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

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

In the case before us, the design to make appropriations hinge and depend upon the destruction of certain laws is plain on the face of the bills before us,—the bill now pending, and another one on our tables. The same design was plain on the face of the bills sent us at the last session. The very fact that the sections uncovering the ballot-box to violence and fraud, are not, and never have been separately presented, but are thrust into appropriation bills, discloses and proves a belief, if not a knowledge, that in a separate bill the Executive would not approve them. Moreover both Houses have rung with the assertion that the Executive would not approve in a separate measure the overthrow of existing safeguards of the ballot-box, and that should he refuse to give his approval to appropriations and an overthrow of those safeguards linked together, no appropriations should be made.

The plot and the purpose then, is by duress to compel the Executive to give up his convictions, his duty, and his oath, as the price to be paid a political party for allowing the Government to live! Whether the bills be united or divided, is mere method and form. The substance in either form is the same, and the plot if persisted in will bury its aiders and abettors in opprobrium, and will leave a buoy on the sea of time warning political mariners to keep aloof from a treacherous channel in which a political party foundered and went down.

The size of the Army and its pay, have both been exactly fixed by law—by law enacted by a democratic House, and approved by a second democratic House. It has been decided and voted that the coast defenses and the Indian and frontier service, require a certain number of soldiers; and the appropriations needed for provision and pay have been ascertained to a farthing. Nothing remains to be done, but to give formal sanction and warrant for the use of the money from time to time. This was all true at the last session. But a democratic House, or more justly speaking the democratic majority in the House refused to give its sanction, refused to allow the people’s money, to reach the use for which the people paid it, unless certain long-standing laws were repealed. When the Senate voted against the repeal, we were bluntly told that unless that vote was reversed, unless the Senate and the Executive would accept the bills, repealing clauses and all, the session should die, no appropriations should be made, and the wheels of the Government should stop. The threat was executed; the session did die, and every branch of the Government was left without the power to execute its duties after the 30th of next June.

We were further told that when the extra session, thus to be brought about, should convene, the democrats would rule both Houses, that the majority would again insist on its terms, and that then unless the Executive submitted to become an accomplice in the design to fling down the barriers that block the way to the ballot-box against fraud and force, appropriations would again be refused, and again the session should die leaving the Government paralyzed. The extra session has convened; the democrats have indeed the power in both Houses, and thus far the war and the caucus have come up to the manifesto. So far the exploit has been easy. The time of trial is to come; the issue has been made, and of its ignominious failure, there can be no doubt if the Executive shall plant itself on constitutional right and duty, and stand firm. The actors in this scheme have managed themselves and their party into a predicament, and unless the President lets them out they will and they must back out. [Laughter, and manifestations of applause in the galleries.]

Should the Executive interpose the constitutional shield against the political enormities of the proposed bills, and then should the majority carry out the threat to desert their posts by adjournment without making the needed appropriations, I hope and trust they will be called back instantly and called back as often as need be until they relinquish a monstrous pretension and abandon a treasonable position.

The Army bill now pending, is not, in its political features, the bill tendered us at the last session a few days ago; it is not the same bill then insisted on as the ultimatum of the majority. The bill as it comes to us now, condemns its predecessor as crude and objectionable. It was found to need alteration. It did need alteration badly, and those who lately insisted on it as it was, insist on it now as it then was not. A grave proviso has been added to save the right of the President to aid a State gasping in the throes of rebellion or invasion and calling for help. As the provision stood when thrust upon us first and last at the recent session, it would have punished as a felon the President of the United States, the General of the Army, and others, for attempting to obey the Constitution of the United States and two ancient acts of Congress, one of them signed by George Washington. Shorn of this absurdity, the bill as it now stands, should it become a law, will be the first enactment of its kind that ever found its way into the statutes of the United States. A century, with all its activities and party strifes, with all its passionate discords, with all its expedients for party advantage, with all its wisdom and its folly, with all its patriotism and its treason, has never till now produced a congressional majority which deemed such a statute fit to be enacted.

Let me state the meaning of the amendments proposed under guise of enlarging liberty on election day—that day of days when order, peace, and security for all, as well as liberty, should reign. The amendments declare in plain legal effect that, no matter what the exigency may be, no matter what violence or carnage may run riot and trample down right and life, no matter what mob brutality may become master, if the day be election day, any officer or person, civil, military, or naval, from the President down, who attempts to interfere, to prevent or quell violence by the aid of national soldiers, or armed men not soldiers, shall be punished, and may be fined $5,000 and imprisoned for five years. This is the law we are required to set up. Yes, not only to leave murderous ruffianism untouched, but to invite it into action by assurances of safety in advance.

In the city of New York, all the thugs and shoulder-hitters and repeaters, all the carriers of slung-shot, dirks, and bludgeons, all the fraternity of the bucketshops, the rat-pits, the hells and the slums, all the graduates of the nurseries of modern so-called democracy, [laughter;] all those who employ and incite them, from King’s Bridge to the Battery, are to be told in advance that on the day when the million people around them choose their members of the National Legislature, no matter what God-daring or man-hurting enormities they may commit, no matter what they do, nothing that they can do will meet with the slightest resistance from any national soldier or armed man clothed with national authority.

Another bill, already on our tables, strikes down even police officers armed, or unarmed, of the United States.

In South Carolina, in Louisiana, in Mississippi, and in the other States where the colored citizens are counted to swell the representation in Congress, and then robbed of their ballots and dismissed from the political sun—in all such States, every rifle club, and white league, and murderous band, and every tissue ballot-box stuffer, night-rider, and law-breaker, is to be told that they may turn national elections into a bloody farce, that they may choke the whole proceeding with force and fraud, and blood, and that the nation shall not confront them with one armed man. State troops, whether under the name of rifle clubs or white leagues, or any other, armed with the muskets of the United States, may constitute the mob, may incite the mob, but the national arm is to be tied and palsied.