Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/146

120 claims so strong, on the ground of majorities so large, that even such a returning board as Louisiana had, did not dare to decide against them; and when they had been seated in the legislature, organized as I have described, United States soldiers with fixed bayonets decided the case against them and took them out of the legislative hall by force. When that had been done the conservative members left that hall in a body with a solemn protest. The United States soldiery kept possession of it; and then, under their protection, the Republicans organized the legislature to suit themselves.

This is what happened in the statehouse of Louisiana on the 4th day of January.

Sir, there is one thing which every free people living under a constitutional government watches with peculiar jealousy as the most essential safeguard of representative institutions. It is the absolute freedom of legislative bodies from interference on the part of executive power, especially by force. Therefore, in a truly constitutional government, may the proceedings of the legislature be good or ever so bad, is such interference, especially as concerns the admission of its own members, most emphatically condemned and most carefully guarded against, whether it proceed from a governor or from a president or from a king, under whatever circumstances, on whatever pretexts. And whenever such interference is successfully carried out, it is always, and justly, looked upon as a sure sign of the decline of free institutions.

There is another thing which especially the American people hold sacred as the life element of their republican freedom: It is the right to govern and administer their local affairs independently through the exercise of that self-government which lives and has its being in the organism of the States; and therefore we find in the Constitution of the Republic the power of the National