ut I have been expected every second year
to make many political speeches, commonly from thirty to forty.
Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Fry, and Mr. Reed, and a great many others
who could be named, were called on for a much larger number.
A man at all prominent in public affairs is also expected
to give utterance to the voice of the people on all great
occasions of joy or sorrow, at high festivals, or at colleges
and schools, on great National anniversaries, when great men
die and great historical events are celebrated. So it was
a life of hard work upon which I entered when I took my seat
in the House of Representatives on the 4th of March, 1869.
The thirty-four years that have followed have been for me
years of incessant labor.

CHAPTER XVII
RECONSTRUCTION

The reconstruction policy of the Republican Party has been
bitterly denounced. Some men who supported it are in the
habit now of calling it a failure. It never commanded in
its fullest extent the cordial support of the whole party.
But it was very simple. So far as it applied to the Southern
whites who had been in rebellion it consisted only of complete
amnesty and full restoration to political rights. No man
was ever punished for taking part in the rebellion after
he laid down his arms. There is no other instance of such
magnanimity in history. The War left behind it little bitterness
in the hearts of the conquerors. All they demanded of the
conquered was submission in good faith to the law of the land
and the will of the people as it might be constitutionally
declared.

Their policy toward the colored people was simply the application
to them of the principles applied to the whites, as set forth
in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution
of nearly every State in the Union. There was to be no distinction
in political rights by reason of color or race. The States
were left to regulate such qualifications as residence, character,
intelligence, education and property as they saw fit, only
subject to the condition that they were to apply to all alike.

It was the purpose of the dominant party to leave the control
of the election of national officers, as it had been left
from the beginning, in the hands of the local or State authorities.
The power was claimed, indeed it is clearly given by the Constitution,
as was asserted in the debates in the Convention that framed
it, to conduct those elections under National authority, if
it should be f