Los Angeles daily herald., 1876-01-23


have had that effect, without any cor
responding benefit Hill quoted a
letter from Junius Henri Browne, in
the Tribune, stating that General But
Ter said in speech at Lowell, Massa-
chusetts, that he had been prompted
by Stanton to put forward the negro
question in order to complicate the ex-
change of prisoners; Browns COM
ment being that Stanton was the dig
ger of the unnumbered graves which
crowded the vicinity of nearly every
Southern prison with never-to-be-for-
gotten horrors. He summed up his
argument, and said, What have /
proved? l have proved that the Fed
eral authorities broke cartel deliber-
ately; that they refused to reopen car
tel when approached by Mr.. Stephens
as a Commissioner solely on the
ground of humanity. l have proved
that they made medicine contraband
of war, and thereby left us to the dread
necessity of supplying prisoners such
medicine as could be imprOvised in the
Confederacy. That they refused TO al
low their ewn surgeons to accompany
their prisoners to the South. That
the Confederate authorities proposed
to return sick and wounded, without
equivalent, in August 1864; that you
never deigned reply till December,
1864; that your high officers in COM
mand gave as the reason why they
would not exchange, that it would be
humane to the prisoners but cruelty
to soldiers in the field. 1t was part
of your military policy to let your
-;e hnt ha
Confederacy should increase its mill"
tary force. That with all the horrors
you have made such noise about as
occurring at Andersonville; greater
horrors occurred In prisons where you
held our troops, and that the percent
age of deaths was per cent. greater
among OUR prisoners in your hands
than among yours in our hands.
When the gentleman from Maine rises
again to give birth to that unmiti-
gated effusion of genius, without fact
to sustain it, in which he says: "And
here, before my God, measuring my
words, knowing their full intent, L
declare that neither the deeds of the
Duke of Alva in the Low Countries,
nor the massacre at Saint Bartholo-
NEW, nor the thumb-screws and ell
gines of torture of the Spanish Inqui-
sition, begin to compare in atrocity
with the hideous crime of Anderson
ville," let him add land the atrocities
there do not compare with those at
Elmira, Fort Douglas or Fort Della
ware; and of all, both at Anderson
vile and Elmira, the Confederate Gov
ernment stards acquitted from all re-
sponsibility and blame.n Hill then
quoted from the speech of Jefferson
Davis to Confederate soldiers after the
retreat of General Mcclellan from be-
fore Richmond, in which he said,
"The crowning glory of our soldiers is
their humanity to the wounded and
to the prisoners who have fallen into
their hands.n He also referred to the
fact that the Richmond Examiner,
which Blaine had quoted as authority
against Davis, had stated that the hui
manity and generosity of Davis would
ruin the Confederacy. The gentleman
from Maine introduced that witness
to prove Davis guilty of inhumanity,
but the witness said the humanity of
Davis would ruin the Confederacy.
My message to the gentleman from
Maine is this: There are no Confed-
crates in this House; no Confederate
ambitions, desires or purposes in this
House; but the South is here, and here
she intends to remain. Enthusiastic
demonstrations on the Democratic
side, and in the galleries. Let fanat-
icism do its work. Let it pass it's null
lifying Act; trample on the Constitu-
ton; abnegate the pledges of our
fathers; incite raids on our people;
multiply infidelities, till they shall be
as the stars of heaven or as the sands
of the seashore, without number; but
know, for all these your iniquities,
the South will never again seek her
remedy in the madness of another Sc.
cession. Renewed applause. ] We
are here; we are in our fathers house;
in the house of our brothers, our COM
panions. We are at home, thank God!
Enthusiastic applause. We come to
crafty no vengeance, to retaliate no
wrongs, to resent no past insults, to
reopen no strife. We come with pa
triOtic purpose, to do whatever in our
power shall be to restore an honest,
economical and constitutional admin
istration of the Government We
come, charging on the Union no wrong
to us. The Union never wrOnged the
South. The Union has been an un-
mixed blessing to every section, every
State, every man of every color, in
America. We charge all our wrongs
to that higher-law fanaticism, which
never kept a pledge or law. We
sought to leave the association Of those
who would not keep fidelity to a cove
nant. We sought to go by ourselves;
but SO far from having lost fidelity to
the Constitution, we hugged it to our
bosom, and carried il witt us. With
the brave Union meii OF the North
followers of Webster aud Fillmore,
sCass ssandIDouglas, you who fought for
the Union for the sake of The Union,
you who ceased to fight when the bat
tie was ended and the sword sheathed
with you we have no quarrel. We
felt your heavy arm in the midst of
cannon we heard your voice of kind
ness, calling upon us as brothers to
come back. We are here, to cooper
ate with you, to do whatever we can,
in spite of all our sorrows, to rebuild
the Union; to restore peace to the
country; to make the American Union
what our fathers intended it should
be, the glory of America and bless
ing to- humanity. But you, gentle
man, who prosecuted us by your inf
deities until you drove us out of the
Union, you who then claimed to be
the only friends of the Union, which
you had before denounced as league
with death and covenant with hell,
you who follow up the war when the
soldiers who fought it have made peace
and gone to their homes-to you we