Show Notes Line: “Statesmen of America! beware what you do.
A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, for including the
negro in the body politic, would require more space than can be reasonably asked
here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as
the wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the world. His
right to a participation in the production and operation of government is an inference
from his nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or
education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare that he
shall not share in the making and directing of the government under which he lives,
than to say that he shall not acquire property and education.
The fundamental and unanswerable argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the
negro is found in the undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every fact
and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote, the negro can sustain
his right equally. It is plain that, if the right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The
doctrine that some men have no rights that others are bound to respect, is a
doctrine which we must banish as we have banished slavery, from which it
emanated. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men, of course the
whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The result is a war of races, and the
annihilation of all proper human relations.
But suffrage for the negro, while easily sustained upon abstract principles, demands
consideration upon what are recognized as the urgent necessities of the case. It is a
measure of relief,--a shield to break the force of a blow already descending with
violence and render it harmless. The work of destruction has already been set in
motion all over the South. Peace to the country has literally meant war to the loyal
men of the South, white and black; and negro suffrage is the measure to arrest and
put an end to that dreadful strife.
Something then, not by way of argument, (for that has been done by Charles
Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and other able men,) but
rather of statement and appeal.
For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage ceremonies,) the negroes
are evidently a permanent part of the American population. They are too numerous
and useful to be colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by
natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for weal or for woe, here
they must remain. Their history is parallel to that of the country; but while the
history of the latter has been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been
heavy and dark with agonies and curses. What ;Connell said of the history of
Ireland may with greater truth be said of the negroes. It may be quote; traced like a
wounded man through a crowd, by the blood.& quote; Yet the negroes have marvelously
survived all the exterminating forces of slavery and have emerged at the end of two
hundred and fifty years of bondage, not morose, misanthropic, and revengeful, but
cheerful, hopeful, and forgiving. They now stand before Congress and the country,
not complaining of the past, but simply asking for a better future. The spectacle of
these dusky millions thus imploring, not demanding, is touching; and if American
statesmen could be moved by a simple appeal to the nobler elements of human
nature, if they had not fallen, seemingly, into the incurable habit of weighing and
measuring every proposition of reform by some standard of profit and loss, doing
wrong from choice, and right only from necessity or some urgent demand of human
selfishness, it would be enough to plead for the negroes on the score of past services
and sufferings. But no such appeal shall be relied on here. Hardships, services,
sufferings, and sacrifices are all waived.
It is true that they came to the relief of the country at the hour of its extreme need.
It is true that, in many of the rebellious States, they were almost the only reliable
friends the nation had throughout the whole tremendous war. It is true that,
notwithstanding their alleged ignorance, they were wiser than their masters, and
knew enough to be loyal, while those masters only knew enough to be rebels and
traitors. It is true that they fought side by side in the loyal cause with our gallant
and patriotic white soldiers, and that, but for their help, divided as the loyal States
were, the Rebels might have succeeded in breaking up the Union, thereby entailing
border wars and troubles of unknown duration and incalculable calamity. All this and
more is true of these loyal negroes. Many daring exploits will be told to their credit.
Impartial history will paint them as men who deserved well of their country. It will
tell how they forded and swam rivers, with what consummate address they evaded
the sharp-eyed Rebel pickets, how they toiled in the darkness of night through the
tangled marshes of briers and thorns, barefooted and weary, running the risk of
losing their lives, to warn our generals of Rebel schemes to surprise and destroy our
loyal army. It will tell how these poor people, whose rights we still despised,
behaved to our wounded soldiers, when found cold, hungry, and bleeding on the
deserted battle-field; how they assisted our escaping prisoners from Andersonville,
Belle Isle, Castle Thunder, and elsewhere, sharing with them their wretched crusts,
and otherwise affording them aid and comfort; how they promptly responded to the
trumpet call for their services, fighting against a foe that denied them the rights of
civilized warfare, and for a government which was without the courage to assert
those rights and avenge their violation in their behalf; with what gallantry they flung
themselves upon Rebel fortifications, meeting death as fearlessly as any other troops
in the service. But upon none of these things is reliance placed. These facts speak to
the better dispositions of the human heart; but they seem of little weight with the
opponents of impartial suffrage.
It is true that a strong plea for equal suffrage might be addressed to the national
sense of honor. Something, too, might be said of national gratitude. A nation might
well hesitate before the temptation to betray its allies. There is something
immeasurably mean, to say nothing of the cruelty, in placing the loyal negroes of the
South under the political power of their Rebel masters. To make peace with our
enemies is all well enough; but to prefer our enemies and sacrifice our friends, to
exalt our enemies and cast down our friends, to clothe our enemies, who sought
the destruction of the government, with all political power, and leave our friends
powerless in their hands, is an act which need not be characterized here. We asked
the negroes to espouse our cause, to be our friends, to fight for us, and against their
masters; and now, after they have done all that we asked them to do, helped us to
conquer their masters, and thereby directed toward themselves the furious hate of
the vanquished, it is proposed in some quarters to turn them over to the political
control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let
nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of
gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the
weak and defenseless, the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great
pertinence to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would
wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of human selfishness.
For in respect to this grand measure it is the good fortune of the negro that
enlightened selfishness, not less than justice, fights on his side. National interest and
national duty, if elsewhere separated, are firmly united here. The American people
can, perhaps, afford to brave the censure of surrounding nations for the manifest
injustice and meanness of excluding its faithful black soldiers from the ballot-box,
but it cannot afford to allow the moral and mental energies of rapidly increasing
millions to be consigned to hopeless degradation.
Strong as we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black man's arm to make
us stronger. We want no longer any heavy- footed, melancholy service from the
negro. We want the cheerful activity of the quickened manhood of these sable
millions. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a
degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom
such a class may exist. Exclude the negroes as a class from political rights, teach
them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage is to be enjoyed by white citizens
only, that they may bear the burdens of the state, but that they are to have no
part in its direction or its honors, and you at once deprive them of one of the main
incentives to manly character and patriotic devotion to the interests of the
government; in a word, you stamp them as a degraded caste, you teach them to
despise themselves, and all others to despise them.
Men are so constituted that they largely derive their ideas of their abilities and their
possibilities from the settled judgments of their fellow-men, and especially from such
as they read in the institutions under which they live. If this bless them, they are
blest indeed; but if this blast them, they are blasted indeed. Give the negro the
elective franchise, and you give him at once a powerful motive for all noble exertion
and make him a man among men. A character is demanded of him, and here as
elsewhere demand favors supply. It is nothing against this reasoning that all men
who vote are not good men or good citizens. It is enough that the possession and
exercise of the elective franchise is in itself an appeal to the nobler elements of
manhood, and imposes education as essential to the safety of society.
To appreciate the full force of this argument, it must be observed, that
disfranchisement in a republican government based upon the idea of human equality
and universal suffrage, is a very different thing from disfranchisement in
governments based upon the idea of the divine right of kings, or the entire
subjugation of the masses.
Masses of men can take care of themselves. Besides, the disabilities imposed upon all are necessarily without that bitter and stinging element of invidiousness which attaches to disfranchisement in a republic. What is common to all works no special sense of degradation to any. But in a country like ours, where men of all nations, kindred, and tongues are freely enfranchised, and allowed to vote, to say to the negro, You shall not vote, is to deal his manhood a staggering blow, and to burn into his soul a bitter and goading sense of wrong, or else work in him a stupid indifference to all the elements of a manly character. As a nation, we cannot afford to have amongst us either this indifference and stupidity, or that burning sense of wrong. These sable millions are too powerful to be allowed to remain either indifferent or discontented. Enfranchise them, and they become self- respecting and country-loving citizens. Disfranchise them, and the mark of Cain is
set upon them less mercifully than upon the first murderer, for no man was to hurt
him. But this mark of inferiority all the more palpable because of a difference of
color not only dooms the negro to be a vagabond but makes him the prey of insult
and outrage everywhere.
While nothing may be urged here as to the past services of
the negro, it is quite within the line of this appeal to remind the nation of the
possibility that a time may come when the services of the negro may be a second
time required. History is said to repeat itself, and, if so, having wanted the negro
once, we may want him again. Can that statesmanship be wise which would leave
the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his
prompt assistance? Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in
gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national
trouble? Was not the nation stronger when two hundred thousand sable soldiers
were hurled against the Rebel fortifications, than it would have been without them?
Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago, are we sure
that another quite as pressing may not await us? Casting aside all thought of justice
and magnanimity, is it wise to impose upon the negro all the burdens involved in
sustaining government against foes within and foes without, to make him equal
sharer in all sacrifices for the public good, to tax him in peace and conscript him in
war, and then coldly exclude him from the ballot-box?
Look across the sea. In Ireland, in her present condition, fretful, discontented,
compelled to support an establishment in which she does not believe, and which the
vast majority of her people abhor, a source of power or of weakness to Great
Britain? Is not Austria wise in removing all ground of complaint against her on the
part of Hungary? And does not the Emperor of Russia act wisely, as well as
generously, when he not only breaks up the bondage of the serf, but extends him all
the advantages of Russian citizenship? Is the present movement in England in favor
of manhood suffrage for the purpose of bringing four millions of British subjects into
full sympathy and co-operation with the British government a wise and humane
movement, or otherwise? Is the existence of a rebellious element in our borders
which New Orleans, Memphis, and Texas show to be only disarmed, but at heart as
malignant as ever, only waiting for an opportunity to reassert itself with fire and
sword a reason for leaving four millions of the nation's truest friends with just cause
of complaint against the Federal government? If the doctrine that taxation should go
hand in hand with representation can be appealed to in behalf of recent traitors and
rebels, may it not properly be asserted in behalf of a people who have ever been
loyal and faithful to the government?
The answers to these questions are too obvious to require a statement.
Disguise it as we may, we are still a divided nation. The Rebel States have still an
anti-national policy. Massachusetts and South Carolina may draw tears from the
eyes of our tender-hearted President by walking arm in arm into his Philadelphia
Convention, but a citizen of Massachusetts is still an alien in the Palmetto State.
There is that, all over the South, which frightens Yankee industry, capital, and skill
from its borders. We have crushed the Rebellion, but not its hopes or its malign
purposes. The South fought for perfect and permanent control over the Southern
laborer. It was a war of the rich against the poor. They who waged it had no
objection to the government, while they could use it as a means of confirming their
power over the laborer. They fought the government, not because they hated the
government as such, but because they found it, as they thought, in the way between
them and their one grand purpose of rendering permanent and indestructible their
authority and power over the Southern laborer. Though the battle is for the present
lost, the hope of gaining this object still exists, and pervades the whole South with a
feverish excitement.
We have thus far only gained a Union without unity, marriage without love, victory
without peace. The hope of gaining by politics what they lost by the sword, is the
secret of all this Southern unrest; and that hope must be extinguished before
national ideas and objects can take full possession of the Southern mind. There is
but one safe and constitutional way to banish that mischievous hope from the South,
and that is by lifting the laborer beyond the unfriendly political designs of his former
master. Give the negro the elective franchise, and you at once destroy the purely
sectional policy, and wheel the Southern States into line with national interests and
national objects. The last and shrewdest turn of Southern politics is a recognition of
the necessity of getting into Congress immediately, and at any price. The South will
comply with any conditions but suffrage for the negro. It will swallow all the
unconstitutional test oaths, repeal all the ordinances of Secession, repudiate the
Rebel debt, promise to pay the debt incurred in conquering its people, pass all the
constitutional amendments, if only it can have the negro left under its political
control. The proposition is as modest as that made on the mountain: All these
things will I give unto thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
But why are the Southerners so willing to make these sacrifices? The answer plainly
is, they see in this policy the only hope of saving something of their old sectional
peculiarities and power. Once firmly seated in Congress, their alliance with Northern
Democrats re-established, their States restored to their former position inside the
Union, they can easily find means of keeping the Federal government entirely too
busy with other important matters to pay much attention to the local affairs of the
Southern States. Under the potent shield of State Rights, the game would be in their
own hands. Does any sane man doubt for a moment that the men who followed
Jefferson Davis through the late terrible Rebellion, often marching barefooted and
hungry, naked, and penniless, and who now only profess an enforced loyalty, would
plunge this country into a foreign war to-day, if they could thereby gain their
coveted independence, and their still more coveted mastery over the negroes?
Plainly enough, the peace not less than the prosperity of this country is involved in
the great measure of impartial suffrage. King Cotton is deposed, but only deposed
and is ready to-day to reassert all his ancient pretensions upon the first favorable
opportunity.
Foreign countries abound with his agents. They are able, vigilant,
devoted. The young men of the South burn with the desire to regain what they call
the lost cause; the women are noisily malignant towards the Federal government. In
fact, all the elements of treason and rebellion are there under the thinnest disguise
which necessity can impose.
What, then, is the work before Congress? It is to save the people of the South from
themselves, and the nation from detriment on their account. Congress must supplant
the evident sectional tendencies of the South by national dispositions and
tendencies. It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the
politics of those States. It must cease to recognize the old slave-masters as the only
competent persons to rule the South. In a word, it must enfranchise the negro, and
by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build up a
national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that
our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine
must be put into new bottles. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Loyalty is
hardly safe with traitors.
Statesmen of America! beware what you do. The ploughshare of rebellion has gone
through the land beam deep. The soil is in readiness, and the seedtime has come.
Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the
past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder
today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot
fathers. The principle of slavery, which they tolerated under the erroneous
impression that it would soon die out, became at last the dominant principle and
power at the South. It early mastered the Constitution, became superior to the
Union, and enthroned itself above the law.
Freedom of speech and of the press it slowly but successfully banished from the
South, dictated its own code of honor and manners to the nation, brandished the
bludgeon and the bowie-knife under Congressional debate, sapped the foundations of
loyalty, dried up the springs of patriotism, blotted out the testimonies of the fathers
against oppression, padlocked the pulpit, expelled liberty from its literature, invented
nonsensical theories about master-races and slave-races of men, and in due season
produced a Rebellion fierce, foul, and bloody.
This evil principle again seeks admission into our body politic. It comes now in shape
of a denial of political rights to four million loyal colored people. The South does not
now ask for slavery. It only asks for a large degraded caste, which shall have no
political rights. This ends the case. Statesmen beware what you do. The destiny of
unborn and unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake of
your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the blood-bought wisdom
all round you, and forever expel every vestige of the old abomination from our
national borders? As you members of the Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the
country be peaceful, united, and happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable.