Mr. Morrill. And that is the question the Committee submit to the Senate.
Mr. Sumner. I hope the Senate will adhere to its original position, and I believe that the assertion of that principle at this moment is more important than the bill.
In the debate that ensued, Mr. Harlan said that he should “vote against the report of the Committee, chiefly, however, because he did not think there was a pressing necessity for the organization of another Territory in that part of our domain.” Mr. Sumner called attention to the Ordinance for the organization of the Northwest Territory, and then said:—
It will be observed that in this Ordinance, to which we so often refer as a commanding authority, there is no discrimination of color. Now I ask if this is not a good precedent. Like the present bill, it was applicable to a vast unsettled Territory. Senators may say that our fathers, in the Ordinance, were not practical. I am not of that number. Senators may say that our fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, were not practical. I am not of that number. Senators may say that our fathers, in the Constitution of the United States, which contains no discrimination of color, were not practical. I am not of that number. Sir, I believe that the authors of this Ordinance, and the authors of the Declaration of Independence, and the authors of the Constitution were eminently practical, when they excluded from those instruments any discrimination of color. But it is said that there are no persons in the new Territory to whom the principle is now applicable. This can make no difference. It is something to declare a principle, and I cannot hesitate to say that at this moment the principle is much more important than the bill. The bill may be postponed, but the principle must not be postponed.
Mr. Morrill. I will suggest to the Senator, if he will permit me,—
Mr. Sumner. Certainly.
—that the statement I made about its applicability was this: it is not by possibility applicable to any man of African descent. There are some five or six thousand Indians, to whom a bill in general phrase, without limitation of “white,” might possibly apply; I do not say that it would apply to them in this case.
Mr. Sumner. Practically, the subject-matter of this clause is not Indians, but the well-known African race of this continent; and it is proposed, by specious words wrapped up in a clause borrowed from another bill, to exclude them from the right of suffrage in this Territory; and the argument for this injustice, as my friend from New Hampshire [Mr. Hale] has so ably stated, is only a reproduction of that well-known ancient argument for Slavery in the Territories. How often were we in those days compelled to encounter the charge that we were not practical,—that we were urging a prohibition, when there was no occasion for it! For myself, I believe you cannot too often assert a prohibition of Slavery, nor too often assert human rights, wherever they may be called in question; and especially do I believe in the importance of such assertion when you are laying the foundations of a new community. “Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.” These are familiar words of childhood. Would my friend from Maine have the tree that he plants grow up with a generous and protecting shelter for all mankind, or shall it be the bent and crabbed product of unhappy prejudices which are only a growth of Slavery? I know my friend means no such thing; but I insist that the policy he recommends tends to such fatal end. For myself, Sir, I am satisfied with the Declaration of Independence; I am satisfied with the Constitution on this important subject; and, adopting the language of our Lieutenant-General in the field, I desire to say, “I will fight on this line to the end, even if it takes all summer.” There is no line better than that of human rights. While fighting on that line, I cannot err; there is no pertinacity too great; there is no ardor that is not respectable. I thank General Grant for these words. They express his own steadfast purpose, and we all thank him. But each, in his sphere, may make them his own. I make them mine, wherever human rights are in question.
The report of the Conference Committee was adopted,—Yeas 26, Nays 13. And so this first battle for colored suffrage was lost.