"In any view I can take of it, I believe it is the duty of the Senate of the United States, as it regards its own honor and the future of our country, never the leave this matter in its present condition, to be believed by some and disbelieved by others, to be made the subject of party contest and party chicanery, but let us have a fair, judicial, full investigation into the merits of these accusations. If they are false, stamp them with the brand of ignominy; if they are true, deal with the facts proven as you think is just and right."
The debate upon the report attracted much attention and was participated in by many Senators. The motion of the majority of the committee was adopted by the vote of 44 yeas and 17 nays. The Senate thus denied that the case made by the legislature of Ohio did justify an inquiry into the election of Senator Payne. He filled out the measure of his term and still lives at his home in Cleveland, honored and respected, at the age of eighty-five.
Congress adjourned August 5, 1886.
I had been invited to deliver an address, upon the celebration of the sixty-fourth anniversary of the birth of General U. S. Grant, at the Metropolitan church in Washington on the 27th of April, 1886. The text given me was "Grant and the New South." As this brief speech expressed my appreciation of the character of General Grant soon after his death, and my presage of the new south, I insert it here:
"Ladies and Gentlemen:—Our friends have given me a very great theme and very little time in which to present it to you. The new south is one of the mysteries which time only can unfold. It is to us, and, I fear, will be for generations to come, one of those problems which tax the highest abilities of statesmen. It is like the Irish question to England and the Eastern question to Europe. We can only judge of the future by the past. I can base my hope for the new south only upon the probable results of the changed conditions grafted upon the old south by the war; more a matter of hope and expectation than as yet of realization. Still we may hope very much even from the present signs of the times and upon what the south ought to be if not upon what it is.
"We know what the old south was. It was an oligarchy called a democracy. I do not speak this word in an offensive sense, but simply as descriptive of the character of the government of the south before the war. One-third of the people of the south were slaves. More than another third were deprived, by the nature of the institutions among which they lived, of many of the advantages absolutely indispensable to the highest civilization. Less than one-fourth of the population were admirably trained, disciplined and qualified for the highest duties of mankind. The south was very much such a democracy as Rome and Greece were at some periods of their history; a democracy founded upon the privileges of the few and the exclusion of the many. Very much like the democracy of the barons of Runnymede, who, when they met together to dictate Magna Charta to King John, guarded fully their own privileges as against the king, but cared but little for the rights of the people. And so with the south—the old south. But it was an able oligarchy.
"Among the brightest names in the American diadem were many men of the south—at the head of whom, and at the head of all mankind, was the name of Washington. And so, in all our history, the south, misnamed a democracy, did furnish to the United States many of their leading lights, and the highest saints in our calendar. They were able men. All who came in contact with them felt their power and their influence. Trained, selected for leading pursuits, they exercised a controlling influence in our politics. They held their slaves in subjection and the middle classes in ignorance, but extended their power and influence, so as to control, in the main, the policy of this country, at home and abroad. They disciplined our forces, led our parties, and made our law.
"General Grant, in the popular mind, represents the impersonation of the forces that broke the old south. Not that thousands of men did not do as much as he within the limits of their opportunities. Not that every soldier who followed his flag did not perform his duty in the same sense as General Grant. But General Grant was the head, the front, the selected leader; and therefore his name is the impersonation of that power in the war which broke the old south, and preserved our Union to your children, and I trust your children's children, to the remotest posterity. But, while we praise Grant and the Union soldiers, we must remember that Abraham Lincoln was the genius of the times. He pointed out the way. He foresaw the events that came. He did not like war. He hated war. He loved the south as few men did. He was born of the south—in his early life reared in the south. All his kin were in the south. He belonged to that middle or humble class of men in the south who were most seriously oppressed by all their surroundings—by the slavery of the south. He hated slavery, if he hated anything, but I do not believe he hated the owners of slaves. He loved all mankind. No man better than he could have uttered those words: 'Malice towards none, charity for all.' That was Abraham Lincoln. He was driven into the war reluctantly. At first, he tried to prevent it, and would not see the necessity for it. He ridiculed it, and believed that the time would speedily come when all the excitement springing up in the south would pass away.
"But the inevitable and irrepressible conflict was upon him, and he met the responsibility with courage and sagacity. A higher power than Abraham Lincoln, a power that rules and governs the universe of men, decreed the war as a necessary and unavoidable event, to prepare the way for a new south and a new north, and a more perfect Union. The war did come as a scourge and a resurrection. Grant was the commander of the Union armies, and at the close of the war more than what we had hoped for at the beginning was accomplished. When the war commenced no man among those in public life contemplated or expected the speedy abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the United States of America. I can say that, the winter before the war commenced, no man in public life in Washington expected the untold benefits and good that have come to mankind as the result of the war, by the Act of Emancipation —unforeseen then, but thankfully appreciated now, by the whole American people; even by the masters of the slaves.
"Now fellow-citizens, the new south is founded upon the ruins of the old. It inherits the prejudices, the institutions and some of the habits of the old south. No wise man will overlook this, and should not expect that the southern people will at once yield to the logic of events; but every patriotic man ought to do his utmost to bring about, as soon as possible, a cheerful acquiescence in the results of the war. You cannot in a single generation, much less a single decade, change the ideas of centuries. And, therefore, we must not be impatient with the new south. And we who come from the north must not expect them at once to lay aside all ideas with which they were born and which they inherited from their ancestors for generations. Therefore, it was to be expected that the south would be somewhat disturbed, and would be somewhat slow in their movements; that it must be born again and live an infancy and take its ordinary course in human life. It must grow as Topsy grew. Remember, at that time, before the war, this country was a confederacy, not of states, but a confederacy of sections. There were but two parties to that confederacy, one was the north and the other was the south. On every question, great and small, that division in American life and American politics arose. Before the war and during the war party lines were drawn on the sectional line, north and south. The parties in this country were sectional parties, and even up to this time we have not broken down the asperity which existed, growing out of this sectional condition of affairs.