American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

I want to ask the judgment of an honest country, I want to ask the judgment of the moral sentiments of the law-abiding people of this grand and glorious Republic to tell me whether men shall murder by the score, whether men shall trample the law under foot, whether men shall force judges to resign, whether men shall force prosecuting attorneys to resign, whether men shall take five officers of a State out and hang or shoot them if they attempt to exercise the functions of their office, whether men shall terrify the voters and office-holders of a State, whether men shall undertake in violation of law to organize a Legislature for revolutionary purposes, for the purpose of putting a governor in possession and taking possession of the State and then ask the democracy to stand by them—I appeal to the honest judgment of the people of this land and ask them to respond whether this was not an excusable case when this man used the Army to protect the life of that State and to preserve the peace of that people? Sir, the man who will not use all the means in his power to preserve the nationality, the integrity of this Government, the integrity of a State or the peace and happiness of a people, is not fit to govern, he is not fit to hold position in this or any other civilized age.

Does liberty mean wholesale slaughter? Does republican government mean tyranny and oppression of its citizens? Does an intelligent and enlightened age of civilization mean murder and pillage, bloodshed at the hands of Ku-Klux or White Leagues or anybody else, and if any one attempts to put it down, attempts to reorganize and produce order where chaos and confusion have reigned, they are to be denounced as tyrants, as oppressors, and as acting against republican institutions? I say then the happy days of this Republic are gone. When we fail to see that republicanism means nothing, that liberty means nothing but the unrestrained license of the mobs to do as they please, then republican government is a failure. Liberty of the citizen means the right to exercise such rights as are prescribed within the limits of the law so that he does not in the exercise of these rights infringe the rights of other citizens. But the definition is not well made by our friends on the opposite side of this Chamber. Their idea of liberty is license; it is not liberty, but it is license. License to do what? License to violate law, to trample constitutions under foot, to take life, to take property, to use the bludgeon and the gun or anything else for the purpose of giving themselves power. What statesman ever heard of that as a definition of liberty? What man in a civilized age has ever heard of liberty being the unrestrained license of the people to do as they please without any restraint of law or of authority? No man, no not one until we found the democratic party, would advocate this proposition and indorse and encourage this kind of license in a free country.

Mr. President, I have perhaps said more on this question of Louisiana than might have been well for me to say on account of my strength, but what I have said about it I have said because I honestly believed it. What I have said in reference to it comes from an honest conviction in my mind and in my heart of what has been done to suppress violence and wrong. But I have a few remarks in conclusion to submit now to my friends on the other side, in answer to what they have said not by way of argument but by way of accusation. You say to us—I had it repeated to me this morning in private conversation—“Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace.” Ah, I heard it said on this floor once “Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and your State government will not last a minute.” I heard that said from the opposite side of the Chamber, and now you say “Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace.”

Mr. President, I dislike to refer to things that are past and gone; I dislike to have my mind called back to things of the past; but I well remember the voice in this Chamber once that rang out and was heard throughout this land, “Withdraw your troops from Fort Sumter if you want peace.” I heard that said. Now it is “Withdraw your troops from Louisiana if you want peace.” Yes, I say, withdraw your troops from Louisiana if you want a revolution, and that is what is meant. But, sir, we are told, and doubtless it is believed by the Senators who tell us so, who denounce the republican party, that it is tyrannical, oppressive, and outrageous. They have argued themselves into the idea that they are patriots, pure and undefiled. They have argued themselves into the idea that the democratic party never did any wrong. They have been out of power so long that they have convinced themselves that if they only had control of this country for a short time, what a glorious country they would make it. They had control for nearly forty long years, and while they were the agents of this country—I appeal to history to bear me out—they made the Government a bankrupt, with rebellion and treason in the land, and were then sympathizing with it wherever it existed. That is the condition in which they left the country when they had it in their possession and within their control. But they say the republican party is a tyrant; that it is oppressive. As I have said, I wish to make a few suggestions to my friends in answer to this accusation—oppressive to whom? They say to the South, that the republican party has tyrannized over the South. Let me ask you how has it tyrannized over the South? Without speaking of our troubles and trials through which we passed, I will say this: at the end of a rebellion that scourged this land, that drenched it with blood, that devastated a portion of it, left us in debt and almost bankrupt, what did the republican party do? Instead of leaving these our friends and citizens to-day in a territorial condition where we might exercise jurisdiction over them for the next coming twenty years, where we might have deprived them of the rights of members on this floor, what did we do? We reorganized them into States, admitted them back into the Union, and through the clemency of the republican party we admitted representatives on this floor who had thundered against the gates of liberty for four bloody years. Is that the tyranny and oppression of which you complain at the hands of the republican party? Is that a part of our oppression against you southern people?

Let us go a little further. When the armed democracy, for that is what they were, laid down their arms in the Southern States, after disputing the right of freedom and liberty in this land for four years, how did the republican party show itself in its acts of tyranny and oppression toward you? You appealed to them for clemency. Did you get it? Not a man was punished for his treason. Not a man ever knocked at the doors of a republican Congress for a pardon who did not get it. Not a man ever petitioned the generosity of the republican party to be excused for his crimes who was not excused. Was that oppression upon the part of the republicans in this land? Is that a part of the oppression of which you accuse us?

Let us look a little further. We find to-day twenty-seven democratic Representatives in the other branch of Congress who took arms in their hands and tried to destroy this Government holding commissions there by the clemency of the republican party. We find in this Chamber by the clemency of the republican party three Senators who held such commissions. Is that tyranny; is that oppression; is that the outrage of this republican party on you southern people? Sir, when Jeff Davis, the head of the great rebellion, who roams the land free as air, North, South, East, and West, makes democratic speeches wherever invited, and the vice-president of the southern rebellion holds his seat in the other House of Congress, are we to be told that we are tyrants, and oppressing the southern people? These things may sound a little harsh, but it is time to tell the truth in this country. The time has come to talk facts. The time has come when cowards should hide, and honest men should come to the front and tell you plain, honest truths. You of the South talk to us about oppressing you. You drenched your land in blood, caused weeping throughout this vast domain, covered the land in weeds of mourning both North and South, widowed thousands and orphaned many, made the pension-roll as long as an army-list, made the debt that grinds the poor of this land—for all these things you have been pardoned, and yet you talk to us about oppression. So much for the oppression of the republican party of your patriotic souls and selves. Next comes the President of the United States. He is a tyrant, too. He is an oppressor still, in conjunction with the republican party. Oppressor of what? Who has he oppressed of your Southern people, and when, and where? When your Ku-Klux, banded together for murder and plunder in the Southern States, were convicted by their own confession, your own representatives pleaded to the President and said, “Give them pardon, and it will reconcile many of the southern people.” The President pardoned them; pardoned them of their murder, of their plunder, of their piracy on land; and for this I suppose he is a tyrant.

More than that, sir, this tyrant in the White House has done more for you southern people than you ought to have asked him to do. He has had confidence in you until you betrayed that confidence. He has not only pardoned the offences of the South, pardoned the criminals of the democratic party, but he has placed in high official position in this Union some of the leading men who fought in the rebellion. He has put in his Cabinet one of your men; he has made governors of Territories of some of your leading men who fought in the rebellion; he has sent on foreign missions abroad some of your men who warred against this country; he has placed others in the Departments; and has tried to reconcile you in every way on earth, by appealing to your people, by recognizing them and forgiving them for their offenses, and for these acts of generosity, for these acts of kindness, he is arraigned to-day as a Cæsar, as a tyrant, as an oppressor.

Such kindness in return as the President has received from these people will mark itself in the history of generosity. O, but say they, Grant wants to oppress the White Leagues in Louisiana; therefore he is an oppressor. Yes, Mr. President, Grant does desire that these men should quit their everyday chivalric sports of gunning upon negroes and republicans. He asks kindly that you stop it. He says to you, “That is all I want you to do;” and you say that you are desirous that they shall quit it. You have but to say it and they will quit it. It is because you have never said it that they have not quit it. It is in the power of the democratic party to-day but to speak in tones of majesty, of honor, and justice in favor of human life, and your Ku-Klux and murderers will stop. But you do not do it; and that is the reason they do not stop. In States where it has been done they have stopped. But it will not do to oppress those people; it will not do to make them submit and subject them to the law; it will not do to stop these gentlemen in their daily sports and in their lively recreations. They are White Leagues; they are banded together as gentlemen; they are of southern blood; they are of old southern stock; they are the chivalry of days gone by; they are knights of the bloody shield; and the shield must not be taken from them. Sirs, their shield will be taken from them; this country will be aroused to its danger; this country will be aroused to do justice to its citizens; and when it does, the perpetrators of crime may fear and tremble. Tyranny and oppression! A people who without one word of opposition allows men who have been the enemies of a government to come into these legislative Halls and make laws for that government to be told that they are oppressors is a monstrosity in declamation and assertion. Who ever heard of such a thing before? Who ever believed that such men could make such charges? Yet we are tyrants!

Mr. President, the reading of the title of that bill from the House only reminds me of more acts of tyranny and oppression of the republican party, and there is a continuation of the same great offenses constantly going on in this Chamber. But some may say “It is strange to see Logan defending the President of the United States.” It is not strange to me. I can disagree with the President when I think he is wrong; and I do not blame him for disagreeing with me; but when these attacks are made, coming from where they do, I am ready to stand from the rising sun in the morning to the setting sun in the evening to defend every act of his in connection with this matter before us.

I may have disagreed with President Grant in many things; but I was calling attention to the men who have been accusing him here, on this floor, on the stump, and in the other House; the kind of men who do it, the manner of its doing, the sharpness of the shafts that are sent at him, the poisonous barbs that they bear with them, and from these men who, at his hands, have received more clemency than any men ever received at the hands of any President or any man who governed a country. Why, sir, I will appeal to the soldiers of the rebel army to testify in behalf of what I say in defense of President Grant—the honorable men who fought against the country, if there was honor in doing it. What will be their testimony? It will be that he captured your armed democracy of the South, he treated them kindly, turned them loose, with their horses, with their wagons, with their provisions; treated them as men, and not as pirates. Grant built no prison-pens for the southern soldiers; Grant provided no starvation for southern men; Grant provided no “dead-lines” upon which to shoot southern soldiers if they crossed them; Grant provided no outrageous punishment against these people that now call him a tyrant. Generous to a fault in all his actions toward the men who were fighting his country and destroying the constitution, that man to-day is denounced as a very Cæsar!