Old and New Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...series of measures be completed by those who have begnn it, or shall it be flung into ruin and confusion, halfway, by those who have fought every single step of it from 1860 until today? It is right to state these claims more in detail. Left in this general enumeration, they might be denied, or answered with generalities. But we suppose that, to the specifications, no particular answer can well be made by way of refutation, scarce even by way of belittlement. n. The Rebellion and Reconstruction. The Republican party, opposed, as the records of votes in Congress show, at every step and in every measure, on principle and in detail, by the Democratic party as well as by the rebels, quelled the Rebellion, and emancipated the slaves. They then established the series of measures which have resulted in the partly complete, and still successfully proceeding, reconstruction (so-called) of the Union. The last of these measures were laws for punishing the "Ku-Klux" outrages, and for securing freedom of suffrage in the Southern States. They have, in great measure, accomplished those objects; and, if left undisturbed, will certainly complete the work. And lastly, that series of amnesty laws has been passed, --without precedent or comparison for large and liberal kindliness in all the history of this world--which has given back the electoral franchise to all the rebels, leaving the exclusion of one or two hundred of the worst of them from office the sole vestige of penalty for the greatest crime of history. "J Much complaint is made at even this vestige. But perjury and treason are crimes. It is not safe to admit into our government men who have made a dangerous attack on it once from the very places they want to re-enter, and who still insist...