before the election endeavored to rekindle the furious hates of a struggle ten years ago well ended by the cry of a solid South.

Gentlemen, this will not do. Ten years of misrule and oppression have brought starvation and sorrow to the freedmen! Wherever Republican rule has obtained, chaos still presides -social order and security are unknown.

Wherever virtue and intelligence have dominated over carpet-bag rule business has revived and peace reigns.

The colored men have been robbed of their earnings by fraudulent savings-banks; they have been stuffed with lying promises; they have been deceived until deception no longer availeth.

The negroes are intelligent beings. Why wonder, then, that they are undeceived? Why wonder that they prefer peace rather than tumult; plenty rather than want; honest Democrats rather than dishonest Republicans; their old friends and masters rather than adventurers, who have proved to them devouring vultures.

Gentlemen, no man in this country detested slavery more than I; no man welcomed the proclamation of emancipation more than I; and therefore do I, for humanity's sake, protest against the attempt to bind the black man with chains more galling than those which, by God's providence, were snapped asunder in war.

The colored men understand all this; they are turning away with a sense of loathsomeness from their deceivers, and when the arm of Federal power is withheld, under the auspices of a benigner rule, they will overthrow the last vestige of carpet-bag rule on this continent.

Gentlemen, dismiss all thought of further prosecuting a conspiracy against the people, forego your plans of insisting that the President of the Senate shall count the vote, or that a decision shall be delayed until after the 4th of March; abandon any project which will result in an interregnum, and meanwhile expose the country to the terrors of revolution and blast with ruin the industries of the land; by one grand sacrifice suffer your ambitions, your plans, your prejudices, your hates, to be lost in a devotion to country which is as much beyond the fealty to party as the religion of Christ excels the creeds of the heathen.

Do not suppose you will profit by the conspiracy. Whether it fails or wins it will be the same to you. You will find all the comfort you are entitled to in the words Addison causes Sempronius to speak when urged to wrong:

Know, villains, when such paltry slaves presume
To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds
They're thrown neglected by, but if it fails
They're sure to die like dogs.

No trifling can be borne. Depart from precedents, trample on the Constitution, you defy the will of forty millions of freemen; you proclaim revolution.

Why, a crime of such tremendous magnitude as that contemplated has not been committed in the world's history. It might be tolerated were it of temporary consequence, but it involves the destruction of all confidence, all hope. If a party can prolong its authority for four years, why not for forty years? Why not for all time?

We are to-day standing face to face with a monster peril which must be met now if ever. The conspirators who threaten with rebellion our laws and liberties are criminals indescribably base; but infinitely more guilty will we be if by indifference, neglect, or cowardice we permit the success of the conspiracy. We shall have no excuse to urge. We have the power; what we need is the inclination to use it. The Constitution of our fathers is all-sufficient; wise precedents all along our history light our pathway.

Public opinion, burning with indignation at the commission of unequaled frauds, is urging us to be firm and constant. If we waver or betray, may Omnipotence crush with the thunderbolts of His wrath the walls of the Capitol, for they are hallowed by memories too sacred to survive such awful sacrilege!

The sovereign prerogative, the exalted duty of vindicating the right of the people to govern themselves, is ours. That prerogative, God helping us, we will assert; that duty we will piously perform. If we fail we will blacken our souls with cowardice, perjury, treason; we will permit and connive at the most unhallowed conspiracy ever planned against liberty and civilization. We will summon from the depths of hell the red demon war, and unchain his furies over this fair land.

But, Mr. Speaker, let us have a clear and accurate sense of what our duty is and resolutely determine to do it. All will then be well. We will cause the centennial year to surpass in glory all other years, for we will secure all through the coming ages a Government based upon the law of equal freedom. Despite the corruptions of our latter years, the reign of vice and profligacy which has poisoned as the blight of death; despite false notions of government, false sense of duty and responsi

bility engendered by war, there is a reserve force of virtue in this land; there is a moral consciousness in the minds of our people which will evoke from chaos a reign of peace, purity, and plenty.

Simeon B. Chittenden [N. Y.] replied to his colleague.

WHO ARE THE CONSPIRATORS

SIMEON B. CHITTENDEN, M.C.

Two hundred and one of the two hundred and ninety-two members of this body have studied law. I do not doubt that the legal members of this House are entirely competent and equipped to discuss the great constitutional questions which now agitate the country, including the status of the Louisiana returning board and the horrible conspiracy which my colleague, Mr. Willis, this morning so vividly revealed to us on this side of the House.

I have no doubt that the legal members of this body are fully prepared to discuss these questions to the end of the session or the century without coming to any practical conclusions thereon. It is the easiest and most natural thing in the world that lawyers should love to discuss such questions. But I say, Mr. Chairman, that the people of this country at this hour do not enjoy these eternal diatribes. Scourged by war and debt, sunk to the deepest pit of commercial and political demoralization, by reason of a genuine conspiracy, which culminated in the wickedest rebellion in all history, to which my friend did not allude, the people of this country cry to-day for wise and temperate counsels, for patriotic and practical statesmanship to lift them from a horrible pit to a better national life.

I wish to say to my colleague that, if I understand the popular thought and heart of the country, the priceless boon which the people craved in those hours and days of supreme peril, now in my judgment happily passed forever, were voices of genius and patriotism, which, ringing through these halls, should be heard in every hamlet and city in the land, speaking light and peace to the dark currents of party spirit.

Sir, let us not deceive ourselves. The people thank God for the report of the joint committee made the day before yesterday. The mass of the people will confirm that report with a unanimity which has scarcely been matched since the election of Washington to the presidency in 1789. The spirit and con

THE PIRATES UNDER FALSE COLORS-CAN THEY CAPTURE THE SHIP OF STATE?

Cartoon by Thomas Nast, in campaign of 1872

From the collection of the New York Public Library

clusion of that report will, unless I am entirely mistaken in regard to the popular sense, sweep and control the popular judgment of the people of this country as fire driven by the wind sweeps and burns the browned and parched prairies of the West in autumn. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the voice of the people will be listened to. It must be listened to, or our institutions are gone. We have descended as far as we can go. We have to look upward, to act upward, not in the spirit of partisans. I say it without any disrespect-not in the uncharitable spirit my good friend and colleague [Mr. Willis] manifested this morning, in broadly intimating that the party of this side of the House and all who believe as I do in the election of Hayes and Wheeler are conspirators. Let us have done with all such stuff. Let all hard words be dropped. We have had partisanship enough. The people of the country will not be misled by such nonsense. They think and act, and will expect and compel us to act, on principles of eternal justice in regard to this matter, now soon to be settled.

Corrupt elections are no new thing under the sun. From the time of the consular republic of Rome to the last election in New Orleans it has been so. Everybody knows that corrupt elections are as old as the history of republics. Why, then, all this howling about corrupt elections at the South? Was there no such thing ever heard of before? My colleague knows perfectly well that never on the face of the earth, since the name of republic was heard, have there been more shamefully corrupt elections than he and I have both submitted to in the State and city of New York. Every attempt to make the American people or the world believe that there was anything exceptional in the corruptions which have happened in this last presidential election, when made by an intelligent man, is insincere and untruthful, and designed to mislead.

I believe that the latest elections in at least three of the Southern States were an absolute farce. I do not think there is any other word to express it. I believe that must be the final conclusion of every fair-minded man. I believe that the leaders of both parties did all they could to carry their tickets, and the result was what I have stated, and according to the forms of law Hayes and Wheeler have been elected President and VicePresident of the United States. And I claim and sincerely believe that all the advantages of fair consideration are in favor of their inauguration; the cheating on both sides having been so absolutely universal that it is impossible for anybody to determine where the real truth lies. I venture to say that there is