ters, may be united in the same bill. With somewhat of monotonous and ostentatious iteration we have been asked whether in corporating general legislation in appropriation bills is revolution, or revolutionary? No one in my hearing has ever so contended.

steamboat. The votes and the executive approval which would make one of these provisions a law, would make them all a law. The proceeding would be outlandish, but it would not violate the Constitution.

which the members of each House hold] wishes to seem and is determined to seem their places and their trusts, irreparable arraigned, merely for insisting that proharm may come of their acts and omis- visions appropriating money to keep the sions, before they can be visited with even Government alive, and provisions not in political defeat, and before the wrong themselves improper relating to other matthey do can be undone. A congressional majority is absolutely safe during its term, and those who suffered such impunity to exist in the frame of our Government, must have relied on the enormity and turpitude of the act to deter the representatives of the people and the representatives of States from betraying a trust so Each House is empowered by the Conexalted and so sacred as their offices imply. stitution to make rules governing the Mr. President, it does not escape my at- modes of its own procedure. The rules tention, as it must occur to those around permitting, I know of nothing except conme, that in ordinary times obvious apho- venience, common sense, and the danger risms, I might say truisms like these would of log-rolling combinations, which forbids be needless, if not out of place in the Sen- putting all the appropriations into one ate. They are pertinent now because bill, and in the same bill, all the revenue of an occasion without example in Ameri- laws, a provision admitting a State into can history. I know of no similar instance the Union, another paying a pension to a in British history. Could one be found, widow, another changing the name of a it would only mark the difference between an hereditary monarchy without a written constitution, and a free republic with a written charter plainly defining from the beginning the powers, the rights, and the duties of every department of the Government. The nearest approaches in English A Senator might vote against such a experience to the transactions which now huddle of incongruities, although separatemenace this country, only gild with broadly he would approve each one of them. If, light the wisdom of those who established a system to exempt America forever from the struggles between kingcraft and liberty, between aristocratic pretensions and human rights, which in succeeding centuries had checkered and begrimed the annals of Great Britain. It was not to transplant, but to leave behind and shut out the usurpations and prerogatives of kings, The assault which has been made on the nobles, and gentry, and the rude and vio- executive branch of the Government and lent resorts which, with varying and only on the Constitution itself, would not be partial success, had been matched against less flagrant if separate bills had been rethem, that wise and far-seeing men of sorted to as the weapons of attack. Supmany nationalities came to these shores pose in a separate bill, the majority had, in and founded "a government of the people, advance of the appropriations, repealed for the people, and by the people." Such the national-bank act and the resumption boisterous conflicts as the Old World had act, and had declared that unless the Exewitnessed between subjects and rulers-cutive surrendered his convictions and between privilege and right, were the yielded up his approval of the repealing warnings which our fathers heeded, the act, no appropriations should be made; dangers which they shunned, the evils which they averted, the disasters which they made impossible so long as their posterity should cherish their inheritance.

Until now no madness of party, no audacity or desperation of sinister, sectional, or partisan design, has ever ventured on such an attempt as has recently come to pass in the two Houses of Congress. The proceeding I mean to characterize, if misunderstood anywhere, is misunderstood here. One listening to addresses delivered to the Senate during this debate, as it is called, must think that the majority is arraigned, certainly that the majority

however, they passed both Houses in a bunch, and the Executive found no objection to any feature of the bill on its merits, and the only criticism should be that it would have been better legislative practice to divide it into separate enactments, it is not easy to see on what ground a veto could stand.

would the separation of the bills have palliated or condoned the revolutionary purpose? In the absence of an avowal that appropriations were to be finally withheld, or that appropriations were to be made to hinge upon the approval or veto of something else, a resort to separate bills might have cloaked and secreted for a time the real meaning of the transaction. In that respect it would have been wise and artful to resort to separate bills on this occasion; and I speak, I think, in the hearing of at least one democratic Senator who did not overlook in advance the suggession now made. But when it was declared, or in

cient acts of Congress, one of them signed by George Washington. Shorn of this absurdity, the bill as it now stands, should it become a law, will be the first enactment of its kind that ever found its way into the statutes of the United States. A century, with all its activities and party strifes, with all its passionate discords, with all its expedients for party advantage, with all its wisdom and its folly, with all its patriotism and its treason, has never till now produced a congressional majority which deemed such a statute fit to be enacted.

and fraud, and blood, and that the nation shall not confront them with one armed man. State troops, whether under the name of rifle clubs or white leagues, or any other, armed with the muskets of the United States, may ccastitute the mob, may incite the mob, but the national arm is to be tied and palsied.

I repeat such an act of Congress has never yet existed. If there ever was a time when such an act could safely and fitly stand upon the statute-book, that time is not now, and is not likely to arrive in the near future. Until rebellion raised its iron hand, all parties and all sections had been content to leave where the Constitution left it the power and duty of the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The Constitution has in this regard three plain commands:

The President "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Let me state the meaning of the amendments proposed under guise of enlarging liberty on election day-that day of days when order, peace, and security for all, as well as liberty, should reign. The amendments declare in plain legal effect that, no matter what the exigency may be, no matter what violence or carnage may run riot and trample down right and life, no matter what mob brutality may become master, if the day be election day, any officer or person, civil, military, or naval, from the President down, who attempts to interfere, to prevent or quell violence by the aid of national soldiers, or armed men not soldiers, shall be punished, and may be fined "The actual service of the United $5,000 and imprisoned for five years. This States" some man may say means war is the law we are required to set up. Yes, merely, service in time of war. Let me read not only to leave murderous ruffianism un- again, "Congress shall have power to protouched, but to invite it into action by as-vide for calling forth the militia." For surances of safety in advance. what? First of all, "to execute the laws of the Union."

Again, "The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States."

In the city of New York, all the thugs and shoulder-hitters and repeaters, all the Yes, Congress shall have power "to procarriers of slung-shot, dirks, and blud- vide for calling forth the militia to execute geons, all the fraternity of the bucket- the laws of the Union." Speaking to lawshops, the rat-pits, the hells and the yers, I venture to emphasize the word slums, all the graduates of the nurseries" execute." It is a term of art; it has a of modern so-called democracy, [laughter;] long-defined meaning. The act of 1795, all those who employ and incite them, from re-enacted since, emphasized these constiKing's Bridge to the Battery, are to be told tutional provisions. in advance that on the day when the mil-* lion people around them choose their The election law came in to correct members of the National Legislature, no abuses which reached their climax in 1868 matter what God-daring or man-hurting enormities they may commit, no matter what they do, nothing that they can do will meet with the slightest resistance from any national soldier or armed man clothed with national authority.

Another bill, already on our tables, strikes down even police officers armed, or unarmed, of the United States.

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in the city of New York. In that year in the State of New York the republican candidate for governor was elected; the democratic candidate was counted in. Members of the Legislature were fraudulently seated. The election was a barbarous burlesque. Many thousand forged naturalization papers were issued; some of them were white and some were coffee-col

In South Carolina, in Louisiana, in Mis-ored. The same witnesses purported to sissippi, and in the other States where the colored citizens are counted to swell the representation in Congress, and then robbed of their ballots and dismissed from the political sun-in all such States, every rifle club, and white league, and murderous band, and every tissue ballot-box stuffer, night-rider, and law-breaker, is to be told that they may turn national elections into a bloody farce, that they may choke the whole proceeding with force

attest hundreds and thousands of naturalization affidavits, and the stupendous fraud of the whole thing was and is an open secret. Some of these naturalization papers were sent to other States. So plenty were they, that some of them were sent to Germany, and Germans who had never left their country claimed exemption from the German draft for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian war, because they were naturalized American citizens! [Laughter.]

has pleased the honorable Senator from Delaware to read. The election thus protected was the fairest, the freest, the most secure, a generation has seen. When, two years afterward, New York came to crown Grant with her vote, his action in protect

ber, 1870, was not forgotten. When next New York has occasion to record her judg ment of the services of Grant, his action in 1870 touching peace in the city of New York will not be hidden away by those who espouse him wisely. [Applause in the galleries.]

Repeating, ballot-box stuffing, ruffian- | a continent beyond the sea rose and unism, and false counting decided every- covered before him, [applause in the gallething. Tweed made the election officers, ries,] he responded in the orders which it and the election officers were corrupt. In 1868, thirty thousand votes were falsely added to the democratic majority in the cities of New York and Brooklyn alone. Taxes and elections were the mere spoil and booty of a corrupt junta in Tammany Hall. Assessments, exactions, and ex-ing her chief city on the Ides of Novememptions were made the bribes and the penalties of political submission. Usurpation and fraud inaugurated a carnival of corrupt disorder; and obscene birds without number swooped down to the harvest and gorged themselves on every side in plunder and spoliation. Wrongs and usurpations springing from the pollution and Now, the election law is to be emascudesecration of the ballot-box stalked high-lated; no national soldier must confront headed in the public way. The courts and rioters or mobs; no armed man by nationthe machinery of justice were impotent in al authority, though not a soldier, must the presence of culprits too great to be stay the tide of brutality or force; no deppunished. uty marshal must be within call; no supervisor must have power to arrest an man who in his sight commits the most flagrant breach of the peace. But the democrats tell us "we have not abolished the supervisors; we have left them." Yes, the legislative bill leaves the supervisors, two stool-pigeons with their wings clipped, [laughter,] two licensed witnesses to stand about idle, and look-yes, “a cat may look at a king"--but they must not touch bullies or lawbreakers, not if they do murders right before their eyes.

The act of 1870 came in to throttle such abuses. It was not born without throes and pangs. It passed the Senate after a day and a night which rang with democratic maledictions and foul aspersions.

see an affray or a riot at the polls on election day and call upon the bystanders to quell it, if this bill becomes a law, and one of those bystanders has a revolver in his pocket, or another one takes a stick or a cudgel in his hand, the marshal may be fined $5,000 and punished by five years' imprisonment.

In the autumn of that year an election was held for the choice of Representatives in Congress. I see more than one friend near me who for himself and for others has reason even unto this day to remember that election and the apprehension which preceded it. It was the first time the law of 1870 had been put in force. Resistance If a civil officer should, under the pendwas openly counseled. Democratic news- ing amendment, attempt to quell a riot by papers in New York advised that the offi- calling on the bystanders, if they have cers of the law be pitched into the river. arms, he is punishable for that. If a marDisorder was afoot. Men, not wanting in shal, the marshal of the district in which bravery, and not republicans, dreaded the the election occurs, the marshal nominated day. Bloodshed, arson, riot were feared. to the Senate and confirmed by the Senate Ghastly spectacles were still fresh in mem--I do not mean a deputy marshal-should ory. The draft riots had spread terror which had never died, and strong men shuddered when they remembered the bloody assizes of the democratic party. They had seen men and women, blind with party hate, dizzy and drunk with party madness, stab and burn and revel in murder and in mutilating the dead. They had seen an asylum for colored orphans made a funeral pile, and its smoke sent up from their Christian and imperial city to tell in heaven of the inhuman bigotry, the Lorrible barbarity of man. Remembering such sickening scenes, and dreading their repetition, they asked the President to protect them to protect them with the beak and claw of national power. Instantly the unkenneled packs of party barked in vengeful chorus. Imprecations, maledictions, and threats were hurled at Grant; but with that splendid courage which never blanched in battle, which never quaked before clamor-with that matchless selfpoise which did not desert him even when

Such are the devices to belittle national authority and national law, to turn the idea of the sovereignty of the nation into a laughing-stock and a by-word.

Under what pretexts is this uprooting and overturning to be? Any officer who transgresses the law, be he civil or military, may be punished in the courts of the State or in the courts of the nation under exist ing law. Is the election act unconstitu tional? The courts for ten years have been open to that question. The law has been pounded with all the hammers of the lawyers, but it has stood the test; no court has pronounced it unconstitutional, although many men have been prosecuted

and convicted under it. Judge Woodruff and Judge Blatchford have vindicated its constitutionality. But, as I said before, the constitutional argument has been abandoned. The supreme political court, practically now above Congresses or even constitutions, the democratic caucus, has decided that the law is constitutional. The record of the judgment is in the legislative bill.

We are told it costs money to enforce the law. Yes, it costs money to enforce all laws; it costs money to prosecute smugglers, counterfeiters, murderers, mail robbers and others. We have been informed that it has cost $200,000 to execute the election act. It cost more than $5,000,000,000 in money alone, to preserve our institutions and our laws, in one war, and the nation which bled and the nation which paid is not likely to give up its institutions and the birthright of its citizens for $200,000. [Applause in the galleries.]

elections to decide that a State should be slave and should not be free; that party which has corraled courts of justice with national bayonets, and hunted panting fugitive slaves, in peaceful communities, with artillery and dragoons; that party which would have to-day no majority in either House of Congress except for elections dominated and decided by violence and fraud; that party under whose sway, in several States, not only the right to vote, but the right to be, is now trampled under foot.

Such is the source of an insulting summons to the Executive to become particeps criminis in prostrating wholesome laws, and this is the condition on which the money of the people, paid by the people, shall be permitted to be used for the purposes for which the people paid it.

Has the present national Administration been officiously robust in checking the encroachments and turbulence of democrats, either by the use of troops or otherwise? I ask this question because the next election is to occur during the term of the pres

The presiding officer, (Mr. COCKRELL, in the chair.) The Senator will suspend a moment. The chair will announce to the galleries that there shall be no more ap-ent Administration. plause; if so, the galleries will be cleared immediately.

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, that interruption reminds me, the present occupant of the chair having been deeply interested in the bill, that the appropriations made and squandered for local and unlawful improvements in the last river and harbor bill alone, would pay for executing the election law as long as grass grows or water runs. The interest on the money wrongfully squandered in that one bill, would execute it twice over perpetually. The cost of this needless extra session, brought about as a partisan contrivance, would execute the election law for a great while. A better way to save the cost, than to repeal the law, is to obey it. Let White Leagues and rifle clubs disband; let your night-riders dismount; let your tissue ballot-box stuffers desist; let repeaters, falsecounters, and ruffians no longer be employed to carry elections, and then the cost of executing the law will disappear from the public ledger.

What is the need of revolutionary measures now? What is all this uproar and commotion, this daring venture of partisan experiment, for? Why not make your issue against these laws, and carry your issue to the people? If you can elect a President and a Congress of your thinking, you will have it all your own way.

Why now should there be an attempt to block the wheels of government on the eve of an election at which this whole question is triable before the principals and masters of us all? The answer is inevitable. But one truthful explanation can be made of this daring enterprise. It is a political, a partisan manœuvre. It is a strike for party advantage. With a fair election and an honest count, the democratic party cannot carry the country. These laws, if executed, insure some approach to a fair election. Therefore they stand in the way, and therefore they are to be broken down.

I reflect upon no man's motives, but I believe that the sentiment whieh finds exAgain we are told that forty-five million pression in the transaction now proceeding people are in danger from an army nomi- in the two houses of Congress, has its orinally of twenty-five thousand men scat- gin in the idea I have stated. I believe tered over a continent, most of them be- that the managers and charioteers of the yond the frontiers of civilized abode. Mil- democratic party think that with a fair itary power has become an affrighting election and a fair count they cannot carry specter. Soldiers at the polls are displeas- the State of New York. They know that ing to a political party. What party? with free course, such as existed in 1868, That party whose Administration ordered to the ballot-box and count, no matter soldiers, who obeyed, to shoot down and kill unoffending citizens here in the streets of Washington on election day; that party which has arrested and dispersed Legislatures at the point of the bayonet; that party which has employed troops to carry

what majority may be given in that State where the green grass grows, the great cities will overbalance and swamp it. They know that with the ability to give eighty, ninety, one hundred thousand majority in the county of New York and the county of