Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1879 — ODIOUS ELECTION LAWS. [ARTICLE]

ODIOUS ELECTION LAWS.

Reasons Why They Should Be Repealed. Their Tendency to Abridge the Bights and Privileges of Citizens. Hon. Daniel W, Voorhees in the United States Senate.

Sir, these laws are not the offspring of that great instrument which ha*- descended to us with ever-increasing strength and glory from the days of our Revolutionary ancestors. They emanate rather from that malignant spirit of political'oppression and tyranny which preceded the French Revolution, and caused its fires at last to break forth; which filled the prisons of Franco with victims arrested on secret orders, and made every citizen tremble as one who fears a blow in the dark. They emanate from the spirit which ruled over Venice, when a whisper or a look of suspicion was more to be dreaded than the blow of a dagger, and when the silent and voiceless accusation doomed its object to walk the Bridge of Highs into the caverns of a ruthless and lingering death. In English history there never was a period in which they could have been executed. Charles the First lost his head, James the Second his throne, and George the Third bis American colonies in attempting far less encroachments on the liberties of Englishmen than these laws perpetrate on the li jerties of Americans. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, suspended a sword by a single hair over the beads of his guests at a banquet, and enjoyed their terror. The party but yesterday in power in this Chamber has suspended over the heads of the American people and put into operation in their midst euactmeuts far deadlier than the sword; for wbhout the unassailable saiegnards of personal liberty lite itself is of no value. Tue Senator from Maine [Mr. Blaiue] has urg -d that opposition to these enactments is a raise issue on the pajt of those who have not felt their cruel enforcement. He asserts that because the Federal election laws have not been called into active execution in some portions of the country, and troops have not Lmmju placed at all the polles, therefore the people have no reason for risentment The Tones of the Revolutiou argued the same way 190 years ago on tne Stamp act and the tax on tea. They insisted that the claim of right to bind the colonies in all things put forth by the British Parliament could do no barm, and ought to be submitted to as long as no attempt was made to enforce it. But it was that very claim of light winch made tne Revolution. It was not ti.e amount of the tax collected, or even demanded, that caused the sword of Bunker Hill to bo drawn. It was the naked assertion ot a ! principle subvurs.ve ot local self-government , winch drove the colonists to armed resistance i and kept the army of the Revolution iu the ' field Under Washington until American inde- ' pendeuce was secured. Our fatheis were un-I willing for a claim of despotic power to hang ■ over them as a threat liable at any time to be ! put in execution. They revolted’ against the idea that they were ’to hold their rights subject only to the fortxaranee of tneir rulers, j They resented the menace of the British Gov- \ eminent contained in its declaration of power as they would a pcrsoual’indigoity. Burke, in bis s;>eeeh of March, 1775, on conciliation with ' America, thus describes the colonists:

“In other r-ouutr.es tue people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate tlie evil, and Judge of the pressure ot the grievance by the badness of tue principle. 1 bey augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” Inis was the sublime sentiment of liberty which inspired Jeffoison and John Adams, Patrick Henry and John Hancock; which welded together the toil-worn and destitute veterans of Virginia and Massachusetts in mauy a bitter and bloody charge. The sound of the clanking chains of political bondage was heaid in the distance, aqd it was enough. They did not sit supinely and heedlessly until the manacles were fastened on their limbs. Are their descendants of this day so degenerate that they wi 1 wait uuiil the hand of power clutches them by the throat and hurls them intoprieou before they will ‘urn and destroy the laws which provide for such debasement? Shall we salute with reverence the tokens of tyranny, the emblems- of our enslavement? TneSwiss peasant refused to bow his uncovered head to the cap of the Austrian tyrant elevated as a sign of subjugation; and the hearts of brave men and fair women in all the four quarters of the globe have poured incense to the name of William Tell. John Hampden thought 20 shillings of ship-money too dear a price to pay for security, ease, peace, and life itself, as long as the prerogative to levy such a tax was claimed by the King; and ho yielded up his peerless spirit on the plains of Clialgravo in defying an unjust principle of government. Notwithstanding the derision of the Senator from Maine, all history attests tne danger of leaving instruments of usuroation ami oppression ready for the use of those intrusted with executive authority. The usurper will come at last. The hour of his adve it is inevitable. The temptations of supreme and arbitrary power have never yet failed-to develop a t.'resar, a Cromwell or a Napoleon, whenever the people have relaxed their vigilance and suffered their laws to pave the way toward despotism. But in the present instance we have vastly more than the mere menace or threat of future subjugation by virtue of the laws under discussion. We are not left to conjecture what will bo done hereafter. Already these laws have been executed over the prostrate forms and liberties of American citizens in a manner and to an extent which would arouse any peoJ>le in Europe to revolt, except, perlaps, the serfs of Russia. I speak not now of the South, which has so long been considered a legitimate prey to the spoiler, but of the great, dominant, and stalwart North. Lxiok to New York, that mighty emporium of the wealth and commerce of the western hemisphere, Scenes have been enacted there within the fast few years which bring shame and disgrace to the republic wherever they are known. John I. Davenp-rt is Chief Supervisor of Elections iu the city of New York, appointed by the Circuit Court of the United States. He is also the Clerk of the United States Circuit Court, and a United States Commissioner. With all the powers of these manifold official positions combined in his own person he has indeed been the autocrat of the ballot box. In the elections of 1876 he had under him 1,070 Supervisors, 2,500 Deputy Marshals, and an indefinite number of Commissi ners, at an expense for them and for himself of <94,587.

In 1878 he employed 1.225 Supervisors, 1,350 Deputy Marshals, and Commissioners in proSortiou, for all whoso pay and expenses he rew upon the money of the people in the treasury. In June, 1876, as Clerk of the United States Circuit Court, he issued warrants for the arrest of 2,6(.K) naturalized voters to be brought before him as United States Commissioner and Chief Supervisor for the purpose of making them surrender their natui alization papers. The Federal courts themselves afterward held that the naturalization papers in question were all legal and valid, but the desired result had been accomplished. The terror inspired by these arrests intimidated thousands from going to the p. lla. It became well known that there was no personal security in New York in connection with the elections, and lhe poor, the timid, and the humble stayed away. The same course was pursued in 1878. During the summer of that year 9,400 citizens were notified that they would be arrested unless they surrendered their naturalization papers to the head-overseer, John L Davenport. In the month of October, 1878, 3,100 persons were actually arrested and a reign of terror inaugurated just in advance of the election. The pretense that these persons held fraudulent naturalizati >n papers had already been shown to be false, but it was necessary to party success that an alaim should be raised and a panic created in the minds of foreign-born citizens and of the poor laboring classes generally. The movement was successful, and it has been estimated that 10,0i:0 legal voters remained away from the polls rather than risk the jails and the prison-pens of the Chief Supervisor and his subordinates. But it was reserved for the day of election itself to give free scope to the frightful powers with which this band of Federal Ku-Klux is invested. Those who braved the dangers which environed the ballot-box, and approached it as if they were still freemen, soon found their mistake. They quickly ascertained that the previous threats and warnings which they bad neard were neither idle nor unmeaning. As a specimen of thousands of similar occurrences on election day, I quote a statement recently made by a member of the other branch of Congress from New York. Speaking from his place on the floor, be said: “ A neighbor of a mine, who had resided in tho same district for seventeen years, and a soldier of the Union army at that, was arrested. I was asked to go to the liepublican headquarters in an adjoining district, whither he had been taken. The street for an entire block was lined with carriages, in which the unfortunate citizens who had fallen into the hands of the Philistines had been or were to be conveyed. When I entered the building I found the front room decorated with the paraphernalia of a political headquarters, and filled with Bepublican politicians. In the back room a United States Commissioner was holding court The door was closed, watched by a Cerberus. No one was allowed inside but the prisoners and the Republican managers. After about half an hour’s waiting I was informed by the doorkeeper that the man I was looking for was no longer there. I asked whither he hid been taken. * Suppose to Fort Davenport,’ was the laconic reply. Sir, most likely this soldier of the Union armv was with Grant in the Wilderness, at Cold Harbor and at Petersburg. Or perhaps he was with Sherman in his march to the sea, and as a soldier of the Army of the Tennessee took part in the bloody battle of Atlanta. Wherever

he was, however, and on whatever field he was baptized with fire, he was assured that he was offering his life for the preservation of the Union under the safeguards of constitutional liberty. He was also assured that human slavery should not survive the triumph of the Union cause, and he rej need to believe that his country would in fact soon be the land only of the free. What must have been his reflections, therefore, in November last to find, in attempting to cast his ballot, that he was as very a slave in the hands of a brutal overseer as any negro ever driven in a cotton-field, and that he had no more power under existing laws to protect his personal freedom than an African bondsman on the auction-block before the war. Did he not, most probably, conclude that one of the fruits of the war, under the nurture and cultivation of the Republican party, was the extension of slavery, rather than its overthrow and destruction ? Was he not impressed with the fact that the liberation of one race had been followed by the enslavement of another* What were his thoughts, and the thoughts of his fellow-victims, who had also Wen his fellow-soldiers, as they lay like felons in prison, in “Fort Davenport,” for offering to vote? How did their bitter thoughts in that hour of degradation compare with their glorious dreams as they often lay together in the tented field; when th-ir— Bugles sang truce; for the night-cloud had lowered, And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky; And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered— The weary to sleep and the wounded to die. In such an hour as tbis they dreamed not only of returning to the dear ones at home, of their rapturous, clinging embrace, and burning kiss, but they likewise dreamed of returning to a land of liberty, to homes made free from ' the invasive steps of the spy and informer, and to a state of personal security under 'laws of their own making. These bright dreams have all vanished, ana in their place the returned soldier, and all others, have embraced a reality as horrible and as unbearable to the soul of a man fit to be free as Dante’s conceptions of Inferno are to the Christian mind. The following description of election-day in Davenport’s c >urt in New York is said to be but a tame and imperfect presei tinent of the facts as they there transpire from year to year as the elections occur :

“Such a scene as the rooms of this court presented on that election day has never before been witnessed in this city or in this country, and it is to be hoped never will again From early morning until after the polls were closed these rooms were packed and j tmmed with a mass of prisoners and Marshals. Not only were they crowded beyond their capacity, but the halls and corridors with those who were unable to gain admission, so that the counselp-ep-reeeutiug the prisoners and die bondsmen who were offered to secure their release had the greatest difficulty, and were frequently unsuccessful, in obtaining entrance. In addition to all this was that delectable iron ‘pen’ on the upper floor, in which men were crowded until it resembled the Black Hole of Calcutta, and where they were kept for hours hungry, thirsty, suffering in every wav, until their cases could be reached. With scarcely an exception these men had gone to the polls expecting to be absent but a short time. Many of them were thinly clad; numtiers had sick wives or lelativea; some were sick themselves. There were carmen who had left their horses standing iu public streets; men whose situations depended on their speedy return; nieu who wished to leave the city on certain trains. Every imaginable vexation, inconvenience, injury aiid wrong which the mind can conceive existed in their cases, so that it was painful for the counsel who were endeavoring to secure their release to approach sufficiently near the railing to hear their piteous appeals and witness the distress w Rich they had no power to alleviate And, over all tin's pushing, struggling, complaining ciowd, Mr. Commissioner John I. Davenport sat supreme, with a sort of Oriental magnificence, calmly indifferent to everything but the single fact that no man who wae arrested was allowed to vote. ”

May I not, in view of this dark and shameful picture, appeal to Senators, without impropriety. to know whither we are drifting ? Are we still hugging th ■ miserable delusion that there is no danger, while scenes are being enacted in strict accordance with the Jaws on our statute books which would be a disgrace to Turkish civilization if enacted by the arbitrary authority of the Sultan? Has a fatal lethargy seized the American people, and are we indeed to follow the downward pathway of all the republics that hive ri en and fallen in the past? The sailor in Northern seas veers off into safer waters the moment he feels the current of the great maelstrom under his keel. Wo are in the very vortex of the whir pool wherein everv local privilege, every right of citizenshi , all the sanctuaries of home, and the strip of state itself, are being drawn down and dashed. to pieces, and yet the cry that all is well, uttered by false pilots, lulls us into a sense of security and repose. I call upon my countrymen to awaken, for the hour of mortal peril to their institutions is here. What has happened in New York has happened elsewhere, and may happen everywhere. Shall the laws which make such scenes possible remain in force? I invoke against them the memories of the mighty dead who fell for independence; who enriched the soil of Massachusetts with their blood at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill; who struggled with Washington at Brandywine, and charged under his eye at Princeton, Trenton and Monmouth; who tasted death at Camden, the Cowpens and Eutaw Springs, in order that we might be free; who yielded up their brave spirits on the plains of Yoi ktownin the precious hour of final victory. By these great souls, by their privations, sorrows, anguish and pain, I implore the American people not to forget the value of those liberties which are now tramp’ed under foot with every circumstance of scorn and contempt.

At this point, however, and in this connection, another branch of legislation on the subject of popular elections calls for our consideration. In presenting the elaborate and care fully-constructed system of laws for the suppression of self-government, we are next confronted by those provisions which place the land and naval forces of the United States at the polls. Those who conceived and enacted these laws were not content until the sword as well as the purse of the nation was prostituted to the suppression of free elections. I have only to appeal to the laws themselves to make good this statement, strong as it may appear. The section most familiar to the public mind is 5,528 of the Revised Statutes, ana is ofteh cited in proof of the harmless purposes of the army. It has, in fact, at a hasty glance, a somewhat innocent aspect, but a moment’s inspection will show that, like tho Trojan horse, its real object is to carry armed men into a citadel—in this instance the citadel of liberty—without exciting suspicion or resistance. It was enacted in February, 1865, and its language is as follows : “ Every officer of the army or navy or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, who orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held in any State, unless such force, be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States or to keep the peace at the polls, shall be fined not more than SS,(MX), and suffer imprisonment at hard labor not less than three months nor more than five years.” Here is simply a cheap display of nretended severity against military interference with elections, while the sole purpose of the section was to authorize the presence of armed troops at the polls under the vague pretext of keeping the peace. Sir. who is to determine the necessity of the presence of the i.rmy or the navy at the place of voting on election day to keep the peace? Who is to pass upon this plea of military necessity and give the command to close in on the ballot-box with the bayonet? Under this section it is evident that the President of the United States as Commander-in-Chief would have that duty to perform. What a dazzling field here opens for the operations of a usurper! It is a matter of history that Caesar while in Gaul sent his emissaries to Rome to i ocite riots and disturbances at the elections in order to give him the pretext he craved, to keep the peace at the polls with his trained legions at his back. Napoleon the Great crushed the liberties of Fi ance under the tyrant’s usual guise of preserving public order by force of arms; and Napoleon the lesser in our own day followed his example. What a temptation is presented, by the section I have read, to some American Executive to practice the same usurpations! He has only to stir up troubles through his partisan emissaries in the South, as has often been done heretofore, and the occasion is made for the use of the army to any extent he may choose. He is the judge of the number of troops and the time they are to move and the places they are to invest. He may order any number of ships of war into the harbor of New York or in front of New Orleans on election day or at any time before that day to overawe the people, simply avowing that he does so under this law to keep the peace at the polls. It is difficult to conceive that such an enactment could be found among the statutes of a republic, but it is my painful duty to show two others on the same subject far moreldangerous, if possible, than this Section 1,989, found in the Revised Statutes under the title “ civil rights,” confers on the President in express terms the powers which are implied in section 5,528. There is no attempt here to deceive. The army and navy are boldly placed at the disposal of the President to use at his discretion over a range of subjects and in the control of their details as extensive as the rights of man under a free constitution. The words of the section are as follows: “It shall be lawful for the President of the United States, or such person as he may empower for that purpose, to employ such part of the land or naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, as may be necessary to aid in the execution of judicial process issued under any of the preceding provisions, or as shall be necessary to prevent the violation and enforce the due execution of the provisions of this title.” There are fifteen sections in this title, and they embrace the assertion and enforcement of every right and privilege known to American citizenship. They were prepared and enacted for the purpose of placing the negro on an exact equality in every particular with the white man before the law, and they consequently cover as much ground as the constitution itself. For instance, the first section of this title provides for the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence; and the second section provides for the right to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real ana personal property, It is made lawful for the

President, at his own will and pleasure, and without reference to State laws on these subjects, to launch the army into any State he may choose to crush, under the pretense of enforcing these provisions or preventing their violation. The thi d section of this title relates to actions at law and suits in equity for damages by such as deem themselves deprived of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the constitution and laws. The fourth section treats of conspiracies—first, to intimidate persons from accepting and holding office; second, t) deter witnesses from testifying in any United States court to influence grand or petit jurors, or in any manner to impede or defeat the due course of justice: and, third, to deprive any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or to prevent any one from voting for the candidate of his choice. The section concludes by giving a right of civil suit for damages to any one conceiving himself aggrieved under its provisions Other sections follow of intricate and diversified character, but I have cited en ugh to show the vast and sweeping scope of the duties devolved on the army and navy by virtue of section 1,989 and the abs flute supremacy of oneman power there created. Under the wide and universal provisions of the civil-nghta title, which we are now considering, there is not a phase in human affairs wherein the army and navy of the United States cannot be called by the Executive to prevent or to enforce the execution of some act by individuals, States, and Territories. Section 1,989. contemplates the military control of slections not only, but of everything else that belongs to the States, Territories, counties, cities, and every other species of municipality. It u-terly abrogates the constitution of the United States. By that instrument, section 4, article 4, the extent of the power of the Federal Government to send troops to a State is defined: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence. ”

This short and pregnant sentence marks the boundaries, as understood by the fathers, between the Federal Government and the States in regard to the character and enforcement of State constitutions and laws. There has been much confusion of ideas and the wildest vagaries of construction growing out of this clause of the Federal constitution, and especially in relation to that part of it which guarantees to every State a republican form of government I have heard it contended in debate in Congress that by virtue of this power of guarantee the Federal Government could unseal members of a State Legislature, annul laws of their enactment, direct other members to be sworn in and other laws to be enacted, and in a general and in an especial manner take charge of all local interests. All this, too, was to be upheld and enforced by United States military authority, if necessary. Sir, may it not be well to understand exactly what it is that the Federal Government is called on to guarantee to the States? A republican form of government is something easily defined. The term “republic,” as applied to a political organization, is derived from the two Latin words, res, a thing, an affair, and publica, public, meaning a public affair in which all have a common interest, in which there is neither royalty nor rank fixed by law. Webster defines a republican form of government to be: “A state in which the sovereign power is exercised by representatives elected by the people; a commonweal’ll.” Taking tbis as the true meaning of the expression used in the Federal constitution, and we have no difficulty in understanding that when a State has framed and adopted a constitution in harmony therewith, and maintains it, the Federal Government has no more power to interfere with or send armed forces into the State, except upon its own application to resist invasion or to suppress domestic violence, than the State has to assume the functions of the Federal Government. If the Legislature of a State should pass laws repugnant to the constitution or the laws of the United States, which t< gether with treaties are the supreme law, the courts are charged with the duty of arresting them. If riots break out at elections, or on any other occasion, begetting domestic violence which the State cannot put down; or if invasion occurs, and the State calls for assistance in the manner prescribed bv the constitution, then and only then can the Government of the United States come to its relief in martial array. A contrary doctrine to this, the doctrine contained in the section under discussion, changes this Government in the twinkling of an eye from a republic to a consolidated military despotism, governed in all parts and details by the army and navy, at the sole behest of the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States. There is no more escape from this conclusion than there is from the evidence of our senses that light follows the morning and darkness the night. By this section the President is left to determine everything, and to execute without restraint from any quarter his arbitrary conclusions. He may declare it necessary to aid in the execution of judicial process with the army in any portion of the country, whether it is so or not. He may declare any city of over 20,000 inhabitants, or any county or parish in the United States, in a state of insurrection, station troops in them,proclaim martial law,and cut them off from all communication with other parts of the world.

But there remains one more section authorizing the use of the army and navy to subvert free elections which demands our attention. I turn to it, I confi ss, with feelings of repugnance. It completes the degradation of that army and navy whose fame and glory fill the whole earth. It shows to what base uses the heroes of a hundred battles may be put bv the vaulting ambition of radical partisans. It is section 1,984, and reads as follows: “The Commissioners authorized to be appointed by the preceding section are empowered, within their respective counties, to appoint, in writing, under their hands, one or more suitable persons, from time to time, who shall execute all such warrants or other process as the Commissioners may issue in the lawful performance of their duties, and the persons eo appointed shall have authority to summon and call to their aid the bystanders or posse comitatus of the proper county, or such portion of the land or naval forces’of the United States, or of the militia, as may be necessary to the performance or the duty w'ith which they are charged; and such warrants shall run and be executed anywhere in the State or Territory within which they are issued.”

The warrants or other process mentioned in this section, and which the Commissioners may issue, are such as are provided for the arrest and intimidation of voters before elections, on election day, and afterward. They are such as are contemplated m chapter 7 of the title “Crimes,” on which I have already commented. We behold, therefore, by virtue of this most amazing section, tho army and navy of the United States, not placed under the command of the President or such person as he may empower, presumably an officer of high rank and character, to regulate and control elections, but ordered to obey the “ summon and call” of the lowest agents, and, naturally, the vilest instruments of this whole pernicious business. Let us pause and look for a moment at the scene which is here provided for. The Circuit Courts of the United States and the District Courts of the Territories are authorized by section 1,983t0 increase the number of Commissioners from time to time, so as to afford a speedy and convenient means for the arrest and examination of persons charged with crimes against the election laws, until the whole land shall swarm with Commissioners bent on the success of their party. Then these Commissioners, appointed for a political purpose, are empowered in every county in the United States to appoint one or more persons whom they deem suitable to execute their process and carry out their edicts. And how astonishing and incredible it seems, in this age of advanced civilization, that these innumerable Deputy Commissioners, these irresponsible sublessees of unconstitutional power, should have, by the express words of American law, the authority to summon and call to their aid, not merely the bystanders and the posse comitatus of the county, but such portion of the laud or naval forces of the United States or of the militia as they may consider necessary to the performance of their duties. Here are lhe plain words of the law, and there is not a Senator on this floor who will gainsay my statement Sir, who are these people on whom the most tremendous powers known to human governments have been so lavishly bestowed? I have no word of disparagement for United States Commissioners, appointed to perform the legitimate duties of that useful office, but for political instruments, thrust by partisan hate and ambition into that position, and for those still below them, I have neither respect nor forbearance. The experience of the last few years in the different States, and notably in New York, shows that political Commissioners, their deputies and subordinates, foisted into the control of elections, belong tssentially to that class of human pests so powerfully describe! by Curran in his defense of Rowan, who, in the language of the great Irishman, “overwhelmed in ihe torrent of corruption at an early period, lay at the bottom like drowned bodies while soundness or sanity remained in them; but at length, becoming buoyant with putrefaction, they rose as they rotted and floated to the surface of the polluted stream, where they were drifted along, the objects of terror and contagion and abomination.” Yet of such as the-e are made the commanders of the military and qaval forces of this Government; to these miserable, cringing camp-followers of any party in power, occupying, as they do, the lowest and most disreputable places in the rear rank of political warfare, the proudest plumed chieftains on land and sea must bow their tall heads and obey their mandates. Will some Senator tell me how the brave and brilliant Sherman, bearing a higher rank than even Washington ever bore, is to escape obedience to a Deputy United States Commissioner? Will some one point out to me how, under the law as it now stands, Sheridan, Hancock, or the Secretary of War himself, is to refuse military subjection and co-opera-tion to any offspring of the political sewer appointed by a United States Commissioner and bearing a warrant or other process for the arrest of a citizen charged with an offense against the election laws ? I assert, fearless of contradiction, that under the section I have read the veriest reptile of ward politics, the most abandoned scavenger of party warfare, armed with a Commissioner’s appointment and any sort of process against the liberty of an American citizen, can call the whole army and navy to hjs

support, and the tallest heads must bow to his command. The scarred and veteran legions who bore the eagles of the republic in triumph in Mexico Mid who are yet in the army; the dauntless chivalric, and generous hearts who losed with their own equal kindred in the mortal grasp of civil war; all these, and others besides, are placed at the beck and nod of a commander selected by a United States Commissioner. I will not stop to say that this is monstrous. That will be the universal verdict I will not pause to denounce such laws as wholly infamous, for that will be the judgment not only of the American people but of all the civilized nations of the world. Simply to call up and exhibit such a horrible death’s head as this in the laws of a commonwealth pretending to be free is enough to excite the jeers, the hisses, and the execrations of every lover of liberty on the inhabitable globe. The army and the navy of the United States! How often the banquet nail and the festive board have rung with eloquence in their praise! How often their achievements have been the theme of poetry and of song! Whose heart has not swelled with emotion at the mention of Revolutionary fields of fame? Whose eye has not kindled at the story of Lundy’s Lane, the Thames, Tippecanoe, and New Orleans? Whose spirit does not feel exalted when Buena Vista, Monterey, Cerro Gorao, Chernbnsco, and Chapultepev pass in stately review? And whose eyes have not grown moist and dim with enthusiasm in reading the battles of the ocean, those deadly conflicts of the sea which have male American genius and courage as imperishable in history ai the fixed stars are in the heavens ever our heads?

Sir, these sentiments are universal in the American heart, but who now will speak the eulogy or sing in heroic verse the deeds of the army and the navy of the United States used to overthrow tree elections under the command of Deputy United States Commissioners? Others may answer the question; I cannot. History, however, gives no uncertain answer as to the final result of such legislation. All the free governments of the past have withered awav and perished by the introduction of militarv force into the management of their civil affairs. We will prove no exception to th s invariable rule. Even in England, the home of monarchy, governed by Kings and Queens and a hereditary nobility, the people, nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, demanded and enforced the entire absence of troops from the polls on election day, in order that they might preserve their rights, whatever they were, under the British constitution. A committee of this body, on a former occasion, described the objects "of the well-known statute of George IL in the following terms: “It cannot escape notice that the leading object of this ancient statute, as sufficiently evidenced by the preamble, was the preservation of the rights and liberties of the kingdom, not their destruction. And the history ot the times shows that the prohibition to keep military forces near places where there was an election of members of Parliament arose from outrages practiced upon the electors by the Ministers in posting troops so as to overawe them and coerce them into the returning of candidates friendly to the Ministerial party, and the supporters of prerogative against popular rights.” This description of the use of the military on election day sounds painfully familiar at this time to American ears. Our ancestors, even in the dark reign of the second George, a century and a half ago, would not brook such outrages upon the electors. Are we, with all the increase of light and liberty in the world, to be denounced for demanding just what they did? The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar], in his recent speech, found nothing to censure or disapprove in the use of the army or the navy to control elections. Another Senator from the same State held different views. Daniel Webster declared : “If men would enjoy the blessings of republican government they must govern themselves by reason, by mutual counsel and consultation, by a sense and feeling of general interest, and by the acquiescence of the minority in the will of the majority properly expressed; and above all the military must be kept, according to the language of our bill of rights, in strict subordination to the civil authority. Wherever this lesson is not learned and practiced there can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff, and a satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for forms of government to be prescribed by military leaders, and the right of suffrage to be exercised at the point of the sword. ”