WASHINGTON, _January 5, 1867_.
_To the Senate of the United States_:
I have received and considered a bill entitled "An act to regulate the
elective franchise in the District of Columbia," passed by the Senate
on the 13th of December and by the House of Representatives on the
succeeding day. It was presented for my approval on the 26th ultimo--six
days after the adjournment of Congress--and is now returned with my
objections to the Senate, in which House it originated.
Measures having been introduced at the commencement of the first session
of the present Congress for the extension of the elective franchise to
persons of color in the District of Columbia, steps were taken by the
corporate authorities of Washington and Georgetown to ascertain and make
known the opinion of the people of the two cities upon a subject so
immediately affecting their welfare as a community. The question was
submitted to the people at special elections held in the month of
December, 1865, when the qualified voters of Washington and Georgetown,
with great unanimity of sentiment, expressed themselves opposed to
the contemplated legislation. In Washington, in a vote of 6,556--the
largest, with but two exceptions, ever polled in that city--only
thirty-five ballots were cast for negro suffrage, while in Georgetown,
in an aggregate of 813 votes--a number considerably in excess of the
average vote at the four preceding annual elections--but one was given
in favor of the proposed extension of the elective franchise. As these
elections seem to have been conducted with entire fairness, the result
must be accepted as a truthful expression of the opinion of the people
of the District upon the question which evoked it. Possessing, as an
organized community, the same popular right as the inhabitants of a
State or Territory to make known their will upon matters which affect
their social and political condition, they could have selected no more
appropriate mode of memorializing Congress upon the subject of this
bill than through the suffrages of their qualified voters.
Entirely disregarding the wishes of the people of the District of
Columbia, Congress has deemed it right and expedient to pass the measure
now submitted for my signature. It therefore becomes the duty of the
Executive, standing between the legislation of the one and the will of
the other, fairly expressed, to determine whether he should approve the
bill, and thus aid in placing upon the statute books of the nation a law
against which the people to whom it is to apply have solemnly and with
such unanimity protested, or whether he should return it with his
objections in the hope that upon reconsideration Congress, acting as
the representatives of the inhabitants of the seat of Government, will
permit them to regulate a purely local question as to them may seem best
suited to their interests and condition.
The District of Columbia was ceded to the United States by Maryland and
Virginia in order that it might become the permanent seat of Government
of the United States. Accepted by Congress, it at once became subject to
the "exclusive legislation" for which provision is made in the Federal
Constitution. It should be borne in mind, however, that in exercising
its functions as the lawmaking power of the District of Columbia the
authority of the National Legislature is not without limit, but that
Congress is bound to observe the letter and spirit of the Constitution
as well in the enactment of local laws for the seat of Government as
in legislation common to the entire Union. Were it to be admitted that
the right "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever"
conferred upon Congress unlimited power within the District of Columbia,
titles of nobility might be granted within its boundaries; laws might be
made "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press,
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances." Despotism would thus reign at
the seat of government of a free republic, and as a place of permanent
residence it would be avoided by all who prefer the blessings of liberty
to the mere emoluments of official position.
It should also be remembered that in legislating for the District of
Columbia under the Federal Constitution the relation of Congress to
its inhabitants is analogous to that of a legislature to the people
of a State under their own local constitution. It does not, therefore,
seem to be asking too much that in matters pertaining to the District
Congress should have a like respect for the will and interest of its
inhabitants as is entertained by a State legislature for the wishes
and prosperity of those for whom they legislate. The spirit of our
Constitution and the genius of our Government require that in regard to
any law which is to affect and have a permanent bearing upon a people
their will should exert at least a reasonable influence upon those who
are acting in the capacity of their legislators. Would, for instance,
the legislature of the State of New York, or of Pennsylvania, or of
Indiana, or of any State in the Union, in opposition to the expressed
will of a large majority of the people whom they were chosen to
represent, arbitrarily force upon them as voters all persons of the
African or negro race and make them eligible for office without any
other qualification than a certain term of residence within the State?
In neither of the States named would the colored population, when acting
together, be able to produce any great social or political result.
Yet in New York, before he can vote, the man of color must fulfill
conditions that are not required of the white citizen; in Pennsylvania
the elective franchise is restricted to white freemen, while in Indiana
negroes and mulattoes are expressly excluded from the right of suffrage.
It hardly seems consistent with the principles of right and justice that
representatives of States where suffrage is either denied the colored
man or granted to him on qualifications requiring intelligence or
property should compel the people of the District of Columbia to
try an experiment which their own constituents have thus far shown
an unwillingness to test for themselves. Nor does it accord with our
republican ideas that the principle of self-government should lose its
force when applied to the residents of the District merely because their
legislators are not, like those of the States, responsible through the
ballot to the people for whom they are the lawmaking power.
The great object of placing the seat of Government under the exclusive
legislation of Congress was to secure the entire independence of the
General Government from undue State influence and to enable it to
discharge without danger of interruption or infringement of its
authority the high functions for which it was created by the people.
For this important purpose it was ceded to the United States by Maryland
and Virginia, and it certainly never could have been contemplated
as one of the objects to be attained by placing it under the exclusive
jurisdiction of Congress that it would afford to propagandists or
political parties a place for an experimental test of their principles
and theories. While, indeed, the residents of the seat of Government are
not citizens of any State and are not, therefore, allowed a voice in the
electoral college or representation in the councils of the nation, they
are, nevertheless, American citizens, entitled as such to every guaranty
of the Constitution, to every benefit of the laws, and to every right
which pertains to citizens of our common country. In all matters, then,
affecting their domestic affairs, the spirit of our democratic form of
government demands that their wishes should be consulted and respected
and they taught to feel that although not permitted practically to
participate in national concerns, they are, nevertheless, under a
paternal government regardful of their rights, mindful of their wants,
and solicitous for their prosperity. It was evidently contemplated that
all local questions would be left to their decision, at least to an
extent that would not be incompatible with the object for which Congress
was granted exclusive legislation over the seat of Government. When the
Constitution was yet under consideration, it was assumed by Mr. Madison
that its inhabitants would be allowed "a municipal legislature for local
purposes, derived from their own suffrages." When for the first time
Congress, in the year 1800, assembled at Washington, President Adams, in
his speech at its opening, reminded the two Houses that it was for them
to consider whether the local powers over the District of Columbia,
vested by the Constitution in the Congress of the United States, should
be immediately exercised, and he asked them to "consider it as the
capital of a great nation, advancing with unexampled rapidity in arts,
in commerce, in wealth, and in population, and possessing within itself
those resources which, if not thrown away or lamentably misdirected,
would secure to it a long course of prosperity and self-government."
Three years had not elapsed when Congress was called upon to determine
the propriety of retroceding to Maryland and Virginia the jurisdiction
of the territory which they had respectively relinquished to the
Government of the United States. It was urged on the one hand that
exclusive jurisdiction was not necessary or useful to the Government;
that it deprived the inhabitants of the District of their political
rights; that much of the time of Congress was consumed in legislation
pertaining to it; that its government was expensive; that Congress was
not competent to legislate for the District, because the members were
strangers to its local concerns; and that it was an example of a
government without representation--an experiment dangerous to the
liberties of the States. On the other hand it was held, among other
reasons, and successfully, that the Constitution, the acts of cession
of Virginia and Maryland, and the act of Congress accepting the grant
all contemplated the exercise of exclusive legislation by Congress,
and that its usefulness, if not its necessity, was inferred from the
inconvenience which was felt for want of it by the Congress of the
Confederation; that the people themselves, who, it was said, had been
deprived of their political rights, had not complained and did not
desire a retrocession; that the evil might be remedied by giving them a
representation in Congress when the District should become sufficiently
populous, and in the meantime a local legislature; that if the
inhabitants had not political rights they had great political influence;
that the trouble and expense of legislating for the District would not
be great, but would diminish, and might in a great measure be avoided
by a local legislature; and that Congress could not retrocede the
inhabitants without their consent. Continuing to live substantially
under the laws that existed at the time of the cession, and such changes
only having been made as were suggested by themselves, the people of the
District have not sought by a local legislature that which has generally
been willingly conceded by the Congress of the nation.
As a general rule sound policy requires that the legislature should
yield to the wishes of a people, when not inconsistent with the
constitution and the laws. The measures suited to one community might
not be well adapted to the condition of another; and the persons best
qualified to determine such questions are those whose interests are
to be directly affected by any proposed law. In Massachusetts, for
instance, male persons are allowed to vote without regard to color,
provided they possess a certain degree of intelligence. In a population
in that State of 1,231,066 there were, by the census of 1860, only 9,602
persons of color, and of the males over 20 years of age there were
339,086 white to 2,602 colored. By the same official enumeration there
were in the District of Columbia 60,764 whites to 14,316 persons of the
colored race. Since then, however, the population of the District has
largely increased, and it is estimated that at the present time there
are nearly 100,000 whites to 30,000 negroes. The cause of the augmented
numbers of the latter class needs no explanation. Contiguous to Maryland
and Virginia, the District during the war became a place of refuge for
those who escaped from servitude, and it is yet the abiding place of a
considerable proportion of those who sought within its limits a shelter
from bondage. Until then held in slavery and denied all opportunities
for mental culture, their first knowledge of the Government was acquired
when, by conferring upon them freedom, it became the benefactor of their
race. The test of their capability for improvement began when for the
first time the career of free industry and the avenues to intelligence
were opened to them. Possessing these advantages but a limited time--the
greater number perhaps having entered the District of Columbia during
the later years of the war, or since its termination--we may well
pause to inquire whether, after so brief a probation, they are as a
class capable of an intelligent exercise of the right of suffrage and
qualified to discharge the duties of official position. The people
who are daily witnesses of their mode of living, and who have become
familiar with their habits of thought, have expressed the conviction
that they are not yet competent to serve as electors, and thus become
eligible for office in the local governments under which they live.
Clothed with the elective franchise, their numbers, already largely in
excess of the demand for labor, would be soon increased by an influx
from the adjoining States. Drawn from fields where employment is
abundant, they would in vain seek it here, and so add to the
embarrassments already experienced from the large class of idle persons
congregated in the District. Hardly yet capable of forming correct
judgments upon the important questions that often make the issues
of a political contest, they could readily be made subservient to the
purposes of designing persons. While in Massachusetts, under the census
of 1860, the proportion of white to colored males over 20 years of age
was 130 to 1, here the black race constitutes nearly one-third of the
entire population, whilst the same class surrounds the District on all
sides, ready to change their residence at a moment's notice, and with
all the facility of a nomadic people, in order to enjoy here, after a
short residence, a privilege they find nowhere else. It is within their
power in one year to come into the District in such numbers as to have
the supreme control of the white race, and to govern them by their own
officers and by the exercise of all the municipal authority--among
the rest, of the power of taxation over property in which they have
no interest. In Massachusetts, where they have enjoyed the benefits
of a thorough educational system, a qualification of intelligence
is required, while here suffrage is extended to all without
discrimination--as well to the most incapable who can prove a
residence in the District of one year as to those persons of color who,
comparatively few in number, are permanent inhabitants, and, having
given evidence of merit and qualification, are recognized as useful and
responsible members of the community. Imposed upon an unwilling people
placed by the Constitution under the exclusive legislation of Congress,
it would be viewed as an arbitrary exercise of power and as an
indication by the country of the purpose of Congress to compel the
acceptance of negro suffrage by the States. It would engender a feeling
of opposition and hatred between the two races, which, becoming deep
rooted and ineradicable, would prevent them from living together in
a state of mutual friendliness. Carefully avoiding every measure that
might tend to produce such a result, and following the clear and
well-ascertained popular will, we should assiduously endeavor to promote
kindly relations between them, and thus, when that popular will leads
the way, prepare for the gradual and harmonious introduction of this
new element into the political power of the country.
It can not be urged that the proposed extension of suffrage in the
District of Columbia is necessary to enable persons of color to protect
either their interests or their rights. They stand here precisely as
they stand in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Here as elsewhere, in all
that pertains to civil rights, there is nothing to distinguish this
class of persons from citizens of the United States, for they possess
the "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security
of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens," and are made
"subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other,
any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding." Nor, as has been assumed, are their suffrages
necessary to aid a loyal sentiment here, for local governments already
exist of undoubted fealty to the Government, and are sustained by
communities which were among the first to testify their devotion to the
Union, and which during the struggle furnished their full quotas of men
to the military service of the country.
The exercise of the elective franchise is the highest attribute of an
American citizen, and when guided by virtue, intelligence, patriotism,
and a proper appreciation of our institutions constitutes the true basis
of a democratic form of government, in which the sovereign power is
lodged in the body of the people. Its influence for good necessarily
depends upon the elevated character and patriotism of the elector, for
if exercised by persons who do not justly estimate its value and who are
indifferent as to its results it will only serve as a means of placing
power in the hands of the unprincipled and ambitious, and must eventuate
in the complete destruction of that liberty of which it should be the
most powerful conservator. Great danger is therefore to be apprehended
from an untimely extension of the elective franchise to any new class
in our country, especially when the large majority of that class, in
wielding the power thus placed in their hands, can not be expected
correctly to comprehend the duties and responsibilities which pertain
to suffrage. Yesterday, as it were, 4,000,000 persons were held in a
condition of slavery that had existed for generations; to-day they are
freemen and are assumed by law to be citizens. It can not be presumed,
from their previous condition of servitude, that as a class they are as
well informed as to the nature of our Government as the intelligent
foreigner who makes our land the home of his choice. In the case of
the latter neither a residence of five years and the knowledge of our
institutions which it gives nor attachment to the principles of the
Constitution are the only conditions upon which he can be admitted to
citizenship; he must prove in addition a good moral character, and thus
give reasonable ground for the belief that he will be faithful to the
obligations which he assumes as a citizen of the Republic. Where a
people--the source of all political power--speak by their suffrages
through the instrumentality of the ballot box, it must be carefully
guarded against the control of those who are corrupt in principle and
enemies of free institutions, for it can only become to our political
and social system a safe conductor of healthy popular sentiment when
kept free from demoralizing influences. Controlled through fraud and
usurpation by the designing, anarchy and despotism must inevitably
follow.
In the hands of the patriotic and worthy our Government will be
preserved upon the principles of the Constitution inherited from our
fathers. It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot box
a new class of voters not qualified for the exercise of the elective
franchise we weaken our system of government instead of adding to its
strength and durability.
In returning this bill to the Senate I deeply regret that there should
be any conflict of opinion between the legislative and executive
departments of the Government in regard to measures that vitally affect
the prosperity and peace of the country. Sincerely desiring to reconcile
the States with one another and the whole people to the Government of
the United States, it has been my earnest wish to cooperate with
Congress in all measures having for their object a proper and complete
adjustment of the questions resulting from our late civil war. Harmony
between the coordinate branches of the Government, always necessary for
the public welfare, was never more demanded than at the present time,
and it will therefore be my constant aim to promote as far as possible
concert of action between them. The differences of opinion that have
already occurred have rendered me only the more cautious, lest the
Executive should encroach upon any of the prerogatives of Congress,
or by exceeding in any manner the constitutional limit of his duties
destroy the equilibrium which should exist between the several
coordinate departments, and which is so essential to the harmonious
working of the Government. I know it has been urged that the executive
department is more likely to enlarge the sphere of its action than
either of the other two branches of the Government, and especially in
the exercise of the veto power conferred upon it by the Constitution. It
should be remembered, however, that this power is wholly negative and
conservative in its character, and was intended to operate as a check
upon unconstitutional, hasty, and improvident legislation and as a means
of protection against invasions of the just powers of the executive and
judicial departments. It is remarked by Chancellor Kent that--
To enact laws is a transcendent power, and if the body that possesses
it be a full and equal representation of the people there is danger of
its pressing with destructive weight upon all the other parts of the
machinery of Government. It has therefore been thought necessary by the
most skillful and most experienced artists in the science of civil
polity that strong barriers should be erected for the protection and
security of the other necessary powers of the Government. Nothing has
been deemed more fit and expedient for the purpose than the provision
that the head of the executive department should be so constituted as
to secure a requisite share of independence and that he should have a
negative upon the passing of laws; and that the judiciary power, resting
on a still more permanent basis, should have the right of determining
upon the validity of laws by the standard of the Constitution.
The necessity of some such check in the hands of the Executive is shown
by reference to the most eminent writers upon our system of government,
who seem to concur in the opinion that encroachments are most to be
apprehended from the department in which all legislative powers are
vested by the Constitution. Mr. Madison, in referring to the difficulty
of providing some practical security for each against the invasion of
the others, remarks that "the legislative department is everywhere
extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its
impetuous vortex." "The founders of our Republic * * * seem never to
have recollected the danger from legislative usurpations, which by
assembling all power in the same hands must lead to the same tyranny as
is threatened by Executive usurpations." "In a representative republic,
where the executive magistracy is carefully limited both in the extent
and the duration of its power, and where the legislative power is
exercised by an assembly which is inspired, by a supposed influence over
the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength, which
is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a
multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the
objects of its passions by means which reason prescribes, it is against
the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to
indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions." "The
legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from
other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more
extensive and less susceptible of precise limits, it can with the
greater facility mask, under complicated and indirect measures, the
encroachments which it makes on the coordinate departments." "On the
other side, the Executive power being restrained within a narrower
compass and being more simple in its nature, and the judiciary being
described by landmarks still less uncertain, projects of usurpation
by either of these departments would immediately betray and defeat
themselves. Nor is this all. As the legislative department alone has
access to the pockets of the people and has in some constitutions full
discretion and in all a prevailing influence over the pecuniary rewards
of those who fill the other departments, a dependence is thus created in
the latter which gives still greater facility to encroachments of the
former." "We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is
to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other
departments."
Mr. Jefferson, in referring to the early constitution of
Virginia, objected that by its provisions all the powers of
government--legislative, executive, and judicial--resulted to the
legislative body, holding that "the concentrating these in the same
hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no
alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands,
and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would
surely be as oppressive as one." "As little will it avail us that they
are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we
fought for, but one which should not only be founded on free principles,
but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced
among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their
legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the
others. For this reason that convention which passed the ordinance of
government laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative,
executive, and judicial departments should be separate and distinct,
so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them
at the same time. But no barrier was provided between these several
powers. The judiciary and executive members were left dependent on the
legislative for their subsistence in office, and some of them for their
continuance in it. If, therefore, the legislature assumes executive and
judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made, nor, if made, can
be effectual, because in that case they may put their proceedings into
the form of an act of assembly, which will render them obligatory on the
other branches. They have accordingly in many instances decided rights
which should have been left to judiciary controversy; and the direction
of the executive, during the whole time of their session, is becoming
habitual and familiar."
Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, reviews the
same subject, and says:
The truth is that the legislative power is the great and overruling
power in every free government. * * * The representatives of the people
will watch with jealousy every encroachment of the executive magistrate,
for it trenches upon their own authority. But who shall watch the
encroachment of these representatives themselves? Will they be as
jealous of the exercise of power by themselves as by others? * * *
There are many reasons which may be assigned for the engrossing
influence of the legislative department. In the first place, its
constitutional powers are more extensive, and less capable of being
brought within precise limits than those of either the other
departments. The bounds of the executive authority are easily marked
out and defined. It reaches few objects, and those are known. It can
not transcend them without being brought in contact with the other
departments. Laws may check and restrain and bound its exercise. The
same remarks apply with still greater force to the judiciary. The
jurisdiction is, or may be, bounded to a few objects or persons; or,
however general and unlimited, its operations are necessarily confined
to the mere administration of private and public justice. It can not
punish without law. It can not create controversies to act upon. It can
decide only upon rights and cases as they are brought by others before
it. It can do nothing for itself. It must do everything for others. It
must obey the laws, and if it corruptly administers them it is subjected
to the power of impeachment. On the other hand, the legislative power
except in the few cases of constitutional prohibition, is unlimited. It
is forever varying its means and its ends. It governs the institutions
and laws and public policy of the country. It regulates all its vast
interests. It disposes of all its property. Look but at the exercise
of two or three branches of its ordinary powers. It levies all taxes;
it directs and appropriates all supplies; it gives the rules for the
descent, distribution, and devises of all property held by individuals;
it controls the sources and the resources of wealth; it changes at its
will the whole fabric of the laws; it molds at its pleasure almost all
the institutions which give strength and comfort and dignity to society.
In the next place, it is the direct visible representative of the will
of the people in all the changes of times and circumstances. It has the
pride as well as the power of numbers. It is easily moved and steadily
moved by the strong impulses of popular feeling and popular odium. It
obeys without reluctance the wishes and the will of the majority for the
time being. The path to public favor lies open by such obedience, and it
finds not only support but impunity in whatever measures the majority
advises, even though they transcend the constitutional limits. It has no
motive, therefore, to be jealous or scrupulous in its own use of power;
and it finds its ambition stimulated and its arm strengthened by the
countenance and the courage of numbers. These views are not alone those
of men who look with apprehension upon the fate of republics, but they
are also freely admitted by some of the strongest advocates for popular
rights and the permanency of republican institutions. * * *
* * * * *
* * * Each department should have a will of its own. * * * Each should
have its own independence secured beyond the power of being taken away
by either or both of the others. But at the same time the relations of
each to the other should be so strong that there should be a mutual
interest to sustain and protect each other. There should not only be
constitutional means, but personal motives to resist encroachments of
one or either of the others. Thus ambition would be made to counteract
ambition, the desire of power to check power, and the pressure of
interest to balance an opposing interest.
* * * * *
* * * The judiciary is naturally and almost necessarily, as has been
already said, the weakest department. It can have no means of influence
by patronage. Its powers can never be wielded for itself. It has no
command over the purse or the sword of the nation. It can neither lay
taxes, nor appropriate money, nor command armies, nor appoint to office.
It is never brought into contact with the people by constant appeals and
solicitations and private intercourse, which belong to all the other
departments of Government. It is seen only in controversies or in trials
and punishments. Its rigid justice and impartiality give it no claims to
favor, however they may to respect. It stands solitary and unsupported,
except by that portion of public opinion which is interested only in the
strict administration of justice. It can rarely secure the sympathy or
zealous support either of the Executive or the Legislature. If they
are not, as is not unfrequently the case, jealous of its prerogatives,
the constant necessity of scrutinizing the acts of each, upon the
application of any private person, and the painful duty of pronouncing
judgment that these acts are a departure from the law or Constitution
can have no tendency to conciliate kindness or nourish influence. It
would seem, therefore, that some additional guards would, under the
circumstances, be necessary to protect this department from the absolute
dominion of the others. Yet rarely have any such guards been applied,
and every attempt to introduce them has been resisted with a pertinacity
which demonstrates how slow popular leaders are to introduce checks upon
their own power and how slow the people are to believe that the
judiciary is the real bulwark of their liberties. * * *
* * * * *
* * * If any department of the Government has undue influence or
absorbing power, it certainly has not been the executive or judiciary.
In addition to what has been said by these distinguished writers,
it may also be urged that the dominant party in each House may, by the
expulsion of a sufficient number of members or by the exclusion from
representation of a requisite number of States, reduce the minority to
less than one-third. Congress by these means might be enabled to pass a
law, the objections of the President to the contrary notwithstanding,
which would render impotent the other two departments of the Government
and make inoperative the wholesome and restraining power which it was
intended by the framers of the Constitution should be exerted by them.
This would be a practical concentration of all power in the Congress
of the United States; this, in the language of the author of the
Declaration of Independence, would be "precisely the definition of
despotic government."
I have preferred to reproduce these teachings of the great statesmen
and constitutional lawyers of the early and later days of the Republic
rather than to rely simply upon an expression of my own opinions.
We can not too often recur to them, especially at a conjuncture like
the present. Their application to our actual condition is so apparent
that they now come to us a living voice, to be listened to with more
attention than at any previous period of our history. We have been and
are yet in the midst of popular commotion. The passions aroused by a
great civil war are still dominant. It is not a time favorable to that
calm and deliberate judgment which is the only safe guide when radical
changes in our institutions are to be made. The measure now before me is
one of those changes. It initiates an untried experiment for a people
who have said, with one voice, that it is not for their good. This alone
should make us pause, but it is not all. The experiment has not been
tried, or so much as demanded, by the people of the several States for
themselves. In but few of the States has such an innovation been allowed
as giving the ballot to the colored population without any other
qualification than a residence of one year, and in most of them the
denial of the ballot to this race is absolute and by fundamental law
placed beyond the domain of ordinary legislation. In most of those
States the evil of such suffrage would be partial, but, small as it
would be, it is guarded by constitutional barriers. Here the innovation
assumes formidable proportions, which may easily grow to such an extent
as to make the white population a subordinate element in the body
politic.
After full deliberation upon this measure, I can not bring myself to
approve it, even upon local considerations, nor yet as the beginning of
an experiment on a larger scale. I yield to no one in attachment to that
rule of general suffrage which distinguishes our policy as a nation.
But there is a limit, wisely observed hitherto, which makes the ballot
a privilege and a trust, and which requires of some classes a time
suitable for probation and preparation. To give it indiscriminately to
a new class, wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to
perform the trust which it demands, is to degrade it, and finally to
destroy its power, for it may be safely assumed that no political truth
is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing
extension of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction.