RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT.
Gov. Morton and his scheme of Gerrymandering--The XIV Amendment--
Hasty reconstruction and the Territorial plan--The Military Bill--
Impeachment--An amusing incident--Vote against impeachment--The
vote reversed--The popular feeling against the President--The trial
--Republican intolerance--Injustice to senators and to Chief Justice
Chase--Nomination of Gen. Grant--Re-nomination for Congress--Personal
--Squabble of place-hunters--XVI Amendment.
The fall elections of this year were complicated by the hostile
influence of the Executive, but the popular current was strongly
on the side of Congress. A few prominent Republican members followed
the President, but the great body of them stood firm. In my own
Congressional district my majority was over 6,200, notwithstanding
the formidable conservative opposition in my own party, and its
extraordinary efforts to divide the Republicans through the patronage
of the Administration. Nearly all of my old opponents in the
district and State were now Johnsonized, except Gov. Morton, whose
temporary desertion the year before was atoned for by a prudent
and timely repentance. He was not, however, thoroughly reconstructed;
for in the Philadelphia Loyal Convention which met in September of
this year to consider the critical state of the country, he used
his influence with the delegates from the South to prevent their
espousal of Negro Suffrage, and begged Theodore Tilton to prevail
on Frederick Douglass to take the first train of cars for home, in
order to save the Republican party from detriment. He was still
under the shadow of his early Democratic training; and he and his
satellites, vividly remembering my campaign for Negro Suffrage the
year before, and finding me thoroughly intrenched in my Congressional
district, hit upon a new project for my political discomfiture.
This was the re-districting of the State at the ensuing session of
the Indiana Legislature, which they succeeded in accomplishing by
disguising their real purpose. There was neither reason nor excuse
for such a scheme at this time, apart from my political fortunes;
and by the most shameless Gerrymandering three counties of my
district, which gave me a majority of 5,000, were taken from me,
and four others added in which I was personally but little acquainted,
and which gave an aggregate Democratic majority of about 1,500.
This was preliminary to the next Congressional race, and the success
of the enterprise remained to be tested; but it furnished a curious
illustration of the state of Indiana Republicanism at that time.
On the meeting of Congress in December the signs of political
progress since the adjournment were quite noticeable. The subject
of impeachment began to be talked about, and both houses seemed
ready for all necessary measures. Since mingling freely with their
constituents, very few Republican members insisted that the XIV
Constitutional Amendment should be accepted as a finality, or as
an adequate solution of the problem of reconstruction. The second
section of that amendment, proposing to abandon the colored race
in the South on condition that they should not be counted in the
basis of representation, was now generally condemned, and if the
question had been a new one it could not have been adopted. This
enlightenment of Northern representatives was largely due to the
prompt and contemptuous rejection by the rebellious States of the
XIV Amendment as a scheme of reconstruction, and their enactment
of black codes which made the condition of the freedmen more
deplorable than slavery itself. In this instance, as in that of
Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation, it was rebel desperation
which saved the negro; for if the XIV Amendment had been at first
accepted, the work of reconstruction would have ended without
conferring upon him the ballot. This will scarcely be denied by
any one, and has been frankly admitted by some of the most
distinguished leaders of the party.
The policy of treating these States as Territories seemed now to
be rapidly gaining ground, and commended itself as the only logical
way out of the political dilemma in which the Government was placed.
But here again the old strife between radicalism and conservatism
cropped out. The former opposed all haste in the work of
reconstruction. It insisted that what the rebellious districts
needed was not an easy and speedy return to the places they had
lost by their treasonable conspiracy, but a probationary training,
looking to their restoration when they should prove their fitness
for civil government as independent States. It was insisted that
they were not prepared for this, and that with their large population
of ignorant negroes and equally ignorant whites, dominated by a
formidable oligarchy of educated land-owners who despised the power
that had conquered them, while they still had the sympathy of their
old allies in the North, the withdrawal of Federal intervention
and the unhindered operation of local supremacy would as fatally
hedge up the way of justice and equality as the rebel despotisms
then existing. The political and social forces of Southern society,
if unchecked from without, were sure to assert themselves, and the
more decided anti-slavery men in both houses of Congress so warned
the country, and foretold that no theories of Democracy could avail
unless adequately supported by a healthy and intelligent public
opinion. They saw that States must grow, and could not be suddenly
constructed where the materials were wanting, and that forms are
worthless in the hands of an ignorant mob. It was objected to the
territorial theory that it was arbitrary, and would lead to corruption
and tyranny like the pro-consular system of Rome; but it was simply
the territorial system to which we had been accustomed from the
beginning of the Government, and could not prove worse than the
hasty re-admission of ten conquered districts to the dignity of
States of the Union, involving, as it has done, the horrors of
carpet-bag government, Ku Klux outrages, and a system of pro-consular
tyranny as inconsistent with the rights of these States as it has
been disgraceful to the very idea of free government and fatal to
the best interests of the colored race.
But the strange chaos of opinion which now prevailed was unfavorable
to sound thinking or wise acting. Great and far-reaching interests
were at stake, but they were made the sport of politicians, and
disposed of in the light of their supposed effect upon the ascendancy
of the Republican party. Statesmanship was sacrificed to party
management, and the final result was that the various territorial
bills which had been introduced in both Houses, and the somewhat
incongruous bills of Stevens and Ashley, were all superseded by
the passage of the "Military bill," which was vetoed by the President,
but re-enacted in the face of his objections. This bill was utterly
indefensible on principle. It was completely at war with the genius
and spirit of democratic government. Instead of furnishing the
Rebel districts with civil governments, and providing for a military
force adequate to sustain them, it abolished civil government
entirely, and installed the army in its place. It was a confession
of Congressional incompetence to deal with a problem which Congress
alone had the right to solve. Its provisions perfectly exposed it
to all the objections which could be urged to the plan of territorial
reconstruction, while they inaugurated a centralized military
despotism in the place of that system of well-understood local self-
government which the territorial policy offered as a preparation
for restoration. The measure was analyzed and exposed with great
ability by Henry J. Raymond, whose arguments were unanswered and
unanswerable; but nothing could stay the prevailing impatience of
Congress for speedy legislation looking to the early return of the
rebel districts to their places in the Union. The bill was a
legislative solecism. It did not abrogate the existing Rebel State
governments. It left the ballot in the hands of white Rebels, and
did not confer it upon the black loyalists. It sought to conciliate
the power it was endeavoring to coerce. It provided for negro
suffrage as one of the fundamental conditions on which the rebellious
States should be restored to their places in the Union, but left
the negro to the mercy of their black codes, pending the decision
of the question of their acceptance of the proposed conditions of
restoration. The freedmen were completely in the power of their
old masters, so long as the latter might refuse the terms of
reconstruction that were offered; and they had the option to refuse
them entirely, if they saw fit to prefer their own mad ascendancy
and its train of disorders to compulsory restoration. This perfectly
inexcusable abandonment of negro suffrage was zealously defended
by a small body of conservative Republicans who were still lingering
in the sunshine of executive favor, and of whom Mr. Blaine was the
chief; and it was through the timely action of Mr. Shellabarger,
of Ohio, which these conservatives opposed, that the scheme of
reconstruction was finally so amended as to make the Rebel State
governments provisional only, and secure the ballot to the negro
during the period, whether long or short, which might intervene
prior to the work of re-admission. This provision was absolutely
vital, because it took from the people of the insurrectionary
districts every motive for refusing the acceptance of the terms
proposed, and settled the work of reconstruction by this exercise
of absolute power by their conquerors. It was this provision which
secured the support of the Radical Republicans in Congress; but it
did not meet their objections to this scheme of hasty military
reconstruction, while these objections have been amply justified
by time.
Thaddeus Stevens never appeared to such splendid advantage as a
parliamentary leader as in this protracted debate on reconstruction.
He was then nearly seventy-six, and was physically so feeble that
he could scarcely stand; but his intellectual resources seemed to
be perfectly unimpaired. Eloquence, irony, wit, and invective,
wre charmingly blended in the defense of his positions and his
attacks upon his opponents. In dealing with the views of Bingham,
Blaine, and Banks, he was by no means complimentary. He referred
to them in his closing speech on the bill, on the thirteenth of
February, when he said, in response to an interruption by Mr.
Blaine, "What I am speaking of is this proposed step toward universal
amnesty and universal Andy-Johnsonism. If this Congress so decides,
it will give me great pleasure to join in the _io triumphe_ of the
gentleman from Ohio in leading this House, possibly by forbidden
paths, into the sheep-fold or the goat-fold of the President." In
speaking of the amendment to the bill offered by General Banks, he
said, "It proposes to set up a contrivance at the mouth of the
Mississippi, and by hydraulic action to control all the States that
are washed by the waters of that great stream." He declared that,
"The amendment of the gentleman from Maine lets in a vast number
of Rebels, and shuts out nobody. All I ask is that when the House
comes to vote upon that amendment, it shall understand that the
adoption of it would be an entire surrender of those States into
the hands of the Rebels. * * * If, sir, I might presume upon my
age, without claiming any of the wisdom of Nestor, I would suggest
to the young gentlemen around me, that the deeds of this burning
crisis, of this solemn day, of this thrilling moment, will cast
their shadows far into the future, and will make their impress upon
the annals of our history; and that we shall appear upon the bright
pages of that history just in so far as we cordially, without guile,
without bickering, without small criticisms, lend our aid to promote
the great cause of humanity and universal liberty."
As a precautionary measure against executive usurpation, the Fortieth
Congress was organized in March, 1867, immediately after the
adjournment of the Thirty-ninth. After a brief session it adjourned
till the third of July to await the further progress of events.
On re-assembling I found the feeling in favor of impeachment had
considerably increased, but was not yet strong enough to prevail.
All that could be done was the passage of a supplemental act on
the subject of reconstruction, which naturally provoked another
veto, in which the President re-affirmed the points of his message
vetoing the original bill, and arraigned the action of Congress as
high-handed and despotic. The message was construed by the
Republicans as an open defiance, and many of them felt that a great
duty had been slighted in failing to impeach him months before.
The feeling against him became perfectly relentless, as I distinctly
remember it, and shared in it myself; but on referring to the
message now, I am astonished at the comparative moderation of its
tone, and the strength of its positions. Its logic, in the main,
is impregnable, if it be granted that the Rebel districts were not
only States, but States _in the Union,_ and the Congress which was
now so enraged at the President had itself refused to deal with
them as Territories or outlying possessions, and thereby invited
the aggravating thrusts of the message at the consistency of his
assailants.
Just before the adjournment of this brief session of Congress, an
amusing incident occurred in connection with the introduction of
the following resolution in the House:
"_Resolved,_ That the doctrines avowed by the President of the
United States, in his message to Congress of the fifteenth instant,
to the effect that the abrogation of the governments of the Rebel
States binds the Nation to pay the debts incurred prior to the late
Rebellion, is at war with the principles of international law, a
deliberate stab at the national credit, abhorrent to every sentiment
of loyalty, and well-pleasing only to the vanquished traitors by
whose agency alone the governments of said States were overthrown
and destroyed."
The resolution was adopted by yeas one hundred, nays eighteen, and
the announcement of the vote provoked the laughter of both sides
of the House. It gratified the Republicans, because it was a thrust
at Andrew Johnson, and perfectly accorded with their prevailing
political mood, which was constantly becoming more embittered toward
him. It equally gratified the Democrats, because they at once
accepted it as a telling shot at Gov. Morton, who had fathered the
condemned heresy nearly two years before in his famous Richmond
speech, which he and his friends had been doing their best to
forget. Party feeling had never before been more intense; but this
resolution performed its mediatorial office with such magical effect
in playing with two utterly diverse party animosities, that
Republicans and Democrats were alike surprised to find themselves
suddenly standing on common ground, and joyfully shaking hands in
token of this remarkable display of their good fellowship.
Congress assembled again on the twenty-first of November, in
consequence of the extraordinary conduct of the President. The
popular feeling in favor of impeachment had now become formidable,
and on the twenty-fifth the Judiciary Committee of the House finally
reported in favor of the measure. The galleries were packed, and
the scene was one of great interest, while all the indications
seemed to point to success; but on the seventh of December, the
proposition was voted down by yeas fifty-seven, nays one hundred
and eight. The vote was a great surprise and disappointment to
the friends of impeachment, and was construed by them as a wanton
surrender by Congress, and the prelude to new acts of executive
lawlessness. These acts continued to be multiplied, and the removal
of Secretary Stanton finally so prepared the way that on the twenty-
fourth of February, 1868, the House, by a vote of one hundred and
twenty-six to forty-seven, declared in favor of impeachment. The
crowds in the galleries, in the lobbies, and on the floor were
unprecedented, and the excitement at high tide. The fifty-seven
who had voted for impeachment in December, were now happy. They
felt, at last, that the country was safe. The whole land seemed
to be electrified, as they believed it would have been at any
previous time if the House had had the nerve to go forward; and
they rejoiced that the madness of Johnson had at last compelled
Congress to face the great duty. A committee of seven was appointed
by the Speaker to prepare articles of impeachment, of whom Thaddeus
Stevens was chairman. He was now rapidly failling in strength, and
every morning had to be carried up stairs to his seat in the House;
but his humor never failed him, and on one of these occasions he
said to the young men who had him in charge, "I wonder, boys, who
will carry me when you are dead and gone." He was very thin, pale
and haggard. His eye was bright, but his face was "scarred by the
crooked autograph of pain." He was a constant sufferer, and during
the session of the Committee kept himself stimulated by sipping a
little wine or brandy; but he was its ruling spirit, and greatly
speeded its work by the clearness of his perceptions and the strength
of his will. His mental force seemed to defy the power of disease.
The articles of impeachment were ready for submission in a few
days, and adopted by the House, on the second of March, by a majority
of considerably more than two thirds, when the case was transferred
to the Senate.
The popular feeling against the President was now rapidly nearing
its climax and becoming a sort of frenzy. Andrew Johnson was no
longer merely a "wrong-headed and obstinate man," but a "genius in
depravity," whose hoarded malignity and passion were unfathomable.
He was not simply "an irresolute mule," as General Schenck had
styled him, but was devil-bent upon the ruin of his country; and
his trial connected itself with all the memories of the war, and
involved the Nation in a new and final struggle for its life. Even
so sober and unimaginative a man as Mr. Boutwell, one of the managers
of the impeachment in the Senate, lost his wits and completely
surrendered himself to the passions of the hour in the following
passage of his speech in that body:
"Travelers and astronomers inform us that in the Southern heavens,
near the Southern Cross, there is a vast space which the uneducated
call the 'hole in the sky,' where the eye of man, with the aid of
the powers of the telescope, has been unable to discover nebulae,
or asteroid, or comet, or plant, or star or sun. In that dreary,
cold, dark region of space, which is only known to be less than
infinite by the evidences of creation elsewhere, the great Author
of celestial mechanism has left the chaos which was in the beginning.
If this earth were capable of the sentiments and emotions of justice
and virtue, which in human mortal beings are the evidences and the
pledge of our divine origin and immortal destiny, it would heave
and throe with the energy of the elemental forces of nature, and
project this enemy of two races of men into that vast region, there
forever to exist, in a solitude as eternal as life, or as the
absence of life, emblematical of, if not really, that 'outer
darkness' of which the Savior of man spoke in warning to those who
are the enemies of themselves, of their race, and of their God."
This fearful discharge of rhetorical fireworks at the President
fitly voiced the general sentiment of the Republicans. Party
madness was in the air, and quite naturally gave birth to the "hole
in the sky" in the agony of its effort to find expression. No
extravagance of speech or explosion of wrath was deemed out of
order during this strange dispensation in our politics.
The trial proceeded with unabated interest, and on the afternoon
of the eleventh of May the excitement reached its highest point.
Reports came from the Senate, then in secret session, that Grimes,
Fessenden and Henderson were certainly for acquittal, and that
other senators were to follow them. An indescribable gloom now
prevailed among the friends of impeachment, which increased during
the afternoon, and at night when the Senate was again in session.
At the adjournment there was some hope of conviction, but it was
generally considered very doubtful. On meeting my old anti-slavery
friend, Dr. Brisbane, he told me he felt as if he were sitting up
with a sick friend who was expected to die. His face was the
picture of despair. To such men it seemed that all the trials of
the war were merged in this grand issue, and that it involved the
existence of Free Government on this continent. The final vote
was postponed till the sixteenth, owing to Senator Howard's illness,
and on the morning of that day the friends of impeachment felt more
confident. The vote was first taken on the eleventh article. The
galleries were packed, and an indescribable anxiety was written on
every face. Some of the members of the House near me grew pale
and sick under the burden of suspense. Such stillness prevailed
that the breathing in the galleries could be heard at the announcement
of each senator's vote. This was quite noticeable when any of the
doubtful senators voted, the people holding their breath as the
words "guilty" or "not guilty" were pronounced, and then giving it
simultaneous vent. Every heart throbbed more anxiously as the name
of Senator Fowler was reached, and the Chief Justice propounded to
him the prescribed question: "How say you, is the respondent,
Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty
of a high misdemeanor, as charged in this article of impeachment?"
The senator, in evident excitement, inadvertently answered "guilty,"
and thus lent a momentary relief to the friends of impeachment;
but this was immediately dissipated by correcting his vote on the
statement of the Chief Justice that he did not understand the
senator's response to the question. Nearly all hope of conviction
fled when Senator Ross, of Kansas, voted "not guilty," and a long
breathing of disappointment and despair followed the like vote of
Van Winkle, which settled the case in favor of the President.
It is impossible now to realize how perfectly overmastering was
the excitement of these days. The exercise of calm judgment was
simply out of the question. As I have already stated, passion
ruled the hour, and constantly strengthened the tendency to one-
sidedness and exaggeration. The attempt to impeach the President
was undoubtedly inspired, mainly, by patriotic motives; but the
spirit of intolerance among Republicans toward those who differed
with them in opinion set all moderation and common sense at defiance.
Patriotism and party animosity were so inextricably mingled and
confounded that the real merits of the controversy could only be
seen after the heat and turmoil of the strife had passed away.
Time has made this manifest. Andrew Johnson was not the Devil-
incarnate he was then painted, nor did he monopolize, entirely,
the "wrong-headedness" of the times. No one will now dispute that
the popular estimate of his character did him very great injustice.
It is equally certain that great injustice was done to Trumbull,
Fessenden, Grimes and other senators who voted to acquit the
President, and gave proof of their honesty and independence by
facing the wrath and scorn of the party with which they had so long
been identified. The idea of making the question of impeachment
a matter of party discipline was utterly indefensible and preposterous.
"Those senators," as Horace Greeley declared, "were sublimely in
the right who maintained their independent judgment--whether it
was correct or erroneous, in a matter of this kind, and who
indignantly refused all attempts to swerve them from their duty as
they had undertaken to perform it by solemn oaths." The Chief
Justice was also cruelly and inexcusably wronged by imputing corrupt
motives to his official action. His integrity and courage had been
amply demonstrated through many long years of thorough and severe
trial; and yet many of his Republican friends, both in the Senate
and House, who had known him throughout his political career,
denounced him as an apostate and a traitor, and even denied him
all social recognition. Senator Howe, of Wisconsin, was especially
abusive, and made himself perfectly ridiculous by the extravagance
and malignity of his assaults. The judicial spirit was everywhere
wanting, and the elevation of Senator Wade to the Presidency in
the midst of so much passion and tumult, and with the peculiar
political surroundings which the event foreshadowed, would have
been, to say the least, a very questionable experiment for the
country.
The excitement attending the trial of the President soon subsided,
but the Republicans continued anxious about the state of the country.
The work of reconstruction was only fairly begun, and its completion
was involved in the approaching presidential election. Chase and
Seward had lost their standing in the party, and there was no longer
any civilian in its ranks whose popularity was especially commanding
or at all over-shadowing. Under these circumstances it was quite
natural to turn to the army, and to canvass the claims of Gen.
Grant. The idea of his nomination was exceedingly distasteful to
me. I personally knew him to be intemperate. In politics he was
a Democrat. He did not profess to be a Republican, and the only
vote he had ever given was cast for James Buchanan in 1856, when
the Republican party made its first grand struggle to rescue the
Government from the clutches of slavery. Moreover, he had had no
training whatever in civil administration, and no one thought of
him as a statesman. But the plea of his availability as a military
chieftain was urged with great effect, and was made irresistible
by the apprehension that if not nominated by the Republicans the
Democrats would appropriate him, and make him a formidable instrument
of mischief. His nomination, however, was only secured by cautious
and timely diplomacy, and potent appeals to his sordidness, in the
shape of assurances that he should have the office for a second
term. But as the nominee of his party, fairly committed to its
principles and measures touching the unsettled questions of
reconstruction and suffrage, I saw no other practicable alternative
than to give him my support. I was still further reconciled to
this by the action of the Democrats in the nomination of Seymour
and Blair, and the avowal of the latter in his famous "Brodhead
letter," that "we must have a President who will execute the will
of the people by trampling in the dust the usurpations of Congress
known as the Reconstruction Acts."
In my new Congressional district I was unanimously re-nominated by
the Republicans, and entered at once upon the canvass, though
scarcely well enough to leave my bed. The issue was doubtful, and
my old-time enemies put forth their whole power against me at the
election. They were determined, this time, to win, and to make
sure of this they embarked in a desperate and shameless scheme of
ballot-stuffing in the city of Richmond, which was afterward fully
exposed; but in spite of this enterprise of "Ku Klux Republicans,"
I was elected by a small majority. The result, however, foreshadowed
the close of my congressional labors, which followed two years
later, just as the XV Constitutional Amendment had made voters of
the colored men of the State; but it was only made possible by my
failing health, which had unfitted me for active leadership. In
my old district I had made myself absolutely invincible. For twenty-
one years in succession, that is to say, from the year 1848 to the
year 1868, both inclusive, I canvassed that district by townships
and neighborhoods annually on the stump. In the beginning, public
opinion was overwhelmingly and fiercely against me, but I resolved,
at whatever cost, to reconstruct it in conformity with my own
earnest convictions. I literally wore myself out in the work, and
am perfectly amazed when I recall the amount of it I performed,
and the complete abandon of myself to the task. From the beginning
to the end of this struggle the politicians of the district were
against me, and they were numerous and formidable, and in every
contest were reinforced by the politicians of the State. Although
the ranks of my supporters were constantly recruited and no man
ever had more devoted friends, I was obliged, during all these
years, to stand alone as the champion of my cause in debate. I
believe no Congressional district in the Union was ever the theatre
of so much hard toil by a single man; but although it involved the
serious abridgement of health and life, the ruinous neglect of my
private affairs, and the sacrifice of many precious friendships,
I was not without my reward. I succeeded in my work. Step by step
I saw my constituents march up to my position, and the district at
last completely disenthralled by the ceaseless and faithful
administration of anti-slavery truth. The tables were completely
turned. Almost everybody was an Abolitionist, and nobody any longer
made a business of swearing that he was not. In canvassing my
district it became the regular order of business for a caravan of
candidates for minor offices, who were sportively called the "side
show," to follow me from point to point, all vying with each other
as to which had served longest and most faithfully as my friends.
They had always been opposed to slavery, and men who had taken the
lead in mobbing Abolitionists in earlier days and gained a livelihood
by slave-catching, were now active and zealous leaders in the
Republican party. It was a marvelous change. Slavery itself,
greatly to the surprise and delight of its enemies, had perished;
but it was, after all, only one form of a world-wide evil. The
abolition of the chattel slavery of the Southern negro was simply
the introduction and prelude to the emancipation of all races from
all forms of servitude, and my Congressional record had been a
practical illustration of my faith in this truth. The rights of
man are sacred, whether trampled down by Southern slave-drivers,
the monopolists of the soil, the grinding power of corporate wealth,
the legalized robbery of a protective tariff, or the power of
concentrated capital in alliance with labor-saving machinery.
During the winter preceding the inauguration of the President I
was besieged by place-hunters more than ever before. They thronged
about me constantly, while I generally wrote from twenty to thirty
letters per day in response to inquiries about appointments from
my district. The squabbles over post-office appointments were by
far the most vexatious and unmanageable. They were singularly
fierce, and I found it wholly impossible to avoid making enemies
of men who had supported me with zeal. I was tormented for months
about the post-office of a single small town in Franklin county,
where the rival parties pounced upon each other like cannibals,
and divided the whole community into two hostile camps. I was
obliged to give my days and nights to this wretched business, and
often received only curses for the sincerest endeavors to do what
I believed was right. The experience became absolutely sickening,
and could not be otherwise than seriously damaging to me politically.
Such matters were wholly foreign to the business of legislation,
and I wrote a very earnest letter to Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island,
heartily commending his measure proposed in the preceding Congress
for the reform of our Civil Service, and for which, as the real
pioneer of this movement, he deserves a monument.
It was on the eighth of December, 1868, that I submitted a proposed
amendment to the Constitution, declaring that "the right of suffrage
in the United States shall be based upon citizenship, and shall be
regulated by Congress"; and that "all citizens of the United States,
whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally,
without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on race,
color, or sex." This was prior to the ratification of the XV
Amendment, and I so numbered the proposition; but on further
reflection I preferred an amendment in the exact form of the
fifteenth, and early in the next Congress I submitted it, being
the first proposition offered for a sixteenth amendment to the
Constitution. My opinions about woman suffrage, however, date much
farther back. The subject was first brought to my attention in a
brief chapter on the "political non-existence of woman," in Miss
Martineau's book on "Society in America," which I read in 1847.
She there pithily states the substance of all that has since been
said respecting the logic of woman's right to the ballot, and
finding myself unable to answer it, I accepted it. On recently
referring to this chapter I find myself more impressed by its force
than when I first read it. "The most principled Democratic writers
on Government," she said, "have on this subject sunk into fallacies
as disgraceful as any advocate of despotism has adduced. In fact,
they have thus sunk, from being, for the moment, advocates of
despotism. Jefferson in America, and James Mill at home, subside,
for the occasion, to the level of the Emperor of Russia's catechism
for the young Poles." This she makes unanswerably clear; but my
interest in the slavery question was awakened about the same time.
I regarded it as the _previous_ question, and as less abstract and
far more immediately important and absorbing than that of suffrage
for woman. For the sake of the negro I accepted Mr. Lincoln's
philosophy of "one war at a time," though always ready to show my
hand; but when this was fairly out of the way, I was prepared to
enlist actively in the next grand movement in behalf of the sacredness
and equality of human rights.