Liberty in the Nineteenth Century

by Frederic May Holland

Lincoln was already thinking of setting free the slaves in all the States which should continue in rebellion after the close of the year; and his draft of a proclamation, announcing this purpose, was read to the Cabinet on July 22, 1862. The army in Virginia had been so unfortunate that summer as to cause a postponement; but the victory of Antietam was followed by the publication, on September 22d, of the formal notice that emancipation might be proclaimed on the 1st of January. How welcome the new policy was to loyal citizens may be judged from the approbation expressed by the clergy of all denominations, even the New School Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic. When New Year's Day dawned there was much doubt whether the promise would be fulfilled. Abolitionists and coloured people met in Boston and other cities, and waited hour after hour, hoping patiently. It was evening before the proclamation began to pass over the wires. It promised freedom to all slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, besides most of those in Louisiana and Virginia. Tennessee and some other States were not mentioned, because held to have been brought back into the Union. There was to be freedom thenceforth wherever the Stars and Stripes waved. No wonder that the news caused great audiences to shout or weep with joy, and many to spend the night in praise and prayer. The North was now inspired by motives amply sufficient to justify even a war of conquest; and her men and money were given freely, until superiority in resources enabled General Grant to close the war in April, 1865. The revolted States came back, one by one, and left slavery behind. Even where it had not been formally abolished, it was practically extinct. Douglass was right in saying "It was not the destruction, but the salvation of the Union, that saved the slave."

An amendment to the Constitution, which swept away the last vestiges of slavery, and made it for ever impossible in the United States, was adopted on December 18, 1865. It had been proposed two years before; but the assent of several States then actually in revolt would have been necessary to secure the majority of three-fourths necessary for adoption of an amendment. It was by no means certain that even the nominally loyal States would all vote unanimously for emancipation. In order to increase the majority for the Thirteenth Amendment, the admission of Nevada and Colorado as States was voted by Congress, despite some opposition by the Democrats, in March, 1864. Nevada had a population of less than 43,000 in 1870. There were not 46,000 people there in 1890, and there had been a decline since 1880. It is not likely that her inhabitants will ever be numerous enough to justify her having as much power in the Senate as New York or Pennsylvania. Senators who represent millions of constituents have actually been prevented from passing necessary laws by Senators who did not represent even twenty-five thousand people each. Nevada is still the worst instance of such injustice; but it is by no means the only one; and these wrongs can never be righted, for the Constitution provides that. "No State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." The Thirteenth Amendment did not, I think, come into force a day earlier than it would have done if Nevada had never been admitted, for the bona-fide States came forward with unexpected willingness. Colorado was not fully admitted before 1876. Lincoln's favouring the bills for admitting these States was a serious error, though the motive was patriotic. His beauty and grandeur of character make the brightest feature of those dark, sad years. No name stands higher among martyrs for freedom.

IX. There is no grander event in all history than the emancipation of four million slaves. This was all the more picturesque because done by a conquering army; but it was all the more hateful to the former owners. They refused to educate or enfranchise the freedmen, and tried to reduce them to serfdom by heavy taxes and cruel punishments for petty crimes. The States which had seceded were kept under military dictators after the war was over; and their people were forced to accept the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave protection to coloured people as citizens of the United States.

In 1867 there were twenty-one Northern States; but only Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont gave the ballot freely to illiterate negroes without property. Massachusetts had an educational test for all voters; there were other restrictions elsewhere; and no coloured men could vote in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or the North-west. In fact, very few had ever voted anywhere when Congress gave the suffrage to all the freed men for their own protection, with no discrimination against illiteracy.

The result of this measure in the District of Columbia was that unscrupulous politicians gained strong support from needy and ignorant voters of all colours. Public money was spent recklessly; taxation became oppressive; and the public debt grew to alarming size. On June 17, 1874, when Grant was President and each branch of Congress was more than two-thirds Republican, the House of Representatives voted, ten to one, in favour of taking away the suffrage, not only from the blacks who had received it seven years before, but even from the whites who had exercised it since the beginning of the century. All local government was entrusted to three commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. There was no opposition; for the arrangement seemed only temporary. It proved permanent. Even taxation without representation has been thought better than negro suffrage; and the citizens of the national capital remain in 1899 without any voice in their own municipal government.

The problem has been still more difficult in those eleven States which had to accept negro suffrage, in or after 1867, as a condition of restoration to the Union. The extension of franchise made in all the States by the Fifteenth Amendment, in 1870, seemed such a blessing to the Republicans that Frederick Douglass was much censured for holding that it might possibly have been attained without special supernatural assistance. It soon became plain, however, that Congress ought to have given the spelling-book earlier than the ballot. The suffrage proved no protection to the freedman; for his white neighbours found that he could be more easily intimidated than educated. Congress tried to prevent murder of coloured voters by having the polls guarded by Federal troops and the elections supervised by United States marshals. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by President Grant in districts where the blacks outnumbered the whites. It was hard to see what liberty had gained.

The negro's worst enemies were his own candidates. They had enormous majorities in South Carolina; and there, as Blaine admits, they "brought shame upon the Republican party," "and thus wrought for the cause of free government and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm." Between 1868 and 1872 they added ten millions by wanton extravagance to the State debt. Large sums were stolen; taxes rose to six per cent.; and land was assessed far above its value, with the avowed purpose of taking it away from the whites. Such management was agreed at a public meeting of coloured voters under Federal protection, in Charleston, in 1874, to have "ruined our people and disgraced our State." Negro suffrage was declared by the New York Evening Post to have resulted in "organising the ignorance and poverty of the State against its property and intelligence."

This took place all over the South, and also in Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities. Here the illiterate vote was largely European; and the corruption of politics was facilitated by the absorption of property-holders in business. There was great need that intelligent citizens of all races, parties, and sections should work together to reform political methods sufficiently to secure honest government. Some progress has already been made, but by no means so much as might have been gained if the plundered taxpayers at the South had made common cause with those at the North in establishing constitutional bulwarks against all swindlers whose strength was in the illiterate and venal vote.

Unfortunately, prejudice against negroes encouraged intimidation; and fraud was used freely by both parties. When elections were doubted, Republican candidates were seated by Federal officials and United States soldiers. These latter were not resisted; but the Southern Democrats made bloody attacks on the negro militia. One such fight at New Orleans, on September 14, 1874, cost nearly thirty lives. What was called a Republican administration collapsed that day throughout Louisiana; but it was soon set up again by the army which had brought it into power.

At last the negroes found out that, whoever might conquer in this civil war, they would certainly lose. They grew tired of having hostile parties fighting over them, and dropped out of politics. The Republicans held full possession of the presidency, both branches of Congress, the Federal courts, the army, the offices in the nation's service, and most of the State governments; but they could not prevent the South from becoming solidly Democratic. The new governments proved more economical, and the lives of the coloured people more secure. The last important result of negro suffrage in South Carolina and Louisiana was an alarming dispute as to who was elected President in 1876. The ballot has not been so great a blessing to the freedmen as it might have been if it had been preceded by national schools, and given voluntarily by State after State.