BOOK III. GREAT SPEECHES ON GREAT ISSUES. (continued 13)

I wish the Senator from Georgia to understand just here that we may get along in the future harmoniously, that the way to deal with me is to deal directly. We want no bills of discovery. Now, sir, you will find out how I am going to vote in a little while. [Applause.]

Mr. Davis, of West Virginia. Mr. President, during this temporary suspension——

Mr. Mahone. I have not yielded the floor. I am waiting for a little order.

Mr. Davis, of West Virginia. I wish to call the attention of the Chair to the disorder in the Senate both when my friend from Georgia was speaking and now. I believe it has been some time since we have had as much disorder as we have had to-day in the galleries. I hope the Chair will enforce order.

Mr. Teller. I should like to say that much of the disorder originated in the first place from the cheering on the democratic side of the Chamber.

The Vice-President. The Chair announces that order must be maintained in the galleries; otherwise the Sergeant-at-Arms will be directed to clear the galleries.

Mr. Mahone. I promised not to detain the Senate, and I regret that so early after my appearance here I should find it necessary to intrude any remarks whatsoever upon the attention of this body. I would prefer to be a little modest; I would prefer to listen and to learn; but I cannot feel content after what has passed in this presence, when the gentleman by all manner of methods, all manner of insinuations, direct and indirect, has sought to do that which would have been better done and more bravely pursued if he had gone directly to the question itself. He has sought to discover where the democrat was who should here choose to exercise his right to cast his vote as he pleased, who should here exercise the liberty of manhood to differ with his caucus. Why, sir, the gentleman seems to have forgotten that I refused positively to attend his little lovefeast; not only that, I refused to take part in a caucus which represents a party that has not only waged war upon me but upon those whom I represent on this floor. They have not only intruded within the boundaries of my own State, without provocation, to teach honesty and true democracy, but they would now pursue my people further by intruding their unsolicited advice and admonition to their representative in this Chamber. Yes, sir, you have been notified, duly notified that I would take no part or lot in any political machinery.

Further than that, you have been notified that I was supremely indifferent to what you did; that I had no wish to prefer, and was indifferent to your performances; that I should stand on this floor representing in part the people of the State of Virginia, for whom I have the right to speak (and not 3211the Senator from Georgia) even of their democracy. The gentleman may not be advised that the Legislature which elected me did not require that I should state either that I was a democrat or anything else. I suppose he could not get here from Georgia unless he was to say that he was a democrat, anyhow. [Laughter.] I come here without being required to state to my people what I am. They were willing to trust me, sir, and I was elected by the people, and not by a legislature, for it was an issue in the canvass. There was no man elected by the party with which I am identified that did not go to the Legislature instructed by the sovereigns to vote for me for the position I occupy on this floor. It required no oath of allegiance blindly given to stand by your democracy, such as is, [laughter,] that makes a platform and practices another thing. That is the democracy they have in some of the Southern States.

Now, I hope the gentleman will be relieved. He has been chassezing all around this Chamber to see if he could not find a partner somewhere; he has been looking around in every direction; occasionally he would refer to some other Senator to know exactly where the Senator was who stood here as a democrat that had the manhood and the boldness to assert his opinions in this Chamber free from the dictation of a mere caucus. Now, I want the gentleman to know henceforth and forever here is a man, sir, that dares stand up [applause] and speak for himself without regard to caucus in all matters. [Applause, long continued, in the galleries and on the floor.] Mr. President, pardon me; I have done.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Mr. President—

The Vice-President. The Senate will be in order. Gentlemen on the floor not members of the Senate will take seats.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Mr. President, I hope nobody imagines that I rise to make any particular reply to the remarkable exhibition we have just seen. I rise to say a few things in justification of myself. I certainly did not say one word to justify the gentleman in the statement that I made an assault upon him, unless he was the one man who had been elected as a democrat and was not going to vote with his party. I never saw that gentleman before the other day. I have not the slightest unkind feeling for him. I never alluded to him by name; I never alluded to his State; and I cannot understand how the gentleman says that I alluded to him except upon the rule laid down by the distinguished Senator from New York, that a guilty conscience needs no accuser. [Applause and hisses in the galleries.] I did not mention the Senator. It had been stated here by the Senator from New York over and over that the other side would have a majority when that side was full. I showed it was impossible that they should have a majority unless they could get one democratic vote, with the vote of the Vice-President. I did not know who it was; I asked who it was; I begged to know who it was; and to my utter astonishment the gentleman from Virginia comes out and says he is the man.

The Senator from Virginia makes a very strange announcement. He charged me not only with attacking him, but with attacking the people of Virginia? Did I say a word of the people of Virginia? I said that the people of no portion of this country would tolerate treachery. Was that attacking the people of Virginia? I said that thirty-eight men had been elected to this body as democrats. Does the Senator deny that? Does he say he was elected here not as a democrat? He says he was not required to declare that he was a democrat, and in the next breath he says he is a truer, better democrat than I am. Then I commend him to you. Take good care of him, my friends. Nurse him well. How do you like to have a worse democrat than I am?

Mr. Conkling and others. A better democrat.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Oh, a better! Then my friend from New York is a better democrat than I am. You have all turned democrats; and we have in the United States Senate such an exhibition as that of a gentleman showing his democracy by going over to the Republicans!

Sir, I will not defend Virginia. She needs no defense. Virginia has given this country and the world and humanity some of the brightest names of history. She holds in her bosom to-day the ashes of some of the noblest and greatest men that ever illustrated the glories of any country. I say to the Senator from Virginia that neither Jefferson, nor Madison, nor Henry, nor Washington, nor Leigh, nor Tucker, nor any of the long list of great men that Virginia has produced ever accepted a commission to represent one party and came here and represented another. [Applause on the floor and in the galleries.]

Mr. Cockrell. I trust that those at least who are enjoying the privilege of the floor of the Senate Chamber will be prohibited from cheering.

The Vice-President. The Chair will state that the violation of the rules does not appear to be in the galleries, but by persons who have been admitted to the privilege of the floor. The Chair regrets to clear the floor, but if the manifestation is continued he will be obliged to do so. It is a violation of the rules of the Senate.

Mr. Mahone rose.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Does the Senator from Virginia wish to interrupt me?

Mr. Mahone. I do wish to interrupt you.

3212The Vice-President. Does the Senator from Georgia yield?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly.

Mr. Mahone. I understand you to say that I accepted a commission from one party and came here to represent another. Do I understand you correctly?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I understood that you were elected as a democrat.

Mr. Mahone. Never mind; answer the question.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Yes, I say you accepted a commission, having been elected as a democrat. That is my information.

Mr. Mahone. I ask you the question: Did you say that I had accepted a commission from one party and came here to represent another? That is the question.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Oh, I said that will be the case if you vote with the republicans. You have not done it yet, and I say you will not do it.

Mr. Mahone. If not out of order in this place, I say to the gentleman that if he undertakes to make that statement it is unwarranted and untrue.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I should like to ask the gentleman a question: Was he not acting with the democratic party, and was he not elected as a democrat to this body? Answer that question.

Mr. Mahone. Quickly, sir. I was elected as a readjuster. Do you know what they are? [Laughter and applause.]

The Vice-President rapped with his gavel.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I understand there are in Virginia what are called readjuster democrats and debt-paying democrats, or something of that kind, but as I understand they are all democrats. We have nothing to do with that issue. We are not to settle the debt of Virginia in the Senate Chamber; but I ask the Senator again, was he not elected to this body as a member of the national democratic party?

Mr. Mahone. I will answer you, sir. No. You have got the answer now.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Then I conceive that the gentleman spoke truly when he said that I do not know what he is. What is he? Everybody has understood that he voted with the democrats. Did he not support Hancock for the Presidency? Did not the Senator support Hancock for the Presidency, I ask him? [A pause] Dumb! Did he not act with the democratic party in the national election, and was not the Senator from Virginia himself a democrat? That is the question. Why attempt to evade? Gentlemen, I commend him to you. Is there a man on that side of the Chamber who doubts that the Senator was sent to this body as a democrat? Is there a man in this whole body who doubts it? Is there a man in Virginia who doubts it? The gentleman will not deny it. Up to this very hour it was not known on this side of the Chamber or in the country how he would vote in this case, or whether he was still a democrat or not. I maintain that he is. The Senator from New York seemed to have information that somebody who was elected as a democrat was not, and I went to work to find out who it was. It seems I have uncovered him. For months the papers of the country have been discussing and debating how the Senator would vote. Nobody could know, nobody could tell, nobody could guess. I have been a truer friend to the Senator than he has been to himself. I have maintained always that when it came to the test the Senator would be true to his commission; that the Senator would be true to the democratic professions he made when he was elected. He will not rise in this presence and say he could have been elected to the Senate as a republican. He will not rise in the Senate and say he could have been elected to the Senate if he had given notice that on the organization of this body he would vote with the republicans. He will not say it.

The gentleman makes some remarks about the caucus. I have no objection to a gentleman remaining out of a caucus. That is not the question. I have no objection to a gentleman being independent. That is not the question. I have no objection to a gentleman being a readjuster in local politics. That is not the question. I have no objection to a man dodging from one side to another on such a question. With that I have nothing to do. That is a matter of taste with him; but I do object to any man coming into this high council, sent here by one sentiment, commissioned by one party, professing to be a democrat, and after he gets here acting with the other party. If the gentleman wants to be what he so proudly said, a man, when he changes opinions, as he had a right to do, when he changes party affiliations as he had a right to do, he should have gone to the people of Virginia and said, “You believed me to be a democrat when you gave me this commission; while I differed with many of you on the local question of the debt, I was with you cordially in national politics; I belonged to the national democratic party; but I feel that it is my duty now to co-operate with the republican party, and I return you the commission which you gave to me.” If the gentleman had done that and then gone before the people of Virginia and asked them to renew his commission upon his change of opinion, he would have been entitled to the eulogy of manhood he pronounced upon himself here in such theatrical style. I like manhood.

I say once more, it is very far from me 3213to desire to do the Senator injury. I have nothing but the kindest feelings for him. He is very much mistaken if he supposes I had any personal enmity against him. I have not the slightest. As I said before, I never spoke to the gentleman in my life until I met him a few days ago; but I have done what the newspapers could not do, both sides having been engaged in the effort for months; I have done what both parties could not do, what the whole country could not do—I have brought out the Senator from Virginia.

But now, in the kindest spirit, knowing the country from which the honorable Senator comes, identified as I am with its fame and its character, loving as I do every line in its history, revering as I do its long list of great names, I perform the friendly office unasked of making a last appeal to the honorable Senator, whatever other fates befall him, to be true to the trust which the proud people of Virginia gave him, and whoever else may be disappointed, whoever else may be deceived, whoever else may be offended at the organization of the Senate, I appeal to the gentleman to be true to the people, to the sentiment, to the party which he knows commissioned him to a seat in this body.

Mr. Logan. Mr. President, I have but a word to say. I have listened to a very extraordinary speech. The Senate of the United States is a body where each Senator has a right to have a free voice. I have never known before a Senator, especially a new Senator, to be arraigned in the manner in which the Senator from Virginia has been, and his conduct criticised before he had performed any official act, save one, so far as voting is concerned. He needs no defense at my hands; he is able to take care of himself; but I tell the Senator from Georgia when he says to this country that no man has a right to come here unless he fulfills that office which was dictated to him by a party, he says that which does not belong to American independence. Sir, it takes more nerve, more manhood, to strike the party shackles from your limbs and give free thought its scope than any other act that man can perform. The Senator from Georgia himself, in times gone by, has changed his opinions. If the records of this country are true (and he knows whether they are or not) he, when elected to a convention as a Union man, voted for secession. [Applause in the galleries.]

The Vice-President rapped with his gavel.

Mr. Hoar. If my friend will pardon me a moment, I desire to call the attention of the Chair to the fact that there has been more disorder in this Chamber during this brief session of the Senate than in all the aggregate of many years before. I take occasion when a gentleman with whose opinions I perfectly agree myself in speaking to say that I shall move the Chair to clear any portion of the gallery from which expressions of applause or dissent shall come if they occur again.

Mr. Logan. What I have said in reference to this record I do not say by way of casting at the Senator, but merely to call attention to the fact that men are not always criticised so severely for changing their opinions. The Senator from Georgia spoke well of my colleague. Well he may. He is an honorable man and a man deserving well of all the people of this country. He was elected not as a democrat but by democratic votes. He votes with you. He never was a democrat in his life; he is not to-day. You applaud him and why? Because he votes with you. You want his vote; that is all. You criticise another man who was elected by republican votes and democratic votes, readjusters as they are called, and say that he has no right to his opinions in this Chamber. The criticism is not well. Do you say that a man shall not change his political opinions?

The Senator from Georgia in days gone by, in my boyhood days, I heard of, not as a democrat. To-day he sits here as a democrat. No one wishes to criticise him because he has changed his political opinions. He had a right to do so. I was a democrat once, too, and I had a right to change my opinions and I did change them. The man who will not change his opinions when he is honestly convinced that he was in error is a man who is not entitled to the respect of men. I say this to the Senator from Georgia. The Senator says to us, “take him,” referring to the Senator from Virginia. Yes, sir, we will take him if he will come with us, and we will take every other honest man who will come. We will take every honest man in the South who wants to come and join the republican party, and give him the right hand of fellowship, be he black or white. Will you do as much?

Mr. Hill of Georgia. We have got them already.

Mr. Logan. Yes, and if a man happens to differ with you the tyranny of political opinion in your section of country is such that you undertake to lash him upon the world and try to expose him to the gaze of the public as a man unfaithful to his trust. We have no such tyranny of opinion in the country where I live; and it will be better for your section when such notions are driven to the shades and retired from the action of your people.

I do not know that the gentleman from Virginia intends to vote as a republican. I have never heard him say so. I know only what he has said here to-day; but 3214I respect him for stating to the Senate and the country that he is tired of the Bourbon democracy; and if more men were tired of it the country would be better off. The people are getting tired of it even down in your country, every where. The sooner we have a division down there the better it will be for both sides, for the people of the whole country.

I did not rise to make any defense of the Senator from Virginia, for he is able, as I said, to defend himself, but merely to say to the Senator from Georgia that the criticism made upon that Senator without any just cause is something I never witnessed before in this Chamber or in any other deliberative body, and in my judgment it was not justified in any way whatever.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I desire to say once more, what everybody in the audience knows is true, that I did not arraign the Senator from Virginia. In the first speech I never alluded to Virginia or to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. Logan. Every one in the Chamber knew to whom the Senator alluded.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I alluded to somebody who was elected as a democrat, and who was going to vote as a republican.

Mr. Teller. He was not elected as a democrat.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Then I did not allude to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. Teller. The Senator said that thirty-eight members of the Senate were elected as democrats.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly they were.

Mr. Teller. That is a mistake.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly they were, and the record shows it.

Mr. Conkling. May I ask the Senator a question?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Let me go on and then you can follow me. I again say it is strange that the Senator from Virginia should say I arraigned him, and his valiant defender, the Senator from Illinois, comes to defend him from an arraignment that was never made.

Mr. Logan. Did not the Senator from Georgia ask the Senator from Virginia in his seat if he was not elected as a Democrat? Did not the Senator charge that a man was acting treacherously to his constituents? Did the Senator not make the most severe arraignment of him that he could possibly make?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. If the Senator will allow me, I did that only after the Senator from Virginia had arraigned himself. The Senator from Virginia insisted that I alluded to him when I had not called his name, and I had not alluded to his State and when I had arraigned nobody.

Mr. Logan. Will the Senator allow me to ask him this question: Did he not have in his mind distinctly the Senator from Virginia when he made his insinuations?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I will answer the gentleman’s question fairly. I did believe that the gentlemen on the other side who were counting upon a democratic vote were counting upon the Senator from Virginia, but I equally believed that they would be disappointed. I did not believe that the Senator from Virginia was guilty, and I in perfect sincerity and good faith, so far from arraigning him, intended to defend him from the foul suspicion, and my honest repulsion of the insinuation, which was necessary in consequence of what they expected, was regarded by the Senator himself as an arraignment. There is an anecdote told in the life of the great minister, Whitefield. When he was speaking one day in the country to an audience, he described the enormity of sin and the characteristics of sin; he did it with wonderful power. When he came out he was assailed by a gentleman for having made a personal assault on him. “Why,” said Whitefield, “I never heard of you before; I did not intend any assault upon you.” He replied, “Well, sir, you told me everything I have been doing all my life.” I frankly confess I am not a man to dodge. The papers have justified me in believing, Senators have justified me in believing, that you are calculating to get the democratic vote of the Senator from Virginia, whom the whole country has treated as having been elected as a democrat. I believed you would be disappointed; I believed that because you would be disappointed it was wholly unnecessary to delay this organization. I did not believe the Senator would vote with you, and in vindication of that Senator I will not believe it yet. He has not said so. He has made the mistake, because of what the papers say, of assuming that I alluded to him; but I vindicate him yet. He said if I asserted that he was elected as a democrat and would be false to his commission, I said what was not warranted and what was untrue. I am glad he said so. I did not say he would; but I say you expected it, I say your papers expected it, and I say it has been calculated on. I vindicate the Senator from Virginia, and I hope he will vindicate himself by not doing what you expect him to do. The Senator from Illinois charges me again with criticising a man for changing his opinion. I distinctly said that every man in this country has a right to change his opinion. The distinguished Senator from Illinois has changed his opinion. He says the country is tired of Bourbon democracy. He ought to know, for he used to be one of the worst Bourbon democrats this country ever saw.

Mr. Logan. That was when you belonged to the other side.

3215Mr. Hill, of Georgia. The first time I ever heard of that Senator was when I was battling in the South for the good old whig principles and he was an outrageous Bourbon democrat. That amounts to nothing. You had a right to change, if you have changed; I do not say you have.

Mr. Logan. I will only say, if the Senator will allow me, that when I saw the light I changed for the right. The Senator saw the darkness and changed for the wrong.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Ah, that is not argument.

Mr. Logan. It is true, however, just the same.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I hope the Senator will see more light and change again.

Mr. Logan. I do not think I shall.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. He needs a great deal of light.

Mr. Logan. No doubt of that. I do not expect to get it, however, from that side.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I object to this style of interruption; it is unworthy of the Senate. I am not here to indulge in such remarks. The Senator has a right to change; I have arraigned nobody for changing his opinion. If the Senator from Virginia has changed his opinions he has a right to change them; I have not said he has not. I do not deny his right. I admit that a man has a right also to change his party affiliations if he is convinced he has been wrong; but a man has no right to hold a commission which was given him while he was a democrat and because he was a democrat and given to him as a democrat, and change his opinions and act with the adversary party. It is his duty to return that commission to the people who gave it and ask them to renew it upon his change of opinion. That is all I ask.

Mr. Logan. Will the Senator allow me to ask him what right has he as a Senator to undertake to dictate to the Senator from Virginia as to what shall be required in his State?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. That is incorrect again. I have not undertaken to dictate to the Senator from Virginia. The Senator from Virginia can do just as he pleases; but when the Senator from Virginia acts as a public man I have a right to my opinion of his public acts, and I have a right to speak of all public acts and their character. I will not deny his right; I am not dictating to him—far from it. There is not in my heart now an unkind feeling for the Senator from Virginia. I would if I could rescue him from the infamy into which others are trying to precipitate him. That is what I want to do. I am not assailing him; I am not arraigning him; I am not dictating to him. I know the proud nature of the Senator from New York. I know if that Senator was elected to this body as a republican, although he might have been a readjuster at the time, and if he should come to this body and the democrats should begin to intimate in this Hall and the democratic papers should intimate over the country that he was going to vote with the democrats on the organization, he would feel insulted just as my friend from Tennessee (Mr. Harris) justly felt by the allusions to him in the newspapers. So with any other man on that side. If the Senator from Virginia was elected as a democrat I am right; but if as a republican I have nothing more to say.

Mr. Logan. Will the Senator allow me right there? Is it not true that the democracy of the Virginia Legislature that elected the Senator now in his seat from Virginia did nominate Mr. Withers as their candidate and supported him, and was not this senator elected by the opponents of the democrats of that Legislature? Is not that true? I ask the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. Mahone. Substantially so.

Mr. Logan. Then if that be true, why say that he came here as the representative of the democracy of Virginia?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. My understanding is that the democracy of Virginia is very much like the democracy of other States, as Tennessee. We are divided down there in several States on local questions that have nothing to do with national politics. In Virginia the democracy was divided between what are called readjuster democrats and debt-paying democrats, but all democrats.

What was called the republican party it was said, although I must vindicate many of the republicans in the State from the charge, coalesced with what are called the readjuster democrats. The late Senator from Virginia was nominated by what are called the debt-paying democrats, and the present Senator from Virginia, as I understand it, was run against him as a readjuster democrat.

Mr. Logan. And the republicans all supported him.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly, because they always support a candidate who is running against the regular nominee. I suppose the republicans always go for men who are not in favor of paying debts! I had thought that republicans professed to affiliate with those who would pay debts. But I have nothing to do with that question; it does not come in here. What I say and what will not be denied, and I am ashamed that there is an attempt to deny it, is, and it is the worst feature of this whole thing, that anybody should get up 3216here and attempt to deny that the Senator from Virginia was elected to the Senate as a democrat; should attempt to evade the fact that he was a Hancock democrat last year; that he has acted with the national democracy all the time; and that whatever might have been the local differences in Virginia, he has been a national democrat every hour, held out to the country as such. I say I am ashamed that anybody should attempt to make a question of that fact. He was not only a democrat, a national democrat, and voted for Hancock, but I remember the historical fact that he had what he called his own ticket in the field for Hancock and voted for it. He is just as much a democrat, sent here as a readjuster democrat, as the other candidate, the debt-paying democrat, would have been if he had been elected.

Mr. Logan. The difference is, if the Senator will allow me, if the other had been elected, he would have been in full accord with the democracy here. This gentleman does not happen to be, and therefore the criticism of the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I do not wish to do the republicans of Virginia injustice; I do not wish to do any body injustice. There are some republicans of Virginia for whom I confess, if reports be true, I have a profound respect. When a portion of the democrats, under the cry of readjusterism, sought to get the support of the republicans of Virginia, there were manly republicans who refused to go into a coalition that would compromise the character of the State on the question of its debt. I am told there are republicans now in Virginia who say that if republicanism here means the Senator from Virginia, and you accept him as a republican, you must give them up as republicans. I do not know how true it is. But this is unworthy of the Senate.

I repeat, the worst feature of this whole transaction is that anybody should get up here and attempt to make an impression that there was a doubt as to the democracy of the Senator from Virginia heretofore. That is an evasion unworthy of the issue, unworthy of the place, unworthy of the occasion, unworthy of Virginia, unworthy of the Senator, unworthy of his defenders. Admit the fact that he was a democrat, and then claim that he exercised the inalienable right of changing his opinions and his party affiliations, but do not claim that he had a right to do it in the manner you say he has done it.

Once more let me say, the Senator from Virginia ought to know that by all the memories of the past there is not a man in this body whose whole soul goes out more in earnest to protect his honor than my own. I would rather lose the organization of the Senate by the democratic party and never again have a democratic committee in this body than have Virginia soiled with dishonor. I do not say that the Senator is going to do it, but I see the precipice yawning before him. I see whither potential influences are leading him. I know the danger just ahead. I would rescue him if I could. He may say it is enmity; he may say it is an unfriendly spirit; he will live to know the force of the words I am uttering. Men in this country have a right to be democrats; men in this country have a right to be republicans; men in this country have a right to divide on national issues and local issues; but no man has a right to be false to a trust, I repeat it, and whether the Senator from Virginia shall be guilty or not is not for me to judge and I will not judge. I say if he votes as you want him to vote God save him or he is gone. If he comes here to illustrate his democracy by going over to that side of the House and voting with that side of the House, he will be beyond my rescue. No, gentlemen, I honor you. I like a proud republican as well as I do a proud democrat. I am conscious of the fact that some of the best personal friends I have in this body sit on that side of the Chamber, men whose high character I would trust anywhere and everywhere. Gentlemen, you know your hearts respond to every word I am uttering when I say you despise treachery, and you honor me to-day for making an effort to rescue a gentleman, not from treachery, but from the charge of it. If the Senator shall vote as you desire him to vote, he cannot escape the charge.

Mr. Mahone. Mr. President, I want to interrupt the Senator from Georgia.

The Vice-President. Does the Senator from Georgia yield?

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Certainly.

Mr. Mahone. I cannot allow you to make any such insinuation.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I make no insinuation.

Mr. Mahone. You did emphatically, and it was unmanly. Now it must stop. Let us understand that.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. I repeat, I do not know how the Senator is going to vote. I believe he is not going to vote as you expect. I believe he is not going to be guilty of being false to his commission. I will not charge that he will; I will not insinuate that he will. I have not insinuated it. The gentleman must be his own keeper; the gentleman must solve his own questions; but I repeat, I repeat as a friend, I repeat as a friend whose friendship will be appreciated some day, that the Senator is in danger of bringing upon himself a charge which he will never have the power to explain.

Mr. Mahone. I cannot allow you or 3217any other man to make that charge without a proper answer.

Mr. Hill, of Georgia. Oh, well.

Senator Mahone’s Reply to Senator Hill

in Extra Senate Session, March 28th, 1881.

Mr. Mahone. Mr. President, my profound respect for the wisdom and experience of my seniors in this Chamber compels me to renew expression of the reluctance with which I so soon intrude upon its deliberations. Senators and the country will concede that to this seeming forwardness I have been provoked.

If I do not challenge generous consideration from those who would appear to have found pleasure in their unjustifiable assaults, I do not doubt that I shall command the respect of the brave and independent here, as I know I shall command that of my own people. I shall not complain of the intolerance and indirection which have characterized the allusions of some Senators to myself. Doubtless they comport entirely with their own sense of manly deportment and senatorial dignity, however little they do with mine. Virginia is accustomed to meet occasions where the independent spirit of the Anglo-Saxon is required to assert itself; Virginia has ever met, with fortitude and dignity, every duty that destiny has imposed, always, however, with much contempt for small party tactics where principles were involved to which her faith and her honor were committed.

With absolute confidence in my loyalty to her and my devotion to every interest of her people, I shall not relax my purpose to repel every impeachment of the constituency which sent me here with clearly defined duties which they and I comprehend. I was elected to the Senate of the United States to do their will, not to a caucus to do its petty bidding. Virginia earned her title of the Old Dominion by the proud and independent action of her own people, by the loyalty of her sons to the instincts of independence, without help at the hands of those who would now interfere with her affairs.

However feebly I may assert that spirit against the gratuitous and hypocritical concern for her of strangers to her trials, her sacrifices, and her will, I feel that the spirit of my people inspires me when I scornfully repel for them and for myself ungracious attempts to instruct a Virginia Senator as to his duty to them and to himself. Senators should learn to deal with their constituencies, while I answer to mine.

To him who would insinuate that my action in respect to the organization of the committees of this body and the proposed election of its officers has been governed or controlled by impure considerations—and I am loth to believe that any honorable Senator has so intended—in the language of another, I say:

If thou saidst I am not peer

To any lord in Scotland here,

Lowland or highland, far or near,

Lord Angus, thou hast lied!

And now, Mr. President, permit me to say that Senators can no more realize my regret than they can measure my amazement that my colleague should have felt it incumbent upon him to join the assaulting column in this Chamber. He first introduces the consideration of my political consistency, and he next introduces me, with the eighty-odd thousand of his fellow-citizens who sent me here, to this honorable body as a repudiator of public obligations. The sense of justice of fellow Senators renders it unnecessary for me to apologize for noticing my colleague’s criticisms on the one hand and his perversions on the other. However much he and his friends may endeavor, by the chop-logic of the attorney, to demonstrate what I ought to be, I know by my convictions and by my sense of duty what I am. In this particular I have largely the advantage of my colleague; for if I take him by his record, diminutive as it is, he neither knows what he was, what he is, or what duty he came here to perform. A very brief recital of Virginia political history, covering but a decade, will give a clear view of the Virginia situation as it is represented on this floor. My colleague gave the first page, and then, like the lazy, truant school-boy, skipped many pages, or, like the shifty lawyer, read only so much of the authority as suited his case. I am duly grateful to him for the small meed of praise he would deal out to me for the humble part I bore in the great liberal movement of 1869, which was undertaken to return our State to her normal condition in the Union.

I am the more grateful because the organs of the faction he represents here have recently published columns to prove that I was breathed into political existence subsequently to that momentous period. Not being sworn, my colleague thought it was sufficient for him to tell the truth without the usual obligation to tell the whole truth. It is now my privilege, as well as duty, to supply all deficiencies. The views I entertained then I still adhere to, and though, as far as my information goes, we had no material assistance from him in that severe and trying ordeal of 1869, I do know that after his election to this body he confessed himself in entire accord with all that had been done by Virginia as a condition precedent to her restoration, and with the zeal of a new convert expressed the hope that other States of the Union without the same propelling cause should do likewise. In a letter addressed to the 3218then governor of Virginia (Walker) he wrote as follows:

JOHNSTON TO GOVERNOR WALKER IN 1869.

Believing fully not only that we in Virginia could not prosper, but that our continued exclusion from the Union interfered with the business of the whole country, I have been anxious for an early compliance with the reconstruction laws, and that the State should itself inaugurate some movement similar to that which resulted in your election for the purpose, and not wait, like Micawber, “for something to turn up.”

The fifteenth amendment, which I trust will soon be adopted by States enough to make it a part of the Constitution of the United States, will end a question which has agitated the country for half a century. I entirely approve of the principles of that amendment, and as we have invested the freedman with the right to vote, let us give him a fair opportunity to vote understandingly. He has civil rights, and it is our interest he should know their value.

That we are apparently so near to the consummation of reconstruction we are greatly indebted to President Grant’s kind offices. The State was in a dilemma; it wanted a constitution; but the one made for it has at least two very objectionable features. We felt that we were suffering in all our material interests by staying out of the Union, and yet to go in under the constitution with all its provisions would have been worse.

The Gordian knot was happily cut by the President’s first message to Congress and the prompt response of that body. Up to this time the conduct of the administration has been liberal, and if the same policy is pursued hereafter it ought to have the hearty support of this State. If we cast dead issues behind us and look only to that line of conduct which shall restore quiet and confidence, and encourage enterprise and industry, we shall even see the country richer and more prosperous than it has ever been.

This movement in 1869 accomplished the restoration of our State under the expurgated constitution and gave us representation here in the persons of my colleague and ex-Senator Lewis. We were relieved of military government, became rehabilitated in our sovereignty, with entire control of our local autonomy. Thus, for a period, Virginia seemed to be enjoying the full freedom of her long-deferred hope for peace.

In the curious panoramic exhibition of my colleague I next appear as a candidate for governor in 1877. To be a candidate in Virginia is a privilege which every qualified voter may constitutionally exercise, and in that year there were three prominent candidates other than those named by the Senator. Two of them had been major-generals and one a brigadier-general. What an omission! Shades of departed glory defend us! when a United States Senator of the Bourbon persuasion can omit imposing titles in detailing events with which they were intimately associated. ’Tis true I was not nominated, lacking forty votes of a certain majority of a convention composed of over fourteen hundred delegates against a combination of five candidates, one of whom my colleague preferred, that preference perhaps being based upon motives as unselfish as are usual in veteran politicians and office-holders.

Mr. President, I can scarcely hope, in the presence of this body, where my colleague has served for many years, and where the altitude of his statesmanship frowns contemptuously down upon all who would aspire to reach its summit, to attain the awful diffidence with which I should undertake to correct any of his statements. He is one of the conscript fathers of the Senate, old in all its ways and usages; and long absence from his constituency and perpetual service to the national democratic party in helping to organize its numerous defeats make him forgetful of recent events in Virginia. Hence the necessity of my attempting to inform him as to certain matters of recent history at home.

“The next event,” says my colleague, “was that the readjusters separated themselves from the democratic party;” and after treating this at some length he says, “This brings us down to what is called Mozart Hall convention,” in which, he adds, “I spoke of the conservative party as though I belonged to it.”

Mr. President, I confess my inability to understand all this curious mixture of the odds and ends of my colleague’s scrap-book. He parades his facts in curiously-contrived array. He empties his ill-assorted jewels of information and “chunks of wisdom,” and seems to rely upon Senators to give them that consecutive arrangement as to fact and date which they have, possibly, in his own great mind. But, sir, the fact is there was no remarkable incident in Virginia politics between the election of 1877 and 1879, the month of February of the latter year being, the date of the assembling of the Mozart Hall convention. Certainly until February, 1879, there was no change in the status of parties in Virginia within that period. There was no organization of readjusters until February, 1879, and there was no declared democratic party until 1880.

This brings me, Mr. President, to a period when I propose to do more than follow my colleague in his half-way candid and nearly always inaccurate statement. It is at this juncture, he says, that Mr. Riddleberger 3219and I are so much identified that he cannot separate us. It is at this point the organization of the readjusters begins; and it is at this point he appears to seek to make an impression wholly unwarranted by any act of the readjusters in Virginia. It is at this point, too, Mr. President, that I am constrained by a sense of duty to my people, my State, and myself to treat the question of our State debt as it presents itself in Virginia. In doing this, I wish it distinctly understood that I hold this to be a matter belonging exclusively to the State of Virginia, and I should repel any Federal interference with this as I would with any other question of mere State concern. I shall presume upon the indulgence of Senators because they have heard but one side, and that more than once, and I know they will be willing to hear a defense of Virginia against unjust attacks from those who ought to be her defenders.

Sir, there is not a fact upon which to base any one of the statements or arguments of my colleague. Instead of the Mozart Hall convention being held to effect a repeal of an irrepealable contract, it was a body of people assembled on a call of members of the General Assembly opposed to what is known in Virginia as the “brokers’ bill.” They assembled before that bill had passed either House of the General Assembly, and, coming fresh from the people, expressed their unqualified disapproval of that measure. It was apparent the measure was to pass, and organized opposition began. But, Mr. President, this is neither the beginning nor the end of this question. It was in 1871 that the first funding bill was enacted, and this we know in Virginia as the first contract.

I will not go into the details of this measure, as I shall ask the clerk to read a review of all the Virginia funding acts before concluding my remarks. It is my purpose now only to notice the speeches of Senators, notably that of my colleague, in this Chamber. It will be news to Senators to hear to-day that the readjusters never repealed either of the funding contracts. That enacted and only partially executed in 1866–’67 was in effect repealed by the Assembly which passed it, and the work of repeal was consummated by the Legislature that enacted the more obnoxious measure of 1871. This in turn was repealed by the Assembly of 1872, the propounder of the repeal measure being the present lieutenant-governor of the State, subsequently in full fellowship with the alleged debt-payers. Indeed this measure was so obnoxious that Governor Walker, who was conceded to be its author, subsequently urged that the Federal Government should assume the debts of the Southern States.

Mr. President, I might pause to inquire if that is a part of the doctrine of my colleague and the Senators who co-operate with him, when they stand here to represent the party for which Governor Walker then spoke, the pretended debt-payers of Virginia? It was this repeal bill which the Virginia court of appeals held to be unconstitutional, and here the matter rested until the State had accumulated interest arrears to over five million dollars, beside diverting one and a half million dollars which was dedicated by the constitution to the public free schools.

In 1877 what is known as the Barbour bill was proposed and passed, not a few of the latter-day self-styled debt-payers being among its most zealous supporters. Although this did not repeal in terms the original funding bill, it was nevertheless vetoed by the governor.

Such was our condition at the succeeding election—schools reduced 50 per cent., length of sessions abridged, asylums sustained by money borrowed from the banks—after exhausting every possible expedient even to a reduction of judicial salaries, that a Legislature was returned pledged to a resettlement of this debt.

That settlement came in the form of the brokers’ bill, for which my colleague stands at home and here the champion, aided and abetted by distinguished gentlemen on this floor. I commend the virtuous democracy of this Chamber to read that bill, and then tell this Senate whether there ever was a more undemocratic measure than the bill propounded in Virginia by the party whose cause they espouse.

That settlement came in the form of the broker’s bill, as I have said, and this was the last repeal of the original contract. Yet my colleague would say the readjusters of to-day disregard the court decisions. Surely he has not forgotten that he was upon the hustings in Virginia advocating each of the successive measures repealing the “irrepealable” contract, while in every instance the readjusters proper opposed the new measure.

But here again I am called upon to answer the charge of personal inconsistency. My colleague cannot ascertain that I opposed the funding scheme of 1871—a measure which, I assert without the fear of contradiction, not only repudiated but forcibly repudiated what my colleague understands to be one-third of the debt of Virginia. I suggest to my fellow-Senators on the opposite side to take care of that contamination of which they have warned the country in respect to the readjusters of Virginia.

My colleague adverted to the Richmond Whig, and proclaimed it as my mouthpiece. Mr. President, nobody speaks for me; I speak for myself. Why not have ascertained from the same source how I stood on the funding bill of 1871? Senators 3220will not find that I ever supported the measure of 1871.

Passing over what appears in my colleague’s speech as extracts from newspapers, to whose misstatements he has contributed a full share, I come now to notice his animadversions on the Riddleberger bill. If his criticisms were based on fact and a proper understanding of that measure, they would be unanswerable. He says that “the ‘Riddleberger bill’ has been substantially pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States.” I ask him in what particular? Is it in this—that it does not recognize the interest that accrued during the war? If so, will my learned colleague inform me upon what principle of right he last summer sustained a measure which repudiated one-half of the interest that has accrued since the complete restoration of our State? Does he not know that that measure of forcible readjustment absolutely repudiated one-half of the accrued and unfunded interest, while the Riddleberger bill provides for paying it dollar for dollar? The difference is simply this: that since 1871 we have denied the right of the creditor to exact war interest and proposed to pay him all else in full. Our adversaries would and did fund that war interest and proposed to repudiate one-half of that which we are in honor and in law bound to pay.

Is it unconstitutional in that it pays but 3 per cent.? The only measure ever passed by the Virginia Assembly to pay as much as 4 per cent. and the only one under which one-third of our creditors have received a penny of interest, was introduced and patronized by Mr. Riddleberger. The first time that our Legislature ever voiced 3 per cent. was when they passed the brokers’ job, the pet scheme of my colleague, so ably re-enforced in his advocacy of it on this floor by distinguished gentlemen on the other side, the Legislature then themselves admitting and declaring in the preamble of their bill that this is all the State can pay for ten years “without destroying its industries;” and last winter every legislator of their party voted to run the 3 per cent. for the whole time.

Is it unconstitutional in that it does not exempt the bonds from taxation forever, as the brokers’ bill attempted to do, a feature peculiar to that measure for paying the debt of Virginia which my colleague advocates here? If so, I would respectfully refer my colleague to his State constitution, which says that all property shall be taxed equally and uniformly; that no one species of property shall be taxed higher than another, and that only such property as is used for religious, educational, and charitable purposes may be exempt from taxation. My learned colleague, who so unkindly characterized the patron of that bill as a county court lawyer, cites only Hartman vs. Greenhow as the case which holds this bill unconstitutional. That case decided no principle that this bill infringes. The Riddleberger bill imposes no tax upon bonds held either in or out of the State. It simply does not exempt any. By what authority, I would ask my colleague, can such a tax be made and collected? He must answer to the party which he undertakes to represent here for doing an unconstitutional act: to tax bonds of the State of Virginia held by a non-resident. The Riddleberger bill does not tax them. Whenever the General Assembly, carrying out the Riddleberger bill, shall endeavor to tax bonds held out of the State, it will be time for the Senator to renew the test in the Supreme Court of the United States and cite the precedent of Hartman vs. Greenhow.

Is it the much-discussed fourteenth section which is unconstitutional? If so I would remind my legal colleague that it is a verbatim copy of a statute passed by the State of Tennessee, adjudicated by the Supreme Court of the United States, and not only held by that high tribunal to be constitutional but proper legislation for the protection and maintenance of government. Is it unconstitutional in what is called its force feature? If so it has precedent in the bill of ’71, which forbade the payment of any interest to a creditor who did not accept a reduction of one-third. It has precedent in the brokers’ bill, which provided tax certificates to compete at a reduced price with the receivable coupon, and both of these measures found a hustings advocate in my colleague.

But he would imply that our debt was ascertained at a certain sum in pursuance of the State Constitution, which he says was $29,667,304.76.

Mr. President, if there is any man in the party which my colleague represents who agrees with another member of that party in Virginia as to what the debt of that State is, we have yet to find the concurrence; it is with one leader this figure, with another leader another figure; by one report of their officers one sum, and then by another report of other officers a different sum. Grant that sum to be the true one; but let the Senator state that our constitution recognized no specific sum. It says there shall first be a settlement with West Virginia, which has not yet been had, and commands payment of what Virginia shall owe. That is the language, that is the instruction of the constitution of Virginia; that, after a settlement with West Virginia, covering one-third of old Virginia’s territory, shall have been arrived at by an adjustment of their relative 3221proportions of the public debt, Virginia will provide for her share. Now I would like the Senators from West Virginia in this cry against readjusters as repudiators to tell the country what answer they have made to their obligation for one-third of the debt contracted by the old Commonwealth of Virginia. Will they tell the country where they have ever made a proposition to pay one stiver of their share of the public debt of that State to maintain the honor and the dignity of their own Commonwealth? Let them answer.

It was the party of my colleague, that repudiated the settlement of 1871 by the passage of the brokers’ bill in 1879, and in turn attempted to repudiate the latter by unanimously indorsing what is known as the “Ross Hamilton bill.” I suppose it would not suit my colleague to tell this audience who Ross Hamilton is. Yet, I beg Senators to take notice that the party of my colleague, after a winter spent in the vain effort to find a leader capable of devising means to overthrow the popular will, discovered such, as they supposed, in the person of Ross Hamilton, a colored republican member of the Legislature from the county of Mecklenburg, and blindly followed him to defeat. Hamilton’s bill, which was thus unanimously supported by my colleague’s party, not only in effect repealed their pet scheme, the brokers’ bill, but all other acts in respect to the public debt of Virginia.

I come now to perform a duty—the most unpleasant in one sense and the most agreeable in another. It is to repel the charge flippantly, I hope inconsiderately, made on this floor that we are repudiators and our proposed measure dishonorable. To the first I reply that my colleague’s party in eight years of administration of our State affairs paid 2 per cent. installments of interest on ten millions of our public debt just six times, or 12 per cent. in all; 6 times 8 would be 48 per cent. Instead of that they paid 12 per cent., and that is debt-paying!

Let this suffice. But when Senators apply the word dishonorable, they do not know either whom or what they characterize. Two things they have endeavored to demonstrate, and one is that I received a majority of the white conservative vote of both branches of the Virginia General Assembly. Proudly do I proclaim the truth of this. Every one of those who voted for me to come to this Chamber gave an unqualified vote for the Riddleberger bill. Are they dishonorable men? Scornfully do I repel the charge that any one of them is capable of dishonorable action.

Were it true, what a sad commentary it would be upon those honorable gentlemen whom it is said I am not representing here. Mr. President, my colleague comes from what we call in Virginia the great Southwest, a noble and prosperous section of Virginia. Fifteen white Conservative counties compose his congressional district, and though the ablest of the orators of my colleague’s party canvassed it thoroughly against me and the views set forth in this measure, but two delegates and no senator of the gentleman’s party came to the Legislature. To a man they supported the Riddleberger bill. Every senator and every delegate from my colleague’s own congressional district, save and except two delegates, supported me for the Senate and the Riddleberger bill as a measure for debt-paying. He would do well to spend a little more time with his constituents!

Whatever our differences on this question, it seems to me those people should have had a defender in him against such foul and slanderous accusations as have been made—that they are dishonorable men. O Shame! where is thy blush? Dishonorable in Virginia to beg the privilege of paying every dollar she borrowed—that is, her rightful share, instead of not only paying that but also the share of West Virginia—dishonorable to pay every dollar she borrowed, only abating the war interest! Dishonorable, too, in the opinion of the gentlemen who represent States on this floor and municipalities which have by arbitrary legislation reduced their indebtedness from $243,000,000 down to $84,000,000! Dishonorable in Virginia not only to assume her full share of her public obligations, as measured by her territory in this division of it, but offering to tax her people to an extent threatening the destruction of her industrial interests! Is that dishonorable in that people? If so, what have you to say of this tier of Southern States whose public indebtedness, whose plighted faith, whose sacred obligations—as sacred as are those of my State of Virginia—have been reduced from $243,000,000 by one or another method of repudiation, upon one or another excuse, down to $84,000,000, with a reduced interest rate upon the curtailed principal, and only proposing to pay interest in some cases at 2 per cent. and in others 3 and in others 4 on the reduced principal? Is it dishonorable in Virginia to assume $20,000,000 of the debt of the old State and then to tax her industries within the verge of endurance to pay on that sum the highest rate of interest? Let Senators who assail unjustly the conduct of Virginia in this respect put their own houses in order. I want, Mr. President, the Secretary to read from the International Review the measures of readjustment in the Southern States that Senators may know how fashionable readjustment had been in that section 3222of this great country on which northern democrats rely in a presidential election.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

Fluctuation of the Debts of twelve Southern States since the year 1842.

States. 1842. 1852. 1860. 1870.

West Virginia

Virginia $6,994,307 $13,573,355 $31,779,062 $47,390,839

North Carolina None. 977,000 9,699,000 29,900,045

South Carolina 5,691,234 3,144,931 4,046,540 7,665,909

Georgia 1,309,750 2,801,972 2,670,750 6,544,500

Florida 4,000,000 2,800 4,120,000 1,288,697

Alabama 15,400,060 8,500,000 6,700,000 8,478,018

Mississippi 7,000,000 7,271,707 None. 1,796,230

Louisiana 23,985,000 11,492,566 4,561,109 25,021,734

Texas 5,725,671 None. 508,641

Arkansas 2,676,000 1,506,562 3,092,624 3,459,557

Tennessee 3,198,166 3,776,856 20,896,606 38,539,802

Kentucky 3,085,500 5,726,307 5,479,244 3,892,480

Totals 73,340,017 64,499,727 93,046,934 174,486,452

States. Date after the war when debt reached highest. 1880. Amount of debt repudiated bet. period wh. highest & June, 1880

West Virginia No debt.

Virginia $47,390,839 $29,345,226 $18,045,613

North Carolina 29,900,045 3,629,511 26,270,534

South Carolina 24,782,906 7,175,454 17,607,452

Georgia 20,197,500 10,334,000 9,863,500

Florida 5,512,268 1,391,357 4,120,911

Alabama 31,952,000 11,613,670 20,338,830

Mississippi 3,226,847 379,485 2,847,362

Louisiana 40,416,734 12,635,810 27,780,924

Texas 5,782,887 5,782,887

Arkansas 18,287,273 5,813,627 12,473,646

Tennessee 41,863,406 25,685,822 16,177,584

Kentucky 3,892,480 180,394 3,712,086

Totals 273,205,185 113,967,243 159,237,942

Mr. Mahone. There is no mere readjustment there; I will not say it is repudiation. “Repudiation” is honorable, perhaps; “readjustment” dishonorable.

Oh, Virginia! It was for this you bared your bosom to soldier’s tread and horse’s hoof. It was for this you laid waste your fields. It was for this you displayed your noble virtues of fortitude and courage, your heroic suffering and sacrifice. It was for this you suffered the dismemberment of your territory and sent your sons to the field to return to the ruins where were once their homes. It was for this you so reluctantly abandoned your allegiance to a common country to be the last to make war and the last to surrender. O Ingratitude, thou basest and meanest of crimes!

And now, Mr. President, at the time of my election who constituted my opponents? Already, as you have been advised, another representing distinctly the Bourbon democracy of Virginia and the so-called democracy of this Chamber, another representing distinctly the republican party of Virginia—these were the candidates before the Legislature which elected me to this body. I received not only a majority of the so-called democratic readjusters but of the so-called republican readjusters. And now what were the efforts, known there if not here to gentlemen, to defeat me? Were not combinations sought to be made? It is known of all men there at the capital of my State, if not here, that every influence from whatsoever quarter it could be adduced, whether democratic or republican, was brought together at Richmond for the purpose by combination of defeating my election, of defeating the sovereign will of the people of that Commonwealth as expressed on the 4th of November, 1879.

There was a democracy which sought to secure the election of an orthodox, simon-pure, unadulterated republican, but of that kind called Bourbons in Virginia—a democracy which was not only willing but ready and anxious to send here in the place I have the honor to hold a republican whom they would otherwise profess to despise. What for? For the consideration well known there, that they might elect certain county judges and control the State offices, and by that means prevent the disclosures which have subsequently followed since the readjusters have gotten possession of the capitol. That democracy which like Cæsar’s wife would stand “above suspicion,” were ready to trade a seat in the United States Senate so that a few county judges might be preserved, that the offices in the capitol at Richmond might be retained in their control; I say in order, perhaps, that the disclosures which have followed the advent of the party I represent might have been longer concealed; moreover that control of the ballot-box in the State might continue where it had been; so certainly I believe; and all this by those who professed to represent the party which had declared in national convention for a full vote, a free ballot, and an honest count.

Such were the considerations, such I say were the inducements which prompted that democracy to its efforts to send to this Chamber a republican beyond question since these many long and weary years. If that is the democracy that the gentlemen on that side love, I proclaim my inability to co-operate with them.

I supported neither of the candidates for Congress in my district, and emphatically declared that purpose on more than one public occasion, because one was a candidate of that party, the Bourbon reactionists, and the other a Bourbon republican with accommodating views on the debt question.

3223To obey the behests of the democratic caucus of this body, whose leadership on this floor, whose representative national authority—the one here and the other elsewhere—have championed the cause of the Bourbon-funder party in Virginia, would be an obsequious surrender of our State policy and self-condemnation of our independent action.

The desire of our people for cordial relations with all sections of a common country and the people of all the States of the Union, their devotion to popular education, their efforts for the free enjoyment of a priceless suffrage and an honest count of ballots, their determination to make Virginia, in the public belief, a desirable home for all men, wherever their birthplace, whatever their opinions, and to open her fields and her mines to enterprise and capital, and to stay the retrograde movement of years, so as to bring her back from the fifteenth in grade to her original position among the first in the sisterhood of States, forbid that my action here should be controlled or influenced by a caucus whose party has waged war upon my constituency and where party success is held paramount to what I conceive to be the interests of Virginia and the welfare of the whole country.

The readjusters of Virginia have no feeling of hostility, no words of unkindness for the colored man. His freedom has come, and whether by purpose or by accident, thank God, that among other issues which so long distracted our country and restrained its growth, was concluded, and I trust forever, by the results of the sanguinary struggle between the sections.

I have faith, and it is my earnest hope, that the march of an enlightened civilization and the progress of human freedom will proceed until God’s great family shall everywhere enjoy the products of their own labor and the blessings of civil, political, and religious liberty.

The colored man was loyal to Virginia in all the days of conflict and devastation which came of the heroic struggle in the war of sections that made her fields historic. By no act of his was either the clash of arms provoked or freedom secured. He did not solve his duty by consideration of self-interest.

Speech of Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont,

(Author of the Tariff Bill of 1861), delivered in the Senate of the United Stales, December 8, 1881, on the Bill to Appoint a Tariff Commission.

The Senate, being as in Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration the bill (S. No. 22) to provide for the appointment of a commission to investigate the question of the tariff and internal revenue laws—

Mr. Morrill said: I have brought this subject to the early attention of the Senate because, if early legislative action on the tariff is to be had, obviously the measure proposed by Senator Eaton and passed at the last session of the Senate is a wise and indispensable preliminary, which cannot be started too soon. The essential information needed concerns important interests, vast in number and overspreading every nook and corner of our country; and when made available by the ingathering and collocation of all the related facts, will secure the earliest attention of Congress, as well as the trust and confidence of the country, and save the appropriate committees of both Houses weeks and months of irksome labor—possibly save them also from some blunders and from final defeat.

An enlargement of the free list, essential reductions and readjustments of rates, are to be fully considered, and some errors of conflicting codifications corrected.

If a general revision of the Bible seems to have been called for, it is hardly to be wondered at that some revision of our revenue laws should be invited. But changes in the framework of a law that has had more of stability than any other of its kind in our history, and from which an unexampled growth of varied industries has risen up, should be made with much circumspection, after deliberate consideration, by just and friendly hands, and not by ill-informed and reckless revolutionists. When our recent great army was disbanded, war taxes were also largely dismissed, and we have now, and certainly shall have hereafter, no unlimited margin for slashing experiments.

THE TARIFF OF 1861.

The tariff act of 1861, which, by a nickname given by baffled opponents as an echo to a name so humble as my own, it was perhaps hoped to render odious, was yet approved by a democratic President and gave to Mr. Buchanan a much needed opportunity to perform at last one official act approved by the people.

If I refer to this measure, it will not be egotistically nor to shirk responsibility, but only in defense of those who aided its passage—such as the never-to-be-forgotten Henry Winter Davis, Thad. Stevens, and, William A. Howard, and, let me add, the names of Fessenden and Crittenden—and, without the parliamentary skill of one (Mr. Sherman) now a member of this body, its success would not have been made certain.

And yet this so-called “Morrill tariff,” hooted at as a “Chinese wall” that was to shut out both commerce and revenue, notwithstanding amendments subsequently 3224piled and patched upon it at every fresh demand during the war, but retaining its vertebræ and all of its specific characteristics, has been as a financial measure an unprecedented success in spite of its supposed patronymical incumbrance. Transforming ad valorem duties into specific, then averaging but 25 per cent. upon the invoice values, imposing much higher rates upon luxuries than upon necessaries, and introducing compound duties^[86] upon woolens, justly compensatory for the duties on wool, it has secured all the revenue anticipated, or $198,159,676 in 1881 against $53,187,511 in 1860, and our total trade, exports and imports, in 1860, of $687,192,176, appears to have expanded in 1880 to $1,613,770,633, with a grand excess of exports in our favor of $167,683,912, and an excess in 1881 of $259,726,254, while it was $20,040,062 against us in 1860. A great reduction of the public debt has followed, and the interest charged has fallen from $143,781,591 in 1867 to about $60,500,000 at the present time.

If such a result is not a practical demonstration of healthy intrinsic merits, when both revenue and commerce increase in a much greater ratio than population, what is it? Our imports in the past two years have been further brilliantly embellished by $167,060,041 of gold and silver coin and bullion, while retaining in addition all of our own immense domestic productions; and it was this only which enabled us to resume and to maintain specie payments. Let the contrast of 1860 be also borne in mind, when the excess of our exports of gold and silver was $57,996,004.

As a protective measure this tariff, with all its increasing amendments, has proven more satisfactory to the people and to various industries of the country than any other on record. The jury of the country has so recorded its verdict. Agriculture has made immense strides forward. The recent exports of food products, though never larger, is not equal by twenty-fold to home consumption, and prices are every where more remunerative, agricultural products being higher and manufactures lower. Of wheat, corn, and oats there was produced 1,184,540,849 bushels in 1860, but in 1880 the crop had swelled to 2,622,200,039 bushels, or had much more than doubled. Since 1860 lands in many of the Western States have risen from 100 to 175 per cent. The production of rice, during the same time, rose from 11,000,000 pounds to 117,000,000. The fires of the tall chimneys have every where been lighted up; and while we made only 987,559 tons of pig iron in 1860, in 1880 we made 4,295,414 tons; and of railroad iron the increase was from 235,107 tons to 1,461,837 tons. In twenty years the production of salt rose from 12,717,200 bushels to 29,800,298 bushels. No previous crop of cotton equalled the 4,861,000 bales of 1860; but the crop of 1880 was larger, and that of 1881 is reported at 6,606,000 bales. The yield of cotton from 1865 to 1881 shows an increase over the fifteen years from 1845 to 1861 of 14,029,000 bales, or almost an average gain of a million bales a year.

The giant water-wheels have revolved more briskly, showing the manufacture of 1,797,000 bales of cotton in 1880 against only 979,000 bales in 1860, and this brought up the price of raw cotton to higher figures than in 1860. Thirteen States and one Territory produced cotton, but its manufacture spreads over thirty States and one Territory. The census of cotton manufacture shows:

1860. 1880.

Capital invested $98,585,269 $207,781,868

Number of operatives 122,028 175,187

Wages paid $23,940,108 $41,921,106

Value of productions 115,681,774 192,773,960

It will be found that a larger amount of capital has been invested in cotton mills than in woolen, and that the increase of productions has been large and healthy, a very handsome proportion of which is to be credited to Southern States. Goods of many descriptions have also been cheapened in price. Standard prints or calicoes which sold in 1860 for nine and one-half cents per yard now sell for six and one-half cents.

The census returns of woolen manufactures show the following astonishing results:

Census of 1880. Census of 1860.

Males employed 74,367 24,841

Females employed 65,261 16,519

Capital invested $155,454,105 $30,862,654

Wages paid 47,115,614 9,808,254

Value raw material consumed 162,609,436 36,586,887

Value of annual product 265,684,796 61,895,217

Importations of woolens 33,613,897 37,876,945

Annual product’n of wool lbs 264,500,000 60,511,343

It thus appears, that while the number of hands employed is three times and a half larger than in 1860, the wages paid is about five times larger and the capital is five times greater. The annual productions have been more than quadrupled, and the aggregate importations have fallen off four millions. With these results in our front, protection on wool and woolens will be likely to withstand the hand-grenades of all free-trade besiegers.

3225In New England and some other States sheep husbandry has fallen off, and in some places it has been replaced by the dairy business; but in other States the wool-clip has largely increased, especially has the weight of the fleece increased. The number of sheep has increased about 80 per cent. and the weight of wool over 400 per cent. The discovery that the fine long merino wools, known as the American merino, are in fact the best of combing wools and now used in many styles of dress goods has added greatly to their demand and value. Many kinds of woolen goods can be had at a less price than twenty years ago. Cashmeres that then brought forty-six cents per yard brought only thirty-eight and one-fourth cents in 1880, and muslin de laines dropped from twenty cents to fifteen, showing that the tariff did not make them dearer, but that American competition caused a reduction of prices.

The length of our railroads has been trebled, rising from 31,185 miles in 1860 to 94,000 miles in 1881, and possibly to one-half of all in the world. For commercial purposes the wide area of our country has been compressed within narrow limits, and transportation in time and expense, from New York to Kansas, or from Chicago to Baltimore, is now less formidable than it was from Albany or Pittsburgh to Philadelphia prior to the era of railroads. The most distant States reach the same markets, and are no longer neighbors-in-law, but sister States. The cost of eastern or western bound freight is less than one-third of former rates. Workingmen, including every ship-load of emigrants, have found acceptable employment. Our aggregate wealth in 1860 was $19,089,156,289, but is estimated to have advanced in 1880 to over forty billions. Further examination will show that the United States are steadily increasing in wealth, and increasing, too, much more rapidly than free-trade England, notwithstanding all her early advantages of practical experience and her supremacy in accumulated capital. The increase of wealth in France is twice as rapid as in England, but in the United States it is more rapid than even in France.

These are monumental facts, and they can no more be blinked out of sight than the Alleghanies or the Rocky Mountains. They belong to our country, and sufficiently illustrate its progress and vindicate the tariff of 1861. If the facts cannot be denied, the argument remains irrefutable. If royal “cowboys” who attempted to whistle down American independence one hundred years ago ingloriously failed, so it may be hoped will fail royal trumpeters of free-trade who seem to take sides against the United States in all commercial contests for industrial independence.

Among the branches of manufactures absolutely waked into life by the tariff of 1861, and which then had no place above zero, may be named crockery and china ware. The number of white-ware factories is now fifty-three, with forty decorating establishments; and the products, amounting to several millions, are sold at prices 25 to 50 per cent. below the prevailing prices of twenty years ago. Clay and kaolin equal to the best in China have been found east, west, and south in such abundance as to promise a large extension of American enterprise, not only in the ordinary but in the highest branches of ceramic art. Steel may also here claim its birth. No more of all sorts than 11,838 tons were made in 1860, but 1,397,015 tons were made in 1880. Those who objected to a duty on steel have found they were biting something more than a file. Silks in 1860, hardly unwound from the cocoon, were creeping along with only a small showing of sewing-silk and a few trimmings, but now this industry rises to national importance, furnishing apt employment to many thousand women as well as to men; and the annual products, sharply competing with even the Bonnét silks of Lyons, amount to the round sum of $34,500,000. Notwithstanding the exceptionally heavy duties, I am assured that silk goods in general are sold for 25 per cent. less than they were twenty years ago.

Plate-glass is another notable manufacture, requiring great scientific and mechanical skill and large capital, whose origin bears date since the tariff of 1861. It is made in Missouri and in Indiana, and to a small extent in Kentucky and Massachusetts; but in Indiana it is made of the purest and best quality by an establishment which, after surmounting many perils, has now few equals in the magnitude or perfection of its productions, whether on this or the other side of the Atlantic, and richly merits not only the favor but the patronage of the Government itself. Copper is another industry upon which a specific duty was imposed in 1861, which has had a rapid growth, and now makes a large contribution to our mineral wealth. The amount produced in 1860 was less than one-fifth of the present production, and valued at $2,288,182; while in 1880 the production rose to the value of $8,849,961. The capital invested increased from $8,525,500 to $31,675,096. In 1860 the United States Mint paid from twenty-three and one-half to twenty-five cents per pound for copper; but has obtained it the present year under a protective tariff as low as seventeen cents. Like our mines of inexhaustible coal and iron, copper is found in many States, some of it superior to any in the world, and for special uses is constantly sought after by foreign governments.

3226Many American productions sustain the character they have won by being the best in the world. Our carpenters and joiners could not be hired to handle any other than American tools; and there are no foreign agricultural implements, from a spade to a reaper, that an American farmer would accept as a gift. There is no saddlery hardware nor house-furnishing, equal in quality and style to American. Watches and jewelry and the electric gold and silver plated ware of American workmanship as to quality have the foremost place in the marts of the world. The superiority of our staple cotton goods is indisputable, as is proven by the tribute of frequent counterfeits displayed abroad. The city of Philadelphia alone makes many better carpets and more in quantity than the whole of Great Britain. These are noble achievements, which should neither be obscured nor lost by the sinister handling and industrious vituperation of free-trade monographists.

The vast array of important and useful inventions recorded in our Patent Office, and in use the world over, shows that it is hardly arrogance for us to accept the compliment of Mr. Cobden and claim that the natural mechanical genius of average Americans will soon appear as much superior to that of Englishmen as was that of Englishmen one hundred years ago to that of the Dutch.

THE TARIFF SHIELDED US IN 1873.

If we had been under the banner of free trade in 1873, when the widespread financial storm struck our sails, what would have been our fate? Is it not apparent that our people would have been stranded on a lee shore, and that the general over-production and excess of unsold merchandise everywhere abroad would have come without hindrance, with the swiftness of the winds, to find a market here at any price? As it was the gloom and suffering here were very great, but American workingmen found some shelter in their home markets, and their recovery from the shock was much earlier assured than that of those who in addition to their own calamities had also to bear the pressure of the hard times of other nations.

In six years, ending June 30, 1881, our exports of merchandise exceeded imports by over $1,175,000,000—a large sum in itself, largely increasing our stock of gold, filling the pockets of the people with more than two hundred and fifty millions not found in the Treasury or banks, making the return to specie payments easy, and arresting the painful drain of interest so long paid abroad. It is also a very conclusive refutation of the wild free-trade chimeras that exports are dependent upon imports, and that comparatively high duties are invariably less productive of revenue than low duties. The pertinent question arises, Shall we not in the main hold fast to the blessings we have? As Americans we must reject free trade. To use some words of Burke upon another subject: “If it be a panacea we do not want it. We know the consequences of unnecessary physic. If it be a plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to be established against it.”

FREE-TRADE PROSPERITY ON THE WANE.

It gives me no pleasure to notice retrograde steps in the prosperity of Great Britain; and, if some evidence of this sort is brought out, like that of the five thousand houses now marked “To let” in Sheffield and ten thousand in Birmingham, it will have no other purpose than to show that free trade has failed to secure the promised supremacy to English manufactures. The avowal of Mr. Gladstone that the additional penny to the income tax produces less revenue than formerly indicates a positive decrease of wealth; and the steady diminution of British exports since 1873, amounting in 1880 to one hundred and sixty million dollars, with a diminution in the total of exports and imports of two hundred and fifty million dollars, is more conclusive proof as well of British decadence as of the advancement of other nations.

COMMERCIAL PROTECTION.

The sum of our annual support bestowed upon the Navy, like that upon the Army, may be too close-fisted and disproportionate to our extended ocean boundaries, and to the value of American commerce afloat; yet whatever has been granted has been designed almost exclusively for the protection of our foreign commerce, and amounts in the aggregate to untold millions. Manufacturers do not complain that this is a needless and excessive favor to importers; and why, then, should importers object to some protection to a much larger amount of capital, and to far greater numbers embarked certainly in an equally laudable enterprise at home?

THE FREE-TRADE PROPAGANDISTS OF ENGLAND.

For the last thirty-five years England has been making extraordinary efforts, political, industrial, legislative, diplomatic, social, and literary, all combined, to persuade mankind to follow her example of reversing that policy of protection, supreme in her Augustan age, or from Queen Anne down throughout the Georgian era, and the policy maintained by Chatham, by the younger Pitt, and by Canning with an 3227energy that created and sustained the most varied and extensive workshops of the world. Already mistress of the ocean and abounding in wealth, the sea-girt Island aspired to a world-wide monopoly of trade. Penetrated with this later free-trade ambition, and not infrequently accused of trying to make all England tributary to Manchester, and all the rest of the world tributary to England, the eloquent Mr. Bright, who grandly rejected any idea of a new nation in America, resorts even to the infelicitous language of passion when he denounces his opponents, as he does, by declaring that any looking toward protective legislation anywhere in the world is proof either of “congenital depravity or defect of judgment.” Let us be thankful it is no worse, for what would have happened if the wrathful Englishman had said “total depravity?”

The repeal of the corn laws was not for the benefit of foreign nations, but solely for the benefit of Englishmen.

First. It was their belief that their skill and great capital gave them that superiority which would secure them against all competition except that arising from cheaper food.

Second. The cheaper-fed workmen of Germany, France, and America presented the only competition not to be resisted, and it had to be at once squarely met. Protection was abandoned, and abandoned possibly forever, but abandoned because the laboring British population had become too great and too hungry, with over a million and a half of paupers, when measured by the supply of home-grown food. Some of the little Benjamins must go to Egypt for corn. Starving men do little work, but occasionally do too much. The sole conditions to the continuance of the dense population and the grand scale of British manufactures in competition with modern nations appeared to be parsimony and privation, or lower-priced bread and lowest-priced labor. With these partially secured there came a season of temporary relief, but, unfortunately, with no increase of wages. It was barely success at the cost of an alliance with the discontent of underpaid workmen, with strikes and organized expatriation. Free trade, it is found, grinds labor to the bone, and forces it to fly, with muscles and machinery, to more inviting fields.

British agriculture, long depressed and chronically exposed to bad harvests, is now threatened with ruin by foreign competition, and British manufactures also seem almost as destitute of sunshine as their agriculture, though still owning a reluctant allegiance to the laws of the universe and to the exact science of the garrulous Bonamy Price. Lord Derby, in a late speech to the Lancashire farmers, recommended that some of the farmers should emigrate—five millions, I believe, he proposed—and those who might remain, said he, will then be able to farm on better terms.

True enough; but what a cold, sunless, and desperate remedy is that! If not Roman decimation, at least a sentence of banishment, crushing out the sweetest affections planted in human hearts, their love for their birthplaces, the homes of their fathers! But if these ill-fated men have barely supported life by the pittances daily earned, by what means, at whose cost, can they be transported to better and more welcome homes? The advice of Lord Derby is like that of the children of Marie Antoinette when the populace of Paris were clamoring for bread. Said the children: “Why don’t they buy cake?” Equally “child-like and bland” is Lord Derby. It would seem, when over 40 per cent. of their yearly imports must be of food, that the British Islands are too small for the foundations of the empire. The grand pyramid stands upon its apex reversed.

English statesmen have not forgotten the reservation of Sir Robert Peel, the author of the free-trade bill in 1846: “I reserve to myself,” said he, “distinctly and unequivocally the right of adapting my conduct to the exigencies of the moment and to the wants of the country;” and that is all protectionists ever claim to do.

Already Sir Stafford Northcote, the leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Commons, is on the fence, and only ventures to favor “universal free trade.” That is surely a horse of another color, not Wellington’s “Copenhagen,” but more like Sancho Panza’s “Dapple.”

The recent reaction or change in many organs of British opinion shows that this right of adaptation to the exigencies of the moment is neither surrendered nor obsolete. Let me cite an extract from an influential paper, called the Observer:

There is no obligation upon us to incur industrial martyrdom for the sake of propagating free-trade principles, even supposing their truth to be as self-evident as we fondly imagined. Moreover, to speak the honest truth, we are beginning to doubt how far the creed to which we pinned our faith is so self-evident as we originally conceived. If we can persuade other nations to follow our example, then free trade is unquestionably the best thing for England. It does not follow, however, that it is the best thing for us, if we are to be left the sole adherents of free trade in the midst of a community of nations devoted to protection.

The Observer does not say, as will be seen, that it is best for other nations, but 3228only, if they will follow her example, “unquestionably the best thing for England;” and that will not be disputed.

Other nations, however, seem to prefer to profit by the earlier English example, displayed for seventy years after Smith’s Wealth of Nations appeared, and free trade, like the favorite English plum-pudding, is now called for by nobody but themselves, and is getting so cold as to be unpalatable even at home. Yet it is proposed by the amateur statesmen of our urban free-trade clubs, guiltless of any drop of perspiration in the paths of industry, to arrest American development by copying this foreign example, and thus bring our home labor and all of its rewards down to the European and Asiatic level. Nevertheless, I have faith that we shall abide in the track of the principles and politics which elevate and give character to American citizens, surrounding them with the daily presence and beauty of the useful arts, which so largely add to the power and dignity of any people in the great family of nations. To limit the industrial forces of an active, inventive, and ingenious people to agriculture alone, excluding manufactures and the mechanic arts, would be little better than in time of war to restrict an army to infantry alone, to the exclusion of cavalry and artillery. Great battles are not often so won.