My excellent friend from Maine takes no notice of all this. He goes back for his rule to those unhappy days before the war. He makes the system of interpretation, born of Slavery, his melancholy guide. With such Mentor, how can he arrive at any conclusion other than alien to Human Rights? He questions everything, denies everything. He finds no power for anything, unless distinctly written in positive and precise words. He cannot read between the lines; he cannot apply a generous principle which will coördinate everything there in harmony with the Declaration of Independence.
When I refer to the Declaration, I know well how such an allusion is too often received on this floor. I have lived through a period of history, and do not forget that I here heard our great title-deed arraigned as “a self-evident lie.” There are Senators now, who, while hesitating to adopt that vulgar extravagance of dissent, are willing to trifle with it as a rule of interpretation. I am not frightened. Sir, I insist that the National Constitution must be interpreted by the National Declaration. I insist that the Declaration is of equal and coördinate authority with the Constitution itself. I know, Sir, the ground on which I stand. I need no volume of law, no dog-eared page, no cases to sustain me. Every lawyer is familiar with the fundamental beginning of the British Constitution in Magna Charta. But what is Magna Charta? Simple concessions wrung by barons of England from an unwilling monarch; not an Act of Parliament, nothing constitutional in our sense of the term; simply a declaration of rights: and such was the Declaration of Independence. And now, Sir, I am prepared to insist, that, whenever you are considering the Constitution, so far as it concerns human rights, you must bring it always to that great standard; the two must go together; and the Constitution can never be interpreted in any way inconsistent with the Declaration. Show me any words in the Constitution applicable to human rights, and I invoke at once the great truths of the Declaration as the absolute guide to their meaning. Is it a question of power? Then must every word in the Constitution be interpreted so that Liberty and Equality shall not fail.
My excellent friend from Maine takes no notice of this. He goes back to days when the Declaration was denounced as “a self-evident lie,” and the Constitution was interpreted always in the interest of Slavery. Sir, I object to this rule. I protest against it with all my mind and heart and soul. I insist that just the opposite must prevail, and I start with this assumption. I shall not make a long argument, for the case does not require it. I desire to be brief. You know the Amendment:—
“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
“Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Here is an Amendment abolishing Slavery. Does it abolish Slavery half, three-quarters, or wholly? Here I know no half, no three-quarters; I know nothing but the whole. And I say the article abolishes Slavery entirely, everywhere throughout this land,—root and branch,—in the general and the particular,—in length and breadth, and then in every detail. Am I wrong? Any other interpretation dwarfs the great Amendment, and permits Slavery still to linger among us in some of its insufferable pretensions. Sir, I insist upon thorough work. When I voted for that article, I meant what it said,—that Slavery should cease absolutely, entirely, and completely. But, Sir, Congress has already given its testimony to the true meaning of the article. Shortly after its adoption, it passed what is known as the Civil Rights Law, by which the courts of justice throughout the country, State as well as National, are opened to colored persons, who are authorized not only to sue and be sued, but also to testify,—an important right most cruelly denied, even in many of the Northern States, making the intervention of the Nation necessary, precisely as it is necessary now. That law was passed by both Houses of Congress, vetoed by the President, and passed then by a two-thirds vote over the veto of the President, and all in pursuance of these words:—
“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Remark, if you please, the energy of that expression; I have often had occasion to call attention to it. It is a departure from the old language of the Constitution:—
“The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”