The madness that would set aside provisions so essentially just, whose only error is inadequacy, has broken forth naturally in brutal utterance, where he has charged persons by name with seeking his life, and has stimulated a mob against them. It is difficult to surpass the criminality of this act. The violence of the President has provoked violence. His words were dragon’s teeth, which have sprung up armed men. Witness Memphis; witness New Orleans. Who can doubt that the President is author of these tragedies? Charles the Ninth of France was not more completely author of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew than Andrew Johnson is author of the recent massacres now crying out for judgment. History records that the guilty king was pursued in the silence of night by the imploring voices of murdered men, mingled with curses and imprecations, while ghosts stalked through his chamber, until he sweated blood from every pore; and when he came to die, his soul, wrung with the tortures of remorse, stammered out, “Ah, nurse, my good nurse! what blood! what murders! Oh, what bad counsels I followed! Lord God, pardon me! have mercy on me!” Like causes produce like effects. The blood at Memphis and New Orleans must cry out until heard, and a guilty President may suffer the retribution which followed a guilty king.
The evil he has done already is on such a scale that it is impossible to measure it, unless as you measure an arc of the globe. I doubt if in all history there is any ruler who in the same brief space of time has done so much. There have been kings and emperors, proconsuls and satraps, who have exercised tyrannical power; but facilities of communication now lend swiftness and extension to all evil influences, so that the President is able to do in a year what in other days would have taken a life. Nor is the evil confined to any narrow spot. It is coextensive with the Republic. Next to Jefferson Davis stands Andrew Johnson as its worst enemy. The whole country has suffered; but the Rebel region has suffered most. He should have sent peace; instead, he sent a sword. Behold the consequences!
In support of a cruel “policy” he has not hesitated to use his enormous patronage. President Lincoln said, familiarly, that, as the people had continued him in office, he supposed they meant that others should be continued also; and he refused to make removals. But President Johnson announces “rotation in office”; and then, warming in anger against all failing to sustain his “policy,” he roars that he will “kick them out.” Men appointed by the martyred Lincoln are to be “kicked out” by the successor, while he pretends to sustain the policy of the martyr. The language of the President is most suggestive. He “kicks” the friends of his well-loved predecessor; and he also “kicks” the careful counsel of that well-loved predecessor, that we must “build up from the sound materials.”
That I may give practical direction to these remarks, let me tell you plainly what must be done. In the first place, Congress must be sustained in its conflict with the One Man Power; and, in the second place, ex-Rebels must not be hurried back to power. Bearing in mind these two things, the way is easy. Of course, the Constitutional Amendment must be adopted. As far as it goes, it is well; but it does not go far enough. More is necessary. Impartial suffrage must be established. A homestead must be secured to every freedman, if in no other way, through the pardoning power. If to these is added education, there will be a new order of things, with liberty of the press, liberty of speech, and liberty of travel, so that Wendell Phillips may speak freely in Charleston or Mobile. There is an old English play under the name of “The Four P’s.” Our present desires may be symbolized by four E’s,—standing for Emancipation, Enfranchisement, Equality, and Education. Securing these, all else will follow.
I can never cease to regret that Congress hesitated by proper legislation to assume temporary jurisdiction over the whole Rebel region. To my mind the power was ample and unquestionable, whether in the exercise of belligerent rights or in the exercise of rights directly from the Constitution itself. In this way everything needful might have been accomplished. Through this just jurisdiction the Rebel communities might have been fashioned anew, and shaped to loyalty and virtue. The President lost a great opportunity at the beginning. Congress has lost another. But it is not too late. If indisposed to assume this jurisdiction by an Enabling Act constituting provisional governments, there are many things Congress may do, acting indirectly or directly. Acting indirectly, it may insist that Emancipation, Enfranchisement, Equality, and Education shall be established as conditions precedent to the recognition of any State whose institutions have been overthrown by rebellion.[66] Acting directly, it may, by Constitutional Amendment, or by simple legislation, fix all these forever.
You are aware that from the beginning I have insisted upon Impartial Suffrage as the only certain guaranty of security and reconciliation. I renew this persistence, and mean to hold on to the end. Every argument, every principle, every sentiment is in its favor. But there is one reason which at this moment I place above all others: it is the necessity of the case. You require the votes of colored persons in the Rebel States to sustain the Union itself. Without their votes you cannot build securely for the future. Their ballots will be needed in time to come much more than their muskets were needed in time past. For the sake of the white Unionists, and for their protection,—for the sake of the Republic itself, whose peace is imperilled, I appeal for justice to the colored race. Give the ballot to the colored citizen, and he will be not only assured in his own rights, but the timely defender of yours. By a singular Providence your security is linked inseparably with the recognition of his rights. Deny him, if you will: it is at your peril.
But it is said, Leave this question to the States; and State rights are pleaded against the power of Congress. This has been the cry: at the beginning, to prevent effort against the Rebellion; and now, at the end, to prevent effort against a revival of the Rebellion. Whichsoever way we turn, we encounter the cry. But yielding now, you will commit the very error of President Buchanan, when at the beginning he declared that we could not “coerce” a State. Nobody now doubts that a State in rebellion may be “coerced”; and to my mind it is equally clear that a State just emerging from rebellion may be “coerced” to the condition required by the public peace.
There are powers of Congress, not derived from the Rebellion, which are adequate to this exigency; and now is the time to exercise them, and thus complete the work. It was the Nation that decreed Emancipation, and the Nation must see to it, by every obligation of honor and justice, that Emancipation is secured. It is not enough that Slavery is abolished in name. The Baltimore platform, on which President Johnson was elected, requires the “utter and complete extirpation of Slavery from the soil of the Republic”; but this can be accomplished only by the eradication of every inequality and caste, so that all shall be equal before the law.