The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may
very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already
much-worn topic of reconstruction.
Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more
intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best
of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left
undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled
with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands
statesmanship.
Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously
ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent
results,--a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,--a
strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to
liberty or civilization,--an attempt to re-establish a Union by force,
which must be the merest mockery of a Union,--an effort to bring under
Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may
safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who deliberate
with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even conceal their
deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or whether, on the other
hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason, have
a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social
antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be
determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.
The last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to
these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already
adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the
difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is
changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central
government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of
States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there
remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local
affairs,--an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men
of all sections of the country than perhaps any one other political
idea,--no general assertion of human rights can be of any practical
value. To change the character of the government at this point is
neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to
make the government consistent with itself, and render the rights of the
States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.
The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to
protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States.
They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go
unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon
the national statute-book.
Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths
of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own
conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it
favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that
it could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom,
manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South;
and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the
intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the
conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which
it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless
the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State
authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This,
of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way
and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with
itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,--a right
and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire for
his protection.
One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the
highly instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to
republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and
despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged
class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to
maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the
war.
There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive
teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has come
to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor never a
day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of progress
and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and despairing
bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood,
or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and
strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the
result is the same,--society is instructed, or may be.
Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly
engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can
discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark
outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to
our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning
seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until
the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant
before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions
remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked
behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?
It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery
never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years ago,
and it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented prosperity.
Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,--poured out against
slavery during thirty years,--even they must confess, that, in all the
probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would have continued
its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth century but for
the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at last in a fiery
conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which has now been
suppressed.
It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason
prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion
is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been
taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the needed
courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic. At
any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire
purification Congress must now address Itself, with full purpose that
the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas, root and
branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The
country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas for
postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the responsibility
to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power are here
commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung shadows to
obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and intenser heat at
every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding implores relief
from its distress and agony.
If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the
requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now
before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the
termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they
will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical
policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some
excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it
can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy
which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that
they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to
the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows now that
it must go on without his aid, and even against his machinations. The
advantage of the present session over the last is immense. Where that
investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked by faith, this may
walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go forward, and where that
failed, this must succeed, giving the country whole measures where that
gave us half-measures, merely as a means of saving the elections in a
few doubtful districts. That Congress saw what was right, but distrusted
the enlightenment of the loyal masses; but what was forborne in distrust
of the people must now be done with a full knowledge that the people
expect and require it. The members go to Washington fresh from the
inspiring presence of the people. In every considerable public
meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house,
school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been
discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a
radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise
with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into
demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been
spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so
far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The
men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress with the largest
majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by lean majorities, or
else left at home. The strange controversy between the President and the
Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed of by the people. The
high reconstructive powers which he so confidently, ostentatiously,
and haughtily claimed, have been disallowed, denounced, and utterly
repudiated; while those claimed by Congress have been confirmed.
Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The
appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal.
Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval
of his astute Secretary, soon after the members of the Congress had
returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive
mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,--men whom
the whole country delighted to honor,--and, with all the advantage which
such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to
the Mississippi, advocating everywhere his policy as against that of
Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful
exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely
unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious,
unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,--a
political gladiator, ready for a "set-to" in any crowd,--he is beaten
in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a
convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent
attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to
Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no
condemnation could be more absolute and humiliating. Unless reopened by
the sword, as recklessly threatened in some circles, this question is
now closed for all time.
Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat
theological question (about which so much has already been said
and written), whether once in the Union means always in the
Union,--agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,--it
is obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day,
in point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten,
conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their
State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of
the leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the
institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should
begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be
no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and
treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate,
one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose
in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were
never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four
millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order,
should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and
impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the
formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.
It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the
precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people
are less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained.
They demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present
anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,--where
frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very
presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall
cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black
and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause
Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow
into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in
Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be
tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty,
and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this important
work.
The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the
beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government,
one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the
elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great
measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks,
and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the
place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.
Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is
no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies
as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is
the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events,
which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color
or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as
identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.
The policy that emancipated and armed the negro--now seen to have been
wise and proper by the dullest--was not certainly more sternly demanded
than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success
in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the
nation must fall or flourish with the negro.
Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction
between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any
difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United
States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens,
whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly
no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The
mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by
a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of
citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to
disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This
unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated
citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of
each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the
several States,--so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal
voter in all the States.