Has the present national Administration been officiously robust in checking the encroachments and turbulence of democrats, either by the use of troops or otherwise? I ask this question because the next election is to occur during the term of the present Administration.
What is the need of revolutionary measures now? What is all this uproar and commotion, this daring venture of partisan experiment, for? Why not make your issue against these laws, and carry your issue to the people? If you can elect a President and a Congress of your thinking, you will have it all your own way.
Why now should there be an attempt to block the wheels of government on the eve of an election at which this whole question is triable before the principals and masters of us all? The answer is inevitable. But one truthful explanation can be made of this daring enterprise. It is a political, a partisan manœuvre. It is a strike for party advantage. With a fair election and an honest count, the democratic party cannot carry the country. These laws, if executed, insure some approach to a fair election. Therefore they stand in the way, and therefore they are to be broken down.
I reflect upon no man’s motives, but I believe that the sentiment which finds expression in the transaction now proceeding in the two houses of Congress, has its origin in the idea I have stated. I believe that the managers and charioteers of the democratic party think that with a fair election and a fair count they cannot carry the State of New York. They know that with free course, such as existed in 1868, to the ballot-box and count, no matter what majority may be given in that State where the green grass grows, the great cities will overbalance and swamp it. They know that with the ability to give eighty, ninety, one hundred thousand majority in the county of New York and the county of Kings, half of it fraudulently added, it is idle for the three million people living above the Highlands of the Hudson to vote.
This is a struggle for power. It is a fight for empire. It is a contrivance to clutch the National Government. That we believe; that I believe.
The nation has tasted, and drunk to the dregs, the sway of the democratic party, organized and dominated by the same influences which dominate it again and still. You want to restore that dominion. We mean to resist you at every step and by every lawful means that opportunity places in our hands. We believe that it is good for the country, good for every man North and South who loves the country now, that the Government should remain in the hands of those who were never against it. We believe that it is not wise or safe to give over our nationality to the dominion of the forces which formerly and now again rule the democratic party. We do not mean to connive at further conquests, and we tell you that if you gain further political power, you must gain it by fair means, and not by foul. We believe that these laws are wholesome. We believe that they are necessary barriers against wrongs, necessary defenses for rights; and so believing, we will keep and defend them even to the uttermost of lawful honest effort.
The other day, it was Tuesday I think, it pleased the honorable Senator from Illinois [Mr. Davis] to deliver to the Senate an address, I had rather said an opinion, able and carefully prepared. That honorable Senator knows well the regard not only, but the sincere respect in which I hold him, and he will not misunderstand the freedom with which I shall refer to some of his utterances.
Whatever else his sayings fail to prove, they did I think, prove their author, after Mrs. Winslow, the most copious and inexhaustible fountain of soothing syrup. The honorable Senator seemed like one slumbering in a storm and dreaming of a calm. He said there was no uproar anywhere—one would infer you could hear a pin drop—from centre to circumference. Rights, he said, are secure. I have his language here. If I do not seem to give the substance aright I will stop and read it. Rights secure North and South; peace and tranquillity everywhere. The law obeyed and no need of special provisions or anxiety. It was in this strain that the Senator discoursed.
Are rights secure, when fresh-done barbarities show that local government in one portion of our land is no better than despotism tempered by assassination? Rights secure, when such things can be, as stand proved and recorded by committees of the Senate! Rights secure, when the old and the young fly in terror from their homes, and from the graves of their murdered dead! Rights secure, when thousands brave cold, hunger, death, seeking among strangers in a far country a humanity which will remember that—
“Before man made them citizens,