Year: 1868

liberty without the benefit of Ha5eas
corpus, and every newspaper suppressed.
Every officer may be ruled out and ev-
cry dollar in the treasury taken, every
voice hushed into silence. Gan anything
be more tyrannical? There is now no
civil government in any of these States (;
they are military despotisms, and when
this bill passes, there is no responsibility.
These men could see these people tram
pied down and all their rights crushed
ont. They could willingly see the Dem
ocratic majority upon this floor driven
out at the point of the bayonets of
Federal soldiery to crafty their revenge.
This bill creates military despotism
and is it possible that men are willing to
see such things done in a portion of this
country? You have done this in ten
great States. We cannot maintain two
Governments here, upon the same prin-
ciple enunciated by the gentleman who
declared that the Government could not
exist half slave and half free. These
reconstruction acts cannot do it. We
are asked what We mean by these things.
In this Government all power is dele
gated-anything beyond that is ,usur-
patton. The Democratic party per-
formed its duty toward the Govern
ment throughout the late war
though the same warm support could
not be expected of them as the Republi-
can party. At the commencement of
the war Democrats were required to lay
aside thsir political faith and the preju-
dices of their lives; they were shorn of
political power and not an office or a dol
lar of patronage in all the land was
theirs, yet they did their whole duty. In
the late war they came up to the sup
port of the Government to an extent not
to be expected OF them by the Republi-
can party. sas


Scarcely Democratic family in all
the State; but was represented in the
army, and whatever might have been
the opinion of the Democratic party in
reference to the policy and measures of
the Observation-Disclosures opposed
they were to the extreme Radical meas
ures of the party in5power, they were
too much interested in the preservation
of the Government to permit it to be
destroyed. In 1861, when it was nee
essary to take proper position on the
question of the war, although the De-
mocracy believed that the war might
have been averted, yet they generously
and gallantly came to the rescue, and
without their aid the Confederacy would
have been established and the Union
= dissolved. The Democratic banner in
Ohio Was borne by distinguished gen
tleman, now Representative upon the
floor of this House, and upon it was in
. scribed his eloquent and memorable
words: awe have no terms to offer,
no compromise to make with armed
rebels"


The Democracy gave untold treasure
at the request of the party in power and
poured out their blood at its command,
and yet because they were unwilling to
yield up the great principles of civil lib
erty and stand by and see the Constitu-
tion daily violated and outrage after out
rage committed upon the dearest rights
of the people because they would not
place their hands upon their mouths and
Z lay their mouths in the dust-they were
denounced as traitors. Democrats, for
no other reason than that they were
Democrats, were arrested like felons, i'm
prisoned like convicts, tried by uncon-
stitutional and illegal military tribunals,
fined, imprisoned, banished and
murdered. Democratic newspapers
were suppressed, the freedom of
speech attempted to be entirely
abolished, and every outrage that inge-
nuity could devise or maliguancy invent.
was practiced upon the Democratic mi
nority. The men who charge the Dem
ocratic party with being party of trea-
son and party false to the country,
knowingly and wilfully give expression
to foul and unmitigated SANDER. There
is no peace wing or war wing to the
Democratic party, as the gentleman
from Cuyahoga asserts-the whole is
bound in one common interest in perpet-
uating and preserving one common Gov
ernment. We have but one Lord, one
faith and one baptism. But in the midst
OF all these prosecutions, as the
oppressor became more tyrannical and
arrogant: as the storm became fercer
and tiercer, in their adherence to princi-
Pio INV O0uiooAatiC party roSe Ii lSuer anu
higher, and became bolder and bolder in
the very audacity Of despair. And what
ever the people Of this country to-day
possess of constitutional liberty and
right, they owe it to the boldness and
devotion of the Democratic party. 1t
was the protector of the Constitution
and the bulwark of liberty over which
the waves of usurpation dare not rise.
Gentlemen of the opposition might laugh,
but it was nevertheless true.


Z s In conclusion. he would quote from
Sir Walter Scott's beautiful story of
Guy Mannering-the prophecy of the
Gipsey Queen, concerning the House of
Bertram:


Dark shall be light. 80 -


And wrong made right, 90 & zrf .sgD-
" hen Bertrams right and Rel trans might


Shall meet on Ellansowan's height" ii LIZ
and he rejoiced in language unspeaka-
bic, that ''dark now IS light" and that
9the day and hour had come when the
grand old Democracy of Ohio had met
their oppressors eye to eye and face to
face, here upon the heights of ELAN