break the Union, and constantly threatening | faithfully represented the opinions of his secession where the full rights of slavery were not acknowledged.

Thus the defense and aggrandizement of slavery and the hatred of abolitionism became not only the central idea of the Democratic party, but its master passion; a passion intensified and inflamed by twenty-five years of fierce political contest, which had not only driven from its ranks all those who preferred freedom to slavery, but had absorbed all the extreme pro-slavery elements of the fallen Whig party. Over against this was arrayed the Republican party, asserting the broad doctrines of nationality and loyalty, insisting that no State had a right to secede, that secession was treason, and demanding that the institution of slavery should be restricted to the limits of the States where it already existed. But here and there many bolder and more radical thinkers declared, with Wendell Phillips, that there never could be union and peace, freedom and prosperity, until we were willing to see John Hancock under a black skin.

That we may see more clearly the opinions which were to be settled by war I will read two passages from the Congressional Globe, not for the purpose of making a personal point against any man, but simply to show where honest men stood when that contest was approaching its crisis. I read from a speech made on the 19th day of December, 1859, by the distinguished gentleman from Mississippi, [Mr. SINGLATON,] then and now a member of this House :

The South will never submit to that state of

State. Not long before the date of this speech, it will be remembered that two distinguished members of the Republican party had uttered their opinions on this question, Mr. Lincoln had said that it was impossible for a country to remain partly slave and partly free. And Mr. Seward had said that there was an irrepressible conflict between the systems of free and slave labor, which could never cease until one or the other was wholly overthrown. The Republican party, however, disclaimed all right or purpose to interfere with slavery in the States; yet they expressed the hope that the time would come when there should be no slave under our flag, In response to that particular opinion, the distinguished gentleman from Mississippi, [Mr. LAMAR,] then a member of this House, on the 23d day of December, 1859, said this;

*

I was upon the. floor of the Senate when your great leader, William H. Seward, anslavery sentiment and action. nounsod that startling programme of antiAnd, sir, in his exultation he exclaimed-for I heard him myself--that he hoped to see the day when there would not be the foot-print of a single slave upon this continent. And when he uttered this atrocious sentiment, his form seemed to dilate, his pale, thin face, furrowed kindled with malignant triumph, and his eye by the lines of thought and evil passions, glowed and glared upon Southern Senators as though the fires of hell were burning in his heart.

I have read this passage to mark the height to which the antagonism had risen in 1859. And this passage enables us to measure the progress he has since made.

I mark it here as one of the notable signs of the time, that the gulf which intervenes between the position then occupied by the gentleman from Mississippi and the position he occupies to-day is so deep, so vast, that it indicates a progress worthy of all praise. I congratulate him and the country that, in so short a time, so great a change has been possible.

things. It matters not what evils come upon us; it matters not how deep we have to wade through blood; we are bound to keep our slaves in their present position. And let me ask you, what good would you bring to the slaves by this process of abolition? You may possibly have the object in view of benefiting the slave or benefiting the white race or both; but suppose you could carry out your plans and condne us to our present area, and suppose that the institution of slavery should abolish Now I ask the gentleman if he is quite itself, what would you have done? You know it is impossible for us to live on terms of sure, as a matter of fact, that the Democratic equality with them. It is not to be supposed for party, its Southern as well as its Northern moment that we can do so. The result would wing, have followed his own illustrious and be a war between the races, which would perhaps involve the utter annihilation of one or worthy example in the vast progress he has the other; and thus you see that instead of made since 1859 ? He assures us that the benefiting either you would have brought dis-transformation has been so complete that aster upon both. But I tell you here, to-day, that the institu- the nation can safely trust all the most pretion of slavery must be sustained. The Southcious fruits of the war in the hands of that has made up its mind to keep the black race If that in bondage. If we are not permitted to do party who stood with him in 1859. this inside of the Unton, I tell you that it will be true, I rejoice at it with all my heart; but be done outside of it. Yes, sir, and we will the gentleman must pardon me if I ask him expand this institution; we do not intend to be confined within our present limits; and to assist my wavering faith by some evidence, there are not men enough in all your borders some consoling proofs. When did the great to coerce three million armed men in the transformation take place? Certainly not South, and prevent their going into the sur- within two years after the delivery of the rounding Territories. speech I have quoted; for two years from that time the contest had risen much higher; it had risen to the point of open, terrible, and Did the change come durdetermined war. ing the war? O, no; for in the four terrible years ending in 1865, every resource of

In the course of that debate, the same gentleman said :

I am one of those who have said, and here repeat it, if the black Republican party elect a President I am for dissolving the Union.

I have no doubt the gentleman fairly and

courage and power that the Southern States could muster was employed not only to save lavery but to destroy the Union. So the transformation had not occurred in 1865. When did it occur? Aid our anxious inquiry, for the nation ought to be sure that the great change has occurred before it can safely trust its destinies to the Democratic party. Did it occur in the first epoch of reconstruction-the two years immediately following the war? During the period the attempt was made to restore ge ernments in the South on the basis of the white vote. Military control was held generally; but the white population of the Southern States were invited to elect their own Legislatures and establish provisional governments.

In the laws, covering a period of two and a half years, 1865, 1866, and a portion of 1867, enacted by those Legislatures, we ought to find proof of the transformation if it had then occurred. What do we find? What we should naturally expect: that a people, ac customed to the domination of slavery, roenacted in almost all of the Southern States, and notably in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana, laws limiting and restricting the liberty of the colored man; vagrant laws and peonage laws, whereby negroes were sold at auction for the payment of a paltry tax or fine, and held in a slavery as real as the slavery of other days. I believe that this was true of nearly all of the Southern States; so that the experiment of allowing the white population of the South to adjust that very question proved a frightful failure; and then it was that the National Congress intervened. They proposed an act of reconstruction, an act which became a law on the 2d of March, 1867.

And what was that act? Gentlemen of

The only revenge

fiscation after the war.
which the conquering nation gratified was
this: In saying to the South "You may como
back to your full place in the Union when
you do these things: join with the other
States in putting into the Constitution a pro-
vision that the national debt shall never be
repudiated; that your rebel war debt shall
never be paid, and that all men, without re-
gard to race or color, shall stand equal be-
fore the law; not in suffrage, but in civil
rights; that these great guarantees of liberty
and public faith shall be lifted above the
reach of political parties, above the legisla-
tion of States, above the legislation of Con-
gress, and shall be set in the serene firma-
ment of the Constitution, to shine as lights
forever and forever. And under that equal
sky, under the light of that equal sun, all
men, of whatever race or color, shall stand
equal before the law."'

That was the plan of reconstruction offered to those who had been in rebellion, offered by a generous and brave nation; and I challenge the world to show an act of equal generosity to a conquered people. What answer did it meet? By the advice of Andrew Johnson, a bad adviser, backed by the advice of the Northern Democracy, a still worse adviser, ten of the eleven States lately in rebel. lion contemptuously rejected the plan of reconstruction embraced in the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution. They would have none of it; they had been invited by their Northern allies to stand out, and were told that when the Democracy came into power they should be permitted to come back to their places without guarantees or

conditions.

This brings us to 1868. Had the transformation occurred then? For remember, gentlemen, I am searching for the date of the great transformation similar to that

On

which has taken place in the gentleman from Mississippi. We do not find it in 1868. on the contrary, in that year, we find Frank P. Blair, of Missouri, writing those words, which a few days after they were written gave him the nomination for the Vice-Presidency on the Democratic ticket

and the Constitution; and that is for the PresThere is but one way to restore government ident elect to declare all these acta

And the constitutional amendment with them-

the South, you are too deeply schooled in philosophy to take any umbrage at what I sball now say, for I am dealing only with history. You must know, and certainly do know, that the great body of the nation which had carried the war to triumph and success knew that the eleven States that had opposed the Union had plunged their people into crime; a crime set down in the law-a law signed by President Washington--at the very top of the catalogue of crimes: the crime of treason and all that follows it. You certainly know that, under that law, every man who voluntarily took up arms against the Union could have been tried, convicted, and hanged as a traitor to his country. But I call your attention to the fact that the conquering nation said, in this great work of reconstruction, "We will do Because he wrote that letter he was nomnothing for revenge, everything for perma-inated for Vice-President by the Democratic nent peace;" and you know there never was party. Therefore, as late as July, 1868, the a trial for treason in this country during the transformation had not occurred. whole of the struggle nor after it; no man ESA executed for treason; no man was tried. There was no expatriation, no exile, no cou

to declare all these acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the south, and disperse the carpet-bag State govern ments and allow the white people to reorganize their own governments and elect Senators and Representatives.

Had it occurred in 1872? In 1871 and 1872 all the amendments of the Constitution had been adopted, against the stubborn re

1. They are first to make a census and enroll. ment of all the white men in the State. 2. To incorporate into the interior military organizationaal the whites who will join with them.

istance of the Northern and Southern De- ! The purposes of these clubs or White Line nocracy. I call you to witness that, with companies are these, as they are openly avow. ed or secretly cherished: he exception of three or four Democratic Representatives who voted for the abolition of slavery, the three great amendments, the hirteenth, the fourteenth, and the fifteenth, net the determined and united opposition of be Democracy of this country. Bash of the mendments, now so praised by the gentle uan, was adopted against the whole weight of your resistance. And two years after the adoption of the last amendment, in many of rour State platformas, they were declared to be null and void.

In "1871 and 1872 occurred throughout the South those dreadful scenos ensoted by the Kuklux organizations, of which I will say only this, that a man facile princeps among the Democrats of the slave-holding States, Roverdy Johnson, who was sent down | to defend those who were ladicted for their crimes, held ap his hands in horror at the shocking barbarities that had boon perpetrated by his clients upen negre sitizens. for to the evidence of that eminent mau 82 & sudoient proof of the obaracter of that great conspiracy against the freedom of the colored race. So the transformaation had not come in the days of Kuklux of 1871 and 1872.

I re38

3. To set aside, by whatever means may be ace, and to nullify in practice the enabling necessary, the election of colored men to of and enforcement acts of Congress, granting and enforcing the right of all citizens, with out distinction of color, to hold offices, if properly elected to them.

4. To allow none but white men to be elected

to office or to hold offles.

And how was it about the same time, and even later, in other States ? Here is a report upon Louisians, the report from which the gentleman quoted, a report that exhibits the same condition of affairs, signed by the gontleman who sits in front of me, [Mr. Hos. ] Although by a minority of the committee, it is a report of great power and of indubitable truth. I quote from page 18:

The White League is an organization which exists in New Orleans, and contains at least members, armed, drilled, and officered as a from twenty-five hundred to three thousand military organization. Organizations bearing the same name extend throughout many parts

of the State.

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語

The White Leagus of New Orleans itself was and is a constant menace to the Republicans of the whole State.

On the 14th of deptember, 1874, it arose upon and attacked the police of the city, the pretext of the attack being the seizure of arIAS Had it come in 1873 and the beginning of which it had imported from the North; and 1874? Had it come in the State of Mississippi having defeated them with considerable Had it come in one quarter of the States lately slaughter, it took possession of the State. house, overthrew the State government, and in rebelliou? Here is a report from an honor-installed a new governor in office, and kept able committee of this House, signed by two him in power until the United States intergentlemen who are still members, Mr. Congan fored. This rising was planned beforehand. and Mr. HoRLBUT--3 report made as late as December, 1874, in which there is disclosed, by innumerable witnesses, the proof that the White Line organization, an armed military ›rganization formed within the Demooratio party, had leagued themselves together to prevent the enjoyment of suffrage and squal ights by the colored men of the South. Without detaining the House to read there now, I will quote two or three paragraphs rom that report, dated December 14, 1874, and printed House Document No. 265.

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THE "WHITE LINE."

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器

We cannot doubt that the effect of all thess

things was to prevents fall, free, and fair election, and to intimidate the colored voters and the white Republicans.

Se the transformation had not occurred in

Angust, 1874. I come down now to 1875, to the late autumn of that year, and ask if the not detain the House by reading the tostitransformation had then occurred. I will mony of the cloud of witnesses which gathers around me, but will print a few specimens This interior oganization has not yet as. of the proof, most of them relating to the umed definitely in the State of Mississippi such precise form and so distinct an existence recent State election in Mississippi. While is in the State of Louisiana, but is unques.I say, to the honor of the gentleman from ionably an extension into Mississippi of the 'White League" organization, whose a quarters are in New Orleans. In Warren county it is sometimes called the "White Line," and by that name is familiarly spoken of by the leading papers of Vicksburg, as well as by some of the prominent witnesses before this committee. It is also known as "people's clubs,' but in all instances the formation of the clubs or civil organization is accompanied by establishing within the clubs themselves à military organization, officered, equipped, and Thus the clubs and the tax-payers' league are open associations, apparently directed to ward objects in which all citizens might law fully unite, but controlled from within by the military and partisan organizations whose purposes are special and lawful.

armed.

Mississippi, that in his own State he spoke Against the organization of the White Line, it is unquestionably true that he was not supported by a like action on the part of the great mass of his political associates. With the permission of the House I will quote from a number of papers in his State, which say, with the utmost boldness, that though Col. LAMAR spoke against the White Line, and though the State convention ignored it, yet, back of the convention and back of the gen tleman himself, the White Line was formed and carried the election, and intends in the same way to carry the next.

[From the Meridian Mercury.] Our correspondent at Running Water Mills makes his points well. His positions cannot successfully be contradicted. The miserable bunglers who have put the negro in the Constitution have certainly written themselves down asses all. When we accept "results of the war, we do not accept the notion of statesmen, but the blunders of unreasoning malice and stupidity, and of course we continue to accept it only se long as we are COIN

Already do we see signs in our State of the zood effects of the color line. Prior to its organization there was no harmony or unity of action among the whites. The negroes had perfected their rase in organizations and were able to control the politics of the State. The whites, after having attempted every scheme to secure an intelligent government and a co-operation of the negroes in this be-pelled to. half, wisely gave it up and determined to organize themselves as a race and meet the issue that had presented itself for ten years. Now we recognize the fact that the State is most thoroughly aroused, more harmonious in its actions, and more determined to succeed in the coming election than it has been since the days of secession.

[From the Jackson Clarion.]

Appeal after appeal has been made in vain to the colored people. No more appeals will be made to them.

[From the Alabama Examiner. than a political campaign; it is the reballion, The present contest is rather a revolution If you see fit to apply that term.

[From the Forest Register.]

In this connection we will state that the white men who ally themselves with negroes in this conflict need not expect any better fate than they; fact is, they will be the first to suf fer, if the Caucasian can and them at all when trouble comes.

The county executive committee of the Democrats and conservatives of Hinda county Speaking of the State Democratic platform which, on motion, it was ordered that each held & meeting at Raymond the other day, st of August 9, 1875, the Columbus Index says: alub in the county appoint a special committee whose business ft shall be to attend any We stand on the color line, because it is tacitly indorsed by the platform, and because and every Radical meeting held in its vleinwe believe it to be the only means of redeem-ity, and that each of said committees shall reIng this and other counties from negro rule.

A very general system of coercion was adopted throughout the South by Democratic clubs and associations agreeing not to employ negroes who voted the Republican ticket, not to lease them lands, nor to furnish them with or allow them to obtain for themselves any means of subsistence.

The white people must be welded into one compact organization. All differences of opinion, all personal aspirations, must be settled within our own organization, and from its decision there must be no appeal. Otherwise sach recurring election produces its disor-munication from Buena Vista, Mississippi :

fantry, at Meridian, en the 22d of November, 1875, in which he said:

We have surrendered none of our convictions and still claims the right of vindication. In looking back at our past actions and motives, and the wrongs we have suffered and are still suffering, we confess that we have no regrets for the choice we made between the "higher-law" license of majorities in the Union and the sacred security of self-government in the States, between the Federal and Confederate governments. We are not comas citizens or soldiers, and feel that truch, reason, and religion exculpate us from wrongdoing. We know we were right, and though crushed to earth we should ever remember, and teach our children to remember, our cause was just! We are still proud of the cause and glory in the fight we made.

C. A. M. PULLIMAN, Secretary Buena Vista Dem. Con. Club. "Fred Crow, Frank Williams, Dary Holli. man, John Dose, Wade Pulliam, Calvin Glad. ney, Joe Moore, Henry Johnson, Andersonscious of a solitary dereliction of duty, either Williams, Ed. Bramlett, John Pulliam, Ben Valliant, Gay Brand, Wash Chandler, Jake Walker, Henry Woodard, Lawson Pulliam, W. Huddlestone, Martin Pulliam, Ed. Kyle, Calvin Gray, John Buchanan, Dan. Punds, Albert Conor, Ed. Nathan, Jim Fulliam,Simon Baskin, Bill Pulliam, George Gates, J. Feath erstone, Shadi Love, Hilliard Fields.

5. That every other club in the county is requested to take like action.

That our papers are requested to publish these resolutions and the names of persous sent to them by the executive committee. 7. That colored men are invited to join this club.

8. That this club meet the ûrst Saturday in

of Mississippi is to be credited, the late elec If the testimony of the Democratic prese tion in the State of Mississippi was taiated [From the Okolona (Mississippi) States, Ne-with fraud and managed by intimidation The Radical party of Mississippi contend that intimidation won the White Line victory. It is not the first time, neither will it be the last time in which intimidation has been sucocssfully used. The white men have been in timidated in times past, and we wonder which has the best of the bargain. We are so situ ated that we are obliged to fight the devil with fire. Let the white men not be afraid to intimidate evil-doers. Intimidation is legitimate, perfectly legitimate.

Ex-Governor Benjamin G. Humphries, of Mississippi, made a speech at a reunion of the Thirteenth Mississippi Confederate In