“a doubtful question, the whole former history of the country,
the Declaration of Independence, the writings of Washington and
of Jefferson and of Madison, the writings in ‘The Federalist,’
everything that pertained to that day and gives color and tone
to the Constitution, must be considered.”
I am happy in any word of respect for the Declaration,--because the
claim of Equal Rights stands on the Constitution interpreted by the
Declaration.
This brings me again to the main question. We have the National
Constitution from the Preamble to the signature of George Washington,
and then we have the recent Amendments, all to be interpreted by the
National Declaration, which proclaims, as with trumpet:--
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.”
Unquestionably the Constitution supplies the machinery by which these
great rights are maintained. I say it supplies the machinery; but I
insist, against the Senator, and against all others, that every word
in the Constitution must be interpreted by these primal, self-evident
truths,--not merely in a case that is doubtful, as the Senator says,
but constantly and always, so that the two shall perpetually go
together, as the complement of each other; but the Declaration has
a supremacy grander than that of the Constitution, more sacred and
inviolable, for it gives the law to the Constitution itself. Every word
in the Constitution is subordinate to the Declaration.
Before the war, when Slavery prevailed, the rule was otherwise,
naturally; but, as I have already said, the grandest victory of the
war was the establishment of the new rule by which the Declaration
became supreme as interpreter of the Constitution. Take, therefore,
any phrase in the Constitution, take any power, and you are to bring
it all in subordination to those supreme primal truths. Every power
is but the agent by which they are maintained; and when you come to
those several specific powers abolishing slavery, defining citizenship,
securing citizens in their privileges and immunities, guarding them
against any denial of the equal protection of the laws, and then again
securing them the right to vote, every one of these safeguards must be
interpreted so as best to maintain Equal Rights. Such I assert to be
Constitutional Law.
Sir, I cannot see it otherwise. I cannot see this mighty Magna Charta
degraded to the level of a casual letter or an item of history. Why,
Sir, it is the baptismal vow of the Republic; it is the pledge which
our fathers took upon their lips when they asked the fellowship of
mankind as a free and independent nation. It is loftier than the
Constitution, which is a convenience only, while this is a guide.
Let no one smile when it is invoked. Our fathers did not smile on
the great day. It was with them an earnest word, opening the way to
victory, and to that welcome in the human family with which our nation
has been blest. Without these words what would have been the National
Declaration? How small! Simply a dissolution of the tie between the
Colonies and the mother country; a cutting of the cord,--that is all.
Ah! it was something grander, nobler. It was the promulgation of primal
truths, not only for the good of our own people, but for the good
of all mankind. Such truths can never die. It is for us to see that
they are recognized without delay in the administration of our own
Government.
Mr. Carpenter replied at some length. Mr. Sumner followed.