Mr. Logan. Will the Senator allow me to ask him what right has he as a Senator to undertake to dictate to the Senator from Virginia as to what shall be required in his State?
Mr. Hill, of Georgia. That is incorrect again. I have not undertaken to dictate to the Senator from Virginia. The Senator from Virginia can do just as he pleases; but when the Senator from Virginia acts as a public man I have a right to my opinion of his public acts, and I have a right to speak of all public acts and their character. I will not deny his right; I am not dictating to him—far from it. There is not in my heart now an unkind feeling for the Senator from Virginia. I would if I could rescue him from the infamy into which others are trying to precipitate him. That is what I want to do. I am not assailing him; I am not arraigning him; I am not dictating to him. I know the proud nature of the Senator from New York. I know if that Senator was elected to this body as a republican, although he might have been a readjuster at the time, and if he should come to this body and the democrats should begin to intimate in this Hall and the democratic papers should intimate over the country that he was going to vote with the democrats on the organization, he would feel insulted just as my friend from Tennessee (Mr. Harris) justly felt by the allusions to him in the newspapers. So with any other man on that side. If the Senator from Virginia was elected as a democrat I am right; but if as a republican I have nothing more to say.
Mr. Logan. Will the Senator allow me right there? Is it not true that the democracy of the Virginia Legislature that elected the Senator now in his seat from Virginia did nominate Mr. Withers as their candidate and supported him, and was not this senator elected by the opponents of the democrats of that Legislature? Is not that true? I ask the Senator from Virginia.
Mr. Mahone. Substantially so.
Mr. Logan. Then if that be true, why say that he came here as the representative of the democracy of Virginia?
Mr. Hill, of Georgia. My understanding is that the democracy of Virginia is very much like the democracy of other States, as Tennessee. We are divided down there in several States on local questions that have nothing to do with national politics. In Virginia the democracy was divided between what are called readjuster democrats and debt-paying democrats, but all democrats.
What was called the republican party it was said, although I must vindicate many of the republicans in the State from the charge, coalesced with what are called the readjuster democrats. The late Senator from Virginia was nominated by what are called the debt-paying democrats, and the present Senator from Virginia, as I understand it, was run against him as a readjuster democrat.
Mr. Logan. And the republicans all supported him.
Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly, because they always support a candidate who is running against the regular nominee. I suppose the republicans always go for men who are not in favor of paying debts! I had thought that republicans professed to affiliate with those who would pay debts. But I have nothing to do with that question; it does not come in here. What I say and what will not be denied, and I am ashamed that there is an attempt to deny it, is, and it is the worst feature of this whole thing, that anybody should get up here and attempt to deny that the Senator from Virginia was elected to the Senate as a democrat; should attempt to evade the fact that he was a Hancock democrat last year; that he has acted with the national democracy all the time; and that whatever might have been the local differences in Virginia, he has been a national democrat every hour, held out to the country as such. I say I am ashamed that anybody should attempt to make a question of that fact. He was not only a democrat, a national democrat, and voted for Hancock, but I remember the historical fact that he had what he called his own ticket in the field for Hancock and voted for it. He is just as much a democrat, sent here as a readjuster democrat, as the other candidate, the debt-paying democrat, would have been if he had been elected.
Mr. Logan. The difference is, if the Senator will allow me, if the other had been elected, he would have been in full accord with the democracy here. This gentleman does not happen to be, and therefore the criticism of the Senator from Georgia.