Speech of Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine,
On the False Issue raised by the Democratic Party, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Monday, April 14, 1879.
The Senate having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1,) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880, and for other purposes—
Mr. Blaine said:
Mr. President: The existing section of the Revised Statutes numbered 2002 reads thus:
No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, shall order, bring, keep or have under his authority or control, any troops or armed men at the place where any general or special election is held in any State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed enemies of the United States, or to keep the peace at the polls.
The object of the proposed section, which has just been read at the Clerk’s desk, is to get rid of the eight closing words, namely, “or to keep the peace at the polls,” and therefore the mode of legislation proposed in the Army bill now before the Senate is an unusual mode; it is an extraordinary mode. If you want to take off a single sentence at the end of a section in the Revised Statutes the ordinary way is to strike off those words, but the mode chosen in this bill is to repeat and re-enact the whole section leaving those few words out. While I do not wish to be needlessly suspicious on a small point I am quite persuaded that this did not happen by accident but that it came by design. If I may so speak it came of cunning, the intent being to create the impression that whereas the republicans in the administration of the General Government had been using troops right and left, hither and thither, in every direction, as soon as the democrats got power they enacted this section. I can imagine democratic candidates for Congress all over the country reading this section to gaping and listening audiences as one of the first offsprings of democratic reform, whereas every word of it, every syllable of it, from its first to its last, is the enactment of a republican Congress.
I repeat that this unusual form presents a dishonest issue, whether so intended or not. It presents the issue that as soon as the democrats got possession of the Federal Government they proceeded to enact the clause which is thus expressed. The law was passed by a republican Congress in 1865. There were forty-six Senators sitting in this Chamber at that time, of whom only ten or at most eleven were democrats. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly republican. We were in the midst of a war. The republican administration had a million or possibly twelve hundred thousand bayonets at its command. Thus circumstanced and thus surrounded, with the amplest possible power to interfere with elections had they so designed, with soldiers in every hamlet and county of the United States, the republican party themselves placed that provision on the statute book, and Abraham Lincoln, their President, signed it.
I beg you to observe, Mr. President, that this is the first instance in the legislation of the United States in which any restrictive clause whatever was put upon the statute book in regard to the use of troops at the polls. The republican party did it with the Senate and the House in their control. Abraham Lincoln signed it when he was Commander-in-Chief of an army larger than ever Napoleon Bonaparte had at his command. So much by way of correcting an ingenious and studied attempt at misrepresentation.
The alleged object is to strike out the few words that authorize the use of troops to keep peace at the polls. This country has been alarmed, I rather think indeed amused, at the great effort made to create a widespread impression that the republican party relies for its popular strength upon the use of the bayonet. This democratic Congress has attempted to give a bad name to this country throughout the civilized world, and to give it on a false issue. They have raised an issue that has no foundation in fact—that is false in whole and detail, false in the charge, false in all the specifications. That impression sought to be created, as I say, not only throughout the North American continent but in Europe to-day, is that elections are attempted in this country to be controlled by the bayonet.
I denounce it here as a false issue. I am not at liberty to say that any gentleman making this issue knows it to be false; I hope he does not; but I am going to prove to him that it is false, and that there is not a solitary inch of solid earth on which to rest the foot of any man who makes that issue. I have in my hand an official transcript of the location and the number of all the troops of the United States east of Omaha. By “east of Omaha,” I mean all the United States east of the Mississippi river and that belt of States that border the Mississippi river on the west, including forty-one million at least out of the forty-five million of people that this country is supposed to contain to-day. In that magnificent area, I will not pretend to state its extent, but with forty-one million people, how many troops of the United States are there to-day? Would any Senator on the opposite side like to guess, or would he like to state how many men with muskets in their hands there are in the vast area I have named? There are two thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven! And not one more.
From the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the lakes, and down the great chain of lakes, and down the Saint Lawrence and down the valley of the Saint John and down the St. Croix striking the Atlantic Ocean and following it down to Key West, around the Gulf, up to the mouth of the Mississippi again, a frontier of eight thousand miles either bordering on the ocean or upon foreign territory is guarded by these troops. Within this domain forty-five fortifications are manned and eleven arsenals protected. There are sixty troops to every million of people. In the South I have the entire number in each State, and will give it.
And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress and destroy the liberties of fifteen million people! In the Southern States there are twelve hundred and three counties. If you distribute the soldiers there is not quite one for each county; and when I give the counties I give them from the census of 1870. If you distribute them territorially there is one for every seven hundred square miles of territory, so that if you make a territorial distribution, I would remind the honorable Senator from Delaware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota for his State would be three—“one ragged sergeant and two abreast,” as the old song has it. [Laughter.] That is the force ready to destroy the liberties of Delaware!
Mr. President, it was said, as the old maxim has it, that the soothsayers of Rome could not look each other in the face without smiling. There are not two democratic Senators on this floor who can go into the cloak-room and look each other in the face without smiling at this talk, or, more appropriately, I should say without blushing—the whole thing is such a prodigious and absolute farce, such a miserably manufactured false issue, such a pretense without the slightest foundation in the world, and talked about most and denounced the loudest in States that have not and have not had a single Federal soldier. In New England we have three hundred and eighty soldiers. Throughout the South it does not run quite seventy to the million people. In New England we have absolutely one hundred and twenty soldiers to the million. New England is far more overrun to-day by the Federal soldier, immensely more, than the whole South is. I never heard anybody complain about it in New England, or express any great fear of his liberties being endangered by the presence of a handful of troops.
As I have said, the tendency of this talk is to give us a bad name in Europe. Republican institutions are looked upon there with jealousy. Every misrepresentation, every slander is taken up and exaggerated and talked about to our discredit, and the democratic party of the country to-day stand indicted, and I here indict them, for public slander of their country, creating the impression in the civilized world that we are governed by a ruthless military despotism. I wonder how amazing it would be to any man in Europe, familiar as Europeans are with great armies, if he were told that over a territory larger than France and Spain and Portugal and Great Britain and Holland and Belgium and the German Empire all combined, there were but eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers! That is all this democratic howl, this mad cry, this false issue, this absurd talk is based on—the presence of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers on eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory, not double the number of the democratic police in the city of Baltimore, not a third of the police in the city of New York, not double the democratic police in the city of New Orleans. I repeat, the number indicts them; it stamps the whole cry as without any foundation; it derides the issue as a false and scandalous and partisan makeshift.
What then is the real motive underlying this movement? Senators on that side, democratic orators on the stump cannot make any sensible set of men at the crossroads believe that they are afraid of eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers distributed one to each county in the South. The minute you state that, everybody sees the utter, palpable and laughable absurdity of it, and therefore we must go further and find a motive for all this cry. We want to find out, to use a familiar and vulgar phrase, what is “the cat under the meal.” It is not the troops. That is evident. There are more troops by fifty per cent. scattered through the Northern States east of the Mississippi to-day than through the Southern States east of the Mississippi, and yet nobody in the North speaks of it; everybody would be laughed at for speaking of it; and therefore the issue, I take no risk in stating, I make bold to declare, that this issue on the troops, being a false one, being one without foundation, conceals the true issue, which is simply to get rid of the Federal presence at Federal elections, to get rid of the civil power of the United States in the election of Representatives to the Congress of the United States. That is the whole of it; and disguise it as you may there is nothing else in it or of it.
You simply want to get rid of the supervision by the Federal Government of the election of Representatives to Congress through civil means; and therefore this bill connects itself directly with another bill, and you cannot discuss this military bill without discussing a bill which we had before us last winter, known as the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill. I am quite well aware, I profess to be as well aware as any one, that it is not permissible for me to discuss a bill that is pending before the other House. I am quite well aware that propriety and parliamentary rule forbid that I should speak of what is done in the House of Representatives; but I know very well that I am not forbidden to speak of that which is not done in the House of Representatives. I am quite free to speak of the things that are not done there, and therefore I am free to declare that neither this military bill nor the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill ever emanated from any committee of the House of Representatives at all; they are not the work of any committee of the House of Representatives, and, although the present House of Representatives is almost evenly balanced in party division, no solitary suggestion has been allowed to come from the minority of that House in regard to the shaping of these bills. Where do they come from? We are not left to infer; we are not even left to the Yankee privilege of guessing, because we know. The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] obligingly told us—I have his exact words here—“that the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] was the chairman of a committee appointed by the democratic party to see how it was best to present all these questions before us.”
We are told, too, rather a novel thing, that if we do not take these laws, we are not to have the appropriations. I believe it has been announced in both branches of Congress, I suppose on the authority of the democratic caucus, that if we do not take these bills as they are planned, we shall not have any of the appropriations that go with them. The honorable Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Hereford] told it to us on Friday; the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Thurman] told it to us last session; the honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] told it to us at the same time, and I am not permitted to speak of the legions who told us so in the other House. They say all these appropriations are to be refused—not merely the Army appropriation, for they do not stop at that. Look for a moment at the legislative bill that came from the democratic caucus. Here is an appropriation in it for defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court and the circuit and district courts of the United States, including the District of Columbia, &c., $2,800,000: “Provided”—provided what?
That the following sections of the Revised Statutes relating to elections—going on to recite them—be repealed.
That is, you will pass an appropriation for the support of the judiciary of the United States only on condition of this repeal. We often speak of this government being divided between three great departments, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—co-ordinate, independent, equal. The legislative, under the control of a democratic caucus, now steps forward and says, “We offer to the Executive this bill, and if he does not sign it, we are going to starve the judiciary.” That is carrying the thing a little further than I have ever known. We do not merely propose to starve the Executive if he will not sign the bill, but we propose to starve the judiciary that has had nothing whatever to do with the question. That has been boldly avowed on this floor; that has been boldly avowed in the other House; that has been boldly avowed in democratic papers throughout the country.
And you propose not merely to starve the judiciary but you propose that you will not appropriate a solitary dollar to take care of this Capitol. The men who take care of this great amount of public property are provided for in that bill. You say they shall not have any pay if the President will not agree to change the election laws. There is the public printing that goes on for the enlightenment of the whole country and for printing the public documents of every one of the Departments. You say they shall not have a dollar for public printing unless the President agrees to repeal these laws.
There is the Congressional Library that has become the pride of the whole American people for its magnificent growth and extent. You say it shall not have one dollar to take care of it, much less add a new book, unless the President signs these bills. There is the Department of State that we think throughout the history of the Government has been a great pride to this country for the ability with which it has conducted our foreign affairs; it is also to be starved. You say we shall not have any intercourse with foreign nations, not a dollar shall be appropriated therefor unless the President signs these bills. There is the Light-House Board that provides for the beacons and the warnings on seventeen thousand miles of sea and gulf and lake coast.
You say those lights shall all go out and not a dollar shall be appropriated for the board if the President does not sign these bills. There are the mints of the United States at Philadelphia, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, coining silver and coining gold—not a dollar shall be appropriated for them if the President does not sign these bills. There is the Patent Office, the patents issued which embody the invention of the country—not a dollar for them. The Pension Bureau shall cease its operations unless these bills are signed and patriotic soldiers may starve. The Agricultural Bureau, the Post Office Department, every one of the great executive functions of the Government is threatened, taken by the throat, highwayman-style, collared on the highway, commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the democratic congressional caucus. That is what it is; simply that. No committee of this Congress in either branch has ever recommended that legislation—not one. Simply a democratic caucus has done it.
Of course this is new. We are learning something every day. I think you may search the records of the Federal Government in vain; it will take some one much more industrious in that search than I have ever been, and much more observant than I have ever been, to find any possible parallel or any possible suggestion in our past history of any such thing. Most of the Senators who sit in this Chamber can remember some vetoes by Presidents that shook this country to its centre with excitement. The veto of the national-bank bill by Jackson in 1832, remembered by the oldest in this Chamber; the veto of the national-bank bill in 1841 by Tyler, remembered by those not the oldest, shook this country with a political excitement which up to that time had scarcely a parallel; and it was believed, whether rightfully or wrongfully is no matter, it was believed by those who advocated those financial measures at the time, that they were of the very last importance to the well-being and prosperity of the people of the Union. That was believed by the great and shining lights of that day. It was believed by that man of imperial character and imperious will, the great Senator from Kentucky. It was believed by Mr. Webster, the greatest of New England Senators. When Jackson vetoed the one or Tyler vetoed the other, did you ever hear a suggestion that those bank charters should be put on appropriation bills or that there should not be a dollar to run the Government until they were signed? So far from it that, in 1841, when temper was at its height; when the whig party, in addition to losing their great measure, lost it under the sting and the irritation of what they believed was a desertion by the President whom they had chosen; and when Mr. Clay, goaded by all these considerations, rose to debate the question in the Senate, he repelled the suggestion of William C. Rives, of Virginia, who attempted to make upon him the point that he had indulged in some threat involving the independence of the Executive. Mr. Clay rose to his full height and thus responded:
“I said nothing whatever of any obligation on the part of the President to conform his judgment to the opinions of the Senate and the House of Representatives, although the Senator argued as if I had, and persevered in so arguing after repeated correction. I said no such thing. I know and I respect the perfect independence of each department, acting within its proper sphere, of the other departments.”
A leading democrat, an eloquent man, a man who has courage and frankness and many good qualities, has boasted publicly that the democracy are in power for the first time in eighteen years, and they do not intend to stop until they have wiped out every vestige of every war measure. Well, “forewarned is forearmed,” and you begin appropriately on a measure that has the signature of Abraham Lincoln. I think the picture is a striking one when you hear these words from a man who was then in arms against the Government of the United States, doing his best to destroy it, exerting every power given him in a bloody and terrible rebellion against the authority of the United States and when Abraham Lincoln was marching at the same time to his martyrdom in its defense! Strange times have fallen upon us that those of us who had the great honor to be associated in higher or lower degree with Mr. Lincoln in the administration of the Government should live to hear men in public life and on the floors of Congress, fresh from the battle-fields of the rebellion, threatening the people of the United States that the democratic party, in power for the first time in eighteen years, proposes not to stay its hand until every vestige of the war measures has been wiped out! the late vice-president of the confederacy boasted—perhaps I had better say stated—that for sixty out of the seventy-two years preceding the outbreak of the rebellion, from the foundation of the Government, the South, though in a minority, had by combining with what he termed the anti-centralists in the North ruled the country; and in 1866 the same gentleman indicated in a speech, I think before the Legislature of Georgia, that by a return to Congress the South might repeat the experiment with the same successful result. I read that speech at the time; but I little thought I should live to see so near a fulfillment of its prediction. I see here to-day two great measures emanating, as I have said, not from a committee of either House, but from a democratic caucus in which the South has an overwhelming majority, two-thirds in the House, and out of forty-two Senators on the other side of this Chamber professing the democratic faith thirty are from the South—twenty-three, a positive and pronounced majority, having themselves been participants in the war against the Union either in military or civil station. So that as a matter of fact, plainly deducible from counting your fingers, the legislation of this country to-day, shaped and fashioned in a democratic caucus where the confederates of the South hold the majority, is the realization of Mr. Stephens’ prophecy. And very appropriately the House under that control and the Senate under that control, embodying thus the entire legislative powers of the Government, deriving its political strength from the South, elected from the South, say to the President of the United States, at the head of the Executive Department of the Government, elected as he was from the North—elected by the whole people, but elected as a Northern man; elected on Republican principles, elected in opposition to the party that controls both branches of Congress to-day—they naturally say, “You shall not exercise your constitutional power to veto a bill.”
Some gentleman may rise and say, “Do you call it revolution to put an amendment on an appropriation bill?” Of course not. There have been a great many amendments put on appropriation bills, some mischievous and some harmless; but I call it the audacity of revolution for any Senator or Representative, or any caucus of Senators or Representatives, to get together and say, “We will have this legislation or we will stop the great departments of the Government.” That is revolutionary. I do not think it will amount to revolution; my opinion is it will not. I think that is a revolution that will not go around; I think that is a revolution which will not revolve; I think that is a revolution whose wheel will not turn; but it is a revolution if persisted in, and if not persisted in, it must be backed out from with ignominy. The democratic party in Congress have put themselves exactly in this position to-day, that if they go forward in the announced programme, they march to revolution. I think they will, in the end, go back in an ignominious retreat. That is my judgment.
The extent to which they control the legislation of the country is worth pointing out. In round numbers, the Southern people are about one-third of the population of the Union. I am not permitted to speak of the organization of the House of Representatives, but I can refer to that of the last House. In the last House of Representatives, of the forty-two standing committees the South had twenty-five. I am not blaming the honorable Speaker for it. He was hedged in by partisan forces, and could not avoid it. In this very Senate, out of thirty-four standing committees the South has twenty-two. I am not calling these things up just now in reproach; I am only showing what an admirable prophet the late vice-president of the Southern Confederacy was, and how entirely true all his words have been, and how he has lived to see them realized.
I do not profess to know, Mr. President, least of all Senators on this floor, certainly as little as any Senator on this floor, do I profess to know, what the President of the United States will do when these bills are presented to him, as I suppose in due course of time they will be. I certainly should never speak a solitary word of disrespect of the gentleman holding that exalted position, and I hope I should not speak a word unbefitting the dignity of the office of a Senator of the United States. But as there has been speculation here and there on both sides as to what he would do, it seems to me that the dead heroes of the Union would rise from their graves if he should consent to be intimidated and outraged in his proper constitutional powers by threats like these.
All the war measures of Abraham Lincoln are to be wiped out, say leading democrats! The Bourbons of France busied themselves, I believe, after the restoration, in removing every trace of Napoleon’s power and grandeur, even chiseling the “N” from public monuments raised to perpetuate his glory; but the dead man’s hand from Saint Helena reached out and destroyed them in their pride and in their folly. And I tell the Senators on the other side of this Chamber,—I tell the democratic party North and South—South in the lead and North following,—that, the slow, unmoving finger of scorn, from the tomb of the martyred President on the prairies of Illinois, will wither and destroy them. Though dead he speaketh. [Great applause in the galleries.]
The presiding officer, (Mr. Anthony in the chair.) The Sergeant-at-Arms will preserve order in the galleries and arrest persons manifesting approbation or disapprobation.
Mr. Blaine. When you present these bills with these threats to the living President, who bore the commission of Abraham Lincoln and served with honor in the Army of the Union, which Lincoln restored and preserved, I can think only of one appropriate response from his lips or his pen. He should say to you with all the scorn befitting his station:
Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?