John Sherman

I believed then, and now know, that the passage of this law was a great misfortune.

At the same time, the financial question, embracing the currency, the public debt and the national revenue were of the highest importance and demanded immediate consideration.

That is the view I take of this amended bill; and taking that view of it I see no reason in the world why we should not all vote for it.

But it does point out a way by which the twenty absent Senators, and the fifty absent Representatives can get back to these halls, and there is no other way by which they can justly do it.

All that it demands of the people of the southern states is to extend to all their male citizens, without distinction of race or color, the elective franchise.

They are intended to protect a race of people who are now without protection.

I cannot think that these gentlemen are alarmed about the state of despotism that President Johnson is to establish in the southern states.

The outrages of the Ku-Klux-Klan seemed to me to be so atrocious and wicked that the men who committed them were not only unworthy to govern, but unfit to live.

If he sign it, it will be a solemn pledge of the law-making power of the nation that the negroes shall have secured to them all these natural and inalienable rights.

Let me tell you, as the solemn conviction with which I address you to-night, that Andrew Johnson never will throw the power we have given him into the hands of the Copperhead party of the United States.

It is only by discussion and comparison of views that the highest human wisdom is elicited.

There are, there must be, differences of opinion; God has so made us that we must differ; it is the established nature of the human mind to disagree.

Every man in public life now has a heavy responsibility resting upon him, in the discharge of which he is bound to follow the dictates of his own conscience, given to him by Almighty God.

Just such a speech at the moment it was made is worth more than all that has been said in Congress since the session commenced.

They will help save the Union--and they will save the Union particularly if fanatics and despots will allow it to be saved.

If he shall prove false to the declaration made by him in his veto message, that his strongest desire was to secure to the freedmen the full enjoyment of their freedom and property, then I will not quarrel with him as to the means used.

The highest human wisdom is to do all the good you can, but not to sacrifice a possible good to attempt the impracticable.

No new theories of possible utopian good can compensate for the loss of such patriotism and devotion.

If ever the time shall come when I can no longer confide in his devotion to the principles upon which he was elected, I will bid farewell to Andrew Johnson with unaffected sorrow.

Why not complete the work so gloriously done by our soldiers in securing union and liberty to all men without distinction of color, leaving to the states, as before, the question of suffrage.

Will you, by new issues upon which you know you have not the voice of the people, jeopard these rights which you can by the aid of the Union party secure to these freedmen?

Will you, by your demand of universal suffrage, destroy the power of the Union party to protect them in their dearly purchased liberty?

What would be their miserable fate if now surrendered to the custody of the rebels of the south?

Where will be the four million slaves whom by your policy you have emancipated?

But the division of the Whig party was an event utterly insignificant in comparison with the evil results of a division in the Union party.