Sir, there is a new force in our country. I have alluded to a new rule of interpretation; I allude now to a new force: it is the colored people of the United States counted by the million; a new force with votes; and they now insist upon their rights. They appear before you in innumerable petitions, in communications, in letters, all praying for their rights. They appeal to you in the name of the Constitution, which is for them a safeguard,—in the name of that great victory over the Rebellion through which peace was sealed; and they remind you that they mean to follow up their appeal at the ballot-box. I have here an article in the last “New National Era,” of Washington, a journal edited by colored persons,—Frederick Douglass is the chief editor,—and devoted to the present Administration. What does it say?
“Here, then, is a measure, just and necessary, the embodiment of the very principles upon which the Government is founded, and which distinguish it from monarchical and aristocratic Governments,—a measure upon which there should be no division in the Republican Party in Congress, and of which there is no question as to its being of more importance than Amnesty. Without this measure Amnesty will be a crime, merciless to the loyal blacks of the South, and an encouragement of treason and traitors. We have met colored politicians from the South who think that the Amnesty proposition is an attempt to gain the good-will of the white voters of the South at the expense of the colored voters. Should this feeling become general among the colored people, there is danger of a division of the colored vote to such an extent as to defeat the Republican Party. Give us the just measure of protection of our civil rights before the pardoning of those who deny us our rights and who would destroy the nation, and the colored people can feel assured that they are not to be forced into a back seat, and that traitors are not to be exalted.”
Is not this natural? If you, Sir, were a colored citizen, would you not also thus write? Would you not insist that you must doubt any political party, pretending to be your friend, that failed in this great exigency? I know you would. I know you would take your vote in your hand and insist upon using it so as to secure your own rights.
The testimony accumulates. Here is another letter, which came this morning, signed, “An Enfranchised Republican,” dated at Washington, and published in the “New York Tribune.” It is entitled, “President Grant and the Colored People.” The writer avows himself in favor of the renomination of General Grant, but does not disguise his anxiety at what he calls “the President’s unfortunate reply to the colored delegation which lately waited on him.”
Now, Sir, in this sketch you see a slight portraiture of a new force in the land, a political force which may change the balance at any election,—at a State election, at a Presidential election even. Take, for instance, Pennsylvania. There are colored voters in that State far more than enough to turn the scale one way or the other, as they incline; and those voters, by solemn petition, appeal to you for their rights. The Senator from Maine rises in his place and gravely tells them that they are all mistaken, that Congress has no power to give them a remedy,—and he deals out for their comfort an ancient speech.
Sir, I trust Congress will find that it has the power. One thing I know: if it has the power to amnesty Rebels, it has the power to enfranchise colored fellow-citizens. The latter is much clearer than the former. I do not question the former; but I say to my excellent friend from Maine that the power to remove the disabilities of colored fellow-citizens is, if possible, stronger, clearer, and more assured than the other. Unquestionably it is a power of higher necessity and dignity. The power to do justice leaps forth from every clause of the Constitution; it springs from every word of its text; it is the inspiration of its whole chartered being.
Mr. President, I did not intend to say so much. I rose to-day merely to enable the absent to speak,—that colored fellow-citizens, whose own Senators had failed them, might be heard through their written word. I did not intend to add anything of my own; but the subject is to me of such incalculable interest, and its right settlement is so essential to the peace of this country, to its good name, to the reconciliation we all seek, that I could not resist the temptation of making this further appeal.
February 1st, Mr. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, in an elaborate speech, replied to Mr. Sumner, and criticized his bill, especially so far as it secured equal rights in churches and juries.