Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1879 — THE ARMY APPROPRIATION BILL. [ARTICLE]

THE ARMY APPROPRIATION BILL.

An Interesting and Eloquent Speech by Senator Blaine—The Political Amendments to the Bill Fittingly Characterised—The Democracy Caring More for the State-Sovereignty Principle Involved than Fearing the Preoence of Federal Troops. The Senate, on tbe 14th, resumed consideration of the Army Appropriation bill, the question being on Mr. Blaine’s amendment prohibiting the appearance within one mile of a polling-place of any person armed with a deadly weapon of any kind, and Mr. Blaine addressed the Senate. He said the method adopted in the pending section to get rid of the eight closing words of the section of the Revised Statutes proposed to be repealed, namely, “or to keep the peace at the polls,” was an unusual and extraordinary method, lhe ordinary way to repeal a single sentence is to strike out the particular words objected to, but tbe mode chosen in this bill is to repeal and re-enact the whole section except the last eight words. He was persuaded that this unusual course was not taken accidentally, but designedly. If he so might speak, it came of cunning, the intent being to create the impression that the Republicans iu the administration of the General Government had used the troops right and left in every direction, and that as soon as the Deinbcrats got into power they proceeded to enaci this prohibitory sixth section, and the Democratic stump-speakers would doubtless make great political capital out of this idea, whereas every word of it from first to last was an enactment of the Republican p.irty. Whether intentionally or not, the issue thus presented was a dishonest one. The law was passed by a Republican Congress. There were forty-six Senators sitting in the Senate Chamber at the time, of whom only ten or at least eleven were Democrats and the House of Representatives was overwhelmingly Republican. We were in the midst of the Wai*. The Republican Administration had 1,010,000 or possibly 1,200,000 bayonets at its command, and. under the circumstances, with the amplest power to interfere with elections, had they so chosen, with soldiers in every hamlet and county of the United States, the Republican party themselves placed that on the statute-book and Abraham Lincoln signed it. He asked attention to the fact that this was the first instance in the legislation of the United States in which any restrictive clause whatever was put upon the statute-books In regard to the use of troops at the polls, and that was passed by the Republican party and signed by Abraham Lincoln when he had more troops under his control than Napoleon Bonaparte ever had. But the point is, said Mr. Blaine, to strike out the few words authorizing the use of troops to keep the peace at the polls; and the country is alarmed, or, he would rather say, amused, at the effort made to create the impression tiiat tbeßepublican party relied lor its popular strength upon the use of bayonets. This Democratic Congress has attempted by raising an issue false in every detail to create the impression, not only in America, but in Europe and throughout tbe civiliz.d world that elections in ibis country are attempted to be controlled by the bayonet. He denounced the issue as false, and though not at liberty to say that any geutieman making it knew its falsity, ■nd though he hoped they did not, he proposed to prove its utter lack of foundation. He had 1 n his band an abstract of all the troops of the United States east of Omaha, including the States bordering on the Mississippi River on tbe west, embracing a territory populated by 41,000,000 at least of the 45,000,000 supposed to be In this country to-day. By this statement he showed that in all that great territory only 2,977 soldiers are stationed. Within this domain 45 fortifications are manned and 11 arsenals protected. To every million people there are about 60 soldiers. The honorable Senator from Delaware was alarmed about the over-riding of a popular ballot by troops of the United States, but there is not a single Federal soldier in Delaware. Tbe honorable Senator from West Virginia (Hereford) had spoken of his State being trodden by tbe iron heel ot military despotism, but there is not a man in United States uniform on the soil of West Virginia In Maryland, 192 artillerymen at Fort McHenry gugyd the entrance to Baltimore’s beautiful harbor. In Virginia, there la a school of practice at Fortress Monroe. Outside of that school there Is nqt a Federal soldier in the, State. There are but 30 soldiers in North Carolina guarding a fort at th* mouth of Cape Fear River. In South Carolina there are 120 artillery men to guard the entrance to Charleston Harbor. There are 29 soldiers in Georgia, and 182 in Florida. There Is not one in Tennessee, Kentucky or Missouri. There are 57 iu Arkansas, 32 in Alabama and 239 in Louisiana. The great State ot MiseiMiDPi has not one on its soil, nor has Texas, except those guarding the frontier on the Rio Grande. In the entire South, said Mr. Blaine, there are 1,155 soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress ■nd destroy the liberties or 15,000,000 of people in 1,023 counties, or not quite 1 soldier to each county, or 1 soldier to about 700 square miles of terltory. There was an old saying, be continued, that there wer£soothsayers in Rome who could not look each other in the face without smiling, and no two Democratic Senators on the floor can go into the cloakroom and look each other in the face without smiling, or rather blushing, over this talk, the whole thing was such a miserable pretense, such a miserably manufactured false issue. In New England they had 380 soldiers, eg about 120 to every 1,000,000 people, whereas the ratio in the South was not quite 70, yet the peopte of New Vbiglanfl nevet eWMplsnwW of military power. The tendency ot this talk, as he had said, wat, to misrepresent us abroad, and tbe Democratic party stood indicted, and he hereby charged them with the public slander ot their country, creating the

Impression in the civilized world that we are under military despotism. But, continued Mr. Blaine, the real uritre o< the Democrats must lx- looked for elsewhere. IvJ* simply U> get rid of Federal supervision at election*, to get rid of thecivß poweg-of the United (Hates in the election of Representatives tA.Conitees, and therefore thia bill connects lIMIf dMctly with the bill which ni before Conxreii at the last session known aa the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Appropriation bill. He waa aware that parliamentary rules forbade him to discuss a bill pending beforadhe House of Representative*, but be slab knew thit nothing forbade him to apeak of what was nut done in the House, but in a Democratic caucus, Where this legtalalion was decided upon. Mr. Blaine discussed the legal questh m involved and, continuing, said: The de lzn now is to get rid of ail ctvti officers of the United States under the pretense of keeping troops Sway from- the poll*, and the amdbry ments which will be ottered will test the sincerity of the Democratic side on that point and show whether the Federal Government would be allowed representation at the polls at all, except by two men of straw, without any power, who can merely look on. He yrould go ao far as to say that it the bill went through In its present form the remainder of the law in regard to Marshals and Supervisors would be worth nothing, stnee there would be no power vested in the Federal Government to enforce Its provision*. We are told, said Mr. Blaine, and it is rather a novel thing, that it we do not agree to the bills as offered we are not to have an appropriation. That has been announced in Loth branches of .Congress, he supposed on the authority of the Democratic caucus. Not merely the Army Appropriation—they did not stop there, but in the Legislative bill, as it came from the caucus, there was an appropriation for defraying the expenses of the Supreme Court, Circuit Courts and District Courts of the United States provided that certain sections of the Revised Statutes be repealed. He had always understood that the Government was divided into three distinct Departments —Legislative, Executive and Judicial. But now the Legislative branch steps forward and says if the Executive does not sign the bills it offers it will starve the Judiciary. This was carrying the matter further than he bad ever knewn it to go before and beside starving the Judiciary the other side would refuse to appropriate s dollar for the expenses of the Capitol building and grounds, for public printing or for the Congressional Library. The Department of State, of which the country had reason to be proud for its conduct of its' foreign affairs, was to be disabled, and bar diplomatic relations must cease unless the President signs these bills. The beacons and warning lights on seventeen thousand miles of coast must go out; the mints of New Orleans, Denver, Ban Franeiaco and Philadelphia must stop; the Pension Bureau must suspend operations; all Executive functions of the Government are taken by the throat in highwayman style and commanded to stand and deliver in the name of the Democratic caucus. A leading Democrat, an eloquent man, who had courage, franknisq and many good qualifications, boasts publicly that the Democrats are in power for the first time in eighteen years, and that they do not Intend to stop until they have wiped out every vestige ot the Republican war measures.- . Forewarned <r forearmed, and the. Democrat* began properly on a measure signed by Abraham Lincoln. The picture was a striking one and strange. The time had come when men, fresh from the battle-fields of the Rebellion, took their seats here and proposed to repeal laws enacted while they were trying to destroy th* Union. The Vice-President of the Coniederacy had

stated that for sixty or seventy years preceding the Rebellion, irom the foundation of the Government, the South, though in a minority, had, by combining with what be termed the anti-Cemralists in the North, ruled the country, and in 1866 the same gentleman said In a speech before the Georgia Legislature that by a return to Congress the South might repeat the experiment with the same success. He (Blaine) bad read that speech at the time of its delivery, and had little thought that he would live to see the prophecy fulfilled.' But now we see those measures matured in the Democratic caucus in which the South has an overwhelming majority of two-thirds in the House and thirty out of forty-two Senator*, twenty-three of whom, a positive and pronounced majority, participated in the war against the Union either in civil or military situations, so that our legislation is shaped and fashioned by n catcus in which the ei-Confederates have a majority, and Mr. Stephens’ prophecy is realized. Very appropriately the Congress controlled by the South says to the President, the remaining branch of the Government elected on Republican principles in opposition to the party now in power, that he Shall not exercise his power to veto a bill. They ask if we call It revolutionary, continued Mr. Blaine, to put amendments on an Appropriation bill. Of course not. There have been a great many amendments put on bills, some mischievous and some harmless, but 1 call it audacity of revolution for any Senator or Representative of any caucus of Senators or Representatives to get together and say that they will have certain legislation or stop the Departments of the Government. That is revolutionary I don’t think it will be revolution. It will be a revolution that will not revolve; it won’t work. It is a revolution if persisted in, and if not persisted in it must be backed but from ignominiously, and the latter will prob-. ably be the result. Mr. Blaine concluded as follows: “1 do not profess to know, Mr. President, what the President of the United States will do when these bills are presented to him, as I suppose in due course ot time they will be. I certainly should never speak a solitary word of disrespect of a gentleman holding that exalted position, and I hope I shall not Speak a word unbefitting the dignity of the office ot a Senator of she United States, but as there had been speculation here and there on both sides as to what he would do, it seems to me that the dead heroes of the Union would rise, from their graves if be should consent to be intimidated and outraged in his proper Constitutional power by thieats like these. All the Wat measures of Abraham Lincoln ire to be .wiped out, says a leading Democrat. The Bourbons of France buried themselves, I believe, after their restoration in removing every trace oi Napoleon’s power and grandeur, even chiselin?. the N from monuments raised to perpetuate his glory, but the dead man’s hand from St. Helena reached out and destroyed them in their pride and in their glory. And I tell the Senators on the other side of this chamber, I tell the Democratic party North and South, the South in the lead and the North following, ihaffctoah**? unmoving fioget-uz the tomb of the martyred President, from the prairies of Illinois, will wither and destroy them. ‘Though dead, he speaketh.’ ([Great applause in the galleries.] When you present these bills with these threats to tha living President, who bore the commission of Abraham Lincoln and who served with honor in the Army of the Union which Lincoln restored and preserved, I can think only of one appropriate response from hit lips or nls pen. He should say to you with.all the sqorn-Mflt-ting his station: ‘lsthy servant a dog* that he should do this thing.’” —An extraordinary incident occurred recently in a trial before the- Police Tribunal of Marseilles, France. A female fortune-teller and charlatan named Debard was being tried for.robang an inhabitant of Bandol (Vary, to horn she hid sold some of hex remedies, of a sum of 2,200 francs. Eight witnesses affirmed that she was in the locality on the day of-the robbery, but three others swore as positively that she was at Carpentras and at Cavaillon, a considerable distance from . Bandol, on the day in question. A doubt was apparently arising id the, mind of the Judge, when a man named Pont declared to the court that, on- the previous evening, he' had heard a niece of the woman declare at an inn that her aunt would not be condemned, as they had good witnesses, and that the money would not be found where she had concealed it. The niece being in the court with the daughter of the defendant, the Judge ordered them to be at once arrested and searched, and beneath the clothes of the daughter was found the mpney in a leathern bag attached round her waist. Both women were then ordered to be sent to prison with the three witnesses who had sworn the alibi. A colored firm of Chicago recently dissolved partnership, and posted the following notice to the public: ‘‘De dissolution of coparsnips heretofo resisting betwixt me dud Mose Jones, in de barber profession, am. heretofo dissolved. Puseons who owe must pay to de auWibcr, .Jfofo o*e must call oh Jopes, as de firm m ilsolved.” ' • . The last language spoken on earth will probably be the Finnish.