MR. PRESIDENT,--The question of power, I take it, must be settled
in this Chamber. You have already most solemnly voted to require in
every new constitution suffrage for all, without distinction of race
or color or previous condition. But the greater contains the less. If
you can do that, you can do everything. If you can require that Magna
Charta of human rights, you can require what is smaller. It is already
fixed in your statutes, enrolled in your archives, that Congress has
this great power. I do not say whether it has this power over other
States; that is not the question; but it has the power over the Rebel
States. That power is derived from several sources,--first, from the
necessity of the case, because the State governments there are illegal,
and the whole region has passed, as in the case of Territories, under
the jurisdiction of Congress: no legal government exists there, except
what Congress supplies. There is another source in the military power
now established over that region; then, again, in that great clause
of the National Constitution by which you are required to guaranty to
every State a republican form of government. Here is enough. Out of
these three sources, these three overflowing fountains, springs ample
authority. You have exercised it by prescribing in their constitutions
Suffrage for all. I ask you to go one step further, and to prescribe
Education for all.
I am met here by personal objections; I am asked why I have not
brought this forward before. Sir, I have brought it forward in season
and out of season. I have on the table before me a speech of mine
in 1865, where, in laying down the great essential guaranties, I
declared them as follows: First, the unity of the Republic; secondly,
Enfranchisement; thirdly, the guaranty of the National debt; fourthly,
the repudiation of the Rebel debt; fifthly, Equal Suffrage; and,
sixthly, Education of the people.[99] Therefore from the beginning I
have asked this guaranty, believing, as I do most clearly, that under
the National Constitution you may demand it. If you may demand it, if
you have the power, then do I insist it is your duty so to do. Duties
are in proportion to powers. These great powers are not merely for
display or idleness, but for employment, to the end that the Republic
may be advanced and fortified.
Then I have been reminded very earnestly by Senators that I have used
strong language in saying that these governments will be open to
the imputation of being born of the bayonet. This is not the first
time I have used that language in this Chamber. From the beginning I
have protested against Reconstruction by military power. Again and
again I have asserted that it is contrary to the genius of republican
institutions, and to a just economy of political forces. I have not
been hearkened to. Others have pressed the intervention of military
power; and now, as I am about to record my vote in favor of the pending
proposition, I cannot but express my sincere and unfeigned regret that
Congress did not see its way to a generous measure of Reconstruction
purely civil in character, having no element of military power. Such
you had before you at the last session in the Louisiana Bill, which I
sought to press day by day; and when, at the last moment, the Military
Bill was passed, I, from my place here, declared that I should deem it
my duty at the earliest possible moment in this session to press the
Louisiana Bill, or some kindred measure not military in character.
I was early tutored in the principles of Jefferson. I cannot
forget his Inaugural Address, where he lays down among the
cardinal principles, or what he calls “the essential principles
of our Government,” and consequently those which ought to shape
its administration, “The supremacy of the civil over the military
authority.” Imbued with this principle, I hoped that Congress would see
the way to establish at once civil governments in all those States,
and not subject them to military power, except so far as needed for
purposes of protection. This is the true object of the army. It is to
protect the country,--not to make constitutions, or to superintend
the making of constitutions. At least, so I have read the history of
republican institutions, and such are the aspirations that I presume to
express for my country.
The vote on Mr. Summer’s proposition stood, Yeas 20, Nays 20,
being a tie, so that the amendment was lost. Any one Senator
changing from the negative would have carried it.
The bill passed the Senate,--Yeas 38, Nays 2. On the amendments
of the Senate there was a difference between the two Houses,
which ended in a committee of conference, whose report was
concurred in without a division.
March 23d, the bill was vetoed by the President. On the same
day it was passed again by the House,--Yeas 114, Nays 25,--and
by the Senate,--Yeas 40, Nays 7,--being more than two thirds;
so that it became a law, notwithstanding the objections of the
President.[100]