is doubtless important, but Congress has no right to use a means of
performing it forbidden by the Constitution, no matter how necessary or
proper it might be thought to be. But, sir, this doctrine is monstrous.
It has no foundation in the Constitution. It subjects all the States
to the will of Congress; it places their institutions at the feet of
Congress. It creates in Congress an absolute, unqualified despotism. It
asserts the power of Congress in changing the State governments to be
"plenary, supreme, unlimited," "subject only to revision by the people
of the United States." The rights of the people of the State are
nothing; their will is nothing. Congress first decides; the people of
the whole Union revise. My own State of Ohio is liable at any moment to
be called in question for her constitution. She does not permit negroes
to vote. If this doctrine be true, Congress may decide that this
exclusion is anti-republican, and by force of arms abrogate that
constitution and set up another, permitting negroes to vote. From that
decision of Congress there is no appeal to the people of Ohio, but
only to the people of New York and Massachusetts and Wisconsin, at the
election of representatives, and, if a majority cannot be elected to
reverse the decision, the people of Ohio must submit. Woe be to the
day when that doctrine shall be established, for from its centralized
despotism we will appeal to the sword!
Sir, the rights of the States were the foundation corners of the
confederation. The Constitution recognized them, maintained them,
provided for their perpetuation. Our fathers thought them the safeguard
of our liberties. They have proved so. They have reconciled liberty
with empire; they have reconciled the freedom of the individual with the
increase of our magnificent domain. They are the test, the touchstone,
the security of our liberties. This bill, and the avowed doctrine of its
supporters, sweeps them all instantly away. It substitutes despotism for
self-government--despotism the more severe because vested in a numerous
Congress elected by a people who may not feel the exercise of its power.
It subverts the government, destroys the confederation, and erects a
tyranny on the ruins of republican governments. It creates unity--it
destroys liberty; it maintains integrity of territory, but destroys the
rights of the citizen.
THADDEUS STEVENS,
OF PENNSYLVANIA. (BORN 1792, DIED 1868.)
ON RECONSTRUCTION; THE RADICAL REPUBLICAN THEORY;
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 18, 1865.
A candid examination of the power and proper principles of
reconstruction can be offensive to no one, and may possibly be
profitable by exciting inquiry. One of the suggestions of the message
which we are now considering has special reference to this. Perhaps
it is the principle most interesting to the people at this time. The
President assumes, what no one doubts, that the late rebel States have
lost their constitutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of
representation in Congress, except by permission of the Government. It
matters but little, with this admission, whether you call them States
out of the Union, and now conquered territories, or assert that because
the Constitution forbids them to do what they did do, that they are
therefore only dead as to all national and political action, and will
remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of
life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. In other
words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead carcasses
lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it
requires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State
government and send representatives to Congress. Nobody, I believe,
pretends that with their old constitutions and frames of government they
can be permitted to claim their old rights under the Constitution. They
have torn their constitutional States into atoms, and built on their
foundations fabrics of a totally different character. Dead men cannot
raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their own existence "as it
was." Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the Constitution
place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for it only
adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he
only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the Commander-in-Chief of
the armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the
sovereign legislative power of the conqueror shall give them law.
There is fortunately no difficulty in solving the question. There are
two provisions in the Constitution, under one of which the case must
fall. The fourth article says:
"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union."
In my judgment this is the controlling provision in this case.
Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two
acknowledged belligerents severed their original compacts, and broke all
the ties that bound them together. The future condition of the conquered
power depends on the will of the conqueror. They must come in as new
States or remain as conquered provinces. Congress--the Senate and House
of Representatives, with the concurrence of the President--is the
only power that can act in the matter. But suppose, as some dreaming
theorists imagine, that these States have never been out of the Union,
but have only destroyed their State governments so as to be incapable of
political action; then the fourth section of the fourth article applies,
which says:
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
republican form of government."
Who is the United States? Not the judiciary; not the President; but the
sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives
in Congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. It means the
political Government--the concurrent action of both branches of Congress
and the Executive. The separate action of each amounts to nothing,
either in admitting new States or guaranteeing republican governments
to lapsed or outlawed States. Whence springs the preposterous idea that
either the President, or the Senate, or the House of Representatives,
acting separately, can determine the right of States to send members or
Senators to the Congress of the Union?
To prove that they are and for four years have been out of the Union for
all legal purposes, and, being now conquered, subject to the absolute
disposal of Congress, I will suggest a few ideas and adduce a few
authorities. If the so-called "confederate States of America" were an
independent belligerent, and were so acknowledged by the United States
and by Europe, or had assumed and maintained an attitude which entitled
them to be considered and treated as a belligerent, then, during such
time, they were precisely in the condition of a foreign nation with whom
we were at war; nor need their independence as a nation be acknowledged
by us to produce that effect.
After such clear and repeated decisions it is something worse than
ridiculous to hear men of respectable standing attempting to nullify the
law of nations, and declare the Supreme Court of the United States in
error, because, as the Constitution forbids it, the States could not go
out of the Union in fact. A respectable gentleman was lately reciting
this argument, when he suddenly stopped and said, "Did you hear of that
atrocious murder committed in our town? A rebel deliberately murdered
a Government official." The person addressed said, "I think you are
mistaken." "How so? I saw it myself." "You are wrong, no murder was or
could be committed, for the law forbids it."
The theory that the rebel States, for four years a separate power and
without representation in Congress, were all the time here in the Union,
is a good deal less ingenious and respectable than the metaphysics of
Berkeley, which proved that neither the world nor any human being was in
existence. If this theory were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven;
but its effect is deeply injurious to the stability of the nation. I
cannot doubt that the late confederate States are out of the Union
to all intents and purposes for which the conqueror may choose so to
consider them.
* * * * *
But suppose these powerful but now subdued belligerents, instead of
being out of the Union, are merely destroyed, and are now lying about,
a dead corpse, or with animation so suspended as to be incapable of
action, and wholly unable to heal themselves by any unaided movements of
their own. Then they may fall under the provision of the Constitution,
which says "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the
Union a republican form of government." Under that power, can the
judiciary, or the President, or the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, or
the Senate or House of Representatives, acting separately, restore them
to life and readmit them into the Union? I insist that if each acted
separately, though the action of each was identical with all the others,
it would amount to nothing. Nothing but the joint action of the two
Houses of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do it.
If the Senate admitted their Senators, and the House their members,
it would have no effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth
Congress might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress for
the last four years.
* * * * *
Congress alone can do it. But Congress does not mean the Senate, or the
House of Representatives, and President, all acting severally. Their
joint action constitutes Congress. Hence a law of Congress must be
passed before any new State can be admitted, or any dead ones revived.
Until then no member can be lawfully admitted into either House. Hence
it appears with how little knowledge of constitutional law each branch
is urged to admit members separately from these destroyed States. The
provision that "each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns,
and qualifications of its own members," has not the most distant bearing
on this question. Congress must create States and declare when they
are entitled to be represented. Then each House must judge whether
the members presenting themselves from a recognized State possess the
requisite qualifications of age, residence, and citizenship; and whether
the elections and returns are according to law. The Houses, separately,
can judge of nothing else. It seems amazing that any man of legal
education could give it any larger meaning.
It is obvious from all this that the first duty of Congress is to pass
a law declaring the condition of these outside or defunct States, and
providing proper civil governments for them. Since the conquest
they have been governed by martial law. Military rule is necessarily
despotic, and ought not to exist longer than is absolutely necessary.
As there are no symptoms that the people of these provinces will be
prepared to participate in constitutional government for some years, I
know of no arrangement so proper for them as territorial governments.
There they can learn the principles of freedom and eat the fruit of
foul rebellion. Under such governments, while electing members to the
territorial Legislatures, they will necessarily mingle with those
to whom Congress shall extend the right of suffrage. In Territories,
Congress fixes the qualifications of electors; and I know of no better
place nor better occasion for the conquered rebels and the conqueror to
practise justice to all men, and accustom themselves to make and to obey
equal laws.
And these fallen rebels cannot at their option reenter the heaven which
they have disturbed, the garden of Eden which they have deserted;
as flaming swords are set at the gates to secure their exclusion, it
becomes important to the welfare of the nation to inquire when the doors
shall be reopened for their admission.
According to my judgment they ought never to be recognized as capable
of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the
Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its framers
intended, and so as to secure perpetual ascendency to the party of the
Union; and so as to render our republican Government firm and stable
forever. The first of those amendments is to change the basis of
representation among the States from Federal members to actual voters.
Now all the colored freemen in the slave States, and three fifths of the
slaves, are represented, though none of them have votes. The States have
nineteen representatives of colored slaves. If the slaves are now free
then they can add, for the other two fifths, thirteen more, making the
slaves represented thirty-two. I suppose the free blacks in those States
will give at least five more, making the representation of non-voting
people of color about thirty-seven. The whole number of representatives
now from the slave States is seventy. Add the other two fifths and it
will be eighty-three.
If the amendment prevails, and those States withhold the right of
suffrage from persons of color, it will deduct about thirty-seven,
leaving them but forty-six. With the basis unchanged, the eighty-three
Southern members, with the Democrats that will in the best times be
elected from the North, will always give them a majority in Congress
and in the Electoral College. They will at the very first election take
possession of the White House and the halls of Congress. I need not
depict the ruin that would follow. Assumption of the rebel debt or
repudiation of the Federal debt would be sure to follow. The oppression
of the freedmen, there--amendment of their State constitutions, and the
reestablishment of slavery would be the inevitable result. That they
would scorn and disregard their present constitutions, forced upon them
in the midst of martial law, would be both natural and just. No one who
has any regard for freedom of elections can look upon those governments,
forced upon them in duress, with any favor. If they should grant the
right of suffrage to persons of color, I think there would always be
Union white men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, to divide the
representation, and thus continue the Republican ascendency. If they
should refuse to thus alter their election laws it would reduce the
representatives of the late slave States to about forty-five and render
them powerless for evil.
It is plain that this amendment must be consummated before the defunct
States are admitted to be capable of State action, or it never can be.
The proposed amendment to allow Congress to lay a duty on exports
is precisely in the same situation. Its importance cannot well be
overstated. It is very obvious that for many years the South will not
pay much under our internal revenue laws. The only article on which we
can raise any considerable amount is cotton. It will be grown largely at
once. With ten cents a pound export duty it would be furnished cheaper
to foreign markets than they could obtain it from any other part of the
world. The late war has shown that. Two million bales exported, at five
hundred pounds to the bale, would yield $100,000,000. This seems to me
the chief revenue we shall ever derive from the South. Besides, it
would be a protection to that amount to our domestic manufactures.
Other proposed amendments--to make all laws uniform; to prohibit the
assumption of the rebel debt--are of vital importance, and the
only thing that can prevent the combined forces of copperheads and
secessionists from legislating against the interests of the Union
whenever they may obtain an accidental majority.
But this is not all that we ought to do before these inveterate rebels
are invited to participate in our legislation. We have turned, or are
about to turn, loose four million of slaves without a hut to shelter
them, or a cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery have
prevented them from acquiring an education, understanding the commonest
laws of contract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This
Congress is bound to provide for them until they can take care of
themselves. If we do not furnish them with homesteads, and hedge them
around with protective laws; if we leave them to the legislation of
their late masters, we had better have left them in bondage. Their
condition would be worse than that of our prisoners at Andersonville. If
we fail in this great duty now, when we have the power, we shall deserve
and receive the execration of history and of all future ages.
Two things are of vital importance.
1. So to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be
counted in any of the amendments of the Constitution until they are
duly admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their
conqueror. For more than six months the amendment of the Constitution
abolishing slavery has been ratified by the Legislatures of three
fourths of the States that acted on its passage by Congress, and which
had Legislatures, or which were States capable of acting, or required to
act, on the question.
I take no account of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels, who without
any legal authority have assembled in the capitals of the late rebel
States and simulated legislative bodies. Nor do I regard with any
respect the cunning by-play into which they deluded the Secretary of
State by frequent telegraphic announcements that "South Carolina had
adopted the amendment," "Alabama has adopted the amendment, being the
twenty-seventh State," etc. This was intended to delude the people, and
accustom Congress to hear repeated the names of these extinct States as
if they were alive; when, in truth, they have no more existence than the
revolted cities of Latium, two thirds of whose people were colonized and
their property confiscated, and their right of citizenship withdrawn by
conquering and avenging Rome.
2. It is equally important to the stability of this Republic that it
should now be solemnly decided what power can revive, recreate, and
reinstate these provinces into the family of States, and invest them
with the rights of American citizens. It is time that Congress should
assert its sovereignty, and assume something of the dignity of a Roman
senate. It is fortunate that the President invites Congress to take this
manly attitude. After stating with great frankness in his able message
his theory, which, however, is found to be impracticable, and which I
believe very few now consider tenable, he refers the whole matter to
the judgment of Congress. If Congress should fail firmly and wisely to
discharge that high duty it is not the fault of the President.
This Congress owes it to its own character to set the seal of
reprobation upon a doctrine which is becoming too fashionable, and
unless rebuked will be the recognized principle of our Government.
Governor Perry and other provisional governors and orators proclaim
that "this is the white man's Government." The whole copperhead party,
pandering to the lowest prejudices of the ignorant, repeat the cuckoo
cry, "This is the white man's Government." Demagogues of all parties,
even some high in authority, gravely shout, "This is the white man's
Government." What is implied by this? That one race of men are to have
the exclusive right forever to rule this nation, and to exercise all
acts of sovereignty, while all other races and nations and colors are to
be their subjects, and have no voice in making the laws and choosing the
rulers by whom they are to be governed. Wherein does this differ from
slavery except in degree? Does not this contradict all the distinctive
principles of the Declaration of Independence? When the great and good
men promulgated that instrument, and pledged their lives and sacred
honors to defend it, it was supposed to form an epoch in civil
government. Before that time it was held that the right to rule was
vested in families, dynasties, or races, not because of superior
intelligence of virtue, but because of a divine right to enjoy exclusive
privileges.
Our fathers repudiated the whole doctrine of the legal superiority of
families or races, and proclaimed the equality of men before the law.
Upon that they created a revolution and built the Republic. They were
prevented by slavery from perfecting the superstructure whose foundation
they had thus broadly laid. For the sake of the Union they consented to
wait, but never relinquished the idea of its final completion. The time
to which they looked forward with anxiety has come. It is our duty to
complete their work. If this Republic is not now made to stand on their
great principles, it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men
will still shake it to its centre. If we have not yet been sufficiently
scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God's
creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the
still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father, still increasing his
inflictions as he increased the severity of the plagues of Egypt until
the tyrant consented to do justice. And when that tyrant repented of
his reluctant consent, and attempted to re-enslave the people, as our
southern tyrants are attempting to do now, he filled the Red Sea with
broken chariots and drowned horses, and strewed the shores with dead
carcasses.
Mr. Chairman, I trust the Republican party will not be alarmed at what I
am saying. I do not profess to speak their sentiments, nor must they
be held responsible for them. I speak for myself, and take the
responsibility, and will settle with my intelligent constituents.
This is not a "white man's Government," in the exclusive sense in
which it is used. To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates
the fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is man's
Government; the Government of all men alike; not that all men will have
equal power and sway within it. Accidental circumstances, natural and
acquired endowment and ability, will vary their fortunes. But equal
rights to all the privileges of the Government is innate in every
immortal being, no matter what the shape or color of the tabernacle
which it inhabits.
If equal privileges were granted to all, I should not expect any but
white men to be elected to office for long ages to come. The prejudice
engendered by slavery would not soon permit merit to be preferred
to color. But it would still be beneficial to the weaker races. In a
country where political divisions will always exist, their power,
joined with just white men, would greatly modify, if it did not entirely
prevent, the injustice of majorities. Without the right of suffrage in
the late slave States (I do not speak of the free States), I believe the
slaves had far better been left in bondage. I see it stated that very
distinguished advocates of the right of suffrage lately declared in this
city that they do not expect to obtain it by congressional legislation,
but only by administrative action, because, as one gallant gentleman
said, the States had not been out of the Union. Then they will never get
it. The President is far sounder than they. He sees that administrative
action has nothing to do with it. If it ever is to come, it must be by
constitutional amendments or congressional action in the Territories,
and in enabling acts.
How shameful that men of influence should mislead and miseducate the
public mind! They proclaim, "This is the white man's Government," and
the whole coil of copperheads echo the same sentiment, and upstart,
jealous Republicans join the cry. Is it any wonder ignorant foreigners
and illiterate natives should learn this doctrine, and be led to despise
and maltreat a whole race of their fellow-men?
Sir, this doctrine of a white man's Government is as atrocious as the
infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief-Justice to everlasting
fame; and, I fear, to everlasting fire.
HENRY J. RAYMOND,
OF NEW YORK. (BORN 1820, DIED 1869.)
ON RECONSTRUCTION; CONSERVATIVE, OR ADMINISTRATION, REPUBLICAN OPINION;
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 21, 1865.
I need not say that I have been gratified to hear many things which have
fallen from the lips of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Finck), who has
just taken his seat. I have no party feeling, nor any other feeling,
which would prevent me from rejoicing in the indications apparent on
that side of the House of a purpose to concur with the loyal people of
the country, and with the loyal administration of the Government, and
with the loyal majorities in both Houses of Congress, in restoring peace
and order to our common country. I cannot, perhaps, help wishing,
sir, that these indications of an interest in the preservation of our
Government had come somewhat sooner. I cannot help feeling that such
expressions cannot now be of as much service to the country as they
might once have been. If we could have had from that side of the House
such indications of an interest in the preservation of the Union,
such heartfelt sympathy with the efforts of the Government for the
preservation of that Union, such hearty denunciation of those who were
seeking its destruction, while the war was raging, I am sure we might
have been spared some years of war, some millions of money, and rivers
of blood and tears.