Speech #520135491

Without having made any investigation of what took place at the recent election. I can state what I believe was proved bpyond peradventure or contest before that committee. In the year 1868 there were issued within the space of a very few days in one of the States of this Union about sixty thousand naturalization papers. all purporting to have been dated within the space of three or four or five days. and all coming from one or two courts. when it was utterly impossible that more than two hundred or three hundred could have been accomplished in a single day. One of the courts was presided over by a judge who was afterwards impeached and convicted and driven from office on charges of corruption. Those naturalization papers. which were in blank as they purported to have come from the court. were distributed all over that region of that State. its capital city. and in neighboring States. Among the sixty thousand naturalization papers issued at that time there were probably some five or six hundred genuine papers issued. There was. as I suppose everybody would agree. an attempt to perpetrate a most enormous fraud on the Government of this country and on the honesty and purity of its elections. Its permanent success. if no other method could have been found to counteract it. would have justified revolution and the taking up of arms. It was itself a revolution. without the dignity of the taking up of arms. The officer who was charged with the duty expended undoubtedly. with the aid of a particular political party. who raised the money. a very considerable sum of money to search all the registries round about in the region where this mass of fraudulent papers had been circulated. and to find the names of the men who had undertaken to vote upon them. The chances of a fraud in every individual instance werd as 60.000 to 500 or 600. or whatever might have been the possibility of an honest naturalization within that period of three or four days. That was a legitimate expenditure. it was an expenditure which I think the political party who. though they were interested specially in detecting and defeating these frauds. were eaI tirely justified in making. and which this official was entirely justified in accepting and acting upon. I think so. That is the answer to the Senators proponition so far as that period of time is concerned. In most instances the persorns who had offered to vote had not arrived in the country at the time they claimed to have been naturalized. or within a very ihort time thereafter. Their papers were clearly fraudulent. and they were arrested. but of course arrests were made in a very few instances of men who had been honestly naturalized in Judge Barnards court. and who were honestly entitled to vote. and it was said. " See how you arrest these honest citizens and try to bulldoze them." Of course they were discharged nstantly when their honesty was shown. I think that was an entirely reasonable. proper. and necessary defense of the honest elective franchise of this country against a gross and gigantic crime. At a later period it is very well known that in the same city there were great unoccupied buildings hired in the interest of a certain organization. and men crowded in there simply to register as residents on that spot on the night when they registered. and then they disappeared lik.3 the mists of the morning.