MR. PRESIDENT,—I shall not stop to consider any question touching the power to appoint Governors of States. My object is different. It is to expose a case of peculiar interest and importance, with regard to which I have a statement worthy of confidence. From this it appears that one of the first acts of Mr. Stanly, on arrival at Newbern, North Carolina, and assuming his responsible duties as Provisional Governor, was to announce that the school there for the education of colored children, recently opened by Northern charity, must be closed, being forbidden by the laws of North Carolina, which he was instructed by the authorities at Washington to maintain. I have here an official report of this extraordinary transaction.
“In a conversation between Governor Stanly and Mr. Colyer, the Governor stated that there was one thing in Mr. C.’s doings, as superintendent of the poor, a question would be raised about,—indeed, it had been already,—and that was his (C.’s) keeping school for the blacks. ‘Of course you are aware,’ said the Governor, ‘that the laws of the State make the opening of such schools a criminal offence. My instructions from Washington were, that I was to carry out the laws of North Carolina precisely as they were administered before the breaking out of this unhappy affair; so, if I were called upon for a decision in the matter of your schools for the blacks, I would have to decide against you; but at the same time I don’t want anything done abruptly. As a man, I might do, perhaps, as you have done; but as a Governor, I must act in my official capacity according to my instructions, and administer the laws as I find them.’
“A true copy.
“C. H. Mendell,
Clerk to Mr. Colyer.
“Newbern, May 28, 1862.”
Then follows a further statement.
“Mr. C. C. Leigh, who was with General Saxton in the Oriental, on his way to South Carolina, as confidential agent of the National Freedmen’s Relief Association, and who has just returned, asked Mr. Colyer what he should do. Mr. C. replied: ‘I must close the schools, as I cannot consent to continue to place myself in a situation where I am liable to be punished according to the laws of North Carolina.’
“Mr. Leigh is the Chairman of our Home Committee.”
If any person, in the name of the United States, has undertaken to close a school for little children, whether white or black, it is important that we should know the authority under which he assumes to act. Surely nobody here will be willing to take the responsibility for such an act. It is difficult to conceive that one of the first fruits of national victory and the reëstablishment of national power should be an enormity not easy to characterize in any terms of moderation. Jefferson tells us that in a certain contest there is no attribute of the Almighty “which can take side with us.”[71] And permit me to say, that, if, in the war unhappily existing, the military power of the United States is employed in closing schools, there is no attribute of the Almighty which must not be against us; nor can we expect any true success. Sir, in the name of the Constitution, of humanity, and of common sense, I protest against such impiety under sanction of the United States.