Year: 1876




face.


Gentlemen from the South rise here
day after day and ask whether we do


not know that it is their interest to


treat labor kindly. Certainly it is
their interest: but they are not the on
ly people who are not wholly govern
ed either by reason or by interest.
Prejudice and passion are large factors
in human life aud human action. II
| Is a mans interest and his highest du-
~ to treat kindly his wife, the moth


er of his children; yet how many
! poor heart-broken women suffer dai-
ly agonies from all manner Of brutal
| iiy and abuse from their natural and
legal protectors. Any day in Oul
crowded cities you can see some hu-


man brute, whose living depends on


his horse, overload him. torture him
fog him, and in mad passion cripple
and kill him. 1t was clearly his in


terests to treat him kindly, but he


does not do it. And yet neither wife


nor horse could provoke such evil
passion as the enfranchised, perhaps
defiant, slave can call up in the


soured temper of the discroWned mas
| ter.


It ia not possible for the best of the
race educated as slave-owners to bear
with absolute patience the equality


and perhaps the rivalry of the other


Nothing but law backed by power car


muzzle these dangerous passions and
| force them to die off in ineffect-


ual murmurs. And in the ordinary


jurisprudence of the affected States


there is no such live, effective law,


and no power to sustain it.


What white man has been brought


to Justice for all these most miserable


of all possible forms of murder


Public opinion sustains them, and
they walk the streets to-day un-


whipped of justice. And then, when


force and violence has had its full


work, when the freedom of elections


has been trampled down by armed


violence, when 80, 0,000voters have been
bullied intos Hence in one single State
gentlemen who own their seats in thi:


House to these great wrongs say be-


hold the peace and quiet which reigr


in this Democratic State! They xiii


all the opposition, and have the quiet


of the grave.


|


preston of the popular will in any


state is the highest of crimes against


society and the nation. 1t was thu:


that. in Texas and Tennessee and 9th


er States in 1861, the killing without


law or warrant of Union men made


them harmonious in secession; and i


they did not scruple TO use these
| bloody measures on their own race
and people, shall they stop now as


against an intrusive people, whose


presence in their midst is badge oi
suhjugation and skeleton reminder


of lost dominion No, sir, the tactics


so successful in Mississippi. so neatly
successful in Louisiana, will assured
ly be repeated this year In other
| States.


The horribly and eOwsrdly butch
cry at Hamburg the other day was


not in itself political, but 1t is fatal


evidence to show the temper of large
class of white people, and the slight
consideration given to life when that
life, God given as i; is, is incased in a


black skin.


If, without provocation, white men
troop in arms from one state into an


other, besiege, seize upon, and murder
unoffending persons, what bOnnds can


be set to this lust of blood when heated
by the stormy appeals of partisans and
fired by the passions of a great politi-
cal election?


The Hamburg murders.are symto-
matte aud the disease they reveal is
constitutional, deep-seated in the very
marrow of society itself. Yet gentle
men from the North made mockery
on this floor of the horrible reeitals,
until shamed by the bOldeT, braver,
and more honorable delunciations Of
ra = 77--c-...-s.z -s.ziffvs men of the South. I
wait to see if even in South Carolina
any measure Of justice shall be meted
out to the ruffianly crew, and not till
that is it done shall | believe to any
great extent either in the apology or
the denunciatiOn. One honest, effect
i've wholesome hanging of murder
er convicted, sentenced and executed
under the law will be more convinc-
ing 10 me than all the possible speech
es on the this floor or elsewhere.


One of the reasons why this Re
publican party must live is to hold
some sort of terror over the perpetra-
tors of this crime for neither the past
nor the present Ofthe Democracy give
any hope of protection for the weak
and oppressed them. For, sir, it is
the Democracy that denied the col
Ored man any rights that white
man was bound respect, and so far
as it dare II does SO still. 1t was De-
mocracy that insisted that the consti-
tuition carried slavery into our Terri
- & = cfi
1t was Democracy that permitted the
growth and progress of theslave-hold |
er's rebellion that Joined them in
the cry of a Union disOlvable at will /; |
that declared the election of Lincoln |
cause for secession; that denied the |
right of coercion; that stripped the |
nation bare of her weapons |
in the time of need; that proposed |
when it dared not fight !;
that denied the right of self preserva-
ton.


It was Dem mocracy, assembled In its |
highestsanhedrim in Chicago, in 1854,
after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, that |
by special high priests, of whom TIL |
den was chief, declared the war fail |
ure and insulted at once the good |
sense and the high courage Of the
people.


1t was Democracy which condemn
ed the enlistment of colored troops,
which denounced the proclamation
Of emancipation, which opposed Bit
terly, stubbornly, and ably the three
great amendments to the constitution,
which fought them by all tactics in
Congress which fought them in State
in State Legislatures,
which denied and denies still that
they did ever become part of the con-
5titution or are now the supreme law
Of the land.


1t is this same Democracy, un-
In principles, unaltered in
full, of the old passions and
lnhoIy traditions-less defiant than
Of old, because less secure, but more
lrtful, more designing, with more OF
he fox and less Of the iiOn-that is
seeking again to worm its way into
he confidence OF the American peo-
pie, and thus roll back the progress of
he age, and plunge us into bitter and
HaUG |