Let me state the same fact, dividing the Houses. There are but four Senators here who fought in the Union Army. They all sit here now; and there are but four. Twenty Senators sit here who fought in the army of the rebellion, and three more Senators sit here who held high civil command in the confederacy.
In the House, there are fifty Union soldiers from twenty-seven States, and sixty-five confederate soldiers from eleven States.
Who, I ask you, Senators, tried by this record, is keeping up party divisions on the issues and hatreds of the war?
The South is solid. Throughout all its borders it has no seat here save two in which a republican sits. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Bruce] and the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Kellogg] are still spared; and whisper says that an enterprise is afoot to deprive one of these Senators of his seat. The South is emphatically solid. Can you wonder that the North soon becomes solid too? Do you not see that the doings witnessed now in Congress fill the North with alarm, and distrust of the patriotism and good faith of men from the South? Forty-two democrats have seats on this floor; forty-three if you add the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Davis.] He does not belong to the democratic party, although I must say, after reading his speech the other day, that a democrat who asks anything more of him is an insatiate monster. [Laughter.] If we count the Senator from Illinois, there are forty-three democrats in this Chamber. Twenty-three is a clear majority of all, and twenty-three happens to be exactly the number of Senators from the South who were leaders in the late rebellion.
Do you anticipate my object in stating these numbers? For fear you do not, let me explain. Forty-two Senators rule the Senate; twenty-three Senators rule the caucus. A majority rules the Senate; a caucus rules the majority; and the twenty-three southern Senators rule the caucus. The same thing, in the same way, governed by the same elements, is true in the House.
This present assault upon the purity and fairness of elections, upon the Constitution, upon the executive department, and upon the rights of the people; not the rights of a king, not on such rights as we heard the distinguished presiding officer, who I am glad now to discover in his seat, dilate upon of a morning some weeks ago; not the divine right of kings, but the inborn rights of the people—the present assault upon them, could never have been inaugurated without the action of the twenty-three southern Senators here, and the southern Representatives there, [pointing to the House.]
The people of the North know this and see it. They see the lead and control of the democratic party again where it was before the war, in the hands of the South. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The honorable Senator from Alabama [Mr. Morgan], educated no doubt by experience in political appearances, and spectacular effects, said the other day that he preferred the democrats from the North should go first in this debate. I admired his sagacity. It was the skill of an experienced tactician to deploy the northern levies as the sappers and miners; it was very becoming certainly. It was not from cruelty, or to make them food for powder, that he set them in the forefront of the battle; he thought it would appear better for the northern auxiliaries to go first and tunnel the citadel. Good, excellent, as far as it went; but it did not go very far in misleading anybody; putting the tail foremost and the head in the sand, only displayed the species and habits of the bird. [Laughter.]
We heard the other day that “the logic of events” had filled the southern seats here with men banded together by a common history and a common purpose. The Senator who made that sage observation perhaps builded better than he knew. The same logic of events, let me tell democratic Senators, and the communities behind them, is destined to bring from the North more united delegations.
I read in a newspaper that it was proposed the other day in another place, to restore to the Army of the United States men who, educated at the nation’s cost and presented with the nation’s sword, drew the sword against the nation’s life. In the pending bill is a provision for the retirement of officers now in the Army, with advanced rank and exaggerated pay. This may be harmless, it may be kind. One swallow proves not spring, but along with other things, suspicion will see in it an attempt to coax officers now in the Army to dismount, to empty their saddles, in order that others may get on.
So hue and cry is raised because courts, on motion, for cause shown in open court, have a right to purge juries in certain cases. No man in all the South, under thirty-five years of age, can be affected by this provision, because every such man was too young when the armies of the rebellion were recruited to be subject to the provision complained of. As to the rest, the discretion is a wholesome one. But, even if it were not, let me say in all kindness to southern Senators, it was not wise to make it a part of this proceeding, and raise this uproar in regard to it.