Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-09-26
At the Point of a Buyonet'


political irony than the Presidents use
OF Federal troops in Little Rock. It is
improbable that such use will be chal-
lenged in any law court, or that such
challenge would stand. It is more inter-
eSt1ng to consider the fact that these
same troops might have been there
today under the specific provisions of
a new law on civil rights. What pre-
vented that was the Senate's fiat repudi-
alton, by unanimous vote last July ~,
Of the idea that Federal troops would
be sent into the South to enforce court
edictS on school indignation.
Last July 2, before the Senate had
taken up the civil rights bill, Senator
Russell dropped what a colleague later
called his "bombShell" in a speech that
contained this passage:
1 unhesitatingly assert that Part 3
OF the civil rights bill was deliberately
drawn to enable the use Of the military
forces to destroy the system of separation
OF the races in the Southern States at the
point of bayonet. If it should be neces-
sary to take this step.
Twenty days later Senator Know
land and Senator Humphrey, represent
ing the Republican Democratic coalition
supporting the bill, obtained the votes Of
the 30 Senators present not only to
strike the provision from the civil rights
bill, but to repeal the Reconstruction
Era statute empowering the President
to use troops for enforcement of civil
rightS-including school migration.
There were at least three reasons
for repeating that law. One was that
Senator RuSSell's speech had made an
impression, even on the President, that
endangered other provisions of the bill
unless the issue over use of troops was
removed from debate. Another reason
was that, as many Senators pointed out,
the Constitution, If not other statutes,
reserved adequate power to the Presi-
dent to use troops in certain circum-
stances. And numerous Senators spoke
of reliance on the ultimate wisdom of
the people, rather than troops, to make
Indignation succeed, and of wiping out
memories, as well as laws, of the tragic
Era Of Reconstruction.
But repeal of the troop statute gave
Senator Russell and those who stood
with him the opening they looked for,
and the Senate went on to eliminate
from the bill all the provisions of Part 3
which would have made it applicable to
enforcement of school indignation as
well as other civil rights, thus restrict
ing its enforcement provisions to the
right to vote.
The troops are in Little Rock today,
enforcing indignation "at the point of
a bayonet" as the result Of a grim
sequence of events which no one seemed
able or willing to stop in time; events
which followed one after the other with
all the inevitability Of Greek tragedy.
So now the fine words that I'LL the
Congressional Records Of last summer,
deploring the very suggestion that
troops would be used to enforce court
rulings on integration, fit from page
to page like haunting ghosts of dead
past.
For the sad business in Little Rock
seems not the end, but the beginning
Of what so many good citizens have
hoped might be avoided. Removing the
troops may not be as simple as 1t was
to send them in. There is little wonder
that the President has so quickly seized
the opportunity, presented by the South
ern Governors, to talk it over. Between
them, they may find way out.