CHAPTER XIV.

"STIRRING UP STRIFE."

ON May 19th, 1879, there was a lively time in the Senate on the question of National Sovereignty versus State Sovereignty. The question before the Senate was a bill making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the Government, but discussion took a wide range, and abounded in cross-firing of wit and repartee. Mr. Blaine had the floor, but Mr. Eaton, of Connecticut, Mr. Bayard, of Delaware, Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, and others, figured largely in the discussions. Toward the close of the discussion, Mr. Blaine, continuing his frequently interrupted speech, and seeking to unearth the sources of existing ill-will, said:

"I do not think the evil that has been done to the Southern country by the school-books in the hands of their children has been measured. Many of the books put into the hands of the rising generation of the South are tinctured all through with prejudice and misrepresentation and with a spirit of hatred.

"We are accused by our friends on the opposite side of the Chamber of stirring up strife

and generating hatred. I do not believe it would be possible to find in all the literature of the North for the schools and for the young a solitary paragraph intended or calculated to arouse hatred or suggest unpatriotic feelings toward any portion of the Union. A large portion of the South has been furnished with special school-books calculated for the meridian, with the facts appended to suit that particular locality. It was said that for two generations a large portion of the English people believed that the American colonies had never achieved their independence, but had been kicked off as a useless appendage to the British Empire, and that they were glad to be rid of us.

"There is a large number of the school children in the South who are educated with radically wrong notions and radically erroneous facts. I saw an arithmetic that was filled with examplesthink of putting politics into an arithmetic-such as this: If ten cowardly Yankees had so many miles the start, and five brave Confederates were following them, the first going at so many miles an hour, and the others following at so many miles an hour, how long before the Yankees would be overtaken? Now, think of putting that deliberately in a school-book and having school histories made up on that basis for children. I have here from a gentleman who, I believe, is a man of high position, an extract which is so pertinent that I desire to read it. It is from an address before

the literary societies of the Virginia University, by Mr. John S. Preston, a gentleman of distinction, I believe, in the State of South Carolina. I want to read this merely to put it on record to show the pabulum on which the Southern mind feeds:

*

'The Mayflower freight, under the laws of England, was heresy and crime. The Jamestown emigrant was an English freeman, loyal to his country and his God, with England's honor in his heart and English piety in his soul, and carrying in his right hand the charters, usages, and the laws which were achieving the regenerations of England. These two peoples spoke the same language, and nominally read the same Bible; but like the offspring of the Syrian princes, they were two manner of people, and they could not coalesce or commune. Their feud began beyond the broad Atlantic, and has never ceased on its Western shores. Not space, or time, or the convenience of any human law, or the power of any human arm, can reconcile institutions for the turbulent fanatic of Plymouth Rock and the God-fearing Christian of Jamestown. You may assign them to the closest territorial proximity, with all the forms, modes, and shows of civilization; but you can never cement them into the bonds of brotherhood. Great nature, in her supremest law, forbids it. Territorial localization drove them to a hollow and unnatural armistice in effecting their segregation from England-the one for the lucre of traffic, the other to obtain a more perfect law of liberty; the one to destroy foreign tea, the other to drive out foreign tyrants; the one to offer thanksgiving for the fruit of the earth, the other to celebrate the gift of grace by the birth of Christ,'

"I know the piety of New England has sometimes been criticised, but I never before heard of such fervent zeal among the Jamestown emigrants."

Does

MR. BUTLER. What is the date of that? MR. BLAINE. I think in 1875 or 1876. the Senator from South Carolina think that is enough to establish a statute of limitations? MR. BUTLER. I say nothing about it.

MR. MORGAN. May I be allowed a word?
MR. BLAINE. Certainly.

MR. MORGAN.

I have not seen all these arith

metics, or school histories Senator from Maine refers.

their existence, unless the

either, to which the
I doubt
I doubt very much
Senator has them

present to prove the fact. I refer now to those published since the war.

MR. BLAINE. I refer only to those published

since the war.

MR. MORGAN. There is some other literature, however, in the Southern States which I will call the attention of the Senator from Maine to, that perhaps would indicate that there was some necessity for counter proceedings for the purpose of infusing the minds of the people down there with correct ideas on political questions. I hold in my hand the "minutes of the twelfth session of the Alabama Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Mobile, Alabama, in Emmanuel church, December 18, 19, 20, 21, and

22, 1878, Right Reverend Bishop J. P. Campbell, D. D., LL. D., president." He is a colored man, and a very learned man I am told. On page 13

of the minutes of that conference I find the follow

ing entry:

Committee on letters and petitions:

"First. Complaint against Z. Taylor, of Birmingham, for voting Democratic ticket, signed by United States. marshal."

The decision was:

"His case out of jurisdiction of this conference; belongs to North Alabama conference." [Laughter.]

I have no comment to make upon that.

MR. BLAINE. That begins to show me that the claim for piety in the South that Mr. Preston makes has some foundation. [Laughter.] If they begin to bring up men before church conferences for voting the Democratic, State-rights, secession ticket, I think it is good evidence of reform. [Laughter.] It gives some ground of patriotic hope for the future.

"I have here also a speech delivered by the honorable Senator from South Carolina, the junior Senator from that State [MR. HAMPTON], before the Historical Society, I believe, of the South, and this has arrested my attention. Of course, I read it in no spirit of captious or personal criticism, but as a great public document; and if what I read means anything, it means a great deal: