grows or water runs. The interest on the money wrongfully squandered in that one bill, would execute it twice over perpetually. The cost of this needless extra session, brought about as a partisan contrivance, would execute the election law for a great while. A better way to save the cost, than to repeal the law, is to obey it. Let White Leagues and rifle clubs disband; let your night-riders dismount; let your tissue ballot-box stuffers desist; let repeaters, false-counters, and ruffians no longer be employed to carry elections, and then the cost of executing the law will disappear from the public ledger.

Again, we are told that forty-five million people are in danger from an army nominally of twenty-five thousand men scattered over a continent, most of them beyond the frontiers of civilized abode. Military power has become an affrighting specter. Soldiers at the polls, are displeasing to a political party. What party? That party whose Administration ordered soldiers, who obeyed, to shoot down and kill unoffending citizens here in the streets of Washington on election day; that party which has arrested and dispersed Legislatures at the point of the bayonet; that party which has employed troops to carry elections to decide that a State should be slave and should not be free; that party which has corraled courts of justice with national bayonets, and hunted panting fugitive slaves, in peaceful communities, with artillery and dragoons; that party which would have to-day no majority in either House of Congress except for elections dominated and decided by violence and fraud; that party under whose sway, in several States, not only the right to vote, but the right to be, is now trampled under foot.

Such is the source of an insulting summons to the Executive to become particeps criminis in prostrating wholesome laws, and this is the condition on which the money of the people, paid by the people, shall be permitted to be used for the purposes for which the people paid it.

Has the present national Administration been officiously robust in checking the encroachments and turbulence of democrats, either by the use of troops or otherwise? I ask this question because the next election is to occur during the term of the present Administration.

What is the need of revolutionary measures now? What is all this uproar and commotion, this daring venture of partisan experiment, for? Why not make your issue against these laws, and carry your issue to the people? If you can elect a President and a Congress of your thinking, you will have it all your own way.

Why now should there be an attempt to block the wheels of government on the eve of an election at which this whole question is triable before the principals and masters of us all? The answer is inevitable. But one truthful explanation can be made of this daring enterprise. It is a political, a partisan manoeuvre. It is a strike for party advantage. With a fair election and an honest count, the democratic party cannot carry the country. These laws, if executed, insure some approach to a fair election. Therefore they stand in the way, and therefore they are to be broken down.

I reflect upon no man's motives, but I believe that the sentiment which finds expression in the transaction now proceeding in the two Houses of Congress, has its origin in the idea I have stated. I believe that the managers and charioteers of the democratic party think that with a fair election and a fair count they cannot carry the State of New York. They know that with free course, such as existed in 1868, to the ballot-box and count, no matter what majority may be given in that State where the green grass grows, the great cities will overbalance and swamp it. They know that with the ability to give eighty, ninety, one hundred thousand majority in the county of New York and the county of Kings, half of it fraudulently added, it is idle for the three million people living above the Highlands of the Hudson to vote. This is a struggle for power. It is a fight for empire. It is a contrivance to clutch the National Government. That we believe; that I believe.

The nation has tasted, and drank to the dregs, the sway of the democratic party, organized and dominated by the same influences which dominate it again and still. You want to restore that dominion. We mean to resist you at every step and by every lawful means that opportunity places in our hands. We believe that it is good for the country, good for every man North and South who loves the country now, that the Government should remain in the hands of those who were never against it. We believe that it is not wise or safe to give over our nationality to the dominion of the forces which formerly and now again rule the democratic party. We do not mean to connive at further conquests, and we tell you that if you gain further political power, you must gain it by fair means, and not by foul. We believe that these laws are wholesome. We believe that they are necessary barriers against wrongs, necessary defenses for rights; and so believing, we will keep and defend them even to the uttermost of lawful honest effort.

The other day, it was Tuesday I think, it pleased the honorable Senator from Illinois [Mr. DAVIS] to deliver to the Senate an address, I had rather said an opinion, able and carefully prepared. That honorable Senator knows well the regard not only, but the sincere respect in which I hold him, and he will not misunderstand the freedom with which I shall refer to some of his utterances.

Whatever else his sayings fail to prove, they did I think, prove their author, after Mrs. Winslow, the most copious and inexhaustible fountain of soothing sirup. The honorable Senator seemed like one slumbering in a storm and dreamin of a calm. He said there was no uproar anywhere-one would infer you could hear a pin drop,--from center to circumference. Rights, he said, are secure. I have his language here. If I do not seem to give the substance aright I will stop and read it. Rights secure North and South; peace and tranquility everywhere. The law obeyed and no need of special provisions or anxiety. It was in this strain that the Senator discoursed.

Are rights secure, when fresh-done barbarities show that local government in one portion of our land is no better than despotism tempered by assassination. Rights secure, when such things can be, as stand proved and recorded by committees of the Senate! Rights secure, when the old and the young fly in terror from their homes, and from the graves of their murdered dead! Rights secure, when thousands brave cold, hunger, death, seeking among strangers in a far country a humanity which will remember that

"Before man made them citizens,
Great nature made them men!

Read the memorial signed by Judge Dillon, by the democratic mayor of Saint Louis, by Mr. Henderson, once a member of the Senate, and by other men known to the nation, detailing what has been done in recent weeks on the Southern Mississippi. Read the affidavits accompanying this memorial. Has any one a copy of the memorial here? I have seen the memorial. I have seen the signatures. I hope the honorable Senator from Illinois will read it, and read the affidavits which accompany it. When he does, he will read one of the most sickening recitals of modern times. He will look upon one of the bloodiest and blackest pictures in the book of recent years. Yet the Senator says, all is quiet. "There is not such faith, no not in Israel." Verily "order reigns in Warsaw.

Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Mr. President, the republican party everywhere wants peace and prosperitypeace and prosperity in the South, as much and as sincerely as elsewhere. Disguising the truth, will not bring peace and prosperity. Soft phrases will not bring peace. "Fair words butter no parsnips. We hear a great deal of loose flabby talk about "fanning dying embers," "rekindling smoldering fires," and so on. Whenever the plain truth is spoken, these unctious monitions, with a Peter Parley benevolence, fall copiously upon us. This lullaby and hush has been in my belief a mistake from the beginning. It has misled the South and misled the North. In Andrew Johnson's time a convention was worked up at Philadelphia, and men were brought from the North and South, for ecstasy and gush. A man from Massachusetts and a man from South Carolina locked arms and walked into the convention arm in arm, and sensation and credulity palpitated, and clapped their hands, and thought an universal solvent had been found. Serenades were held at which "Dixie" was played. Later on, anniversaries of battles fought in the war of Independence, were made occasions by men from the North and men from the South for emotional, dramatic, hugging ceremonies. General Sherman I remember, attended one of them, and I remember also, that with the bluntness of a soldier, and the wisdom and hard sense of a statesman, he plainly cautioned all concerned not to be carried away, and not to be fooled. But many have been fooled, and being fooled, have helped to swell the democratic majorities which now display themselves before the public eye.

Of all such effusive demonstrations I have this to say: honest, serious convictions are not ecstatic or emotional. Grave affairs and lasting purposes do not express or vent themselves in honeyed phrase or sickly sentimentality, rhapsody, or profuse professions.

This is as true of political as of religious duties. The Divine Master tells us, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven."

Facts are stubborn things, but the better way to deal with them is to look them squarely in the face.

The republican party and the northern people preach no crusade against the South. I will say nothing of me past beyond a single fact. When the war was

over, no man who fought against his flag was punished even by imprisonment. No estate was confiscated. Every man was left free to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After the Southern States were restored to their relations in the Union, no man was ever disfranchised by national authority-not one. If this statement is denied I invite any Senator to correct me. I repeat it. After the southern State governments were rebuilded, and the States were restored to their relations in the Union, by national authority not one man for one moment was ever denied the right to vote, or hindered in the right. From the time that Mississippi was restored, there never has been an hour when Jefferson Davis might not vote as freely as the honorable Senator in his State of Illinois. The North, burdened with taxes, draped in mourning, dotted over with new-made graves tenanted by her bravest and her best, sought to inflict no penalty upon those who had stricken her with the greatest, and, as she believed, the guiltiest rebellion that ever crimsoned the annals of the human race.

As an example of generosity and magnanimity, the conduct of the nation in victory was the grandest the world has ever seen. The same spirit prevails now. Yet our ears are larumed with the charge that the republicans of the North seek to revive and intensify the wounds and pangs and passions of the war, and that the southern democrats seek to bury them in oblivion of kind forgetfulness.

We can test the truth of these assertions right before our eyes. Let us test them. Twenty-seven States adhered to the Union in the dark hour. Those States send to Congress two hundred and sixty-nine Senators and Representatives. Of these two hundred and sixty-nine Senators and Representatives, fifty-four, and only fifty-four, were soldiers in the armies of the Union. The eleven States which were disloyal send ninety-three Senators and Representatives to Congress. Of these, eighty-five were soldiers in the armies of the rebellion, and at least three more held high civil station in the rebellion, making in all eighty-eight out of ninety-three.

Let me state the same fact, dividing the Houses. There are but four Senators here who fought in the Union Army. They all sit here now; and there are but four. Twenty Senators sit here who fought in the army of rebellion, and three more Senators sit here who held high civil command in the confederacy.

In the House, there are fifty Union soldiers from twenty-seven States, and sixtyfive confederate soldiers from eleven States.

Who, I ask you, Senators, tried by this record, is keeping up party divisions on the issues and hatreds of the war?

The South is solid. Throughout all its borders it has no seat here save two in which a republican sits. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. BRUCE] and the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. KELLOGG] are still spared; and whisper says that an enterprise is afoot to deprive one of these Senators of his seat. The South is emphatically solid. Can you wonder if the North soon becomes solid too? Do you not see that the doings witnessed now in Congress fill the North with alarm, and distrust of the patriotism and good faith of men from the South? Forty-two democrats have seats on this floor; forty-three if you add the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. DAVIS.] He does not belong to the democratic party, although I must say, after reading his speech the other day, that a democrat who asks anything more of him is an insatiate monster. [Laughter.] If we count the Senator from Illinois, there are forty-three democrats in this Chamber. Twenty-three is a clear majority of all, and twenty-three happens to be exactly the number of Senators from the South who were leaders in the late rebellion.

Do you anticipate my object in stating these numbers? For fear you do not, let me explain. Forty-two Senators rule the Senate; twenty-three Senators rule the caucus. A majority rules the Senate; a caucus rules the majority; and the twentythree southern Senators rule the caucus. The same thing, in the same way, gov. erned by the same elements, is true in the House.

This present assault upon the purity and fairness of elections, upon the Constitution, upon the executive department, and upon the rights of the people; not the rights of a king, not on such rights as we heard the distinguished presiding officer, who I am glad now to discover in his seat, dilate upon of a morning some weeks ago; not the divine right of kings but the inborn rights of the people-the present assault upon them, could never have been inaugurated without the action of the twenty-three southern Senators here, and the southern Representatives there, [pointing to the House.]

The people of the North know this and see it. They see the lead and control of the democratic party again where it was before the war, in the hands of the South. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The honorable Senator from Alabama [Mr. MORGAN], educated no doubt by experience in political appearances, and spectacular effects, said the other day that he preferred the democrats from the North should go first in this debate. I admired his sagacity. It was the skill of

an experienced tactician to deploy the northern levies as the sappers and miners; it was very becoming certainly. It was not from cruelty, or to make them food for powder, that he set them in the forefront of the battle; he thought it would appear better for the northern auxiliaries to go first and tunnel the citadel. Good, excellent, as far as it went; but it did not go very far in misleading anybody; putting the tail foremost and the head in the sand, only displayed the species and habits of the bird. [Laughter.]

We heard the other day that "the logic of events" had filled the southern seats here with men banded together by a common history and a common purpose. The Senator who made that sage observation perhaps builded better than he knew. The same logic of events, let me tell democratic Senators, and the communities behind them, is destined to bring from the North more united delegations.

I read in a newspaper that it was proposed the other day in another place, to restore to the Army of the United States men who, educated at the nation's cost and presented with the nation's sword, drew that sword against the nation's life. In the pending bill is a provision for the retirement of officers now in the Army, with advanced rank and exaggerated pay. This may be harmless, it may be kind. One swallow proves not spring, but, along with other things, suspicion will see in it an attempt to coax officers now in the Army to dismount, to empty their saddles, in order that others may get on.

So hue and cry is raised because courts, on motion, for cause shown in open court, have a right to purge juries in certain cases. No man in all the South, under thirty-five years of age, can be affected by this provision, because every such man was too young when the armies of the rebellion were recruited to be subject to the provision complained of. As to the rest, the discretion is a wholesome one. But, even if it were not, let me say in all kindnees to southern Senators, it was not wise to make it a part of this proceeding, and raise this uproar in regard to it.

Even the purpose, in part already executed, to remove the old and faithful officers of the Senate, even Union soldiers, that their places may be snatched by others to overturn an order of the Senate which has existed for a quarter of a century, in order to grasp all the petty places here, seems to me unwise. It is not wise, if you want to disarm suspicion that you mean aggrandizing, gormandizing, unreasonable things.

Viewing all these doings in the light of party advantage advantage to the party to which I belong, I could not deplore them; far from it; but wishing the repose of the country, and the real, lasting, ultimate welfare of the South, and wishing it from the bottom of my heart, I believe they are flagrantly unwise, hurtfully injudicious.

What the South needs is to heal, build, mend, plant, sow. In short, to go to work. Invite labor; cherish it; do not drive it out. Quit proscription, both for opinion's sake, and for color's sake. Reform it altogether. I know there are difficulties in the way. I know there is natural repugnance in the way; but drop passion, drop sentiment which signifies naught, and let the material prosperity and civilization of your land advance. Do not give so much energy, so much restless, sleepless activity, to an attempt so soon to get possession once more, and dominate and rule the country. There is room enough at the national board, and it is not needed, it is not decorous, plainly speaking, that the South should be the Mac Gregor at the table, and that the head of the table should be wherever he sits. For a good many reasons, it is not worth while to insist upon it.

Mr. President, one of Romes' famous legends stands in these words: "Let what each man thinks of the Republic be written on his brow." I have spoken in the spirit of this injunction. Meaning offense to no man, and holding ill-will to no man, because he comes from the South, or because he differs with me in political opinion, I have spoken frankly, but with malice toward none.

This session, and the bill pending, are acts in a partisan and political enterprise. This debate, begun after a caucus had defined and clenched the position of every man in the majority, has not been waged to convince anybody here. It has resounded to fire the democratic heart, to sound a blast to the cohorts of party, to beat the long-roll, and set the squadrons in the field. That is its object, as plainly to be seen as the ultimate object of the attempted overthrow of laws.

Political speeches having been thus ordained, I have discussed political themes, and with ill-will to no portion of the country but good-will toward every portion of it, I have with candor spoken somewhat of my thoughts of the duties and dangers of the hour. [Applause on the floor and in the galleries. ]

The House having under consideration the bill [H. R. 214] to remove the disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of the Amendment of the Constitution of the Uuited States, the pending question being on the motion of Mr. Blaine to reconsider the motion by which the bill was repealed.

MR. BLAINE:

Mr. SPEAKER, I rise to a privileged, the midst of the hot flame of war, when the question. I move to reconsider the vote which has just been declared. I propose to debate that motion, and now give notice that if the motion to reconsider is agreed to it is my intention to offer the amendment which has been read several times. I will not delay the House to have it read again.