Sir, there is yet room for your energies. That region won to Union and Liberty by the victory you organized must not be allowed to lapse under its ancient masters, the perjured assertors of property in man. It must not be abandoned. Let it be held by arms until it smiles with the charities of life, and all its people are guarded by an impenetrable shield.
And still speaking with equal plainness, I venture to press one controlling consideration upon the Secretary of the Treasury:—
Sir, you are the guardian of the national finances. Use the peculiar influence belonging to this position so that nothing shall be done to impair the National Credit. See to it especially that no person is admitted to political power in any Rebel community who spurns the National Faith, sacredly plighted to the national freedman as well as to the national creditor. Such is the ordinance of Providence, that the fortunes of the two are joined inseparably together. Credit is sensitive. It needs that all the resources of the country should be brought into activity,—that agriculture should be fostered, that commerce should be revived, that emigration should be encouraged; but this cannot be done without that security which is found in equal laws and a contented people. The farmer, the merchant, the emigrant must each feel secure. Land, capital, and labor are of little value, except on this essential condition. The loyal people who have contributed so much, and now hold your bonds, trust that this essential condition will not fail through any failure on your part, and that you will not consent to open a political volcano, spouting smoke and red-hot lava, in an extended region whose first necessity is peace. There is an order in all things; and any concession to the criminal enemies of our country, until after the confirmation of the National Security and the National Faith, is simply an illustration, on a gigantic scale, of the cart before the horse.
For myself, fellow-citizens, pardon me, if I say that my course is fixed. Many may hesitate; many may turn away from those great truths which make the far-reaching brightness of the Republic; many may seek a temporary favor by untimely surrender: I shall not. The victory of blood, which has been so painfully won, must be confirmed by a greater victory of ideas, so that the renowned words of Abraham Lincoln may be fulfilled, and “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of Freedom; and government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”[245] To this end I seek no merely formal Union, seething with smothered curses, but a practical, moral, and political Unity, founded on common rights, knit together by common interests, inspired by a common faith, and throbbing with a common love of country,—where our Constitution, interpreted anew, shall be a covenant with Life and a league with Heaven,[246] and Liberty shall be everywhere not only a right, but a duty. John Brown, on his way to the scaffold, stooped to take up a slave child. That closing example was the legacy of the dying man to his country. That benediction we must continue and fulfil. The last shall be first; and so, in this new order, Equality, long postponed, shall become the master principle of our system and the very frontispiece of our Constitution. The Rebellion was to beat down this principle, by founding a government on the alleged inferiority of a race. The attempt has failed, but not, alas! the insolent assumption of the conspirators. Pursuing our victory, I now insist that this assumption shall be trampled out. A righteous government cannot be founded on any exclusion of race. This is not the first time that I have battled with the barbarism of Slavery. I battle still, as the bloody monster retreats to its last citadel; and, God willing, I mean to hold on, if it takes what remains to me of life.
APPENDIX.
The appearance and condition of Andrew Johnson before the Senate, and representatives of foreign powers, when taking the oath as Vice-President, March 4, 1865, was not calculated to inspire general confidence. But, in the absence of further display of the same kind, the public had become silent, hoping something better. The memory of that incident threw a shadow over the great office he was called to assume. Some were favorably affected by the avowals of patriotism in numerous off-hand speeches, although touching but a single chord. Nothing was said of the great principles of Reconstruction, but treason was to be made “odious.” The repetition of himself impressed Chief Justice Chase, as well as Mr. Sumner, and he said to the latter, “Let us see the President, and try to give him another topic.” So, in company, at an early hour of the evening, about a week after the commencement of his Presidency, they called, and united in urging him to say something for the equal rights of our colored fellow-citizens. Though reserved in language, he was not unsympathetic in manner, so that, after the interview, the Chief Justice, on reaching the street, said: “Did you see how his face lighted at your appeal to carry out the Declaration of Independence?” A few days later Mr. Sumner called alone, and received from the President positive assurance of agreement on the suffrage question. His words were, “On this question, Mr. Sumner, there is no difference between us,—you and I are alike.” An account of these interviews, and the sequel, was subsequently given in an address at Boston, October 2, 1866.
Very soon it was too apparent that the President had adopted an opposite course. States were to be hurried back by Presidential prerogative on the electoral basis anterior to the war. Mr. Sumner from the beginning had regarded the votes of colored fellow-citizens necessary to a proper reconstruction,—first, as an act of justice to them, and, secondly, as a counterpoise to the disloyal. He had urged this solution in the Senate, and had repeatedly presented it to President Lincoln. The Diary of Hon. Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, according to an article published by him,[247] shows how Mr. Sumner pressed this duty in the most intimate councils. It appears that this Secretary was at the War Department, Sunday evening, April 16th, the day after President Lincoln’s death, where he met Speaker Colfax, Mr. Covode, the very earnest Representative from Pennsylvania, Messrs. Dawes and Gooch, Representatives of Massachusetts, and Mr. Sumner. After stating that Mr. Stanton read to them the drafts of orders for the reorganization of Virginia and North Carolina, the article proceeds:—