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tional, that they were without a vestige of authority.

Now, if the crime committed by the southern men in going into the rebellion deserved punishment, they should have been punished according to the Constitution. That was the only way in which we could punish their crime without committing on our part as great a crime, the crime of destroying our own Government and overthrowing our own Constitution. Sir, in overthrowing our Constitution, in violating its sacred guarantees, we committed the same crime with which we had charged the rebels of the South and of which they undoubtedly had been guilty.

That was my view of the case, and believing that these acts of Congress were unconstitutional, null, and void, I believe that the President of the United States, who was sworn to maintain the Constitution, ought not to allow it to be trampled under foot; that your conscience, sir, and the conscience of the majority in these two Houses, should not dictate to the President what he should do in a case of this kind. He had his own conscience to keep clear and spotless, he had sworn an oath himself, and I remember right well that it was not the Democratic convention which sat in New York two years ago that first gave utterance to this doctrine, that the President of the United States was bound by the oath to maintain the Constitution, and not to allow it to be violated in any way or by any body, neither by Congress nor by his own act nor by the act of any one else.

Mr. Jefferson, who found the Democratic party, held and declared this doctrine not only as a matter of theory, but he acted upon it a memorable occasion when President of the United States. I prefer to quote his own language. In a letter to Mr. Adams, dated 11th of September, 1804, he says:

"You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide on the validity of the sedition law. But nothing in the Constitution has given them a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to decide for them. Both magistracies are equally independent in the sphere of action assigned to them."

And again, in a letter to George Hay, dated Washington, June 2, 1807, in reference to the action of the Executive on the sedition act, he says:

"The judges determined the sedition act was valid under the Constitution." * * * * "But the Executive determined that the sedition act was a nullity under the Constitution, and exercised his regular power of prohibiting the execution of the sentence."

General Jackson was equally explicit, both in the declaration of the principle and its exemplification in his official action. In his protest against the resolution of censure adopted by the Senate, December 26, 1833, he says:

"Each of the three great departments is independent of the other in its sphere of action, and when it deviates from that sphere is not responsible to the others further than it is especially made so in the Constitution. In every other respect each of them is the coequal of the other two, and all are the servants of the American people, without power or right to control or censure each other in the service of their common superiors save only in the manner and to the degree which that superior has prescribed."

In the bank veto, July 10, 1832, are these words: 

"The Congress, the Executive, and the court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others."

And this construction of the Constitution, so manifestly true, so far from being revolutionary, is demonstrated by recent events to be essential to secure the people in the enjoyment of their rights and protect them from usurpation by Congress, the strongest and least responsible and most dangerous department of the Government. We have seen the body only denying representation to the people of eleven States, but foisting governments upon those States and putting its own creatures into the Halls of Congress as Representatives of those States, merely to strengthen the hands of the dominant party. Thus reenforced, it was enabled to override the President's veto and to withdraw from the courts all power to revise its action. Coercing the President to execute its behests by the fear of impeachment, its power has been unlimited. In this way it has carried out reconstruction acts and constitutional amendments, and intends to perpetuate its power in defiance of the popular will.

The danger which now menaces the liberties of the people could never have occurred if by refusing to execute its revolutionary programme the people could have been called on to decide between the Congress and the President. There would have been no delay by adjourning the question over for the popular umpirage in the settlement of the questions at issue, and the only difference would be that the equations would have been fairly presented to and decided by the proper tribunal, with no possible danger to the public peace in the mean time.

This view proceeds upon and accords with the theory that the people-not the Congress, or the President, or the courts-are to govern. Radicalism proceeds upon the reverse of this. None of the measures of reconstruction, so called, would have been adopted if they had been submitted to the people in this manner. They have been forced in, seriatim, by fraud, by denying persistently that it was the purpose to impose such measures upon the country, and using the power obtained by such denials to press upon the country the very measures disavowed before the people. The constitutional amendments have been obtained by the coercion in the South, and in defiance of the known will of the North.

This, sir, is simply and without any concealment my view of the theory of our Government. That Congress has been usurping the powers which belong to the President and to the other coordinate branches of the Government I have not a particle of doubt. The overwhelming majority obtained by the Republicans in Congress during the rebellion and afterward, by bringing unauthorized persons into Congress to increase that majority, has sent them headlong upon their career; and they have been and are grasping at every power which was places by our ancestors in the hands of the President and the courts. Our fathers defined and divided the powers of the Government, to prevent all power being grasped and concentrated in the hands of any one of the different branches of Government. I believe that the reckless legislation of which the Republican party have been guilty are flagitious violation of the Constitution; and in it the gentleman has been a leader, though he did not begin early to lead in this direction. He began, if I am not mistaken, with the same views of reconstruction as those now held by the Democratic party. But having been converted to this doctrine, he has out-Heroded Herod, and, with the proverbial zeal of a new convert has gone further than anyone else, and signalized himself by the boldness and audacity of his assaults upon our Government now that we can recognize as the Government which descended to us from our fathers? I remember reading one of the first contested-election cases which occurred in Congress. It was the case of Mr. Preston, of western Virginia, and he was expelled from his seat because his brother marched a company of troops through the streets of the town on the day of the election, such was the jealousy with which even the appearance of employing force in our elections was regarded by our ancestors. Now an election is not valid unless it is superintended by the bayonets of the regular Army. Our Army moves wherever there is an election. They no longer make war upon the camps of the enemies of the Government, but they make war upon political opponents of the Administration, and change upon the ballot-boxes and the polls.

Mr. President, I was perfectly well aware that this practice, although it commenced at the South, would not end there. The party in power commenced using the bayonet to set up the carpet-baggers in the southern States, in the reconstructed States. Although those states were at peace, and desired peace more than any other part of our country, still they were not allowed to hold an election without the presence of the Army. I knew very well that when the Republican party had accustomed the people in this country to hold elections under the superintendence of military officers and armed troops it would not be a great while before the "political necessity" of the party would extend that practice into the northern States; and from having originated in the South, in those States which had been in rebellion, it has recently gone into the States which furnished the most powerful aid and the largest nnmber [[number]] of men to overthrow the rebellion.

Mr. MORTON. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?
Mr. BLAIR. Certainly.
Mr. MORTON. I ask the Senator whether he regards the fifteenth amendment as having been adopted, and as now being a part of the fundamental law of the land?
Mr. BLAIR. I should think the gentleman ought to have got my opinion of the fifteenth amendment by this time. [Laughter.] I think that the ratification of my own State, for instance, was in legal form, although that ratification was obtained by the most infamous perfidy. General Grant carried the State of Missouri by twenty-five thousand majority, and at the same election the negro suffrage amendment to the Constitution was voted down by thirty thousand majority, and not one half of the people of Missouri were allowed to vote. The majority in the State of Missouri against that amendment was known to the Senators who sat upon this floor and the Representatives who sat in the other House to be probably two thirds of the entire population of the State; and yet, without any sort of consideration or regard for the will of that immense and overwhelming majority, the Senators and Representatives of the State and the members of the Legislature hurried to give effect and vitality to this fifteenth amendment.

The very gentlemen who claim that the ballot is necessary to protect the negro, who attach such immense importance to the ballot, when the ballot has been exercised by their own constituents adverse to their wishes and party interests, disregard it as if it were no more than waste paper. That shows the real opinion of those gentlemen in regard to the suffrage. How much protection did the suffrage afford the people of Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Connecticut, and the other northern States also, that voted by immense majorities against negro suffrage, against the perfidy and misrepresentation of their Representatives in Congress and the State Legislatures which has saddled them with the fifteenth amendment, and which the Senator from Indiana well says became a "political necessity" to his party at this crisis?

I have enumerated already other States, and I do not wish to call the roll again to show the gentleman from Indiana what my opinion