I have said that the national credit will suffer; but this does not disclose the whole financial calamity. It is idle to suppose that recent rebels, restored to privileges of citizenship, will vote cordially for the national debt incurred in the suppression of their rebellion, or that they will willingly tax themselves for interest on the enormous outlays by which their darling Slavery has been overthrown. The evidence shows them already set against any such contribution. As time advances, and their power is assured, in conjunction with Northern sympathizers, they will openly oppose it; or, if they consent to recognize it, they will impose the condition that the Rebel debt shall be recognized also. All this is inevitable, if you give them the power; it is madness to tempt them. But they will not have the power, if the promises to the freedman are performed. Here again justice to the freedman becomes a necessity.
Sometimes it is said that we must not require justice to the freedman, because justice is still denied to the colored citizen in Connecticut and New York. Idle words, of inconceivable utterance! as if the two cases bore any imaginable resemblance! There are rivers in the North and rivers in the South, but who says that on this account the two regions are alike? The denial of justice to the colored citizens in Connecticut and New York is wrong and mean; but it is on so small a scale that it is not perilous to the Republic, nor is it vital to the protection of the colored citizen and the protection of the national creditor. You are moved to Enfranchisement in Connecticut and New York for justice to a few individuals only; but you are moved to it in the Rebel States for justice to multitudes, also to save the Republic, imperilled by injustice on a gigantic scale, and to supply needful protection to the national freedman and the national creditor. From failure on our part, there is in one case little more than shame, while in the other there is positive danger, involving the fate of the national freedman and the national creditor, to whom we are bound by the most solemn ties. To a good man, injustice, even on a small scale, is not tolerable; he feels the necessity of resisting it; but where the victims are counted by millions, this necessity becomes a transcendent duty, quickened and invigorated by all the instincts of self-preservation. Therefore, I say again, for the national safety, redeem these promises of the Fathers, and your own.
It is sometimes asserted that the National Constitution expressly reserves to the States the power of determining who shall vote, because it declares that “the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.” But this assumption proceeds on the fatal error, that, at any time under the Constitution, which makes no distinction of color, there can be any such oligarchical distinction as a “qualification” founded on color. Even assuming that in a period of peace this might be done, yet, beyond all doubt, at the present moment, from the necessity of the case, from the Rights of War, from the Constitutional clause of guaranty, and from the Constitutional Amendment, Congress, by its quadruple powers, is completely authorized to do all it thinks best for the national security and the national faith in the Rebel States. As well question Farragut in the maintop of his steamer, Sherman in his march across Georgia, or Grant in the field before Richmond, as question the authority of Congress in the present crisis. But, if the authority exists, it must be exercised.
II.
And this brings me to the next form of this necessity and duty, as they appear in the guaranty clause of the Constitution. It is expressly declared that “the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” These words, when properly understood, leave no alternative. They speak to us with no uncertain voice. But they must be understood. The Rebel States, while providing constitutional safeguards for property in man, and, according to the vaunt of their Vice-President, making Slavery the corner-stone of the new Government, yet follow our Constitution in the formal guaranty of a republican form of government.[46] Defiantly they assume that Slavery is not inconsistent with such a government. To this degrading assumption we must reply, not only for the national cause, but that republican governments may not suffer.
The magnitude of the question before us is seen in the postulate with which I begin. Assuming that there has been a lapse of government in any State, so as to impose upon the United States the duty of executing this guaranty, then do I insist that it is a bounden duty to see that such State has a “republican form of government,” and, in the discharge of this bounden duty, we must declare that a State, which, in the foundation of its government, sets aside “the consent of the governed,” which imposes taxation without representation, which discards the principle of Equal Rights, and lodges power exclusively with an Oligarchy, Aristocracy, Caste, or Monopoly, cannot be recognized as a “republican form of government,” according to the requirement of American institutions. Even if it may satisfy some definition handed down from antiquity or invented in monarchical Europe, it cannot satisfy the solemn injunction of our Constitution. For this question I now ask a hearing. Nothing in the present debate can equal it in importance. Its correct determination will be an epoch for our country and for mankind.
Believe me, Sir, this is no question of theory or abstraction. It is a practical question, which you are summoned to decide. Here is the positive text of the Constitution, and you must affix its meaning. You cannot evade it, you cannot forget it, without abandonment of duty. Others in vision or aspiration have dwelt on the idea of a Republic, and they have been lifted in soul. You must consider it not merely in vision or aspiration, but practically, as legislators, seeking a precise definition, to the end that the constitutional “guaranty” may be performed. Your powers and duties are involved in this definition. The character of the Government founded by our fathers is also involved in it.
There is another consideration not to be forgotten. In affixing the proper meaning to the text, and determining what is a “republican form of government,” you act as a court in the last resort, from which there is no appeal. You are sole and exclusive judges. You may decide as you please. Rarely in history has such an opportunity been offered to the statesman. You may raise the name of Republic to majestic heights of justice and truth, or you may let it drag low down in the depths of wrong and falsehood. You may make it fulfil the idea of John Milton, when he said that “a commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body”;[47] or you may let it shrink into the ignoble form of a pretender, with the name of Republic, but without its soul.