De Alexander

These considerations were bound to affect the judgment of Republicans, and when Stevens began to talk and the real conditions in the South came to be known, it aroused party indignation to a high pitch in the House.

If States can be reconstructed in a summer and congressmen admitted in a winter, it was said, the South, helped by the Democracy of the North, might again be in control of the Government within two years.

Such laws, for whatever purpose passed, had a powerful effect on Northern sentiment already influenced by reported cruelties, while the Southern people's aversion to Union soldiers settling in their midst intensified the feeling.

A different punishment for the same offence was prescribed for the negroes; apprentice, vagrant, and contract labour laws tended to a system of peonage; and the prohibition of public assemblies, the restriction of freedom of movement, and…

I pray the gentleman to quote authority; not to put too heavy a load upon his own judgment; he might sink under the weight.

An ordinance of secession is simply a nullity, because it encounters the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land.

Indeed, there was nothing in the armory of the best equipped politician, including able speaking and forceful writing, that he did not possess, and out of New York as well as within it he had been regarded the earnest friend and faithful…

There had been greater orators, abler debaters, and more profound statesmen, but no one had ever preceded him with an environment more influential.

We see men who have been ruined without fault, and men who have made great fortunes without industry.

It affects the character of our people." Prosperity also troubled him.

They want the offices he has in his gift, and when his friends are scattered and overthrown they will have him at their mercy.

The game they are playing upon President Johnson is precisely the same.

A policy that excluded the negro from all participation in public affairs did not commend itself to the leaders of the Radicals.

Personally he declared himself in favour of a qualified suffrage for negroes, but he thought this a matter to be determined by the States themselves.

There are forged votes from living as well as from dead soldiers; fictitious votes from soldiers whose genuine votes and powers of attorney are in the hands of their friends.

But I do complain that when these wrongs are done, the Government deliberately passes laws that protect the doer, and thus make wrong-doing its own act.

You will find that more men will be needed to keep the South in subjection to the arbitrary projects of the Administration than are required to drive the armies of rebellion from the field.

The Democrats sought to evade Vallandigham's words of despair, written into the Chicago platform, by eulogising McClellan, but as the glory of Antietam paled in the presence of Sherman's and Sheridan's victories, they declared that success…

Catching again the spirit of the great moral impulse and that lofty enthusiasm which had aroused the people of the North to the decisive struggle against slavery, these leaders sprang to the work of advancing the cause of liberty and human…

The country was never in a profounder quiet.' Do you comprehend the terrible significance of those words?

Indeed, the influence of the army's achievements, dissipating the despondency of the summer months, lifted the campaign into an atmosphere of patriotism not before experienced since the spring of 1861, and established the belief that…

Instead of being a failure, the war was now recognised as a grand success, and radical speakers, replying to the clamour for a cessation of hostilities, maintained that the abolition of slavery was the only condition that promised a…

This story, coupled with recent victories, turned the Democratic platform into a lie.

They have robbed the cradle and the grave equally to get their present force.

It was well known that party nomenclature did not represent his views, but his admirers, profoundly impressed with his sterling integrity and weight of character, insisted, amidst the loudest cheering of the day, that his name be presented.