Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1879 — VITAL ISSUES. [ARTICLE]

VITAL ISSUES.

The Army at the Polls and the Doctrine of State Rights. Eloquent Extract from a Recent Speech by Hon. George H. Pendleton. The presence of the army at the polls! Mast! argue it seriously? Must I show by theory and reason that it is entirely incompatible with the freedom of elections? Must Igo into history and sustain the theory by the example of every free Government which has ever lived and died? Must I show that nearly every State in the Union has prohibited even the mustering of the militia on the days of election? Must I show that the framers of our constitution were so -jealous of the military power that they made it absolutely the creature of Congress? The Congress shall have power: To raise and support armies; ; ... To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces. But lest even Congress should be tempted to use the army to perpetuate the power of a party or destroy the liberty of the people, the conetitution carefully provided that even Congress should make “no appropriation of money to that use for a longer term than two years.” To guard still more carefully the use of the military power the constitution declares that, while Congress may “provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia,’’ and the President shall be their Commander-in-Chief when called into the service of the United States, “the appointment of officers and the authority of training the militia” are reserved to the States respectively. And still further to prevent the army from becoming a part of the machinery of Government, or an instrument of civil administration, or a posse, or a * police power—in a word, to confine it as nearly as possible to the single, simple duty of fighting the armed enemies of the country, the constitution gave Congress the power “to provide for calling out the militia to execute the laws of the United States. ” These are the wise constitutional provisions. Laws and habitudes made in pursuance of their letter and spirit governed the use of the army for more than seventy years. The war came, armies were raised and the people became accustomed to the exactions of the military power, the commanders came to love it. In the border States—l speak more confidently as to Kentucky, because I happen to know about it—the military power was used for every purpose, without shadow of authority of law. The military commanders, by special orders, defined the qualification of voters, defined the duties of judges of election, ordered them not to receive 'the votes of certain classes whom the constitution and laws declared were qualified to vote, and not to permit certain candidates to be voted for whom this same constitution declared to be elegibJe; and sent troops to the polls to enforce the execution of these orders. Remember these things were done at the State elections for State officers. We know full well that on one occasion, within four days of an election in a warrq party contest, the commanding officer forbade the Democratic nominee to be a candidate for the Judgeship of the Court of Appeals, and ordered the judges of ejection not to receive votes for him. If it be said that Kentucky was . disturbed, and many of her citizens were favorable to the Rebellion, the answer is plain, that, if there was peace enough to have an election at all, there was peace enough to have a free and legal election. These events produced the law of 1865. It prohibited many of the wrongs complained of, and forbade the use Of the army at elections except, among other things, “to keep the peace at the -polls.” No argument could induce the Republicans to leave out those words. Under that clause every evil has crept in. Troops have been used as a posse; troops have been stationed for the purpose of intimidation over the country. They were sent with Butler to New York; they were kept handy for use in the State Houses of South Carolina and Louisiana; they were put at the beck of every Deputy Marshal, and when there was danger of a Democratic Legislature they were sent to drag members from the legislative halls of New Orleans. At the extra session of Congress the Democrats sought to repeal this clause. It was demonstrated by a history of fourteen years that the troops were never needed to keep peace at the polls; that they were, never called on for that purpose; that the pretense was used that troops in squads ana companies and regiments might be stationed in the proper localities, subject to the call of Deputy Marshals, to obtain partisan advantage. It was the same old story taught by all philosophy, by all experience, by all the instincts and impulses of human nature. The Democrats sought to repeal the law; they appealed to the constitution, to the traditions of the fathers, to the philosophy of our institutions, to the experience of the world. We were met with the assertion that we desired to encourage turbulence at the polls, to strip the administration of legitimate power. The President adopted the suggestion, and vetoed the bilL Mark the bill exactly! It left the President the power to use the army anywhere, everywhere, at any election, whether general or special, to repel the armed enemies of the country; to suppress insurrection; to resist and crush rebellion. It only prevented him, in time of peace and tranquillity, from taking bodies of troops to the polls'under the pretense of preventing men from fighting or crowding around the ballot-boxes. He might have all the flocks and herds on the royal demesnes, but his heart coveted this little ewe lamb of the people. I impute to the President no bad motive. I know him too well to asperse his personal character. I believe no more patriotic men exist than our army. “To keep the peace at the polls,” even by this President and by this army! That would be the peace that the wolf keeps among the lambs! That would be the peace of the desert! That would be the peace which the armies of France kept when the people voted for the empire! That would befthe peace which Rome enjoyed when the candidates bought the election to the imperial throne from the legions! That would be the peace of all voting on the side of the soldiers.

The presence of such a power is incompatible with the freedom of elections. It will overpower a strong people; it will seduce a weak people; it will mold a corrupt and debauched people. But in either event free election is destroyed. The power of the army is force; its life is absolute command and implicit obedience. Its weapons are sword and musket. Its methods are despotic. In the atmosphere of its presence and protection, reason, judgment, free choice—the very element and substance of election—cannot breathe, refuse to live. No free Government has ever permitted troops to be used at the polls. Every Government which has tolerated their presence there has ceased to be free, ho matter under what pretext; no matter for what avowed or real pui-pose; the result has been the same. Rome existed as a republic for 500 years, her armies conquered the world; her Consular elections were annual; her Consuls commanded her armies. By a law of the republic the armies were prohibited to approach the sacred circle of the city a» the time of an election. Csesar returning from Gaul led his legions across the Rubicon under the pretense of saving the order of the city, or quelling domestic turbulence, “of keeping the peace at the polls,” and in fifty years the em- ■ pire superseded the republic, and the army sold the imperial crown. France has made the army an instrument of civil administration. All the Latin race has, in the Old and New World, followed the example, and orderly, free government has nowhere long existed among them. England learned this lesson long ago. For centuries no armed soldier has been permitted near the polling places, eypn if the peace were broken. The Sheriffs of London summoned the juries and held the issues of property and life in his hands. Their power was so great that oftentimes the chiefs of the parties sat in council awaiting the results of the election as the token of their safety for another year or of the necessity of instant flight from the country. The turbulence was great London was convulsed by riotous mobs and the excesses of armed bands, and yet, wisely curbing the impulses of the momen*, the statute of 1735 recited that by the common law, by the statutes of Edward 1, by the usage and practice of the realm, armed troops had not been permitted to approach the polls for any purpose, and continued and enforced the prohibition. When, a few years afterward, troops were used to quell a riot at a Westminster election, with uncovered heads and bended knees the offenders received the censure of the House of Commons. Within a month, when the city of Quebec requested the presence of a regiment to preserve its peace, the

Governor General refused. He said a wellregulated police, not a part of the army, must keep the peace of the community. England to-day is the freest Government in the world except our own. A soldier cannot enter the hall of the Commons with his uniform and arms. Our Declaration of Independence is the pro test in behalf of civil liberty, immortal in history. It will gather glory throughout all the ages. It voices the whole spirit of freedom. It exalts the individual in stating his inaliena ble rights. It ennobles the State in defining its just purposes and powers. It was evoked by the wrongs our fathers suffered. “He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” “He has kept among us in time of peace standing armies without the consent of our Legislature.” ■ He has affected to render the military independent Of and superior to the civil Dower.” *He has deprived us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury.” This sublime protest against outrages on civil liberty denounced the wrongs of which the Democratic party complains to-day. It stands upon the declaration out of which the republic was born. It asks nothing which the Declaration does not demand. That was a “revolutionary document,” says Gdh. Garfield. Aye! And the Democratic party is “revolutionary* to that exten“and no further. It teaches the truths which the Declaration announced to be self-evident. It demands the rights for the assertion of which our fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. The Republican party to-day denounces these doctrines as revolutions:?, and inconsistent with the maintenance of the Government and the best interests of the people. My countrymen, must 1 adjure you to heed theieesonof all reason, of all history? The great experiment is in our hands to-aay. We are exposed to greater dangers from this cause than any Government Other Governments have the King, the throne, the crown, the executive head—the emblem of national sovereignty raised above parties, wielding the vital pow< rs of the Government, and maintaining its form, whichever party may succeed. If it were possible at all, such a Government might use the troops impartially to keep the peace as between the parties. Every department of our Government, every representative of the sovereignty of the people is in the hands of a party; every office, ana honor, and emolument ts the price of party success. It is madness, to confide to a party the power of bringing troops to the polls, wheie its fate is to be decided. State rights are not State wrongs. The rights of the States, as reserved and limited by the constitution, are as essential to our constitutional Union as are the rights and powers of the Federal Government Both are essential to our Government and form of governmental being, which has been so well defined by the Supreme Court of the United States to be “An indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.” The doctrine of States’rights is not the doctrineof disunion, nor of nullification, nor yet of secession. It does not maintain the superiority of the States. It does not decry or belittle the powers of the Federal Union, whether of making or executing the laws. It never has been stated, it never will be stated, more tersely, more accurately, more clearly, than in the Tenth amendment of the constitution, so tenaciously insisted on by Massachusetts:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Government of the United States is supreme within its sphere, because the constitution expressly provides that “ This constitution and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. ” The constitution is the supreme law. The laws made in pursuance of it are likewise supreme. The laws made not in pursuance of it are not supreme. They are null and void. They are no laws. The duty and the power to execute the constitution and laws have been confided by the constitution to the Federal Government. The powers of the Federal Government are delegated, every one of them, by the States; or, if you prefer it, by the people of the States. They exist by virtue of that delegation, and the instrument delegating, defining, expressing the extent and limit of the powers, is the constitution. The powers and rights of the States, meaning thereby the Government and the people of the States, are inherent in them as political communities. The States delegated some of their powers to the Federal Government; they prohibited the exercise of some by themselves absolutely, and of others without the consent of Congress. The constitution defines the powers delegated, the powers prohibited, and declares that the powers not delegated to the United Statesnor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States. If a question arises as to the power of the United States, you must look to the delegation of powers by the constitution. If the power is not found there, it does not exist If a question arises as to the power of a State, you look to the powers delegated to the United States, and then go to the powers prohibited to the States. And if the power is in neither category it does belong to the State. It a difference of interpretation as to the power delegated and prohibited arise, and a case involving the question can be made, then the judicial tribunals, and ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States, become nece-sarily the final arbiter. If a case for judicial interference cannot be made, that great public opinion—that enlightened public Conscience which seeks the highest sources of wisdom, which always aspires to lie right—will in one way or another give decisive judgment That opinion may ebb and flow like the tides of the ocean at the bidding of the fickle encore. But it will attain a steadiness like the ocean from which all height is measured. This is the doctrine of State rights, as maintained by the Democratic/party. It is the doctrineof the constitution. It is the doctrine of local Government, of home rule, of Union. It is the doctrine of a simple Government of few powers, touching few objects,—of fi eodom. Consolidation is as unconstitutional as secession; unity of Government is as unconstitutional as separation, and both consolidation and unity tend as certainly in the end to disunion. If it be said this theory cannot be strictly correct, for that twenty-four new States have been carved out of territory belonging to the Union, the answer is that it is strictly and entirely true as to the original thirteen States, and that everv new State has been admitted to the Union expressly on the same terms as the original States. I know it is fashionable in these days to decry State rights, to hold them up as the origin of the war and the cause of all our sectional troubles. They are confounded with secession, with nullification, with denying or dwarfing or paralyzing the Federal Gyvernment, and they are made the stalking horse of all that shocks the Union sentiment of the people. Even now the fear of them is invoked to aid the scheme of using the military power and the civil officers of the Federal Government to interfere with elections. I protest against this confusion of ideas; I protest against defining the doctrine wrongfully and then attacking it as otlr doctrine. I will quarrel with no man about terms, about names he may call this Government—a Nation or a Confederation, or a Federal Union. If he believes the Federal Government is supreme within its sphere and the States are supreme within their spheres, and that neither may trench on the powers of the other; if he believes that all powersnot delegatedjior prohibited are reserved to the States respectively, he is States-rights man enough for me. He asserts the true, constitutional, conservative doctrine; conservative of our Government, of our Union, which was designed to be perpetual, of our freedom.