There has never since been an attempt to protect National elections by National authority.

I am clearly of the opinion that Congress has the power to regulate the matter of elections of Members of the House of Representatives and to make suitable provisions for honest elections and an honest ascertainment of the result, and that…

If it only be maintained in force while one political party is in power, and repealed when its antagonist comes in, and is to be constant matter of political strife and sectional discussion, it is better, in my judgment, to abandon it than…

In other words, it is better to have the second best law kept permanently on the statute book than to have the best law there half the time.

What power can you invoke if that right be withheld from you?

If you hold the right at will of your State, then you can invoke no power but the State for its vindication.

If you hold it at the will of the Nation, as expressed by the people of the whole Nation under the Constitution of the United States, then you are entitled to invoke the power of the United States for its enforcement whenever necessary.

I have had during my whole life to deal with that most difficult of all political problems, the relation to each other, in a Republic, of men of different races.

It is a question which has vexed the American people from the beginning of their history.

First the Indian, then the Negro, then the Chinese, now the Filipino, disturb our peace.

In my opinion, in all these race difficulties and troubles, the fault has been with the Anglo-Saxons.

If you will only disfranchise him for the qualities which you say unfit him to vote and not for his race or the color of his skin there is no Constitutional obstacle in your way.

It was not wholly unnatural that the men who, in dealing with each other, were men of scrupulous honor and of undoubted courage should have brought themselves to do such things, or at any rate to screen and sympathize with the more hot…

The proof in the public records of those public crimes is abundant.

With the exception of Reverdy Johnson of Maryland there is no record of a single manly remonstrance, or expression of disapproval from the lips of any prominent Southern man.

But they had persuaded themselves to believe that a contest for political power with a party largely composed of negroes was a contest for their civilization itself.

They thought it like a fight for life with a pack of wolves.

In some parts of the South there were men as ready to murder a negro who tried to get an office as to kill a fox they found prowling about a hen roost.

They could not endure that men, some of whom had been bought and sold like chattels in the time of slavery, and others ready to sell themselves, although they were freemen, should sit to legislate for their States with their noble and…

I myself, although I have always maintained, and do now, the equal right of all men of whatever color or race to a share in the government of the country, felt a thrill of sadness when I saw the Legislature of Louisiana in session in the…

If they had been met cordially by the communities where they took up their abode they would have brought to them a most valuable quality of citizenship.

I incline to think that a large number of the men who got political office in the South, when the men who had taken part in the Rebellion were still disfranchised, and the Republicans were still in power, were of a character that would not…

President Grant gave the influence and authority of his Administration toward maintaining in power the lawfully chosen Republican State Governments.

When that was withdrawn the negro and carpet- bag majority was powerless as a flock of sheep before a pack of wolves to resist their brave and unscrupulous Democratic enemy, however inferior the latter in numbers.

Under the Constitution every State can prescribe its own qualifications for suffrage, with the single exception that no State can deny or abridge the right of a citizen of the United States to vote on account of race, color or previous…