That this should continue to flaunt, now that Slavery is condemned,
increases the inconsistency. By the decree against that wrong all
semblance of apology was removed. Ceasing to be a slave, the former
victim has become not only a man, but a Citizen, admitted alike within
the pale of humanity and within the pale of citizenship. As man he is
entitled to all the rights of man, and as citizen he becomes a member
of our common household, with Equality as the prevailing law. No longer
an African, he is an American; no longer a slave, he is a common part
of the Republic, owing to it patriotic allegiance in return for the
protection of equal laws. By incorporation with the body-politic he
becomes a partner in that transcendent unity, so that there can be no
injury to him without injury to all. Insult to him is insult to an
American citizen. Dishonor to him is dishonor to the Republic itself.
Whatever he may have been, he is now the same as ourselves. Our rights
are his rights; our equality is his equality; our privileges and
immunities are his great freehold. To enjoy his citizenship, people
from afar, various in race and complexion, seek our shores, losing here
all distinctions of birth,--as into the ocean all rivers flow, losing
all trace of origin or color, and there is but one uniform expanse
of water, where each particle is like every other particle, and all
are subject to the same law. In this citizenship the African is now
absorbed.
Not only is he Citizen. There is no office in the Republic, from lowest
to highest, executive, judicial, or representative, which is closed
against him. The doors of this Chamber swing open, and he sits here
the coëqual of any Senator. The doors of the other Chamber also swing
open. Nay, Sir, he may be Vice-President, he may be President; but he
cannot enter a hotel or public conveyance, or offer his child at the
common school, without insult on account of color. Nothing can make
this terrible inconsistency more conspicuous. An American citizen,
with every office wide open to his honorable ambition, in whom are all
the great possibilities of our Republic, who may be anything according
to merit, is exposed to a scourge which descends upon the soul as the
scourge of Slavery descended upon the flesh.
In ancient times the cry, “I am a Roman citizen,” stayed the scourge of
the Lictor; and this cry, with its lesson of immunity, has resounded
through the ages, testifying to Roman greatness. Once it was on the
lips of Paul, as appears in the familiar narrative:--
“And as they bound him with thongs, Paul said unto the
centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man
that is a Roman, and uncondemned?
“When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief
captain, saying, Take heed what thou doest; for this man is a
Roman.
…
“And the chief captain also was afraid, after he knew that he
was a Roman, and because he had bound him.”[217]
Will not our “Chief Captain,” will not Senators, take heed what they
do, that the scourge may not continue to fall upon a whole race, each
one of whom is an American and uncondemned? Is our citizenship a
feebler safeguard than that of Rome? Shall the cry, “I am an American
citizen,” be raised in vain against perpetual outrage?
In speaking of the citizen as of our household, I adopt a distinction
employed by a great teacher in Antiquity. Aristotle, in counsels to
his former pupil, Alexander, before his career of Asiatic conquest,
enjoined a broad distinction between Greeks and Barbarians. The former
he was to treat as friends, and of the household; the latter he was to
treat as brutes and plants.[218] This is the very distinction between
Citizenship and Slavery. The Citizen is of the national household; the
Slave is no better than brute or plant. But our brutes and plants are
all changed into men; our Barbarians are transformed into Greeks. There
is no person among us now, whatever his birth or complexion, who may
not claim the great name of Citizen, to be protected not less at home
than abroad,--but always, whether at home or abroad, by the National
Government, which is the natural guardian of the citizen.