public impression as to his career
precisely the reverse of its actual history. The illustrations are
many:--

In financial circles Mr. Bayard has been held as a fair and
conservative exponent of sound views, a jealous guardian of the public
credit. As matter of fact, he joined in a political crusade to enforce
the payment of the National debt in depreciated paper money, and almost
the first vote he ever gave in the Senate was against the bill
declaring the National debt to be payable in coin. He voted to except
specifically the fifteen hundred millions of 5-20 bonds from coin
payment, argued earnestly in favor of taxing the bonds of the
Government, refused to support the bill for the resumption of specie
payments, and united with others in a National movement to repeal the
Act after it had been for a considerable period in operation.

On the Southern question, in all its phases, Mr. Bayard has been
proclaimed by his supporters as calm, considerate, and just. In truth
he has gone as far as the most rancorous rebel leader of the South,
touching the Reconstruction laws and the suffrage of the negro. In the
Forty-second Congress, in an official report on the condition of the
South, Mr. Bayard joined with the minority of the committee in the
distinct avowal that negro suffrage would practically cease when the
Republican party should be defeated. These are the exact words in
which Mr. Bayard concurred: "_But whenever that party (the Republican)
shall go down, as go down it will at some time not long in the future,
that will be the end of the political power of the negro among white
men on this continent_." When Mr. Bayard united with other Democrats
in this declaration the right of the negro to vote had already been
protected by an Amendment to the Constitution. His language was,
therefore, a distinct threat to override the Constitution in order to
strip the negro of the political power which the Constitution had
conferred upon him. This threat was so serious and so lawless that it
should have received more attention than was bestowed upon it when
first put forth. It was not uncommon to hear brazen defiance of
Constitutional obligations from Southern speakers addressing Southern
audiences for mere sensational effect. But his was an announcement
made in the Senate of the United States, not hastily and angrily in the
excitement of debate, but with reflection and deliberation, in an
official report which had been s