Thus, as will be seen above, the ever-glorious Fifteenth Amendment became a part of the American Constitution, and the same was made known to the remotest bounds of the Republic.
"Arise, shine forth, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee!" Such is the language of Holy Scripture, and it expresses well the sudden outburst of the joy that filled the hearts of the entire colored race when the Fifteenth Amendment became the law of the land. Then, indeed, did the colored soldier feel that he had a country, and that he had not fought and bled in vain for the cause of freedom and the Union! Then did all colored men and women feel, indeed, that they were men and women among other full-fledged citizens of the United States! Then did they feel, in the celebrated words of Robert Burns, the Scotch poet, that "An honest man, though e'er so poor, is king of men for all that!" If the Emancipation Proclamation called forth a tremendous flood of thankfulness and gratitude, if even the fall of Richmond and the freeing of the last slave called for shouts of joy and rejoicing, much more—yea, ten times more—did the publication of the Fifteenth Amendment exercise the entire redeemed race from the very bottom of their hearts! Their forefathers had been stolen away from Africa; they had been brought here. This was their home, such as it was. They had no other country but the United States. Now, the new amendment to the Constitution had put the right to vote into their hands, the same as others—just the same as others, and they most loyally sent up a shout of joy that reached from Maine to the Rio Grande river, and that shout arose to Heaven and entered into the ears of the celestials.
Where, now, was the doctrine, indeed, "That the descendants of the African race had no rights that a white man was bound to respect?" Who ever gave "the white man" the right to use such language, unless it was wickedly presumed by his own presumptuous and lying arrogance? The white race only compose a small portion of the human race. According to tradition, Adam was as brown as a bun; and certainly our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must have been a very dark-complexioned man? Does anybody mean to say that Adam and the Lord Jesus had no right to be respected because they were as brown as a bun in complexion? Like the so-called "divine right of kings," such language was nothing but a wilful and deliberate falsehood, for the entire race of man have rights to be respected—the one as much as the other. How passeth away the glory of this world! Behold your millions of people gloriously set free, and after a long and fearful war pronounced full-fledged citizens, even as others! If the ransomed race formerly rejoiced when they felt their bodily chains fall off, much more did they rejoice when they were invested with the same rights as the rest of the American nation, and could vote like the freemen that they were! It is true that in the sight of God and all justice (both divine and human) they were always men, they had always rights that other men were bound to respect, but now we had the full confession of those rights from all the rest of our own compatriots, who fully and freely admitted, that all their rights were ours also and justice, though long delayed, was done at last!
The colored people were now in full possession of their political rights for the first time, and many new things happened that passed for a great wonder in the history of the nation. Hiram B. Revels took his seat as United States Senator for Mississippi on the 25th of February, 1870. It was from the self-same State that Jefferson Davis hailed, for he was Senator for Mississippi until he resigned his seat and went out with the rest of the rebels. Nine brief years had passed away; for four and a half years the civil war had raged; the curse of slavery had disappeared from the land, and now came Hiram B. Revels from Mississippi, from which the head of the Southern Confederacy had come in former days! Most assuredly this was the Lord's work, and it was wondrous in our eyes!
It was just one year from the day and hour when Senator Revels took his seat in the United States Senate that Jefferson F. Long, also a colored man, was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives from the State of Georgia—the State of Alexander H. Stephens, who had been vice-president of the late Confederate States! It was that same Stephens who had put forth the idea in a speech of his own immediately after he was made vice-president, that slavery should be the corner-stone of the new government of Secessia!
Then the United States Government sent E. D. Bassett, a colored man from Pennsylvania, as Minister-Resident and Consul-General to the Republic of Hayti, in the West Indies. This was carrying things on at quite a lively rate, indeed. Nor was this all. President Grant then turned around, and sent J. Milton Turner, a colored man from Missouri, as Minister-Resident and Consul-General to the Republic of Liberia, in Western Africa. It is true that Hayti and Liberia are not nations of the first rank in power and population, but they are at least as respectable as any, and the time must yet come when ambassadors of the colored race will be appointed to the first nations on earth. President Grant was at least making a good beginning, and as he had been a soldier, like the lion, he had nothing to fear!
About this time Frederick Douglass had been made a Presidential Elector for the great Empire State of New York, and he helped to cast the vote for that State for General Grant upon his election for the second term, in 1872. Times were indeed mightily changed with Frederick Douglass since he was a young man, and fled away from Baltimore in the disguise of a sailor, passing through New York City, which was then almost as much opposed to freedom of the slaves as the State of Georgia.
Well does the English poet say, "Slavery there has lost the day!" The ballot was now in the hands of the colored man as well as others. He had tilled the fertile soil of the United States for two hundred and fifty years; he had now lent a vigorous hand in three wars, and had completely won his right and title to full-fledged citizenship, with all the honors and powers that it carries with it. All Abolitionists and true-hearted Republicans rejoiced at the spectacle, whilst the late arch-rebels and others of that ilk were depressed at the changes!
[CHAPTER XIV.]
