History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States Part 31

"After some days, the bill came up again in the Senate of the United States, and the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, got up and in open Senate appealed to me, 'Will the Senator from New Hampshire withdraw that amendment?' 'Never, Mr. President.' 'Then,' said the Senator from Mississippi, 'I will lay the bill aside, and will not ask the Senate to pa.s.s it;' and so the whole scheme failed, because they would not consent that the money of the black man should educate his own child, and they could not vote it to educate a white child.

"Now I turn back to that time six years ago, and I mark the road that we have come along. I mark where we struck the chains from the black man in this same District, whose child you could not educate six years ago; I mark, in this Senate, at this very session, that we have pa.s.sed a bill in aid of the Freedmen's Bureau to secure to him his rights in this District; I mark that all through this nation we have stricken off the chains of the slave and secured to the slave his rights elsewhere in the Union; and we have now come to the height of the hill, and are considering whether we will not enfranchise those very black men through all the country."

In favor of granting political rights to the negro, Mr. Clark made the following remarks: "Mr. President, the question of the negro has troubled the nation long. His condition as a slave troubled you; and his condition as a freedman troubles you. Are you sick, heart-sick of this trouble? and do you inquire when will it end? I will tell you.

When you have given him equal rights, equal privileges, and equal security with other citizens; when you have opened the way for him to be a man, then will you have rendered exact justice which can alone insure stability and content.

"Sir, if I ever did hold that this Government was made or belonged exclusively to the white man, I should now be ashamed to avow it, or to claim for it so narrow an application. The black man has made too many sacrifices to preserve it, and endangered his life too often in its defense to be excluded from it. The common sentiment of grat.i.tude should open its doors to him, if not political justice and equality.

"Mr. President, my house once took fire in the night-time; my two little boys were asleep in it, when I and their mother were away. The neighbors rushed into it, saved the children, and extinguished the flames. When I reached it, breathless and exhausted, the first exclamation was, 'Your children are safe.' Can you tell me how mean a man I should have been, and what execration I should have deserved, if the next time those neighbors came to my house I had kicked them out of it? Tell me, then, I pray you, why two hundred thousand black men, most of whom volunteered to fight your battles, who rushed in to save the burning house of your Government, should not be permitted to partic.i.p.ate in that Government which they helped to preserve? When you enlisted and mustered these men, when your adjutant-general went South, and gathered them to the recruiting-office, and persuaded them to join your ranks, did he, or any one, tell them this was the white man's Government? When they came to the rendezvous, did you point to the sign over the door, 'Black men wanted to defend the white man's Government?' When you put upon them the uniform of the United States, did you say, 'Don't disgrace it; this is the white man's Government?'

When they toiled on the march, in the mud, the rain, and the snow, and when they fell out of the ranks from sheer weariness, did you cheer them on with the encouragement that 'this is the white man's Government?'

"When they stood on picket on the cold, stormy night to guard you against surprise, did you creep up and warm their congealing blood with an infusion of the white man's Government? When, with a wild hurrah, on the 'double-quick,' they rushed upon the enemy's guns, and bore your flag where men fell fastest and war made its wildest havoc, where explosion after explosion sent their mangled bodies and severed limbs flying through the air, and they fell on glacis, ditch, and scarp and counterscarp, did you caution them against such bravery, and remind them that 'this was the white man's Government?' And when the struggle was over, and many had fought 'their last battle,' and you gathered the dead for burial, did you exclaim, 'Poor fools! how cheated! this is the white man's Government?' No, no, sir; you beckoned them on by the guerdon of freedom, the blessings of an equal and just Government, and a 'good time coming.'

"'White man's Government, 'do you say? Go to Fort Pillow; stand upon its ramparts and in its trenches, and recall the horrid butchery of the black man there because he had joined you against rebellion, and then say, if you will, 'This is the white man's Government.' Go to Wagner. Follow in the track of the Ma.s.sachusetts Fifty-fourth, as they went to the terrible a.s.sault, with the guns flashing and roaring in the darkness. Mark how unflinchingly they received the pelting iron hail into their bosoms, and how they breasted the foe! See how n.o.bly they supported, and how heroically they fell with their devoted leader; count the dead; pick up the severed limbs; number the wounds; measure the blood spilled; and remember why and wherefore and in whose cause the negro thus fought and suffered, and then say, if you can, 'This is the white man's Government.' Go to Port Hudson, go to Richmond, go to Petersburg, go anywhere and every-where--to every battle-field where the negro fought, where danger was greatest and death surest--and tell me, if you can, that 'this is the white man's Government.' And then go to Salisbury and Columbia and Andersonville, and as you shudder at the ineffable miseries of those dens, and think of those who ran the dead-line, and were not shot, but escaped to the woods and were concealed and fed and piloted by the black men, and never once betrayed, but often enabled to escape and return to their friends, and then tell me if 'this is a white man's Government.'

"In ancient Rome, when one not a citizen deserved well of the republic, he was rewarded by the rights of citizenship, but we deny them, and here in America--not in the Confederate States of America, where, attempting to found a government upon slavery and the subjection of one race to another, it would have been fitting, if anywhere, but in the United States of America, the cardinal principle of whose Government is the equality of all men. After these black men have so n.o.bly fought to maintain the one and overthrow the other, when they ask us for the necessary right of suffrage to protect themselves against the rebels they have fought, and with whom they are compelled to live, we coolly reply, 'This is the white man's Government.' Nay, more, and worse, we have refused it to them, and allowed it to their and our worst enemies, the rebels. Sir, from the dim and shadowy aisles of the past, there comes a cry of 'Shame! shame!' and pagan Rome rebukes Christian America.

"But not chiefly, Mr. President, do I advocate this right of the black man to vote because he has fought the battles of the republic and helped to preserve the Union, but because he is a citizen and a man--one of the people, one of the governed--upon whose consent, if the Declaration of Independence is correct, the just powers of the Government rest; an intelligent being, of whom and for whom G.o.d will have an account of us, individually and as a nation; whose blood is one with ours, whose destinies are intermingled and run with ours, whose life takes hold on immortality with ours, and because this right is necessary to develop his manhood, elevate his race, and secure for it a better civilization and a more enlightened and purer Christianity."

On the 15th of February, Mr. Sumner presented a memorial from George T. Downing, Frederick Dougla.s.s, and other colored citizens of the United States, protesting against the pending const.i.tutional amendment as introducing, for the first time, into the Const.i.tution a grant to disfranchise men on the ground of race or color. In laying this memorial before the Senate, Mr. Sumner said: "I do not know that I have at any time presented a memorial which was ent.i.tled to more respectful consideration than this, from the character of its immediate signers and from the vast mult.i.tudes they represent. I hope I shall not depart from the proper province of presenting it if I express my entire adhesion to all that it says, and if I take this occasion to entreat the Senate, if they will not hearken to arguments against the pending proposition, that they will at least hearken to the voice of these memorialists, representing the colored race of our country."

Mr. Williams, of Oregon, argued in favor of the resolution reported by the committee as the best measure before the Senate. He was for proceeding slowly in the work of reconstruction. In his opinion, neither the negro nor his master was now fit to vote. Upon this point he said: "It seems to me there can be little doubt that at this particular time the negroes of the rebel States are unfit to exercise the elective franchise. I have recently conversed with two officers of the Federal army from Texas, who told me that there, in the interior and agricultural portions of the State, the negroes do not yet know that they are free; and one of the officers told me that he personally communicated to several negroes for the first time the fact of their freedom. Emanc.i.p.ation may be known in the towns and cities throughout the South, but the probabilities are that in the agricultural portions of that country the negroes have no knowledge that they are free, or only vague conceptions of their rights and duties as freemen. Sir, give these men a little time; give them a chance to learn that they are free; give them a chance to acquire some knowledge of their rights as freemen; give them a chance to learn that they are independent and can act for themselves; give them a chance to divest themselves of that feeling of entire dependence for subsistence and the sustenance of their families upon the landholders of the South, to which they have been so long accustomed; give them a little time to shake the manacles off of their minds that have just been stricken from their hands, and I will go with the honorable Senator from Ma.s.sachusetts to give them the right of suffrage. And I will here express the hope that the day is not far distant when every man born upon American soil, within the pale of civilization, may defend his manhood and his rights as a freeman by that most effective ballot which

"'Executes the freeman's will As lightning does the will of G.o.d.'"

Concerning the amendment proposed by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Williams said: "All the impa.s.sioned declamation and all the vehement a.s.sertions of the honorable Senator do not change or affect the evidence before our eyes that the people of these United States are not prepared to surrender to Congress the absolute right to determine as to the qualifications of voters in the respective States, or to adopt the proposition that all persons, without distinction of race or color, shall enjoy political rights and privileges equal to those now possessed by the white people of the country. Sir, some of the States have lately spoken upon that subject. Wisconsin and Connecticut, Northern, loyal, and Republican States, have recently declared that they would not allow the negroes within their own borders political rights; and is it probable that of the thirty-six States, more than six, at the most, would at this time adopt the const.i.tutional amendment proposed by the gentleman?"

Notwithstanding the temporary darkness of the political sky, Mr.

Williams saw brilliant prospects before the country. "This nation,"

said he, "is to live and not die. G.o.d has written it among the shining decrees of destiny. Inspired by this hope and animated by this faith, we will take this country through all its present troubles and perils to the promised land of perfect unity and peace, where freedom, equality, and justice, the triune and tutelar deity of the American Republic, will rule with righteousness a nation 'whose walls shall be salvation and whose gates praise.'"

At the close of this speech, the Senate being about to proceed to a vote upon the pending amendment, it was proposed to defer action and adjourn the question over to the following day, for the purpose of affording an opportunity for speeches by Senators who were not prepared to proceed immediately. Mr. Fessenden, who had the measure in charge, protested against the delays of the Senate. "This subject,"

said he, "has dragged along now for nearly two weeks. If members desire to address the Senate, they must be prepared to go on and do so without a postponement from day to day for the purpose of allowing every gentleman to make his speech in the morning, and then adjourning early every evening. We shall never get through in that way. I give notice to gentlemen that I shall begin to be a little more quarrelsome--I do not know that it will do any good--after to-day."

On the day following, Mr. Hendricks delivered a speech of considerable length in opposition to the const.i.tutional amendment. After having maintained that the proposition did not rest the right of representation upon population, nor upon property, nor upon voters, Mr. Hendricks inquired: "Upon what principle do Senators propose to adopt this amendment to the Const.i.tution? I can understand it if you say that the States shall be represented in the House of Representatives upon their population; I can understand it if you say that they shall be represented upon their voters; but when you say that one State shall have the benefit of its non-voting population and another State shall not, I can not understand the principle of equity and justice which governs you in that measure. Sir, if it does not stand upon a principle, upon what does it rest? It rests upon a political policy. A committee that had its birth in a party caucus brings it before this body, and does not conceal the fact that it is for party purposes. This measure, if you ever allow the Southern States to be represented in the House of Representatives, will bring them back shorn of fifteen or twenty Representatives; it will bring them back so shorn in their representation that the Republican party can control this country forever; and if you cut off from fifteen to thirty votes for President of the United States in the States that will not vote for a Republican candidate, it may be that you can elect a Republican candidate in 1868."

Mr. Hendricks thought that "this proposition was designed to accomplish three objects: first, to perpetuate the rule and power of a political party; in the second place, it is a proposition the tendency of which is to place agriculture under the control and power of manufactures and commerce forever; and, in the third place, it is intended, I believe, as a punishment upon the Southern States."

In reference to changing the basis of representation as a punishment for the Southern States, Mr. Hendricks said: "Now that the war is over; now that the Southern people have laid down their arms; now that they have sought to come again fully and entirely into the Union; now that they have pledged their honors and their fortunes to be true to the Union and to the flag; now that they have done all that can be done by a conquered people, is it right, after a war has been fought out, for us to take from them their political equality in this Union for the purpose of punishment? The Senator from Maine, the chairman of the committee, says that the right to control the suffrage is with the States, but if the States do not choose to do right in respect to it, we propose to punish them. You do not punish New York for not letting the foreigner vote until he resides there a certain period. You do not punish Indiana because she will not allow a foreigner to vote until he has been in the country a year. These States are not to be punished because they regulate the elective franchise according to their sovereign pleasures; but if any other States see fit to deny the right of voting to a cla.s.s that is peculiarly guarded and taken care of here, then they are to be punished."

Referring to the speech of the Senator from New Hampshire, Mr.

Hendricks asked: "Had the white men of this country a right to establish a Government, and thereby a political community? If so, they had a right to say who should be members of that political community.

They had a right to exclude the colored man if they saw fit. Sir, I say, in the language of the lamented Douglas, and in the language of President Johnson, this is the white man's Government, made by the white man for the white man. I am not ashamed to stand behind such distinguished men in maintaining a sentiment like that. Nor was my judgment on the subject changed the day before yesterday by the lamentations of the Senator from New Hampshire, [Mr. Clark,] sounding through this body like the wailing of the winds in the dark forest, 'that it is a horrible thing for a man to say that this is a white man's Government.'

"Mr. President, there is a great deal said about the part the colored soldiers have taken in putting down this rebellion--a great deal more than there is any occasion for, or there is any support for in fact or history. This rebellion was put down by the white soldiers of this country."

Criticising sentiments toward the South, expressed by Senators, Mr.

Hendricks said: "We hear a good deal said about blood now. Yesterday the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Williams] criticised the President for his leniency toward the South. A few days ago, the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] made a severe criticism on the President for his leniency, and my colleague asks for blood. Mr. President, this war commenced with blood; nay, blood was demanded before the war. When the good men and the patriotic, North and South, representing the yearning hearts of the people at home, came here, in the winter and spring of 1861, in a peace congress, if possible to avoid this dreadful war, right then the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Chandler] announced to his Governor and the country that this Union was scarcely worth preserving without some blood-letting. His cry before the war was for blood. Allow me to say that when the Senator's name is forgotten because of any thing he says or does in this body, in future time it will be borne down upon the pages of history as the author of the terrible sentiment that the Union of the people that our fathers had cemented by the blood of the Revolution and by the love of the people; that that Union, resting upon compromise and concession, resting upon the doctrine of equality to all sections of the country; that that Union which brought us so much greatness and power in the three-quarters of a century of our life; that that Union that had brought us so much prosperity and greatness, until we were the mightiest and proudest nation on G.o.d's footstool; that that grand Union was not worth preserving unless we had some blood-letting!"

Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, replied: "The Senator from Indiana has arraigned me upon an old indictment for having written a certain letter in 1861. It is not the first time that I have been arraigned on that indictment of 'blood-letting.' I was first arraigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C. Breckinridge; and I answered the traitor John C. Breckinridge; and after I gave him his answer, he went out into the rebel ranks and fought against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator from Kentucky and by other traitors upon this floor. I expect to be arraigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter; and what was in it? What was the position of the country when that letter was written? The Democratic party, as an organization, had arrayed itself against this Government--a Democratic traitor in the presidential chair, and a Democratic traitor in every department of this Government; Democratic traitors preaching treason upon this floor, and preaching treason in the hall of the other house; Democratic traitors in your army and in your navy; Democratic traitors controlling every branch of this Government. Your flag was fired upon, and there was no response. The Democratic party had ordained that this Government should be overthrown; and I, a Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote to the Governor of that State, 'Unless you are prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this great Government, the Government is overthrown.' That is all there was to that letter.

That I said, and that I say again; and I tell that Senator if he is prepared to go down in history with the Democratic traitors who then cooperated with him, I am prepared to go down on that 'blood-letting'

letter, and I stand by the record as then made." [Applause in the galleries.]

On the 19th of February, Mr. Howard, of Michigan, offered an amendment providing that the right of suffrage should be enjoyed by all persons of African descent belonging to the following cla.s.ses: those who have been in the military service of the United States, those who can read and write, and those who possess $250 worth of property.

Mr. Yates, of Illinois, addressed the Senate for three hours on the pending amendment of the Const.i.tution. On the 29th of January preceding, Mr. Yates had proposed a bill providing that no State or Territory should make any distinction between citizens on account of race, or color, or condition; and that all citizens, without distinction of race, color, or condition should be protected in the enjoyment and exercise of all their civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage.

This bill Mr. Yates made the basis of his argument. His reason for preferring a bill to a const.i.tutional amendment was presented as follows: "There is only one way of salvation for the country. Your amendments to the Const.i.tution of the United States can not be adopted. If we have not the power now under the Const.i.tution of the United States to secure full freedom, then, sir, we shall not have it, and there is no salvation whatever for the country. Let not freedom die in the house, and by the hands of her friends."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hon. Richard Yates.]

Mr. Yates maintained that the const.i.tutional amendment abolishing slavery gave to Congress power to legislate to the full extent of the measure proposed by him. "Let gentlemen come forward," said he, "and meet the issue like men. Let them come forward and do what they have by the Const.i.tution the clear power to do, and that is a _sine qua non_ in order to carry into effect the const.i.tutional prohibition of slavery. As for me, I would rather face the music and meet the responsibility like a man, and send to the people of the State of Illinois the boon of universal suffrage, and of a full and complete emanc.i.p.ation, than meet the taunt of Northern demagogues that I would force suffrage upon North Carolina, and Tennessee, and Delaware, while I had not the courage to prescribe it for our own free States. Sir, it will be the crime of the century if now, having the power, as we clearly have, we lack the nerve to do the work that is given us to do.

"Let me say to my Republican friends, you are too late. You have gone too far to recede now. Four million people, one-seventh of your whole population, you have set free. Will you start back appalled at the enchantment your own wand has called up? The sequences of your own teachings are upon you. As for me, I start not back appalled when universal suffrage confronts me. When the b.l.o.o.d.y ghost of slavery rises, I say, 'Shake your gory locks at me; I did it.' I accept the situation. I fight not against the logic of events or the decrees of Providence. I expected it, sir, and I meet it half way. I am for universal suffrage. I bid it 'All hail!' 'All hail!'

"Four million people set free! What will protect them? The ballot.

What alone will give us a peaceful and harmonious South? The ballot to all. What will quench the fires of discord, give us back all the States, a restored Union, and make us one people? The ballot, and that alone. Is there no other way? None other under the sun. There is no other salvation.

"The ballot will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our troubles.

It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look and live. It will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar of fire by night.

It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, and across Jordan's stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy land. Sir, the ballot is the freedman's Moses. So far as man is concerned, I might say that Mr.

Lincoln was the Moses of the freedmen; but whoever shall be the truest friend of human freedom, whoever shall write his name highest upon the horizon of public vision as the friend of human liberty, that man--and I hope it may be the present President of the United States--will be the Joshua to lead the people into the land of deliverance."

Mr. Yates maintained that for the exercise of the right of suffrage there should be no test of intelligence, wealth, rank or race. To bring the people up to the proper standard, the ballot itself was "the greatest educator." He said: "Let a man have an interest in the Government, a voice as to the men and measures by which his taxes, his property, his life, and his reputation shall be determined, and there will be a stimulus to education for that man.

"As the elective franchise has been extended in this country, we have seen education become more universal. Look throughout all our Northern States at our schools and colleges, our academies of learning, our a.s.sociations, the pulpit, the press, and the numerous agencies for the promotion of intelligence, all the inevitable offspring of our free inst.i.tutions. Here is the high training which inspires the eloquence of the Senate, the wisdom of the cabinet, the address of the diplomatist, and which has developed and brought to light that intelligent and energetic mind which has elevated the character and contributed to the prosperity of the country. It is the ballot which is the stimulus to improvement, which fires the heart of youthful ambition, which stimulates honorable aspiration, which penetrates the thick shades of the forest, and takes the poor rail-splitter by the hand and points him to the shining height of human achievement, or which goes into the log hut of the tailor boy and opens to him the avenue of the presidential mansion."

Mr. Yates then declared his confidence in the triumph of the principle of universal suffrage: "It is my conscientious conviction that if every Senator on this floor, and every Representative in the other House, and the President of the United States, should, with united voices, attempt to oppose this grand consummation of universal equality, they will fail. It is too late for that. You may go to the head-waters of the Mississippi and turn off the little rivulets, but you can not go to the mouth, after it has collected its waters from a thousand rivers, and with acc.u.mulated volume is pouring its foaming waters into the Gulf, and say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'

"It is too late to change the tide of human progress. The enlightened convictions of the ma.s.ses, wrought by the thorough discussions of thirty years, and consecrated by the baptism of precious blood, can not now be changed. The hand of a higher power than man's is in this revolution, and it will not move backward. It is of no use to fight against destiny. G.o.d, not man, created men equal. Deep laid in the solid foundations of G.o.d's eternal throne, the principle of equality is established, indestructible and immortal.

"Senators, sixty centuries of the past are looking down upon you. All the centuries of the future are calling upon you. Liberty, struggling amid the rise and wrecks of empires in the past, and yet to struggle for life in all the nations of the world, conjures you to seize this great opportunity which the providence of Almighty G.o.d has placed in your hands to bless the world and make your names immortal, to carry to full and triumphant consummation the great work begun by your fathers, and thus lay permanently, solidly, and immovably, the cap-stone upon the pyramid of human liberty."

On the 21st of February, the proposed amendment being again before the Senate, Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, delivered an elaborate speech in opposition to the measure. He had previously refrained from speech-making, supposing that "while the pa.s.sions of the country were inflamed by the war, reason could not be heard." He regretted that questions pertaining to the war still occupied the attention of Congress to the exclusion of those connected with economy, revenue, finance, ordinary legislation, and the administration of justice--questions which require intelligence, investigation, labor, and the habits of the student. As an argument against changing the basis of representation as it existed, Mr. Buckalew gave statistical details, showing the various ratios of representation in the Senate, as possessed respectively by the East, West and South. He maintained that New England had too great a preponderance of power in the Senate, both, as to membership and the chairmanships of committees, "While,"

said he, "the population of the East is less than one-seventh of the population of the States represented in the Senate, she has the chairmanships of one-third of the committees. The chairmanship of a committee is a position of much influence and power. The several distinguished gentlemen holding that position have virtual control over the transaction of business, both in committee and in the Senate."

Mr. Buckalew thus presented the effect of restoration of representation to the Southern States upon the relative position of New England: "Twenty-two Senators from the Southern States and two from Colorado--being double the number of those from the East--would reduce the importance of the latter in the Senate and remit her back to the condition in which she stood in her relations to the Union before the war. True, she would even then possess much more than her proportion of weight in the Senate, regard being had to her population, but she would no longer dominate or control the Government of the United States."

Mr. Buckalew argued at some length that representation should continue to be based upon population. He thought that the two-fifths added to the representative population in the South by the abolition of slavery would be counterbalanced by the mortality of the slave population since the outbreak of the war. He then presented the following objections to "any propositions of amendments at this time by Congress:"

"1. Eleven States are unrepresented in the Senate and House. They are not heard in debate which may affect their interests and welfare in all future time.

"2. Any amendment made at this time will be a partisan amendment.

"3. The members of this Congress were not chosen with reference to the subject of const.i.tutional amendment.

"4. Whatever amendments are now proposed by Congress are to be submitted to Legislatures, and not to popular conventions in the States; and most of those Legislatures are to be the ones now in session.