This assault to-day compels me to make a statement now which I never
supposed I should be called to make. I make it now with hesitation, but
rather to show the Senator’s course than my own. Sir, I am the author
of the provision in that Act conferring suffrage; and when I brought it
forward, the Senator from Illinois was one of my opponents,--then as
now. Senators who were here at that time remember well that this whole
subject was practically taken for the time from the jurisdiction of the
Senate into a caucus of the Republican party, where a committee was
created to whom all pending measures of Reconstruction were referred. I
had the honor of being a member of that committee. So was the Senator
from Illinois. So was my friend from Michigan [Mr. HOWARD]. The Senator
from Ohio [Mr. SHERMAN] was our chairman. In that committee this
Reconstruction Bill was debated and matured sentence by sentence, word
for word; and then and there, in that committee, I moved that we should
require the suffrage of all persons, without distinction of color, in
the organization of new governments, and in all the constitutions to be
made.
In making this proposition at that time I only followed the proposition
I had made in the Senate two years before,[230] which I had urged
upon the people in an elaborate address at a political convention in
Massachusetts,[231] which I had again upheld in an elaborate effort
for two days in this Chamber,[232] and which from the beginning I had
never lost from my mind or heart. It was natural that I should press
it in committee; but I was overruled,--the Senator opposing me with
his accustomed determination. I was voted down. The chairman observed
my discontent and said, “You can renew your motion in caucus.” I
did so, stating that I had been voted down in committee, but that I
appealed from the committee to the caucus. My colleague [Mr. WILSON],
who sits before me, called out, “Do so”; and then rising, said, in
language which he will pardon me for quoting, but which will do
him honor always, “The report of the committee will leave a great
question open to debate on every square mile of the South. We must
close that question up.” Another Senator, who is not now here,--I can
therefore name him,--Mr. Gratz Brown [of Missouri], cried out most
earnestly, “Push it to a vote; we will stand by you.” I needed no such
encouragement, for my determination was fixed. There sat the Senator
from Illinois, sullen in his accustomed opposition. I pushed it to a
vote, and it was carried by only two majority, Senators rising to be
counted. My colleague, in his joy on the occasion, exclaimed, “This
is the greatest vote that has been taken on this continent!” He felt,
I felt, we all felt, that the question of the suffrage was then and
there secured. By that vote the committee was directed to make it a
part of Reconstruction. This was done, and the measure thus amended was
reported by the Senator from Ohio as chairman of the committee.
I am compelled to this statement by the assault of the Senator. I had
no disposition to make it. I do not claim anything for myself. I did
nothing but my duty. Had I done less, I should have been faithless,--I
should have been where the Senator from Illinois placed himself.
The Senator read from the “Globe” the vote on the passage of the bill,
and exulted because my name was not there. Sir, is there any Senator
in this Chamber whose name will be found oftener on the yeas and nays
than my own? Is there any Senator in this Chamber who is away from
his seat less than I am? There was a reason for my absence on that
occasion. I left this Chamber at midnight, fatigued, not well, knowing
that the great cause was assured, notwithstanding the opposition of the
Senator from Illinois,--knowing that at last the right of the colored
people to suffrage was recognized. I had seen it placed in the bill
reported from the committee. There it was on my motion, safe against
the assaults of the Senator from Illinois. Why should I, fatigued,
and not well, remain till morning to swell the large and ascertained
majority which it was destined to receive?[233] I have no occasion to
make up any such record. You know my fidelity to this cause. You know
if I am in the habit of avoiding the responsibilities of my position.
I cannot disguise, also, that there was another influence on my mind.
Reconstruction, even with the suffrage, was defective. More was
needed. There should have been a system of public schools, greater
protection to the freedmen, and more security against the Rebels, all
of which I sought in vain to obtain in committee, and I found all
effort in the Senate foreclosed by our action in caucus. Pained by this
failure, and feeling that there was nothing more for me to do, after
midnight I withdrew. On the return of the Act to the Senate on the veto
of the President, I recorded my vote in its favor.
What Mr. Trumbull calls “the record” in this case, and which
Mr. Sumner, in the surprise of the occasion, seemingly accepts,
according to the obvious import of the term, as substantially
the complete record, inspection of either the Congressional
Globe or the Senate Journal shows to be very far from complete.
The vote following the Presidential veto was by no means the
only one in which Mr. Sumner’s name appears: between this and
the vote which would seem from the representation to have next
preceded, designated as “the vote on the passage of the bill,”
there intervened another, involving in an important degree the
character and fate of the whole measure.
The bill in its original form, as it came from the House, was
purely, as indicated by its title, “a bill to provide for the
more efficient government of the insurrectionary States,”
dividing them into military districts and placing them under
military rule,--this being deemed the only effectual means
of suppressing the outrages continually perpetrated upon the
loyalists of the South, black and white,--its Reconstruction
features, which included the provision for colored suffrage,
being engrafted upon it by the Senate, coupled with
considerable modifications of its military details. It was on
the votes at this stage, February 16th, that Mr. Sumner’s name
was wanting.
On the return of the bill to the House for concurrence in
these amendments, it at once encountered on the Republican
side severe animadversion, aptly expressed in the remark,--“We
sent to the Senate a proposition to meet the necessities of
the hour, which was Protection without Reconstruction, and it
sends back another which is Reconstruction without Protection.”
Concurrence was refused, and a committee of conference asked.
The Senate insisting, and declining the proposed conference,
the House proceeded alone, supplementing the Reconstruction
provisions with others guarding against Rebel domination,[234]
and crowning their work with the emphatic vote of 128 Yeas
to 46 Nays. To this vote the Senate yielded, by a concurrent
vote of Yeas 35, Nays 7,--with “the effect,” as announced, “of
passing the bill.” Mr. Sumner, hailing these amendments as
what he had required, of course voted with the Yeas,--and his
name so stands on both of the official registers, in immediate
conjunction with Mr. Trumbull’s.[235] This was on the 20th of
February. The vote consequent upon the Veto was ten days later,
when his name was again recorded with the Yeas.[236] These two
were the only votes in the Senate on the Reconstruction Act of
March 2, 1867, in the completeness of its provisions, as it
appears in the Statute-Book.[237]
* * * * *
February 10th, 1870, the bill for the admission of Mississippi
having come up for consideration in the Senate, Mr. Stewart,
of Nevada, availed himself of the opportunity to reopen the
personal controversy with Mr. Sumner, in an acrimonious
speech denying his claim to the authorship of the provision
for colored suffrage in the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and
ascribing it to Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, a member of the other
House,--quoting Mr. Sumner’s opening declaration on this point,
but resisting the reading of what followed in explanation and
support of that declaration, under the plea that “he did not
want it printed as part of his own speech.”[238]
On the conclusion of Mr. Stewart’s speech, Mr. Sumner answered
as follows:--
MR. PRESIDENT,--You will bear witness that I am no volunteer now. I
have been no volunteer on any of these recurring occasions when I have
been assailed in this Chamber. I have begun no question. I began no
question with the Senator from Nevada. I began no question with the
other Senator on my right [Mr. TRUMBULL]. I began no question yesterday
with the Senator from New York [Mr. CONKLING].[239] I began no
question, either, with the Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. CARPENTER].[240]
But I am here to answer; and I begin by asking to have read at the desk
what I did say, and what the Senator from Nevada was unwilling, as he
declared, to have incorporated in his speech. I can understand that he
was very unwilling. I send the passage to the Chair.
The passage referred to, embracing the first three paragraphs
of Mr. Sumner’s statement in answer to Mr. Trumbull, January
21st,[241] having been read, he proceeded:--
That statement is to the effect that on my motion that important
proposition was put into the bill. Does anybody question it? Has
the impeachment of the Senator to-day impaired that statement by a
hair’s-breadth? He shows that in another part of this Capitol patriot
Representatives were striving in the same direction. All honor to them!
God forbid that I should ever grudge to any of my associates in this
great controversy any of the fame that belongs to them! There is enough
for all, provided we have been faithful. Sir, it is not in my nature
to take from any one credit, character, fame, to which he is justly
entitled. The world is wide enough for all. Let each enjoy what he has
earned. I ask nothing for myself. I asked nothing the other day; what I
said was only in reply to the impeachment, the arraignment let me call
it, by the Senator from Illinois.
I then simply said it was on my motion that this identical requirement
went into the bill. The Senator, in reply, seeks to show that in the
other Chamber a similar proposition was brought forward; but it did not
become a part of the bill. He shows that it was brought forward in this
Chamber, but did not become a part of the bill. It was on my motion
that it did become a part of the bill. It was not unnatural, perhaps,
that I should go further, as I did, and say that in making this motion
I only acted in harmony with my life and best exertions for years. I
have the whole record here. Shall I open it? I hesitate. In doing so I
break a vow with myself. And yet it cannot be necessary. You know me in
this Chamber; you know how I have devoted myself from the beginning to
this idea, how constantly I have maintained it and urged it from the
earliest date.
* * * * *
The first stage in this series--you [Mr. ANTHONY, of Rhode Island, in
the chair] remember it; you were here; the Senator from Nevada was not
here--goes to February 11, 1862, when
“Mr. Sumner submitted resolutions declaratory of the relations
between the United States and the territory once occupied
by certain States, and now usurped by pretended governments
without constitutional or legal right.”
In these resolutions it is declared, that, after an act of secession
followed by war,
“The territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of
Congress, as other territory, and the State becomes, according
to the language of the law, _felo de se_.”