2. As the Rebellion was waged in denial of the Equal Rights of the colored race, it is essential not only that Slavery should be renounced, but also that all men should be hailed as equal before the law; and this enfranchisement must be both civil and political. Unless this is done, the condition of the freedman will be deplorable. Exposed to every brutality, he will not be heard as a witness against his oppressor. Compelled to pay taxes, he will be excluded from all representation in the government. Without this security, Emancipation is illusory. It is a jack-o’-lantern, which the poor slave will pursue in vain. Even if Slavery cease to exist, it will give place to a condition hardly less galling. There will be serfdom, apprenticeship, peonage, or some other device of Slavery. According to the poet, there are different “circles” in Hell, each with its own terrible torments; and the unhappy African will only escape from one of these into another. And all this will be beyond correction or remedy, if not at the outset guarded against by organic law.
3. As the national debt was incurred for the suppression of the Rebellion, this, too, must be fixed beyond repeal. Unless this is done, it is evident, from reason as well as from testimony, that the representatives of the Rebel States will coalesce with others for its repudiation. Mississippi, which leads in the present effort to capture the national capital, is the original author of repudiation. Out of the legislative halls of this State the monster sprang. There was its birth. It will be simply true to its past history, as well as to its present animosities, when this State leads in the repudiation of the national debt. Nothing short of madness will allow any such opportunity. No Rebel State should be readmitted, unless bound irrevocably to the support of the national debt and the payment of the interest.
4. The assumption of the Rebel debt must be positively forbidden. Already ex-Rebels insist upon its payment. Such voices come from Mississippi and Virginia. Ex-Rebel newspapers, whose editors have taken the oath of allegiance, uphold this debt. But Congress has already led the way in denouncing it. For a State to assume this criminal obligation would be oppressive to the people, and especially to the freedmen. It would be a drain upon the resources of the State. It would be an insult to the whole country. This debt, whether at home or abroad, has been incurred for the support of the Rebellion, and must be treated accordingly. It is part of the crime. Here, too, there must be a guaranty.
5. As the national peace and tranquillity depend essentially upon the overthrow of monopoly and tyranny, here is another occasion for special guaranty against the whole pretension of color. No Rebel State can be readmitted with this controversy still raging, and ready to break forth. So long as it continues, the land will be barren. Agriculture and business of all kinds will be uncertain, and the country will be handed over to a fearful struggle, with the terrors of San Domingo to darken the prospect. In shutting out the freedman from his equal rights at the ballot-box, you open the doors of discontent and insurrection. Cavaignac, the patriotic President of the French Republic, met the present case, when, speaking for France, he said: “I do not believe repose possible, either in the present or the future, except so far as you found your political condition on universal suffrage, loyally, sincerely, completely accepted and observed.”[243] It is impartial suffrage that I claim, without distinction of color, so that there shall be one equal rule for all men. And this, too, must be placed under the safeguard of Constitutional Law.
6. As the education of the people is essential to the national welfare, and especially to the development of those principles of justice and morality which constitute the only sure foundation of a Republican Government, and as, according to the census, an immense proportion of the people of the Rebel States, without distinction of color, cannot read and write, it is obvious that public schools must be established for the equal good of all. The example of Massachusetts must be followed, which, after declaring in its Constitution that “wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, are necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties,” proceeds to direct the Legislature and magistrates, in all future periods, “to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences,” and especially “public schools and grammar schools in the towns.” All this must enter into our work of reconstruction, and become one of our guaranties.