Do not forget the grandeur of the work in which you are engaged. You are forming States. Such a work cannot be done hastily or carelessly. The time you give will be saved to the country hereafter a thousand-fold. The time you begrudge will rise in judgment against you. It is a law of Nature, that, just in proportion as the being produced is higher in the scale and more complete in function, all the processes are more complex and extended. The mature liberty we seek cannot have the easy birth of feebler types. As man, endowed with reason and looking to the heavens, is above the quadruped that walks, above the bird that flies, above the fish that swims, and above the worm that crawls, so should these new governments, republican in form and loyal in soul, created by your care, be above those whose places they take. The Old must give way to the New, and the New must be worthy of a Republic, which, ransomed from Slavery, has become an example to mankind. Farewell to the Old! All hail to the New!
Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, and Mr. Conness, of California, joined in criticism of Mr. Sumner’s opposition to the employment of the military arm in Reconstruction, protesting particularly against the declaration that States are “about to be born of the bayonet.” To the proposed requirement of a system of free schools in the Rebel States Mr. Frelinghuysen objected: “For us to undertake now to add new conditions to the Reconstruction measure which the Thirty-Ninth Congress adopted I hold to be bad faith.… That is not the way to do business.… Let this nation keep its faith. I hope, Mr. President, that the amendment will not be adopted.” Mr. Patterson, of New Hampshire, would “be glad to have such a requisition laid on all the States of the Union, if it were not unconstitutional. But he wished to ask him [Mr. Sumner] this question: Does he think it possible to establish a system of common schools in these Southern States corresponding to the common-school system of New England, unless he first confiscates the large estates and divides them into small homesteads, so that there may be small landholders who shall support these schools by the taxation which is laid upon them?”
Mr. Sumner. I do.
Mr. Patterson. You think it is possible?
Mr. Sumner. I do, certainly,—most clearly.
Mr. Morton said: “The proposition is fundamental in its character; its importance cannot be overestimated; and I hope that it will be placed as a condition, upon complying with which they shall be permitted to return.” Mr. Cole, of California, declared himself “warmly in favor of the amendment.” Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, and Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, spoke against it. The latter thought Mr. Sumner “not open to criticism for the sentiments which he has expressed upon this occasion, nor for the position which he has assumed.” In a humorous vein, he said: “The propositions which the Senator from Massachusetts makes one year, and which are criticized by his colleagues as extreme, inappropriate, and untimely, are precisely the propositions which those colleagues support with greater zeal and vehemence, if possible, than he, the year following. In short, Sir, we can foresee at one session of Congress the character of the propositions and of the arguments with which we are to be favored at the next in this Chamber, by looking to the pioneer man, who goes forward in advance, his banner thrown out, his cause announced, the means by which it shall be carried on and the objects in view proclaimed with force and frankness.”
Mr. Sumner replied:—
Mr. President,—The question of power, I take it, must be settled in this Chamber. You have already most solemnly voted to require in every new constitution suffrage for all, without distinction of race or color or previous condition. But the greater contains the less. If you can do that, you can do everything. If you can require that Magna Charta of human rights, you can require what is smaller. It is already fixed in your statutes, enrolled in your archives, that Congress has this great power. I do not say whether it has this power over other States; that is not the question; but it has the power over the Rebel States. That power is derived from several sources,—first, from the necessity of the case, because the State governments there are illegal, and the whole region has passed, as in the case of Territories, under the jurisdiction of Congress: no legal government exists there, except what Congress supplies. There is another source in the military power now established over that region; then, again, in that great clause of the National Constitution by which you are required to guaranty to every State a republican form of government. Here is enough. Out of these three sources, these three overflowing fountains, springs ample authority. You have exercised it by prescribing in their constitutions Suffrage for all. I ask you to go one step further, and to prescribe Education for all.
I am met here by personal objections; I am asked why I have not brought this forward before. Sir, I have brought it forward in season and out of season. I have on the table before me a speech of mine in 1865, where, in laying down the great essential guaranties, I declared them as follows: First, the unity of the Republic; secondly, Enfranchisement; thirdly, the guaranty of the National debt; fourthly, the repudiation of the Rebel debt; fifthly, Equal Suffrage; and, sixthly, Education of the people.[99] Therefore from the beginning I have asked this guaranty, believing, as I do most clearly, that under the National Constitution you may demand it. If you may demand it, if you have the power, then do I insist it is your duty so to do. Duties are in proportion to powers. These great powers are not merely for display or idleness, but for employment, to the end that the Republic may be advanced and fortified.
Then I have been reminded very earnestly by Senators that I have used strong language in saying that these governments will be open to the imputation of being born of the bayonet. This is not the first time I have used that language in this Chamber. From the beginning I have protested against Reconstruction by military power. Again and again I have asserted that it is contrary to the genius of republican institutions, and to a just economy of political forces. I have not been hearkened to. Others have pressed the intervention of military power; and now, as I am about to record my vote in favor of the pending proposition, I cannot but express my sincere and unfeigned regret that Congress did not see its way to a generous measure of Reconstruction purely civil in character, having no element of military power. Such you had before you at the last session in the Louisiana Bill, which I sought to press day by day; and when, at the last moment, the Military Bill was passed, I, from my place here, declared that I should deem it my duty at the earliest possible moment in this session to press the Louisiana Bill, or some kindred measure not military in character.