Speech #460107202

Now. this spectacle presentsitself: A committee of this body. taking the testimony. unquestioned. uncontradicted. find that at one end of the Union. in the interest of one party. the political forces of States are seized and the political institutions of States are overturned by such methods as have been described to us by the honorable Senator from Colorado. speaking of what he knows. that in States where large republican majorities had existed their political opponents crowded into the ballotboxes by the thousand fraudulent vote. put there by the hand of no voter. and took out the ballots which the honest mnajority of that people had thrown. and the representative .of that State. on being inquired of what is his information as to the number of such ballots. did not find time to answer the question. At the other end of the Union what happened? In the city of New York in the year 1868 within the space of a few dayssome ten or fifteen I think in all. but at any rate a very few daystwo democratic judges of inferior courts issued sixty thousand pretended naturalization papers. You could not have crowded into fifty times .the space the signature by one hand even of the initials of the judge whose judgment was supposed to have given validity to those fraudulent naturalization papers. Clerks sat in rows in the dark. putting upon blanks prepared for the purpose by democratic committees the forged initials in the similitude of the handwriting of the judge. Those papers were sent out broadcast over New York and Connecticut and New Jersey. In one instance some hundreds of immigrant laborers arrived in a ship three weeks before the election. and before .the election came every one of those men was supplied with a fraudulent naturalization paper by the democratic committee. and voted the democratic ticket at the next election. This was a fraud so gigantic that it excited the astonishment of men over the civilized world. The object which was sought to be accomplished by it was equal in magnitude to the crime by which it was sought toaccomplish it.