Speech #470004549

I affirmed t the e apitation tax. which the Senator from Virginia made in his speech here the point of his departure frous and his opposition to the democratic party of Virginia. is the law of several of the Northern States whose republican Senators are in this coalition for an alleged free ballot. that Mr. KELLOGG. of Louisiana. a prominent member of the coalition standing on the right hand of the Senator from Virginia. and one of his main supports. has always opposed a free ballot. and is here by virtue of a device which denied "a free ballot and a fair count" to the people 9f Louisiana by a returning board supported by military force. that the republican Senators from Ohio and Massachusetts and other States have sustained the denial of a free ballot to the Southern States and have sustained the disfranchisement of that class of the southern people in whom was the intelligence and the wealth and the property of that country. both directly and indirectly. both by the device of false counts by returning boards which made and unmade votes in the will and discretion of its members and by preventing a free ballot with military force. I affirmed that the Senators from Massachusetts are here members of a coalition for an alleged free ballot. and that they hold their seats here under State laws which deny a free ballot to more than one hundred thousand adult males who cannot vote because of a suffrage capitation tax and an intelligence qualification of reading and writing the English language. oven though the citizen is a highly educated person of foreign birth. and he was under a qualification of two years residence in addition to the period of naturalization. I asked the attention of the Senate and the country to the fact that while holding their seats hero under laws which deny a free ballot to more than one hundred thousand adult males the Senators from Massachusetts at the same time declare that they are opposed to the readjustment or nondebtpaying views of the Senator from Virginia. which is the alleged reason for which he left the democratic party ofVirginia. and that they also oppose his suffragecapitationtax theory. the only point on which he claims ever to have differed with the democratic party of Virginia respecting a free ballot. Yet they join in a coalition with him for "a free ballot and a fair count" which is denied by the laws of their own State. and which. upon the principles which their laws affirm. cannot prevail.