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I want to ask the judgment of an honest country, I want to ask the judgment of the moral sentiments of the law-abiding people of this grand and glorious Republic to tell me whether men shall murder by the score, whether men shall trample the law under foot, whether men shall force judges to resign, whether men shall force prosecuting attorneys to resign, whether men shall take five officers of a State out and hang or shoot them if they attempt to exercise the func tions of their office, whether men shall terrify the voters and office-holders of a State, whether men shall undertake in violation of law to organize a Legislature for revolutionary purposes, for the purpose of putting a governor in possession and taking possession of the State and then ask the democracy to stand by them-I appeal to the honest judgment of the people of this land and ask them to respond whether this was not an excusable case when this man used the Army to protect the life of that State and to preserve the peace of that people? Sir, the man who will not use all the means in his power to preserve the nationality, the integrity of this Government, the integrity of a State or the peace and happiness of a people, is not fit to govern, he is not fit to hold position in this or any other civilized age.

Now, Mr. President, I want to ask candid, honest, fair-minded men, after reading the report of General Sheridan showing the murder, not for gain, not for plunder, but for political opinions in the last few years of thirty-five hundred persons in the State of Louisiana, all of them republicans, not one of them a democrat-I want to ask if they can stand here before this country and defend the democratic party of Louisiana? I put this question to them for they have been here for days crying against the wrongs upon the democracy of Louisiana. I want any one of them to tell me if he is prepared to defend the democracy of Louisiana. What is your democracy of Louisiana? You are excited, your extreme wrath is aroused at General Sheridan because he called your White Leagues down there "banditti." I ask you if the murder of thirty-five hundred men in a short time for political purposes by a band of men banded together for the purpose of murder does not make them banditti, what it does make them? Does it make them democrats? It certainly does not make them republicans. Does it make them honest men? It certainly does not. Does it make them law-abiding men? It certainly does not. Does it make them peaceable citizens? It certainly does not. But what does it make them? A band of Does liberty mean wholesale slaughter? men banded together and perpetrating mur-Does republican government mean tyranny der in their own State? Webster says a bandit is "a lawless or desperate fellow; a robber; a brigand," and "banditti" are men banded together for plunder and murder; and what are your White Leagues banded together for if the result proves that they are banded together for murder for political purposes?

and oppression of its citizens? Does an intelligent and enlightened age of civilization mean murder and pillage, bloodshed at the hands of Ku-Klux or White Leagues or anybody else, and if any one attempts to put it down, attempts to reorganize and produce order where chaos and confusion have reigned, they are to be denounced as O, what a crime it was in Sheridan to tyrants, as oppressors, and as acting against say that these men were banditti! He is a republican institutions? I say then the wretch. From the papers he ought to be happy days of this Republic are gone. hanged to a lamp-post; from the Senators When we fail to see that republicanism he is not fit to breathe the free air of heav- means nothing, that liberty means nothing en or of this free Republic; but your mur- but the unrestrained license of the mobs to derers of thirty-five hundred people for do as they please, then republican governpolitical offenses are fit to breathe the air ment is a failure. Liberty of the citizen of this country and are defended on this means the right to exercise such rights as floor to-day, and they are defended here are prescribed within the limits of the law by the democratic party, and you cannot so that he does not in the exercise of these avoid or escape the proposition. You have rights infringe the rights of other citizens. denounced republicans for trying to keep But the definition is not well made by our the peace in Louisiana; you have de- friends on the opposite side of this Chamnounced the Administration for trying to ber. Their idea of liberty is license; it is suppress bloodshed in Louisiana; you have not liberty, but it is license. License to do denounced all for the same purpose; but what? License to violate law, to trample not one word has fallen from the lips of a constitutions under foot, to take life, to solitary democratic Senator denouncing take property, to use the bludgeon and the these wholesale murders in Louisiana. gun or anything else for the purpose of You have said, "I am sorry these things giving themselves power. What statesman are done," but you have defended the ever heard of that as a definition of liberty? White Leagues; you have defended Penn; What man in a civilized age has ever heard you have defended rebellion; and you of liberty being the unrestrained license of stand here to-day the apologists of murder, the people to do as they please without any of rebellion, and of treason in that State. I restraint of law or of authority? No man,

no not one until we found the democratic | South. Let me ask you how has it tyranparty, would advocate this proposition and indorse and encourage this kind of license in a free country.

Mr. President, I have perhaps said more on this question of Louisiana than might have been well for me to say on account of my strength, but what I have said about it I have said because I honestly believed it. What I have said in reference to it comes from an honest conviction in my mind and in my heart of what has been done to suppress violence and wrong. But I have a few remarks in conclusion to submit now to my friends on the other side, in answer to what they have said not by way of argument but by way of accusation. You say to us-I had it repeated to me this morning in private conversation-"Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace." Ah, I heard it said on this floor once "Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and your State government will not last a minute." I heard that said from the opposite side of the Chamber, and now you say "Withdraw your troops from Louisiana and you will have peace.'

Mr. President, I dislike to refer to things that are past and gone; I dislike to have my mind called back to things of the past; but I well remember the voice in this Chamber once that rang out and was heard throughout this land, "Withdraw your troops from Fort Sumter if you want peace." I heard that said. Now it is "Withdraw your troops from Louisiana if you want peace." Yes, I say, withdraw your troops from Louisiana if you want a revolution, and that is what is meant. But, sir, we are told, and doubtless it is believed by the Senators who tell us so, who denounce the republican party, that it is tyrannical, oppressive, and outrageous. They have argued themselves into the idea that they are patriots, pure and undefiled, They have argued themselves into the idea that the democratic party never did any wrong. They have been out of power so long that they have convinced themselves that if they only had control of this country for a short time, what a glorious country they would make it. They had control for nearly forty long years, and while they were the agents of this country-I appeal to history to bear me out-they made the Government a bankrupt, with rebellion and treason in the land, and were then sympathizing with it wherever it existed. That is the condition in which they left the country when they had it in their possession and within their control. But they say the republican party is a tyrant; that it is oppressive. As I have said, I wish to make a few suggestions to my friends in answer to this accusation-oppressive to whom? They say to the South, that the republican party has tyrannized over the

nized over the South? Without speaking of our troubles and trials through which we passed, I will say this: at the end of a rebellion that scourged this land, that drenched it with blood, that devastated a portion of it, left us in debt and almost bankrupt, what did the republican party do? Instead of leaving these our friends and citizens to-day in a territorial condition where we might exercise jurisdiction over them for the next coming twenty years, where we might have deprived them of the rights of members on this floor, what did we do? We reorganized them into States, admitted them back into the Union, and through the clemency of the republican party we admitted representatives on this floor who had thundered against the gates of liberty for four bloody years. Is that the tyranny and oppression of which you complain at the hands of the republican party? Is that a part of our oppression against you southern people?

Let us go a little further. When the armed democracy, for that is what they were, laid down their arms in the Southern States, after disputing the right of freedom and liberty in this land for four years, how did the republican party show itself in its acts of tyranny and oppression toward you? You appealed to them for clemency. Did you get it? Not a man was punished for his treason. Not a man ever knocked at the doors of a republican Congress for a pardon who did not get it. Not a man ever petitioned the generosity of the republican party to be excused for his crimes who was not excused. Was that oppression upon the part of the republicans in this land? Is that a part of the oppression of which you accuse us?

Let us look a little further. We find to-day twenty-seven democratic Representatives in the other branch of Congress who took arms in their hands and tried to destroy this Government holding commissions there by the clemency of the republican party. We find in this Chamber by the clemency of the republican party three Senators who held such commissions. Is that tyranny; is that oppression; is that the outrage of this republican party on you southern people? Sir, when Jeff Davis, the head of the great rebellion, who roams the land free as air, North, South, East, and West, makes democratic speeches wherever invited, and the vice-president of the southern rebellion holds his seat in the other House of Congress, are we to be told that we are tyrants, and oppressing the southern people? These things may sound a little harsh, but it is time to tell the truth in this country. The time has come to talk facts. The time has come when cowards should hide, and honest men should come to the front and tell you plain,

honest truths. You of the South talk to is in the power of the democratic party us about oppressing you. You drenched to-day but to speak in tones of majesty, of your land in blood, caused weeping honor, and justice in favor of human life, throughout this vast domain, covered the and your Ku-Klux and murderers will land in weeds of mourning both North and stop. But you do not do it; and that is South, widowed thousands and orphaned the reason they do not stop. In States many, made the pension-roll as long as an where it has been done they have stopped. army-list, made the debt that grinds the But it will not do to oppress those people; poor of this land-for all these things you it will not do to make them submit and have been pardoned, and yet you talk to subject them to the law; it will not do to us about oppression. So much for the op- stop these gentlemen in their daily sports pression of the republican party of your and in their lively recreations. They are patriotic souls and selves. Next comes the White Leagues; they are banded together President of the United States. He is a as gentlemen; they are of southern blood; tyrant, too. He is an oppressor still, in they are of old southern stock; they are conjunction with the republican party. the chivalry of days gone by; they are Oppressor of what? Who has he oppressed knights of the bloody shield; and the of your Southern people, and when, and shield must not be taken from them. Sirs, where? When your Ku-Klux, banded to- their shield will be taken from them; this gether for murder and plunder in the country will be aroused to its danger; this Southern States, were convicted by their country will be aroused to do justice to its own confession, your own representatives citizens; and when it does, the perpetratpleaded to the President and said, "Give ors of crime may fear and tremble. Tythem pardon, and it will reconcile many ranny and oppression! A people who of the southern people." The President without one word of opposition allows men pardoned them; pardoned them of their who have been the enemies of a governmurder, of their plunder, of their piracy ment to come into these legislative Halls on land; and for this I suppose he is a and make laws for that government to be tyrant. told that they are oppressors is a monstrosity in declamation and assertion. Who ever heard of such a thing before? Who ever believed that such men could make such charges? Yet we are tyrants!

More than that, sir, this tyrant in the White House has done more for you southern people than you ought to have asked him to do. He has had confidence in you until you betrayed that confidence. He has not only pardoned the offences of the South, pardoned the criminals of the democratic party, but he has placed in high official position in this Union some of the leading men who fought in the rebellion. He has put in his Cabinet one of your men; he has made governors of Territories of some of your leading men who fought in the rebellion; he has sent on foreign missions abroad some of your men who warred against this country; he has placed others in the Departments; and has tried to reconcile you in every way on earth, by appealing to your people, by recognizing them and forgiving them for their offenses, and for these acts of generosity, for these acts of kindness, he is arraigned to-day as a Cæsar, as a tyrant, as an oppressor.

Such kindness in return as the President has received from these people will mark itself in the history of generosity. O, but say they, Grant wants to oppress the While Leagues in Louisiana; therefore he is an oppressor. Yes, Mr. President, Grant does desire that these men should quit their every-day chivalric sports of gunning upon negroes and republicans. He asks kindly that you stop it. He says to you, "That is all I want you to do;" and you say that you are desirous that they shall quit it. You have but to say it and they will quit it. It is because you have never said it that they have not quit it. It

Mr. President, the reading of the title of that bill from the House only reminds me of more acts of tyranny and oppression of the republican party, and there is a continuation of the same great offenses constantly going on in this Chamber. But some may say "It is strange to see Logan defending the President of the United States." It is not strange to me. I can disagree with the President when I think he is wrong; and I do not blame him for disagreeing with me; but when these attacks are made, coming from where they do, I am ready to stand from the rising sun in the morning to the setting sun in the evening to defend every act of his in connection with this matter before us.

I may have disagreed with President Grant in many things; but I was calling attention to the men who have been accusing him here, on this floor, on the stump, and in the cther House; the kind of men who do it, the manner of its doing, the sharpness of the shafts that are sent at him, the poisonous barbs that they bear with them, and from these men who, at his hands, have received more clemency than any men ever received at the hands of any President or any man who governed a country. Why, sir, I will appeal to the soldiers of the rebel army to testify in behalf of what I say in defense of President Grant-the honorable men who fought against the country, if there was honor in

when it does it, your duty is plain and simple, and as the President has told you, he will perform his without fear, favor, or affection. Recognize the government that revolution has been against and intended to overthrow, and leave the President to his duty, and he will do it. That is what to do.

doing it. What will be their testimony? | nized him. The duty is plain, and that is It will be that he captured your armed de- for this, the other branch of Congress, to mocracy of the South, he treated them do it, and that settles the question. Then, kindly, turned them loose, with their horses, with their wagons, with their provisions; treated them as men, and not as pirates. Grant built no prison-pens for the southern soldiers; Grant provided no starvation for southern men; Grant provided no dead-lines" upon which to shoot southern soldiers if they crossed them; Grant provided no outrageous punishment against these people that now call him a tyrant. Generous to a fault in all his actions toward the men who were fighting his country and destroying the constitution, that man to-day is denounced as a very Cæsar!

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Sherman has not been denounced, but the only reason is that he was not one of the actors in this transaction; but I want now to say to my friends on the other side, especially to my friend from Delaware, who repeated his bitter denunciation against Sheridan yesterday—and I say this in all kindness, because I am speaking what future history will bear me out inwhen Sheridan and Grant and Sherman, and others like them, are forgotten in this country, you will have no country. When the democratic party is rotten for centuries in its grave, the life, the course, the conduct of these men will live as bright as the noonday sun in the heart of every patriot of a republic like the American Union. Sirs, you may talk about tyranny, you may talk about oppression, you may denounce these men; their glory may fade into the darkness of night; but that darkness will be a brilliant light compared with the darkness of the democratic party. Their pathway is illuminated by glory; yours by dark deeds against the Government. That is a difference which the country will bear witness to in future history when speaking of this country and the actors on its stage.

If we

Sir, we have been told that this old craft is rapidly going to pieces; that the angry waves of dissension in the land are lashing against her sides. We are told that she is sinking, sinking, sinking to the bottom of the political ocean. Is that true? Is it true that this gallant old party, that this gallant old ship that has sailed through troubled seas before is going to be stranded now upon the rock of fury that has been set up by a clamor in this Chamber and a few newspapers in the country? Is it true that the party that saved this country in all its great crises, in all its great trials, is sinking to-day on account of its fear and trembling before an inferior enemy? I hope not. I remember, si once I was told that the old republican ship was gone; but when I steadied myself on the shores bounding the political ocean of strife and commotion, I looked afar off and there I could see a vessel bounding the boisterous billows with white sails unfurled, marked on her sides "Freighted with the hopes of mankind," while the great Mariner above, as her helmsman, steered her, navigated her to a haven of rest, of peace, and of safety. You have but to look again upon that broad ocean of political commotion to-day, and the time will soon come when the same old craft, provided with the same cargo, will be seen, flying the same flag, passing through these tempestuous waves, anchoring herself at the shores of honesty and justice, and there she will lie undisturbed by strife and tumult, again in peace and safety. [Manifestations of applause in the galleries.]

On the False Issue raised by the Democratic Party, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, Monday, April 14, 1879.

Now, Mr. President, I have a word to say about our duty. A great many people are asking, what shall we do? Plain and simple in my judgment is the proposition. I say to republicans, do not be scared. No Speech of Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine, man is ever hurt by doing an honest act and performing a patriotic duty. are to have a war of words outside or inside, let us have them in truth and soberness, but in earnest. What then is our duty? I did not believe that in 1872 there were official data upon which we could decide who was elected governor of Louisiana. But this is not the point of my argument. It is that the President has recognized Kellogg as governor of that State, and he has acted for two years. The Legislature of the State has recognized him; the supreme court of the State has recognized him; one branch of Congress has recog

The Senate having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1,) making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1880, and for other purposes

Mr. Blaine said:

Mr. PRESIDENT: The existing section of the Revised Statutes numbered 2002 reads thus:

No military or naval officer, or other person engaged in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, shall

order, bring, keep or have under his authority or control, any troops or armed men at the place where any general or special election is held in any State, unless it be necessary to repel the armed enemies of the United States, or to keep the peace at the polls.

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at the polls. The republican party did it with the Senate and the House in their control. Abraham Lincoln signed it when he was Commander-in-Chief of an army larger than ever Napoleon Bonaparte had at his command. So much by way of correcting an ingenious and studied attempt at misrepresentation.

The object of the proposed section, which has just been read at the Clerk's desk, is The alleged object is to strike out the to get rid of the eight closing words, name- few words that authorize the use of troops ly, or to keep the peace at the polls," ,"to keep peace at the polls. This country and therefore the mode of legislation pro- has been alarmed, I rather think indeed posed in the Army bill now before the amused, at the great effort made to create Senate is an unusual mode; it is an extra- a widespread impression that the republiordinary mode. If you want to take off a can party relies for its popular strength single sentence at the end of a section in upon the use of the bayonet. This demothe Revised Statutes the ordinary way is cratic Congress has attempted to give a to strike off those words, but the mode bad name to this country throughout the chosen in this bill is to repeat and re-en-civilized world, and to give it on a false act the whole section leaving those few issue. They have raised an issue that has words out. While I do not wish to be no foundation in fact that is false in needlessly suspicious on a small point I whole and detail, false in the charge, false am quite persuaded that this did not hap-in all the specifications. That impression pen by accident but that it came by design. If I may so speak it came of cunning, the intent being to create the impression that whereas the republicans in the administration of the General Government had been using troops right and left, hither and thither, in every direction, as soon as the democrats got power they enacted this section. I can imagine democratic candidates for Congress all over the country reading this section to gaping and listening audiences as one of the first offsprings of democratic reform, whereas every word of it, every syllable of it, from its first to its last, is the enactment of a republican Congress.

sought to be created, as I say, not only throughout the North American continent but in Europe to-day, is that elections are attempted in this country to be controlled by the bayonet.

I denounce it here as a false issue. I am not at liberty to say that any gentleman making this issue knows it to be false; I hope he does not; but I am going to prove to him that it is false, and that there is not a solitary inch of solid earth on which to rest the foot of any man who makes that issue. I have in my hand an official transcript of the location and the number of all the troops of the United States east of Omaha. By "east of Omaha," I mean all I repeat that this unusual form presents the United States east of the Mississippi a dishonest issue, whether so intended or river and that belt of States that border not. It presents the issue that as soon as the Mississippi river on the west, includthe democrats got possession of the Fed-ing forty-one million at least out of the eral Government they proceeded to enact forty-five million of people that this counthe clause which is thus expressed. The try is supposed to contain to-day. In that law was passed by a republican Congress magnificent area, I will not pretend to in 1865. There were forty-six Senators sitting in this Chamber at that time, of whom only ten or at most eleven were democrats. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly republican. We were in the midst of a war. The republican administration had a million or possibly twelve hundred thousand bayonets at its command. Thus circumstanced and thus surrounded, with the amplest possible From the headwaters of the Mississippi power to interfere with elections had they River to the lakes, and down the great so designed, with soldiers in every hamlet chain of lakes, and down the Saint Lawand county of the United States, the re-rence and down the valley of the Saint publican party themselves placed that provision on the statute-book, and Abraham Lincoln, their President, signed it.

I beg you to observe, Mr. President, that this is the first instance in the legislation of the United States in which any restrictive clause whatever was put upon the statute-book in regard to the use of troops

state its extent, but with forty-one million people, how many troops of the United States are there to-day? Would any Senator on the opposite side like to guess, or would he like to state how many men with muskets in their hands there are in the vast area I have named? There are two thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven! And not one more.

John and down the St. Croix striking the Atlantic Ocean and following it down to Key West, around the Gulf, up to the mouth of the Mississippi again, a frontier of eight thousand miles either bordering on the ocean or upon foreign territory is guarded by these troops. Within this domain forty-five fortifications are manned

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