Year: 1875

The Report of the minority of the Commit
tee on the Louisiana affair will not answer Its
purpose. 1t was designed to Justify the con-
duct of the Administration In the South, and
to assist the Administration party at the polls
in the North. We are not impugning the mo-
tiyes of the minority in saying this. They
doubtless believe every word they have ut
tered. They think the colored people will be
in danger of their lives in case of an Admin
istration defeat in the reconstructed States,
and that the country will be in deadly peril
if the opposition win the next general elec-
tions. No sordid or indirect motives can be
imputed to Mr.. Hoar. who has been the NOV
ing spirit in this review OF the Sub Commit
tees work. His prejudices, which are all the
more powerful because of their honest sim
cerity, would not permit him to accept the re-
port brought back from New-Orleans by three
of the ablcSt and most candid members of the
House. 1t seemed to him unnatural and mon
strous that his own party should be shown
to be in the wrong and the Con-
servatives in the right in any case
or any circumstances. There was only zeal
for the truth as he understands it, that is, for
facts favorable to his own side, which induced
him to undertake the extraordinary task of
annulling a report so reasonable and so just
as to satisfy the candid men of both parties
inside and outside Of Congress. His common
place colleagues were doubtless governed by
the usual motives. There is nothing common
place about Mr.. Hoar, even when he is most
partial and unjust. The result is remark
able and unusual document. 1t is written
with such impassOned feeling and such earn
estness of conviction that it cannot but have
a considerable effect among the kind of people
who feel and think with Mr.. Hoar, or rather
who feel with him and do not think at all.
The Republicans who believe that bad Re-
publican is under all circumstances better
than a good Democrat, if they even admit the
existence of the latter category, and who con-
slider it a solemn religious duty to sustain
Gen. Grant in any act which he may commit,
will accept this report as the final word on
the subject to which it refers.


But this is not the purpose of the report.
and if it accomplishes no more than this it
fails. The elections last Autumn were lost by
the votes of another sort of Republicans-of
men who do their own thinking, and who have
ceased to regulate their consciences by the
DEGREES of caucuses men who have lost con-
fidence in many of their party leaders, and
who do not believe that Gen. Grant is a safe
man to be trusted with extraordinary and
illegal powers. Unless these men can be
brought to support the Republican party and
its measures By their votes and their influence
there is no hope that that party can ever carry
another general election. We do not think that
this report will induce dozen of these valu
able thousands Of voters to renOunce their
attitude of observation and to cast in their lot
with the steady supporters of the Adminstra-
ton. The assertions of Mr.. Hoar and his
colleagues are strong enough, but their admis-
sions are fatal to the effect of the re-
port The stories they relate Of the horrors
of partisan strife in Louisiana, its bloodshed
and tumult, are many of them true and
depl0rable. But nowhere does this report give
us the slightest intimatiOn that Gen. Grants
way is the proper and effective way to deal
with these evils. On the contrary, it asks us
TO believe that during the six years OF his ad-
ministration, in which time he has been more
generally exempt from criticism in his own
party than any President in our history, and
has been sustained in the absolute control of
the army, the Judiciary, and the legislative au-
thority, no progress has been made toward
the pacfcatiOn of the State of Louisiana. We
are asked to believe that with every branch of
the Government there in Republican hands,
and with the army ready everywhere to in
terfere in their behalf, the majority are 80 in
Inundated by tho minority that no fair or full
vote can be had. If this be 80, what is to be
gained by perpetuating this state Of things