The military despotism in the United States--speech of Senator Saulsbury.
The unexpected ebullition of popular feeling in illinois and Missouri, following close upon the speech of Senator Salisbury, of Delaware, shows that the people of the United States are getting tired of the military despotism of Lincoln — fired unto death, for in this "little affair" in Coles county, they have put their lives in the seale for freedom. The speech of Mr. Saulsbury was directed against military interference in elections. He said:‘ The Senator from Michigan, (Mr. Howard,) had said that the time was unpropitious for the passage of such a bill as this. He would commend to him and others who thought like him the example of a distinguished British statesman, who, when the rights of the English subjects were at stake, rose in his place in Parliament and declined to discuss questions of war so long as private rights were in jeopardy. Under these constant encroachments of power we shall wake up hereafter and find that the dream we have been indulging in was a delusion. Our constitutional rights were secured to us not only for times of peace, but times of war.--They were as rudders to the ship, and if abandoned the ship was lost. Neither is the pretext that the surrender of these liberties emptily is unnecessary for their preservation permanently. --What an absurdity that the Union can be preserved by the destruction of the Constitution. In his opinion, those who have the matters in hand have not in view the preservation of the Constitution.--The effect of their utterances evinced the truth of what he said.
’ Let any public man say that he is in favor of the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is, and what is the judgment passed upon him? Why, that he is a disloyal man and unfiathful to the Government under which he lives; and the noblest of all sentiments uttered in this day is adjudged by the very men guilty of perpetrating acts in violation of the Constitution as disloyal. He thought that the only disloyal men and traitors in the country were those who scouted at the Constitution. It was to that Constitution, and that alone, he owed his allegiance. Had he a right to cherish any love or attachment to anything else besides the Union and the Constitution? Those who advocate the policy of destroying these were the real traitors, and deserve to be branded as such. Yet so enormous had been the abuses perpetrated by this administration that the power that sat enthroned at the other end of the avenue found it necessary to send armed forces into a State to prevent a free people from expressing their love for a free Constitution, made by the fathers, and under which they still desired to live.
Their only disloyalty arose from the fact of their following in the precepts of their fathers. Was he asked to support a new Union under the oath he took? Was he asked to enter the new house built to Butler on the ruins of the old fabric built by Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison? His people did not desire to enter the beauteous palace of Archbishop Butler, in spite of the adornments which he picked up in the Gulf of Mexico. They did not desire to look into the costly mirrors, nor to hear the strains of the music from stolen instruments. They preferred the good old strains which came up from the past, which they have heard in infancy and manhood — the music of the Union and the Constitution; and for a declaration of this kind alone have the people of what was once his State, but now a military province, had the tyrannical hand laid upon them for presuming to vote for the representatives of their choice. Yet the gentleman from Michigan said if these things were true they deserved it; besides they should consider the state of the times. Such a response as that might well come from those who desire to pick up the crumbs which fail from the Presidential table. The sole offence of the dominant party in his State was their attachment to the Constitution and their refusal to vote as the Administration might dictate.
You can never conquer the spirits of brave men, though you may keep them from the poll by brute force, and thus deprive them of their rights, because they do not desire to clash against your armed power; but they will retire to their homes, such of them as may not be provided with prisons, and scorn your power and delay your malice. Suppose the President should be a successful nomince, and now in power with his army of a million and a half of men, with the power of rooting out of it every man politically obnoxious to him. Suppose that after the exercise of this power he finds that the army approves of his acts, as the Senator from Michigan does, what is to hinder him from perpetuating his power, after eight years, and thus be coming one of the greatest monarchs and despots that ever sat upon a throne?
Suppose the army should become, after from four to eight years service, his willing instruments to continue him in permanent power, and his children after him, what is to prevent it? The people of this country could not prevent it. He was met here with this answer, "That the soldier was too honest, and loved his country too much, to be guilty of such an act;" but confidence was a plant of slow growth. In this connection, Mr. Saulsbury quoted from Gibbons's "Decline and Fail of the Roman Empire," showing that fifteen thousand well armed and disciplined men kept in subjection ten millions of unarmed men. If that be true, what could a million and a half of armed men at the command of the President, Executive, or any other man, do in a population of twenty millions? He knew that soldiers entered into the present contest for the noblest purpose — to preserve the old, and not to make a new Union; but no man could tell the changes that might come over the minds of men. The power being exercised, and the soldiers being placed under officers having a common purpose, with the executive in the hands of an ambitious man, and one regardless of the rights of the people, there would be no chance for the preservation of our liberties.
It was safer for the people that a change should take place in four years than that the same person should be continued, in order to strengthen himself in power and have greater opportunity for the purposes of ambition. He said the Senator from Michigan lays down the broad proposition that the military orders concerning elections are law, and therefore the proclamation of the Governor of Maryland was a usurpation of power; yet, strangely, he compliments the man who never was Governor of the State of Delaware by the voice of the people, but who was act over them by the force of the bayonet, because he issued a proclamation for the people to be obsequiously obedient to the orders of their master, General Schenck. If the soil of Maryland had been reddened with blood, as the Senator indicated it might have been, against whom would the dead account stand? Not against Governor Bradford or the citizens; but against him who sat enthroned at the other end of the avenue, and Major General Schenck and those associated with him. In regard to military interference in his own State, he quoted from a volume of three hundred pages of sworn testimony taken before a committee of the Delaware Legislature.
The Governor says that he had no official in formation that troops would be sent into the State at the election of 1862; yet on the eve of the day of election every village of the State was filled with soldiery. They swarmed at every poll except one or two on the day of election. Where did they come from, and for what purpose? He denied that there had been any trouble in that State demanding their presence. The only authority for executing the laws of the State was entrusted to the Governor, a Commander in Chief, except when he seeks the protection of the Federal Government; yet, because that State was small and feeble in numbers, (but not in patriotism of her sons,) these troops were sent among them. He cited the testimony of Mayor Glipin, of Wilmington, and others, who had never been Democrats, to show that it had been avowed beforehand that unless force was procured, the State would go for the Democrats; and Provost-Marshals had commissions signed by Edwin M. Stanton, and sent in blank, accompanied by orders, and yet the Secretary of Wardenies that any orders had been sent direct from his department. He could not show these orders, but the testimony would prove this crime on the Secretary to the satisfaction of a jury of twelve honest men. The blank commissions, it is testified by several of the Provost-Marshals, who are of course Republicans, were filled up on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday election, by George F. Fisher, the Republican candidate for Congress and now a Judge of the Supreme Court of the District.
He wished to let the country know that we had a Secretary of War who sent out blank commissions on the eve of election, and allowed partisan candidates to fill them. After this talk not of the purity of elections! This was partisanship of the basest kind, and would be scorned by all patriotic and honest men. He commented upon the President's instructions to Gen. Steele in reference to the qualifications of voters in Arkansas. They were to be permitted to vote under their State Constitution as modified by the President; provided, too, they would support his proclamation!--Mighty man! Oh! what meat is this on which our modern Casar feeds that he has grown so great! He quoted at length from Plutarch's "Life of Pompey," and drew a parallel between Casar and Lincoln. It would be seen that our President was not the first man in the world who had sent soldiers to control elections. He did not know whether the President had read Plutarch, though he understood that he was well versed in Shakespeare, and considered the passage, "Oh! my of fence is rank!" one of the best. [Laughter.]
He held that there was a fixed purpose, and everything is being done to perpetuate the powers of the President for four years, and if this attempt was unrebuked by the people by their votes, this President, with his army, will defy the American people after the next term of four years shall expire. If he does not he will be an extraordinary man. He appealed from Casar to the Senate, and invoked it by that love of constitutional liberty which animated our fathers, and that love of civil liberty which caused the effusion of such precious blood in the revolution, to save us from the impending military despotism.
