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?
Speech of Roscoe Conkling.
On the Extra Session of 1879. What it Teaches and what it Means. In the Senate of the United States, April 24, 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. Conkling said: