Speech #460108147

Consequently there were Kn Klux with all that that name and the history of its developments and its trials and otherwise implies. There were knights of this circle and that circle. companies. all manner of combinations and associations that put in peril the lives of a great many people who undertook to have political opinions and express them and carry them into effect differing from those of the small and conservative and aristocratic body who were the ancient rulers in those States. Then in some of the Northern States. notably the great cities where vast immigration had poured in immense numbers of persons above the age of twentyone years from foreign countries. and a large part of whom came undercircumstances and fell under such influencesthat they seemed to become the natural. not allies but instruments. of an organized party. as in the city of Now York. for instance. that had controlled its politics with a despotism as severe as any that has ever been heard of. All these were made the subjects of the contrivances by which the apparent voice of the State of lew York in the election of Representatives to Congress and in respect of the election of President of the United States was made to appear strongly democratic (if I may refer to a partisan name) and made to appear so by falsehood and fraud to such an extent as that it shocked a large portion even of the democratic party itself and of the men in it who still had some faith in the justice and right of a wellordered government. So these causes combining led to the passage of these laws that are now Title 26 of the Revised Statutes. called "The Elective Franchise." for the purpose of protecting the honest and just voters in the States that had been in the rebellion against the violence and intimidation and peril to which they had been exposed. and of protecting the just and honest voters of the States that contained great cities. like Now York. to which I have referred. from the fraud and deviltry. because I think it deserves that name. which had been exerted to produce a false voice from that Empire State instead of a true one in respect of the election not only of its own State officers but of members of Congress in a large part of it. numerically a large part. and of electors of President and VicePresident.