Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

There was a good deal to provoke them also in the character of some of the Northern men who had gone to the South to take an active part in political affairs. Some of them were men of the highest character and honor, actuated by pure and unselfish motives. If they had been met cordially by the communities where they took up their abode they would have brought to them a most valuable quality of citizenship. If Northern immigration and Northern capital had been welcomed at the South it would have had as helpful and influence as it had in California and Oregon. But the Southern men treated them all alike. I incline to think that a large number of the men who got political office in the South, when the men who had taken part in the Rebellion were still disfranchised, and the Republicans were still in power, were of a character that would not have been tolerated in public office in the North. General Willard Warner of Alabama, a brave Union soldier, a Republican Senator from that State, was one of the best and bravest men who ever sat in that body. Governor Packard of Louisiana was I believe a wise and honest man. But in general it was impossible not to feel a certain sympathy with a people, who whatever else had been their faults never were guilty of corruption or meanness, or the desire to make money out of public office, in the intolerable loathing which they felt for these strangers who had taken possession of the high places in their States.

President Grant gave the influence and authority of his Administration toward maintaining in power the lawfully chosen Republican State Governments. But in spite of all he could do they had all been overthrown but two when the Presidential election was held in 1876. Those two were South Carolina and Louisiana. The people of those two States had chosen Republican Governors at the State election held on the same day with the election of the President. But these Governors could not hold their power twenty-four hours without the support of the National administration. When that was withdrawn the negro and carpet- bag majority was powerless as a flock of sheep before a pack of wolves to resist their brave and unscrupulous Democratic enemy, however inferior the latter in numbers.

In attempting to give a dispassionate account of the history of this great question which has entered so deeply into the political and social life of the American people almost from the beginning, it is hard to measure the influence of race prejudice, of sectional feeling, and of that other powerful motive, eagerness for party supremacy.

Suffrage was conferred upon the negro by the Southern States themselves. Under the Constitution every State can prescribe its own qualifications for suffrage, with the single exception that no State can deny or abridge the right of a citizen of the United States to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

But I am bound to say, indeed it is but to repeat what I have said many times, that my long conflict with their leaders has impressed me with an ever-increasing admiration of the great and high qualities of our Southern people. I said at Chicago in February, 1903, what I said, in substance, twenty years before in Faneuil Hall, and at about the same time in the Senate:

"Having said what I thought to say on this question, perhaps I may be indulged in adding that although my life, politically and personally, has been a life of almost constant strife with the leaders of the Southern people, yet as I grow older I have learned, not only to respect and esteem, but to love the great qualities which belong to my fellow citizens of the Southern States. They are a noble race. We may well take pattern from them in some of the great virtues which make up the strength, as they make the glory, of Free States. Their love of home; their chivalrous respect for women; their courage; their delicate sense of honor; their constancy, which can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an interest of their States through adversity and through prosperity, through the years and through the generations, are things by which the people of the more mercurial North may take a lesson. And there is another thing—covetousness, corruption, the low temptation of money has not yet found any place in our Southern politics.

"Now, my friends, we cannot afford to live, we don't wish to live, and we will not live, in a state of estrangement from a people who possess these qualities. They are our kindred; bone of our bone; flesh of our flesh; blood of our blood, and whatever may be the temporary error of any Southern State I, for one, if I have a right to speak for Massachusetts, say to her, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return from following after thee. For where thou goest I will go, and where thou stayest, I will stay also. And they people shall be my people, and thy God my God.'"

In July, 1898, I was invited to deliver an address before the Virginia Bar Association. I was received by that company of distinguished gentlemen with a hospitality like that I had found in Charleston the year before. Certainly the old estrangements are gone. I took occasion in my address to appeal to the Virginia bar to give the weight of their great influence in sustaining the dignity and authority of the Supreme Court, in spite of their disappointment at some of its decisions of Constitutional questions. They received what I had to say, although they knew I differed from them on some of the gravest matters which concerned the State, and had been an anti-slavery man from my youth, with a respect and courtesy which left nothing to be desired. At the banquet which followed the address, this toast was given by William Wirt Henry, a grandson of Patrick Henry, himself one of the foremost lawyers and historians of the South. I prize very highly the original which I have in his handwriting.

"Massachusetts and Virginia.
"Foremost in planting the English Colonies in America;
"Foremost in resisting British tyranny;
"Foremost in the Revolution which won our Independence
and established our free institutions;
"May the memories of the past be the bond of the future."

My own endeavor, during my long public life, has been to maintain the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, which declares the right of every man to political equality by virtue of his manhood, and of every people to self-government by virtue of its character as a people. This our fathers meant to lay down as the fundamental law of States and of the United States, having its steadfast and immovable foundation in the law of God. It was never their purpose to declare that ignorance or vice or want of experience of the institutions of a country should not disqualify men from a share in the Government. Those things they meant to leave to the discretion of the power, whether State or National, which was to prescribe the qualifications of suffrage. But they did not mean that the accident of birthplace, or the accident of race, or the accident of color, should enter into the question at all. To this doctrine I have, in my humble way, endeavored to adhere. In dealing with the Chinese, or any class of immigrants, I would prescribe as strict a rule as the strictest for ascertaining whether the immigrant meant in good faith to be an American citizen, whether he meant to end his life here, to bring his wife and children with him, whether he loved American institutions, whether he was fit to understand the political problems with which the people had to deal, whether he had individual worth, or health of body or mind. I would make, if need be, ten years or twenty years, as the necessary period of residence for naturalization.