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 {LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.} 
 
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 I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. } 
 
 
X 
 
The Results of the Presidential Election. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 HON. BENJAMIN M. BOYER, 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 REPLY TO HON. JAMES G. BLAINE; 
 
 D SLIVERED 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 JANUARY 8, 1860, 
 
 
 £L__1S _ 
 
 
 WASHINGTON: 
 F. & J. RIVES & GEO. A. BAILEY, 
 
 REPORTERS AND PRINTERS OF THE DEBATES OF CONGRESS. 
 18G9. 
 
E&G& 
 
 •3Y) 
 
X 
 
 The Results of the Presidential Election. 
 
 The House being in Committee of the Whole on the 
 Btato of the Union — 
 
 Mr. BOYER said : 
 
 Mr. Chairman : The issues supposed to 
 have been settled by the election of General 
 Grant to the Presidency formed the subject 
 of an elaborate speech by the honorable gen- 
 tleman from Maine [Mr. Blaine] a few days 
 before the adjournment of Congress for the 
 holidays in December. The assumptions of 
 the gentleman on that occasion, which differ 
 materially from my own conclusions, have 
 suggested the brief remarks which I propose 
 to make upon this the first opportunity I have 
 had for a reply. Nor is this an idle discussion ; 
 for what has been clearly and fairly determined 
 by a general election ought to be acquiesced 
 in as the declared will of the people, binding 
 upon the minority and regulating the official 
 duty of those elected by the majority. 
 
 The late presidential election decided, of 
 course, that the Republican party should con- 
 tinue to administer the Government through 
 an elected Chief Magistrate of their own choice 
 »nd a majority of the Forty-First Congress. 
 But it settled scarcely anything else than what 
 is practically inseparable from such a result. 
 The election, in fact, turned upon a false and 
 imaginary is.^ue. as I shall presently show, by 
 which the Republican party succeeded in avoid- 
 ing a direct verdict of the people upon the real 
 questions involved in the policy upon which 
 they had administered the Government. By 
 the same means they avoided, as far as possi- 
 ble, committal upon any question which could 
 
 be referred to the future. As an example of 
 the latter, as well as an illustration of the un- 
 warranted assumptions of the gentleman from 
 Maine, take the subject of the finances. In 
 the speech to which I have adverted the gen- 
 tlemau said "the election of General Grant 
 has settled the financial question." Settled 
 it how? Why, says the gentleman, "it has 
 settled that the public debt shall be paid in the 
 utmost good faith, accordiug to the letter and 
 spirit of the contract." 
 
 This, to be sure, is in the very words of the 
 Chicago platform, and neither more nor less 
 explicit. But when and by what party was it 
 ever made a question whether the national 
 debt should not be paid in the utmost good 
 faith and according to the letter and spirit of 
 the contract? What is good faith and what 'he 
 letter and spirit of the contract are the very 
 points of the controversy, and upon these the 
 Republican platform and the enunciations of 
 General Grant leave us as much as ever in the 
 dark. The late Thaddeus Stevens, whose lead- 
 ership of the Republican majority in this House 
 was conspicuous, and who was in his lifetime 
 as much entitled to speak for the Republican 
 party as the gentleman from Maine, declared 
 in one of his last speeches in this Hall that the 
 Republican platform meant that "the bloated 
 bondholders," as he styled the holders of five- 
 twenties, should be paid in currency and not 
 in gold. But this, says Horace Greeley, is 
 "villainy." And so thinks the gentleman 
 from Maine. Cn the other hand, an honor- 
 able Senator, [Mr. Morton,] a high Repub- 
 
lican authority, and prominently named even 
 for the Secretaryship of the Treasury under the 
 new Administration, maintains that to pay the 
 bonds in currency is a clear legal right accord- 
 ing to the contract. The gentleman from Mas- 
 sachusetts, [Mr. Butler,] who will concede 
 nothing in Republican orthodoxy even to the 
 gentleman from Maine, goes further, and says 
 that to pay in greenbacks is not only a legal 
 right but a moral duty. 
 
 In reference to the question touching the 
 resumption of specie payment we discover the 
 same confusion among the Republican oracles. 
 "Let resumption come at once," says the 
 venerable editor of the Tribune in his late let- 
 ter addressed to the distinguished Republican 
 Senator already referred to. " Wages must 
 fall, property sell cheaper or be unsalable, the 
 sheriff and constable be after many of us. We 
 must suffer any how. But," continues he with 
 heroic emphasis, "I prefer to take the plunge 
 atonce and be done with it." " But," retorts 
 the honorable Senator, "you may be ready to 
 make the plunge, but the great body of the 
 people are not. Postpone till 1871." "Post- 
 pone indefinitely," says the gentleman from 
 Massachusetts. It appears from this that the 
 interpretation of the settlement of the financial 
 question by the election of General Grant is 
 attended with as much confusion of tongues as 
 prevailed among the artificers of Babel. The 
 fact is that the election has left the financial 
 question practically where it found it. All 
 that the election has certainly settled in rela- 
 tion thereto is that the party which has swelled 
 the national debt by unprecedented extrava- 
 gance and deranged the currency by unwise 
 legislation shall, for at least two years longer, 
 shoulder the responsibility of providing a rem- 
 edy. The financial elephant, for the present, is 
 their prize. So much of finance has been 
 settled by the' diction of General Grant, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 The gentleman lays it down as an inevitable 
 consequence of General Grant's election that | 
 negro suffrage must be accepted as a perma- 
 ishmetit in the southern States, 
 "and at ho distant day throughout the entire 
 UnioD." Yet if negro suffrage, which is the 
 very corner >v bf Radical reconstruction, 
 hid licon divested of all other issues ami fairly 
 
 submitted to the vote of the whole people, 
 what man acquainted with the national senti- 
 ment will deny that its defeat would have been 
 overwhelming ? No other proof is needed to 
 establish this proposition than the decisive vote 
 upon this question when lately presented by 
 itself in several of the great Republican States 
 of the North and the continued exclusion of 
 negroes from the polls in nearly all of them. 
 
 It is said, however, that negro suffrage " is 
 of necessity conceded as one of the essentials 
 of reconstruction." But has the Radical policy 
 of reconstruction itself been so approved and 
 established that it can never be disturbed by 
 future elections ? Is there nothing to be appre- 
 hended from the continued violation of nat- 
 ural laws and a possible collision of races? 
 Are the reconstruction laws themselves so 
 firmly intrenched upon constitutional grounds 
 that a general revulsion of feeling among the 
 superior race might not find a ready excuse for 
 sweeping from its foundationsthe whole work of 
 Radical reconstruction? Radicalism has not 
 itself been overscrupulous in the use of means. 
 Usurpation is a dangerous game for any party 
 to play if it would have its work outlast the 
 passions from which it derived its power to 
 tyrannize and proscribe. 
 
 Of course, the late elections have continued 
 in the hands of the Republican party the power 
 to enforce their policy for two year3 longer. 
 But now, since the election of General Grant 
 has in the eyes of all men insured the safety 
 of the Union, there will be less excuse for 
 sectional and personal proscription. Those 
 caricatures of republican government imposed 
 by the stranger and the negro upon the dis- 
 franchised white race of the South had become 
 abhorrent to the public mind of the North 
 long before the late presidential election. But 
 the shadowy ghost of an extinct rebellion filled 
 the popular imagination with false alarms 
 and frightened it from that forgiveness which 
 had become both safe and merciful. In so far. 
 therefore, as the late elections have continued 
 the power of Radicalism it was a verdict ex- 
 torted from the fears of the people rather than 
 their judgment upon the merits of the Radical 
 policy. Public confidence turned to Grant as 
 the urtgos'pected representative of a triumph- 
 ant Union, and the Republican party was 
 
saved through him alone. Had he been the 
 candidate of the Opposition, whom could rad- 
 icalism have elected over him? Look to the 
 October elections. Let the imminent danger 
 which threatened radicalism, even with Grant 
 as its candidate, answer the question. No other 
 name given under heaven among men could 
 have saved the Republican party from over- 
 whelming defeat and final condemnation. Y\ as 
 it because Grant was the representative of 
 Radicalism that worked this great salvation ? 
 Everybody knows better. Radicalism had 
 been already repudiated, as the State and 
 municipal elections in the North had for two 
 years indicated. Even after the sagacious 
 nomination at Chicago the handwriting was 
 still seen on the wall. Even over against the 
 name of Grant, resplendent as it was with mil- 
 itary glory, the gathering cloud of threatened 
 disaster lowered. There were names before 
 the Democratic National Convention at New 
 York which thrilled with apprehension the 
 Republican heart every time the electric wires 
 Mashed through the land the Democratic roll- 
 call of the States. 
 
 I shall not pause to review the blunders from 
 which others reaped a harvest which they did 
 not sow. Nor shall I calculate how many grains 
 of common sense were needed in the balance in 
 which Democratic victory was that day weighted 
 down. I only refer to the irrevocable past for 
 the lesson which it teaches to your party, Mr. 
 Chairman, rather than to mine. The argument 
 which I desire to draw from it is this : that the 
 elements of Republican success at the late elec- 
 tions were derived from other sources than the 
 popular approval of the Radical policy. It was 
 the misfortune of my party, Mr. Chairman, to 
 expose itself to misrepresentation. It was the 
 fortune of yours to take advantage of it, and to 
 be permitted to inscribe with popular approba- 
 tion the winning words, " Let us have peace " 
 upon the banners of the party which had for 
 nearly four years in a time of profound peace 
 continued the worst consequences of war. Rut 
 the glaring contradiction was not regarded, and 
 everywhere the Republican press and the Re- 
 publican orators proclaimed to the people that 
 the real question was whether the rebellion 
 should be renewed by a victorious Democracy, 
 or peace and union insured by the election of 
 
 General Grant. And now, baring answered 
 its purpose, false and imaginary as the issue 
 was, T insist that it shall he held within tint scope 
 of its logical application, and I maintain that 
 nothing ought to be considered a s. -tiled by 
 the election of General Grant except that the 
 rebellion shall not be renewed. 
 
 But, said the gentleman from Maine, ri 
 higher in his flight toward the regions of pure 
 imagination, " With the election of General 
 Grant comes a higher standard of American 
 citizenship, with more dignity and character 
 to the name abroad and more assured liberty 
 and security attaching to it at home." Iligh 
 sounding phrases, indeed. But no new stand- 
 ard of citizenship has been set up by General 
 Grant, and if we are compelled to seek for this 
 boasted standard of American citizenship in 
 the reconstruction policy of Congress, what do 
 we find? Taking up the latest illustration of 
 Radical reconstruction, the constitution just 
 prepared and ready to be fastened upon the 
 people of Virginia, (twenty-five thousand of 
 whom are excluded from the polls this day,) I 
 read in it that no inhabitant of that State shall 
 hold any State office unless he first takes an oath 
 to recognize and accept the political equality of 
 the negro. Neither shall any one who will not 
 take this oath be qualified to serve on a jury. 
 
 1 find in the constitution of Alabama, rejected 
 by the people of that State, but afterward, nev- 
 ertheless, imposed upon them by Congress, the 
 same oath prescribed as a condition -precedent 
 to the registration of a voter. The same test 
 for the qualification of a voter exists in Arkansas 
 and in Louisiana, and in the constitution pro- 
 posed for Mississippi, the temporary rejection 
 of which has led to the contiuued exclusion of 
 the latter State from representation in Con- 
 gress. Georgia having been admitted to rep- 
 resentation, is now threatened with expulsion 
 unless she will allow negroes to sit in her Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 In some form in all the reconstructed States 
 of the South fidelity to the dogma of a party 
 is thus made the test of American citizenship. 
 Upon condition of allegiance to the Repub- 
 lican party, however, all former rebels against 
 the Government, however red-handed, are to 
 be forgiven and exalted. The constitution of 
 Arkansas, for example, provides that certain 
 
classes of ex-rebels shall not register as voters, 
 including those, in express terms, who during 
 the late rebellion violated the rules of civilized 
 warfare. But all of them shall vote notwith- 
 standing, even those who, in violation of the 
 rules of civilized warfare, deliberately mur- 
 dered Union prisoners in cold blood, or helped 
 to destroy them by lingering tortures in prison 
 pens, "provided" — and I now quote the very 
 words of the constitution approved by Con- 
 gress — "provided that all persons included," 
 lie, (in the disfranchised classes) "who have 
 openly advocated, or who have voted for the re- 
 construction proposed by Congress, and accept 
 the equality of all men before the law shall be 
 deemed qualified electors under this constitu- 
 tion.'' 
 
 If we turn to the constitution of Louisiana 
 we find similar proscriptions and pardons. No 
 traitor is there too black for Radical absolu- 
 tion provided lie will swear that the negro is his 
 political equal, and he can ventilate his loyalty 
 under that clause of the Louisiana constitution 
 which takes all the disfranchised Radicals out of 
 t he lists of the proscribed by the accommodating 
 proviso "that no person who, prior to the 1st 
 of .January, 1868, favored the execution of the 
 laws of the United States popularly known as 
 the reconstruction acts of Congress, and openly 
 and actively assisted the loyal men of the 
 State (to wit, the Radicals) in their efforts 
 to restore Louisiana to her position in the 
 Union, shall be held to be included among 
 those herein excepted.*' Among the pro- 
 scribed I Grid those who in the advocacy of 
 the rebellion wrote or published a newspaper 
 article or preached a sermon during the war. 
 They shall not vote in Louisiana unless they 
 are in favor of the reconstruction policy of 
 Congress, and swear to the doctrine of negro 
 equality. But they who, in the advocacy of 
 tr< ason, wrote it in bloody characters with their 
 swords and preached sermons against the 
 Union through the cannon's mouth, they 
 I, nevertheless, be clothed with all the 
 attributes of citizenship in the State, provided 
 they will swear allegiance to negro equality, 
 willing lo aid in the enforce- 
 mstruction. 
 
 In further illustration of these sublime tests 
 of loyally and citizenship, in their operat.iou 
 
 even upon northern men, let me suppose a 
 case, of which there may be many examples 
 now and likely to be many more hereafter. 
 Suppose a northern citizen of the United 
 States, who, as a volunteer soldier of the Union 
 Army during the civil war, had done his share 
 toward the redemption of our common coun- 
 try, and, with the idea of improving his for- 
 tunes, should emigrate to one of the southern 
 States — to Arkansas, for example, or to Louis- 
 iana. After residing there the requisite time, 
 suppose he were to offer to register as a voter. 
 The first test of qualification to which he would 
 be subjected would be the oath in favor of ne- 
 gro equably. If, by reason of his conviction* 
 of the unsoundness and impolicy of the doc- 
 trine of negro equality, he could not conscien- 
 tiously take the oath, disfranchisement, would 
 be the inevitable penalty. Nor would a shat- 
 tered constitution, broken down in the service 
 of his country, nor a limb lost, it may be, in 
 fighting the battles of the Union, save him 
 from being driven from the polls. But not so 
 would it happen under the new dispensation 
 to the rebel who had shed the blood and shot 
 off the limb of this disfranchised Union soldier. 
 The rebel can vote, however red his hand has 
 been with Union blood, provided he is willing 
 to swear that he is politically no better than a 
 negro, and has advocated and voted for the 
 reconstruction policy of Congress. Beneath 
 the level of such a yoke, and through such par- 
 tisan crevices must hundreds of thousands of 
 disfranchised white men creep before they can 
 become the political equals of the negro or 
 make their present fidelity to their country uf 
 any avail. 
 
 Such are the new tests of loyalty and suffrage 
 which Radical reconstruction has prescribed, 
 exemplifying that higher standard of Ameri- 
 can citizenship which thegentleman from Maine 
 st) grandiloquently prefigured. 
 
 By such tenures is American citizenship held 
 in more than ten States of the Federal Union. 
 Such are the standards prescribed by a party 
 which retains power by the votes of black bar- 
 barians and the wholesale disfranchisement of 
 white conservatives. It can no longer be said 
 that the three hundred thousand white men 
 who have been stripped of their rights of cit- 
 izenship by the acts of this Congress are thus 
 
degraded because of their former rebellion. 
 This will not be believed when enabling acts 
 are constantly being passed by Congress re- 
 moving the political disabilities of subservient 
 rebels by hundreds and thousands, while from 
 these bills of amnesty the name of every sus- 
 pected conservative is first carefully expunged, 
 as if he were afflicted with political leprosy. 
 The ironclad oath has long ago become but a 
 spike upon which to impale conservatives. 
 There are Representatives from southern 
 States with seats on this floor, in full fellow- 
 ship and communion with the Radical major- 
 ity, from whose bodies the Union bullets have 
 never been extracted, and who bear upon 
 their persons the scars of wounds received in 
 their desperate endeavors to capture and de- 
 stroy this very Capitol where, as loyal men, 
 they now sit in judgment. They succeeded in 
 capturing the Capitol, not with rebel bullets, 
 but by the aid of Radical ballots. 
 
 I have no charges to make against these 
 gentlemen. I complain not of their presence 
 here, for I am in favor of universal amnesty. 
 But that they should be here to the exclusion 
 of others, not by virtue of their obedience to 
 the laws and their renewed allegiance to the 
 Union, but solely because they have pros- 
 trated themselves before the Radical idol 
 and shout the shibboleth of a party, conveys 
 to the mind no very exalted idea of the ad- 
 vancing standard of impartial American citi- 
 zenship. 
 
 To affirm that this condition of things has 
 received the deliberate approval of either Gen- 
 eral Grant or of the majority which elected him 
 I believe to be a slander against both. 
 
 Among those things lost with the "lost 
 cause " by the defeat of Mr. Seymour, the gen- 
 tleman enumerates what he is pleased to term 
 "the paradise of State rights." 
 
 If, however, it be claimed as one of the re- 
 sults of the late election that States have no 
 longer any rights which the Federal power is 
 bound to respect, there will be many a fierce 
 struggle before the party of centralization will 
 be left in undisputed possession of the Govern- 
 ment. Secession was a heresy which threat- 
 ened the existence of the Union, but the 
 denial to the States of those reserved rights 
 which clearly lie on their side of the line, de- 
 
 liniug the constitutional jurisdiction of the 
 Federal authority, would destroy the symmetry 
 and distinguishing excellence of our institu- 
 tions, to preserve which would be worth as 
 great a sacrifice as the suppression of the re- 
 bellion against the Union itself. 
 
 I know not through what future convulsions 
 the ultimate destiny of the Republic is to be 
 wrought out, nor how far the new President, 
 naturally conservative and sagacious, may be 
 willing and able to aid in the restoration of 
 fraternal feeling and public confidence through- 
 out all sections. I know not how successfully 
 General Grant may be able to check the waste- 
 ful extravagance of the public expenditures 
 and aid in the restoration of a sound currency, 
 and open up before the eyes of his anxious 
 and tax-burdened countrymen a prospect of 
 the early reduction of the public debt by the 
 practice of that economy which is so essential, 
 but to which, under the republican rule, the 
 country has been so long a stranger. Nor can 
 I tell how far, if he should in all these things 
 be disposed to act for his country instead of 
 his party, he will regard his obligations to the 
 latter paramount if they should happen to dis- 
 agree with the former. He has hitherto been 
 credited with views broader and more national 
 than the policy of his party. Considering 
 how immeasurably the Republican party is his 
 debtor he can well afford to preserve his indi- 
 viduality. He need not sink, unless he chooses, 
 into the mere stalking horse of party, the mere 
 dispenser of party patronage — the gilded figure- 
 head in a State pageant, like a doge of Venice, 
 subject to his council of ten. If he is ambitious 
 to crown his warlike fame with enduring civic 
 renown he will be far more than all this. He 
 can be more than all this without having attrib- 
 uted to him any special love for the party that 
 voted against him. He will, it must be ex- 
 pected, give the offices to the men who voted 
 him into the Presidency. Nor can he be ex- 
 pected to betray any of the pledges which his 
 Republican candidacy have fairly imposed 
 upon him. But he is too wise not to see that 
 he owes to the Republican party the nomina- 
 tion alone. They owe him everything beside. 
 Without him they would have been nothing, 
 and they know it. 
 
 In view of these considerations it is compli- 
 
mentary to him to doubt how far he will sub- 
 mit his official locks to be shorn by the Radical 
 Delilah, and allow himself to be bound by the 
 withes of the civil tenure law or by any new 
 inventions, which upon the first exhibition of 
 independent action on his part, Congress may 
 deem it expedient to devise for his restriction. 
 It would be in accordance at least with the 
 popular conception of his characterise should 
 defend with resolution the constitutional pre- 
 rogatives of his office. If he were to imitate 
 Congress he might even go beyoud this, and 
 become a law unto himself. 
 
 When by his official utterances the new Presi- 
 dent shall have broken his sphinx-like silence, 
 and revealed a policy of his own, then, and not 
 
 till then, can it be safely asserted how much 
 or how little has been accomplished by the 
 election of General Grant. 
 
 The great constitutional and national party 
 to which I belong, numbering in its ranks this 
 day, notwithstanding the election of General 
 Grant, a majority of the white people of the 
 entire country, will continue to move on, never 
 despairing of the Republic, faithful to its great 
 mission and strong in its abiding convictions 
 of right. It will never cease its effortsuntil,with 
 or without the aid of Geueral Grant, it shall be- 
 hold the civil law supreme throughout the land, 
 and this nation again united as one people with 
 the equality, dignity, and rights of the several 
 States reestablished and secured.