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.