[69] In placing the responsibility with both parties, DeLarge said: "Mr. Speaker, when the governor of my State the other day called in council the leading men of the State, to consider the condition of affairs there and to advise what measures would be best for the protection of the people, whom did he call together? The major portion of the men whom he convened were men resting under political disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In good faith, I ask the gentlemen on this side of the House, and gentlemen on the other side of the House, whether it is reasonable to expect that those men should be interested, in any shape or form, in using their influence and best endeavor for the preservation of the public peace when they have nothing to look for politically in the future? You say that they should have the moral and material interest of their State at heart, though even always denied a participation in its honors. You may insist that the true patriot seeks no personal ends in acts of patriotism. All this is true, but, Mr. Speaker, men are but men everywhere, and you ought not to expect of those whom you daily call by opprobrious epithets, whom you daily remind of their political sins, whom you persistently exclude from places of the smallest trust in the government you have created, to be very earnest to cooperate with you in the work of establishing and fortifying the government set up in hostility to the whole tone of their prejudices, their connections, and their sympathies. What ought to be is one thing; what in the weakness and fallibility of human nature will be is quite another thing. The statesman regards the actual and acts upon it; the desirable, the possible, and even the probable furnishes but poor basis for political action."—Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 1st Session, App., pp. 230-231.
[70] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, p. 376.
[71] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, p. 4039.
[72] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, App., p. 475.
[73] Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, p. 1121; 44th Congress, 1st Session, p. 206; 47th Congress, 1st Session, p. 3946.
[74] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 3825-3826; 3781-3784; 5540-5543.
[75] Congressional Record, pp. 3667, 3668, 3669.
[76] Ibid., 44th Congress, 2nd Session, App., pp. 123-136.
[77] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2100-2105.
[78] Miller pointed out the inherent weaknesses of the South, the insecurity of investment, violation of the right of property and of contract, the jeopardy of life, and over-assessment of taxes on property held by Northern Whites—as constituting the causes underlying the failure of investors to direct their monies to Southern enterprises. He discussed the amenability of the Negro to civilizing influences and the economic progress that the race had made since its emancipation from slavery. Miller asserted, moreover, that though these remarks might effect the loss of his seat in the next Congress, he conceived it his duty to his party and to his race to defend his people against the dastardly attack of one who pretended to be its friend. Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2691.