I appeal to my friends on the other side to tell me and the country whether they mean to say that this provision which simply makes it the duty of the United States to guarantee to each State a republican form of government and to protect it, upon the application of the governor or the legislature, against domestic violence, confers upon the President, a single officer of the United States, any such power. Are the gentlemen prepared to go before the country on the proposition that the President is the United States?

SEVERAL MEMBERS.-Oh, no!

OMAR D. CONGER [Mich.].-To whom does the application come which is referred to?

MR. CARLISLE.-It comes to the President. That is the constitutional provision making it the duty, not of the President, but of the United States as a government to protect the States against domestic violence on the application of the governor or the legislature. And I repeat the proposition that, under that provision of the Constitution, the President, without legislation on the part of Congress, did not possess one particle of power to use the army or the navy for this purpose. And the same authority which conferred the power on him by legislation can take it away from him. [Applause on the Democratic side.]

HARRY WHITE [Pa.].-Does my friend remember that in Mr. Pierce's administration, on the 12th of June, 1856, the Secretary of the Navy, under the order of the President of the United States, at the request of the mayor, sent a body of marines to the fourth ward in this city while an election for municipal officers was going on, and they shot down unoffending American citizens? That act was sustained by the gentleman's political friends. Does he know that?

MR. CARLISLE.-I do remember at that election the soldiers of the United States or the marines were used in this city, district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and that my friend's political party complained loudly and long of it.

MR. WHITE.-Did not Henry C. Burnett, a predecessor of the gentleman from Kentucky, defend on this floor the use of the troops to keep peace at the polls?

MR. CARLISLE.-The District of Columbia was not in a State. MR. WHITE.-Had not the District of Columbia a municipal city government, a mayor, and police? [Laughter on the Democratic side.]

MR. CARLISLE.-The authority of the President to use the army or the navy in protecting the States against domestic

violence, or in assisting the States to enforce their laws, is derived, not from the provision of the Constitution which I have read, but from an act of Congress which was passed on February 27, 1795; and it is under that act that the President proceeds in every instance to send the army or the navy into a State to protect it against domestic violence or to enforce its State laws.

There is the foundation and the only foundation upon which rests to-day all the authority the President has to use the troops, the army or the navy, for these purposes. And I submit to my friends on the other side if it is not entirely competent for the power which conferred this authority to take it away, to modify it, or to alter it. But I deny, sir, that under this authority, if left without any modification, the President can send soldiers into the States of this Union to stand around the polls on election day for the purpose of keeping the peace. I deny what has been asserted by my friend from Maine [Mr. William P. Frye], that the United States deputy marshals can call upon the army of the United States to assist them in keeping the peace. Up to the passage of the army appropriation bill in the second session of the Forty-fifth Congress that was true; but in that bill there was inserted a clause which provided that the army should not be used thereafter as a posse comitatus.

GEORGE M. ROBESON [N. J.].-I wish to ask the gentleman whether if the executive of a State, when the legislature cannot be convened, or the legislature itself, calls upon the President of the United States under the Constitution as it is written, and under the law as it now stands to suppress domestic violence, and that domestic violence be at a place where a general election is taking place, the President of the United States is not bound under his oath of office to comply with the request? And, if so, whether this amendment is not in derogation of his constitutional power and duty?

MR. CARLISLE.-If the application is made in the regular form under the act of Congress I admit that it is the duty of the President to send troops, but I say that when troops have gone into a State and have dispersed the mob or the insurrectionists or whoever else is acting in resistance to the State authorities, they have performed their duty and must stop; they cannot remain at the election precincts to keep the peace, or, in other words, to prevent outbreaks of violence.

MR. ROBESON.-I am not now disputing that point. The gentleman having answered that question so fairly, I now ask him whether or not this section of this bill, this proposed amend

ment of the law, would take away the power of the President to do that thing, if properly called upon?

MK. CARLISLE.-It certainly will not, as I have stated again and again.

MR. ROBESON.-If that be so, if this section does not take away his power in that respect, and if that contingency should happen, as it possibly may, then I would ask this question: is an officer of the army of the United States, who is sworn to obey the lawful orders of the President of the United States, bound to obey should he be ordered by the President to suppress a riot and to quiet domestic violence at a place where a general election is being held? And, if he does, what is to happen to him?

MR. CARLISLE.-The gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Robeson] is asking me a question upon one subject and I am discussing another. [Laughter.] The gentleman from New Jersey asks me what would be the result in case an officer of the United States failed to perform his duty, where the President in giving him his order was acting in strict conformity to the law. I say that the officer is, of course, bound to obey the order.

We, however, are now discussing the question as to whether or not these soldiers shall be sent to a State for the purpose of keeping the peace at the polls, not for the purpose of suppressing domestic insurrection against the authority of the State or protecting the State against domestic violence. The two propositions are altogether different in their nature; they stand upon altogether different foundations. One is essential to the preservation, not only of the peace and integrity, but of the very existence of the Federal Government itself, because that Government cannot exist for a moment if the States are destroyed.

MR. ROBESON.-The amendment in effect says these troops shall not be there for any purpose. But one further question. Does the gentleman understand that the President of the United States is included in the scope of this section? In the fourth line of this section I find these words: "Other persons engaged in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States." I would like to ask the gentleman whether he considers that that expression includes the President of the United States? And, if it does, whether the President of the United States when called upon by the executive of a State in a proper manner-I assume ll that—whether he would be liable to punishment under the provisions of this section if he acted upon that call of a State executive ?

MR. CARLISLE.-My first answer to the gentleman's question is this: that the President cannot be properly called upon to do

a thing which he has no power to do. In other words, he cannot be properly called upon to send troops into a State to preserve peace at an election.

MR. ROBESON.-But I understood the gentleman to say that he thought this section did not affect that power of the executive of a State to call upon the President, nor the duty of the President to respond to that call. If that be so, then he would be properly called upon and not improperly; and the troops would be there under his order.

MR. CARLISLE.-I am not prepared to say upon the instant exactly what the true construction of that portion of the section. is, because my attention has not been previously called to it. But I undertake to say this much, that no provision of this law or of any other law can be so construed or so administered as to punish any officer or any private citizen for doing that which he has a lawful right to do.

Alexander H. Stephens [Ga.] supported the pro

vision.

It is known that I was opposed to the policy of putting this provision on this appropriation bill. But the policy of doing it and the right to do it are different questions. The question now is, is the section excluded by the rule the accepted law of the House?

All laws penal in their character are to be strictly construed, but laws involving questions of public right, public liberty, public policy, are to be liberally construed. Rule 120 provides that any change in existing laws upon appropriation bills must not only be germane, but must be in the nature of retrenchment of expenditures.

There is no question this amendment is germane, none. Does it retrench expenditures? The gentleman from Maine [Mr. Frye] says it must appear on its face that it does reduce expenditures. That is strict construction. May it possibly reduce expenditures? Will it probably reduce expenditures? Will it most probably reduce expenditures? These are considerations which we should not neglect or overlook. If it does, if it probably may, if it possibly may, if it does not increase them, but possibly may reduce them and most probably will, then that liberal construction which I insist should be made of this rule would make us conclude the proposition is admissible under the one hundred and twentieth rule.

I think it will not only possibly and probably but certainly

reduce expenditures. Our past history and experience show that enormous expenditures have attended the use of troops at the polls during elections.

It was not until 1807 that the organized army, the military force and the naval force, was authorized to be called out for a like purpose, to protect the States against domestic violence and insurrection. But the provision of the law for the use of the troops in civil cases is entirely a different matter. It is where provision is made for the execution of a mandate or judgment of a court. The generals are not to command the troops in such cases, but the marshals. The civil officers, as the sheriffs in our States, were authorized to call for the use of the troops, and the President was authorized to furnish them to the legislature or to the governor when the legislature was not in session or the marshals for the execution of the mandate of a court. That is what I call the execution of process in civil administration of the law. That is a very different thing from the other-the use of troops to suppress insurrection and domestic violence in a State upon the call of a legislature or the governor as provided by the Constitution.

Wherever the marshal calls for troops, as was decided by Attorney-General Caleb Cushing, it was as a posse, not as the army. The United States troops were under the command, not of the United States military officers, but under the command of the marshal who asked for them.

The whole of this amendment is simply this: all the new legislation it proposes, or change of legislation, is to repeal that clause which negatively affirms that the troops might be called out and ordered by military commanders to attend at elections under pretence of keeping the peace.

I am for law and order. I have witnessed the presence of soldiers at the polls. I have seen no good from their presence. We had gotten along for three-quarters of a century without it. I think the public sentiment is as much against the use of the troops to preserve the peace North as it is South. Let the relics and vestiges of the war be buried with the things of the past. I do insist that there will be no harm done, no unsettling of our institutions, no revolution in our matchless system of government, by the repeal of this law. It seems to me, therefore, this amendment being germane, regulating the use and the control of the army, and being also within the purview of a liberal construction of the rule, it is admissible on this bill.

Now, as to the use of the army, I wish in connection with some remarks which were offered yesterday on both sides upon