MR. HOUSE OF TENNESSEE.
Now it seems to me that if the Supreme Court of the United States knows what a bill of attainder is, the eighth and ninth sections of this act are clearly in violation of the Constitution. When I took a seat in this House I took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. I can not and will not swear to a lie even to emphasize my abhorrence of polygamy or to punish a Mormon, and with my views of this act I would have had to do so if I had voted for the bill when it passed. It would seem that after organizing a packed jury to convict, the authors of the bill ought then to have been willing to await a conviction before depriving American citizens of the right to vote or hold office. For what is an American, deprived of those rights? He may live in a land of boasted freedom, but thus stripped of the rights and privileges that freemen most value, he is no better than a slave.
Let the carpet bagger, expelled finally from every State in the American Union with the brand of disgrace stamped upon his brow, lift up his head once more and turn his face toward the setting sun. Utah beckons him to a new field of pillage and fresh pastures of pilfering. Let him pack his grip sack and start. The Mormons have no friends, and no one will come forward to defend or protect their rights. A returning board, from whose decision there is no appeal, sent out from the American Congress baptized with the spirit of persecution and intolerance, will enter Utah to trample beneath their feet the rights of the people of that far-off and ill-fated land. Mr. Speaker, I would not place a dog under the dominion of a set of carpet-baggers, re-enforced by a returning board, unless I meant to have him robbed of his bone. A more grinding tyranny, a more absolute despotism was never established over any people.
The Mormons have been guilty of believing in, and some of them practicing, polygamy. But they have been guilty of another sin also. They have committed the offense of belonging to the democratic party. That Territory now has a population about large enough to be admitted into the Union. It would not do to let it enter the Union as a democratic State. There is not now the least danger of it. After it has passed under the manipulations of the returning board, after her people have been driven from their homes under the oppressive laws that will be passed under the powers conferred by this law, after the carpet-bagger has gone in and taken possession, Utah, clothed in the habiliments of the republican party, will be welcomed into the sisterhood of States. I did desire to notice some other features of this law, but time forbids. It was passed under the operation of the previous question, and no one had the opportunity to discuss it or to point out its imperfections. The Delegate sent here by the people of that Territory, by a barefaced usurpation on the part of the governor, was denied a certificate of election, and was not allowed to take the seat to which he had been elected, or to speak in behalf of his people while they were being robbed of their rights.