HENRY WILSON.
Lincoln, Chase and Wilson as Illustrations of Democracy--Wilson's
Birth and Boyhood--Reads over One Thousand Books in Ten Years
--Learns Shoemaking--Earns an Education Twice Over--Forms a
Debating Society--Makes Sixty Speeches for Harrison--Enters
into Political Life on the Working-Men's Side--Helps to form
the Free Soil Party--Chosen United States Senator over Edward
Everett--Aristocratic Politics in those Days--Wilson and the
Slaveholding Senators--The Character of his Speaking--Full of
Facts and Practical Sense--His Usefulness as Chairman of the
Military Committee--His "History of the Anti-Slavery Measures
in Congress"--The 37th and 38th Congresses--The Summary of
Anti-Slavery Legislation from that Book--Other Abolitionist
Forces--Contrast of Sentiments of Slavery and of Freedom--
Recognition of Hayti and Liberia; Specimen of the Debate--Slave
and Free Doctrine on Education--Equality in Washington Street
Cars--Pro-Slavery Good Taste--Solon's Ideal of Democracy
Reached in America.
It is interesting to notice how, in the recent struggle that has
convulsed our country and tried our republican institutions, so many
of the men who have held the working oar have been representative men
of the people. To a great extent they have been men who have grown up
with no other early worldly advantages than those which a democratic
republic offers to every citizen born upon her soil. Lincoln from the
slave states, and Chase and Henry Wilson in the free, may be called the
peculiar sons of Democracy. That hard Spartan mother trained them early
on her black broth to her fatigues, and wrestlings, and watchings, and
gave them their shields on entering the battle of life with only the
Spartan mother's brief--"With this, or upon this."
Native force and Democratic institutions raised Lincoln to the highest
seat in the nation, and to no mean seat among the nations of the earth;
and the same forces in Massachusetts caused that State, in an hour of
critical battle for the great principles of democratic liberty, to
choose Henry Wilson, the self-taught, fearless shoemaker's apprentice
of Natick, over the head of the gifted and graceful Everett, the
darling of foreign courts, the representative of all the sentiments and
training which transmitted aristocratic ideas have yet left in Boston
and Cambridge. All this was part and parcel of the magnificent drama
which has been acting on the stage of this country for the hope and
consolation of all who are born to labor and poverty in all nations of
the world.
Henry Wilson, our present United States Senator, was born at
Farmington, N. H., Feb. 12, 1818, of very poor parents. At the age
of ten he was bound to a farmer till he was twenty-one. Here he had
the usual lot of a farm boy--plain, abundant food, coarse clothing,
incessant work, and a few weeks' schooling at the district school in
winter.
In these ten years of toil, the boy, by twilight, firelight, and on
Sundays, had read over one thousand volumes of history, geography,
biography and general literature, borrowed from the school libraries
and from those of generous individuals.
At twenty-one he was his own master, to begin the world; and in looking
over his inventory for starting in life, found only a sound and healthy
body, and a mind trained to reflection by solitary thought. He went to
Natick, Mass., to learn the trade of a shoemaker, and in working at
it two years, he saved enough money to attend the academy at Concord
and Wolfsborough, N. H. But the man with whom he had deposited his
hard earnings became insolvent; the money he had toiled so long for,
vanished; and he was obliged to leave his studies, go back to Natick
and make more. Undiscouraged, he resolved still to pursue his object,
uniting it with his daily toil. He formed a debating society among
the young mechanics of the place; investigated subjects, read, wrote
and spoke on all the themes of the day, as the spirit within him gave
him utterance. Among his fellow-mechanics, some others were enkindled
by his influence, and are now holding high places in the literary and
diplomatic world.
In 1840, young Wilson came forward as a public speaker. He engaged
in the Harrison election campaign, made sixty speeches in about four
months, and was well repaid by his share in the triumph of the party.
He was then elected to the Massachusetts Legislature as representative
from Natick.
Having entered life on the working man's side, and known by his own
experience the working man's trials, temptations and hard struggles, he
felt the sacredness of a poor man's labor, and entered public life with
a heart to take the part of the toiling and the oppressed.
Of course he was quick to feel that the great question of our time
was the question of labor and its rights and rewards. He was quick to
feel the "irrepressible conflict," which Seward so happily designated,
between the two modes of society existing in America, and to know that
they must fight and struggle till one of them throttled and killed the
other; and prompt to understand this, he made his early election to
live or die on the side of the laboring poor, whose most oppressed type
was the African slave.
In the Legislature, he introduced a motion against the extension of
slave territory; and in 1845, went with Whittier to Washington with the
remonstrance of Massachusetts against the admission of Texas as a slave
State.
When the Whig party became inefficient in the cause of liberty through
too much deference to the slave power, Henry Wilson, like Charles
Sumner, left it, and became one of the most energetic and efficient
organizers in forming the Free Soil party of Massachusetts. In its
interests, he bought a daily paper in Boston, which for some time he
edited with great ability.
Meanwhile, he rose to one step of honor after another, in his adopted
State; he became President of the Massachusetts Senate; and at length
after a well contested election, was sent to take the place of the
accomplished Everett in the United States Senate.
His election was a sturdy triumph of principle. His antagonist had
every advantage of birth and breeding, every grace which early
leisure, constant culture, and the most persevering, conscientious
self-education could afford. He was, in graces of person, manners and
mind, the ideal of Massachusetts aristocracy, but he wanted that clear
insight into actual events, which early poverty and labor had given
to his antagonist. His sympathies in the great labor question of the
land were with the graceful and cultivated aristocrats rather than
the clumsy, ungainly laborer; and he but professed the feeling of all
aristocrats in saying at the outset of his political life, while Wilson
was yet a child, that in the event of a servile insurrection, he would
be among the first to shoulder a musket to defend the masters.
But the great day of the Lord was at hand. The events which since have
unrolled in fire and blood, had begun their inevitable course; and the
plain working-man was taken by the hand of Providence towards the high
places where he, with other working men, should shape the destiny of
the labor question for this age and for all ages.
Wilson went to Washington in the very heat and fervor of that conflict
which the gigantic Giddings, with his great body and unflinching
courage, said to a friend, was to him a severer trial of human nerve
than the facing of cannon and bullets. The slave aristocracy had
come down in great wrath, as if knowing that its time was short. The
Senate chamber rang with their oaths and curses as they tore and
raged like wild beasts against those whom neither their blandishments
nor their threats could subdue. Wilson brought there his face of
serene good nature, his vigorous, stocky frame, which had never seen
ill-health, and in which the nerves were yet an undiscovered region.
It was entirely useless to bully, or to threaten, or to cajole that
honest, good-humored, immovable man, who stood like a rock in their
way, and took all their fury as unconsciously as a rock takes the
foam of breaking waves. In every anti-slavery movement he was always
foremost, perfectly awake, perfectly well informed, and with that
hardy, practical business knowledge of men and things which came from
his early education, prepared to work out into actual forms what Sumner
gave out as splendid theories.
Wilson's impression on the Senate was not mainly that of an orator.
His speeches were as free from the artifices of rhetoric as those of
Lincoln, but they were distinguished for the weight and abundance of
the practical information and good sense which they contained. He never
spoke on a subject till he had made himself minutely acquainted with it
in all its parts, and was accurately familiar with all that belonged
to it. Not even John Quincy Adams or Charles Sumner could show a more
perfect knowledge of what they were talking about than Henry Wilson.
Whatever extraneous stores of knowledge and belles lettres may have
been possessed by any of his associates, no man on the floor of the
Senate could know more of the _United States of America_ than he; and
what was wanting in the graces of the orator, or the refinements of the
rhetorician was more than made amends for in the steady, irresistible,
strong tread of the honest man, determined to accomplish a worthy
purpose.
Wilson succeeded Benton as chairman of the Military Committee of the
Senate, and it was fortunate for the country that when the sudden storm
of the war broke upon us, so strong a hand held this helm. Gen. Scott
said that he did more work in the first three months of the war than
had been done in his position before for twenty years; and Secretary
Cameron attributed the salvation of Washington in those early days,
mainly to Henry Wilson's power of doing the apparently impossible in
getting the Northern armies into the field in time to meet the danger.
His recently published account of what Congress has done to destroy
slavery, is a history which no man living was better fitted to write.
No man could be more minutely acquainted with the facts, more capable
of tracing effects to causes, and thus competent to erect this
imperishable monument to the honor of his country.
It is meet that the poor, farm-bound apprentice, the shoemaker of
Natick, should thus chronicle the great history of the deliverance of
labor from disgrace in this democratic nation.
There is something sublime in the history of the movements of the
37th and 38th Congresses of the United States. Perhaps never in any
country did an equal number of wise and just men meet together under
a more religious sense of their responsibility to God and to mankind.
Never had there been a deeper and more religious awe presiding over
popular elections than those which sent those men to Congress to man
our national ship in the terrors of the most critical passage our
stormy world has ever seen. They were the old picked, tried seamen,
stout of heart, giants in conscience and moral sense. They were the
scarred veterans of long years of battling for the great principles of
the Declaration of Independence, men who in old times had come through
great battles with the beasts of the slavery Ephesus, and still wore
the scars of their teeth. They had seen their president stricken down
at their head, and though bleeding inwardly, had closed up their ranks
shoulder to shoulder, to go steadily on with the great work for which
he died.
These men it was who while the din of arms was resounding through the
country, while Washington was one great camp and hospital, and the
confusing rumors of wars were coming to it from the east and from the
west, from the north and from the south--took up and carried to the
end the grandest national moral reform ever accomplished in a given
time. Many men of the common sort would have said, "This is no time to
be driving at moral reforms. We must drive this war through first, and
when we have done this, we will begin to wipe up, and adjust, and put
away." So gigantic a war was apology enough to satisfy the consciences
of men who looked only to precedents and the rules of ordinary
statesmanship, but our Congress was largely made up of men who walked
by a higher light, and judged by a higher standard than ever has been
given to mere statesmanship before. The spirit of the old Puritans,
their unworldly, God-fearing spirit, their steadfast flint-facedness
in principle, came to a final and culminating development in these
Congresses.
Henry Wilson has written a "History of the Anti-Slavery Measures in
Congress," in a brief, clear, compact summary, and made of it a volume
which ought to be in every true American library. It is a volume of
which every American has just and honest reason to be proud, and to
which every Republican the whole world over, should look with hope and
trust, as exhibiting the magnificent morality, the dauntless courage,
the unwearied faith, hope and charity that are the crown jewels of
republics. We should be glad to see this book of Henry Wilson's in
every farm house of New England, lying by the family Bible, under the
old flag of the Union. The men who carried through these magnificent
reforms--THEY ARE OUR JEWELS.
Mr. Wilson gives in his book a condensed summary of the debates in the
House relative to each step of the reform. For the most part it is a
record of noble, Christian, unworldly patriotic sentiment--a sort of
ideal statesmanship becoming real in tangible good deeds.
Every day some new den in the Augean stable was exposed and opened
up to daylight, and the cleansing baptism of liberty applied. There
was some fluttering and screaming of owls and bats, and now and then
the poor old dilapidated dragon of slavery gave a bootless hiss, but
nobody minded it. It was a whole-hearted, clean, pure, noble time
in Congress, when those walls, so long defiled with the brawls, the
mingled profanity and obscenity of slaveholders and slavebreeders, now
rang only to manly sentiments and cleanly, noble, Christian resolves,
such as make the heart strong to hear. We quote from the close of Mr.
Wilson's book the summary of what was done by these Congresses in the
way of reform legislation.
"As the Union armies advanced into the rebel States, slaves, inspired
by the hope of personal freedom, flocked to their encampments, claiming
protection against rebel masters, and offering to work and fight for
the flag whose stars for the first time gleamed upon their vision with
the radiance of liberty. Rebel masters and rebel-sympathizing masters
sought the encampments of the loyal forces, demanding the surrender
of the escaped fugitives; and they were often delivered up by officers
of the armies. To weaken the power of the insurgents, to strengthen
the loyal forces, and assert the claims of humanity, the 37th Congress
enacted an article of war, dismissing from the service officers guilty
of surrendering these fugitives.
Three thousand persons were held as slaves in the District of
Columbia, over which the nation exercised exclusive jurisdiction; the
37th Congress made these three thousand bondmen freemen, and made
slaveholding in the capital of the nation for evermore impossible.
"Laws and ordinances existed in the national capital that pressed with
merciless rigor upon the colored people: the 37th Congress enacted that
colored persons should be tried for the same offences, in the same
manner, and be subject to the same punishments, as white persons; thus
abrogating the 'black code.'
"Colored persons in the capital of this Christian nation were denied
the right to testify in the judicial tribunals; thus placing their
property, their liberties, and their lives, in the power of unjust
and wicked men; the 37th Congress enacted that persons should not be
excluded as witnesses in the courts of the District on account of color.
"In the capital of the nation, colored persons were taxed to support
schools from which their own children were excluded; and no public
schools were provided for the instruction of more than four thousand
youth; the 38th Congress provided by law that public schools should
be established for colored children, and that the same rate of
appropriations for colored schools should be made as are made for
schools for the education of white children.
"The railways chartered by Congress, excluded from their cars colored
persons, without the authority of law; Congress enacted that there
should be no exclusion from any car on account of color.
"Into the territories of the United States,--one-third of the surface
of the country,--the slaveholding class claimed the right to take
and hold their slaves under the protection of law; the 37th Congress
prohibited slavery for ever in all the existing territory, and in all
territory which may hereafter be acquired; thus stamping freedom for
all, for ever, upon the public domain.
"As the war progressed, it became more clearly apparent that the rebels
hoped to win the Border slave States; that rebel sympathizers in
those States hoped to join the rebel States; and that emancipation in
loyal States would bring repose to them, and weaken the power of the
Rebellion; the 37th Congress, on the recommendation of the President,
by the passage of a joint resolution, pledged the faith of the nation
to aid loyal States to emancipate the slaves therein.
"The hoe and spade of the rebel slave were hardly less potent for the
Rebellion than the rifle and bayonet of the rebel soldier. Slaves sowed
and reaped for the rebels, enabling the rebel leaders to fill the
wasting ranks of their armies, and feed them. To weaken the military
forces and the power of the Rebellion, the 37th Congress decreed that
all slaves of persons giving aid and comfort to the Rebellion, escaping
from such persons, and taking refuge within the lines of the army;
all slaves captured from such persons, or deserted by them; all slaves
of such persons, being within any place occupied by rebel forces, and
afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States,--shall be
captives of war, and shall be for ever free of their servitude, and not
again held as slaves.
"The provisions of the Fugitive-slave Act permitted disloyal masters
to claim, and they did claim, the return of their fugitive bondmen;
the 37th Congress enacted that no fugitive should be surrendered until
the claimant made oath that he had not given aid and comfort to the
Rebellion.
"The progress of the Rebellion demonstrated its power, and the needs of
the imperilled nation. To strengthen the physical forces of the United
States, the 37th Congress authorized the President to receive into the
military service persons of African descent; and every such person
mustered into the service, his mother, his wife and children, owing
service or labor to any person who should give aid and comfort to the
Rebellion, was made for ever free.
"The African slave-trade had been carried on by slave pirates under
the protection of the flag of the United States. To extirpate from
the seas that inhuman traffic, and to vindicate the sullied honor of
the nation, the Administration early entered into treaty stipulations
with the British Government for the mutual right of search within
certain limits; and the 37th Congress hastened to enact the appropriate
legislation to carry the treaty into effect.
"The slaveholding class, in the pride of power, persistently refused
to recognize the independence of Hayti and Liberia; thus dealing
unjustly towards those nations, to the detriment of the commercial
interests of the country; the 37th Congress recognized the independence
of those republics by authorizing the President to establish diplomatic
relations with them.
"By the provisions of law, white male citizens alone were enrolled in
the militia. In the amendment to the acts for calling out the militia,
the 37th Congress provided for the enrollment and drafting of citizens,
without regard to color; and, by the Enrollment Act, colored persons,
free or slave, are enrolled and drafted the same as white men. The
38th Congress enacted that colored soldiers shall have the same pay,
clothing, and rations, and be placed in all respects upon the same
footing, as white soldiers. To encourage enlistments, and to aid
emancipation, the 38th Congress decreed that every slave mustered into
the military service shall be free for ever; thus enabling every slave
fit for military service to secure personal freedom.
"By the provisions of the fugitive-slave acts, slave-masters could hunt
their absconding bondmen, require the people to aid in their recapture,
and have them returned at the expense of the nation. The 38th Congress
erased all fugitive-slave acts from the statutes of the Republic.
"The law of 1807 legalized the coastwise slave-trade; the 38th Congress
repealed that act, and made the trade illegal.
"The courts of the United States receive such testimony as is permitted
in the States where the courts are holden. Several of the States
exclude the testimony of colored persons. The 38th Congress made it
legal for colored persons to testify in all the courts of the United
States.
"Different views are entertained by public men relative to the
reconstruction of the governments of the seceded States, and the
validity of the President's proclamation of emancipation. The 38th
Congress passed a bill providing for the reconstruction of the
governments of the rebel States, and for the emancipation of the slaves
in those States; but it did not receive the approval of the President.
"Colored persons were not permitted to carry the United States mails;
the 38th Congress repealed the prohibitory legislation, and made it
lawful for persons of color to carry the mails.
"Wives and children of colored persons in the military and naval
service of the United States were often held as slaves; and, while
husbands and fathers were absent fighting the battles of the country,
these wives and children were sometimes removed and sold, and often
treated with cruelty; the 38th Congress made free the wives and
children of all persons engaged in the military or naval service of the
country.
"The disorganization of the slave system, and the exigencies of
civil war, have thrown thousands of freedmen upon the charity of the
nation; to relieve their immediate needs, and to aid them through the
transition period, the 38th Congress established a Bureau of Freedmen.
"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, its abolition in the
District of Columbia, the freedom of colored soldiers, their wives
and children, emancipation in Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri,
and by the re-organized State authorities of Virginia, Tennessee, and
Louisiana, and the President's Emancipation Proclamation, disorganized
the slave system, and practically left few persons in bondage; but
slavery still continued in Delaware and Kentucky, and the slave codes
remain, unrepealed in the rebel States. To annihilate the slave
system, its codes and usages; to make slavery impossible, and freedom
universal,--the 38th Congress submitted to the people an anti-slavery
amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The adoption of
that crowning measure assures freedom to all.
"Such are the "ANTI-SLAVERY MEASURES" of the Thirty-seventh and
Thirty-eighth Congresses during the past four crowded years. Seldom
in the history of nations is it given to any body of legislators or
law-givers to enact or institute a series of measures so vast in their
scope, so comprehensive in their character, so patriotic, just, and
humane.
"But, while the 37th and 38th Congresses were enacting this
anti-slavery legislation, other agencies were working to the
consummation of the same end,--the complete and final abolition of
slavery. The President proclaims three and a half millions of bondmen
in the rebel States henceforward and for ever free. Maryland, Virginia,
and Missouri adopt immediate and unconditional emancipation. The
partially re-organized rebel States of Virginia and Tennessee, Arkansas
and Louisiana, accept and adopt the unrestricted abolition of slavery.
Illinois and other States hasten to blot from their statute-books their
dishonoring black codes. The Attorney-General officially pronounces
the negro a citizen of the United States. The negro, who had no status
in the Supreme Court, is admitted by the Chief Justice to practice as
an attorney before that august tribunal. Christian men and women follow
the loyal armies with the agencies of mental and moral instruction to
fit and prepare the enfranchised freedmen for the duties of the higher
condition of life now opening before them."
We cannot quit this subject without remarking on the striking character
of the debates Mr. Wilson's book records on these subjects. The great
majority of Congress utters aloud and with one consent, just, manly,
noble, humane, large-hearted sentiments and resolves, while a poor
wailing minority is picking up and retailing the old worn out jokes and
sneers and incivilities and obscenities of the dying dragon of slavery.
As a specimen of the utter naiveté and ignorance of comity and
good manners induced by slavery, in contrast with the courtesy and
refinement of true republicanism, we give this fragment of a debate on
the recognition of Hayti and Liberia.
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, after plaintively stating that he is weary,
sick, disgusted, despondent with the introduction of slaves and slavery
into this chamber, proceeds to state his terror lest should these
measures take effect, these black representatives would have to be
received on terms of equality with those of other nations. Mr. Davis
goes on to say: "A big negro fellow, dressed out in his silver and
gold lace, presented himself in the court of Louis Napoleon, I admit,
and was received. Now, sir, _I_ want no such exhibition as that in
our country. The American minister, Mr. Mason, was present on that
occasion; and he was sleeved by some Englishman--I have forgotten
his name--who was present, who pointed out to him the ambassador of
Soulouque, and said, 'What do you think of him?' Mr. Mason turned round
and said, 'I think, clothes and all, he is worth a thousand dollars.'"
Mr. Davis evidently considered this witticism of Mr. Mason's as both a
specimen of high bred taste and a settling argument.
In reply, Mr. Sumner drily says: "The Senator alludes to some possible
difficulties, I hardly know how to characterize them, which may occur
here in social life, should the Congress of these United States
undertake at this late day, simply in harmony with the law of nations,
and following the policy of civilized communities, to pass the bill
under discussion. I shall not follow the senator on those sensitive
topics. I content myself with a single remark. I have more than once
had the opportunity of meeting citizens of these republics; and I say
nothing more than truth when I add, that I have found them so refined,
and so full of self-respect, that I am led to believe no one of them
charged with a mission from his government, will seek any society where
he will not be entirely welcome. Sir, the senator from Kentucky may
banish all anxiety on that account. No representative from Hayti or
Liberia will trouble him."
Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky said: "I will only say, sir, that I have an
innate sort of confidence and pride that the race to which we belong is
a superior race among the races of the earth, and I want to see that
pride maintained. The Romans thought that no people on the face of the
earth were equal to the citizens of Rome, and it made them the greatest
people in the world. * * * The spectacle of such a diplomatic dignitary
in our country, would, I apprehend, be offensive to the people for many
reasons, and wound their habitual sense of superiority to the African
race."
Mr. Thomas of Maine, on the other hand, presents the true basis of
Christian chivalry: "I have no desire to enter into the question of the
relative capacity of races; but if the inferiority of the African race
were established, the inference as to our duty would be very plain. If
this colony has been built up by an inferior race of men, they have
upon us a yet stronger claim for our countenance, recognition, and,
if need be, protection. The instincts of the human mind and heart
concur with the policy of men and governments to help and protect
the weak. I understand that to a child or to a woman I am to show a
degree of forbearance, kindness, and of gentleness even, which I am not
necessarily to extend to my equal."
In like manner contrast a passage of sentiment between two senators on
the education bill.
Mr. Carlile of Virginia, "did not see any good reason why the Congress
of the United States should itself enter upon a scheme for educating
negroes." He understood "the reason assigned for the government of a
State undertaking the education of the citizens of the State is that
the citizens in this country are the governors;" but he presumed "we
have not yet reached the point when it is proposed to elevate to the
condition of voters the negroes of the land."
Mr. Grimes in reply said, "It may be true, that, in that section of
the country where the senator is most acquainted, the whole idea of
education proceeds from the fact, that the person who is to be educated
is merely to be educated because he is to exercise the elective
franchise; but I thank God that I was raised in a section of the
country where there are nobler and loftier sentiments entertained in
regard to education. We entertain the opinion that all human beings
are accountable beings. We believe that every man should be taught so
that he may be able to read the law by which he is to be governed,
and under which he may be punished. We believe that every accountable
being should be able to read the word of God, by which he should guide
his steps in this life, and shall be judged in the life to come. We
believe that education is necessary in order to elevate the human race.
We believe that it is necessary in order to keep our jails and our
penitentiaries and our alms-houses free from inmates. In my section
of the country, we do not educate any race upon any such low and
grovelling ideas as those that seem to be entertained by the senator
from Virginia."
But the warmest battle was on the question of the right of colored
persons to ride in the cars. The chivalry maintained their side by
such kind of language as this: "Has any _gentleman_ who was born a
gentleman, or any man who has the instincts of a gentleman, felt
himself degraded by the fact that he was not honored by a seat beside
some free negro? Has any lady in the United States felt herself
aggrieved that she was not honored with the company of Miss Dinah or
Miss Chloe, on board these cars?"
Again, in the course of the debate, another senator says of Mr. Sumner,
"_He_ may ride with negroes, if he thinks proper, so may I; but if I
see proper not to do so, I shall follow my natural instincts, as he
follows his."
"I shall vote for this amendment," says Henry Wilson; "and my own
observation convinces me that justice, not to say decency, requires
that I should do so. Some weeks ago, I rode to the capitol in one of
these cars. On the front part of the car, standing with the driver,
were, I think, five colored clergymen of the Methodist Episcopal
church, dressed like gentlemen, and behaving like gentlemen. These
clergymen were riding with the driver on the front platform, and inside
the car were two drunken loafers, conducting and behaving themselves so
badly that the conductor threatened to turn them out."
"The senator from Illinois tells us," said Mr. Wilson, "that the
colored people have a legal right to ride in these cars now. We know
it; nobody doubts it; but this company into which we breathed the
breath of life, outrages the rights of twenty-five thousand colored
people in this District, in our presence, in defiance of our opinions.
* * * I tell the senator from Illinois that I care far more for
the rights of the humblest black child that treads the soil of the
District of Columbia than I do for the prejudices of this corporation,
and its friends and patrons. The rights of the humblest colored man
in the capital of this Christian nation are dearer to me than the
commendations or the thanks of all persons in the city of Washington
who sanction this violation of the rights of a race. I give this vote,
not to offend this corporation, not to offend anybody in the District
of Columbia, but to protect the rights of the poor and the lowly,
trodden under the heel of power. I trust we shall protect rights, if
we do it over prejudices and over interests, until every man in this
country is fully protected in all the rights that belong to beings made
in the image of God. Let the free man of this race be permitted to run
the career of life; to make of himself all that God intended he should
make, when he breathed into him the breath of life."
So there they had it, at the mouth of an educated northern working-man,
who knew what man as man was worth, and the retiring senators, giving
up the battle, wailed forth as follows:
"Poor, helpless, despised, inferior race of white men, you have very
little interest in this government, you are not worth consideration in
the legislation of this country; but let your superior Sambo's interest
come in question, and you will find the most tender interest on _his_
behalf. What a pity there is not somebody to lamp-black white men, so
that their rights could be secured."
Mr. Powell thought that the Senator from Massachusetts, the next time
one of his Ethiopian friends comes to complain to him on the subject,
should bring an action for him in court, and adds, with the usual good
taste of his party: * * "The Senator has indicated to his fanatical
brethren those people who meet in free love societies, the old ladies
and the sensation preachers, and those who live on fanaticism, that he
has offered it, and I see no reason why we should take up the time of
the Senate in squabbling over the Senator's amendments, introducing the
negro into every wood-pile that comes along."
Mr. Saulsbury closes a discussion on negro testimony with the following
pious ejaculation: "He did not wish to say any more about the _nigger_
aspect of the case. It is here every day; and I suppose it _will_ be
here every day for years to come, till the Democratic party comes
in power and wipes all legislation of this character out of the
statute-book, which I trust in God they will do."
All this sort of talk, shaken in the face of the joyous band of
brothers who were going on their way rejoicing, reminds us forcibly
of John Bunyan's description of the poor old toothless giant, who in
his palmy days used to lunch upon pilgrims, tearing their flesh and
cracking their bones in the most comfortable way possible, but who now
having sustained many a severe brush, was so crippled with rheumatism
that he could only sit in the mouth of his cave, mumbling, "You will
never mend till more of you are burned."
Thank God for the day we live in, and for such men as Henry Wilson and
his compeers of the 37th and 38th Congresses. They have at last put our
American Union in that condition which old Solon gave as his ideal of
true Democracy, namely:
A STATE WHERE AN INJURY TO THE MEANEST MEMBER IS FELT AS AN INJURY TO
THE WHOLE.
[Illustration: Horace Greeley]