these the election laws could not guard. Congress attempted
some laws to secure the Southern Republicans against such
crimes under the authority conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution. But the Supreme Court held that these
laws were unconstitutional, it not appearing that the States
had by any affirmative action denied protection against such
offences to any class of their citizens by reason of race,
color, or previous condition. It was idle to expect Southern
jurors, or State officers to enforce the law against such
crimes in the condition of sentiment existing there.

Further, the people of the North would not maintain the Republican
Party in power forever on this one issue alone. They were
interested in other things. They could not be expected, year
after year, election after election, and perhaps generation
after generation, to hold together by reason of this one question,
differing on other things. So whenever the Democratic Party
should come into power it was apparent that all the vigor
would be taken out of the election laws. If there be not
power to repeal them the House of Representatives can always
refuse to make the appropriation for enforcing them. So it
became clear to my mind, and to the minds of many other Republicans,
that it was better to leave this matter to the returning and
growing sense of justice of the people of the South than to
have laws on this subject passed in one Administration, only
to be repealed in another. A policy to be effective must
be permanent. I accordingly announced in the Senate after
the defeat of the Elections Bill in 1894 that in my judgment
it would not be wise to renew the attempt to control National
election by National authority until both parties in the country
should agree upon that subject.

We should have had little difficulty in dealing with the
Negro or the Indian, or the Oriental, if the American people
had applied to them, as the Golden Rule requires, the principles
they expect to apply and to have applied to themselves. We
have never understood that in some essential matters human
nature is the same in men of all colors and races. Our Fathers
of the time of the Revolution understood this matter better
than we do. The difficult problems in our national politics
at this hour will nearly all of them be solved if the people
will adhere to rules of conduct imposed as restraints in the
early constitutions. The sublimity of the princ