quite as high and as respectable, the honorable Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. DAVIS.] He

says:

"And the question now under consideration is, have the two Houses of Congress in their legislative capacity the power to lay down certain rules by which this office of counting the vote may be performed? I think that they have. The clause in the Constitution read first by the Senator from New Hampshire, and subsequently by other Senators, seems to me to confer full and plenary power in relation to the manner of countingt he votes upon Congress; and Congress may declare by its legislative action certain rules to regulate the count of the presidential vote."

Still later he says:

"Now, sir, as I understand the effect of this joint resolution, it is simply in a form to do that duty"

Which he has described to be the duty of ascertaining whether the votes given are the votes of the State, and he illustrates by supposing the vote to have been given to some person whose eligibility was in question

"that is, to ascertain whether the vote of certain States has been cast in conformity to the Constitution or not, and deciding that they have not been east in conformity to the Constitution, to exclude them from the count, Some gentlemen here think the election in Louisiana was illegal for one class of reasons; I think it was illegal for another class of reasons; but as we both come to the same conclusion, it is immaterial upon what grounds. The vote of that State is illegal.'

The honorable Senator moved an amend

ment to the joint resolution that was then pending, and apparently as expressive of his views, which contains in it so clearly the precise principle upon which this bill proceeds that I cannot forbear from reading it:

"Mr. DAVIS. I move to amend the amendment by striking out all after the word 'that,' where it first occurs, and inserting:

The States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee, are not entitled to representation in the Electoral College for the choice of President and Vice President for the term of office commencing on the 4th day of March, 1865; and no electoral votes shall be received or counted from said States concerning the choice of President and Vice President for the said term of office.' 939

At another place in the debate, which I will not occupy time in turning to, the honorable Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. DOOLITTLE]

Mr. DAVIS. Will the honorable Senator give me the exact date of that debate?

Mr. EDMUNDS. I will give you the book that contains the marks, so that you can look into it. It was between the 1st and 4th of February. The debate ran through two or three days.

Mr. DAVIS. What year?

Mr. EDMUNDS. Eighteen hundred and sixty-five. The honorable Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. DOOLITTLE,] not now in his seat, expressed substantially the same opinions. The fault that he found with the passage of that resolution was that it was passed after the fact, after the votes had been cast, and he contended, and with a good deal of plausibility, that the law ought to provide in advance the rule which should govern. I cite him also as a good authority.

After this debate, in which all these eminent gentlemen on all sides agreed as to the power of Congress and the propriety of a regulating rule which should leave nothing to discretion or doubt when the event should come, the resolution passed by yeas 29, nays 10, and among the yeas are the names of my honorable friend from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BUCKALEW,] the Senator from Kentucky, to whom I have referred, [Mr. DAVIS,] the Senator from Indiana, [Mr. HENDRICKS,] and, I believe, one or two other distinguished members of that political party. I take this, in connection with the well-known principles of the Constitution and of the prac tice of all the States, to be, what is so well called by my friend from Kentucky, plenary proof that we have the power to pass a bill of this discription, and that it is proper that we should exercise that power if there is any reasonable possibility that a case of dispute may arise.

Now, the honorable Senators are opposed to this resolution undoubtedly because those communities that have been permitted, after

40TH CONG. 2D SESS.-No. 245.

the rebellion has been crushed, to organize themselves are not the sort of communities that they wish to recognize. They would be glad to have a bill passed, I do not doubt, which should declare that the men who were entitled to vote in 1860, and no others, in those States should be entitled now to vote for President. The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania put his opposition distinctly, last night, to this resolution upon the ground that those governments that are now organized there are irregular, usurpations, unconstitutional, void governments; and he went so far as to intimate-but I do not wish to follow him into that, because that enters into the political field, and I desire to have this resolution considered upon its merits and got through-he went so votes from those reorganized communities and far as to intimate that the reception of the under their authority would be resisted if they affected the result. But I will not follow him into that. I merely allude to it now so far as I can legitimately, to show that here is a possibility of a question being raised which ought to be provided for in advance by the

law.

Other citizens of our country of great distinction, the newspaper press of the country of the party to which the honorable Senator belongs, have intimated a different line of policy, but still opening the question; that is to say, not only that the votes of these organized communities should not be counted, but that votes taken under some preëxisting organiza tion, or without any organization at all, from the body of electors who by the old laws before the rebellion were entitled to vote, should be the votes received and counted in this election for President. Now, all those are questions. They are fair questions for debate; and I respect the opinions of any Senator who believes that any of these branches of the proposition is the true one. All that I beg to remind these Senators of is that, it being a question of dispute, the law-making power, binding upon us all, upon our consciences, requires the concurrence of a majority to determine the rule beforehand how this dispute shall be disposed of; that is all. There must be, in the nature of things, rules where there is this possibility, a provision made which shall be a controlling guide to the disposition of the question; and the Constitution, happily for the peace of the country, has confided the making of that rule, as I have shown from these debates and from the Constitution itself, to the law, just as in all systems of civilized governments such questions are confided to the disposition of the law, made in advance of the fact, and laying its calm but steadfast hand upon whatever state of circumstances and in whatever interest they may arise, when they do arise, impartially and according to that rule; leaving no discretion to anybody, as the honorable Senator from Illinois sup posed it was to do, but taking away discretion from everybody, and pointing out, as the Senator confessed we were the political power who were to point out and to ascertain, which are the States now embraced within the territories that were the States in 1860, what political communities are the ones which are the States; because there cannot be two States within one territorial boundary of a State.

There can be but one political community that is the true one; and as my honorable friend from Pennsylvania conceded last nightand it is nothing new, of course; we all understand it-it is the political department of the Government, the law-making power, acting through its laws which recognize that condition of things that is to determine what the State is. We have determined as to these States we have provided for the readmission of, who have chosen to reorganize themselves after this rebellion, that that political community is the State. We have not undertaken to interfere in that political community, as the Senator said, to compel them to organize a State. We have not undertaken to interfere by excluding one half of the people from determining what

sort of institutions they would have; but we have, with a very narrow class of exceptions founded upon crime, appealed to the whole body of the community to organize such gov ernments, republican in form, as they should think fit. Having organized them and submitted them to our approval, they have beer. completely restored and rehabilitated. Now. we must decide that they, and no other organization, are the political community in those States; and therefore from them, and from no other organization, can votes for President and Vice President be received.

I should have been glad, if the time would permit, to make some remarks especially in reply to some of the observations of the Senator from Illinois, founded upon the fear that somebody would say that this was a partisan movement; but I have not the time consistently with the patience of the Senate to do that. He of all other men, I think, ought not to be afraid of doing what justice and propriety would seem to require on account of people finding fault with his action. He has given us eminent proofs of his courage in that respect a great many times.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, between the resolution presented by the Senator from Vermont and the substitute offered by the Senator from New York, I believe there is only a formal difference. The one speaks in particular terms designating States, and the other in general terms, which necessarily comprehends them. I agree with the Senator from Vermont in one of his propositions most unhesitatingly, that there can be but one State within the same limits. I lay down the further proposition that the State, the true State, that occupies and consists of the people within the particular boundary of a State, has the right to elect presidential electors.

I agree with the Senator in another of his propositions, that any law of Congress or any regulation which does not infract the Constitution, but which is merely directory of the manner in which the ministerial duty of count. ing the votes of the presidential electors may be prescribed by Congress; but whenever such a law in any of its provisions impinges upon any of the provisions of the Constitution, to that extent it is null and void. I will read what the Constitution says on this subject of presidential electors:

"Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

Now, as to what is to be done with the votes of those electors when they are chosen :

"The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice President; and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted."

These are the portions of the text of the Constitution which settle the principles, and I concede that any legislation within the limit of those principles would be constitutional.

Now, I will proceed to examine each one of the principles established by these provisions of the Constitution which I have read, and endeavor to compare them with the proposition of the honorable Senator:

"Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors."

The first question is, What is the State that is to appoint in such manner as the Legislature thereof shall direct, the electors to which that State is entitled? It is the people of the particular portion of the country organized into a State, under a constitution formed by the people who are clothed with the political power

within that State. The first requisite in the process is that there must be a State. The people alone can form a State. To constitute à State, it must have a government, a government by a constitution; and that is just as necessary as people or territory to constitute a State. How is this government of constitution to be formed? It is to be formed by the people of the State alone. Congress has no power to form the government of a State. It has no power to form that government in whole or in part. It has no right to meddle with that duty and right of the people of the State, the formation of their government, except on a single point; and that is, to see that it is republican in form.

Now, when it is inquired whether a particu lar country being called a State has elected presidential electors or not, I admit that the two Houses may and must necessarily inquire whether there is a State within that country. To reach that conclusion there must be a defined territory; there must be a people; there must be a constitution or a form of government creating a Legislature; and this form of government must be made by the people of the State in their sole and sovereign capacity, irrespective of any manipulation or interference by Congress. The government of the State made by the people thereof must have a legislative body, and that legislative body that is created and organized must direct the manner in which the presidential electors shall be chosen. If there are any of these essential, constitutional requisites absent, it is a fatal defect in its non-conformation to the Constitution, and such a State in which such coustitutional and organic defects exist has no power whatever to choose electors.

I will illustrate my proposition by an example, and I will take an example in point. Here are Alabama and Arkansas. It is said they have been reconstructed. Both of those States before their governments were destroyed had constitutions and State governments formed by or with the consent and acquiescence of the people of those States respectively, and those governments have been recognized by Congress and all the departments of this Government in various official acts. The honorable Senator from Vermout and his associates on this floor were not satisfied to let those gov. ernments formed by the people remain aud perform their legitimate functions, but they proceeded to pass what are called the reconstruction laws of Congress, which profess to abrogate those governments, and to dictate conditions upon which they should be reformed in conformity to the laws of Congress.

My position is that those governments which Congress found in existence, and which it recognized by passing laws for the government of those respective States, being formed by the people of the States, or they having acquiesced in and adopted those governments, were the only legitimate, constitutional governments of the States. It was not competent for Congress to abolish those governments. The reconstruction laws which proposed to effect that object were flagrantly in violation of the Constitution, and are utterly null and void. They had no right to abrogate a State government. A State government can be formed by but one power on earth under the Constitution of the United States, and that is by the people of the State. They are not only to exercise the power, but all the power; and if Congress interferes by its dictation and by military force for the purpose of coercing, constraining the people of a State to form a government after a particular manner, or not to form it after a particular manner, it is an interference without sanction of power and utterly destroys and renders null and void the bastard fruit of such interference.

Then, sir, I am led to this position: not ouly that the State governments of Alabama, Arkansas, and all the other southern States which had been formerly adopted by their people, could not be legitimately or constitutionally or authoritatively abolished by Congress,

but also to the second position that Congress had no legitimate or constitutional power to build up other States in their stead. This reasoning leads me to the conclusion that electors chosen by the governments and the Legislatures of those States that were provided for by their previous constitutions would be literally and strictly in conformity to the Constitution, and that any electors chosen by these spurious and bastard governments in those or in any of the other southern States that have been erected by the usurped power of Congress, in conjunction with the military power of the nation, perverted to that illegitimate and unconstitutional use, with the instrumentality of the negroes, who are not entitled, constitutionally, to vote at all, are utterly null and void, and have no power whatever to choose electors in the presidential election.

Suppose there should be two electoral tickets elected from the southern States, one under their governments that existed before the interposition of Congress by force to destroy them, and by the Legislatures of those States respectively, and then other classes of electors chosen or appointed by these subsequent illegitimate governments. My position is that the former would have all the legitimate and constitutional power to cast the vote of their respective States in the presidential election, and that the latter would not have a particle of power to do it.

Mr. CONKLING. To which governments do you refer, the provisional governments, or those before the rebellion?

Mr. DAVIS. I refer to the governments which the people recognized after the rebellion had ceased. They were not provisional governments. The people do not make provisional governments. They make absolute

governments.

The provisional governments were set up afterward by military power, in derogation of and upon the ruins of the legitimate governments which the people them. selves had formed. I maintain that it is the

right of those previously existing legitimate governments formed by the people themselves, and not the right of those meretricious governments set up by Congress, to choose electors for those respective States; and I believe that whenever the question is presented that a class of electors chosen by the negro governments offer to vote for President of the United States the white people will see to it that the negro governments do not cast their votes, and that the white men do.

Now, sir, what does this joint resolution propose? I will read it:

Resolved, &c., That the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, respectively, shall not be entitled to representation in the Electoral College.

Did any American statesman or legislator ever before assume so monstrous and so unsound a principle? This resolution recognizes that they are States, and yet it says that the States shall not, except on particular conditions, be entitled to choose electors whose votes shall be received and counted. Whence does the honorable Senator from Vermont derive that power to the Senate or to Congress or to himself? There is this important difference between the honorable Senator and myself: he thinks that Congress have sole, sovereign, and absolute power over the subject; I, on the contrary, believe that they have not a particle of power over the subject. But, to proceed with this resolution:

That the States of Virginia, &c., shall not be entitled to representation in the Electoral College for the choice of President or Vice President of the United States, and no electoral votes shall be received or counted from any such States, unless at the time prescribed by law for the choice of electors, the people of such States, pursuant to the acts of Congress in that behalf, shall have, since the 4th day of March, 1867, adopted a constitution of State government, &c.

I ask the honorable Senator where does he derive the power to assume the position that Congress shall or shall not receive electoral votes? I put that question pointedly and with emphasis to the honorable Senator or any of his coadjutors.

Mr. HOWARD. What is the question? Mr. DAVIS. Where do gentlemen derive the power that authorizes Congress to pass a law saying that an electoral vote for President shall be received or shall not be received?

Mr. HOWARD. As the honorable Senator from Vermout, to whom the interrogatory was more particularly addressed, has been obliged to leave the Chamber for a moment, and as the Senator has included others who hold with him in his interrogatory, he will pardon me for making a very brief answer.

Mr. DAVIS. I do not ask the honorable Senator for an argument. I just ask him to refer me to the power.

Mr. HOWARD. Yes; I will immediately, without circumlocution; the power to suppress rebellion and to subdue insurrection.

Mr. DAVIS. That is the most universal and illimitable power that was ever contended for on this earth, but instead of meaning auything and everything, it comprehends but a single, simple point; and that is to suppress insurrection, and when that is done the power is as dead as a door-nail. It exists no longer.

Mr. DRAKE. If the honorable Senator will consider me included among those to whom he appeals for a designation of the power, I would give it a little different direction from that of the honorable Senator from Michigan. The Constitution says:

"Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

I presume that in that clause of the Constitution is the power of Congress to determine what States are entitled to representation in Congress.

Mr. DAVIS. I am much obliged to the honorable Senator for his remark; and I will answer him by this conclusive quotation from the Constitution, which says positively, explicitly, and unconditionally, that every State shall be entitled to two Senators in Congress, and to Representatives in proportion to her population under the ratio, and then that every State shall be entitled to as many electoral votes as she is entitled to Senators and Repre sentatives in Congress. There is the whole of it. Every State is entitled to two Senators. My State is entitled to nine Representatives in Congress. Consequently, my State is entitled to eleven electoral votes. That is the plain language of the Constitution; that is its permanent and immutable meaning until it is altered in the mode prescribed for the amend ment of the instrument itself; and this Congress has no power to impinge the right of my State or any other State to her representation in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, or in the Electoral College.

But I will proceed. I was denying the posi tion assumed by the honorable Senator from Vermont in this resolution, that Congress had the right to say whether a presidential electoral vote shall be received or counted from any State. I say there is no power in Congress to deny the receipt of an electoral vote, or to receive it at all. With the matter of accepting a vote Congress has nothing to do.

The two Houses are authorized to count the votes. It is not Congress; it is not the two branches acting legislatively; it is the two Houses of Congress acting in a convention, and acting ministerially. They are then performing no legislative duty; they are perform ing no duty whatever except a mere simple ministerial duty which they could be commanded by a court of competent jurisdiction by mandamus to execute; and if they refused to execute it, their non-execution would not affect the question of the election of a President at all. It would be as good without the count, if Congress was to refuse to count, as with the count.

But this resolution goes on to declare: And no electoral votes shall be received or counted from any of such States.

That is the provision of the proposed law

of Congress; that is its mandate; and I say for that command and that provision there is not a shred of authority anywhere. It is a simple, unconditional usurpation of power for which Congress has not a color of authority. The Constitution declares that the electors, after they have voted:

"Shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted."

Now, sir, after the next presidential election there will be but that single, plain, simple duty to be performed by the two Houses. They do not receive the votes; they cannot accept the votes; they cannot reject the votes. That matter is provided for specifically by the Constitution itself. After the votes shall have been cast and sealed up the requisition of the Constitution is that they shall be transmitted to the President of the Senate, and they shall be kept by him until a certain day, and on that certain day the two Houses shall get together and perform the simple ministerial duty, not of adjudging between the candidates at all, but of counting the votes for the respective candidates for whom the electors had voted.

Suppose when the business reaches that stage that Congress should make a false count, that they should decide that a candidate who had received the majority of the votes had not received that majority, and that another candidate who had received a minority of the votes had received a majority, would that make the election? Would that decide the election? No, sir. A false and fraudulent count cannot unmake a presidential election. The election is a different matter. It takes place from another power, on another theater. It takes place when the Electoral College of each State gets together and casts its electoral vote for a particular candidate, and seals that vote and sends it on to the President of the Senate. When that is done the election is complete it is consummate; it can never be reversed nor set aside nor nullified.

Suppose the two Houses were not together to count the presidential vote at all; suppose they did not get together to make a count, but the fact was that the electoral vote of each State college had been cast, and had been cast so as to give one of the candidates a majority; would the failure of the two Houses to meet in convention to count the electoral vote annul the election, set it aside, and introduce chaos and confusion, and leave this country without a President? No such nonsense. That is not the principle; that is not the meaning of the Constitution. The President is not elected by the two Houses of Congress in convention. Where one of the candidates does not get a majority of the electoral vote the House, acting by States, makes an election; and that is the only condition or state of case in which the House or either branch of Congress can interfere in the presidential vote at all.

The honorable Senator from Vermont has strange notions of the Constitution and of the constitutional powers of Congress, or I have. There is so much not only of discrepancy but of actual and positive contradiction between that honorable Senator's ideas and my own in relation to such matters, that he or myself is totally at fault. His measure-and the substitute proposed by the honorable Senator from New York adopts the same principle-by language proposes to invest Congress with the power to accept or to reject the electoral votes for a candidate for President. Sir, a power more destitute of foundation, with less color, not only of reality, but with less color of exist ence, never was attempted to be exercised even by this Congress.

The first proposition that I set out was this: an electoral vote can only be cast under the authority and direction of the Legislature of a State. That Legislature can only be created

and organized by its constitution, its form of government. That constitution or form of government can only be created by the people of the State; and all devices of constitutions, laws, rights of suffrage, electoral colleges, in derogation of that general principle are in flagrant conflict with the Constitution and utterly null and void. They are not only usurpations of power, but they are revolutionary, and dangerously revolutionary. They subvert our free, representative, constitutional form of government, and bring the whole under the indefinite and absolute power of a usurping and aggressive Congress.

These observations lead me to adopt the conclusion that there is not a government in the southern States set up under the reconstruction acts that has one particle of constitutional obligation. Those goverments are all made in derogation of the Constitution. They are all made in derogation and in dethronement of the political power in those States as it had been organized and recognized by the Constitution of the United States and by the constitutions of the several States. I can put an apposite case, I think. There was a Dorr government in Rhode Island at one time. Two governments occupied the territory of that small State at one time, and both were struggling for existence and for ultimate supremacy. Before the first or charter government was deposed and set aside legitimately, suppose the Dorr government had had authority and power enough there to have chosen electors for that State for the Presidency; suppose the votes of those electors had been counted by Congress, would the counting of these spurious and unconstitutional votes by Congress have made them valid, and, under a particular division between the candidates, have controlled the election and decided who should be elected President of the United States? No, sir; no, sir.

Mr. President, my honorable friend from Indiana [Mr. MORTON] yesterday stated the issue which had now been formed for the decision of the American people, frankly and candidly, when he said that the question now was to be decided whether this should be the white man's Government or the negro's Government, I accept the definition of the issue. I meet that definition, and I meet it in full and proud confidence that the great mass of the American white people will decide it against the negro and in favor of the white man. Gentlemen, I have no doubt, are looking to the possibility, yea, the probability of the presidential election being decided by the negro vote. It was for that purpose that they made Grant, the General of the Army, their candidate. It is for that purpose that they refuse to disband the enormous standing Army. It is to use that Army for the purpose of subjugating the white people of the United States, if it shall become advisable and practicable to Here we have had the Committee on Finance with its honorable chairman racking their brains to find out resources for revenues to meet the vast expenditures of the Government; but when you say to them, "Abolish the Freedmen's Bureau; diminish the Army from sixty thousand, with a capacity to be raised to one hundred and six thousand to twenty thousand, and in that way you will be able to save fifty or seventy millions," you cannot get the ear or the attention of the majority of this Chamber to any such proposition.

do so.

Sir, if they were devoted friends to freedom, the representative rights of the people, to their liberties, to economy in the expenditures of the Government; if they had an ardent desire to establish an equilibrium between the expenditures and the receipts of the Treasury, here are the plainest modes in the world that would secure it to them. Why do they not adopt them? They are looking to the General-inChief, a military dictator, some of his minions say greater than Alexander or Cæsar, Napoleon or Cromwell, and to enable him to trample with his iron military heel upon the necks of the white men of this country, and to

elevate above them the four or five millions of negroes, he and you hold on to a standing army of sixty thousand. Not only that, you are proposing now to give him the power of distributing two thousand arms into every congressional district in the southern States. Not only that, you have organized your "Grand Army of the Republic," negroes and white renegrades, carpet-baggers, minions of power and spoils, and they are to be marched forward under your dictator, your military chieftain, to rivet the chains and add immeasurably to their weight upon the people not only of the southern States, but of all the States.

When

Mr. President, no people can live half free and half slave. When the southern people are reduced to hopeless, irremediable servitude to negroes, the fate of the white men of the North will soon follow. The one will be a rapid precusor of the other. Do gentlemen expect that the General of the armies or the Grand Army of the Republic, white and black, or the minions who are now in the regular Army, and who will be willing to enlist in such a cause, to enslave the white man to the negro, can ever effect it? No, gentlemen, no. You are aiming at impossibilities. I will tell you when you will elect your President, and when he will take his seat, and never before: when he gets a majority of the electoral votes cast by the white people of the United States, under the governments of States which governments have been formed by the white people. you do that, if you bring him here with a majority of that vote, there will be no obstacle to his inauguration; there will be no obstacle to his installation into office; and the men who would and will oppose him in the canvass would then strike with as much boldness and fidelity in favor of his right to the Presidency, and to serve out his term in it, as his own friends. But when you present the case in this form: here is Seymour, who has twenty, thirty, or forty more of the white electoral vote than Grant, and Grant's election is decided by the negro vote, the question then presents itself to the American mind, to its heart and soul, will you permit these negroes to appoint a President for you? No; no; not even the General of the Army, backed with all of his military power. One day of virtuous liberty in resistance to such a system of tyranny would be worth whole ages of such slavery.

I

Sir, these are my sentiments. I am no party man. I am no Democrat. I never was. am for my country, for the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws; and I will go under any man's standard who strikes in that glorious cause; and I oppose every man who takes up arms against it to the extent of my feeble ability. I am not responsible for the nominations or for the platform at New York. I believe in the platform. I hug it to my heart, to my reason, to my soul; and I have no doubt that under its banner the free white men of America will march on in November next to a glorious victory-peacefully. There will be no blood. You will be beaten so fairly that you will not have ground to stand upon. You will have the votes of some six or eight States. The storm of 1840 will rise and will sweep with more fury than it did then. It will be the best day for you and your posterity, for your country and the whole country that this people has known since the Revolutionary war.

But my friend from Indiana received this platform as a sound and tocsin of war. Sir, there will be no war. A reckless band of revolutionists and all the hosts of the negroes of the South, with all their carpet-baggers and leaders and adventurers cannot make any stand against the hosts of the white freemen of America that will on that day rally for the Constitution which Washington made, and for the liberties which it secures, and which were fought for during the revolutionary war. time will come when you yourselves will sound your praises and your peans for the mighty, free, white host that will perform this great work.

The

My honorable friend [Mr. MORTON] a few days ago said that it was a vulgar prejudice to approve negro equality. My honorable friend | from West Virginia [Mr. WILLEY] made a most passionate and eloquent appeal in favor of the negro and negro suffrage, the equality of the negro; in the language of the honorable Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. SUMNER] the equality of the negro before the law. That is an equality that wiser men than you have been seeking to establish for the last six thousand years. You have never made anything bat a negro out of the curly-headed African, and you never will be able to make anything but that out of him. He has no fitness for selfgovernment. But Senators said that it was the debasing effects, the demoralization, the degradation, the ignorance, the brutality that have been brought upon this race by slavery that rendered them unfit to take part in the Government. They admitted their unfitness. Now, let us see what is the truth of the case. I will read a passage from Malte Brun. He says:

The slave coast of Africa consists of several petty States, which are all under the despotic sway of the king of Dahomey. This barbarian monarch chooses to have women for his body-guard, and his palace is surrounded by one thousand of these Amazons, armed with javalins and muskets, from whom he selects his special military aids and messengers. His ministers, when they come into the royal presence, are obliged to leave their silk gowns at the gates of the palace, and approach the throne walking on all fours, and rolling their hands in the dust. The ferocity of this African despot almost surpasses conception. The road to his residence is strowed with human skulls, and the walls aro adorned and almost covered with jaw-bones. On public occasions the sable monarch walks in solemn

pomp over the bloody heads of vanquished princes or disgraced ministers. At the festival of the tribes, to which all the people bring presents for the king, he drenches the tomb of his father with human blood. Fifty dead bodies are thrown around the royal sepulchre, and fifty heads displayed on poles. The blood of these victims is presented to the king, who dips his fingers in it and licks them. Human blood is mixed with clay to build temples in honor of deceased monarchs. The royal widows kill one another till it pleases the new sovereign to put an end to the slaughter; and the crowd assembled at these most joyous festivals applaud such scenes of horror, and delight in tearing the unhappy victims to pieces."

There is the start from which you say the debasing and unhumanizing and degrading influences of slavery have redeemed their posterity and given them self-government! It is not necessary to read more.

some of the men who served with him in the Army say, would march as cold and with as little twinge of nerve over such scenes as he smoked his cigar when tens of thousands of his men were falling around him in battle.

But I care not what hero you bring up to maintain a cause against the Constitution, against the liberties of this country, in favor of negro governments, to subjugate the white men's Government, in favor of the bayonet against the Constitution and constitutional and representative liberty, you will find a host who will encounter you, and who will scatter you like chaff before the whirlwind. There will be no war. I have had enough war in my day. I never saw much of it, but I do not want to see any more. I have a great and instinctive and immovable mistrust of military men. Standing armies are the natural foes of constitutional government and popular liberty. The two things cannot continue and live and flourish together. One or the other must yield. The military, from the days of Washington up to the commencement of this war, was always subservient to the civil power. You have reversed the order of things, and you have made the military power omnipotent. You bring the Constitution of the United States and all its civil authority, and the constitutions of the States and all their civil authority, and all the majesty and rights of the people, to the feet of the military power, and ride over them rough-shod.

Sir, it is time this thing was coming to an end. You have performed your mission. The Republican party, in its first days, when it was pure compared with what it is at present, performed a noble service to the country in suppressing the rebellion. When the rebellion was quelled your mission was executed. You became then legitimately and properly under the Constitution and the laws of humanity functus officio. It is time that you should die, and you will die upon the ides of March, without any more ensanguined plains and without any further clash of arms.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on the amendment offered by the Senator from New York.

Mr. NYE. Mr. President, I care but little whether the amendment offered by the Senator from New York is adopted or not. It amounts to about the same thing as the original proposition. But I am not willing to let go unchallenged the things that have come from the honorable Senator from Kentucky. While he has been speaking I have thought whether there would not be a change in the form of the Lord's Prayer in Kentucky: "Give us this day our daily bread, if consistent with the Constitution; but be sure, O Lord, to give us white bread made for white men. That form, I think, would be adapted to the creed which the honorable Senator has just

We

Gentlemen, we will beat you. We are for the Constitution. We are for peaceful force, and peaceful remedies. You march along like the king of Dahomey, and all along your path are the skeletons and blood of the Constitution. You perpetrate your orgies as he did. want to rescue the Constitution. We want to rescue law and order from your violence, your misrule, your revolutionary gambols. We expect to do it without any bayonets. We expect to do it by the united and omnipotent voice of the great mass of the American white men; and when you shall be beaten, as I have the fullest faith that you will be beaten, three or four electoral votes to one by the November election, if there is any war you will make it. If there is any clash of arms, any drenching of the land in blood, any crossing of bayonets, any wail of misery and woe from the widow and the orphan, you will be the cause of ityou and your Grant, your General of the Army, your armed military dictator who, I have hear

In the course of an existence as long as that of the honorable Senator from Kentucky, there is hardly a phase of political life that he has not seen. I was forcibly impressed with that in his allusion to 1840. Where, then, was the honorable Senator's heart?

Mr. DAVIS. Exactly where it is now, for the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the law.

Mr. NYE. I recollect very distinctly that very year hearing the distinguished Senator denounce the Democracy in more unmeasured terms than he is capable of denouncing the Republican party. They had beaten his pet, Mr. Clay, and he never has forgiven them. He came here at the commencement of this rebellion a strong Union man; and he says now that he hugs to his very soul a platform that disunionists have made. I merely sug. gest these things to show that where next he may be found, the Lord only knows, in the new catechism which Kentucky may put forth.

He has spoken of the barbarities of some negro chieftain, whose name I did not understand, of whom he read. And yet those bar

barities pale into insignificance in comparison with the butchery of Forrest at Fort Pillow; and he was one of the men who made the platform that my honorable friend loves so well. Above all men living, the honorable Senator is the last one, if he can hug such a thing to his bosom, to be shocked at the barbarities of barbarism, untutored as it is.

Mr. President, the honorable Senator says that the Republican party will die. So it will. So will the honorable Senator die. So will all the parties to which he has belonged die. But, sir, the fruits that this Republican party has brought forth will never die. They have not expended their strength, like the honorable Senator, in trying to depress a race numbering four millions in our midst. They have not taxed their ingenuity to find arguments by which they could make the bonds with which the slaves were bound strong. Their boast is, and will be when the honorable Senator's memory will be forgotten, that they felt for those who were in bonds as though they were bound with them, and broke the shackles that made man a slave. Let the honorable Senator and his colleagues and his coadjutors glory in their oppression, and glory in the fact that they have trampled the oppressed deeper in the mire of oppression where they found them. But, sir, let it be my boast and the boast of the party to which I belong, that there is not a man so low but what they would elevate him to the pure, highest heavens where angels dwell. Sir, that seems to me to be more in accordance with the spirit of our Master; that is more in accordance with the spirit of republican institutions; and that sentiment will grow. Let not the honorable Senator think that that sentiment will die. No, sir; it is now having its second birth amid the troubles and conflicts and toils of arms and civil strife.

Sir, I witnessed the gathering from which salvation is to come, which the honorable Senator perches upon and proclaims to be his roost during the campaign. I witnessed this organization. I looked in upon it. What did I see? I wish I had a Hogarth's pencil to sketch it, or words in which I could convey the faintest idea of that group of indescribable animals. Who was there? Wade Hampton; and at the mention of his name the Democracy shouted by order. That is what they call fraternal love." Who else was there? Rhett, of South Carolina; it ought to be spelled with a ch. Who else was there? Hammond, who pronouneed the people of the color of my honor able friend "mud-sills.' Oh, what a source

to look to for salvation! Who else was there i Forrest, the butcher. No milder name is fitto use as descriptive of him-a man who coldly murdered by order defenseless men who stacked their arms and surrendered. Tell me, sir, what kind of salvation you will get from that source? And where were they? In the largest city upon this continent. With whom were they associated? With men of the North. There sat Forrest and Seymour, the latter presiding over the deliberations, as they were called, of this convocation of unclean things. Whose voices were heard first? Men whose hands were red with loyal blood. Oh, the spirit of fraternity there exhibited! They always agreed. One was a traitor with a sword, and the other a traitor without a sword; that was all the difference. But how my honorable friend from Kentucky hugs their progeny! A sweet thing to hug! May your embrace be long and enduring!

Mr. President, what is this thing that the honorable Senator hugs so fondly? A greenback platform with an anti-greenback candidate.

Mr. SHERMAN. A grayback.
Mr. NYE. A grayback candidate.

Mr. SUMNER. On a greenback platform. Mr. NYE. That is what I say. It is a platform for peace and a general for lieuenant on it, second in command, and a general who was nominated by rebels. I think, if my recollec

tion is correct, an honorable gentleman from Kentucky nominated Frank Blair. I do not wonder that my honorable friend loves the platform. It is a platform whose every line and lineament is marked with repudiation. Is it for that that the distinguished Senator hugs it? It is a platform whose every line is a fraud and almost every word a lie; a platform of professions in which they do not believe, of hope to the head to be broken to the heart. That is the platform on which my honorable friend expects to ride into that happy haven where he is going to look with so much complacency, much as he describes Grant looking upon the battle-field, upon the destruction of the hosts of the Republican party. Perched away up on that uncertain roost he is going to have his vision satisfied by looking upon the ruins of those below. In 1864 I read a speech at quite a distance from here in which the honorable Senator was fully as sanguine in expression at least as now, that in 1864 the Repub-|| lican party were to be demolished; but the Republican party survived both the prediction of the honorable Senator and the power of his opposition.

Sir, to these saviours we are to look. These are the men to whom in these troublous times my honorable friend from Kentucky and those who act with him turn for protection. Who are they? Men who are yet counting the notches upon their swords that they wore gallantly by their sides for four or five years in an earnest, terrible struggle to overthrow this country. They are the saviours now who are going to uphold them! How are they going to uphold them? By overturning all that has been done to build up the waste places they made. When a man is sick he seeks a physician the most skillful he can find. When a nation is troubled the people seek the friends of the nation to uphold it. They feel its pulsations. They want men loyal to the country, loyal to our institutions. There is where I look for help, for aid in this struggle. But my honorable friend and the Democratic host with which he is surrounded look to the rebels. They will give you such protection as vultures give to lambs. They will give you the protection that Forrest gave at Fort Pillow, and the thousand bloody fields upon which we met. What, sir, trust a man with a ballot to uphold this country who has been for five years with the bullet trying to overthrow it! It is an insult to the intelligence of the world; and I assure the honorable Senator from Kentucky the world will not swallow the hook as greedily as he has, nor hug a platform so full of dead men's bones.

Sir, I am sick, my very soul is sick with this struggle through which we have been passing. I thought we had reached the quiet haven of repose. The country needs it, the world needs it; and just as we get to the very goal in comes this firebrand of distraction to say that they are to wrest, and to wrest by force of arms, the governments that we have given these States, and it is done because we have provided that black men may vote.

Mr. President, on earth or in heaven I would rather be found by the side of the blackest man in the country than with Forrest. How will stand the account of the loyal black man that has been led by the uncertain glimpses of his vision to follow that flag which had heretofore only been a symbol of oppression to him, and followed it faithfully to the end; how will his account stand in the day of judgment with the God that loves liberty and of whom liberty was born, beside the man who did all in his power to tear down the fairest fabric that liberty ever reared? and such is Forrest; such is Wade Hampton; such is all the Democratic party in the southern States. There are not enough men in the Democratic party in the southern States who were not rebels to count as "scattering;" and therefore I shall not hereafter in what I have to say of them draw any distinction.

I want this resolution introduced by the honorable Senator from Vermont to guard against

the very catastrophe that the honorable Senator from Kentucky threatens us with. Sir, is Congress to inquire, and who is to keep register whether the votes cast for General Grant are cast by colored men or white men? Who is going to see in the books when the ballot is deposited, which class of man it was who deposited it? Are the honorable Senators and his confreres going to have censors upon the box? Are they going to stamp the ballot of the white man and not stamp the ballot of the black man? If not, what does the honorable Senator mean when he defiantly tells us that no matter what Congress may do, the vote that the white man casts will be the vote that is counted. Sir, I repudiate all such nonsense as that, as it appears to me to be.

I have nothing against white men, sir. My complexion is not far different from that of the honorable Senator from Kentucky; but I never was educated to think that a difference in the hue of the skin made any particular difference in manhood. Hannibal, whose history has been the study of modern generals, was blacker than any negro in Kentucky. He led his armies to victory; and modern generalship is copied after his measures. I suppose the honorable Senator, from his prejudice on that score, would hardly accept the boon of liberty itself if it was won by a skin darker than his

own.

But, sir, the honorable Senator has spoken very confidently of what the Democracy are going to do. I want to mention to the honorable Senator one or two things which the Republicans have done that will stay done. We have given the loyal men of the southern States the ballot. Now, take it away, if you can, and show us the process by which you will do it. Let us see what you will do it with. They have availed themselves of that ballot. They have deposited it; they have put on the garment of citizenship, and I challenge the Democracy to touch one thread of that garment. It is stamped, it is sealed with the insignia of freedom, and I charge you lay not your hands upon it. Sir, it is the decree of a mighty people as irrevocable as the decree of God, and the honorable Senator may satisfy himself on that point. And the honorable Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. BUCKALEW] last night seemed to be waiting for the voice of the people. Sir, you have had it twice; and the same voice that emanated from heaven is echoed back by man, Vox populi vox Dei. Touch not that seal; it is the freeman's power. The ballot is his shield. He has got it. I defy you to take it from him. Attempt that and bloodier scenes will be reenacted upon the already fresh bloody fields. Sir, men fight for freedom. They will not lay it down. They have fought for freedom upon the battle-field; they won their quit-claim to liberty; they have got it; and let not the Democratic party dream of taking it away. And yet, sir, the honorable Senator, or those who act with him, find no sort of awakening, enlivening sentiment from this great fact, but the contrary.

Sir, there has not been a transaction on earth since the crucifixion that thrilled the world with such ecstatic joy as when the last shackle of the slave was broken and fell at his feet. Music never reached its perfection until they sang the song of universal freedom; and if I was at all accustomed to deal in fancy I could fancy now that I hear the angel chorus catching up the sound "Peace on earth and good will to man; the last slave is free; liberty is triumphant." But over this my Democratic friends feel no jubilee. It is a source of mourning to them. Weep on, weep on; the seal is set; the Democratic party will never again have power in this nation until it changes its principles, until it ceases to be oppressive and learns to glory in freedom.

I am strengthened in this conviction by the proceedings of the last Democratic convention. Whoever saw two such elements of weakness combined? If there was any folly in the Republican party, the wisdom of God has come in. Who could have conceived that

two such men would have been born of that Democratic convention. Blair, (to begin with the last and most unimportant first,) who, as restless as the spirit that fomented rebellion in heaven, who acknowledges no discipline to man or law, "a law unto himself;" who throws on defiantly to such patriots as Hampton and Forrest that the only way to put these States into their original status is for the President to take the helm and drive this Senate out. No wonder that it woke an echo in Wade Hampton's bosom and in Forrest's and in Hammond's; it was the old signal for rebellion again. They were going to get a Blair to lead them in that rebellion. The world knows that the health of the gentleman they have nominated for President is very precarious, and he refused, as many times as Cæsar did the crown, to take it on account of his health. They have put forward this ticket in point of physical strength like the hyena, the strength in the hind legs to endure disease, its weak man ahead to be shoved off as Lincoln was, or in some other way, and then they will have got not only old rebels, but a new one with the whole machinery of government. It was well planned, and no wonder it awoke echoes of ecstacy in Forrest's and Hampton's bosom when they heard the name of Blair and his letter; and that is the platform and that the candidate that my friend from Kentucky loves so well.

Sir, who is nominated for President? A man that I have known all my life; and a gentlemanly man he is undoubtedly, but no unsounder man, politically, walks than he. I listened last night to a little running debate between my colleague and my honored friend from Pennsylvania, in which the latter bore testimony to the patriotism and fidelity of the then Governor of New York. I took occasion to reread last night the speech made by that distinguished gentleman on the 4th of July, 1863, just ten days before the bloodiest riot in the world. It was a terrible day, that 4th of July, for the rebels; there came up a wail of woe from the rebels at Vicksburg and at Gettysburg.

Mr. STEWART. Will my colleague allow me to read a sentence of that speech?

"Remember this, that the bloody and treasonable and revolutionary doctrine of publie necessity can be proclaimed by a mob as well as by a government."

Mr. NYE. Yes; I remember that sentence well. That was to this country a most important day. The cause for which my distinguished friend from Kentucky is laboring so hard today was in peril then. It was suffering from the blows of cool, quiet Grant, who smoked his cigar amid the confusion of the battle, as my friend from Kentucky says, which may be so. Abiding in that faith which patriotism always bears within itself in the result, he looked coolly, perhaps, upon the exciting moment, knowing that substantially peace was to follow. On that day thirty and five thousand Democrats laid down their arms within the intrenchments of Vicksburg. On that same day our noble soldiers gained a victory which paralyzed rebellion and gave freedom new life upon the bloody fields of Gettysburg. There was a great loss to the Democratic party; but true to their instincts, as soon as paroled from Vicksburg they took up their arms and stole to other fields.

On that day, after a draft had been ordered by the President of the United States to fill up the ranks, the head of this ticket was addressing a Democratic meeting in a hall in the city of New York, and he said that the law of necessity was never to be invoked by a nation, and said, not in the precise words, and they are here, that the mob could invoke the law of necessity as well as a nation. Sir, quick as the lightening's flash and as electric in its influence the mob did arise, caught up the idea that had been slumbering, touched the torch which ingulfed a city in blood, and fatal were the consequences of that riot. I think eleven thousand-I am not quite certain as to the number-troops had to be taken from the