“One way is to pass a law by two-thirds over the President’s veto, prescribing the conditions of reconstruction of any State government, and declaring none republican in form which excludes negroes from voting. Such a law the President will be obliged to obey and execute.… The other mode of solving the problem, over the head of the President, is to pass an Amendment of the Constitution prescribing universal suffrage.… We have the requisite majority to pursue either of these plans; but is there nerve for the work? I have too often failed to inspire my political friends with that elevated sense of their own authority to dictate the course of affairs, to be sanguine of success in measures which require so much unity, energy, and singleness of purpose as these. The last Congress was not equal to it; is the present Congress?… Now do me the favor to give me your views as fully as I have given you mine. I trust you are not, as I am, in despair.”[248]
In the course of the summer a pamphlet was published in Boston, entitled “Security and Reconciliation for the Future: Propositions and Arguments on the Reorganization of the Rebel States,”—being a collection of resolutions by Mr. Sumner, with the article in the Atlantic Monthly,[249] the speech on the admission of Senators from Arkansas,[250] and the Louisiana debate.[251] The large edition of this collection drew attention, and helped prepare for the speech at the State Convention. A few extracts will show its reception.
Dr. George B. Loring, the agriculturist, afterwards Chairman of the State Committee of the Republican party in Massachusetts, and President of the Massachusetts Senate, wrote from Salem:—
“I only wish all our statesmen had taken the ground adopted by yourself; it would have saved us infinite trouble. It entitles you to eternal thanks, and receives daily more and more assent.”
Hon. John C. Underwood, District Judge of the United States, wrote from Alexandria, Va.:—
“I have read your collected arguments on the subject of Reconstruction with great pleasure and profit. Let me thank you for convincing me, very much against my will, that to allow immediate representation to the Rebel States would be a cruel breach of faith and honor to the freedmen, and that we of the South must be just to these poor people, and submit to a genuine republican government, before we deserve admission again into the American family. I trust no petty personal ambition will prevent my full appreciation of the immensely important work for our country and humanity which you have so well performed.”
Hon. Charles Eames, the able lawyer and scholar, former Commissioner to the Sandwich Islands, and Minister at Venezuela, residing in Washington, wrote from the sea-shore at Long Branch:—
“It is a noble monumental record, worthy both of the subject and of the Senator, and which will stand a landmark in our parliamentary history. Every new day, as it comes, brings new attestation of your wisdom and foresight, and of the truthful views which from the first, and almost, if not altogether, alone in Congress, you took and faithfully expounded on the whole question of Reconstruction. The idea of hurrying these lately Rebel communities into participation in the enactment and administration of our laws seems to me the most absurd blunder ever perpetrated in history, with the possible exception of that earlier and still more monstrous enormity of error which assigned to them the right to give by silence a negative vote on the purposed change of our fundamental law.”