ten 
 'centuries. I wish to meet the allegation upon the facts before the 
 country. With the permission of the Senate let me direct your atten- 
 tion for a moment to the State of Kentucky. She stands first on the 
 roll of the impeached and prosecuted States. And what, sir, I repeat, 
 what is the evidence against that proud, patriotic, gallant State? 
 Will Senators reflect ? The conviction and condemnation of her great 
 people is demanded upon the floor of the Senate upon one newspaper 
 paragraph — a solitary half -column in the single issue of a daily paper — 
 and that article an able and eloquent protest against the sentiment 
 it condemns. Sir, is not the very rebuke of that popular journal 
 proof that the enlightened public sentiment of the State is against 
 the error it so boldly denounces ? Was not that article written to 
 correct and reform the very abuse ; and does not that argument reflect 
 and represent the best public opinion, the opinion of the intelligent 
 and moral influence of the country? But Senators have deluded 
 themselves and endeavored to beguile us with the absurd proposition 
 that a newspaper by criticising and condemning an alleged neglect 
 of the law convicts a State and her people of disregarding and violat- 
 ing all law ! 
 
 Mr. President, I ask with all respect if the humblest human being 
 who walks the earth would be restrained one moment by any intelli- 
 gent judge in all Christendom upon this testimony? There is not a 
 magistrate or a justice of the peace who would issue a warrant on 
 it. In all judicial history an indictment was never found by a grand 
 jury upon such proof. And yet the American Senate is gravely, pas- 
 sionately, vehemently asked upon such a pretext to condemn one of 
 the fairest States of this Union as disloyal, violent, and lawless. Sir, 
 I cannot, I will not, undertake to argue such a proposition. 
 
 Virginia has nearly escaped the common charge made against her 
 sisters. Not one word of evidence has been produced of disloyalty, 
 hostility to the Government, or of any unusual prevalence of crime 
 within her limits. 
 
 The honorable Senator from Illinois, it is true, says that " it would 
 not interfere materially with Virginia, whether certain resolutions 
 presented to her Legislature were unconstitutional or not." I can- 
 not restrain my astonishment at this expression. My knowledge 
 that the Senator is eminently patriotic increases my surprise. Vir- 
 ginia indifferent to the Constitution, while she holds in her bosom the 
 ashes and cherishes in her heart the memories of Madison and Mar- 
 shall ! The mother of Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Tyler, Taylor, 
 Scott, Maury, Thomas, the theme for a jest, the subject of a taunt! 
 When the Senator or myself or thousands like us shall have achieved 
 
 3 K, 
 
34 
 
 for liberty and glory a shadow of what Virginia has, then a jeer or 
 slur upon her great name may have some grace. Has the Senator 
 forgotten how much this nation owes to Virginia ? He must for the 
 moment Lave forgotten that she had given to the Union the States of 
 Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Had the Senator reflected 
 that- his own State was one of the monuments of Virginia's patriot- 
 ism these words could never have fallen from his lips. Nor, sir, are 
 these a tithe of her contributions to the Eepublic. Sbe has borne 
 seven Presidents who at the head of the Government have illustrated 
 her devotion to liberty. She has nurtured on her breast the soldiers 
 who have covered yours arms with renown, the sailors who have 
 brigbteued your flag with honor, the scholars who have extended the 
 conquest of science from the bottom of the sea to the verge of the 
 stars. Her trophies, her memories, her great names, her priceless 
 virtues are before the world ; they are the brightest jewels of the Re- 
 public, they are the noblest heritages of humanity. I pray the day 
 may never come when the great spirit at Mount Vernon shall not 
 protect her from insult and avert her from error. Her proud sorrows 
 are sublime, and like her glories will be immortal. When she sheathed 
 her sword and returned to the Union her constancy to her national 
 duties and her loyalty to her sister States were renewed with all 
 their original vigor and truth. Her care for the Constitution and 
 her devotion to the rights of man had never slumbered. Great State ! 
 Whatever is grand and patriotic and excellent should be compared to 
 thee. When thy name does not inspire the respect, excite the admi- 
 ration, and kindle the affections of American patriots the love of lib- 
 erty and of country will be expiring in our hearts. 
 
 The next State in the order of succession as you advance south is 
 North Carolina. I listened with interest to hear what charges were 
 to be made against the good people to whom I owe my position here. 
 For it seems to be the policy and purpose of republican Senators to 
 assail every Southern State that is under democratic government. 
 Knowing the traditions of my State, and that she had always resented 
 and resisted oppression and tyranny under every form, I was not en- 
 tirely sure but that upon the banks of the Yadkin or Catawba, or in the 
 valleys of the Cape Fear, or among the hills of " Old Bute" and Ala- 
 mance, or up in the bold mountains where the people partake of the 
 character of their sublime but rugged country the spirit of '76 had 
 flamed out and that their jealous love of liberty had assumed the 
 form it did a hundred years ago. But this anxiety was groundless. 
 
 The evidence of disloyalty and lawlessness in North Carolina con- 
 sisted simply and alone in the fact that the district in which an 
 esteemed friend, Hon. David Schenk, resides and where he was 
 born, and his ancestors for generations before him, had elected that 
 worthy man a judge. Why, sir, there is no more upright, consci- 
 entious, honorable man than Judge Schenk. He is a lawyer of emi- 
 nent ability and attainments, and of the highest moral character and 
 of uncommon general intelligence. Without disparagement let me 
 assure n^r honorable friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Scott] that in 
 all the attributes of a just man, a pure judge, an enlightened patriot 
 Judge Schenk is the peer of the Senator, and I kuow no higher posi- 
 tion to assign him. It is true he belonged to the Ku-Klux organi- 
 zation, he so stated himself, but he expressly avowed that he had 
 never participated in, approved, or sympathized with any unlawful 
 act, and the committee of which my friend from Pennsylvania was 
 the honored chairman believed him. In North Carolina we enter- 
 tain for the Senator a very higli regard ; we would be very ungrate- 
 
35 
 
 ful if we did not, for it was chiefly due to his magnanimity that the 
 victims of the Ku-Klux delusion were released from prison. The 
 Senator had been firm and vigilant in his efforts to suppress that 
 organization, but that accomplished, he was as generous and merciful 
 in exerting his just influence for the pardon of the offenders. I am 
 solicitous that my friend should have no unjust impression of our 
 people ; and let me inform him that Judge Schenk's character as a 
 lawyer and a man was so high and just that he was voted for by the 
 most prominent republicans in his district, among others by Hon. 
 Eufus Barringer, elector in 1872 on the Grant and Wilson ticket. 
 
 I hope I need not say that the other incident alluded to by the 
 Senator was a gross and cruel exaggeration and that the conduct of 
 Judge Schenk was entirely justifiable. I will not tire the Senator 
 with details, but I assure him that the action of the judge in that 
 whole transaction was what his or mine or any proper man's would 
 have been under the circumstances. Mr. President, all excitement 
 in reference to the Ku-Klux organization in North Carolina has been 
 so completely obliterated that the republicans have elected members 
 to the Legislature who once belonged to the Ku-Klux, and our peo- 
 ple in their wisdom and magnanimity, without distinction of party 
 have buried that controversy in forgiveness and oblivion forever. 
 
 The Senator from Illinois in his ardent crusade against the South- 
 ern States paused for a moment as he crossed the limits of North 
 Carolina to discharge at her people a reproach Avhich he will find 
 was quite without foundation. He asked with an air of triumph, in 
 which some tinge of ironical mercy seemed to mingle, " How long has 
 it been since we have had this glorious peace in North Carolina?" 
 i ' Grant told you that you had to stop, or he would make you do it ; 
 and you stopped through fear, not because you desired it." Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I rejoice that there is peace, profound peace in North Carolina 
 with all her people. The Senator tells the country that it is the 
 peace of " fear," and not the peace of the will, of the reason of the 
 people. Whence, sir, did the Senator derive his opinions of the peo- 
 ple of North Carolina, that he should venture the assertion that they 
 act from "fear" and not from their judgment and disposition? Is 
 the history of that brave, true State so little known to the Senator 
 that he could commit this injustice? If he had studied the character 
 of her plain, truthful, fearless people, he could not have so wronged 
 himself as to utter this unjust reproach. Let me for a moment re- 
 fresh the Senator's historic recollections with some annals of North 
 Carolina and see if I cannot convince him that his censure of that 
 good State was groundless. I will read from an author the most 
 eminent and illustrious of all Americen writers — an author who is no. 
 less a scholar than a patriot — who of all others among the living or 
 the dead has done more to illustrate American character and incident, 
 and who I hope may long live to enjoy the serene evening of a nobly 
 passed life. 1 will now read from Bancroft's American History: 
 
 The planters of Albemarle were men who had been led to the choice of their 
 residence from a hatred of restraint, and had lost themselves among the woods in 
 search of independence. Are there any who doubt man's capacity for self-gov- 
 ernment, let them study the history of North Carolina ; its inhabitants were 
 restless and turbulent in their imperfect submission to a government imposed on 
 them trom abroad ; the administration of the colony was nrm, humane, and tran- 
 quil when they were left to take care of themselves. Any government but one of 
 their own institution was oppressive. — Bancroft's History of the United States, volume 
 1, page 467. 
 
 ******* 
 
 North Carolina was settled by the freest of the free ; by men to whom the restraints 
 of other colonies were too severe. 
 
36 
 
 But the settlers were gentle in their tempers, of serene minds, enemies to violence 
 and bloodshed. Not all the successive revolutions had kindled vindictive passions ; 
 freedom, entire freedom, was enjoyed without anxiety as without guarantees ; the 
 charities of life were scattered at their feet, like the flowers of their meadows. — 
 Bancroft's History of the United States, volume 1, page 472. 
 
 The people of North Carolina would neither receive a stamp man, nor tolerate 
 the use of a stamp, nor suffer its ports to be closed. The meeting of its Legislature 
 was so long prorogued that it could not join in the application of the Congress ; 
 but had there been need of resorting to arms "the whole force of North Carolina 
 was ready to join in protecting the rights of the continent." — Bancroft's History of 
 the United States, volume 5, page 369. 
 
 The people of the county of ^Mecklenburgh had carefully observed the progress, 
 of the controversy with Britain ; and during the winter political meetings had re- 
 peatedly been held in Charlotte. That town had been chosen for the seat of the Pres- 
 byterian- college, which the Legislature of North Carolina had chartered, but which* 
 the king had disallowed, and it was the center of the culture of that part of the 
 province. The number of houses in the village was not more than twenty ; but 
 the district was aleady well settled by herdsmen who lived apart on their farms. 
 
 Some time in May, i775, they received the news of the address which in the pre- 
 ceding February had been presented to the king by both houses of Parliament, 
 and which declared the American Colonies to be in a state of actual rebellion. This 
 was to them the evidence that the crisis in American affairs was come, and the peo- 
 pie proposed among themselves to abrogate all dependence on the royal authority. 
 But the militia companies were sworn to allegiance ; and "how," it was objected, 
 "can we be absolved from our oath?" " The oath," it was answered, l ' binds only 
 while the king protects." At the instance of Thomas Polk, the commander of the 
 militia of the county, two delegates from each company were called together in 
 Charlotte as a representative committee.. Before their consultations had ended the 
 message of the innocent blood shed at Lexington came up from Charleston and 
 inflamed their zeal. They were impatient that their remoteness forbade their direct 
 activity; had it been possible they would have sent a hundred bullocks from their 
 fields to the poor of Boston. No minutes of the committee are known to exist, but 
 the result of their deliberations, framed with superior skill, precision of language, 
 and calm comprehensiveness, remains as the monument of their wisdom and their 
 courage. Of the delegates to that memorable assembly the name of Ephraim Bre- 
 vard should be remembered with honor by his countrymen. He was one of a nu- 
 merous family of patriotic brothers, and himself in the end fell a martyr to the 
 public cause. Trained in the college at Princeton, ripened among the brave Pres- 
 byterians of Middle Carolina, he digested the system which was then adopted aad 
 which in effect was a declaration of independence as well as a complete system of 
 government. "All laws and commissions confirmed by or derived from the author- 
 ity of the king or Parliament," such are the bold, but well-considered words of these 
 daring statesmen, "are annulled and vacated: all commissions, civil and military, 
 heretofore granted by the Crown to be exercised in the Colonies are void ; the pro- 
 vincial congress of each province, under the direction of the great Continental Con- 
 gress, is invested with all legislative and executive powers within the respective 
 provinces, and no other legislative or executive power does or can exist at this time 
 in any part of these Colonies. As all former laws are now suspended in this prov- 
 ince and the Congress has not yet provided others, we judge it necessary for the 
 better preservation of good order to form certain rules and regulations for the inter 
 nal government of this county until laws shall be provided for us by the Congress." 
 
 In accordance with these principles the freemen of the county formed themselves 
 into nine military companies and elected their own officers. Judicial powers were 
 conferred on men to be singled out by the vote of the companies, two from each of 
 them ; the whole number of eighteen constituting a court of appeal. The tenure 
 alike of military and civil officers was " the pleasure of their several constituents." 
 All public and county taxes, all quit rents to the Crown were sequestered ; and it 
 was voted that persons receiving new commissions from the king or exercising old 
 ones should be dealt with as enemies of the country. 
 
 The resolves were made binding on all, and were to be enforced till the provincial 
 congress should provide otherwise, or, what they knew would never take place, till 
 the British Parliament should resign its arbitrary pretensions with respect to 
 America. At the same time the militia companies were directed to provide them- 
 selves with arms, and Thomas Polk and Joseph Kenedy were specially appointed 
 to purchase powder, lead, and flints. 
 
 Before the month of May had come to an end the resolutions were signed by 
 Ephraim Brevard, as clerk of the committee, and were adopted by the people with 
 the determined enthusiasm which springs from the combined influence of the love 
 of liberty and of religion. Thus was Mecklenburgh County, in North Carolina, sep- 
 arated from the British Empire. The resolves were transmitted with all haste to 
 be printed in Charleston, and they spread through the South, they startled the 
 
37 
 
 royal governors of Georgia and North Carolina. They were dispatched by a mes- 
 senger to the Continental Congress, that the world might know their authors had 
 Tenounced their allegiance to the King of Great Britain, and had constituted a gov 
 ernment for themselves. 
 
 The messenger stopped on his way at Salisbury, and there, to a crowd round the 
 court-house, the resolves were read and approved. The western counties were 
 the most populous part of North Carolina ; and the royal governor had flattered 
 himself and the king with the fullest assurances of their support. " I have no 
 doubt," said he, "that I might command their best services at a word on any 
 emergency. I consider I have the means in my own hands to maintain the sover- 
 eignty of this country to my royal master at all events." And now he was obliged 
 to transmit the deliberate, consistent, and well-considered resolutions of Mecklen- 
 burgh, which he described as the " boldest of all," most traitorously declaring the 
 entire dissolution of the laws and constitution, and setting up a system of rule 
 and regulations subversive of His Majesty's government. — Bancroft's History of 
 the United States, volume 1, page 370. 
 
 At "Wilmington, North Carolina, the sum of two thousand pounds currency was 
 raised in a few days for the relief of Boston ; the women of the place gave liber- 
 ally ; Parker Quince offered his vessel to carry a load of provisions freight free, 
 and master and mariners volunteered to navigate her without wages. Lord North 
 had called the American Union arope of sand; " it is a rope of sand that will hang 
 him," said the people of Wilmington. — Bancroft's History of the United States, 
 volume 1, page 73. 
 
 Were these, Mr. President, acts of "fear"? Were these patriots 
 told that they must do this immortal deed? And before the one hun- 
 dredth anniversary of this unparalleled glory has returned are we to 
 hear in the American Senate that the children of these hold patriots 
 make the peace of "fear"? No, sir, the people of North Carolina 
 fear nothing but to do wrong. They fear God and they have no 
 other fear. Her history is before the world ; it is modest and unpre- 
 tending ; her people have preferred to tread the paths of virtue 
 rather than the heights of fame ; but they have always done their 
 duty. They love liberty, and they do not fear but they hate tyrants. 
 On her soil the voice of "independence" in America was first raised, 
 and to that great example she will forever stand true. Next to lib- 
 erty her people love justice ; and while they respect law they despise 
 unlawful power. Peace prevails throughout all her borders — the 
 fearless peace of liberty, justice, and law, not the trembling silence 
 of timid slaves nor the breathless stillness of prostrate cowards. The 
 light of peace that shines on North Carolina must come from the sun 
 of liberty ; it cannot be reflected from chains or the sword. 
 
 Let me assure the honorable Senator from Illinois that he will find 
 nothing in the history of that State, nothing in the character of her 
 people that will not make him yet prouder of the blood that flows 
 in his own veins. Grand in the majesty of her moderation and faithful 
 to all her duties, there she stands in the light of her own great virtues 
 'without fear and without reproach." 
 
 But, Mr. President, are we to be told upon the floor of the Ameri- 
 can Senate, this forum of the States — yes, sir, in this citadel of the 
 States — for it is in this Chamber that the States are represented as 
 States, equal and coequal, are we to be told here that a great State, 
 one of the original and. immortal thirteen, has performed an obliga- 
 tion not from a sense of duty but through fear of the President of 
 the United States ? Sir, such sentiments shock me. I can conceive 
 no more melancholy evidence of the decline of liberty and popular 
 government in this country than the prevalence of such expressions. 
 A State in fear of the President and that condition of slavish sub- 
 jnission a subject of exultationm the mind of a Senator! Where are 
 we traveling? Are not these "the symptoms of approaching despot- 
 ism ? How long will republican liberty survive when the States of 
 this Union stand in awe of the President? The Constitution makes 
 
38 
 
 it the duty of the President to see that the laws are faithfully exe- 
 cuted, but I trust the day is far distant when "fear" is to he one 
 of the attributes of his office. I thought this was a free government 
 of consent, of affectiou, of interest, and not the stern and iron grasp 
 of force and fear. For the President in his official capacity the 
 American people should hold the high respect, the profound defer- 
 ence, the serious regard for authority that is due to the most exalted 
 office, and to the President as a man the people should extend that 
 homage, reverence, and affection which belongs to the distinguished 
 and patriotic citizen who should possess the most eminent intellec- 
 tual ability and moral endowment, exerted in the service and for the 
 benefit of his country. But fear is not one of the duties that we 
 should render to the office or to the person of the President. Fear is 
 the prerogative of tyrants and the fealty of slaves. It is not the sen- 
 timent of freemen, who should walk |he earth and in the image of 
 their Maker look up to heaven with no fear but of Him. 
 
 South Carolina is the next Southern State. She has escaped en- 
 tirely the animadversion of Senators. I rejoice to see that illustrious 
 State enjoy a moment's repose from her persecutions. The inexorable 
 ascendency of the republican party in that State shields her from the 
 criticisms and assaults of its friends in this Chamber. O, that it 
 had protected her wasted and bleeding bosom from the ravages of 
 its spoilsmen at home ! Fortunate and thrice happy State. The repub- 
 lican party stands guard over the cradle and the grave of secession. 
 Poverty, exhaustion, and a helpless minority defend you from further 
 ruin. But beware, proud old Commonwealth, mother of Marion, 
 Rutledge, Pinckney, Butler and Hampton how you undertake to 
 throw off the yoke of republican domination. The effort may cost 
 you the penalties that visit Louisiana. He would be too cruel who 
 could say one word to disturb your brief relief from oppression, who 
 could stretch your perishing form on the rack again and arouse the 
 resentments and fears of your sleeping tormentors. 
 
 Then comes Tennessee. Why, sir, at the very mention of that name 
 I see -the eyes of Senators open wide with the expectation that the 
 overwhelming flood of rebellious proofs will crush the rash friend who 
 undertakes to defend that insurgent State. But what are the facts? 
 Passing from North Carolina iuto her daughter State, we traverse 
 East Tennessee, we cross Middle Tennessee, we penetrate the western 
 belt of the State to the waters of the Mississippi, and what evidences 
 of the frightful crimes and disorders which are attributed to that 
 State do we find ? In one county, in only one of the eighty-five coun- 
 ties in all that broad State, a bloody riot has taken place, in which 
 the laws have been shockingly violated; and the judges, the law 
 officers of the State, the juries, the governor of the State with the 
 authority of his office and personal influence, and the moral sanctions 
 of the people, are all earnestly at work to bring the offenders to jus- 
 tice. Would it be right, just, or safe to charge a whole State with 
 rebellious and desperate crime because a riot had occurred in a single 
 county and the whole judicial, executive, and popular powers of a 
 State were being exerted to punish the perpetrators of the outrage 
 and make them an example to the country ? Woiild it be just or fair 
 if crime did exist in one, two, or three counties of a State holding a 
 million of people, and the whole authority of the State exerted 
 through its proper officers was being employed and employed effect- 
 ively to suppress and prevent it ? Would it be just or fair or honora- 
 ble to charge the whole State with sweeping lawlessness! In Ten- 
 nessee the riot has submitted to the laws of the State and the author- 
 
39 
 
 ity of the courts is undisputed and supreme. No intelligent man can 
 doubt that the violated laws will be fully vindicated in their utmost 
 majesty and purity. But, sir, a seal has been set upon the loyalty of 
 Tennessee which our republican friends cannot deny. The Legislature 
 has just returned Andrew Johnson to the United States Senate, whom 
 neither majorities nor tumults nor wars could drive from his support 
 of the Union. With all her daring confederate leaders, the State of 
 Tennessee has sent to the Senate of the country the defender and lover 
 of the Union. Andrew Johnson may be the bold and defiant rebel of 
 a party, but from his unflinching attachment to the Union of the 
 States he has never wavered. 
 
 Let us now, Mr. President, turn our attention to Georgia and in- 
 vestigate the temper and condition of her people. We are told by 
 her able and honorable Senators on this floor that they are peaceful 
 and law-abiding, that they recognize their duties to the General Gov- 
 ernment, submit to its authority, and respect and enforce its laws. 
 These Senators are with and of the people of Georgia. They are 
 supposed to know and do know the sentiments of their constituents. 
 They are supposed to represent, and do most ably represent the opin- 
 ions, wishes, and I may say interests of their people, and their voice 
 is heard here and heard all over the country declaring that the people 
 of Georgia respect the Constitution of the United States, abide by 
 all of its amendments, and maintain at home order, good government, 
 and general quiet. Have you analyzed the evidence presented to the 
 Senate to support the charge that the State of Geergia is.rebellious, 
 disloyal, and oppresses the colored race ? That evidence in the aggre- 
 gate and in the detail consists of an article in a newspaper and a 
 letter from a solitary witness, uncorroborated by any concurrence 
 of testimony from any other reliable or trustworthy source. The Ku- 
 Klux organizations we are told were dissolved in 1870, and now the 
 evidence upon which Senators seriously attempt to impeach the char- 
 acter of the empire State of the South is the effusion of one issue of 
 a newspaper and a letter from the unsupported correspondent of a 
 Senator. 
 
 Can snch things be, 
 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
 
 Without our special wonder ? 
 
 Will Senators weigh these frail, flimsy, fleeting shadows against 
 the truth of Senators avouched here with all the sanctity and sol- 
 emnity of their words of honor as Senators ? Mr. President, let us 
 pause and behold the pass to which we have come. A State, an 
 organized State, a State of the American Eevolution, with a million 
 of people, charged and condemned by the American Senate upon the 
 evidence of a few hasty, heated lines in a newspaper and an unveri- 
 fied letter from a defeated aspirant for office. With all of my respect 
 for the press of the country — and I respect it as the great representa- 
 tive and expression of thought in this age — I cannot denounce the 
 whole people of a State as wicked, violent, and revolutionary upon 
 one editorial ; nor, with all the charity that I can exercise, can I con- 
 sent to damn and degrade them upon the slender statement of one- 
 witness who has been unfortunate in running for office. 
 
 I rejoice that the beautiful State of Florida seems undisturbed 
 by any of the violent disorders which we are told distress her neigh- 
 bors. I apprehend from recent, quite recent events that she will 
 continue to become yet more quiet. Our republican friends have 
 not yet made a presentment against the land of flowers and the 
 orange-trees. O no, Mr. President; fifty thousand intelligent, orderly,. 
 
40 
 
 courteous, respectful visitors of both sexes go from the North, from 
 the rigor of your winter, to find genial repose in the bright sun 
 and balmy air of that lovely State. They come for health and pleasure 
 in the fall, and return in the spring as cheerful and as happy as the 
 birds 'who make their annual visit to the South. I have heard of no 
 insult, injury, violence, to one of them. They pass through Virginia, 
 the Carolinas, and Georgia, and return through Alabama, Tennessee, 
 and Kentucky, and they bring no reports of offense to them or of 
 crime in the South. And yet we are told that the life of a northern 
 man is not safe in the South. 
 
 Mr. President, with the letter of Hon. A. H. Buckner, of Mis- 
 souri, to which I specially invite the attention of the Senate, I shall 
 pass over the State of Alabama. I will now read that letter : 
 
 House of Representatives, United States, 
 
 Washington, D. C, January 25, 1875. 
 
 Sir : I was much surprised to hear Senator Sherman lending the weight of his 
 ch aracter to the slander on the people of Louisiana, uttered by General Sheridan, as 
 to the number of murders that had taken place in that State. While it is not stated 
 by these gentlemen that these thousand murders were political assassinations, the 
 charge has no significance unless they design it to be so understood. I venture the 
 opinion that it will be found to be an atrocious misrepresentation, with the smallest 
 amount of truth to support it. I come to this conclusion from the testimony ad- 
 duced before the Alabama committee appointed by the House of Representatives 
 to investigate the condition of affairs in that State during the late political campaign. 
 You will recollect the letter of Hon. Charles Hays to Hon. Joseph R. Hawley, 
 specifying numerous outrages that had taken place from about the 1st of July to 
 the 15th of September, 1874, and also telegraphic dispatches to the same effect pub- 
 lished in the northern papers. The number of murders thus stated as having 
 occurred in the counties of Choctaw, Marengo, Sumter, Pickens, Greene, and Cof- 
 fee, (all of which are included in Mr. Hays's congressional district except the last,) 
 and which occurred within the space of two months and a half, amounts to thirty- 
 six, to say nothing of twenty or thirty wounded. "With the exception of the mur- 
 der of Billings and Ivey, in' Sumter County — the former a white, and the latter a 
 colored man — there was not a particle of evidence before the committee that any 
 such killings had taken place in either of these counties, and they were proved to 
 be unfounded as far as a negative can be. 
 
 I was of the sub-committee that examined witnesses in Sumter County for four 
 days — near the center of these alleged outrages — and with the exceptions I have 
 mentioned no witness stated that any such homicides, or any homicides at all, had 
 occurred in these counties, as stated in the Hawley letter or the telegraphic dis- 
 patch referred to. The evidence, now in course of publication, will confirm my 
 statement in every jot and tittle. 
 
 But if by murders is to be understood all homicides of everv description, includ- 
 ing the killing of negroes by negroes, and the justifiable killing of negroes and 
 white men in the perpetration of a felony, such as robbery, arson, burglary, rape, 
 &c, then there may be some semblance of truth in this statement of General Sher- 
 idan, indorsed by Senator Sherman. I was informed by a gentleman in Montgom- 
 ery County, Alabama, that at the time we were there the jail of the county con- 
 tained upward of one hundred prisoners awaiting trial, principally for felony ; that 
 all were negroes except one or two, and that there were not less than a dozen mur- 
 ders in that county during the year 1874, and all of them committed by negroes 
 upon negroes. This county has a large republican majority and has been entirely 
 under the control of the negroes since reconstruction. I apprehend that a thorough 
 investigation as to these thousand murders in Louisiana will show that at least 
 four-fifths of all that have been committed have no political significance whatever, 
 which General Sheridan knows, if Senator Sherman does not. 
 I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, 
 
 A. H. BTJCKNER. 
 
 Hon. A. G. Thurman. 
 
 Judge Buckner, au honored member of the House of Representa- 
 tives, was one of a committee sent by the House to investigate the 
 condition of the State of Alabama. From his letter it will be seen 
 that the crimes in Alabama are mostly committed by the negroes. 
 This evidence may be regarded as having 'all the force of official irn- 
 X^ression. 
 
41 
 
 In reference to Mississippi, there is no evidence of any violence by 
 the white people except in the city of Vicksburgh. The events there 
 have been laid, before the country, and I hardly think the people of 
 an entire State should be condemned and the State itself be "dis- 
 established" for the act of a hundred men in one place. For three 
 years in the great State of Mississippi there has been one riot which 
 is charged, justly or unjustly I shall not determine, on her white 
 people. Where is the evidence of widespread conspiracy, rebellion, 
 and murder against the Government and the friends of the Union? 
 
 As to the State of Arkansas, I beg to refer the Senate to the very 
 able report of the committee of the House, of which Judge Poland, 
 of Vermont, who once with no ordinary distinction held a seat in this 
 Chamber, is the chairman. I will read from Mr. Poland's report : 
 
 The new constitution we regard as republican in form, and in many respects an 
 improvement upon that of 1868. Some question has been made as to the dropping 
 from the declaration of principles some of the professions of loyalty contained in 
 the old constitution. Most of the reconstruction constitutions contained rather a 
 surplusage on that subject. "We think the substance has been retained. 
 
 The committee are satisfied that the convention to frame the constitution, and 
 the constitution itself, were voted for and are satisfactory to the majority of the 
 voters and people of the State. The State officers were certainly elected by a ma- 
 jority of votes cast, and we think by a majority of the votes in the State. 1?he con- 
 dition of the State has been as peaceful since the new government was inaugurated 
 as it ever has been ; acts of violence have been very few indeed. It is alleged that 
 this is all because they are now under congressional investigation and on their 
 "good behavior." 
 
 The committee believe that in Arkansas the mass of the people on both sides are 
 inclined to peace and good government, and to allow all the enjoyment of their 
 legal rights ; but there are a class of men, the 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 Tour committee cannot find any solid ground on which to stand to say the Gen- 
 eral Government can or ought to interfere ; and no amount of irregularity in the 
 processes by which this state of things was brought about furnish just reason for 
 doing so. The committee believe that, upon principles now well established, all 
 these defects and irregularities in the proceedings must be regarded as cured by 
 the verdict of the people. 
 
 It will be seen that since the overthrow of the attempted usurpa- 
 tion of Brooks and the establishment of a just and conservative gov- 
 ernment in that State, quiet and tranquillity prevail, the law is main- 
 tained, and liberty enjoyed. 
 
 I have inquired with some concern of the Senators and Represent- 
 atives of the State of Texas in reference to the condition of their 
 people. I am informed that the people of that State are enjoying a 
 high degree of prosperity. Both of her Senators inform me that their 
 State is annually receiving an immigration estimated at two hundred 
 thousand souls. What better testimony of the prosperity of a people 
 and their peaceful and law-abiding habits and their respect for the 
 Government and their tolerance of northern opinions than the estab- 
 lished fact that from one to two hundred«thousand settlers, largely 
 from the Northern States, annually find homes among them? 
 
 And now, we approach the State of Louisiana. Yes, I say the State 
 of Louisiana. You remember her, I remember her as a State ; and 
 we hope she may yet be a State. Yes, prostrated, disfranchised, an 
 armed soldiery holding her capital, she is still a State ; and no power 
 on earth can deprive her of her rights, powers, position as a State ; 
 neither her own suicidal hand nor all the powers of the United 
 States combined. If there is anything true in the theory and princi- 
 ples of this Government, it is that the existence of a State is as in- 
 destructible as the Government itself ; but, I will not now discuss 
 this question. We are told that "bloody treason flourishes" all 
 over that once proud and happy State ; the domination of a white 
 
42 
 
 minority over a "black majority ; the intimidations of a black majority 
 supported by the Army and upheld by the patronage of the United 
 States Government, by a white minority restrained, arrested, de- 
 pressed by that same Army and influence. There have been bloody 
 riots committed in Louisiana. I do not defend them; but let us ex- 
 amine them, their numbers and their magnitude. We should no doubt 
 differ about their causes and origin. We are told by Senators that 
 the " whole people are in revolt " and that there are " seas of blood," 
 " thousands of murders" there. 
 
 I invoke the attention of the Senate. There have occurred in the 
 State of Louisiana since the election in 1868 a riot at Colfax, a riot 
 at Coushatta, and the revolution against the Kellogg usurpation at 
 New Orleans. I accept the statement of republican Senators. Three 
 riots, if you will, in that State since 1868, disconnected with each 
 other, occurring in widely separated districts, under entirely differ- 
 ent circumstances, and neither having any reference to any election 
 that was to succeed it — no common interest between them. Upon 
 this statement of fact, we are asked, seriously asked, to pronounce 
 that the people of Louisiana are in armed rebellion and conspiring 
 to overthrow the national authority and all government and substi- 
 tute anarchy and " the slave power." 
 
 Against ail of these charges, against all this denunciation, against 
 all this cry of "organized political crime," against and as everlast- 
 ing answer and refutation and rebuke of its cruel injustice, I pre- 
 sent one paragraph from the calm, able, patriotic report of Messrs. 
 Foster, Phelps, and Potter, the sub-committee of the House of 
 Kepresentatives sent to see and hear for themselves the facts in Lou- 
 isiana. Here is what they say : 
 
 Indeed, in our judgment the substantial citizens of the State "will submit to any 
 fair determination of the question of the late elections, or to anything by which 
 they can secure a firm and good government. What they seek is peace and an 
 opportunity for prosperity ; to that end they will support any form of government 
 that will afford them just protection iu their business and personal relations. In 
 their distress they have got beyond any mere question of political party. They regard 
 themselves as practically without government and ■without the power to form one. 
 
 To that statement I call your attention and the attention of the 
 American people. "In their distress they have got beyond any mere ques- 
 tion of political party." In these few words there is an eloquence of 
 argument and fact far above the power of speech. What must be 
 the extent, the depth, the agony of that " distress " which goes far 
 " beyond political party." It is the " distress " of homes, for families, 
 for life, for liberty. It is the " distress" which only those can feel 
 who on the deck of some burning and sinking vessel, amid the despair- 
 ing faces and prayers of wives and children, hear the last signal-gun 
 that tells them they are going down to rise no more. 
 
 I have thus attempted at the peril of being very tedious to review 
 the condition of the Southern States in the light which the evidence 
 furnished by the republican party presents it. I think I may with 
 candor rest the case of the South here without pleading her immense 
 defenses, her overwhelming justifications, her mitigations of nature 
 that appeal Avith the force of justice to the universal sense of right 
 and reason of mankind. 
 
 In thus vindicating the Southern States let me not be misunder- 
 stood. L have done so from an anxious desire to dispel the imputa- 
 tions against them. But it is not the duty nor the right of any 
 Senator to institute an inquisition into the character or conduct of 
 any State of this Union. The Constitution defines the duties of the 
 United States in this respect, but it has not made and I trust never 
 
43 
 
 will make Congress an inquisitorial court to investigate the States. 
 Sir, is the Senate to become the star chamber of the Republic, in 
 which States are to be immolated and their people put on the rack ? 
 Was it for this that these columns were reared, that this emblazoned 
 roof pours down its gilded light on our heads ? If this is to be, 
 Senators, let us leave this Chamber and with stooping and muffled 
 forms descend to the gloomy and dismal basement of the Capitol, 
 there to revive the examples of Venice. 
 
 Consider the conditiou of the Southern States immediately after 
 the war and what a spectacle do we behold ! There were twelve 
 States embracing an area of over eight hundred thousand square 
 miles, larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, 
 Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland combined, with a population 
 of twelve millions, two-thirds of which were whites aud one 
 third recent slaves. The peace in 1865 succeeded a frightful civil 
 war of four years' duration in which over a million and a half of men 
 were engaged in armed conflict and all the terrible passions of sec- 
 tional strife were excited. The war ended with an upheaval and 
 transformation unprecedented in all time. Systems as old as the 
 settlement of the country and deeply rooted in the very foundations 
 of the structure of the South were suddenly subverted and abolished ; 
 government, society, the established order of labor and capital, the 
 organic laws of States, their relations to the General Government, 
 and the whole frame-work of material, moral, social, and political 
 proportion were overturned and demolished. 
 
 I recall in all history no example of such complicated wreck and 
 confusion. Four millions of slaves, one-half the population, totally 
 unfitted for self-government, were suddenly set at liberty and in- 
 vested with all political power. A great army had dissolved, and its 
 soldiers, accustomed to the camp for years, returned to their homes 
 to find them in ashes and their country without fixed laws. And for 
 years, either from adverse seasons or mistaken husbandry or capri- 
 cious labor, or all combined, the very earth refused her beneficent 
 increase to our stricken people. 
 
 TTnfenced desolation 
 Had left us as naked as the vulgar air. 
 
 I will not lift the veil from the picture of our social suffering. 
 There was not a board in all our land that had not fasted ; there 
 was not a fireside in all the South from which some loved face was 
 not missing ; there was not a heart in all the South that had not 
 bled. Senators, may you and your prosperous people never learn 
 by your own experience the extremity of our afflictions. I have 
 thought how to describe it; I am powerless to do it justice with 
 speech. 
 
 I speak the simple truth when I declare that had I seen at the con- 
 clusion of the war the sea of dark and bitter troubles through which 
 we had to pass, I should have despaired of the fate of my country 
 and regarded the continuance of life as a doubtful blessing. A peo- 
 ple exhausted by war and broken down by anguish were to try again 
 the experiment of self-government for themselves. They were to 
 test the capacity of a new race for self-government, they were to de- 
 termine the question of labor in all its forms, and they were to con- 
 duct these trials at the same time and on the same field with that 
 other grander trial of the capacity of different races to live together 
 in harmony as political equals. These were some of the difficulties 
 the South had to confront. And, Mr. President, had you then done as 
 you ought to have done — and I must say right here what I do think — 
 
44 
 
 had you extended, your right hand to the South in this hour of sorest 
 trial, had you treated her people with magnanimity, had you given 
 them your confidence as countrymen and brothers, the attachment 
 and the gratitude of that people to you and the Union would have 
 been boundless. 
 
 But Senators remind us of the magnanimity of the Government. 
 Holding that quality to be the crown of all the virtues, I should be 
 pleased to recognize it in the conduct of the Government toward 
 the Southern States. It has been exercised in all our relations with 
 others ; it has been manifested toward the Indians ; it has been 
 manifested toward all our feebler neighbors ; it has expressed itself 
 in sympathy for all the oppressed people of the earth. But was 
 it magnanimous, was it wise or politic, when the South was in the 
 condition I have just described, to extort from her poverty a cotton 
 tax of $70,000,000, now almost universally admitted to be unconsti- 
 tutional ? Was it magnanimous, wise, or politic, in your amendments 
 to the Constitution, while you bestowed all political and civil rights 
 on those who had been our slaves to disfranchise without discrimina- 
 tion every human being in the South who had ever been trusted 
 by his people ? And, let me ask the Senate of the United States if 
 it is magnanimous, grateful, patriotic, or honorable to deny to the 
 surviving soldiers of the war of 1812 who live in the South the pen- 
 sion of the Government? Sir, in this debate we have heard much of 
 Jackson and the glory of New Orleans, and the heart of the nation 
 swells with gratitude and pride when the 8th of January, 1815, is 
 mentioned. Is it possible that the brave comrades of Jackson on that 
 glorious day, now past four score years, tottering to their graves, are 
 dishonored by the country they gave their blood to defend ? Sena- 
 tors, let not this reproach longer dishonor the justice, gratitude, and 
 glory of the American people. This is not the magnanimity that 
 conquers hearts. 
 
 But let it be recorded to the imperishable and transcendent glory 
 of the South that amid all this ruin, revolution, eclipse, and dark- 
 ness her great people, as a people, never once lost their self-control, 
 forgot their duty, violated their moderation, or broke any of the re- 
 straints of law or honor. But let it also be written to their undying 
 and supreme renown that amid these speechless calamities they have 
 cherished and preserved in unquenchable light their love of liberty and 
 constitutional freedom. Sir, in all history has there been anything like 
 it ? Look at the civil wars of Marius and Sylla, and behold their fires 
 smothered to-day but to burst out to-morrow in wilder flames and 
 deeper streams of blood. Look at the thirty years' war of our great 
 ancestry — the houses of York and Lancaster. Read the account of 
 the recent " commune " in Paris after the peace with Germany, in 
 which in three months ninety thousand Frenchmen were slain by 
 their own countrymen before the passions of war would subside. 
 And then turn and behold the " great southern ocean," when the 
 storm had ended, become, with all its power and depths, almost as 
 calm as when the " Sea of Galilee " responded to the Spirit of Peace. 
 
 Is it remarkable, that over this vast deep, stirred by the storm of 
 war and strewed with the wrecks of so many institutions, institu- 
 tions of ages, there should be left some agitation ? Is it not more 
 remarkable that there has been so little disturbance ; that the great 
 waves of war and passion have so soon and so universally subsided ? 
 And are these disturbances and outbreaks to be taken as proofs of 
 general dissatisfaction and violence ? We might as well fear that 
 because the volcanoes on the Andes occasionally burst out, the 
 
45 
 
 great central fires were about to break their earthbound cere- 
 ments. Crimes have been committed in the South ; crimes sometimes 
 of a horrid character. I condemn and denounce them ; "wherever 
 the violence, the terror, the tyranny of numbers has prevailed over 
 the weak and defenseless, I utterly abhor and execrate it. I have 
 no sympathy with crime in any shape it may assume. For the 
 authors of these crimes I have no toleration. They have accom- 
 plished no good. It is impossible under the providence of a just 
 Ruler, that crime can accomplish good. But they have brought un- 
 just, cruel reproach and aspersion upon whole communities. Mobs, 
 combined lawless numbers, are not of or with the South. In the name 
 of the courage, manliness, and truth which -distinguish the name of 
 " southerner " over the civilized world, I repudiate and disown such 
 disgraceful acts as utterly abhorrent to our sentiments and character. 
 Senators can have no conception of the gross and cruel injustice they 
 perpetrate against the South by the charge that any considerable, 
 any respectable portion of our people can be guilty of such infamous 
 offenses. I have already demonstrated that such is not the fact. 
 The world knows it is not. 
 
 But, sir, if we feel proper indignation against the perpetration of 
 crime in the case of individuals, what must be our abhorrence and 
 scorn for the authors and agents of that system of gigantic crime 
 which spread wide over the whole Southern States, and at one time 
 threatened to involve in general ruin not only political liberty, but 
 all the safeguards of civilized society. If we feel just and stern in- 
 dignation against the massacre at Coushatta, or Colfax, or Trenton, 
 what must be our surprise and passion when we behold the State of 
 Louisiana, with her half million of people, the helpless victim of a 
 deliberate, systematic, organized, and accomplished conspiracy, which 
 has destroyed the value of her lands, broken down the credit of her 
 stocks, paralyzed her commerce, annihilated her industries, prosti- 
 tuted her laws, prostrated every honest interest in her limits, trampled 
 on her liberties, and brought down her proud name to the dust. 
 What crime can be greater than the destruction of a State, whether 
 accomplished by the armed soldiery of the nation in the capital of 
 the State or perpetrated by the slower processes of the poisons of 
 corruption ? Nor, sir, can this high crime be mitigated by denuncia- 
 tion, abuse, calumniation of the people of Louisiana. The attempt 
 by the authors of these calamities to tarnish, to blacken, to mutilate 
 the character of the unhappy and distressed people whom they have- 
 despoiled and oppressed proves the " guilt of their own great quell." 
 The ancient Carthaginians cut off the eyelids of the noblest Roman 
 and exposed him to the blazing sun until he perished because he had 
 not betrayed his own nor his country's honor ; but amid their tortures 
 the barbarians applauded the virtue and patriotism of Regulus, and 
 erected on the plains near their city a trophy to his memory. The 
 countrymen of Hannibal admired the stern integrity their cruelty 
 could not shake; their savage policy inflicted the rack, but their 
 sense of justice honored the duty that survived it. In Louisiana we 
 have witnessed the rapacity and cruelty that could strip and starve 
 its prostrate victims, accompanied with the infamy that sought to 
 destroy the character it had vainly tried to corrupt. 
 
 And now, Mr. President, I submit to a candid country if there is 
 any just ground in the condition or conduct of the southern people to 
 justify the interference of the Army with the Legislature at New 
 Orleans. 
 
 Louisiana was first admitted as a State in this Union on the 8th of 
 
46 
 
 April, 1812, and again readmitted under the reconstruction acta on 
 June 25, 1868. She is a State, her Representatives are in Congress, 
 the United States courts are over her people, the jurisdiction of na- 
 tional laws extends throughout her limits, she is in all the elements 
 recognized hy the Constitution a State in this Union. In November, 
 1872, a general election for all State officers and members of Con- 
 gress was held in that State, and the conservative party elected their 
 ticket by a majority of about ten thousand votes. On the night of 
 the 5th of December following, under color of a void order issued at 
 midnight by a corrupt and profligate judge, supported by regiments 
 of the United States Army moving before the dawn of day, a fraud- 
 ulent and usurped State government was imposed upon the people of 
 Louisiana. I will read from the report of Messrs. Phelps, Foster, 
 and Potter: 
 
 The general condition of affairs in the State of Louisiana seems to be as follows : 
 The conviction has been general among the whites since 1872 that the Kellogg 
 government was a usurpation. This conviction among, them has been strength- 
 ened by the acts of the Kellogg legislature abolishing existing courts and judges, 
 and substituting others presided over by judges appointed by Kellogg, having ex- 
 traordinary and' exclusive jurisdiction over jSolitical questions ; by changes in the 
 laws, centralizing in the governor every form of political control, including the 
 supervision of the elections ; by continuing the returning board, with absolute 
 power over the returns of elections ; by the extraordinary provisions enacted for the 
 trial of titles and claims to office ; by the conversion of the police force, maintained 
 at the expense of the city of New Orleans, into an armed brigade of State militia, 
 subject to the command of the governor; by the creation in some places of monop- 
 olies in markets, gas-making, water- works, and femes, cleaning vaults and remov- 
 ing filth, and doing work as wharfingers ; by the abolition of courts with elective 
 judges, and the substitution of other courts, with judges appointed by Kellogg, in 
 evasion of the constitution of the State ; by enactments punishing criminally all 
 persons who attempted to fill official positions unless returned by the returning 
 board; by unlimited appropriations for the payment of militia expenses and for the 
 payment of legislative warrants, vouchers, and checks issued during the years 1870 
 and 1872 ; by laws declaring that no person in arrears for taxes after default pub- 
 lished shall bring any suit in any court of the State or be allowed to be a witness in 
 his own behalf — measures which, when coupled with the extraordinary burdens of 
 taxation, have served to vest, in the language of Governor Kellogg's counsel, " a 
 degree of power in the governor of a State scarcely exercised by any sovereign in 
 the world." 
 
 I will also read from the report of Messrs. Hoar, Wheeler, and 
 Frye, three distinguished republicans of the House of Representa- 
 tives : 
 
 On the other hand, the order of Judge Durell and the so-called canvass made by 
 the returning board in the interest of Kellogg seem to us to have no validity and to 
 be entitled to no respect whatever. We concede and declare, as emphatically as 
 any person can desire, the unsatisfactory character of the methods above adopted 
 for arriving at this conclusiom. There is, in our judgment, whatever may be the 
 opinion one may form from the statement of men familiar with the campaign of 
 1872, or from the registration of white and colored voters, no legal evidence what- 
 ever which will warrant the declaration that either Kellogg or McEnery was 
 lawfully elected. 
 
 I will further read from the report of the Committee of the Senate 
 on Privileges and Elections, then composed entirely of republicans : 
 
 3. Conceding the board was in existence, and had full authority to canvass the 
 returns, it hadfno returns to canvass. 
 
 The returns from the parishes had been made, under the law of 1870, to the gov- 
 ernor, and not one of them was before the Lynch board. 
 
 It was testified before your committee by Mr. Bovee himself, who participated in 
 this canvass by the Lynch board, that they were determined to have a republican 
 Legislature, and made their canvass to that end. The testimony abundantly estab- 
 lishes the fraudulent character of their canvass. In some cases they had what were 
 supposed to be copies of the original returns, in other cases they had nothing but 
 newspaper statements, and in other cases, where they had nothing whatever to act 
 upon, they made an estimate, based upon their knowledge of the political complex- 
 ion of the parish, of what the vote ought to have been. They also counted a large 
 
47 
 
 number of affidavits purporting to be sworn to by voters who had been wrongfully 
 denied registration or the right to vote, many of which affidavits they must have 
 known tobe forgeries. It was testified by one witness that he forged over a thou- 
 sand affidavits, and delivered them to the Lynch board while it was in session. It 
 i.s quite unnecessary to waste time in considering this part of the case ; for no per- 
 son can examine the testimony ever so cursorily without seeing that this pretended 
 canvass had no semblance of integrity. 
 
 It has never been pretended by any intelligent or respectable man 
 that Kellogg received a majority of the votes cast in Louisiana in 
 1872. The honorable Senator from Indiana [Mr. Morton'] does insist 
 that, by an "estimate" of what lie imagines the vote ought to have 
 been, according to the census of the State and upon the " line of 
 color," Kellogg was elected. But that Senator has never asserted that 
 Kellogg had any legal expression or sanction of an election. 
 
 Upon this question I refer to the message of the President to the 
 Senate in reply to the resolution of the Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Thur- 
 man:] 
 
 It has been bitterly and- persistently alleged that Kellogg was not elected. 
 "Whether he was or not is not altogether certain, nor is it any more certain that his 
 competitor, McEnery, was chosen. The election was a gigantic fraud, and there 
 are no reliable returns of its result. Kellogg obtained possession of the office, and 
 in my opinion has more right to it than his competitor. 
 
 Thus a State government was imposed upon the people of Lou- 
 isiana and has been continued over them for more than two years 
 against their expressed will and by the fraud of a Federal judge, 
 sustained by the Army of the United States. The facts deposed 
 before the Committee on Privileges and Elections develop a system 
 of glaring and disgraceful fraud without any parallel in the annals 
 of political crime. In 1874 the people of that oppressed State again 
 with determined patriotism entered the canvass and carried the elec- 
 tion in November by an acknowledged majority of the popidar vote, 
 and returned a majority of twenty-nine conservative members to the 
 house of representatives of the State Legislature ; and again a corrupt 
 and fraudulent returning board undertook to defeat the popular will 
 and actually reverse the majority in the house of representatives. 
 
 I beg to refer to the report of the committee of the House again on 
 this subject : 
 
 "Whereas both branches of the Legislature of Louisiana have requested the spe- 
 cial committee of this House to investigate the circumstances attending the elec- 
 tion and returns thereof in that State for the year 1874 ; and whereas said commit- 
 tee have unanimously reported that the returning board of that State, in canvass- 
 ing and compiling said returns and promulgating the result, 'wrongfully applied an 
 erroneous rule of law, by reason whereof persons were awarded seats in the house 
 of representatives of Louisiana to which they were not entitled and persons entitled 
 to seats were deprived of them : 
 
 Resolved, That it is recommended to the house of representatives of Louisiana to 
 take immediate steps to remedy said injustice and to place the persons rightfully 
 entitled in their seats. 
 
 By which it will be seen that a clear, manifest, undeniable ma- 
 jority in the house of representatives was overthrown by the action 
 of the Kellogg returning board. I also read from the same report 
 to show that the election in November, 1874, was fair, lawful, 
 peaceful : 
 
 "We hold, therefore, that in November, 1874, the people of the State of Louisiana 
 did fairly have a free, peaceable, and full registration and election, in which a 
 clear conservative majority was elected to the lower house of the Legislature, of 
 which majority the conservatives were deprived \>y the unjust, illegal, and arbi- 
 trary action of the returning board. 
 
 It will thus appear from the report unanimously made by the com- 
 mittee of seven, composed of five republicans and two democrats, 
 that the conservatives elected a majority of members to the house of 
 
48 
 
 representatives in the State of Louisiana, and that the Kellogg re- 
 turning board undertook to unlawfully supplant that conservative 
 majority, and actually returned a roll giving to the republicans a 
 majority in that house. 
 
 On the morning of the 4th of January the Legislature was to con- 
 vene and organize in the State-house at New Orleans. One hundred 
 and two members who were returned on the roll of the returning 
 board assembled in the legislative hall, of whom fifty-two were re- 
 publicans and fifty democrats, and with them five members who had 
 the parish certificates, prima fads evidence of their election, and who 
 had not been rejected or enrolled by the returning board. After a 
 temporary organization of the house the five members were admitted 
 to seats in the chamber and Mr. Wiltz was elected speaker. Against 
 the admission of the five members and the organization of the house 
 with Mr. Wiltz as speaker there was earnest protest from the repub- 
 lican members. And then occurred a scene which has but few pre- 
 cedents in the history of free governments, and these all conspicuous 
 for the calamities which succeeded them. 
 
 General De Trobriand, an officer of the United States Army, in the 
 uniform of his country, entered the legislative hall of the State of 
 Louisiana, and with a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets ejected from 
 their seats five persons sitting as members of that body. There is 
 the simple statement of the facts. The Army of the United States 
 enters the hall of a State Legislature and expels its seated members. 
 Is it necessary to comment on the character of the act ? When the 
 day comes, and I pray it never may, that such a deed fails to strike 
 the American people with amazement and indignant horror, our lib- 
 erty will already have perished. There is no danger to our free 
 institutions Avhich the Constitution of the United States and the 
 constitutions of all the States guard with so much vigilance as that 
 which must always arise in a free government when the military 
 interferes with the civil authority. And, sir, let it be forever kept 
 in mind that this jealousy of the civil government is just, for it can- 
 not be too watchful against the ambitions of military power. The 
 constitution of every State protects this fundamental vital principle, 
 without which there can be no civil government. This principle is 
 the foundation, the life of all representative government. Strike it 
 down, and nothing remains but military despotism. Its subversion is 
 the end of liberty and the establishment of arbitrary power. That 
 is what it is. * 
 
 As a Senator from North Carolina I feel instructed to protest against 
 all military interference with the civil authority. That State for 
 years has had, in addition xo her constitutional provision, on her stat- 
 ute-books this law. 
 
 21. It shall not be lawful to call or direct any regimental, battalion, or company 
 muster on election days, or to assemble armed men on the day of election at any 
 place appointed by law'to hold elections for electors, governor, members of Congress, 
 or members of the General Assembly, under the penalty of $1,000, to be recovered 
 of any person who shall call such muster or assemble such armed men, and ap- 
 plied one-half to the use of the informer and the other half to the use of the State. — 
 Revised Code of North Carolina, 308, 309. 
 
 And to her honor let it be known that during the civil war her 
 military officers, her governor, and her State officials, all her peo- 
 ple respected the writ of habeas corpus. In looking back over a life 
 now approaching its meridian, I recall no incident of a public charac- 
 ter that gives me more pleasure than when surrounded by thousands 
 of armed troops I felt it to be my duty to obey that writ and sur- 
 render to the unarmed officer of the law a conscripted soldier from 
 the army. So jealous has North Carolina ever been of her liberties. 
 
49 
 
 Among all the safeguards of a free government there is not and 
 there cannot he one more essential and more sacred than the right 
 which the Constitution of the United States secures to each House 
 of Congress and the constitution of every State secures to each branch 
 of a State Legislature, that — 
 
 Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its 
 own members. 
 
 The nature of this power has been well discussed by Mr. Eeverdy 
 Johnson — and when I have mentioned that name in connection with 
 constitutional law I will say no more. I will use his words. He says : 
 
 It is a power essential to legislative freedom. The history of the legislative de- 
 partment of Great Britain shows that this power, after various struggles with 
 kings and lords, secured its permanent place in Parliament and has never since 
 been called into question. If the Legislature cannot delegate the power, still less 
 can it be exercised by the Executive, State or Federal. To suffer it to be done by 
 either would be to divest the Legislature of a power essential to its own integrity. 
 To permit the executive of a State to purge the legislative halls of members whom 
 he may suppose not to have been elected would be not less fatal to the very end of 
 such a department than to give him the power to select its members. And to au- 
 thorize the President so to interfere would be a total violation of the powers ad- 
 mitted to belong to the States, and of the limited powers conferred upon the Gen- 
 eral Government. 
 
 It will do us no harm to glance for a moment at the history of this 
 great legislative right and see with what care our English ancestors 
 have established and preserved it. I will read a short extract from 
 Hallam's Constitutional History, a book which I commend alike to 
 statesmen and American soldiers : 
 
 Nothing further appears on record till in 1586 the house appointed a committee 
 to examine the state and circumstances of the returns for the county of Norfolk. 
 The fact was, that the chancellor had issued a second writ for this county, on the 
 ground of some irregularity in the first return, and a different person had been 
 elected. Some notice having heen taken of this matter in the Commons, the speaker 
 received orders, to signify to them Her Majesty's displeasure that " the house 
 had been troubled with a thing impertinent for them to deal with, and only belong- 
 ing to the charge and office of the lord chancellor, whom she had appointed to con- 
 fer with the judges about the returns for the county of Norfolk, and. to act therein 
 according to justice and right." The house, in spite of this peremptory inhibition, 
 proceeded to nominate a committee to examine into and report the circumstances 
 of these returns, who reported the whole case with their opinion, that those elected 
 on the first writ should take their seats, declaring further that they understood 
 the chancellor and some of the judges to be of the same opinion ; but that "they had 
 not thought it proper to inquire of the chancellor what he had done, because they 
 thought it prejudicial to the privilege of the house to have the same determined by 
 others than such as were members thereof. And though they thought very rever- 
 ently of the said lord chancellor and judges, and knew them to be competent 
 judges in their places ; yet in this case they took them notfor judges in Parliament 
 in this house ; and thereupon required that the members, if it was so thought good, 
 might take their oaths and be allowed of by force of the first writ as allowed by 
 the censure of this house, and not as allowed of by the said lord chancellor and 
 judges. "Which was agreed unto by the whole house." — Hallam's Constitutional His- 
 tory of England, volume 1, pages 274, 275. 
 
 There is an example of the independence of the English House of 
 Commons and of the respect which Queen Elizabeth, the daughter of 
 the haughty Tudors, rendered to a majesty greater than the throne. 
 Shall the Army of the American Eepublic exhibit a disregard for the 
 constitutional privilege of a Legislature which the proudest sovereign 
 who ever wore the crown of Great Britain dared not infringe ? 
 
 But we have been told on this floor that the expelled persons 
 were not members of that Legislature and that they had no right to 
 the seats which they occupied. Sir, is the Senate, is the general 
 commanding the United States troops, is the governor of Louisiana, 
 is the President of the United States, to j udge that question t No, 
 sir; no. Tbat question belonged by the constitution of Louisiana 
 
 4 R 
 
so 
 
 exclusively to tlie house of representatives itself, and we have no 
 power to decide it here. Our right and duty to judge the elections, 
 qualifications, and returns of Senators in this Chamber is not more 
 exclusive. But there are proofs, strong, positive, certain that the 
 conservatives had elected a large majority of that house and that the 
 act of the returning hoard in undertaking to defeat that majority 
 was unlawful and corrupt. I again call attention to the report of 
 the committee of the House of Eepresentatives and their resolution 
 which I have already quoted. 
 
 The committee unanimously recommend "that immediate steps 
 he taken to remedy said injustice and to place the persons right- 
 fully entitled to their seats." Are we to hear after this expression 
 of an able and patriotic committee that the soldiery of the United 
 States which unseated and expelled lawful members of a State Legis- 
 lature was only suppressing a riot, was putting down domestic Vio- 
 lence, was quelling an insurrection ? Was the convention of a Legis- 
 lature "duly, peaceably, quietly elected by the people" a riot, 
 domestic violence, or an armed insurrection? Sir, such a question is 
 not susceptible of argument. It cannot bear the light. Is not the 
 origin, the cause, the fountain of all this wrong in the corrupt, will- 
 ful, wicked conspiracy of the returning board to defraud the people 
 of Louisiana out of their second election ? And was not the Army 
 used, in the words of Kellogg, "to clear the hall and State-house of 
 all persons not returned as legal members of the house of represent- 
 atives by the returning board? Of this returning board the com- 
 mittee of the House say : 
 
 We understand the committee to be unanimous in finding tlie fact that the action 
 of the returning board has defeated the will of the people as expressed by them at 
 the polls on the 3d of November, 1874. The people then elected to the lower house 
 of their Legislature a majority of conservative members ; a portion of the conserva- 
 tive members thus elected were refused their certificates. This is an act of great 
 injustice to the individuals, of gravest danger to the State and free government, 
 and ought to be immediately corrected by any power competent to correct it. 
 
 "Without now referring to other instances, we are constrained to declare that the 
 action of the returning board, on the whole, was arbitrary, unjust, and, in our opin- 
 ion, illegal ; and that this arbitrary, unjust, and illegal action alone prevented the 
 return by the board of a majority of conservative members of the lower house. 
 
 And, sir, what do we now witness ? 
 
 "We hold, therefore, that in November, 1874, the people of the State of Louisiana 
 did fairly have a free, peaceable, and full registration and election, in which a clear 
 conservative majority was elected to the lower house of the Legislature, of which 
 majority the conservatives were deprived by the unjust, illegal, and arbitrary action 
 ofthe returning board. 
 
 And then we behold the Army of the United States used to sustain 
 " the unjust, illegal, and arbitrary action of the returning board " by 
 expelling members from the legislative hall because they had not 
 been returned by that boardi 
 
 And we witness further, now when days and weeks have passed 
 since that interference by the military, these same members excluded 
 from the hall and the injustice thus continued. Is this violation of 
 the most sacred rights of a State of this Union to be perpetuated ? 
 Is a usurping Legislature sustained in authority by the United States 
 Army to make laws for the people of Louisiana, and are the people 
 expected to obey and respect their acts ? The usurpers in Louisiana 
 may well exclaim with the bloody Dane : 
 
 Forgive me my foul murder ! 
 That cannot be ; since I am still possess'd 
 Of those effects for which I did the murder, 
 My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 
 May one be pardon'd, and retain the offense ? 
 
51 
 
 No, sir, the smallest remedy that is clue the violated constitution of 
 that State and her outraged people and the just sentiment of Ameri- 
 can freemen is to allow the rightful members of the Legislature to 
 assemble in the capitol and discharge their legislative duty. I pro- 
 test against this continuing wrong, and every hour of its existence 
 increases its enormity and solidifies its despotism. Its inception may 
 have been a blunder, its prolongation is the greatest crime. 
 
 In the light of these facts what becomes of the argument that 
 the Army of' the United States was used to suppress a riot? When 
 the soldiers entered that hall there was quiet and order within its 
 walls. All disturbances had ceased aud legislative duties were be- 
 ing actually performed. M<r. President, there was a way, a safe, 
 constitutional, just mode of composing all the difficulties of that 
 day. If the returning board instead of acting "unjustly, illegally, 
 and arbitrarily" had discharged their duty fairly, justly, legally, 
 there would have been no trouble in that State-house. But that 
 board corrupts, perverts, suppresses the just returns from the elec- 
 tion, and when the conservatives in spite of the desperate action 
 of the board succeed in securing the organization of the house, 
 the military power of the General Government is invoked to con- 
 summate the usurpation the board had begun. Where was the 
 riot ? With whom, between whom, and by whom was it made ? In the 
 legislative hall there were not one hundred conservatives — citizens, 
 members of the Legislature and its officials — men of all ages. Was it 
 their purpose to commit a riot ? No. They had but an hour before 
 called on the millitary to restore order among their opponents and 
 their followers. How was that riot to be suppressed? Order had been 
 once restored upon the simple appearance of General De Trobriand. I 
 apprehend that. the learned jurists of the country to whom the Sena- 
 tor from New York referred so eloquently will think it rather a novel 
 method of quelling a riot by ejecting with bayonets five members of 
 a State Legislature from the seats they were quietly holding. The 
 idea of a riot by the conservatives in that hall and on that day is 
 simply impossible. The State-house was surrounded by eighteen 
 hundred United States soldiers; charged cannon commanded the 
 streets of the city, and the guns of armed vessels of war in the river 
 were trained upon all the approaches to the capitol. The State-house 
 was encircled with lines of bayonets. A riot in that hall was impossi- 
 ble. The purpose was to eject the five members, to turn the Legislature 
 over to the republicans and to complete the usurpation commenced 
 by the returning board. Is there a rational man on the face of the 
 earth who can doubt that this was the purpose, who does not know 
 that a simple word from the officer in command to " keep the peace " 
 would have maintained order; and are any so blind as to imagine 
 that that feeble band of conservatives so environed could contemplate 
 violence? Sir, I will pursue this line of argument no further. The 
 riot has been suppressed now for six weeks but the five expelled mem- 
 bers are still excluded from the Legislature. 
 
 But the honorable Senator from Ohio says that " to call this one 
 of those great historic outrages where the rights of a whole peo- 
 ple are trampled upon is simply making a mountain out of a mole- 
 hill." I have great respect for the candor of that Senator, but he 
 must pardon the same candor in me when I say that 1 fear he looks 
 upon this event in Louisiana in a very different light from that in 
 which he would view it in Ohio or New York. I fear Senators do 
 not yet fully realize that the Southern States are States of this Union, 
 with all the duties and all the rights of their northern sisters. I wish 
 
52 
 
 I could see armed intervention in Louisiana as the Senator sees, and 
 that his was the true view. I pray that it may not prove one of 
 those great eclipses which have rarely occurred in history to over- 
 shadow free government. In my opinion that will depend upon the 
 courage of Congress and the patriotism of the American people. 
 I think it will not he unprofitable to the Senator and to the 
 people to review those remarkable examples in history which have 
 preceded the tragedy in Louisiana. I will read the account given 
 by Hallam of the usurpation of Charles I, when he invaded the 
 British House of Commons : 
 
 The following account of the king'i coming to the house on this occasion is 
 copied from the pencil notes of Sir II. Verney. It has been already printed by Mr. 
 Hatsell, but with no great correctness. What Sir R. Verney says of the transac- 
 tions of January 3 is much the same as we read in the journals. He thus proceeds : 
 
 " Tuesday, January 4, 1641. 
 
 "The Jive gentlemen which were to be accused came into the house, and there 
 was information that they should be taken away by force. Upon this the house 
 sent to the lord mayor, aldermen, and common council to let them know how their 
 privileges were likely to be broken and the city put into danger, and advised them 
 to look to their security. 
 
 "Likewise some members were sent to the inns of court, to let them know how 
 they heard they were tampered withal to assist the king against them, and there* 
 fore they desired them not to come to Westminster. 
 
 "Then the house adjourned to one of the clock." 
 
 As soon as the house met again, it was moved, considering there was an intention 
 to take these five members away by force, to avoid all tumult let them be com- 
 manded to absent themselves ; upon this the house gave them leave to absent them- 
 selves, but entered no order for it. And the five gentlemen went out of the house. 
 
 A little after the king came with all his guard, and all his pensioners, and two or 
 three hundred soldiers and gentlemen. The king commanded the soldiers to stay 
 in the hall, and sent us word he was at the door. The speaker was commanded to 
 sit still with the mace lying before him, and then the king came to the door, and 
 took the palsgrave in with him. and commanded all that canie with him upon their 
 lives not to come in. So the doors were kept open, and the Earl of Roxburgh stood 
 within the door, leaning upon it. Then the king came upward toward the chair 
 with his hat off, and the speaker stepped out to meet him ; then the king stepped 
 up to his place and stood upon the step, but sat not down in the. chair. 
 
 And after he had looked a great while he told us he would not break our privi- 
 leges, but treason had no privilege ; he came for those five gentlemen,.for he ex- 
 pected obedience yesterday, and not an answer. Then he called Mr. Pym and Mr. 
 Hollis by name, but no answer was made. Then he asked the speaker if they were 
 here or where they were ? Upon this the speaker fell on his knees and desired 
 his excuse, for he was a servaut to the house, and had neither eyes nor tongue to 
 see or say anything but what they commanded him ; then the king told him he 
 thought his own eyes were as good as his, and then said his birds had flown, but 
 he did expect thehouse should send them to him ; and if they did not, he would 
 seek them himself, for their treason was foul, and such a one as they would all 
 thank him to discover ; then he assured us they should have a fair trial ; and so 
 went out, pulling off his hat till he came to the door. Upon this the house did in 
 stantly resolve to adjourn till to-morrow at one of the clock, and in the interim they 
 might consider what to do. — Hallam' s Constitutional History of England, volume 
 2, pages 125, 126. 
 
 Does the Senator discover no coincidence with the recent event in 
 New Orleans? While the principal incidents of the two events are 
 concurrent, does the Senator discover no painful similitude in the 
 exact days of the month and the week and the ominous number of 
 the five expelled members ; the same month, January ; the same day 
 of the month, the 4th; the same day of the week, Tuesday; the 
 same number expelled, five. Slight as these circumstances are, I trust 
 they may make sufficient impression on our minds to warn us against 
 the fatal consequences that followed that unhappy mistake of the 
 best of the Stuarts. Hallam says : 
 
 But the single false step which rendered his affairs irretrievable by anything 
 short of civil war. and placed all reconciliation at an insuperable distance, was his 
 attempt to seize the five members within the walls of the house j an evident viola- 
 
53 
 
 tion, not of common privilege, but of all security for the independent existence of 
 Parliament in the mode of its execution, and leading to a very natural though per- 
 haps mistaken surmise that the charge itself of high treason made against these 
 distinguished leaders, without communicating any of its grounds, had no other 
 foundation than their parliamentary conduct. — Hallam's Constitutional History of 
 England, volume 2, pages 125, 126. 
 
 I will now" read from Hume's history Ms graphic account of the 
 dissolution of that Parliament, the most distinguished of all others 
 for its vicissitudes of glory and shame, hy the usurper Cromwell : 
 
 Cromwell, in a rage, immediately hastened to the house and carried a body of 
 three hundred soldiers along with him. Some of them he placed at the door, some 
 in the lobby, some on the stairs. He first addressed himself to his friend St. 
 John, and told him that he had come with a purpose of doing what grieved him to 
 the very soul, and what he had earnestly with tears besought the Lord not to im- 
 pose upon him, but there was a necessity, in order to the glory of G-od and good of 
 the nation. He sat down for some time and heard the debate. He beckoned Har- 
 rison, and told him that he now judged the Parliament rife for a dissolution. 
 "Sir," said Harrison, "the work is very great and dangerous. I desire you seri- 
 ously to consider before you engage in it." " You say well," replied the general ; 
 and thereupon sat still about a quarter of an hour. When the question was ready 
 to be put he said again to Harrison, " This is the time; I must do it." And sud- 
 denly starting up, he loaded the Parliament with the vilest reproaches for their 
 tyranny, ambition, oppression, and robbery of the public. Then stamping with 
 his foot, which was a signal for the soldiers to enter, " For shame," said he to the 
 Parliament; "get you gone; give place to honest men; to those who will more 
 faithfully discharge their trust. You are no longer a Parliament. I tell you you 
 are no longer a Parliament. The Lord has done with you ; he has chosen other in- 
 struments for carrying on his work." Sir Harry Vane exclaiming against this 
 proceeding, he cried with a loud voice, " O ! Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane ! The 
 Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " 
 
 Having commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out last, and 
 ordering the doors to be locked, departed to his lodgings in Whitehall. — Hume's 
 History of England, volume 7, pages 192, 193. 
 
 And now, coming down to a period nearer our own times, I will 
 draw the attention of the Senate and the country to another scene of 
 military interference with a representative assembly of the people. 
 I read from Thier's French Revolution : 
 
 At this moment Bonaparte heard oiitside the scene that was passing in the As- 
 sembly. "He was alarmed for his brother, and sent ten grenadiers to bring him out 
 of the hall. The grenadiers entered, found Lucien encompassed by a group, laid 
 hold of him by the arm, saying that it was by his brother's orders, and hurried him 
 away. The moment had arrived for taking a decisive step. If there was any 
 wavering all would be lost. Rhetorical means for working upon the Assembly 
 having become impracticable, no alternative was left but force. It was requisite 
 to hazard one of those daring acts before which usurpers always hesitate. Caesar 
 hesitated before he passed the Rubicon, Cromwell before he turned out the Parlia- 
 ment. Bonaparte determined to march his grenadiers against the Assembly. He 
 mounted his horse, with Lucien, and rode along the front of the troops. Lucien 
 harangued them. "The Council of the Five Hundred is dissolved," said he; "it is 
 I that tell you so. Assassins have taken possession of the hall of meeting and 
 have done violence to the majority; I summon you to march and to clear it of 
 them." Lucien afterward swore that himself and his brother would be the faith- 
 ful defenders of liberty. Murat and Leclerc then took a battalion of grenadiers 
 and conducted it to the door of the live Hundred. They advanced to the entrance 
 of the hall. At the sight of the bayonets the deputies set up tremendous shouts, 
 as they had done at the appearance of Bonaparte. But these shouts were drowned 
 by the /rolling of the drums. "Grenadiers, forward!" cried the officers. The 
 grenadiers entered the hall and dispersed the deputies, who fled, some by the pas- 
 sages, others by the windows. In a moment the hall was cleared and Bonaparte 
 was left master of this deplorable field of battle. — Thiers's French Bevolutio-n, vol- 
 ume 4, page 428. 
 
 There, Mr. President, are brought before us in the faithful light of 
 history the three most remarkable instances of military usurpation 
 in the invasion of the rights and powers and the seizure of the per- 
 sons of a legislature. Is it necessary to remind you that each of these 
 
54 
 
 scenes was followed by dark years of blood and sorrows, of con- 
 vulsions that overturned the foundatiens of government, of despot- 
 isms that overshadowed the liberties of nations ? They with the his- 
 tory of their calamities have been handed down to us as warning ex- 
 amples, and they stand as beacon-lights to direct us from their dan- 
 gers. I trust that the American people will study these eminent 
 lessons, and, contemplating the mighty disasters of which they were 
 the sign or the origin, will command their representatives to rebuke 
 their repetition and to anticipate the recurrence of their influence in 
 this Eepublic. 
 
 Nor, will the defenders and apologists of the military usurpation 
 in Louisiana derive much comfort or support from the examples to 
 which they have referred in our own country. While altogether 
 different in most important circumstances, and certainly in their 
 constitutional character and relations not parallel to the event in 
 Louisiana; yet, in the unhappy occurrences that succeeded them 
 neither the dispersion of the territorial Legislature at Topeka nor 
 the suppression of the State Legislature at Annapolis will be pleas- 
 ant or safe authorities for our guidance. They too are conspicuous 
 examples against the evils that certainly flow from military interfer- 
 ence with civil authority even when exercised with the greatest 
 caution and under the sternest necessity. 
 
 No, sir ; military interventions with legislative assemblies have al- 
 ways been fruitful fountains of blood. 
 
 By the side of these examples in what light will the spectacle of 
 the 4th of January at New Orleans appear? In what colors will 
 some future Hume or Hallam draw the picture of that State-house 
 surrounded with its cordon of polished steel ; those brave batteries 
 of artillery posted in the streets of the capital of Louisiana; those 
 dark armaments frowning from the great Mississippi; those squad- 
 rons of armed troops stationed with their unfurled standards up and 
 down the mournful city; that legislative hall, as the officer of the 
 Army, with his buckled sword, and his file of soldiers, enter and seize 
 the devoted five, and with fixed bayonets bear them from the capi- 
 tol? Will it be recorded along with the event which occurred near 
 that city sixty years ago as one of the great victories of liberty, or 
 will it descend to other times as one of the dark and melancholy 
 examples that begin a nation's downfall 1 
 
 The history of Louisiana for the lastf few years presents an in- 
 structive but melancholy picture. We behold that once proud State 
 occupying the most eligible position on the continent for the enjoy- 
 ment of every element of material prosperity, and we should natu- 
 rally expect to find in her rapidly reviving fortunes the promise of a 
 greater future for the South. Her soil is as fruitful as a garden. 
 Her climate, tempered between the glow of the tropics and the 
 milder winds from the Gulf, is genial and delightful. Her productions 
 are more abundant than those of the Nile. Her fruits are more deli- 
 cious than those of Italy. Her flowers as fragrant and as beautiful 
 as imagination can paint. The great Mississippi, once laden with 
 the richest commerce of the world, flows through her borders. The 
 Gulf of Mexico, like another Mediterranean, opens its broad bosom 
 to her trade. Nature has blessed her with its most munificent gifts, 
 and art has contributed to cultivate them to usefulness and beauty. 
 
 The people of Louisiana are a bright, brave, patriotic race, " un- 
 surpassed among the nations of the earth in courage, spirit, generos- 
 ity, and hospitality, and have that love and habit of truth which 
 becomes brave men." They combine the refinement, the courtesy, the 
 
55 
 
 grace of the knightly Nornian with the sterner and sturdier virtues 
 of sterling English character ; for in their veins are doubly united 
 both streams of these noble bloods. Such is the physical State of 
 Louisiana, and such is the character of the people who once possessed, 
 but, in the language of the House committee, "do not now hold, the 
 State government." From the union of such a country and such a 
 people what of happiness and honor might we not naturally ex- 
 pect? And yet, Senators, you behold in Louisiana a scene of calam- 
 ity which defies description. In all Europe, Asia, and America you 
 will see no country, no people so cursed and so forlorn. For 
 two hundred years in the receded past her history is without a paral- 
 lel in mingled infamy and sorrow. There was genius and romantic 
 devotion on the darkest page of the French revolution. Over the 
 corruption and ruin in Louisiana there falls not a gleam of truth or 
 intelligence. We travel through deserted and wasted districts only 
 to contemplate the evidence of decay and to witness the symptoms 
 of approaching dissolution. The sight of a once great, generous, 
 gifted people sinking suddenly into irretrievable degeneracy and 
 degradation, with no hope of deliverance, has rarely, if ever, occurred 
 in the history of nations. 
 
 In that magnificent art gallery which one of the noblest benefacr 
 tors and philanthropists of the age has presented to the people of 
 this city to delight their tastes and elevate their sentiments 
 there is a painting that represents the " Famine in Egypt." When- 
 ever I enter that beautiful hall and behold on the sad canvas the 
 shrunken forms and wasted faces and appealing eyes of that stricken 
 people as they gaze on the tender and pitiful figures of their starving 
 children and press the wilting bodies to their unnourishing breasts, 
 my heart turns to Louisiana, and by the agony and ruin of that once 
 noble State and the dark river that lays before her the painted death 
 and despair on the Nile seems but a miniature. Sir, physical suffering 
 is much ; want, hunger, disease, pain, all try the mind and body ; but 
 what are they when a proud, refined, intelligent, Christian people be- 
 hold the government, the liberty, the virtue their fathers left them, 
 and which they in their souls cherish, dying out and passing away, 
 never to return to them or their children— when they behold the 
 shadows of Mexico, of Jamaica, of Central America, worse than the 
 shadows of death, gradually but surely settling over their country ? 
 
 Sir, when I have read of Palmyra and Balbec and Memphis and 
 Thebes and the great empires and cities of remote ages, and have been 
 told that no vestige of their existence remains and that the traveler 
 looks in vain for the sites where they stood, I have often doubted their 
 reality, for I could not understand how so many monuments of art and 
 time could entirely perish ; but in the rapid decline and transforma- 
 tion of Louisiana I see the truth of history vindicated. There can be 
 a government so bad to which nothing of [ruin is impossible, as there 
 can be a government so good to which nothing of beneficence is im- 
 possible. But much as I deplore this gloomy picture, it is not entirely 
 without some compensation. Had a State government established by 
 the corruption of the Federal judiciary and sustained by the military 
 power of the General Government been even tolerable, had it not 
 been utterly and absolutely self -destructive, the American people 
 might not have been awakened to its enormity, and the evil might 
 have grown until it was too large and too deep to conquer and to eradi- 
 cate. The melancholy and lamentable example is now before us in 
 all its disastrous consequences, and I believe the country will admin- 
 ister a remedy. At least the usurped State government cannot 
 stand. It is dying from its own corruption so fast that bayonets 
 
56 
 
 cannot support and give it life. Springing from no popular will, sur- 
 rounded by no popular affections, restrained by no moral sense, di- 
 rected by no enlightened patriotism, it is obliged to fall crashed by 
 the weight of its own abuses, and universal contempt aud detesta- 
 tion await its downfall. 
 
 Let us be more than thankful that usurpation cannot take root 
 in the soil, cannot flourish in the pure air of the Republic. Beneath 
 the withering shadow of its bayonets the prosperity and freedom 
 of half a million people have sickened and fallen to the earth, and 
 its depressing influences have extended far beyond the limits of a 
 State and are felt in every limb and artery of the Eepublic. The 
 commerce of a nation lifts its hands against the wrong ; the manu- 
 factures of a country protest against the impolicy ; all the trade of the 
 States condemns the folly ; all the industries of the Republic resist the 
 injustice; all the humanities of the people rebuke the oppressions that 
 have depressed, paralyzed, aud exhausted their best resources and cast 
 a frightful cloud upon their hopes. Every interest in the Union sym- 
 pathizes with the misfortunes of Louisiana. The blow that struck 
 her down has staggered the energies of the North and the East. Her 
 blight and the adversities of her southern sisters have extinguished 
 the fires in your furnaces, closed the doors of your mercantile palaces, 
 left your ships to decay in the docks, stopped the music of your looms, 
 and have taken their daily bread from the mouths of the noble sons 
 of labor who support your wealth, prosperity, and glory. 
 
 When the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] declared to us a 
 year since in clear words that "justice to the South was self -protec- 
 tion to the North," he uttered a great truth, one full of wisdom and 
 full of patriotism. Time has verified his statesmanship. Justice is 
 the safety of the nation. It is the only law of perpetual life, the 
 only principle of permanent possession, and whenever or wherever it 
 is violated, the sooner and the more palpable its retributions come 
 the better will it be for the country. That relation which makes the 
 prosperity of each section depend upon the prosperity of the other 
 sections of the Union is the guarantee of its justice and the indissolu- 
 ble bond of its integrity ; and every American patriot must rejoice 
 ■when he beholds a conspicuous illustration of the sublime principle. 
 It is the union of duty, of interest, of self-preservation that binds 
 together more firmly than laws, the union of the States, and the peo- 
 ple. The destruction of material prosperity in the South has been 
 followed, as the night follows the day, by the derangement, depres- 
 sion, and distress of all interests at the North ; and the injury to con- 
 stitutional liberty committed on the State of Louisiana may not as 
 promptly but will as surely extend its dangerous influences over the 
 free institutions of the country. An organ, a limb, one of the senses 
 of the human frame, can no more be cut off or maimed without im- 
 pairing the vital strength of the whole system than can a section or 
 State of this Union be mutilated, stricken down, or dishonored with- 
 out weakening, corrupting, degrading the power and character of 
 the whole Republic ? Sir, let this Union, with its harmonies unbroken 
 by injustice, mad hate, and jarring discords, be a great and continu- 
 ing circle of beneficence, diffusing its influence as the light comes from 
 the firmament over our heads, and let its protection, its benefits, and 
 honors descend equally upon all parts of the country as the dews 
 from heaven, and it will stand as bright and as grand as the stars. 
 
 Let it not be thought that I have exaggerated the wrongs and mis- 
 fortunes of the people of Louisiana. I refer to these extracts from 
 the report of the House committee, and of Colonel Morrow, of the 
 United States Armv : 
 
57 
 
 The general condition of affairs in the State of Louisiana seems to be as follows : 
 The conviction has been general among the whites since 1872 that the Kellogg 
 government was a usurpation. This conviction among them has been strength- 
 ened by the acts of the Kellogg legislature, abolishing existing courts and judges 
 and substituting others presided over by judges appointed by Kellogg, having ex- 
 traordinary and exclusive jurisdiction over political questions ; by changes in the 
 laws, centralizing in the governor every form of political control, including the 
 supervision of the elections ; by continuing the returning board, with absolute 
 power over the returns of elections ; by the extraordinary provisions enacted for 
 the trial of titles and claims to office ; by the conversion of the police force, main- 
 tained at the expense of the city of New Orleans, into an armed brigade of State 
 militia subject to the command of the governor ; by the creation in some places of 
 monopolies in markets, gas-making, water- works, and ferries, cleaning vaults and 
 removing filth, and doing work as wharfingers j by the aholition of courts with 
 elective judges, and the substitution of other courts with judges appointed by Kel- 
 logg in evasion of the constitution of the State ; by enactments punishing crimi- 
 nally all persons who attempted to fill official positions unless returned by the 
 returning board ; by unlimited appropriations for the payment of militia expenses 
 and for the payment of legislative warrants, vouchers, and checks, issued during 
 the years 1870 and 1872; bylaws declaring that no persons in arrears for taxes 
 after default published shall bring any suit in any court of the State or be allowed 
 to be a witness in his own behalf — measures which, when coupled with the ex- 
 traordinary burdens of taxation, have served to vest, in the language of Governor 
 Kellogg's counsel, " a degree of power in the governor of a State scarcely exercised 
 by any sovereign in the world." 
 
 With this conviction is a general want of confidence in the integrity of the exist- 
 ing State and local officials ; a want of confidence equally in their purposes, and in 
 their personnel ; which is accompanied by the paralyzation of business and destruc- 
 tion of values. The most hopeful witness produced by the Kellogg party, while he 
 declared that business was in a sounder condition than ever before, because there 
 was less credit, has since declared that "there was no prosperity." The securities 
 of the State have fallen in two years from 70 or 80 to 25 ; of the city of New Orleans 
 from 80 or 90 to 30 or 40, while the fall in bank shares, railway shares, city and 
 other corporate companies, have in a degree corresponded. Throughout the rural 
 districts of the State the negroes, reared in habits of reliance upon their masters 
 for support, and in a community in which the members are always ready to divide 
 the necessaries of life with each other, not regarding such action as very evil, and 
 having immunity from punishment from the nature of the local officials, had come 
 to filching and stealing fruit, vegetables, and poultry so generally — as Bishop Wil- 
 marth stated without contradiction from any source — that the raising of these 
 articles had to be entirely abandoned, to the great distress of the white people, 
 while within the parishes, as well as in New Orleans, the taxation had been carried 
 almost literalls' to the extent of confiscation. In New Orleans the assessors are 
 paid a commission for the amount assessed, and houses and stores are to be had 
 there for the taxes. In Natchitoches the taxation reached about 8 per cent, of the 
 assessed value on the property. In many parishes all the white republicans and 
 all the office-holders belong to a single family. There are five of the G-reens in 
 office in Lincoln ; there are seven of the Boults in office in Natchitoches. As the 
 people saw taxation increase and prosperity diminish, as they grew poor while 
 officials grew rich, they became naturally sore. That they love their rulers cannot 
 be pretended. — Report of the select committee composed of Messrs. Foster, Phelps, and 
 Potter. 
 
 I now come to the general condition of affairs in the parishes on Red River, and, 
 without the slightest exaggeration, I may say it is bad. Respect and regard for 
 the General Government are expressed by ail classes of people, and so is the de- 
 termination not to be, under any circumstances, brought into collision with the 
 Federal troops ; but there is a universal expression of contempt for the State gov- 
 ernment, and, so far as language could express it, there is open defiance of its au- 
 thority. The governor is everywhere, and by almost every white man, denounced 
 a " usurper," and the determination is openly expressed by nearly every white man 
 not to submit to his usurpation longer than submission is. compelled by the pres- 
 ence and force of Federal soldiers. 
 
 Dissatisfaction and discontent are plainly visible in all the acts and conversation 
 of the people, and the result is manifest in almost every department of business. 
 Uncultivated fields, unrepaired fences, roofless and dilapidated dwellings, and 
 abandoned houses meet the eye at every step, and the whole aspect of the country 
 has a look of poverty and neglect. The schools in many parishes are closed for 
 want of money to pay the teachers, and I was told again and again that the school 
 funds had been stolen by the State officials. In one parish a criminal court had 
 not been held in nearly two years, and in other parishes no court, criminal or civil, 
 had been held for a long time. In a community where there are no courts crime 
 finds a genial soil, and the natural result is that the law has fallen iuto disregard 
 
58 
 
 and disrepute. Judges were openly charged -with corruption, and money, and not 
 justice, is charged with turning the, judicial scales. 
 
 The people reported, and seem to believe, that the machinery of the Federal 
 courts had been used to oppress them for political ends, and that the Federal troops 
 had been used for political purposes. How far this has been the case I have no 
 means of knowing, but I do believe that deputy United States marshals have used 
 United States soldiers in cases where there was no necessity for them, and, from my 
 investigations, in the parishes of Ouachita and Lincoln, I am quite certain thai 
 these civil officers discharged their duties in an unnecessarily harsh, if not cruel, 
 manner. It was represented to me that the marshals are in the habit of prowling 
 through the country in the night-time, accompanied by a posse of soldiers, to make 
 arrests of citizens who'could oe arrested by the marshal unaided, and, under any 
 circumstances, should be arrested in the open daylight. 
 
 These night arrests -seemed to have a peculiar terror for the people, and my at- 
 tention was repeatedly called to them. Another subject of complaint was the fact 
 that citizens are arrested without the shadow of a cause, and after long and vexa- 
 tious delay and great expense, are set at liberty without affording them" even a pre- 
 liminary hearing. — Letter of Henry A. Morrow, lieutenant-colonel Thirteenth Infantry, 
 United States Army. 
 
 Headquarters of the Army, 
 Saint Louis, Missouri, January 4, 1875. 
 
 This paper is most respectfully forwarded to the Secretary.of War with a request 
 that he submit it for the personal perusal of the President." I know of no officer of 
 Colonel Morrow's rank who is better qualified to speak and write of matters like 
 this, and his opinions are entitled to great consideration. I profess to have some 
 knowledge of the people of that section, both white and black, from a long residence 
 among them before the war and several visits since, but I shall not intrude my 
 opinion in the confusion in which the subject is now enveloped. 
 
 W. T. SHERMAN, 
 » General. 
 
 How, Mr. President, let me ask you, is this Union to be maintained 
 and preserved? In the Southern States there are eight millions of 
 white people who entertain political sentiments of great unanimity. 
 I know you can govern this people by force for a time. You have 
 the physical power to do it ; you have already done it. Russia gov- 
 erns the whole of her immense territory by this system. It is a sim- 
 ple form of government; unlimited and irresponsible power on one 
 side and passive obedience and blind submission on the other — the 
 despot and the serf. Senators, I know you do not intend to erect here 
 on the ashes of American liberty an iron throne and place on it an 
 emperor with the imperial purple of the Csesars or the ice-bound dia- 
 dem of the Russias. From the very thought you shrink back in hor- 
 ror, with indignant incredulity. You love the institutions of our 
 fathers and you love the Union and can proudly point to the sacri- 
 fices yon have made to hold and bind it together. But let me ask 
 you, if you think it possible to govern one-half of this country by 
 despotic force and administer free government for the people of the 
 other half ? Can one-half of this country be free and the other half 
 enslaved ? Can fifteen States of this Union be stricken down ; their 
 liberties conquered; their laws overthrown; their free government 
 subverted ; their spirits, their hopes, their aspirations crushed to the 
 earth; their industries paralyzed, and their prosperity prostrated, and 
 the other twenty-two States under the same General Government en- 
 joy their free and popular institutions, move in their regular orbits 
 of State powers and duties, advance in material wealth and physi- 
 cal development, and maintain all their domestic laws and rights 
 without disorder, confusion, and ultimate ruin? History has fur- 
 nished no such example of a government, one half free and. the other 
 half enslaved. The imagination of Milton in bis great sorrow, with 
 the holy light of heaven shut out forever from his eyes, has drawn 
 that picture in the " portress of hell-gates." There we behold the 
 head, breast, and arms of a lovely woman, fair as Liberty herself ; but 
 below the Avaist are seen in loathsome contrast the hideous forms of 
 
59 
 
 beasts, of serpents, of satyrs, and of demons, the horrid types of des- 
 potism and slavery. That picture was justly drawn by the patriot 
 poet in " Paradise Lost ; " and when it shall displace the pure and 
 beautiful image of American liberty, always rightly presented to our 
 eyes as a virgin in the loveliest form of attraction to the hearts of men, 
 it will be in the land of " liberty lost." 
 
 No, this Government cannot last if this is to be its character. 
 It is an impossibility. The Southern States must be free and in- 
 dependent, or the Northern States will soon be enslaved and de- 
 graded with their southern sisters. A government that exercises 
 tyranny, that practices oppression, that enslaves whole communities, 
 must lose its love of liberty — must become indifferent to the forms 
 and principles of popular freedom, and will soon overthrow and destroy 
 not only the forms but the substance of liberty itself. This must be 
 true. Every violation of the rights of the South, every sacrifice of 
 our constitutional guarantees, every disruption of the principles of 
 good government, every unlawful precedent, every example of vio- 
 lence, each instance of indifference to constitutional duty exhibited 
 to us is a blow, a thrust, it may be a deadly wound to popular govern- 
 ment itself. 
 
 The Constitution which protects and defends and regulates Ameri- 
 can liberty cannot be stabbed, wounded, prostrated in Louisiana ; 
 cannot be violated, prostituted, abused in Mississippi; cannot be 
 awed, terrified, intimidated in Arkansas; cannot be menaced, threat- 
 ened, imperiled in North Carolina and Georgia, and survive and 
 live in health and vigor to shield and bless New York and Ohio. 
 Every blow inflicted on the fundamental charter of American liberty 
 weakens all its just powers and tends to reduce it to the contempt 
 of mankind. The pure form and spirit of constitutional liberty once, 
 twice, thrice violated, must lose the power of virtue, the beauty of 
 chastity, and either become the Venus of despotism, or like the modeL 
 of Roman virtue, perish with its dishonor. Nor would the sacrifice 
 of this noblest victim appease the passion for power. 
 
 Upon what line, let me ask you, will unconstitutional ambition 
 pause ? Do you think it will respect geographical boundaries or State 
 limits ? Do you suppose it will halt on the banks of the Potomac, or 
 will it turn back from the waters of the Ohio ? Senators, do not de- 
 lude yourselves. If you do not desire, and I know you do not, that 
 these noble rivers should be the Rubicons of some future Ctesar, do 
 not follow the blind confidence of Pompey, when he boasted that he 
 "could raise armies with the stamp of his foot" to crush the con- 
 queror of Gaul; but rebuke, chasten, and while you have the strength 
 forever put an end to that usurpation and abuse of power which, be- 
 ginning in the South, may at some day march over the liberties of 
 the North 'and erect upon the ruins of both another empire as brilliant 
 and as grand as the one which Augustus founded, and as dark, as 
 miserable, and as infamous as that which ended with the last of the 
 Caesars. Power, unlawful power, never has and never will stop in its 
 career. It grows on what it feeds. Unbridle it, and, like the impris- 
 oned winds let loose, it spreads ; its force swells and gathers new 
 strength, and nothing stays its march until all resistance and opposi- 
 tion are swept before it. 
 
 Do not deceive yourselves. You cannot confine within the limits 
 of prostrate and trampled Louisiana the spirit or the operation of 
 unconstitutional usurpation. That once fair State will not be, un- 
 less you make it so, the grave of unauthorized power — Heaven 
 forbid that it should be the grave of the Constitution. I think we 
 
60 
 
 can already see the bared arms of military ascendency stretching out 
 for further conquest and seizing the shrinking forms of two neigh- 
 boring States. Shall that power put its feet upon their necks and 
 trample in the dust what is left of their liberties ? It is not in 
 the nature of unlawful power to regulate itself ; an excess, a wrong, 
 a usurpation itself, it has no capacity to limit or check its own 
 abuse. It can only exist by advancing; it dares not pause in modera- 
 tion ; the very necessities of its own being, the very laws of its life 
 inexorably drive it to the extremest limits of possible conquest. The 
 violation of one law compels the violation of another, the overthrow 
 of one principle anticipates the overthrow of another, the subversion 
 of one guarantee makes the subversion of another guarantee neces- 
 sary to sustain the first breach, and usurpation cannot and dare not 
 pause, cannot hesitate until every barrier, obstacle, impediment to 
 its success is demolished and removed. It trembles for its existence 
 . while any of the citadels of liberty or law remain unsubdued. They 
 stand as a constant menace and peril to its permanence. No sooner 
 does the gracious Duncan sleep well in his grave than the mind of 
 Macbeth is full of scorpions, for " Banquo and his Fleance live," and 
 soon all causes give way to his own good and he is 
 
 In blood 
 Stept in so far, that, should he wade no more, 
 Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 
 
 It was the inexorable destiny of usurped power which never per- 
 mitted the First Napoleon to repose upon his victories. That destiny 
 drove him to Egypt, drove him to Russia, drove him to Waterloo, 
 and drove him to his ruin ; and had it not terminated in his over- 
 throw his usurped power could have been consummated in nothing 
 but the subversion of all established government and liberty in 
 Europe. 
 
 Laws are silent under the thunders of artillery ; in the blaze of 
 bayonets their lights are eclipsed and amid clashing sabers their 
 forms perish. Before the tread and tramp of armed legions their 
 unshielded ministers are powerless. Let it never be forgotten that 
 the sword is the mortal enemy of liberty, the argument that tyrants 
 throw into the scales of justice. But unhappily for mankind there is 
 something in the splendor of military display that captivates the 
 human heart. The sword has its fatal charms. "The pride, pomp, 
 and circumstance of glorious war, " the caparisoned steed, the 
 gorgeous pavilion, the mounted warrior, the stir of martial music 
 dazzle and blind nlen to the wrongs of which they are the instru- 
 ments. Admiration and gratitude for distinguished military service 
 are just and noble sentiments, honoring no less those who receive 
 than those who render them, when exercised with respect for 
 the laws of the country and the rights of the people. But these 
 sentiments become crimes when they obscure the love of liberty or 
 defend the abuses of power. Let us beware of the fascinations of 
 the sword; familiarity with it is certain contempt for law. The 
 two cannot embrace, and all history warns us which falls. 
 
 Mr. President, the American people are not exempt from the imper- 
 fections of men, and we shall quickly advance headlong to the down- 
 fall of our liberties unless we consider the warning lessons of those 
 who have gone before us. We have been repeatedly told in this de- 
 bate that in republican America there is no danger to be feared from 
 military ascendency. The eloquent Senator from New Jersey with 
 patriotic ardor asked, What would become of our little Army of 
 thirty thousand men before the indignant rebuke of millions of free- 
 
61 
 
 men? Has the learned Senator forgotten that Caesar did not have 
 thirty thousand men when he left Gaul and overthrew the liberty of 
 six hundred years? Sir, far he it from me to intimate that there are 
 any among us who would willfully destroy the institutions of their 
 country. I cast no suspicions, for I have none, upon the patriotism 
 of my countrymen. They no doubt desire as ardently as I do that 
 this beneficent Government should be perpetuated in all its useful- 
 ness and glory to distant ages. 
 
 But, Senators, the Constitution intrusts to us in perhaps the high- 
 est degree the guardianship of its rights, and we should deserve 
 universal execration if we were not faithful to the duty. Sir, I 
 would be unwilling to trust myself with the liberties of my country. 
 When statesmen do not fear to commit these liberties to the hands 
 of any man I tremble for American freedom, for its sentinels will 
 sleep with fatal security. Human wisdom and human virtue are 
 neither perfect, and we must provide against the errors of both. The 
 liberties which a dictator preserves have already lost their virtue. 
 Liberty protected by despotism is but a name; despotism is the 
 government. I, sir, am afraid, ever afraid of military ascendency. 
 Every lesson of history commands me to fear it. What is the history 
 of all republics? In some necessity of the state the civil supremacy 
 gives way to the military power. This becomes the habit of govern- 
 ment, until some chieftain, popular with the army and with the peo- 
 ple, succeeds in making both his slaves. 
 
 This is the history of the world. It is the story of the downfall of 
 liberty everywhere. Caesar's three hundred victories paved his road 
 to the Eoman Empire; Napoleon's triumphs as general of the army 
 and first consul prepared his way to the crown of France ; but for 
 his moderation and virtue and supreme patriotism "the services and 
 successes of Washington would have made him sovereign of the 
 American people. The picture in the Kotunda that represents the 
 popular general of the army in the act of surrendering his sword to 
 the Congress of his country should not perpetuate the immortal deed 
 on canvas alone, but should imprint it in light that will live for- 
 ever in the hearts of the people. That great sword was never so 
 bright as when sheathed and surrendered to the majesty of law. 
 But few, few have been the swords that have shone with that moral 
 glory. That best picture of Washington should be placed where 
 those who are expected to follow his illustrious example should daily 
 behold its grandeur and be inspired by its patriotism and virtue. 
 
 And as the examples of Washington are never without instruction 
 and benefit, it will be well to contemplate his prudent steps in the 
 discharge of that most delicate duty — the suppression of an insur- 
 rection in a State by the National Government. In Marshall's Life 
 of Washington, giving an account of the insurrection in Pennsyl- 
 vania in 1794, we find this passage: 
 
 "While the necessary steps were taking to bring this force into the field, a last essay 
 was made to render its employment unnecessary. The Attorney-General, who was 
 a citizen of Pennsylvania ; Judge Gates, of the superior court ; and Mr. Koss, a Sen- 
 ator representing that State, who was particularly popular in the western country, 
 were deputed by the Government to be the bearers of a general amnesty for past 
 offenses, on the sole condition of future obedience to the laws. 
 
 It having been deemed advisable that the executive of the State in which the 
 insurrection had taken place should act in concert with that of the United States, 
 a proclamation was also issued by Governor Mifflin, and commissioners were ap- 
 pointed by him to unite with those of the General Government. 
 
 And a few pages further we are told that the " President issued a 
 second proclamation," and then we see that — 
 
62 
 
 The President, in person, visited each division of the Army ; but being confident 
 that the force employed must look down all resistance, he left the Secretary of the 
 Treasury to accompany it, and returned himself to Philadelphia, at which place 
 the approaching session of Congress rendered his presence almost indispensably 
 necessary. 
 
 And we learn also that — 
 
 On the 19th the President met both Houses in the Senate Chamber, in order to 
 make, personally, those communications which the state of the nation required. 
 
 As many would read the speech who might not peruse the documents which had 
 been published for the purpose of unfolding the conduct of Government to the in- 
 surgents, the President thought proper to detail at considerable length the progress 
 of opposition to the laws, the means employed both by the Legislature and Exec- 
 utive to appease the discontents which had been fomented, and the measures 
 which he had finally taken" to reduce the refractory to submission. — Marshall's 
 Life of Washington, volume 5, pages 584, 589, 595. 
 
 In the letter of instruction from Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of 
 the Treasury under Washington, to General Lee, then commanding 
 the Army to suppress the insurrection, dated Octoher 20, 1794, occurs 
 this passage : 
 
 You are to exert yourself by all possible means to preserve discipline among the 
 troops, particularly a scrupulous regard to the rights of persons and property and 
 a respect for the authority of the civil magistrate ; taking especial care to inculcate 
 and cause to be observed this principle : that the duties of the Army are confined 
 to the attacking and subduing of armed opponents of the laws, and to the support- 
 ing and aiding of the civil officers in the execution of their functions. 
 
 And in Washington's own letter of the same date, written to Gen- 
 eral Lee, we find this paragraph : 
 
 There is but one other point on which I think it proper to add a special recom- 
 mendation ; it is, that every officer and soldier will constantly bear in mind that 
 he comes to support the laws, and that it would be peculiarly unbecoming in him 
 to be in any way the infractor of them ; that the essential principles of a free gov- 
 ernment confine the province of the military, when called forth on such occasions, 
 to these two objects : first, to combat and subdue all who may be found in arms in 
 opposition to the national will and authority ; secondly, to aid and support the civil 
 magistrates in bringing offenders to justice. The dispensation of this justice be- 
 longs to the civil magistrate ; and let it ever be our pride and our glory to leave the 
 sacred deposit there inviolate. — Sparks's Writings of Washingt07i, volume 10, pages 
 447, 448. 
 
 And in his letter to Alexander Hamilton, of Octoher 31, 1794, from 
 Philadelphia, he says : 
 
 Press the governors to be pointed in ordering the officers under their respective 
 commands to march back with their respective corps ; and to see that the inhabit- 
 ants meet with no disgraceful insults or injuries from them. — Sparks's Writings of 
 Washington, volume 10, page 450. 
 
 Thus, we see the prudence, the care, the anxiety, the patriotism 
 with which Washington proceeded in suppressing the first insur- 
 rection that broke out after the formation of our Government. He 
 issues a first and then a second proclamation. He sends a commis- 
 sion of three distinguished citizens of the country, one his Attorney- 
 General, and all popular and influential gentlemen with the insur- 
 gents, to confer with them and offer full amnesty. He influences the 
 governor of Pennsylvania to appoint a similar commission for the 
 same purpose. He visits the divisions of the Army in person '•' to ob- 
 tain more correct information;" "He leaves his Secretary of the 
 Treasury with the Army in his absence." He meets both Houses of 
 Congress and "thinks proper to detail to them at considerable length " 
 the fullest advice of his conduct. He publishes his address for the 
 information of the country, and "he takes special care to inculcate 
 and causes to be observed this principle," "the military is always 
 to be subordinate to the civil authority," and that " the soldiers are 
 never to insult or injure the people." 
 
63 
 
 Such are the lessons of Washington, widely different from those of 
 Caesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon. In these lessons we shall look in 
 vain for precedents for the recent conduct of our Army in Louisiana. 
 I trust that these wise, prudent, patriotic, successful examples of 
 the Father-President of the Republic may always commend them- 
 selves to the admiration and imitation of his successors. I hold them 
 up to-day as lights for the encouragement and guidance of his coun- 
 trymen. Senators, let us at least be inspired by their patriotism and 
 directed by their wisdom. 
 
 The time will come, when the excitements of this heated hour are 
 gone, that the country will thank the South for the exhibition of 
 that virtue which saved the Southern States from the fate of Mexico 
 and Jamaica. You are not now in a temper to appreciate this fact, 
 but time, the great arbiter, will do justice, and for that judgment 
 we must wait. History will write it down that your policy if ac- 
 complished would have turned the Southern States over into the 
 hands of the newly emancipated blacks and the desperate and cor- 
 rupt men who united with them. It will record the fact that this 
 party under the reconstruction acts obtained possession and control 
 of most of the Southern States, and established over them a govern- 
 ment of supreme and startling wickedness, exceeding in corruption 
 and licentiousness the darkest drama of the Middle Ages. It will 
 paint with the pen of Gibbon or Macaulay for the instruction of 
 future ages that black picture of fraud and infamy from which I shall 
 not this day lift the veil, which came like a plague over the prostrate 
 and bound South. It will tell of the ruin, the waste, and the despair. 
 It will then draw the faint lines of hope and courage, and show the 
 great heart of our people rising in its might to break the power that 
 crushed it. Sir, the struggle was long and desperate — often doubtful ; 
 the cause of good government often trembled in the balance, and 
 -many times it seemed that the light would go out and nothing but 
 darkness and dismay be left on the face of our country. It was not 
 due to the General Government that the Southern States did not 
 succumb in this crisis, for the authority of the Government was ar- 
 rayed on the side of those who were destroying the South. It was not 
 due to the reconstruction acts, for they proscribed and disabled the 
 best men of the South. It was not due to the republican party, for 
 it supported and sustained the despoilers of our substance and liber- 
 ties. 
 
 To what cause is due the deliverance of the South from that mis- 
 rule which in two short years wrought more ruin thaii the war ? It 
 is due solely, but proudly and justly due to the courage, the faith, 
 the prudence, the watchfulness, and the unwavering devotion of the 
 southern people to the ever-living principles of constitutional govern- 
 ment. To these great qualities of our people we are this day indebted 
 that eight millions of people are not in revolution, in anarchy, in 
 chaos, in a living death of misery and shame. There is no grander 
 achievement than the rescue of the Southern States by her own peo- 
 ple from the mortal dangers that environed them. Our forefathers 
 met no such odds during or after the Revolution. The English people 
 from whom we are descended at no time encountered such compli- 
 cated evils and no people ever displayed nobler qualities than the 
 people of the South in this the gloomiest period of her history. Was 
 their forbearance ever equaled? When before was a proud, warlike 
 race subjected to the domination of their recent slaves ? Has their 
 courage been surpassed ? What other people disarmed, despoiled, sur- 
 rounded by armies, and exhausted by disastrous war would not have 
 
64 
 
 surrendered principle '? Has their patriotism been exceeded ? When 
 before did a people lose so much property, suffer so many disappoint- 
 ments, bear so many vicissitudes, and keep faith to their country t Has 
 their virtue ever been eclipsed ? Neither threats, nor blandishments, 
 nor promises, nor preferments, nor fears, nor hopes have for one mo- 
 ment seduced them from fidelity to their convictions of duty. 
 
 Senators, at any time ru the last ten years, if the people of the South 
 could have embraced the republican party, they might have basked 
 in the smiles of the Administration and silenced every accusation 
 against them. They thought they saw the tendency of that party 
 was to their degradation and the ruin of their country, and they 
 could not unite with it. Is it a just cause of offense that they did not 
 purchase place and amnesty at the sacrifice of what they believed 
 right? Let us suppose for one moment that instead of resisting the 
 republican party at the South the white people of the South had 
 joined the negroes, the adventurers, and the corrupt and misguided 
 natives who seized the State governments after reconstruction and 
 united in that desperate and reckless movement against all pub- 
 lic virtue and private respect. Let me ask what would be the con- 
 dition now of the Southern States ? Human imagination can con- 
 ceive nothing so horrible. United with undivided energy aud reso- 
 lution against them, we barely saved the vestiges of government and 
 the fragments of property from demoralization and rapacity ? Had 
 we presented no check, no obstacle to their schemes, but fallen in 
 with their policy, how unutterably deplorable would have been the 
 result ? 
 
 Who has saved the country from those accursed consequences ? Who 
 has been the great conservative health element of the South ? Who 
 has rebuked public spoliation ? Who has exposed enormous public 
 crime? Who has checked extravagant public expenditure? Who 
 has resisted general corruption ? Who has stood faithfully by consti- 
 tutional government ? Who has maintained public morality and social 
 order ? Who has driven from the country the authors of high state 
 crimes, and who has brought to light and exposed to the civilized 
 world for just indignation and punishment the usurpations, the tyr- 
 annies, the rampant violations of all law that have been committed in 
 the South ? And yet we are denounced as great criminals, sympa- 
 thizers with murder, accomplices of assassins, organizers of horrid 
 crime to accomplish political success. Yes, sir ; the time will come 
 when the country will do justice to our motives and our conduct, and 
 the true character and cause of our people will appear as bright as 
 the day. 
 
 Mr. President, is this hostility between the sections never to cease? 
 Is the temple of Janus never to be closed? Will not a war which 
 cost so much precious blood, so much dear-bought treasure, suffice for 
 this insatiate passion ? Have we not had suffering enough? What 
 other sacrifice is necessary to appease this mad demon, this gory Mo- 
 loch of hate ? Are more priceless offerings yet to be burned on his 
 altars before peace will come ? Will nothing appease this destructive 
 god of discord but the ruin, the overthrow of free government, and 
 the perpetual misery and strife of this great people ? Is this war, 
 this feud, to last between the sections forever? Is there nothing that 
 will stop its fury, nothing that will quell its flames, nothing that will 
 allay the wild winds that fan its fires ? It has not been quenched in 
 blood, it has not been exhausted in desolation ; the distress, agony, 
 and sorrow of eight millions of people have not softened its angry 
 spirit; ten years of bitter anguish have but exasperated its malignant 
 
65 
 
 heat. It is here to-day in unabated fierceness, spreading dismay and 
 baleful shadows over all the land. Is there no exorcism for this hate- 
 ful fiend of dissension? No calm, quiet spirit to walk on the bitter 
 waters of sectional strife and bid them be still ? 
 
 Senators, the highest and holiest motives that ever inspired the 
 breasts of mortals should impel us here on this floor to compose this 
 question forever and give peace and repose to the entire country. 
 The South demands it to secure and restore her wasted fortunes, and to 
 educate her people, and to give them comfort and material life. The 
 North requires it that she may have a market for her products and 
 a great support in all times of distress from whatever cause or quarter 
 it may come. Both need it for their mutual safety, happiness, honor, 
 #ud existence. It is our duty to settle this disturbing and harass- 
 ing difference. We cannot escape it ; we cannot leave it to time ; we 
 cannot trifle and palter with it. It involves the life of the nation, 
 the happiness of millions, the fate of free government on the earth. 
 If we are not equal to the great event, if we have not the ability 
 and patriotism to discharge it, if we are not able to accomplish this 
 the first object of our office, let us at least have the manly courage to 
 acknowledge our weakness and bravely surrender our places to those 
 who are superior to our infirmities, and who cau and will march up 
 to the line of this high duty and wisely and nobly perform it. We 
 can at least do that ; and if we can render no other or better service 
 to our country, we ought certainly to be men and give way to those 
 who can. 
 
 The great father of our country, in his farewell address, the last 
 words he spoke to the nation, warned us against these sectional lines 
 and divisions. We did not heed that paternal warning. Disobe- 
 dience to it brought us innumerable woes, and there is but one road 
 back to a condition of peace, prosperity, and liberty. That road was 
 marked out by the founders of the Eepublic, and unless it be faith- 
 fully followed, we will wander off into a wild career of uncertainty 
 and tumult, ending finally, where all the other free governments have 
 ended, in despotism. Remember the civil wars of the Grecian repub- 
 lics were soon followed by the Roman, along the same road, from free- 
 dom. The wars between Athens and Sparta, between Sparta and 
 Boeotia, between first two and finally all the free states of Attica, left 
 Greece an easy victim for Philip. Their dissensions, their wars, their 
 factions broke down the spirit of liberty, and the Greeks who, when 
 united, made Thermopylae, Salamis, and Platea immortal, succumbed, 
 when divided, to Macedon almost without a struggle, and forever oblit- 
 erated their greatness and their liberties. Heaven forbid that we 
 should repeat their melancholy examples. 
 
 Mr. President, are we to revive here the strifes of the unhappy years 
 that preceded the war? Are these noble Halls, dedicated to human 
 liberty, to become arenas for the exhibition of mad passions? Is 
 the genius, the courage, the resistless energy of this wonderful people 
 to be perverted and wasted here in angry controversy, in mutual crim- 
 ination and recrimination, in wicked, blind efforts to pull down and 
 destroy the great sections of the Union ? Are all the powers of our 
 minds and the forces of our hearts to be forever enlisted in the exe- 
 crable attempt to destroy and degrade the character of sister States? 
 Is discord to reign here forever ? Senators, the terrible calamities of 
 such a course cannot be doubted. I will not even dare to foresee or 
 predict them. I will simply say how much nobler, grander, wiser 
 would we be if we would unite all our faculties, our hopes, our pur- 
 poses, our aims, our efforts in the work of pacifying all our con- 
 
 5 R 
 
66 
 
 flicts, reforming our errors, improving onr institutions, and giving 
 strength, stability, beauty, and beneficence to our Government. 
 
 Have we no objects to engage our talents or excite our aspirations 
 but hostile assaults and counter assaults upon our own people ? Are 
 there no other aims or hopes to government ? Are these the grand 
 purposes written on the face of the Constitution for which the Gov- 
 ernment was established ? Is this the way to " form a more perfect 
 Union " ? Is this the way ". to provide for the common defense ? " 
 Is this the way " to insure domestic tranquillity V Is this the way 
 "to promote the general welfare ? " Is this the way "to transmit 
 the blessings of liberty to our children?" Sir, a continent, em- 
 braced by the great oceans of commerce and extending through 
 all the degrees of latitude, and receiving as its own the children o# 
 all the world, is ours, ours to enjoy, to improve, to enlighten, to beau- 
 tify, and to bless. Strife, feuds, hates will do none of these good works. 
 - Devote one-half the earnest passion, the excited intellect, the ardent 
 exertion to reconcile, restore, benefit, and advance the country that 
 is madly and wickedly spent in attempts to array one portion against 
 the other, to oppress one portion to aggrandize the other, to traduce 
 one portion to exalt the other, and we shall build up here in this 
 western world an example of human wisdom and virtue far surpass- 
 ing any vision of splendor and happiness that human imagination 
 has yet conceived. 
 
 Mr. President, what is the temper and spirit of the southern peo- 
 ple at this time ? You would doubtless like to learn it exactly froni 
 one who has the opportunity of knowing it, who has the authority 
 to represent it, and who can also speak it from his own bosom. I 
 know no better way of describing it than by saying that there are 
 two illustrious characters in Roman history who for two thousand 
 years have divided the admiration of mankind, and whose names 
 have become the synonyms of patriotic sacrifice. The first is Quintus 
 Curtius, mounted on his brave horse and in the presence of the Eoman 
 people riding calmly into the yawning gulf in the forum to save his 
 country ; the second is Marcus Brutus, standing in the capitol with 
 the dagger with which he stabbed Caesar and with which he was 
 ready to stab himself — both among the greatest examples of devo- 
 tion to country. Mr. President, were I to express the patriotic sen-, 
 timent of the South at this hour, I would simply say that there are 
 thousands in the South who would follow the example of Curtius 
 and willingly walk into the threatening gulf, if the sacrifice will 
 close its deepening abyss and give peace and liberty to the country, 
 and there is not one who is mad enough to play the role of Brutus. 
 We have lost none of our love of liberty, none of our independent 
 spirit, none of our attachment to our country, none of our admiration 
 for the sublime virtue of the " last of the Romans ;" but we consider 
 that peace is a necessity with us, and we hope that a returning sense 
 of justice at the North will unite with us in preserving liberty, law, 
 and constitutional government. 
 
 We have not yet despaired of the influences of reason, truth, equity, 
 right, and interest in the opinion of the great but often mistaken 
 North. We have learned that patriots have a higher duty to perform 
 than to follow the example of Cato at Utica. It is sometimes nobler 
 to live and suffer for your country than it is to die for it. The patri- 
 otism of Curtius saved the seven -hilled city ; the patriotism of 
 Brutus precipitated the downfall of Eoman liberty. Preserving then 
 the fires of liberty in our hearts as sacredly and devotedly as the 
 vestal virgins kept them burning on their ever-blazing altars, and 
 
67 
 
 relying upon the ultimate patriotism of the North, we are resolved 
 with heroic patience to stand around and guard the temples of the 
 nation's peace and to manifest in its defense and preservation, if 
 possible, a higher and holier and firmer devotion and fortitude than 
 our brave men displayed on the battle-field. We are now in the lines, in 
 the intrenchments, in the bulwarks of the peace, harmony, prosperity, 
 and union of this great people and country ; and fanaticism, sectional 
 hatred, unjust animosities and prejudices and passions cannot prevail 
 against us. No, sir, we shall be successful. Already I see the snows 
 of the great North dissolving and soon to flow in warm and genial 
 streams to the bosom of the South ; already I see its great systems of 
 industry awakening and beholding in the ruin of the South the cer- 
 tain destruction of their own prosperity ; already I discern its great 
 heart beginning to warm under the influence of gentle light from the 
 South and to open its deepest and broadest sympathies for our suffer- 
 ings and our wrongs. Already from the " clear upper sky," where the 
 serene spirits of the great founders of American liberty and govern- 
 ment shine, come pouring down upon us streams of fervent and 
 radiant light, rekindling in our hearts the fires of patriotism and 
 duty and mutual forbearance that animated their great souls. 
 
 From the summit of Bunker Hill the voice of American history and 
 patriotism spoke to the heart of Mr. Sumner, the great apostle of 
 emancipation, and commanded him to remember the devotion and 
 sacrifices of the South in the "times that tried men's souls," and he 
 could not sleep under the shadows of that eloquent stone until he had 
 made an effort to extinguish the hostile memories of war. From 
 every battle of the Revolution arise the shades of immortal martyrs 
 and command us to end this strife. From the bloody and honorable 
 fields on the northern lakes, around this capital and from the plains of 
 New Orleans, from the gallant decks of the proud Navy that proclaimed 
 that the universal seas should be free and from the yet fresh victories 
 in Mexico, from all comes an appeal for peace. Ah, Mr. President, does 
 not the same appeal with more tender and touching pathos speak to 
 us from Manassas, Fredericksburgh, Sharpsburgh, and Gettysburgh ? 
 The great spirits who fell there and passed from the shadows of earth 
 amid the roar of artillery and the red blaze of war have long since 
 made peace on the camping-grounds of the brave and the just ; over 
 the scenes of their last mortal combat the green grass and the sweet 
 flowers of nature have returned with the beautiful spring, and from 
 their united ranks on that august field of review before which all 
 human actions must pass there descends to their countrymen the 
 " white flag" of a final and unending truce, with the message that 
 their blood has been sufficient atonement for the sins of the nation, 
 and that over their peaceful graves their countrymen must shake 
 hands and forever be friends. 
 
 Then, Senators, in the name of our great forefathers who for civil 
 and religious liberty braved the ocean, the tempest, the forest, and 
 the savage to rescue freedom from its fate in Europe and plant it in this 
 new world;, "by the memory of those patriots who one hundred 
 years ago gave their blood and treasure like water to establish our 
 independence; by the names of those who have fallen on every field 
 from Lexington to Appomattox, let us be friends, countrymen, broth- 
 ers. 1 1 invoke the Senators of Massachusetts by the memory of 
 North Carolina's succor in her darkest hour; I invoke the Senators 
 from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware by the 
 memories of their united struggles with Virginia, the Carolinas, and 
 Georgia ; I invoke the Senators from every State — from the great 
 
68 
 
 daughters of Virginia and North Carolina, from those mighty Com- 
 monwealths that sprang from the Louisiana purchase by Jefferson 
 and were saved hy the valor and patriotism of southern men under 
 Jackson — I invoke all, this day and this hour to gather around the 
 family altars^and end forever and forever this fratricidal strife. And 
 we shall rear upon the ruins of our errors and follies, over the preju- 
 dices, passions, and hates of the past a grander and nobler temple of 
 wisdom, justice, and liberty than the sun has yet shone upon, and 
 all over and through that temple from its foundation to its dome 
 we shall behold arrayed side by side the virtues, the valor, the 
 sacrifices, and the immortal achievements of the North and the South. 
 And then as the sun rises in the east and makes his daily revolutions 
 until he sinks to rest in the west his beams will spread the light of 
 American liberty and the glory of a happy and united people over the 
 whole earth as a blessing to all mankind. 
 
 And now, Senators,- 1 conclude with the sentiments with which I 
 began. I thank a merciful Providence that I have been spared to 
 see this day and inspired with the courage and truth to vindicate 
 the character of the South and make a faithful effort to restore and 
 preserve the American Union. I thank God that, if I do nothing 
 else, I can at least leave to my sons this record, that when they shall 
 remember that the people of the South, animated by patriotic cour- 
 age, undertook in obedience to the principles handed down to them 
 by their fathers to separate the Union and arrayed themselves in 
 arms to accomplish that end, and they shall see the name of their 
 ancestors among those whose bright bayonets on the 12th day of July, 
 1864, reflected the beams of the morning sun back on the dome of the 
 nation's Capitol, my children shall also behold the name of their 
 father, when that sad war was over, enrolled in the same Capitol 
 among those who were striving with unalterable and unchangeable 
 devotion to cherish and perpetuate forever the Union of the States, 
 the Constitution, and liberty. And may God bless me with the 
 strength and patriotism to do so much for the peace, happiness, and 
 honor of my country that no human being can doubt the sincerity of 
 my attachment and love for her. 
 
 Senators, I cannot take my seat without expressing to you more 
 than my deepest acknowledgments for the kindness with which you 
 have this day heard me and for the sympathy and generosity which 
 all of you have manifested for me since my admission to this Cham- 
 ber. Extend that sympathy and generosity to the noble people of 
 the South, and they will return to you the warm gratitude and friend- 
 ship which I now feel, and hope to carry in my heart through life. 
 
00032772777 
 
 FOR USE ONLY IN 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION 
 
 Form No. A-368, Rev. 8/95 
 
 C