Thus, out of three inexhaustible fountains may the National Government derive its authority: first, from the war powers, which do not expire except with the establishment of Security for the Future; secondly, from the injunction to guaranty a republican form of government, which is at once a power and a duty; and, thirdly, from the necessity of the case, as with outlying Territories, which have no other government. Under each and all of these the guaranties can be obtained.
In obtaining the needed guaranties there are certain practical points which cannot be disregarded. Knowing what we need, and satisfied concerning the powers of the National Government, the path is easy. As there are ways to obtain guaranties, so also there are ways not to obtain them.
And, first, of ways not to obtain them.
1. Irreversible guaranties cannot be obtained by haste. No State must be precipitated back into the Union. Precipitation back will be hardly less fatal than that original precipitation which plunged the country into the abyss of war. When a State is readmitted, it becomes practically independent. Therefore prudence, care, and watchfulness are needed to see that the national interests are not imperilled by any sudden transformation.
2. Irreversible guaranties cannot be obtained merely by Executive action. Something more is needed. No President can truly say, “The State—it is I.” He is only part of the State; and on this account there is a new motive to reserve. What he does is subject to the correction of Congress, and therefore cannot be final. But it is difficult to see under what authority the President can appoint officers not known to the Constitution or laws, as is the case with Provisional Governors. The Act of Congress authorizing their appointment failed to become a law; so that no such office is “established by law,” according to the requirement of the Constitution.
3. Irreversible guaranties cannot be obtained by yielding to the prejudice of color, and insisting upon a separation of the races. A voice from the West—God save the West!—revives the exploded theory of Colonization, perhaps to divert attention from the great question of Equal Rights. To that voice I reply, first, You ought not to do it, and, secondly, You cannot do it. You ought not to do it, because, besides its intrinsic and fatal injustice, you will deprive the country of what it most needs, which is labor. Those freedmen on the spot are better even than mineral wealth. Each is a mine, out of whom riches can be drawn, provided you let him share the product. And through him that general industry will be established which is better than anything but virtue, and is, indeed, a form of virtue. It is vain to say that this is the country of the “white man.” It is the country of Man. Whoever disowns any member of the Human Family as Brother disowns God as Father, and thus becomes impious as well as inhuman. It is the glory of republican institutions that they give practical form to this irresistible principle. If anybody is to be sent away, let it be the guilty, and not the innocent. Expatriation of leading Rebels will be a public good. As long as they continue here, they will resist the establishment of guaranties; but it is little short of madness to think of exiling loyal persons, whose strong arms are needed, not only for the cultivation of the soil, but also for protection of the Government itself.
4. Irreversible guaranties cannot be obtained by oaths. All oaths are uncertain. It has been said, “The strongest oaths are straw.” Political oaths have become a proverb, whether in England or France. They have been taken freely, and have been broken without hesitation. The Milanese, in reply to the Emperor Barbarossa, said, “You had our oath, but we never swore to keep it.” Our Rebels are openly taught the same duplicity. They have been told authoritatively, that the oath was unconstitutional, and therefore not binding; and so they take it easily. But who can find a guaranty in such a performance? A Swedish priest lately poisoned the sacramental wine; and so these counsellors have poisoned this sacred obligation. But if an oath be taken, it must not stop with support of the Proclamation of Emancipation. It must embrace all those other objects of guaranty, including especially the national freedman and the national creditor. Each of these will be a test of loyalty. But at a moment like the present, at the close of a ferocious rebellion, when hatred and passion are only pent up and not extinguished, an oath is little better than a cotton thread to hold a frigate scourged by a northwester. The Hollanders might as well undertake to swear each individual wave that beats upon their coast. They did better. They made dikes. “Gone to swear a peace,” says Constance, most scornfully, as she denounced an oath of pretended reconciliation. And shall we be content when our Rebels merely “swear a peace”?
5. Irreversible guaranties cannot be obtained by pardons. It is enough to state the proposition; for all must see at once that rights will be very uncertain, if with no protection except the gratitude of a pardoned Rebel. A jail-delivery is not a guaranty. Such a breakwater would be impotent against the malignant sea. Without accepting absolutely the dogma of Cardinal Mazarin, that human beings are governed more through hope than gratitude, it is clear, that, until security is won, we cannot afford to part with any influence or agency through which control may be established. Mercy is a beautiful prerogative, exercised always with inexpressible delight; but on this account we must guard against its fascination, and not, in the generous luxury, imperil a whole community. This is very clear. A pardon is in form an act of grace, but in reality a letter of license. This is all. It leaves the criminal free to renew his crime, whether by force or guile. It has in it no single point of security. As well defend a citadel by kisses or by flowers.