History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 4

should be stricken out; also, that from and after the pa.s.sage of the bill, no person should be disqualified from voting at any election held in the District of Columbia on account of color; also, that all acts of Congress, and all laws of the State of Maryland in force in the District of Columbia, and all ordinances of the cities of Washington and Georgetown inconsistent with the provisions of the bill, should be repealed and annulled.

This bill was made the special order for Wednesday the 10th of January.

Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, whose duty it was, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to report the bill, opened the discussion by speaking as follows in favor of the measure:

"Can we excuse ourselves in continuing a limitation on the right of suffrage in the capital of the republic that has no justification in reason, justice, or in the principles on which we profess to have based our entire political system? Upon this question there seems to have been but little difference of opinion among the men who laid the foundation and built the superstructure of this Government. In those days no limitation was placed upon the enjoyment of the defensive rights of the citizen, including the right of suffrage, on account of the color of the skin, except in the State of South Carolina. All of the other States partic.i.p.ating in the formation of the Government of the United States had some limitation, based on s.e.x, or age, or property placed upon the right of suffrage; but none of them so far forgot the spirit of our Const.i.tution, the great words of the Declaration of Independence, or the genius of our inst.i.tutions, as to inquire into the color of a citizen before allowing him the great defensive right of the ballot. It is true, that as the republic moved off in its grand course among the nations a change occurred in the minds and practices of the people of a majority of the States. The love of liberty, because of its own great self, and not because of its application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive character and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears stuffed with cotton. When these things succeeded the active justice, abounding mercy, and love of human rights of the earlier days, State after State fell into the dark line of South Carolinian oppression, and adopted her anti-republican limitation of the right of suffrage. A few States stood firm and kept their faith, and to-day, when compared with the bruised and peeled and oppression-cursed State of South Carolina, stand forth as shining examples of the great rewards that are poured upon the heads of the just. Ma.s.sachusetts and South Carolina, the one true, the other false to the faith and ideas of the early life of the nation, should teach us how safe it is to do right, and how dangerous it is to do wrong; how much safer it is to do justice than it is to practice oppression.

"But, sir, not the States alone fell into this grievous error. The General Government took its stand upon the side of injustice, and apostatized from the true faith of the nation, by depriving a portion of its citizens of the political right of self-defense, the use of the ballot. What good has come to us from this apostasy? Take the history of the munic.i.p.al government of this city, and what is there in its pages to make an American feel proud of the results of this departure from the principles of true democracy? Is there a worse governed city in all the republic? Where in all the country was there to be found such evidences of thriftless dependence as in this city before the cold breath of the North swept down here during the rebellion and imparted a little of 'Yankee' vigor to its business and population?

Where within the bounds of professed fidelity to the Government was true loyalty at a lower ebb, and sympathy with the rebellion at higher flood; freedom more hated, and emanc.i.p.ation more roundly denounced; white troops harder to raise, and black ones more heartily despised; Union victories more coldly received, and reverses productive of less despondency, than right among that portion of the voting population and its adjuncts which control the local elections in this District?

With what complaisance the social elements of this capital fostered the brood of traitors who rushed hence to the service of the rebellion in 1861! Are these fruits of our errors pleasing?

"I would not be vindictive, I would be just. I do not want to legislate against the white citizen for the purpose of advancing the interests of the colored citizen. It is best to guard against all such legislation. Let the laws which we pa.s.s here be of such pure republican character, that no person can tell from the reading of them what color is stamped upon the faces of the citizens of the United States. Let us have no cla.s.s legislation, no cla.s.s privileges. Let our laws be just and uniform in their operation. This is the smooth sea upon which our ship of state may sail; all others are tempestuous and uncertain.

"And now, Mr. Speaker, who are the persons upon whom this bill will operate, if we shall place it upon the statute-book of the nation?

They are citizens of the United States and residents of the District of Columbia. It is true that many of them have black faces, but that is G.o.d's work, and he is wiser than we. Some of them have faces marked by colors uncertain; that is not G.o.d's fault. Those who hate black men most intensely can tell more than all others about this mixture of colors. But, mixed or black, they are citizens of this republic, and they have been, and are to-day, true and loyal to their Government; and this is vastly more than many of their contemners can claim for themselves. In this District a white skin was not the badge of loyalty while a black skin was. No traitor breathed the air of this capital wearing a black skin. Through all the gradations of traitors, from Wirz to Jeff. Davis, criminal eyes beamed from white faces. Through all phases of treason, from the bold stroke of Lee upon the battle-field to the unnatural sympathy of those who lived within this District, but hated the sight of their country's flag, runs the blood which courses only under a white surface. While white men were fleeing from this city to join their fortunes with the rebel cause, the returning wave brought black faces in their stead. White enemies went out, black friends came in. As true as truth itself were these poor men to the cause of this imperiled nation. Wherever we have trusted them, they have been true. Why will we not deal justly by them? Why shall we not, in this District, where the first effective legislative blow fell upon slavery, declare that these suffering, patient, devoted friends of the republic shall have the power to protect their own rights by their own ballots? Is it because they are ignorant? Sir, we are estopped from that plea. It comes too late. We did not make this inquiry in regard to the white voter. It is only when we see a man with a dark skin that we think of ignorance. Let us not stand on this now in relation to this District. The fact itself is rapidly pa.s.sing away, for there is no other part of the population of the District so diligent in the acquisition of knowledge as the colored portion. In spite of the difficulties placed in their pathway to knowledge by the white residents, the colored people, adults and children, are pressing steadily on.

"Taken as a cla.s.s, they surely show themselves possessed of enough of the leaven of thrift, education, morality, and religion to render it safe for us to make the experiment of impartial suffrage here. Let us make the trial. A failure can work no great harm, for to us belongs the power to make any change which the future may show to be necessary. How can we tell whether success or failure shall be the fruit of a practical application of the principles upon which our inst.i.tutions rest, unless we put them to a fair test? Give every man a fair chance to show how well he can discharge the duties of fully recognized citizenship. This is the way to solve the problem, and in no other way can it be determined. That success will attend the experiment I do not doubt. Others believe the result will prove quite the reverse. Who is right and who wrong can be ascertained only by putting the two opinions to a practical test. The pa.s.sage of this bill will furnish this test, and to that end I ask for it the favorable consideration of this house."

Mr. Boyer, of Pennsylvania, said: "The design of this bill is to inaugurate here, upon this most conspicuous stage, the first act of the new political drama which is intended to culminate in the complete political equality of the races and the establishment of negro suffrage throughout the States. Const.i.tutional amendments with this view have been already introduced at both ends of the Capitol. The object of the leaders of this movement is no longer concealed; and if there is any thing in their action to admire, it is the candor, courage, and ability with which they press their cause. The agitation is to go on until the question has been settled by the country, and it may as well be met here upon the threshold. The monstrous proposition is nothing less than the absorption into the body politic of the nation of a colored population equal to one-sixth of all the inhabitants of the country, as the census reports will show. Four millions of the population so to be amalgamated have been just set free from a servitude, the debasing influences of which have many a time been vividly depicted in the anti-slavery speeches of the very men who are the most prominent champions of this new political gospel.

"The argument in favor of the American negro's right to vote must be measured by his capacity to understand and his ability to use such right for the promotion of the public good. And that is the very matter in dispute. But the point does not turn simply upon the inferiority of the negro race; for differences without inferiority may unfit one race for political or social a.s.similation with another, and render their fusion in the same government incompatible with the general welfare. It is, as I conceive, upon these principles that we must settle the question whether this is a white man's government.

"The negro has no history of civilization. From the earliest ages of recorded time he has ever been a savage or a slave. He has populated with teeming millions the vast extent of a continent, but in no portion of it has he ever emerged from barbarism, and in no age or country has he ever established any other stable government than a despotism. But he is the most obedient and happy of slaves.

"Of all men, the negroes themselves are best contented with their situation. They are not the prime movers in the agitations which concern them. An examination of the tables of the last census will demonstrate that they do not attach much importance to political rights. It will be found that the free people of color are most numerous in some of those States which accord them the fewest political privileges; and in those States which have granted them the right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. In Maryland there were, in 1860, 83,942 free people of color; in Pennsylvania, 56,949; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those States were they voters.

In the State of New York, where they could not vote except under a property qualification, which excluded the most of them, they numbered 49,005. But in Ma.s.sachusetts, where they did then and do now vote, there were but 9,602. And in all New England, (except Connecticut, where they are not allowed to vote,) there were at the last census but 16,084. If the American negro, in his desire and capacity for self-government, bore any resemblance to the Caucasian, he would distinguish himself by emigration; and, spurning the soil which had enslaved his race, he would seek equality and independence in a more congenial clime. But the spirit of independence and hardy manhood which brought the Puritans to the sh.o.r.es of a New England wilderness he lacks. He will not even go to Ma.s.sachusetts now, although, instead of a stormy ocean, his barrier is only an imaginary State line, and instead of a howling wilderness, he is invited to a land resounding with the myriad voices of the industrial arts, and instead of painted savages with uplifted tomahawks, he has reason to expect a crowd of male and female philanthropists, with beaming faces and outstretched hands, to welcome him and call him brother. There will he find lecturers to prove his equality, and statesmen to claim him as an a.s.sociate ruler in the land. If he cares for these things, or is fit for them, why does he linger outside upon the very borders of his political Eden? Why does he not enter into it--avoiding Connecticut in his route--and take possession? The fact is, that the fine political theories set up in his behalf are not in accordance with the natural instinct of the negro, which, in this particular, is truer than the philosophy of his white advisers.

"They are but superficial thinkers who imagine that the organic differences of races can be obliterated by the education of the schools. The qualities of races are perpetuated by descent, and are the result of historical influences reaching far back into the generations of the past. An educated negro is a negro still. The cunning of the chisel of a Canova could not make an enduring Corinthian column out of a block of anthracite; not because of its color, but on account of the structure of its substance. He might indeed, with infinite pains, give it the form, but he could not impart to it the strength and adhesion of particles required to enable it to brave the elements, and the temple it was made to support would soon crumble into ruin."

Mr. Schofield, of Pennsylvania, said: "The cheapest elevator and best moralizer for an oppressed and degraded cla.s.s is to inspire them with self-respect, with the belief in the possibility of their elevation.

Bestow the elective franchise upon the colored population of this District, and you awaken the hope and ambition of the whole race throughout the country. Hitherto punishment has been the only incentive to sobriety and industry furnished these people by American law. They were kept too low to feel disgrace, and reward was inconsistent with the theory of 'service owed.' Let us try now the persuasive power of wages and protection. If colored suffrage is still considered an experiment, this District is a good place in which to try it. The same objections do not exist here that are urged on behalf of some of the States. No const.i.tutional question intervenes. Here, at least, Congress is supreme. The law can be pa.s.sed, and if it is found to be bad, a majority can repeal it. The colored race is too small in numbers here to endanger the supremacy of the white people, but large and loyal enough to counteract to some extent disloyal proclivities.

"Both the precept and practice of our fathers refute the allegation that this is exclusively a white man's government. If we can not now consent to so slight a recognition, as proposed by this bill, of the great underlying theory of our Government, as declared and practiced by our fathers, we are thrown back upon that new and monstrous doctrine, that the five millions of our colored population, and their posterity forever, have no rights that a white man is bound to respect.

"Who p.r.o.nounces this crushing sentence? The political South. And what is this South? The Southern master and his Northern minion. Have these people wronged the South? Have they filled it with violence, outrage, and murder? No, sir; they are remarkably gentle, patient, and respectful. Have they despoiled its wealth or diminished its grandeur?

No, sir; their unpaid toil has made the material South. They removed the forests, cleared the fields, built the dwellings, churches, colleges, cities, highways, railroads, and ca.n.a.ls. Why, then, does the South hate and persecute these people? Because it has wronged them.

Injustice always hates its victim. They are forced to look to the North for justice. And what is the North? Not the lat.i.tude of frosts; not New England and the States that border on the lakes, the Mississippi, and the Pacific. The geographical is lost in the political meaning of the word. The North, in a political sense, means justice, liberty, and union, and in the order in which I have named them. Jefferson defined this 'North' when he wrote 'all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

This North has no geographical boundaries. It embraces the friends of freedom in every quarter of this great republic. Many of its bravest champions hail from the geographical South. The North, that did not fear the slave power in its prime, in the day of its political strength and patronage, when it commanded alike the nation and the mob, and for the same cruel purpose, will not be intimidated by its expiring maledictions around this capital. The North must pa.s.s this bill to vindicate its sincerity and its courage. The slave power has already learned that the North is terrible in war, and forgiving and gentle in peace; let its crushed and mangled victims learn from the pa.s.sage of this bill, that the justice of the North, unlimited by lines of lat.i.tude, unlimited by color or race, slumbereth not."

Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, followed: "In preparing to begin the work of reconstructing the grandest of human governments, shattered for a time by treason, and in endeavoring to ascertain what we should do, and how and when it should be done, I have consulted no popular impulse. Groping my way through the murky political atmosphere that has prevailed for more than thirty years, I have seated myself at the feet of the fathers of our country, that I might, as far as my suggestions would go, make them in accordance with the principles of those who constructed our Government. I can make no suggestion for the improvement of the primary principles or general structure of our Government, and I would heal its wounds so carefully that it should descend to posterity unstained and unmarred as it came, under the guidance of Providence, from the hands of those who fashioned it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hon. William D. Kelley, representative from Pennsylvania.]

"For whom do we ask this legislation? In 1860, according to the census, there were fourteen thousand three hundred and sixteen colored people in this District, and we ask this legislation for the male adults of that number. Are they in rags and filth and degradation? The tax-books of the District will tell you that they pay taxes on $1,250,000 worth of real estate, held within the limits of this District. On one block, on which they pay taxes on fifty odd thousand dollars, there are but two colored freeholders who have not bought themselves out of slavery. One of them has bought as many as eight persons beside himself--a wife and seven children. Coming to freedom in manhood, mortgaged for a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars as his own price, he has earned and carried to the Southern robber thousands of dollars, the price extorted for his wife and children, and is now a freeholder in this District. They have twenty-one churches, which they own, and which they maintain at an annual cost of over twenty thousand dollars. Their communing members number over forty-three hundred. In their twenty-two Sunday-schools they gather on each Sabbath over three thousand American children of African descent. They maintain, sir, to the infamous disgrace of the American Congress and people, thirty-three day schools, eight of which are maintained exclusively by contributions from colored citizens of the District; the remainder by their contributions, eked out by contributions from the generous people of the North; and every dollar of their million and a quarter dollars of real estate and personal property is taxed for schools to educate the children of the white people of the District, the fathers of many of those children having been absent during the war fighting for the Confederacy and against our const.i.tutional flag. Who shall reproach them with being poor and ignorant while Congress, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the District, has, till last year, robbed them day by day, and barred the door of the public school against them? Such reproach does not lie in the white man's mouth; at any rate, no member of the Democratic party ought to utter it."

The debate was continued on the day following. Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, having obtained the floor, addressed the House for two hours.

He said: "I hold that there never has been, in the legislation of the United States, a bill which involved so momentous consequences as that now under consideration, because nowhere in the history of this country, from the time that the first reins of party strife were drawn over the land, was any political party ever known to advocate the doctrine now advocated by a portion of the party on the other side of this House, except within the last year, and during the heat and strife of battle in the land. The wisdom of ages for more than five thousand years, and the most enlightened governments that ever existed upon the face of the earth, have handed down to us that grand principle that all governments of a civilized character have been and were intended especially for the benefit of white men and white women, and not for those who belong to the negro, Indian, or mulatto race.

"It is the high prerogative which the political system of this country has given to the ma.s.ses, rich and poor, to exercise the right of suffrage and declare, according to the honest convictions of their hearts, who shall be the officers to rule over them. There is no privilege so high, there is no right so grand. It lies at the very foundation of this Government; and when you introduce into the social system of this country the right of the African race to compete at the ballot-box with the intelligent white citizens of this country, you are disturbing and embittering the whole social system; you rend the bonds of a common political faith; you break up commercial intercourse and the free interchanges of trade, and you degrade the people of this country before the eyes of the envious monarchs of Europe, and fill our history with a record of degradation and shame.

"Why, then, should we attempt at this time to inflict the system of negro suffrage upon those who happen to be so unfortunate as to reside in the District of Columbia? This city bears the name of George Washington, the father of our country; and as it was founded by him, so I wish to hand it down to those who shall come after us, preserving that principle which declares that the sovereignty is in the white people of the country, for whose benefit this Government was established. I am not ready to believe that those men who have laid down their lives in the battles of the late revolution, who came from their homes like the torrents that sweep over their native hills and mountains, those men who gathered round the sacred precincts of the tomb of Washington to uphold and perpetuate our proud heritage of liberty, intended to inflict upon the people of this District, or of this land, the monstrous doctrine of political equality of the negro race with the white at the ballot-box.

"No such dogma as this was ever announced by the Republican party in their platforms. When that party met at Chicago, in 1860, they took pains to enunciate the great principle of self-government which underlies the inst.i.tutions of this country, that each State has the right to control its own domestic policy according to its own judgment exclusively. I ask the gentlemen on the other side of the house to allow the people of the District of Columbia to exercise the same great right of self-government, to determine by their votes at the ballot-box whether they desire to inaugurate a system of political equality with the colored people of the District.

"Self-government was the great principle which impelled our fathers to protest against the powers of King George. That was the principle which led the brave army of George Washington across the ice of the river Delaware. It was the principle which struck a successful blow against despotism, and planted liberty upon this continent. It was the principle that our fathers claimed the Parliament of England had no right to invade, and drove the colonies into rebellion, because laws were pa.s.sed without their consent by a Parliament in which they were unrepresented.

"I am here to-day to plead for the white people of this District, upon the same grounds taken by our fathers to the English Parliament, in favor of self-government and the right of the people of the District to be heard upon this all-important question. Although we may have a legal yet we have no moral right, according to the immutable principles of justice, and according to the declaration of Holy Writ, that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us, to inflict upon the people of this District this fiendish doctrine of political equality with a race that G.o.d Almighty never intended should stand upon an equal footing with the white man and woman in social or civil life."

Mr. Farnsworth, of Illinois, replied: "He [Mr. Rogers] says this is a white man's Government. 'A white man's Government!' Why, sir, did not the Congress of the United States pa.s.s a law for enrolling into the service of the United States the black man as well as the white man?

Did not we tax the black man as well as the white man? Does he not contribute his money as well as his blood for the protection and defense of the Government? O, yes; and now, when the black man comes hobbling home upon his crutches and his wooden limbs, maimed for life, bleeding, crushed, wounded, is he to be told by the people who called him into the service of the Government, 'This is a white man's Government; you have nothing to do with it?' Shame! I say, eternal shame upon such a doctrine, and upon the men who advocate it!

"What should be the test as to the right to exercise the elective franchise? I contend that the only question to be asked should be, 'Is he a man?' The test should be that of manhood, not that of color, or races, or cla.s.s. Is he endowed with conscience and reason? Is he an immortal being? If these questions are answered in the affirmative, he has the same right to protection that we all enjoy.

"I am in favor, Mr. Speaker, of making suffrage equal and universal. I believe that greater wisdom is concentrated in the decisions of the ballot-box when all citizens of a certain age vote than when only a part vote. If you apply a test founded on education or intelligence, where will you stop? One man will say that the voter should be able to read the Const.i.tution and to write his name; another, that he should be acquainted with the history of the United States; another will demand a still higher degree of education and intelligence, until you will establish an aristocracy of wisdom, which is one of the worst kinds of aristocracy. Sir, the men who formed this Government, who believed in the rights of human nature, and designed the Government to protect them, believed, I think, as I do, that when suffrage is made universal, you concentrate in the ballot-box a larger amount of wisdom than when you exclude a portion of the citizens from the right of suffrage.

"I grant, sir, that many of the colored men whom I would enfranchise are poor and ignorant, but we have made them so. We have oppressed them by our laws. We have stolen them from their cradles and consigned them to helpless slavery. The shackles are now knocked from their limbs, and they emerge from the house of bondage and stand forth as men. Let us now take the next grand step, a step which must commend itself to our judgment and consciences. Let us clothe these men with the rights of freemen, and give them the power to protect their rights.

"Sir, as I have already remarked, we have pa.s.sed through a fiery ordeal. There are but few homes within our land that are not made desolate by the loss of a son or a father. The widow and the orphan meet us wherever we turn. The maimed and crippled soldiers of the republic are every-where seen. Many fair fields have become cemeteries, where molder the remains of the n.o.ble men who have laid down their lives in defense of our Government. We thought that we had attained the crisis of our troubles during the progress of the war.

But it has been said that the ground-swell of the ocean after the storm is often more dangerous to the mariner than the tempest itself; and I am inclined to think that this is true in reference to the present posture of our national affairs. The storm has apparently subsided; but, sir, if we fail to do our duty now as a nation--and that duty is so simple that a child can understand it; no elaborate argument need enforce it, as no sophistry can conceal it; it is simply to give to one man the same rights that we give to another--if we fail now in this our plain duty as a nation, then the ship of state is in more peril from this ground-swell on which we are riding than it was during the fierce tempest of war. I trust that this Congress will have the firmness and wisdom to guide the old ship safely into the haven of peace and security. This we can do by fixing our eyes upon the guiding star of our fathers--the equal rights of all men."

The discussion was resumed on the following day, January 12, by Mr.

Davis, of New York: "Republican government can never rest safely, it can never rest peacefully, upon any foundation save that of the intelligence and virtue of its subjects. No government, republican in form, was ever prosperous where its people were ignorant and debased.

And in this Government, where our fathers paid so much attention to intelligence, to the cultivation of virtue, and to all considerations which should surround and guard the foundations of the republic, I am sure that we would do dishonor to their memory by conferring the franchise upon men unfitted to receive it and unworthy to exercise it.

"I am perfectly aware that in many States we have given the elective franchise to the white man who is debased and ignorant. I regret it, because I think that intelligence ought always, either as to the black or the white man, to be made a test of suffrage. And I glory in the principles that have been established by Ma.s.sachusetts, which prescribes, not that a man should have money in his purse, but that he should have in his head a cultivated brain, the ability to read the Const.i.tution of his country, and intelligence to understand his rights as a citizen.

"I have never been one of those who believed that the black man had 'no rights that the white man was bound to respect.' I believe that the black man in this country is ent.i.tled to citizenship, and, by virtue of that citizenship, is ent.i.tled to protection, to the full power of this Government, wherever he may be found on the face of G.o.d's earth; that he has a right to demand that the shield of this Government shall be held over him, and that its powers shall be exerted on his behalf to the same extent as if he were the proudest grandee of the land. But, sir, citizenship is one thing, and the right of suffrage is another and a different thing; and in circ.u.mstances such as exist around us, I am unwilling that general, universal, unrestricted suffrage should be granted to the black men of this District, as is proposed by the bill under consideration.

"This whole subject is within the power of Congress, and if we grant restricted privilege to-day, we can extend the exercise of that privilege to-morrow. Public sentiment on this, as on a great many subjects, is a matter of slow growth and development. That is the history of the world. Development upon all great subjects is slow. The development of the globe itself has required countless ages before it was prepared for the introduction of man upon it. And take the progress of the human race through the historic age--kingdoms and empires, systems of social polity, systems of religion, systems of science, have been of no rapid growth, but long centuries intervened between their origin and their overthrow.

"The Creator placed man on earth, not for the perfection of the individual, but the race; and therefore he locked up the mysteries of his power in the bosom of the earth and in the depths of the heavens, rendering them invisible to mankind. He made man study those secrets, those mysteries, in order that his genius might be cultivated, his views enlarged, his intellect matured, so that he might gradually rise in the scale of being, and finally attain the full perfection for which his Creator designed him.

"Thus governments, political systems, and political rights have been the subjects of study and improvement; changes adapted to the advance of society are made; experiments are tried, based upon reason and upon judgment, and those are safest which in their gradual introduction avoid unnecessary violence and convulsion.

"I submit, sir, whether it be wise for us now so suddenly to alter so entirely the political _status_ of so great a number of the citizens of this District, in conferring upon them indiscriminately the right of franchise."

Mr. Chanler, of New York, then addressed the House:

"If, sir, it should ever be your good fortune to visit romantic old Spain, and to enter the fortress and palace of Alhambra, the fairest monument of Moorish grandeur and skill, as this Capitol is the pride of American architecture, you may see cut in stone a hand holding a key, surmounting the horse-shoe arch of the main gateway. They are the three types of strength, speed, and secresy, the boast of a now fallen Saracen race, sons of that sea of sand, the desert, who carried the glory of Islam to furthest Gades. In an evil hour of civil strife and bitter hatred of faction, the Alhambra was betrayed to Spain, 'to feed fat an ancient grudge' between political chiefs. The stronghold of the race, with the palace, the sacred courts of justice, and all the rare works of art--the gardens of unrivaled splendor--all that was their own of majesty, strength, and beauty, became the trophies of another.

"The legend of the Saracen exile tells the story of penitence and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, who crossed the ocean to establish the glory of civil and religious liberty, and secure freedom to themselves and their posterity. To-day we are a.s.sembled in the Alhambra of America; here is our citadel; here our courts of highest resort; around these halls cl.u.s.ter the proudest a.s.sociations of the American people; they seem almost sacred in their eyes. No hostile foot of foreign foe or domestic traitor has trodden them in triumph.

Above it floats the flag, the emblem of our Union. That Union is the emblem of the triumphs of the white race. That race rules by the ballot. Shall we surrender the ballot, the emblem of our sovereignty; the flag, the emblem of our Union; the Union, the emblem of our national glory, that they may become the badges of our weakness and the trophies of another race? Never, sir! never, never!

"Shall the white laborer bow his free, independent, and honored brow to the level of the negro just set free from slavery, and, by yielding the entrance to this great citadel of our nation, surrender the mastery of his race over the Representatives of the people, the Senate, and Supreme Court of this Union? Then, sir, the white workingman's sovereignty would begin to cease to be.

"Then the most democratic majesty of American liberty would be humbled in the little dust which was lately raised by a brief campaign of two hundred thousand negro troops, and even they led by white officers, while millions of white soldiers held the field in victory by their own strength and valor. Deny it if ye dare! Sir, I know that this is a white man's Government, and I believe the white workingman has the manhood which shall preserve it to his latest posterity, pure and strong, in 'justice tempered with mercy.'

"There may be a legend hereafter telling of the exile of Representatives now on this floor, who, in the hour of party spite, betrayed the dominion of their race here, and the stronghold of their people's liberty, to a servile and foreign race."