The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XI Part 6

12. The 14th Amendment provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside. This is also an affirmation. It is not a prohibition. The moment that amendment was adopted, it became the duty of the United States to protect the citizens recognized or created by that amendment. We are no longer citizens of the United States because we are citizens of a State, but we are citizens of the United States because we have been born or have been naturalized within the jurisdiction of the United States. It therefore follows, that it is not only the right, but it is the duty, of Congress, to pa.s.s all laws necessary for the protection of citizens of the United States.

13. Congress can not shirk this responsibility by leaving citizens of the United States to the care and keeping of the several States.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court cuts, as with a sword, the tie that binds the citizen to the nation. Under the old Const.i.tution, it was not certainly known who were citizens of the United States. There were citizens of the States, and such citizens looked to their several States for protection. The Federal Government had no citizens. Patriotism did not rest on mutual obligation. Under the 14th Amendment, we are all citizens of a common country; and our first duty, our first obligation, our highest allegiance, is not to the State in which we reside, but to the Federal Government. The 14th Amendment tends to destroy State prejudices and lays a foundation for national patriotism.

14. All statutes--all amendments to the Const.i.tution--in derogation of natural rights, should be strictly construed.

15. All statutes and amendments for the preservation of natural rights should be liberally construed. Every court should, by strict construction, narrow the scope of every law that infringes upon any natural human right; and every court should, by construction, give the broadest meaning to every statute or const.i.tutional provision pa.s.sed or adopted for the preservation of freedom.

16. In construing the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the Supreme Court need not go back to decisions rendered in the days of slavery--when every statute was construed in favor of the sovereignty of the State and the rights of the master. These amendments utterly obliterated such decisions. The Supreme Court should begin with the amendments. It need not look behind them. They are a part of the fundamental organic law of the nation. They were adopted to destroy the old statutes, to obliterate the infamous clauses in the Const.i.tution, and to lay a new foundation for a new nation.

17. Congress has the power to eradicate all forms and incidents of slavery and involuntary servitude, by direct and primary legislation binding upon States and individuals alike. And when citizens are denied the exercise of common rights and privileges--when they are refused admittance to public inns and railway cars, on an equality with white persons--and when such denial and refusal are based upon race and color, such citizens are in a condition of involuntary servitude.

The Supreme Court has failed to take into consideration the intention of the framers of these amendments. It has failed to comprehend the spirit of the age. It has undervalued the accomplishment of the war. It has not grasped in all their height and depth the great amendments to the Const.i.tution and the real object of government. To preserve liberty is the only use for government. There is no other excuse for legislatures, or presidents, or courts, for statutes or decisions. Liberty is not simply a means--it is an end. Take from our history, our literature, our laws, our hearts--that word, and we are naught but moulded clay. Liberty is the one priceless jewel. It includes and holds and is the weal and wealth of life. Liberty is the soil and light and rain--it is the plant and bud and flower and fruit--and in that sacred word lie all the seeds of progress, love and joy.

This decision, in my judgment, is not worthy of the Court by which it was delivered. It has given new life to the serpent of State Sovereignty. It has breathed upon the dying embers of ignorant hate. It has furnished food and drink, breath and blood, to prejudices that were perishing of famine, and in the old case of _Civilization vs.

Barbarism_, it has given the defendant a new trial.

From this decision, John M. Harlan had the breadth of brain, the goodness of heart, and the loyalty to logic, to dissent. By the fortress of Liberty, one sentinel remains at his post. For moral courage I have supreme respect, and I admire that intellectual strength that breaks the cords and chains of prejudice and d.a.m.ned custom as though they were but threads woven in a spider's loom. This judge has a.s.sociated his name with freedom, and he will be remembered as long as men are free.

We are told by the Supreme Court that:

"Slavery cannot exist without law, any more than property and lands and goods can exist without law."

I deny that property exists by virtue of law. I take exactly the opposite ground. It was the fact that man had property in lands and goods, that produced laws for the protection of such property. The Supreme Court has mistaken an effect for a cause. Laws pa.s.sed for the protection of property, sprang from the possession and ownership of the thing to be protected. When one man enslaves another, it is a violation of all justice--a subversion of the foundation of all law. Statutes pa.s.sed for the purpose of enabling man to enslave his fellow-man, resulted from a conspiracy entered into by the representatives of brute force. Nothing can be more absurd than to call such a statute, born of such a conspiracy a law. According to the idea of the Supreme Court, man never had property until he had pa.s.sed a law upon the subject. The first man who gathered leaves upon which to sleep, did not own them, because no law had been pa.s.sed on the leaf subject. The first man who gathered fruit--the first man who fashioned a club with which to defend himself from wild beasts, according to the Supreme Court, had no property in these things, because no laws had been pa.s.sed, and no courts had published their decisions.

So the defenders of monarchy have taken the ground that societies were formed by contract--as though at one time men all lived apart, and came together by agreement and formed a government. We might just as well say that the trees got into groves by contract or conspiracy. Man is a social being. By living together there grow out of the relation, certain regulations, certain customs. These at last hardened into what we call law--into what we call forms of government--and people who wish to defend the idea that we got everything from the king, say that our fathers made a contract. Nothing can be more absurd. Men did not agree upon a form of government and then come together; but being together, they made rules for the regulation of conduct. Men did not make some laws and then get some property to fit the laws, but having property they made laws for its protection.

It is hinted by the Supreme Court that this is in some way a question of social equality. It is claimed that social equality cannot be enforced by law. n.o.body thinks it can. This is not a question of social equality, but of equal rights. A colored citizen has the same right to ride upon the cars--to be fed and lodged at public inns, and to visit theatres, that I have. Social equality is not involved.

The Federal soldiers who escaped from Libby and Andersonville, and who in swamps, in storm, and darkness, were rescued and fed by the slave, had no scruples about eating with a negro. They were willing to sit beneath the same tree and eat with him the food he brought. The white soldier was then willing to find rest and slumber beneath the negro's roof. Charity has no color. It is neither white nor black. Justice and Patriotism are the same. Even the Confederate soldier was willing to leave his wife and children under the protection of a man whom he was fighting to enslave.

Danger does not draw these nice distinctions as to race or color. Hunger is not proud. Famine is exceedingly democratic in the matter of food.

In the moment of peril, prejudices perish. The man fleeing for his life does not have the same ideas about social questions, as he who sits in the Capitol, wrapped in official robes. Position is apt to be supercilious. Power is sometimes cruel. Prosperity is often heartless.

This cry about social equality is born of the spirit of caste--the most fiendish of all things. It is worse than slavery. Slavery is at least justified by avarice--by a desire to get something for nothing--by a desire to live in idleness upon the labor of others--but the spirit of caste is the offspring of natural cruelty and meanness.

Social relations depend upon almost an infinite number of influences and considerations. We have our likes and dislikes. We choose our companions. This is a natural right. You cannot force into my house persons whom I do not want. But there is a difference between a public house and a private house. The one is for the public. The private house is for the family and those they may invite. The landlord invites the entire public, and he must serve those who come if they are fit to be received. A railway is public, not private. It derives its powers and its rights from the State. It takes private land for public purposes.

It is incorporated for the good of the public, and the public must be served. The railway, the hotel, and the theatre, have a right to make a distinction between people of good and bad manners--between the clean and the unclean. There are white people who have no right to be in any place except a bath-tub, and there are colored people in the same condition. An unclean white man should not be allowed to force himself into a hotel, or into a railway car--neither should the unclean colored.

What I claim is, that in public places, no distinction should be made on account of race or color. The bad black man should be treated like the bad white man, and the good black man like the good white man. Social equality is not contended for--neither between white and white, black and black, nor between white and black.

In all social relations we should have the utmost liberty--but public duties should be discharged and public rights should be recognized, without the slightest discrimination on account of race or color.

Riding in the same cars, stopping at the same inns, sitting in the same theatres, no more involve a social question, or social equality, than speaking the same language, reading the same books, hearing the same music, traveling on the same highway, eating the same food, breathing the same air, warming by the same sun, shivering in the same cold, defending the same flag, loving the same country, or living in the same world.

And yet, thousands of people are in deadly fear about social equality.

They imagine that riding with colored people is dangerous--that the chance acquaintance may lead to marriage. They wish to be protected from such consequences by law. They dare not trust themselves. They appeal to the Supreme Court for a.s.sistance, and wish to be barricaded by a const.i.tutional amendment. They are willing that colored women shall prepare their food--that colored waiters shall bring it to them--willing to ride in the same cars with the porters and to be shown to their seats in theatres by colored ushers--willing to be nursed in sickness by colored servants. They see nothing dangerous--nothing repugnant, in any of these relations,--but the idea of riding in the same car, stopping at the same hotel, fills them with fear--fear for the future of our race.

Such people can be described only in the language of Walt Whitman. "They are the immutable, granitic pudding-heads of the world.".

Liberty is not a social question. Civil equality is not social equality.

We are equal only in rights. No two persons are of equal weight, or height. There are no two leaves in all the forests of the earth alike--no two blades of gra.s.s--no two grains of sand--no two hairs. No two any-things in the physical world are precisely alike. Neither mental nor physical equality can be created by law, but law recognizes the fact that all men have been clothed with equal rights by Nature, the mother of us all.

The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart--the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenceless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

In this country all rights must be preserved, all wrongs redressed, through the ballot. The colored man has in his possession in his care, a part of the sovereign power of the Republic. At the ballot-box he is the equal of judges and senators, and presidents, and his vote, when counted, is the equal of any other. He must use this sovereign power for his own protection, and for the preservation of his children. The ballot is his sword and shield. It is his political providence. It is the rock on which he stands, the column against which he leans. He should vote for no man who dees not believe in equal rights for all--in the same privileges and immunities for all citizens, irrespective of race or color.

He should not be misled by party cries, or by vague promises in political platforms. He should vote for the men, for the party, that will protect him; for congressmen who believe in liberty, for judges who worship justice, whose brains are not tangled by technicalities, and whose hearts are not petrified by precedents; and for presidents who will protect the blackest citizen from the tyranny of the whitest State. As you cannot trust the word of some white people, and as some black people do not always tell the truth, you must compel all candidates to put their principle' in black and white.

Of one thing you can rest a.s.sured: The best white people are your friends. The humane, the civilized, the just, the most intelligent, the grandest, are on your side. The sympathies of the n.o.blest are with you. Your enemies are also the enemies of liberty, of progress and of justice. The white men who make the white race honorable believe in equal rights for you. The n.o.blest living are, the n.o.blest dead were, your friends. I ask you to stand with your friends.

Do not hold the Republican party responsible for this decision, unless the Republican party endorses it. Had the question been submitted to that party, it would have been decided exactly the other way--at least a hundred to one. That party gave you the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

They were given in good faith. These amendments put you on a const.i.tutional and political equality with white men. That they have been narrowed in their application by the Supreme Court, is not the fault of the Republican party. Let us wait and see what the Republican party will do. That party has a strange history, and in that history is a mingling of cowardice and courage. The army of progress always becomes fearful after victory, and courageous after defeat. It has been the custom for principle to apologize to prejudice. The Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation gave liberty only to slaves beyond our lines--those beneath our flag were left to wear their chains. We said to the Southern States: "Lay down your arms, and you shall keep your slaves." We tried to buy peace at the expense of the negro.

We offered to sacrifice the manhood of the North, and the natural rights of the colored man, upon the altar of the Union. The rejection of that offer saved us from infamy. At one time we refused to allow the loyal black man to come within our lines. We would meet him at the outposts, receive his information, and drive him back to chain and lash. The Government publicly proclaimed that the war was waged to save the Union, with slavery. We were afraid to claim that the negro was a man--afraid to admit that he was property--and so we called him "contraband." We hesitated to allow the negro to fight for his own freedom--hesitated to let him wear the uniform of the nation while he battled for the supremacy of its flag.

These are some of the inconsistencies of the past. In spite of them we advanced. We were educated by events, and at last we clearly saw that slavery was rebellion; that the "inst.i.tution" had borne its natural fruit--civil war; that the entire country was responsible for slavery, and that slavery was responsible for rebellion. We declared that slavery should be extirpated from the Republic. The great armies led by the greatest commander of the modern world, shattered, crushed and demolished the Rebellion. The North grew grand. The people became sublime. The three sacred amendments were adopted. The Republic was free.

Then came a period of hesitation, apology and fear. The colored citizen was left to his fate. For years the Federal arm, palsied by policy, was powerless to protect; and this period of fear, of hesitation, of apology, of lack of confidence in the right, has borne its natural fruit--this decision of the Supreme Court.

But it is not for me to give you advice. Your conduct has been above all praise. You have been as patient as the earth beneath, as the stars above. You have been law-abiding and industrious, You have not offensively a.s.serted your rights, or offensively borne your wrongs. You have been modest and forgiving. You have returned good for evil. When I remember that the ancestors of my race were in universities and colleges and common schools while you and your fathers were on the auction-block, in the slave-pen, or in the field beneath the cruel lash, in States where reading and writing were crimes, I am astonished at the progress you have made.

All that I--all that any reasonable man--can ask is, that you continue doing as you have done. Above all things--educate your children--strive to make yourselves independent--work for homes--work for yourselves--and wherever it is possible become the masters of yourselves.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see your little children with books under their arms, going and coming from school.

It is very easy to see why colored people should hate us, but why we should hate them is beyond my comprehension. They never sold our wives.

They never robbed our cradles.. They never scarred our backs. They never pursued us with bloodhounds. They never branded our flesh.

It has been said that it is hard to forgive a man to whom we have done a great injury. I can conceive of no other reason why we should hate the colored people. To us they are a standing reproach. Their history is our shame. Their virtues seem to enrage some white people--their patience to provoke, and their forgiveness to insult. Turn the tables--change places--and with what fierceness, with what ferocity, with what insane and pa.s.sionate intensity we would hate them!

The colored people do not ask for revenge--they simply ask for justice. They are willing to forget the past--willing to hide their scars--anxious to bury the broken chains, and to forget the miseries and hardships, the tears and agonies, of two hundred years.

The old issues are again upon us. Is this a Nation? Have all citizens of the United States equal rights, without regard to race or color? Is it the duty of the General Government to protect its citizens? Can the Federal arm be palsied by the action or non-action of a State?

Another opportunity is given for the people of this country to take sides. According to my belief, the supreme thing for every man to do is to be absolutely true to himself. All consequences--whether rewards or punishments, whether honor and power, or disgrace and poverty, are as dreams undreamt. I have made my choice. I have taken my stand. Where my brain and heart go, there I will publicly and openly walk. Doing this, is my highest conception of duty. Being allowed to do this, is liberty.

If this is not now a free Government; if citizens cannot now be protected, regardless of race or color; if the three sacred amendments have been undermined by the Supreme Court--we must have another; and if that fails, then another; and we must neither stop, nor pause, until the Const.i.tution shall become a perfect shield for every right, of every human being, beneath our flag.

TRIAL OF C. B. REYNOLDS FOR BLASPHEMY.

Address to the Jury.

* Within thirty miles of New York, in the city of Morristown, New Jersey, a man was put on trial yesterday for distributing a pamphlet argument against the infallibility of the Bible. The crime which the Indictment alleges Is Blasphemy, for which the statutes of New Jersey provide a penalty of two hundred dollars fine, or twelve months imprisonment, or both. It is the first case of the kind ever tried in New Jersey, although the law dates back to colonial days. Charles B. Reynolds is the man on trial, and the State of New Jersey, through the Prosecuting Attorney of Morris County, is the prosecutor. The Circuit Court, Judge Francis Child, a.s.sisted by County Judges Munson and Quimby, sit upon the case. Prosecutor Wilder W. Cutler represents the State, and Robert G. Ingersoll appears for the defendant.