DEMOCRATIC ATTACKS ON THE NATIONAL ELECTION LAWS. ZslH. 73 cl SPEECH OP HON. JOHN A. ANDERSON, OF KANSAS, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 15, 1880. WASHINGTON. 1880. SPEECH OF HON. JOHN A. ANDERSON. On the Senate concurrent resolution in relation to the joint rule for counting the votes of electors for President and Vice-President. Mr. ANDERSON said: Mr. Speaker: I desire to present some considerations bearing upon the general designs of the democratic party respecting the elec¬ tion laws rather than upon the particular bill under consideration. There are certain truths born with and inseparable from the very existence of this Forty-sixth Congress which no power can change, no sophistry pontort, and no cunning conceal from the American peo¬ ple. THE SOLID SOUTH IN COMMAND. The first is that the solid South, after an interregnum of eighteen years, on March 4,1879, under the name of the democratic party, prac¬ tically regained the absolute control of both branches of the legis¬ lative department of that Government from which it attempted to secede in 1861, and against which until 1865 it waged the most des¬ perate and colossal war of the century. I am neither seeking for an explanation of the causes which produced an event without parallel in history, nor commenting upon the generosity which made it possi¬ ble, but am simply stating the astounding fact that the South, which surrendered to the United States in 1865 at Appomattox, governs the United States in 1880 at Washington. FIGURES WHICH SHOW IT. That such is the case is clearly shown by the official records. The Senate is composed of 76 Senators, representing thirty-eight States, 39 votes being a majority. Of these Senators 42 are democrats, 33 are republicans, and the one independent seeks shelter from presidential lightning under a solitary tree in the democratic meadow. Of the democratic Senators 20 are from the eleven States which seceded, and 10 more from Southern States which sympathized with secession, giv¬ ing 30of the 42 democratic Senatorsfrom the old slave States. Twenty- three of these Senators were officers in the army or government of the confederacy, and compose a majority of the democratic caucus which governs the party that rules the Senate of the United States. The House is composed of 293 members, 147 votes being a majority. Classified politically, 147 are democrats, 130 republicans, and 16 green- backers, the majority of whom are democrats, and so vote on all im¬ portant questions. Classified sectionally, 68 members are from the 4 *' seceding States, and 30 more from sympathizing States, making 101 from the old slave States. In the democratic caucus, where 74 votes constitute a majority, the solid South has 99 Representatives, 67 of whom were in the confederate army or government; and that caucus rules the party which rules the House. In a joint caucus of the democrats of the two Houses there are 189 votes, 95 being a majority. Of these 128 are from the old slave States and 61 from the free States. And an examination of the various com¬ mittees of the two bodies will show the same proportions and prepon¬ derance. THE DOG WAGS THE TAIL. With respect to the internal affairs of the democratic household an outsider cannot so confidently speak; yet when the family airs itself in public it is easy to see that the old story of human nature has re¬ peated itself, and that the northern converts have outrun the south¬ ern saints in zeal. It is an open secret that as a rule the former are the most radical and the latter the most conservative, even when measured by the Calhoun standards of democracy. But were this not the case the South would rule the democratic party for the same reason that a dog wags his tail, namely, because the tail cannot wag the dog. And whatever else may be denied or forgotten the fact looms up as a mountain peak above the plain that in each House of this Congress the solid South, which but fourteen years ago was fighting the flag and shattering the Constitution, to¬ day rules the nation and clucks as fussily over the u unconstitu¬ tionality ” of election laws as does an old hen over one chicken. THE IMMEDIATE OEJECT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. A second fact, as irrepressible as the first, one which follows logic¬ ally and necessarily from the first, is the object which the democratic party deliberately and avowedly set itself to accomplish in this Forty- sixth Congress, namely, the instant repeal of all statutes which its leaders chose to designate as “ war measures,” or as measures “ born of passions incident to the war.” It is not surprising that the gentlemen from the solid South should entertain such a desire, and should seek to accomplish precisely this object. It would be very surprising if they did not. Because the people of that section were born into the belief that slave-holding was a divine right, just as Bostonians are born with the belief that “ culture ” is strength. The perpetuity of slavery was the back-bone of their political system. They intensely believed that the first elec¬ tion of Lincoln imperatively necessitated a war by them in defense of theirsocial and commercial existence. And with a unanimity rarely paralleled they gave satisfactory proof of their sincerity upon many a bloody battle-field, and by a patient endurance of privations as a people of which the North had but slight conception. The verdict of the war was accepted from necessity and not from choice. And the supposition that their representatives, upon regaining the control of Congress, would be satisfied with the political results of the war, runs athwart all the experience of human nature. The North should have expected precisely what it now knows, namely, that they would seek with all the tenacity and dash of the rebellion to set aside anything and everything which is not in accord with the State-rights theories of Calhoun. Any other expectation must rest upon one of two erro¬ neous suppositions: eitherthat they were not sincere in their war con¬ victions, or that their humanity is of a different type from ours. B “THE ELECTION LAWS MUST BE REPEALED.” Hence, the line of attack chosen by the democratic leaders was pre¬ cisely the one which might have been anticipated by every student of human nature, namely, the repeal of the laws regulating national elections; because the destruction of these laws subverts the national power and subordinates it to the power of the States. As we look back at the measures vigorously pressed by the democratic party in this Congress it is easy to see that, apart from routine business, the only thing which it has honestly tried to do was to repeal, or hamper, or nullify four groups of existing statutes: First. Those which empower the United States Government to de¬ tect and prevent the registration of illegal voters at its elections. Second. Those which empower the Government to prevent intimi¬ dation and to maintain peace at its polls by the exercise of its civil power in the person of its marshals and the posse comitatus. Third. Those which empower the Government to prevent intimi¬ dation and preserve the peace at its polls by the exercise of the mili¬ tary power of the nation, as organized in its Army, Navy, or militia. Fourth. Those which empower the Government to detect and pun¬ ish crimes against its election laws. These various statutes are not “ war measures.” Many of them were enacted in the days of Washington; others were passed at an early day to meet threatened insurrections ; others were necessitated by the wonderful increase of our population from three millions to forty-five millions, and by the consequent massing of criminal classes in large cities. All of these statutes tend to secure freedom of elec¬ tions, purity of ballot, and honesty of returns. Their whole form and moving are in those directions ; and they stand as an army between peaceable citizens and cheating ruffians. Their repeal would be in the interest of rascality and rioting. Wipe them from the statute- book and ypu make the practice of fraud easier, its detection more difficult, and its punishment impracticable. But to effect these repeals has been the absorbing purpose of the democratic party in the Forty-sixth Congress. It has assaulted each and every safeguard against the intimidation of voters, against illegal voters, against ballot-box stuffing, against false counting, against thugs, white-liners, and ku-klux at the nation’s elections. It has lost no opportunity, spared no effort, and used every means to destroy these safeguards. WHY THE DEMOCRATS WANT THE ELECTION LAWS REPEALED. And the reasons for these efforts are patent and twofold. First. The theory that a State has the right to secede having been negatived by the war, there is only one remaining mode of subordi¬ nating the power of the nation to the power of the States, and that is by destroying the purity and freedom of national elections. Second. It is only by such subordination that a small minority can hope to maintain its rule over a large majority. Whether the first of these reasons operates in the minds of many persons, is a question which every man can decide for himself. But that the second reason is sufficiently powerful and operative in many localities to influence large masses of men there can be no question. In many districts represented on this floor the colored voters are an overwhelming majority. When permitted to do so they have repeat¬ edly chosen men of their own race as representatives; and the fact that they do not now follow this rule of human nature is strong evi¬ dence that they are not permitted to cast a free ballot and have an 6 honest count. I could name eleven members of this body, casting eleven votes in the House and fifteen or twenty votes in its commit¬ tees, while I cast but one, and yet the 51,110 votes polled at my elec¬ tion outnumber the total of all the votes polled in all of these dis¬ tricts put together. The number of votes polled in the three Kansas districts is greater than the whole number polled in twenty south¬ ern districts. It is wholly immaterial what explanation may be given of these facts ; you cannot explain the fact away. It remains all the same as an undeniable fact after you are done, and it proves this much at least: that some force, be it one thing or be it another, which is not operative in the North is operative and powerfully effective in the South. Be the cause what it may, the result is that a small minority in the Southern States casts more votes in this House and in its com¬ mittees than are cast by a much greater majority in the North and West. No gentlemen better understand the worth of this advantage to the democratic party than do its leaders, and no section more thor¬ oughly realizes the vital importance of retaining this advantage than does the democratic South; and these patent facts afford a satisfactory explanation to the country for the extraordinary zeal shown by that party, and the revolutionary means sought to be used b^ it in at¬ tempting to repeal the national election laws. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN VIEWS. I desire to give full credit to gentlemen on the other side. When they declare, as they have repeatedly done, that the doctrine of se¬ cession was irrevocably decided by the war, that the South will here¬ after be as loyal to the flag as will the North, that in case of a foreign war the men in gray would stand shoulder to shoulder with the boys in blue, and that this Union is one and indivisible, both now and for¬ ever, I accept their declarations as genuine and true. But the difference between us, as I understand it, is this: At the close of the war the North somehow jumped into the belief that the real issue in trial was not simply the question whether a State had the right to secede, this was only the pretext; nor chiefly the matter of slavery, that was only an incident; but that the main and real question was the whole doctrine of Calhoun State rights, as contra¬ distinguished from the Websterian doctrine of nationality. We re¬ garded secession as merely a sample of the cargo of claims, and that when the South surrendered the sample it surrendered the cargo. In other words, we supposed that the whole Calhoun theory was on trial in the right of secession, and that the overruling of that alleged right was a final settlement of the entire theory. You, on the other hand, now claim that the only question at issue was the single item of secession, and that all other items of the Cal¬ houn doctrine are yet in dispute. I can readily see how this position is consistent with your declarations of loyalty to the Union. But I fancy that the American people will decide the remaining counts quite as effectively by ballot as the heresy of secession was decided by the bullet. In any event, it is well that the present issue shall be clearly defined and precisely understood by all parties. THE TRUE ISSUE BETWEEN THE REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES. And that issue is simply the question whether “the Constitution as it was,” or “the Constitution as it is,” forms the organic law of these United States; and whether, in the interpretation of that in- 7 strument, we are to follow the teachings of Washington, Jackson, Webster, and Lincoln, or those of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. Is this a nation or is it a confederacy of States? Is the Constitution a mere agreement of copartnership, or is it a constitution, a something which makes the States “ stand together,” which binds them into one, as motherly love binds the children into one family and makes them forever to stand together as one family in the eyes of man and God? Are the laws passed by Congress in pursuance of the pro¬ visions of that Constitution equal in force to those of a State? Do they reach over every valley, mountain, and acre, or are they estopped and bounded back by State lines? Are the people, the whole peo¬ ple, whether living in one State or another or in no State, the full and final source of power, the complete sovereign ; or are the States the sovereign? All of these questions are in issue, and they are all embraced in the one question whether we have the constitution of Jackson or of Cal¬ houn, that of Lincoln or that of Jefferson Davis ? I risk nothing in averring that the differences which have existed between the two parties on a hundred bills before this House arose from exactly this source and from no other. And just this great question is the real difference to-day, and for years will be, between the democratic and republican parties. The former is governed by the principles of Cal¬ houn, the latter by the principles of Webster; and it is for the people to decide between them at the ballot-box. REVOLUTIONARY ATTEMPTS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. There is a third fact, inseparable from the very existence of this Congress, namely, the unconstitutional and revolutionary methods by which the democratic party has sought to repeal the election laws. In the closing hours of the Forty-fifth Congress a democratic House said to a republican Senate, you must either consent to the repeal of these laws, as effected by the riders on the appropriation bills, or the whole machinery of the Government shall stop for want of money. Under the Constitution the consent of the House, the consent of the Senate, and the consent of the President are each and all necessary to the enactment of a law. But the House alone consented to this re¬ peal; the Senate dissented ; and the alternative which the democratic party thus presented was precisely the alternative which a highway¬ man presents at the mouth of a revolver, u Your money or your life!” The Senate promptly rejected a method alike unconstitutional and outrageous; the House passionately refused appropriations ; and by so doing compelled the President either to call an extra session or consent to the destruction of the Government—a question which he very promptly decided. And thus it was that this democratic Congress, having control of both Houses, prematurely forced itself into existence by the extra democratic session, which proved to be extra-democratic folly, and, therefore, utterly useless, as the regular quantity and quality of that article are amply sufficient. In that extra session the only two arguments advanced for the repeal of the election laws were : First. That they were unconstitutional ; a point which has since been ruled upon by the United States Supreme Court affirming their constitutionality. Second: The argument of the brigand, no longer addressed to the Senate by the House, but addressed by both House and Senate to the President. 8 For months these walls rang with passionate declarations of demo¬ cratic orators that not a dollar should be given till their demands were granted. Like the leap of the lion was the reply, “ You failed to shoot the Government to death, and now starve it to death if you dare!” And the lion heart which uttered those words will wield the veto power for four years to come. The issue was squarely made with President Hayes, “ sign or starve! ” He did neither ! He vetoed; vetoed with the regularity and dispatch of a trip-hammer ; pounded some glimmerings of common sense into the democratic head; and the people pounded the king of the democratic caucus out of the Senate and James A. Garfield into it. Then came the regular session ; and the only tangible thing which the democratic party has done has been to pass the appropriation which it had vociferously protested it would not pass, and then ad¬ journ! It wanted “ to go home! ” The election laws remain unre pealed, and the democratic party will remain at home. O / %