“Mr. President, this was not the only vote. A vote was taken, after this amendment was adopted, upon the passage of the bill thus amended; and the vote on the passage of the bill was Yeas 29, Nays 10, and among those Yeas is not found the name of the Senator from Massachusetts.
“But, Sir, it sometimes happens that malice and hatred will produce results which reason and good-will can never accomplish; and when we passed this bill giving the right of suffrage to the colored men in the South without the aid of the Senator from Massachusetts and sent it to the President [Mr. Johnson] he vetoed it, and on the question of passing it over his veto the Senator from Massachusetts voted with us. His affection for the President was not such as to allow him to coincide with him in anything. So we got his vote at last, but we had two-thirds without him.
“This is the record, Mr. President.”
Mr. Sumner answered:—
This assault to-day compels me to make a statement now which I never supposed I should be called to make. I make it now with hesitation, but rather to show the Senator’s course than my own. Sir, I am the author of the provision in that Act conferring suffrage; and when I brought it forward, the Senator from Illinois was one of my opponents,—then as now. Senators who were here at that time remember well that this whole subject was practically taken for the time from the jurisdiction of the Senate into a caucus of the Republican party, where a committee was created to whom all pending measures of Reconstruction were referred. I had the honor of being a member of that committee. So was the Senator from Illinois. So was my friend from Michigan [Mr. Howard]. The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] was our chairman. In that committee this Reconstruction Bill was debated and matured sentence by sentence, word for word; and then and there, in that committee, I moved that we should require the suffrage of all persons, without distinction of color, in the organization of new governments, and in all the constitutions to be made.
In making this proposition at that time I only followed the proposition I had made in the Senate two years before,[230] which I had urged upon the people in an elaborate address at a political convention in Massachusetts,[231] which I had again upheld in an elaborate effort for two days in this Chamber,[232] and which from the beginning I had never lost from my mind or heart. It was natural that I should press it in committee; but I was overruled,—the Senator opposing me with his accustomed determination. I was voted down. The chairman observed my discontent and said, “You can renew your motion in caucus.” I did so, stating that I had been voted down in committee, but that I appealed from the committee to the caucus. My colleague [Mr. Wilson], who sits before me, called out, “Do so”; and then rising, said, in language which he will pardon me for quoting, but which will do him honor always, “The report of the committee will leave a great question open to debate on every square mile of the South. We must close that question up.” Another Senator, who is not now here,—I can therefore name him,—Mr. Gratz Brown [of Missouri], cried out most earnestly, “Push it to a vote; we will stand by you.” I needed no such encouragement, for my determination was fixed. There sat the Senator from Illinois, sullen in his accustomed opposition. I pushed it to a vote, and it was carried by only two majority, Senators rising to be counted. My colleague, in his joy on the occasion, exclaimed, “This is the greatest vote that has been taken on this continent!” He felt, I felt, we all felt, that the question of the suffrage was then and there secured. By that vote the committee was directed to make it a part of Reconstruction. This was done, and the measure thus amended was reported by the Senator from Ohio as chairman of the committee.
I am compelled to this statement by the assault of the Senator. I had no disposition to make it. I do not claim anything for myself. I did nothing but my duty. Had I done less, I should have been faithless,—I should have been where the Senator from Illinois placed himself.
The Senator read from the “Globe” the vote on the passage of the bill, and exulted because my name was not there. Sir, is there any Senator in this Chamber whose name will be found oftener on the yeas and nays than my own? Is there any Senator in this Chamber who is away from his seat less than I am? There was a reason for my absence on that occasion. I left this Chamber at midnight, fatigued, not well, knowing that the great cause was assured, notwithstanding the opposition of the Senator from Illinois,—knowing that at last the right of the colored people to suffrage was recognized. I had seen it placed in the bill reported from the committee. There it was on my motion, safe against the assaults of the Senator from Illinois. Why should I, fatigued, and not well, remain till morning to swell the large and ascertained majority which it was destined to receive?[233] I have no occasion to make up any such record. You know my fidelity to this cause. You know if I am in the habit of avoiding the responsibilities of my position. I cannot disguise, also, that there was another influence on my mind. Reconstruction, even with the suffrage, was defective. More was needed. There should have been a system of public schools, greater protection to the freedmen, and more security against the Rebels, all of which I sought in vain to obtain in committee, and I found all effort in the Senate foreclosed by our action in caucus. Pained by this failure, and feeling that there was nothing more for me to do, after midnight I withdrew. On the return of the Act to the Senate on the veto of the President, I recorded my vote in its favor.
What Mr. Trumbull calls “the record” in this case, and which Mr. Sumner, in the surprise of the occasion, seemingly accepts, according to the obvious import of the term, as substantially the complete record, inspection of either the Congressional Globe or the Senate Journal shows to be very far from complete. The vote following the Presidential veto was by no means the only one in which Mr. Sumner’s name appears: between this and the vote which would seem from the representation to have next preceded, designated as “the vote on the passage of the bill,” there intervened another, involving in an important degree the character and fate of the whole measure.
The bill in its original form, as it came from the House, was purely, as indicated by its title, “a bill to provide for the more efficient government of the insurrectionary States,” dividing them into military districts and placing them under military rule,—this being deemed the only effectual means of suppressing the outrages continually perpetrated upon the loyalists of the South, black and white,—its Reconstruction features, which included the provision for colored suffrage, being engrafted upon it by the Senate, coupled with considerable modifications of its military details. It was on the votes at this stage, February 16th, that Mr. Sumner’s name was wanting.