Thus do we discern, whether on the coasts of San Domingo or here at Washington, the same determination, with the same disregard of great principles, as also the same recklessness toward the people of Hayti, who have never injured us.
In view of these things, the first subject of inquiry is not soil, climate, productiveness, and possibilities of wealth, but the exceptional and abnormal proceedings of our own Government. This inquiry is essentially preliminary in character. Before considering the treaty or any question of acquisition, we must at least put ourselves right as a nation; nor do I see how this can be done without retracing our steps, and consenting to act in subordination to International Law and the Constitution of the United States.
Beside the essential equity of such submission, and the moral dignity it would confer upon the Republic, which rises when it stoops to Law, there are two other reasons of irresistible force at this moment. I need not remind you that the Senate is now occupied in considering how to suppress lawlessness within our own borders and to save the African race from outrage. Surely our efforts at home must be weakened by the drama we are now playing abroad. Pray, Sir, with what face can we insist upon obedience to Law and respect for the African race, while we are openly engaged in lawlessness on the coasts of San Domingo and outrage upon the African race represented by the Black Republic? How can we expect to put down the Ku-Klux at the South, when we set in motion another proceeding kindred in constant insubordination to Law and Constitution? Differing in object, the two are identical in this insubordination. One strikes at national life and the other at individual life, while both strike at the African race. One molests a people, the other a community. Lawlessness is the common element. But it is difficult to see how we can condemn, with proper, whole-hearted reprobation, our own domestic Ku-Klux, with its fearful outrages, while the President puts himself at the head of a powerful and costly proceeding operating abroad in defiance of International Law and the Constitution of the United States. These are questions which I ask with sorrow, and only in obedience to that truth which is the requirement of this debate. Nor should I do otherwise than fail in justice to the occasion, if I did not declare my unhesitating conviction, that, had the President been so inspired as to bestow upon the protection of Southern Unionists, white and black, one half, nay, Sir, one quarter, of the time, money, zeal, will, personal attention, personal effort, and personal intercession, which he has bestowed on his attempt to obtain half an island in the Caribbean Sea, our Southern Ku-Klux would have existed in name only, while tranquillity reigned everywhere within our borders. [_Applause in the galleries._]