Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-03-14
AT THE CAPITAL.
The Southern Question in
the Senate.
A HOT DEBATE PRECIPITATED.
HOar, Sherman, Eustis and Butler
Participating-StrOng Sec
tiOnal Feelings.

Associated Press Dispatches to THE HERALD
WASHINGTON March 13.-The House
bill for bridges across the Columbia
river, between Washington and Oregon,
(similar to the Senate bill passed and
sent to the House, was reported ba OK
from the committee ON commerce.,
amended by few verbal changes, and
passed, conference being asked.
The committee on commerce reported
bill to repeal a law of the last Con.
gress, requiring steamships TO carry guys
and rockets for casting lines in cases of
distress. The object of this, it was stated,
was to do a way with the extortion prac.
ticed by the patentees of these appli-
ances under the law, as it now stands.
The bill was placed on the calendar.
The Senate then proceeded to the
calendar and passed bills for public
buildings as follows: Stockton, Califor-
mia, So, 900; Mammoth Hot Springs, in
the Yellowstone national park, $4,000;
Virginia City, Nevada, $75 900; The
Dalles. Oregon. 100000; Salem, Ore
gon, $l00, 900; Reno, Nevada, $4,000.
All the foregoing were Senate bills.
Eustis took the floor and referred to
one of them being that in the State of
Louisiana and some other States there
were laws which made it a penal Of
fense for white man to associate
on terms of equality with negroes.
Another was to the effect that there was
alaw which provided for the sale of any
colored man found for certain time out
of work, and that former masters should
have the preference in the purchase.
He denied emphatically that there was
any such law in Louisiana, and spoke of
the recklessness and destitution of
sense OF responsibility with which the
Repu ublican Senators spoke of Southern
affairs.
Hoar said he might have erred as to
the State in which such law was
passed, but quoted them substantially
from the laws of Mississippi passed in
1869. He thought substantially the
same law had been enacted in Louis
lana.
The Educational bill then came up,
and Blair made brief address. He also
read an extract from O speech of Presi-
dent Harrison when Senator in 1885,
favoring the bill, and said the President
held the same sentiments today.
The Southern question came up again,
and Hoar admitted that his statement
about the laws of Louisiana was incor.
rect.
Sherman asked Eustis whether he did
not know that the fifteenth amendment
never would have been proposed but for
the fact that the laws of the Southern
States were depriving the negro of the
rights of citizenship.
Eustis replied that it was his honest
conviction that all the reconstruction
measures were adopted by the Republi-
can party with the single object of Afri-
canizing the South and maintaining pol
itical supremacy, and characterized it as
the greatest crime ever com mitted
against civilized communities.
Sherman then took part in the discus
sion, which became a heated political
controversy. He traced the source of the
reconstruction movement, and said at
the close of the war it had not been
contemplated to arm the negro
with suffrage, but laws were
passed by some OF the Southern
States that were SO unjust to the colored
people and to the white Republicans in
the South, that the people of the North
became convinced that the object in
the South was to overthrow the results
of the war and deprive the freemen of all
the rights of citizenship. When the
time came that it was seen that there
was no way to protect the emancipated
people except by arming them with suf.
frage, Congress had reluctantly, slowly
but deliberately, adopted that remedy as
the only one fitted for the Gaze.
He (Sherman) had sometimes thought
it might possibly have been better not to
have adopted the fifteenth amendment
comforting suffrage on the colored men,
because that right had been nulli6ed
and uprooted. The result of the 6f-
teenth amendment was practically to
give the Southern States increased repre-
sentation in the House of Representa-
tives and increased power in the elec-
toral college. If there was anything
wrong in the eituation of Southern
affairs, the people of the South had
brought it on themselves. There was no
feeling of hate in the North against the
South. II the equal rights OF all the people
in the South were secured, the people
of the North would be satisfied. 1t was
Iuc tuHt tIo 4lbccutA dncnoDlOAb LOU
not turned out as expected, because no
man dreamed that such measures as had
been resorted to in the South would have
been resorted to to deprive the negro OF
his rights. No one had dreamed of Ku-
klux Klans and all the savage machinery
by which that exclusion had been per-
fected.
Butler suggested that the reconstruc-
ton measures and fifteenth amendment
were not 80 much due to Objectionable
legislation in the South as to the conflict
between Andrew johnson and the Re-
publican Congress.
Sherman said that the selection of
Andrew Johnson, Southern man and a
Democrat, for the Vice-P Presidency was a
proof of the generous treatment the
North had shown the South. But John
son had deserted the Republican party
and turned his back on it whom he came
into power, and Congress tied his hands
and prevented the carrying out of his
policy.
Butler-Then understand the Senator
from Ohio 20 admit that the Southern
people are not alone responsible, but that
Andrew Johnson, as President, was more
responsible for the enactment of extreme
measures against the South.
Sherman-I look upon Andrew John
son as a Southern man and Democrat.
Butler-He was your Republican Presi-
dent, and the people of the South had no