Shelby M. Cullom

“ I see no path of ambition open in a bloody struggle for triumph over my own countrymen. There is no path for ambition open for me in a divided country, after having so long served a united and glorious country. Hence, whatever we may do must be the result of conviction, of patriotic duty—the duty that we owe to ourselves, to our posterity, and to the friends of constitutional liberty and self-government throughout the world. ”

“ Can we permit nations foreign to us to collect revenues off our products, the fruits of our industry? I ask the citizens of Illinois—I ask every citizen in the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies, in the valley of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri to tell me whether he is willing to sanction a line of policy that may isolate us from the markets of the world and make us dependent provinces upon powers that thus choose to surround and hem us in? ”

“ The Government of our fathers is to be overthrown and destroyed. The capital that bears the name of the Father of his Country is to be bombarded and levelled with the earth among the rubbish and the dust of things that are past. The records of your Government are to be scattered to the four winds of heaven. The constituted authorities, placed there by the same high authority that placed Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Jackson in the chair, are to be captured and carried off, to become a byword and a scorn to the nations of the world. ”

“ The first duty of an American citizen, or of a citizen of any constitutional Government, is obedience to the Constitution and laws of his country. I have no apprehension that any man in Illinois, or beyond the limits of our own beloved State, will misconstrue or misunderstand my motive. So far as any of the partisan questions are concerned, I stand in equal, irreconcilable, and undying opposition both to the Republicans and the secessionists. ”

“ Then I appeal to you, my own Democratic friends—those men that have never failed to rally under the glorious banner of the country whenever an enemy at home or abroad has dared to assail it—to you with whom it has always been my pride to act—do not allow the mortification, growing out of a defeat in a partisan struggle, and the elevation of a party to power that we firmly believe to be dangerous to the country—do not let that convert you from patriots into traitors to your native land. ”

“ I do not think there was ever a man in public life who was more thoroughly loved by the party to which he belonged than Senator Douglas. His adherents were devoted to him at all times and under all circumstances. When he came through the State, the whole Democratic party was alive and ready to rally to his support. I heard him deliver addresses on two occasions before the War. I heard one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates at Ottawa. I heard Lincoln deliver the famous Springfield address, in which he uttered the immortal sentiment, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." ”

“ Hence, if a war does come, it will be a war of self-defence on our part. It will be a war in defence of our own just rights; in defence of the Government which we have inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic fathers; in defence of those great rights of the freedom of trade, commerce, transit, and intercourse from the centre to the circumference of our great continent. These are rights we can never surrender. ”

“ Yet when we reflect, the distortion disappears. But the wonder still remains. The years during which the deeds of Lincoln have been a memory to us do not carry us back to the early days of our own country. They do not carry us back even to the time of Jackson, Webster, Clay, or Calhoun; yet the sacred halo of patriotic veneration invests as completely the name of Lincoln as of Washington.
The many personal memories of the martyred patriot that I can recall seem almost a dream to me. ”

“ Reconstruction was the problem which confronted us, how to heal up the Nation's wounds and remake a Union which would endure for all time to come. These were the difficult conditions that had to be dealt with by the Thirty-ninth Congress.
Andrew Johnson was the queerest character that ever occupied the White House, and, with the exception of Lincoln only, he entered it under the most trying and difficult circumstances in all our history; but Lincoln had, what Johnson lacked, the support and confidence of the great Republican party. Johnson was never a Republican, and never pretended to be one. ”

“ Not only is our constitutional Government to be stricken down; not only is our flag to be blotted out; but the very foundations of social order are to be undermined and destroyed; the demon of destruction is to be let loose over the face of the land, a reign of terror and mob law is to prevail in each section of the Union, and the man who dares to plead for the cause of justice and moderation in either section is to be marked down as a traitor to his section. ”

“ Senator Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, a member of the committee in the Sixty-first Congress, was one of the most popular members of the Senate. His ability as a lawyer and legislator, combined with his wit and keen sense of humor, enabled him to assume quite a commanding position in that body. When feeling ran high in debate, sometimes almost to the point of personal encounter, Senator Carter would appear, and by a few well-chosen words, voiced in his calm, quiet manner, throw oil upon the troubled waters, and peace again reigned supreme. ”

“ Another and obvious objection to permitting our officials to receive gifts or decorations from foreign powers is that, having no orders of nobility and no decorations in this country, and not recognizing the propriety of offering to officials of other powers, we can in no way reciprocate. It is beneath the dignity of the American Government to receive, through its representatives, presents for which it can make no return. The Constitutional prohibition is, in the opinion of the subcommittee, a wise one, to which Congress should very seldom permit any exception. ”

“ Under our system of government, treaties occupy a unique position. They are not only binding internationally, but the Constitution makes treaties a part of the supreme law of the land—that is, a part of our own municipal law. A treaty, if of later date, and in conflict with a law passed by Congress, repeals so much of the law as it conflicts with; but an unratified protocol, or any other international agreement, no matter by what name it is called, not submitted to the Senate, does not have the effect of a treaty, as that term is defined in the Constitution. ”

“ For the first time since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, a widespread conspiracy exists to destroy the best government the sun of heaven ever shed its rays upon. Hostile armies are now marching upon the Federal Capitol, with a view of planting a revolutionary flag upon its dome; seizing the National archives; taking captive the President elected by the votes of the people, and holding him in the hands of secessionists and disunionists. A war of aggression and of extermination is being waged against the Government established by our fathers. ”

“ Of course, I need not say nobody questions the right of the Senate to amend the treaty as may seem to them best. I am only speaking of the matter of opportuneness and expediency. We insisted on an immediate ratification of the treaty by the Panama Government, and they acceded to our wishes. If we now, after a very long delay, send the treaty back to them amended, you can at once imagine the state of things that it will find there. The moment of unanimity and enthusiasm, which only comes once in the life of a revolution, will have passed away and given way to the play of politics and factions. ”

“ Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous —I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition. ”

“ While I will never invade them—while I will never fail to defend and protect their rights to the full extent that a fair and liberal construction of the Constitution can give them—they must distinctly understand that I will never acquiesce in their invasion of our constitutional rights.
"It is a crime against the inalienable and indefeasible rights of every American citizen to attempt to destroy the Government under which we were born. ”

“ As a lawyer he is as brilliant as either of those men, and probably, owing to his executive experience, a more efficient statesman. I regard him as the best qualified man in this country for any position in the public service which he would accept. He would make a strong President, and as a Senator he is equipped with extraordinary qualifications. If he remains in the Senate, by sheer force of ability alone he is bound to become its acknowledged leader. We have never had a stronger Secretary of State. ”

“ Is it the President of the United States as against a corporation? Is it an honest commission honestly selected by the President of the United States as against a railroad company? I say that there are not those inducements to be placed in the hands of a set of men selected for their integrity, selected for their ability, selected for their capacity to regulate railroads and enforce the law, that are left in the hands of the officers of the railroad companies themselves. ”

“ Such a vast accumulation of history has been compressed into those years, and such a wonderful panorama of events has passed before us in that comparatively brief time, that we are apt to think of Lincoln as of the long ago, as almost a contemporary of Washington and of the Revolutionary fathers. The immensity of the history which has been crowded into those forty-five years has distorted our mental vision, as ordinary objects are sometimes distorted by refraction. ”

“ The President, from whatever motives it matters not, stands in his Executive Office, and by all his influence and power opposes restoration according to law. As an Executive Officer, he has no such right, and his opposition to the laws of Congress on the subject of reconstruction has cost this Nation thousands of loyal men who have been murdered in the South on account of their devotion to the Flag, and millions of money which is to be added to the enormous public debt to be cast upon the necks of the people. ”

“ And now, when the Canadian road, built by Government subsidies, begins to compete with the American roads built with Government subsidies, the latter who have pocketed hundreds of millions of subsidy spoils and overcharge plunder, appeal to the Senate to protect the scoundrels against a little healthy competition, and Senator Gorman pleads for the robbers on the floor of the Senate with tears in his eyes! So whatever extent the competing Canadian roads cause our contiguous roads to lower their freights so much the better for the public. They act just the same as competing waterways. ”

“ In the discharge of the high duty which you have just imposed upon me, it shall be my single aim to dy my part in so shaping the policy of the country, that we shall soon stand upon the high ground of permanent prosperity.
"Gentlemen, it should be our ambition so to legislate that the freedom and rights of every citizen shall be secured and respected; that all interests shall be protected; that one portion of our people shall not oppress another, and so that ample remedies shall be found and applied for every existing wrong. ”

“ Lincoln was the only man living who ever managed Charles Sumner, or could use him for his purpose. Sumner's end has always seemed to me most pitiful. Removed from his high position as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, followed relentlessly by the enmity of President Grant, than at the very acme of his fame; drifting from the Republican party, his own State repudiating him, Charles Sumner died of a broken heart. ”

“ Whenever our Government is assailed, when hostile armies are marching under new and odious banners against the Government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparations for war. The greater unanimity, the less blood will be shed. The more prompt and energetic the movement, and the more imposing in numbers, the shorter will be the struggle. ”

“ The times were never more prosperous. In his message to the Congress which convened after his defeat, President Harrison appositely said: "There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant, or when wages were so high, whether measured in the currency in which they are paid, or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life." And yet, with this admitted condition prevailing, the Democratic party was returned to power.
I felt very badly over President Harrison's defeat, as I had done everything I could to secure, first, his renomination and then his re-election. ”

“ We are to-day at peace with all the Nations of the world. Perhaps never before in our history have we had such intimate and friendly relations with all the great Nations as we have to-day. Our country has the respect of all the Governments of the world, great and small. We are gradually assuming the first place among the naval powers; but, unlike the older Nations, we are acquiring a great navy in the interest of peace. ”

“ I believe I am justified in saying that there is no subject of a public nature that is before the country about which there is so great unanimity of sentiment as there is upon the proposition that the National Government ought in some way to regulate interstate commerce. The testimony taken by the Committee shows conclusively to my mind, and I think to every man's mind who reads it, that there is necessity for some legislation by the National Government, looking to the regulation of interstate commerce by railroad and by waterways in connection therewith. ”

“ I said to him: "Mr. President, the selection of a Chief Justice is one of the greatest duties you have to perform. You can make a mistake; we can raise the devil in Congress; but with a capable Supreme Court standing steady and firm, doing its full duty, the country is safe."
He agreed with me; and very soon thereafter Melville W. Fuller was nominated as Chief Justice of the United States.
But this was only the prelude to the real struggle. The nomination was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, was chairman. ”