CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. The third session of the Forty-fifth Congress* commenced on December 2, 1878. (For the President's message, see "Public Documents," ," ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA, 1878.) In the Senate the Vice-President, William A. Wheeler, pre The following is a list of members: SENATE. Alabama-George E. Spencer, John T. Morgan. Kentucky-Thomas C. McCreery, James B. Beck. Maryland-George R. Dennis, William Pinckney Whyte. New Hampshire-Bainbridge Wadleigh, E. H. Rollins. New York-Roscoe Conkling, Francis Kernan. North Carolina-Augustus S. Merrimon, Matthew W Pansom. Ohio-Stanley Matthews, Allen G. Thurman. Delaware-James Williams. Florida-R. H. M. Davidson, Horatio Bisbee, Jr. Georgia Julian Hartridge, William E. Smith, Philip Cook, Henry R. Harris, Milton A. Candler, James H. Blount, William H. Felton, Alexander H. Stephens, H. P. Bell, Illinois-William Aldrich, C. H. Harrison, Lorenzo Brentano, William Lathrop, H. C. Burchard, T. J. Henderson, Pip C. Hayes, G. L. Fort, Thomas A. Boyd, B. F. Marsh, E. M. Knapp, William M. Springer, Thomas F. Tipton, Joph G. Cannon, John R. Eden, W. A. J. Sparks, William R. Morrison, William Hartzell, R. W. Townshend. Indiana-B. S. Fuller, Thomas R. Cobb, George A. BickBell Leonidas Sexton, Thomas M. Browne, M. S. Robinson, Joha Hanna, M. C. Hunter, M. D. White, W. H. Calkins, James L. Evans, A. H. Hamilton, John H. Baker. Iowa J. C. Stone, Hiram Price, Theodore W. Burdick, N. C. Deering, Rush Clark, E. S. Sampson, H. J. B. Cummings, Williain F. Sapp, Addison Oliver. Kansas-William A. Phillips, Dudley C. Haskell, Thomas Bran. sided; and in the House, the Speaker, Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania. In the Senate, on December 3d, the following resolution was offered by Senator Blaine of Maine: Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be Maine-Thomas B. Reed, William P. Frye, S. D. Lindsey, Llewellyn Powers, Eugene Hale. Maryland-Daniel M. Henry, Charles B. Roberts, William Kimmell, Thomas Swann, E. J. Henkle, William Walsh. Massachusetts-William W. Crapo, Benjamin W. Harris, Walbridge A. Field, Leopold Morse, N. P. Banks, George B. Loring, Benjamin F. Butler, William Claflin, W. W. Rice, Amasa Norcross, George D. Robinson. Michigan-A. S. Williams, Edwin Willets, J. H. McGowan, E. W. Keightley, John W. Stone, Mark S. Brewer, Omar D. Conger, Charles C. Ellsworth, Jay A. Hubbell. Minnesota-M. H. Dunnell, H. B. Strait, J. H. Stewart. Mississippi-H. L. Muldrow, Van H. Manning, H. D. Money, O. R. Singleton, Charles E. Hooker, J. R. Chalmers. Missouri-Anthony Ittner, Nathan Cole, L. S. Metcalf, Robert A. Hatcher, R. P. Bland, Charles H. Morgan, T. T. Crittenden, B. J. Franklin, David Rea, Henry M. Pollard, J. B. Clark, Jr., John M. Glover, A. H. Buckner. Nebraska-Thomas J. Majors. Nevada-Thomas Wren. New Hampshire-Frank Jones, James F. Briggs, Henry W. Blair. New Jersey-C. H. Sinnickson, J. H. Pugh, Miles Ross, Alvah A. Clark, A. W. Cutler, Thomas B. Peddie, A. A. Hardenburgh. New York-James W. Covert, William D. Veeder, S. B. Chittenden, Archibald M. Bliss, Nicholas Muller, 8. S. Cox, Anthony Eickhoff, A. G. McCook, Fernando Wood, A. S. Hewitt, Benjamin A. Willis, Clarkson N. Potter, John H. Ketcham, George M. Beebe, S. L. Mayham, John W. Bailey, Martin I. Townsend, Andrew Williams, A. B. James, John H. Starin, Solomon Bundy, George A. Bagley, William J. Bacon, William H. Baker, Frank Hiscock, John H. Camp, E. G. Lapham, J. W. Dwight, J. Hungerford, E. Kirke Hart, Charles B. Benedict, D. N. Lockwood, G. W. Patterson. North Carolina-Jesse J. Yeates, C. H. Brogden, A. M. Waddell, J. J. Davis, A. M. Scales, W. L. Steele, William M. Robbins, Robert B. Vance. Ohio-Milton Sayler, H. B. Banning, Mills Gardner, J. A. McMahon, A. V. Rice, Jacob D. Cox, Henry L. Dickey, J. W. Keifer, John S. Jones, Charles Foster, Henry S. Neal, Thomas Ewing, M. I. Southard, E. B. Finley, N. H. Van Vorhes, Lorenzo Danford, William McKinley, Jr., James Monroe, James A. Garfield, Amos Townsend. Oregon-Richard Williams. Pennsylvania-Chapman Freeman, Charles O'Neill, Samuel J. Randall, William D. Kelley, A. C. Harmer, William Ward, Isaac N. Evans, Hiester Clymer, A. H. Smith, S. A. Bridges, F. D. Collins, II. B. Wright, James B. Reilly, J. W. Killinger, E. Overton, Jr., John I. Mitchell, J. M. Campbell, W. 8. Stenger, Levi Maish, L. A. Mackey, Jacob Turney, Russell Errett, Thomas M. Bayne, W. 8. Shallenberger, Harry White, J. M. Thompson, Lewis F. Watson. Rhode Island-Benjamin T. Eames, L. W. Ballou. South Carolina-J. H. Rainey, Richard H. Cain, D. Wyatt Aiken, John H. Evins, Robert Smalls. Tennessee-J. H. Randolph, J. M. Thornburgh, George G. Dibrell, H. Y. Riddle, John M. Bright, John F. House, W. C. Whitthorne, J. D. C. Atkins, W. P. Caldwell, Casey Young. Texas-John H. Reagan, D. B. Culberson, J. W. Throckmorton, Roger Q. Mills, D. W. C. Giddings, G. Schleicher. Vermont-Charles H. Joyce, D. C. Denison, George W. Hendee. Virginia-John Goode, Jr., G. C. Walker, Joseph Jorgenson, George C. Cabell, J. R. Tucker, J. T. Harris, Eppa Hunton, A. L. Pridemore. West Virginia-Benjamin Wilson, Benjamin F. Martin, John E. Kenna. Wisconsin-Charles G. Williams, L. B. Caswell, Georgo C. Hazleton, William P. Lynde, Edward S. Bragg, Gabriel Bouck, H. L. Humphrey, Thaddeus C. Pound. TERRITORIAL DELEGATES. instructed to inquire and report to the Senate whether at the recent elections the constitutional rights of American citizens were violated in any of the States of the Union; whether the right of suffrage of citizens of the United States, or of any class of such citizens, was denied or abridged by the action of the election officers of any State, in refusing to receive their votes, in failing to count them, or in receiving and counting fraudulent ballots in pursuance of a conspiracy to make the lawful votes of such citizens of none effect; and whether such citizens were prevented fron exercising the elective franchise, or forced to use it against their wishes by violence or threats, or hostile demonstrations of armed men or other organizations, or by any other unlawful means or practices. Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be further instructed to inquire and report whether it is within the competency of Congress to provide by additional legislation for the more perfect security of the right of suffrage to citizens of the United States in all the States of the Union. Resolved, That in prosecuting these inquiries the Committee on the Judiciary shall have the right to send for persons and papers. Mr. Blaine said: "Mr. President, the pending resolution was offered by me with a twofold purpose in view: "1. To place on record, in a definite and authentic form, the frauds and outrages by which some recent elections were carried by the Democratic party in the Southern States; "2. To find if there be any method by which a repetition of these crimes against a free ballot may be prevented. "The newspaper is the channel through which the people of the United States are informed of current events, and the accounts given in the press represent the elections in some of the Southern States to have been accompanied by violence, in not a few cases reaching the destruction of life; to have been controlled by threats that awed and intimidated a large class of voters; to have been manipulated by fraud of the most shameless and shameful description. Indeed, in South Carolina there seems to have been no election at all in any proper sense of the term. There was instead a series of skirmishes over the State, in which the polling-places were regarded as forts to be captured by one party and held against the other; and, where this could not be done with convenience, frauds in the count and tissue-ballot devices were resorted to in order to effectually destroy the voice of the majority. These in brief are the accounts given in the non-partisan press of the disgraceful outrages that attended the recent elections; and, so far as I have seen, these statements are without serious contradiction. It is but just and fair to all parties, however, that an impartial investigation of the facts shall be made by a committee of the Senate, proceeding under the authority of law and 'representing the power of the nation. Hence my resolution. "But we do not need investigation to establish certain facts already of official record. We know that one hundred and six Representatives in Congress were recently chosen in the States formerly slave-holding, and that the Democrats elected one hundred and one or possibly one hundred and two, and the Republicans four or possibly five. We know that thirty-five of these Representatives were assigned to the Southern States by reason of the colored population, and that the entire political power thus founded on the numbers of the colored people has been seized and appropri ated to the aggrandizement of its own strength by the Democratic party of the South. "The issue thus raised before the country, Mr. President, is not one of mere sentiment for the rights of the negro-though far distant be the day when the rights of any American citizen, however black or however poor, shall form the mere dust of the balance in any controversy; nor is the issue one that involves the waving of the 'bloody shirt,' to quote the elegant vernacular of Democratic vituperation; nor still further is the issue as now presented only a question of the equality of the black voter of the South with the white voter of the South. The issue, Mr. President, has taken a far wider range, one of portentous magnitude; and that is, whether the white voter of the North shall be equal to the white voter of the South in shaping the policy and fixing the destiny of this country; or whether, to put it still more baldly, the white man who fought in the ranks of the Union army shall have as weighty and influential a vote in the government of the Republic as the white man who fought in the ranks of the rebel army. The one fought to uphold, the other to destroy, the Union of the States; and to-day he who fought to destroy is a far more important factor in the government of the nation than he who fought to uphold it. "Let me illustrate my meaning by comparing groups of States of the same representative strength North and South. Take the States of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They send seventeen Representatives to Congress. Their aggregate population is composed of ten hundred and thirty-five thousand whites and twelve hundred and twenty-four thousand colored; the colored being nearly two hundred thousand in excess of the whites. Of the seventeen Representatives, then, it is evident that nine were apportioned to these States by reason of their colored population, and only eight by reason of their white population; and yet in the choice of the entire seventeen Representatives the colored voters had no more voice or power than their remote kindred on the shores of Senegambia or on the Gold Coast. The ten hundred and thirty-five thousand white people had the sole and absolute choice of the entire seventeen Representatives. In contrast, take two States in the North, Iowa and Wisconsin, with seventeen Representatives. They have a white population of two million two hundred and forty-seven thousand-considerably more than double the entire white population of the three Southern States I have named. In Iowa and Wisconsin, therefore, it takes one hundred and thirty-two thousand white population to send a Representative to Congress, but in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana every sixty thousand white people send a Representative. In other words, sixty thousand white people in those Southern States have precisely the same political power in the government of the country that one hundred and thirty-two thousand white people have in Iowa and Wisconsin. "Take another group of seventeen Representatives from the South and from the North. Georgia and Alabama have a white population of eleven hundred and fifty-eight thousand and a colored population of ten hundred and twenty thousand. They send seventeen Representatives to Congress, of whom nine were apportioned on account of the white population and eight on account of the colored population. But the colored voters are not able to choose a single Representative, the white Democrats choosing the whole seventeen. The four Northern States, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and California, have seventeen Representatives, based on a white population of two and a quarter millions, or almost double the white population of Georgia and Alabama, so that in these relative groups of States we find the white man South exercises by his vote double the political power of the white man North. "Let us carry the comparison to a more comprehensive generalization. The eleven States that formed the Confederate Government had by the last census a population of nine and a half millions, of which in round numbers five and a half millions were white and four millions colored. On this aggregate population seventy-three Representatives in Congress were apportioned to those Statesforty-two or three of which were by reason of the white population, and thirty or thirtyone by reason of the colored population. At the recent election the white Democracy of the South seized seventy of the seventy-three districts, and thus secured a Democratic majority in the next House of Representatives. Thus it appears that throughout the States that formed the late Confederate Government sixty-five thousand whites-the very people that rebelled against the Union-are enabled to elect a Representative in Congress, while in the loyal States it requires one hundred and thirty-two thousand of the white people that fought for the Union to elect a Representative. In levying every tax, therefore, in making every appropriation of money, in fixing every line of public policy, in decreeing what shall be the fate and fortune of the Republic, the Confederate soldier South is enabled to cast a vote that is twice as powerful and twice as influential as the vote of the Union soldier North. "But the white men of the South did not acquire and do not hold this superior power by reason of law or justice, but in disregard and defiance of both. The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution was expected to be and was designed to be a preventive and corrective of all such possible abuses. The reading of the clause applicable to the case is instructive and suggestive. Hear it : Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. "The patent, undeniable intent of this provision was that if any class of voters were denied or in any way abridged in their right of suffrage, then the class so denied or abridged should not be counted in the basis of representation; or, in other words, that no State or States should gain a large increase of representation in Congress by reason of counting any class of population not permitted to take part in electing such Representatives. But the construction given to this provision is that before any forfeiture of representation can be enforced the denial or abridgment of suffrage must be the result of a law specifically enacted by the State. Under this construction every negro voter may have his suffrage absolutely denied or fatally abridged by the violence, actual or threatened, of irresponsible mobs, or by frauds and deceptions of State officers from the Governor down to the last election clerk, and then, unless some State law can be shown that authorizes the denial or abridgment, the State escapes all penalty or peril of reduced representation. This construction may be upheld by the courts, ruling on the letter of the law, 'which killeth,' but the spirit of justice cries aloud against the evasive and atrocious conclusion that deals out oppression to the innocent and shields the guilty from the legitimate consequences of willful transgression. "The colored citizen is thus most unhappily situated; his right of suffrage is but a hollow mockery; it holds to his ear the word of promise, but breaks it always to his hope, and he ends only in being made the unwilling instrument of increasing the political strength of that party from which he received ever-tightening fetters when he was a slave and contemptuous refusal of civil rights since he was made free. He resembles indeed those unhappy captives in the East who, deprived of their birthright, are compelled to yield their strength to the upbuilding of the monarch from whose tyrannies they have most to fear, and to fight against the power from which alone deliverance might be expected. The franchise intended for the shield and defense of the negro has been turned against him and against his friends, and has vastly increased the power of those from whom he has nothing to hope and everything to dread. "The political power thus appropriated by Southern Democrats by reason of the negro population amounts to thirty-five Representatives in Congress. It is massed almost solidly, and offsets the great State of New York, or Pennsylvania and New Jersey together, or the whole of New England, or Ohio and Indiana united, or the combined strength of Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, California, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, and Oregon. The seizure of this power is wanton usurpation; it is flagrant outrage; it is violent perversion of the whole theory of republican government. It inures solely to the present advantage and yet, I believe, to the permanent dishonor, of the Democratic party. It is by reason of this trampling down of human rights, this ruthless seizure of unlawful power, that the Democratic party holds the popular branch of Congress to-day, and will in less than ninety days have control of this body also, thus grasping the entire legislative department of the Government through the unlawful capture of the Southern States. If the proscribed vote of the South were cast as its lawful owners desire, the Democratic party could not gain power. Nay, if it were not counted on the other side against the instincts and the interests, against the principles and the prejudices of its lawful owners, Democratic success would be hopeless. It is not enough, then, for modern Democratic tactics that the negro vote shall be silenced; the demand goes further, and insists that it shall be counted on their side, that all the Representatives in Congress and all the Presidential electors apportioned by reason of the negro vote shall be so cast and so governed as to insure Democratic success-regardless of justice, in defiance of law. "And this injustice is wholly unprovoked. I doubt if it be in the power of the most searching investigation to show that in any Southern State during the period of Republican control any legal voter was ever debarred from the freest exercise of his suffrage. Even the revenges which would have leaped into life with many who despised the negro were buried out of sight with a magnanimity which the superior race' fail to follow and seem reluctant to recognize. I know it is said, in retort of such charges against the Southern elections as I am now reviewing, that unfairness of equal gravity prevails in Northern elections. I hear it in many quarters, and read it in the papers, that in the late exciting election in Massachusetts intimidation and bulldozing, if not so rough and rancorous as in the South, were yet as widespread and effective. "I have read, and yet I refuse to believe, that the distinguished gentleman who made an energetic but unsuccessful canvass for the governorship of that State has endorsed and approved these charges; and I have accordingly made my resolution broad enough to include their thorough investigation. I am not demanding fair elections in the South without demanding fair elections in the North also. But venturing to speak for the New England States, of whose laws and customs I know something, I dare assert that in the late election in Massachusetts, or any of her neighboring commonwealths, it will be impossible to find even one case where a voter was driven from the polls, where a voter did not have the fullest, fairest, freest opportunity to cast the ballot of his choice, and have it honestly and faithfully counted in the returns. Suffrage on this continent was first made universal in New England, and in the administration of their affairs her people have found no other appeal necessary than that which is addressed to their honesty of conviction and to their intelligent self-interest. If there be anything different to disclose, I pray you show it to us, that we may amend our ways." Mr. Thurman of Ohio: "Mr. President, I offer an amendment, which I send to the Chair." The Secretary: "It is proposed to add to the resolution the following": "The committee shall also inquire whether any citizen of any State has been dismissed or threatened with dismissal from employment or the deprivation of any right or privilege by reason of his vote or intention to vote at the recent election, or has been otherwise interfered with; and to inquire whether in the year 1978 money was raised by assessment or otherwise upon Federal officeholders or employees for election pur poses, and under what circumstances and by what means; and, if so, what amount was so raised and how the same was expended; and, further, whether such assessments were or not in violation of law; and shall further inquire into the action and conduct of United States supervisors of elections in the several States, and as to the number of marshals, deputy marshals, and others employed to take part in the conduct of the said elections, in what State or city appointed, the amount of money paid or promised to be paid to them, and how or by whom, and under what law or authority." Mr. Thurman: "Mr. President, I attempted to offer that amendment before the Senator from Maine proceeded with his remarks, but failed to have an opportunity to do so. I intended then to say that, whatever opinion might be entertained on this side of the Chamber as to the propriety of the original resolutions as to the competency of Congress to make all the investigations that those resolutions contemplate, yet we were disposed to waive all seruples of that character and suffer the resolutions to pass without opposition if the amendment now proposed should be added to them. The Senator from Maine, however, having a speech carefully studied and prepared, exercised his right to deliver that speech before my amendment could be offered. I do not complain of that at all, nor do I now rise to make any extended reply to the speech that I have heard just now. Should this debate be protracted, I may exercise my privilege of saying something in reply to the Senator from Maine, but to-day |