James Gillespie Blaine

“ The three great Amendments to the Constitution were bought with a great price—even the blood of the slain—and they will assuredly, in their letter and in their spirit, be vindicated and enforced. Mr. Lincoln taught his countrymen the lesson that he who would be no slave must be content to have no slave. It is yet to be learned with equal emphasis that he who would preserve his own right to suffrage must never aid in depriving another citizen of the same great boon. ”

“ You establish a precedent which all future parties in all time to come will look to. The curse of other countries, the curse of France, the curse of the South-American Republics, has been that they followed such a precedent as you call upon us to establish here to-day—the overthrow of their Executive, not by law, not by the Constitution, but by the irregular and arbitrary and revolutionary exercise of power, in order merely to obtain a temporary possession of the Government. ”

“ When the Congress of the United States, acting independently of the Executive power of the Nation, decreed emancipation by amending the Constitution, it solemnly pledged itself, with all its power, to give protection to the emancipated at whatever cost and at whatever sacrifice. ”

“ Their success as civil magistrates, as legislators, as executives was not less marked and meritorious than their illustrious service in war. The same cause brought the same result a century later in men of the same blood fighting with equal valor the same battle of Constitutional liberty. The inspiration of a great cause does not fail to ennoble the humblest of those who do battle in its defense. Those who stood in the ranks of the Union Army have established this truth by the twenty years of honorable life through which they have passed since their patriotic service was crowned with victory. ”

“ I hope I have a heart as capable of feeling for human woe as others. I have long since wished that capital punishment were abolished. But I never dreamed that all punishment could be dispensed with in human society. Anarchy, treason and violence would reign triumphant. The punishment now prescribed is the mildest ever inflicted upon traitors. I might not consent to the extreme severity pronounced upon them by a provisional Governor of Tennessee—I mean the late lamented Andrew Johnson of blessed memory—but I would have increased the severity in this section. ”

“ They bowed before the bier of him who had ben prophet, priest, and king to his people, who had struck the shackles from the slave, who had taught a higher sense of duty to the true man, who had raised the Nation to a loftier conception of faith and hope and charity. A countless multitude of men, with music and banner and cheer and the inspiration of a great cause, presents a spectacle that engages the eye, fills the mind, appeals to the imagination. ”

“ They knew that the great mass of the North was heartily opposed to slavery: they knew that its abolition was not merely right but was destined to be popular. It affected moreover only that great section of country which had engaged in the crime of rebellion; and if it were viewed only as a punishment of those who had sought the destruction of the Government, they felt more than justified in inflicting it.
But the legislation now accomplished was of a different type. In no State of the North had there ever been social equality between the negro and the white man. ”

“ We will not consent that the freedom of the negro shall be made secure by endowing him with citizenship. We demand that without giving negroes the right to vote, they shall yet be counted in the basis of representation, thus increasing our political power when we re-enter Congress beyond that which we enjoyed before we rebelled, and beyond that which white men in the North shall ever enjoy. We decline to give any guarantee for the validity of the public debt. We decline to guarantee the sacredness of pensions to soldiers disabled in the War for the Union. ”

“ No Government of modern times has encountered the dangers that beset the United States, or achieved the triumphs wherewith the Nation is crowned.
The assassination of two Presidents, one inaugurated at the beginning, the other at the close of this period, while a cause of profound National grief, reflects no dishonor upon popular government. The murder of Lincoln was the maddened and aimless blow of an expiring rebellion. The murder of Garfield was the fatuous impulse of a debauched conscience if not a disordered brain. ”

“ They were simply a changing, ever renewing, foreign element in an American State. They were ready to work at a rate of wages upon which a white man could not subsist and support a family. Theirs was in all its aspects a servile labor,—one which would inevitably degrade every workman subjected to its competition. To encourage or even to permit such an immigration, would be to dedicate the rich Pacific slope to them alone and to their employers—in short, to create a worse evil in the remote West than that which led to bloody war in the South. ”

“ I say to the senator from Kentucky that the struggle of the last eight years to give freedom to four and a half millions of men who were held in slavery, to make them citizens of the United States, to clothe them with the right of suffrage, to give them the privilege of being voted for, to make them in all respects equal to the white citizens of the United States, has cost the Republican party a quarter of a million votes. ”

“ When the Southern leaders knew the Confederate cause to be hopeless not a single man among them displayed sufficient heroism to brave public opinion with the declaration of his honest belief. The absolute suppression of free discussion which had long prevailed in the South, the frequent murder of those who attempted to express an unpopular opinion however honestly entertained, had deprived brave men of every trait of that higher form of courage which has given immortality of fame to the moral heroes of the world. ”

“ Neither crime had its origin in the political institutions or its growth in the social organization of the country. Both crimes received the execration of all parties and all sections. In the universal horror which they inspired, in the majestic supremacy of law, which they failed to disturb, may be read the strongest proof of the stability of a Government which is founded upon the rights, fortified by the intelligence, inwrought with the virtues of the people. For as it was said of old, wisdom and knowledge shall be stability, and the work of righteousness shall be peace! ”

“ I have become satisfied that mercy without justice is a crime, and that when mercy and clemency are exercised by the Executive it should always be done in view of justice. In that manner alone the great prerogative of mercy is properly exercised. The time has come, as you who have had to drink this bitter cup are fully aware, when the American people should be made to understand the true nature of crime. Of crime generally our people have a high understanding as well as of the necessity of its punishment ”

“ Rumors, gossip, inventions of all kinds were set afloat in the public press,—hinting first at one man and then at another among the Republican senators as likely to weaken, as about going over to the Administration, as having just had a confidential interview with Mr. Seward, as dining the evening before with the President, or as being concerned in some matter of even less consequence. When public interest is heightened the imagination of the people is stimulated, until trifles light as air have fatal significance in one direction or the other. ”

“ We have expressed our faith that the proposition which has been made by Congress for the settlement of all difficulties in the country [the Fourteenth Amendment] is not only a wise policy, but one so truly magnanimous that the whole world stood in wonder that a people could, under such circumstances, be so magnanimous to those whom they had conquered. And when we say we are ready to stand by the decision of Congress, we only say as soldiers that we follow the same flag and the same principles which we have followed during the war. ”

“ Stimulated by the protection of the President and encouraged by his contumacious quarrel with Congress, the South was driven from one unwise step to another, until the entire situation became hopelessly entangled, and every movement affected by anger and passion;—the North resolving more and more to insist on the fruits of victory, the South resolving more and more to act as though they had conquered in the contest. ”

“ Johnson grew in public favor and increased in reputation, as his talents were admitted and his power in debate appreciated, he became eager to compel recognition from those who had successfully proscribed him. A man who is born to social equality with the best of his community, and accustomed in his earlier years to its enjoyment, does not feel the sting of attempted exclusion, but is rather made pleasantly conscious of the prestige which inspires the adverse effort and can look upon its bitterness in a spirit of lofty disdain. ”

“ But we have met by the powers of the Constitution these great dangers—prophesied when they would arise as likely to be our doom—the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of powerful war, the intervention of the regularity of power through the violence of assassination. We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need. ”

“ A common danger awakened them to a sense of their aggregate strength, and that awakening proved to be the beginning of a new progress. Prolonged peace and quiet in a country, even of our large resources, had engendered the habit of caution, of economy, of extreme conservatism. The dominance of the State-rights' school had created in the minds of the people a distrust of the power of the General Government,—a fact which no doubt was taken into the calculations of those who revolted against its authority. ”

“ As the basis of representation in the Constitution has always given the slave States an advantage, these States, now that slavery was abolished, should not be permitted to oppress the negro population and use them merely for an enlarged Congressional power to the white men who had precipitated the rebellion. As the war to maintain Union and Liberty had cost a vast treasure and sacrificed countless lives, the States that had forced the bloody contest should agree by solemn amendment to the Constitution that the National debt and the pension to the soldier should be secured. ”

“ Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government. But they realized at the same time that the most important demands of far-seeing statesmanship and of true patriotism might be disregarded, and even contemned, by a wild, unreasoning wish of the people to see the old Government, in all its parts, promptly and fully re-established. ”

“ No man in the North, valuing the freedom for which a great war was waged, desires to control the vote of a single individual in the South. He only desires that every individual in the South, as in the North, shall control his own vote, and when that is done the result, whatever it may be, will always be cheerfully accepted. Contention between sections, divided by a fixed line, is the most undesirable form of political controversy. It is also the most illogical. But consolidation on one side leads naturally and always to consolidation on the other side. ”

“ There was hope in the minds of sanguine people of the North that an era of peace and harmony had begun in the South, which would be characterized by a fair recognition of the rights of all the population, that free suffrage would be protected, that the hand of violence would be stayed, and that the Centennial year would find every State of the Republic in the enjoyment of material prosperity, of the fair administration of the law, of the enforcement of equal rights. ”

“ In the city of New York the popular feeling was, if possible, even more marked than in Philadelphia. The streets were so crowded that the procession moved with difficulty to the City Hall, where amid the chantings of eight hundred singers, the body was placed upon the catafalque prepared for it. Throughout the day and throughout the entire night the living tide of sorrowful humanity flowed past the silent form. At the solemn hour of midnight the German musical societies sang a funeral-hymn with an effect so impressive and touching that thousands of strong men were in tears. ”

“ Never in the history of the world had so mighty a rebellion been subdued. Never had any rebellion been followed by treatment so lenient, forgiving, and generous on the part of the triumphant Government. The great mass of those who had resisted the National authority were restored to all their rights of citizenship by the simple taking of an oath of future loyalty, and those excepted from immediate re-instatement were promised full forgiveness on the slightest exhibition of repentance and good works. ”

“ With the Southern States dominant in the Convention, their delegates (all former slave-holders and at a later period engaged in rebellion in order to perpetuate slavery) now resolved with docile acquiescence to "recognize the equality of all men before the law; and the duty of the Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political." ”

“ The philanthropy, the foresight, the insight of the realm were found among the humbler classes. In all parts of the kingdom the laboring men were on the side of the Union. Though they suffered from a cotton-famine, they knew by intuition that the founding of a slave empire in America would degrade labor everywhere; they knew that the triumph of the Union signified the equality of human rights and would add to the dignity and reward of labor. ”

“ The fact that the rebellion fails is the full warrant for its guilty authors to be at once repossessed of all the rights and all the privileges which in the frenzy of anger and disobedience they had thrown away. Such was in effect the argument of the President throughout the Reconstruction contest; such was the demand of the leaders of the Rebellion; such was the concession which the Democratic party constantly urged in Congress, through the press, and in all the channels through which its great power was exerted. ”