bellion, but who now frankly and honestly coöperate with us in restoring the peace of the country and reconstructing the southern State governments upon the basis of impartial justice and equal rights, are received back into the communion of the loyal people; and we favor the removal of the disqualifications and restrictions imposed upon the late rebels in the same measure as the spirit of disloyalty shall die out, and as may be consistent with the safety of the loyal people.

The Democratic Platform on Reconstruction McPherson, History of Reconstruction, p. 367.

[July, 1868]

THE Democratic Party. . standing upon the Constitution as the foundation and limitation of the powers of the Government, and the guarantee of the liberties of the citizen, and recognizing the questions of slavery and secession as having been settled. . by the war or the voluntary action of Southern States in constitutional convention assembled, and never to be renewed or to be reagitated, do with the return of peace, demand:

First Immediate restoration of all the States to their rights in the Union under the Constitution, and of civil government to the American people.

Second Amnesty for all past political offenses, and the regulation of the elective franchise in the States by their citizens. . .

In demanding these measures and reforms, we arraign the Radical party for its disregard of right, and the unparalleled oppression and tyranny which have marked its career.

After the most solemn and unanimous pledge of both Houses of Congress to prosecute the war exclusively for the maintenance of the Government and the preservation of the Union. under the Constitution, it has repeatedly violated that most sacred pledge. . . Instead of restoring the Union, it has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten States, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and negro supremacy. It has nullified there the right of trial by jury; it has abolished the habeas corpus, that most sacred writ of

liberty; it has overthrown the freedom of speech and the press; it has substituted arbitrary seizures and arrests, and military trials and secret star-chamber inquisitions for the constitutional tribunals; it has disregarded in time of peace the rights of the people to be free from searches and seizures; it has entered the post and telegraph offices, and even the private rooms of individuals, and seized their private papers and letters without any specific charge or notice of affidavit, as required by the organic law; it has converted the American Capitol into a bastile; it has established a system of spies and official espionage to which no constitutional monarchy of Europe would now dare to resort; it has abolished the right of appeal on important constitutional questions to the supreme judicial tribunals, and threatens to curtail or destroy its original jurisdiction, which is irrevocably vested by the Constitution, while the learned Chief Justice has been subjected to the most atrocious calumnies, merely because he would not prostitute his high office to the support of the false and partisan charges preferred against the President. Its corruption and extravagance have exceeded anything known in history, and, by its frauds and monopolies, it has nearly doubled the burden of the debt created by the war. It has stripped the President of his constitutional power of appointment, even of his own cabinet. . .

And we do declare and resolve that ever since the people of the United States threw off all subjection to the British Crown the privilege and trust of suffrage have belonged to the several States, and have been granted, regulated and controlled exclusively by the political power of each State respectively, and that any attempt by Congress, on any pretext whatever, to deprive any State of this right, or to interfere with its exercise, is a flagrant usurpation of power which can find no warrant in the Constitution, and, if sanctioned by the people, will subvert our form of government, and can only end in a centralized and consolidated government, in which the separate existence of the States will be entirely absorbed, and an unqualified despotism be established in place of a Federal Union of co-equal States. And that we regard the reconstruction acts (so-called) of

Congress, as such, as usurpations and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void.

Views of F. P. Blair

Annual Cyclopedia, 1868, p. 752. Blair was Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency and by his freedom of speech embarrassed his party. The real issue was somewhat as he stated it: Should the Reconstruction be completed or rejected? [1868]

THE issues upon which the contest turns are clear, and cannot be obscured or distorted by the sophistries of our adversaries. They all resolve themselves into the old and ever-renewing struggle of a few men to absorb the political power of the nation. This effort, under every conceivable name and disguise, has always characterized the opponents of the Democratic party, but at no time has the attempt assumed a shape so open and daring as in this contest. The adversaries of free and constitutional government, in defiance of the expressed language of the Constitution, have erected a military despotism in ten of the States of the Union, have taken from the President the powers vested in him by the supreme law, and have deprived the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction. The right of trial by jury, and the great writ of right, — the habeas-corpus shields of safety for every citizen, and which have descended to us from the earliest transitions of our ancestors, and which our Revolutionary fathers sought to secure to their posterity forever in the fundamental charter of our liberties have been ruthlessly trampled under foot by the fragment of a Congress. Whole States and communities of people of our own race have been attainted, convicted, condemned, and deprived of their rights as citizens, without presentment, or trial, or witnesses, but by congressional enactment of ex post facto laws, and in defiance of the constitutional prohibition denying even to a full and legal Congress the authority to pass any bill of attainder, or ex post facto law. The same usurping authority has substituted as electors in the place of the men of our own race, thus illegally attainted and disfranchised, a host of ignorant negroes, who are supported in idleness with the public money, and combined together to strip the white race of their birthright, through the

management of Freedmen's Bureaus and the emissaries of conspirators in other States; and, to complete the oppression, the military power of the nation has been placed at their disposal, in order to make this barbarism supreme.

The military leader under whose prestige this usurping Congress has taken refuge since the condemnation of their schemes by the free people of the North in the elections of the last year, and whom they have selected as their candidate to shield themselves from the result of their own wickedness and crime, has announced his acceptance of the nomination, and his willingness to maintain their usurpations over eight millions of people at the South, fixed to the earth with his bayonets. He exclaims: "Let us have peace." "Peace reigns in Warsaw" was the announcement which heralded the doom of the liberties of the nation. "The empire is peace," exclaimed Bonaparte, when freedom and its defenders expired under the sharp edge of his sword. The peace to which Grant invites us is the peace of despotism and death.

The Issue in the South

Annual Cyclopedia, 1868, p. 432. Resolutions adopted by the Democratic State Central Committee of Louisiana. [March 6, 1868]

Whereas, The people of Louisiana are immediately threatened with the consummation of a policy involving their degradation and ruin, promising the destruction of their material interests, intending the overthrow of all constitutional safeguards, aiming at the perversion of every social, educational, and governmental institution, and obliterating every vestige of American civilization in this State, for the notorious purpose of recuperating the waning fortunes and maintaining the supremacy of a distrusted, ambitious, and vindictive party; and

Whereas, It is the duty of every citizen to lend his energy and influence to every effort, and his voice to every protest against the imminent consummation of a scheme so audacious, revolutionary, and destructive, the incipient consequences of which have been beggary, wretchedness, and starvation, and the fomenting of bitter animosities, and the matured results of

which will be debasing despotism, or licentious anarchy, disgraceful to the country which tolerates, and ruinous to the people who endure it: therefore be it

Resolved, That we invite all conservative citizens, regardless of past political attachments or differences, to unite with the national Democratic party in the State and throughout the South...

We will unite with the national Democratic party in any policy which may be adopted to preserve the threatened integrity of the Executive and Judicial Departments of the Government, and to counteract the designs of a relentless and tyrannical party to subvert the Constitution and to convert our republican and democratic institutions into a centralized despotism erected on the ruins of public liberty, personal rights, and the sovereignty of the States.

Southern Whites to the Negroes

J. S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, p. 90. Democratic "Address to the Colored People of South Carolina." [1868]

YOUR present power must soon pass from you. Nothing that it builds will stand and nothing will remain of it but the prejudices it may create. It is therefore a most dangerous tool that you are handling. Your leaders, both black and white, are using your votes for nothing but their individual gain. Many of them you have only known heretofore to despise and distrust, until commanded by your Leagues to vote for them. Offices and salaries for themselves are the heights of their ambition. . . Already they have driven away all capital and credit from the South; and . . thousands among you are thrown out of employment and starve simply for lack of work. What few enterprises are carried on are the work of Southern men who have faith that the present state of affairs is but temporary. . .

We therefore urge and warn you, by all the ties of our former relations still strong and binding in thousands of cases, by a common Christianity and by the mutual welfare of our two races, whom Providence has thrown together, to beware