“That it shall be the duty of the governor and legislative
council in each of these States to establish public schools,
which shall be open to all, without distinction of race or
color, to the end, that, where suffrage is universal, education
may be universal also, and the new governments find support in
the intelligence of the people.”
Such are the provisional governments.
The bill then provides for permanent governments republican and truly
loyal. For this purpose the governor must make a registration of male
citizens twenty-one years of age, of whatever color, race, or former
condition, and, on the completion of this register, invite all to take
the oath that they are not in the excluded classes, and also the oath
to maintain a republican form of government; and if a majority of the
persons duly registered shall take these oaths, then he is to order an
election for members of a convention to frame a State constitution.
Nobody can vote or sit as a member of the convention except those who
have taken the two oaths; but no person can be disqualified on account
of race or color. All qualified as voters are eligible as members of
the convention.
The constitution must contain in substance certain fundamental
conditions, never to be changed without consent of Congress:--
First, That the Union is perpetual;
Secondly, That Slavery is abolished;
Thirdly, That there shall be no denial of the elective franchise, or of
any other right, on account of race or color, but all persons shall be
equal before the law;
Fourthly, That the National debt, including pensions and bounties to
Union soldiers, shall never be repudiated or postponed;
Fifthly, That the Rebel debt, whether contracted by a Rebel State or by
the central government, shall never be recognized or paid; nor shall
any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave, or any pension or
bounty for service in the Rebellion, be recognized or paid;
Sixthly, That public schools shall be established, open to all without
distinction of race or color;
Seventhly, That all persons excluded from office under this Act shall
be excluded by the constitution, until relieved from disability by Act
of Congress.
The constitution must be ratified by the people and submitted to
Congress. If Congress shall approve it as republican in form, and shall
be satisfied that the people of the State are loyal and well-disposed
to the Union, the State shall be restored to its former relations and
the provisional government shall cease.
Such is the bill which I should be glad to press upon your attention,
creating provisional governments and securing permanent governments.
It is not a military bill; and on this account, in spirit and form, if
not in substance, it might be preferred to that which you have begun
to sanction. Besides, it contains abundant safeguards. I regret much
that something like this cannot be adopted. It is with difficulty that
I renounce a desire long cherished to see Reconstruction under the
supervision of Congress, according to the forms of civil order, without
the intervention of military power. I am sure that such a bill would
be agreeable to the Unionists of the Rebel States; and this with me is
a rule of conduct which I am unwilling to disregard. They are without
representation in Congress. Let us be their representatives. I hear
their voices gathered into one prayer. I cannot refuse to listen.
* * * * *
If this bill cannot be adopted, then I ask that you shall take at least
one of its provisions. Require free schools as an essential condition
of Reconstruction. But I am met by the objection, that we are already
concluded by the Military Bill adopted a few days ago, so that we
cannot establish any new conditions. This is a mistake. There is no
word in the Military Bill which can have this interpretation. Besides,
the bill is only a few days old; so that, whatever its character,
nothing is as yet fixed under its provisions. It contains no compact,
no promise, no vested right, nothing which may not be changed, if the
public interests require. There are some who seem to insist that it is
a strait-jacket. On the contrary, this very bill asserts in positive
terms “the paramount authority of the United States.” Surely this is
enough. In the exercise of this authority, it is your duty to provide
all possible safeguards. To adopt a familiar illustration, these States
must be “bound to keep the peace.” Nothing is more common after an
assault and battery. But this can be only by good laws, by careful
provisions, by wise economies, and securities of all kinds.
Sometimes it is argued that it is not permissible to make certain
requirements in the new constitutions, although, when the constitutions
are presented to Congress for approval, we may object to them for the
want of these very things. Thus it is said that we may not require
educational provisions, but that we may object to the constitutions,
when formed, if they fail to have this safeguard. This argument forgets
the paramount power of Congress over the Rebel States, which you have
already exercised in ordaining universal suffrage. Who can doubt, that,
with equal reason, you may ordain universal education also? And permit
me to say that one is the complement of the other. But I do not stop
with assertion of the power. The argument that we are to wait until
the constitution is submitted for approval is not frank. I wish to be
plain and explicit. We have the power, assured by reason and precedent.
Exercise it. Seize the present moment. Grasp the precious privilege.
There are some who act on the principle of doing as little as possible.
I would do as much as possible, believing that all we do in the nature
of safeguard must redound to the good of all and to the national fame.
It is in this spirit that I now move to require a system of free
schools, open to all without distinction of caste. For this great
safeguard I ask your votes.
You have prescribed universal suffrage. Prescribe now universal
education. The power of Congress is the same in one case as in the
other. And you are under an equal necessity to employ it. Electors
by the hundred thousand will exercise the franchise for the first
time, without delay or preparation. They should be educated promptly.
Without education your beneficent legislation may be a failure. The
gift you bestow will be perilous. I was unwilling to make education the
condition of suffrage; but I ask that it shall accompany and sustain
suffrage.
Mr. President, I plead now for Education. Nothing more beautiful
or more precious. Education decorates life, while it increases all
our powers. It is the charm of society, the solace of solitude, and
the multiple of every faculty. It adds incalculably to the capacity
of the individual and to the resources of the community. Careful
inquiry establishes what reason declares, that labor is productive in
proportion to its education. There is no art it does not advance. There
is no form of enterprise it does not encourage and quicken. It brings
victory, and is itself the greatest of victories.
In a republic education is indispensable. A republic without education
is like the creature of imagination, a human being without a soul,
living and moving blindly, with no just sense of the present or the
future. It is a monster. Such have been the Rebel States,--for years
nothing less than political monsters. But such they must be no longer.
It is not too much to say, that, had these States been more
enlightened, they would never have rebelled. The barbarism of Slavery
would have shrunk into insignificance, without sufficient force to
break forth in blood. From the returns before the Rebellion[96] we
learn that in the Slave States there were not less than 493,026
native white persons over twenty years of age who could not read
and write,--while in the Free States, with double the native white
population, there were but 248,725 native whites over twenty years of
age thus blighted by ignorance. In the Slave States the proportion
was 1 in 5; in the Free States it was 1 in 22. The number in Free
Massachusetts, with an adult native white population of 470,375, was
1,055, or 1 in 446; the number in Slave South Carolina, with an adult
native white population of only 120,136, was 15,580, or 1 in 8. The
number in Free Connecticut was 1 in 256, in Slave Virginia 1 in 5; in
Free New Hampshire 1 in 192, and in Slave North Carolina 1 in 3. In
this prevailing ignorance we may trace the Rebellion. A population that
could not read and write naturally failed to comprehend and appreciate
a republican government.
This contrast between the Rebel States and the Loyal States
appeared early. It was conspicuous in two Colonies, each of which
exercised a peculiar influence. Massachusetts began her existence
with a system of free schools. The preamble of her venerable statute
deserves immortality. “That learning may not be buried in the grave
of our fathers,” her founders enacted that every township of fifty
householders should maintain a school for reading and writing, and
every town of a hundred householders a school to fit youths for the
University.[97] This statute was copied in other Colonies. It has
spread far, like a benediction. At the same time Virginia set herself
openly against free schools. Her Governor, Sir William Berkeley, in
1671, in a reply to the Lords Commissioners of Plantations on the
condition of the Colony, made this painful record: “I thank God _there
are no free schools_, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these
hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and
sects into the world, and printing has divulged them.… God keep us from
both!”[98] Thus spoke Massachusetts, and thus spoke Virginia, in that
ancient day. The conflict of ideas had already begun. Can you hesitate
to adopt the statute so well justified by time? It began in an infant
colony. Let it be the law of a mighty republic.
The papers of the day mention an incident, showing how the original
spirit of the Virginia Governor still animates these States. A motion
to print two hundred copies of the Report of the State Superintendent
of Public Education was promptly voted down in the Senate of Louisiana,
while a Senator, in open speech, “denounced the public education scheme
as an unmitigated oppression, an electioneering device, an imposition,
which he intended to bring in a bill to abolish, if they were allowed
to go on legislating.” With such brutality is this beautiful cause now
encountered. It is as if a savage rudely drove an angel from his tent.
Be taught by this example, and do not hesitate, I entreat you.
Remember how much is now in issue. You are to fix the securities of
the future, and especially to see that a republican government is
guarantied in an the Rebel States. I call them “Rebel,” for such they
are in spirit still, and such is their designation in your recent
statute. But I ask nothing in vengeance or unkindness. All that I
propose is for their good, with which is intertwined the good of
all. I would not impose any new penalty or bear hard upon an erring
people. Oh, no! I simply ask a new safeguard for the future, that these
States, through which so much trouble has come, may be a strength
and a blessing to our common country, with prosperity and happiness
everywhere within their borders. I would not impose any new burden;
but I seek a new triumph for civilization. For a military occupation
bristling with bayonets I would substitute the smile of peace. But this
cannot be without Education. As the soldier disappears, his place must
be supplied by the schoolmaster. The muster-roll will be exchanged for
the school-register, and our headquarters will be a school-house.
Do not forget the grandeur of the work in which you are engaged.
You are forming States. Such a work cannot be done hastily or
carelessly. The time you give will be saved to the country hereafter
a thousand-fold. The time you begrudge will rise in judgment against
you. It is a law of Nature, that, just in proportion as the being
produced is higher in the scale and more complete in function, all
the processes are more complex and extended. The mature liberty we
seek cannot have the easy birth of feebler types. As man, endowed with
reason and looking to the heavens, is above the quadruped that walks,
above the bird that flies, above the fish that swims, and above the
worm that crawls, so should these new governments, republican in form
and loyal in soul, created by your care, be above those whose places
they take. The Old must give way to the New, and the New must be worthy
of a Republic, which, ransomed from Slavery, has become an example to
mankind. Farewell to the Old! All hail to the New!
Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, Mr. Stewart, of Nevada,
and Mr. Conness, of California, joined in criticism of Mr.
Sumner’s opposition to the employment of the military arm in
Reconstruction, protesting particularly against the declaration
that States are “about to be born of the bayonet.” To the
proposed requirement of a system of free schools in the Rebel
States Mr. Frelinghuysen objected: “For us to undertake now
to add new conditions to the Reconstruction measure which the
Thirty-Ninth Congress adopted I hold to be bad faith.… That is
not the way to do business.… Let this nation keep its faith. I
hope, Mr. President, that the amendment will not be adopted.”
Mr. Patterson, of New Hampshire, would “be glad to have such
a requisition laid on all the States of the Union, if it were
not unconstitutional. But he wished to ask him [Mr. SUMNER]
this question: Does he think it possible to establish a system
of common schools in these Southern States corresponding to
the common-school system of New England, unless he first
confiscates the large estates and divides them into small
homesteads, so that there may be small landholders who shall
support these schools by the taxation which is laid upon them?”
MR. SUMNER. I do.
MR. PATTERSON. You think it is possible?
MR. SUMNER. I do, certainly,--most clearly.
Mr. Morton said: “The proposition is fundamental in its
character; its importance cannot be overestimated; and I
hope that it will be placed as a condition, upon complying
with which they shall be permitted to return.” Mr. Cole,
of California, declared himself “warmly in favor of the
amendment.” Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, and Mr. Buckalew, of
Pennsylvania, both Democrats, spoke against it. The latter
thought Mr. Sumner “not open to criticism for the sentiments
which he has expressed upon this occasion, nor for the position
which he has assumed.” In a humorous vein, he said: “The
propositions which the Senator from Massachusetts makes one
year, and which are criticized by his colleagues as extreme,
inappropriate, and untimely, are precisely the propositions
which those colleagues support with greater zeal and vehemence,
if possible, than he, the year following. In short, Sir, we
can foresee at one session of Congress the character of the
propositions and of the arguments with which we are to be
favored at the next in this Chamber, by looking to the pioneer
man, who goes forward in advance, his banner thrown out, his
cause announced, the means by which it shall be carried on and
the objects in view proclaimed with force and frankness.”