Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/519

Rh appeal to me, Wikisource note: John Potter Stockton's remarks of May 18, 1870 contain the following paragraph:

But why pass any of these bills? Must the President have authority to order the judges about as if they were his satellites? Must the judiciary be prostrated before the military and executive power of the country? For the first time are you to lay violent hands on the independence of the courts? And why, in connection with that, in close proximity, must armed bands for the first time by Federal authority surround out polls? With a prostrate judiciary, with armed men around the polls, my distinguished friend, the Senator from Missouri, [Mr. ,] may see scenes that he little dreamed of seeing when he came to this country, coming, as many of his countrymen have, to this land, leaving their homes that are still as dear to them, and dearer than the hour the left, seeking what? Seeking for personal liberty, for personal freedom. They sing the songs of the fatherland still in this country; they play the games of the fatherland. They came here, not that the skies are brighter or the grass is greener here than in the old country—they came here to seek constitutional freedom, constitutional liberty, and that they might claim that in the face of Heaven and before all men; and, Mr. President, while I live, notwithstanding all that I have seen since I have been in Congress, I intend to the best of my humble ability to try to live a freeman. And, sir, I can tell the Senators from New England that they had better look back at the history of their country and the motives that actuated the settlers that came here. They are very fond of talking to us of Plymouth Rock. Let them remember what brought the Mayflower across the ocean, and when they think of it with pride, as they have a right to do, let them not forget the principles that underlay it.—The Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3568. with so much eloquent earnestness that I am not permitted to doubt its sincerity; and I think courtesy requires that I should respond to it in the same spirit. He expressed his belief that I and thousands of the children of my native land had come to these shores for the purpose of enjoying the blessings of liberty and self-government; and in arguing against this bill, he intimated that we would certainly consider it our duty to do all in our power to preserve and perpetuate these inestimable blessings. In all these suppositions he was right; but I apprehend there may be a serious difference of opinion between the Senator from New Jersey and myself as to what those blessings of liberty and self-government consist in, and as to the manner in which they can and ought to be preserved and perpetuated; and inasmuch as he has appealed to me from his point of view I think it is proper that I should appeal to him and to his associates from mine.

I have listened to the arguments of Democratic Senators against this bill with mingled pleasure and pain; pleasure, when I noticed how my honorable friend from Ohio [Mr. ], whose shrewdness on this floor nobody is disposed to doubt, thought it proper to confine himself to an attack on the details of this bill, instead of launching into that general denunciation of the Constitutional amendments and the legislation based thereon with which Democratic Senators had made us so familiar on former occasions. I might have considered that a good omen had not some of his associates, less discreet and more impulsive than he, hoisted the true colors of their party and boldly declared that they did not believe in the validity of the fifteenth amendment, and openly proclaimed their desire to see it overthrown. Then I could not but remember that even the Senator from Ohio, in the opening remarks of his speech, spoke of the fifteenth