Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/184

 ment and thereafter affirmed that the bill in hand came within the limits of the Constitution.

Elliott had next to establish the validity of the facts upon which the proposed bill was founded. Little difficulty, indeed, was experienced in bringing forward convincing evidence. There were presented before the House numerous editorials from Southern newspapers showing the animus of the enemies of the Negro; the report of the partisan committees of Charleston in 1868; communications appearing in the Newberry, South Carolina, Herald of July 17 in 1868; the Ku Klux Klan order appearing in the Charleston News of January 31, 1871; and the printed allegements of leading unreconstructed Southerners, all of which tended to indicate to what extent violence had superseded law, and exactly how unsafe were the lives and property of the loyal people of the South. Elliott quite properly affirmed, therefore, the urgent need for the passage of the bill as a measure of relief and protection to those in the South, whose liberties had been assailed.

On the political conditions in the South during the decline of the Reconstruction régime many Congressmen spoke with seeming authority. Two speeches of note on Southern conditions were made, during the Forty-second Congress, by Robert Brown Elliott. On May 30, 1872, he addressed the House on the subject of the Ku Klux Klan. In this speech, he exposed the whole scheme of domination by violence as effected by that element of the Southern whites who would either "rule or ruin the governments of the several States." The second speech followed remarks by Voorhees, of Indiana, on the misconduct in financial matters of the administration of South Carolina. Replying to the specific charge that his party had been guilty of an over-issue of bonds, Eliott reviewed briefly the financial history of his State for the period in question and, in conclusion, pointed out, first, that "in a legal sense an over-issue of bonds is an issue made in excess of such issue authorized by law,"