| States. | Date after the war when debt reached highest. | 1880. | Amount of debt repudiated bet. period wh. highest & June, 1880 |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Virginia | No debt. | ||
| Virginia | $47,390,839 | $29,345,226 | $18,045,613 |
| North Carolina | 29,900,045 | 3,629,511 | 26,270,534 |
| South Carolina | 24,782,906 | 7,175,454 | 17,607,452 |
| Georgia | 20,197,500 | 10,334,000 | 9,863,500 |
| Florida | 5,512,268 | 1,391,357 | 4,120,911 |
| Alabama | 31,952,000 | 11,613,670 | 20,338,830 |
| Mississippi | 3,226,847 | 379,485 | 2,847,362 |
| Louisiana | 40,416,734 | 12,635,810 | 27,780,924 |
| Texas | 5,782,887 | 5,782,887 | |
| Arkansas | 18,287,273 | 5,813,627 | 12,473,646 |
| Tennessee | 41,863,406 | 25,685,822 | 16,177,584 |
| Kentucky | 3,892,480 | 180,394 | 3,712,086 |
| Totals | 273,205,185 | 113,967,243 | 159,237,942 |
Mr. Mahone. There is no mere readjustment there; I will not say it is repudiation. “Repudiation” is honorable, perhaps; “readjustment” dishonorable.
Oh, Virginia! It was for this you bared your bosom to soldier’s tread and horse’s hoof. It was for this you laid waste your fields. It was for this you displayed your noble virtues of fortitude and courage, your heroic suffering and sacrifice. It was for this you suffered the dismemberment of your territory and sent your sons to the field to return to the ruins where were once their homes. It was for this you so reluctantly abandoned your allegiance to a common country to be the last to make war and the last to surrender. O Ingratitude, thou basest and meanest of crimes!
And now, Mr. President, at the time of my election who constituted my opponents? Already, as you have been advised, another representing distinctly the Bourbon democracy of Virginia and the so-called democracy of this Chamber, another representing distinctly the republican party of Virginia—these were the candidates before the Legislature which elected me to this body. I received not only a majority of the so-called democratic readjusters but of the so-called republican readjusters. And now what were the efforts, known there if not here to gentlemen, to defeat me? Were not combinations sought to be made? It is known of all men there at the capital of my State, if not here, that every influence from whatsoever quarter it could be adduced, whether democratic or republican, was brought together at Richmond for the purpose by combination of defeating my election, of defeating the sovereign will of the people of that Commonwealth as expressed on the 4th of November, 1879.
There was a democracy which sought to secure the election of an orthodox, simon-pure, unadulterated republican, but of that kind called Bourbons in Virginia—a democracy which was not only willing but ready and anxious to send here in the place I have the honor to hold a republican whom they would otherwise profess to despise. What for? For the consideration well known there, that they might elect certain county judges and control the State offices, and by that means prevent the disclosures which have subsequently followed since the readjusters have gotten possession of the capitol. That democracy which like Cæsar’s wife would stand “above suspicion,” were ready to trade a seat in the United States Senate so that a few county judges might be preserved, that the offices in the capitol at Richmond might be retained in their control; I say in order, perhaps, that the disclosures which have followed the advent of the party I represent might have been longer concealed; moreover that control of the ballot-box in the State might continue where it had been; so certainly I believe; and all this by those who professed to represent the party which had declared in national convention for a full vote, a free ballot, and an honest count.
Such were the considerations, such I say were the inducements which prompted that democracy to its efforts to send to this Chamber a republican beyond question since these many long and weary years. If that is the democracy that the gentlemen on that side love, I proclaim my inability to co-operate with them.
I supported neither of the candidates for Congress in my district, and emphatically declared that purpose on more than one public occasion, because one was a candidate of that party, the Bourbon reactionists, and the other a Bourbon republican with accommodating views on the debt question.
To obey the behests of the democratic caucus of this body, whose leadership on this floor, whose representative national authority—the one here and the other elsewhere—have championed the cause of the Bourbon-funder party in Virginia, would be an obsequious surrender of our State policy and self-condemnation of our independent action.
The desire of our people for cordial relations with all sections of a common country and the people of all the States of the Union, their devotion to popular education, their efforts for the free enjoyment of a priceless suffrage and an honest count of ballots, their determination to make Virginia, in the public belief, a desirable home for all men, wherever their birthplace, whatever their opinions, and to open her fields and her mines to enterprise and capital, and to stay the retrograde movement of years, so as to bring her back from the fifteenth in grade to her original position among the first in the sisterhood of States, forbid that my action here should be controlled or influenced by a caucus whose party has waged war upon my constituency and where party success is held paramount to what I conceive to be the interests of Virginia and the welfare of the whole country.
The readjusters of Virginia have no feeling of hostility, no words of unkindness for the colored man. His freedom has come, and whether by purpose or by accident, thank God, that among other issues which so long distracted our country and restrained its growth, was concluded, and I trust forever, by the results of the sanguinary struggle between the sections.