of the democratic party and hence were hearty prosecutors of democratic republicans.

On this point of debate the following is collated from the speech of the New York member, March 7th, 1860.

DEMOCRACY.

As a democrat I believe slavery to be a crime against the laws of God and nature. From the deluge of democratic speeches I learn that the Alpha and Omega of your religion and democracy are the divinity and benefits of human servitude. In 1854 the invader commenced sapping and mining, seized the outworks, toppled the embattlements to the ground, stormed the strong fortress and obtained possession. Could it be expected that we should sit quietly by and see the acts of every democratic administration rebuked; could we hold political fellowship with those who were willing to crucify the memory of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe? Am I to be reproached as an apostle from democracy? Sir, I would rather desert a political organization than to turn traitor to my own conscience and be guilty of moral treason to my own judgment. The patent of my democracy is in the records of democratic administration, and by it I stand or fall. In 1849 the democratic party in the State of New York became a unit on substantially the basis of Mr. Bronson's letter. The slave power soon forced them from it and from the resolutions of the united democracy in that state the republicans have compiled their political catechism. I only desire the democracy to see to what indignities they must be subjected if they manifest unwillingness to bow down and worship this black Juggernaut of slavery.

SPLENDID RETORTS.

Mr. Davidson, of Louisiana, desired to present to the consideration of this house one of John Brown's pikes. Let' me urge him to extend his cabinet of curiosities and add one of the chains and branding irons of his coffee gang, tied with the lash with which the backs of women and children are scourged, and then, to watch them, a sleek, wellfed bloodhound with quick scent trained to snuff in the air the track of the fleeing fugitive,-let him present these as the symbols, one of Brown's folly, and the other of his own high type of civilization.

You taunt us with cowardice. Go home and ask the remnant of the gallant Palmetto regiment, who received the shock of battle on the plains of Mexico, where stood the

New York volunteers, who, with them side by side, were in the thickest of the fight at Cherubusco, Cerro Gordo and Chepultepec, and when your gallant Butler fell at the head of the regiments of my state and yours, northern warriors joined yours to carry him from the field and regret that one so brave had fallen. Ask your regiment what you think of northern bravery. Gentlemen tell us in certain contingencies they will dissolve the Union. No, sirs. you will long have to march to the music of the Union, that music which is uprising from the fields where labor is repaid, and the workshops where industry is rewarded, from the machinery which, through the instrumentality of steam, is doing the bidding of man, and from the gigantic steamers that plough our rivers and lakes.

While Mr. Van Wyck met every argument, parried every thrust, unmasked every deception and moved upon every breastwork, his bold aggressiveness became so unbearable to the masters of the lash that Davis, of Mississippi (not Jefferson), exclaimed, "I pronounce the gentlemen a liar and scoundrel."

MR. DAVIS: Will you go outside the District of Columbia and test the question of personal courage with any southern man?

MR. VAN WYCK: I travel anywhere and without fear of anyone. For the first eight weeks of this session you stood upon this floor continually libeling the North and the people of the free states, charging them with treason and all manner of crime and now you are thrown into great rage when I tell you a few facts.

This speech, so very elaborate and exhaustive, established the fact that the New Yorker could neither be worsted in the argument nor bullied into silence, and gave him a strong hold upon a constituency who echoed his utterance, "You cannot, you dare not resist. We threaten not with bayonet, revolver or bowie knife, but with the silent ballot, 'which executes a freeman's will as lightning does the will of God.'"

Congress closed this session June 28th, 1860, and commenced again December 3d, 1860. During the interval the republicans had elected Mr. Lincoln president, and the disunionists were preparing for secession. Again Mr. Van Wyck appears upon the stage, and, clad in the armor of the fathers, challenges the con

stituency of the cohorts of revolution. He charges upon them that since 1842 three fourths of the territory acquired had been surrendered to slavery and their "peculiar institution" increased in numbers and power, while they posed as the friends of the Union, "par excellence," and charged all the consequences of meditated disunion upon the anti-slavery element of the country. "The very men who then could not find words sufficiently strong to anathematize those they called traitors, now seem to be courting a traitor's doom and madly rioting in a traitor's saturnalia."

After this sentence came the "fireworks," and amid a storm of excitement he was called to order. But the lion was aroused, and to annihilate the doctrines of the fathers, "Political incendiaries would trample upon the flag and burn the temple of freedom." After impaling the leaders upon their own arguments, now abandoned, they heard the fearful truth. "You have been shorn of your strength by your own Delilah, and now in your blindness would wrap your arms around the pillars of the republic and perish in its ruin." The speech was a master effort, a sunburst in a troubled sky. History was invoked, government records displayed and the cicatrix of burning, blasting denunciation applied to the wound.

FIRST SESSION THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS.

REPUBLICAN APPEAL.

The first session of the 37th congress convened July 4th, 1861, and lasted for one month. Mr. Van Wyck was made chairman of the committee on revolutionary claims, and was conspicuous in urging the adoption of free letter postage for the soldiers, and even so early in the war, an investigation of army contracts, closing with the following appeal: "I appeal to my republican friends, let us be true to our former profession and see to it that plunder and peculation shall not follow on the track of our army. Let us watch the movements of the army contractors and take care that they shall not feast and fatten upon the freewill offering of the Republic, desiring that men who are so base

as to seek at this time to enrich themselves, should be held up to the scorn of the world, never to be forgiven by the American people. Those who are pirating upon our waters under a traitor's commission of cupidity against the generous affections and benevolence of a self sacrificing nation." This appeal was based upon evidence that the army contractors and plunderers were keeping pace with the troops of the Union, and had it been safe, would have preceded them, stealing the forage and demanding its value in gold.

The second session found the New York member chairman of a committee, in hot pursuit of army contractors, their methods and frauds, and having his analytic skill supplemented by practical knowledge in the field, being colonel of a New York regiment, "the way of the transgressor was hard."

As the adornment of the base and crowning of the summit should be germane to the object and solidity of the shaft, so did his speech on monumental frauds instruct, convince and please as well in exordium and argument as in its peroration.

CHALLENGE OFFERED.

During its delivery a member from Pennsylvania and who had a brother in the quartermaster's department, feeling aggrieved, exclaimed, "I must have an explanation here or elsewhere." Mr. Van Wyck: "I will meet the gentleman here or elsewhere after my hour expires. I will answer him or any other man here or at any other place."

Again in the 40th congress in 1867, he appears fortified with four years' experience in exposing frauds and unmasking official delinquencies and concealment of favorites. The most adroit attacks upon the treasury or the purses of the people were alike discovered and denounced. Of a gift enterprise he said: "It contemplates taking $1,200,000 from the pockets of the people, while the most they propose to donate to the object of charity, the Gettysburg asylum, is $10,000." Another was thus described: "G. W. Thomas now proposes to raise $500,000 of which $150,000 is to be drawn in prizes, and $200,000, principally, is to go into the pocket of Thomas." From this mere glance at his

early record it is very easy to discover his natural and unavoid able place as a Nebraska citizen and senator, where monopolies, trusts and frauds cast their blasting shadows across his path

way.

SENATE.

Hon. C. H. Van Wyck entered the senate of the United States in 1881, as the successor of Senator A. S. Paddock; having to his credit six years' experience as a member of the House of Representatives in Congress; and the advantage of military experience and that insight which resulted from having been chairman of the committee on government contracts and of retrenchment.

To the crying demands of the times he responded as promptly as if directed by the hand of destiny, and devoted his faculties to the congenial but very unpopular work of retrenchment and reform. The few following extracts, from numerous and varied speeches, indicate an aggressive spirit, self abnegation, a will that never yields and a courage that never quails.

TARIFF.

MR. VAN WYCK: We were promised during the last session of congress that we were to have a tariff so simplified that he who ran might read and understand it; but it seems that this same old thing must be continued; we must have a tariff here which requires an expert to explain and a lawyer to fully understand. I understand this theory of the protection of labor; but will the gentleman tell me, when he is protecting a few thousands in converting saw-logs in Michigan or Wisconsin into lumber, how many laboring men in this Nation does he strike and drain a tax of that amount out of their pockets? Do you say that to protect American labor from one to three dollars shall be taken out of the pocket of a man in the West and placed in the pocket of the owners of an industry that needs no protection in this land, an industry which has grown to its full strength, and which so far as the material is concerned must soon pass away? The difficulty here is that every single laborer, as you call him, must combine to protect one another, and against the people, who suffered from the exaction on them; and hence it is you find your glass interests, when suffering, are compelled to come up and push up the cart of the owners of pineries whose interests are not suffering.