THE Government could not escape the logic of the position it took when it made the Negro a soldier, and invoked his aid in putting down the slave-holders' Rebellion. As a soldier he stood in line of promotion: the Government destroyed the Confederacy when it placed muskets in the hands of the slaves; and at the close of the war had to legally render slavery forever impossible in the United States. The bloody deduction of the great struggle had to be made a living, legal verity in the Constitution, and hence the Thirteenth Amendment.
"ARTICLE XIII.
"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."
This was the consummation of the ordinance of 1787, carried to its last analysis, applied in its broadest sense. It drove the last nail in the coffin of slavery, and blighted the fondest hope of the friends of secession.
But there was need for another amendment to the Constitution conferring upon the Colored people manhood suffrage. On the 27th of February, 1869, the Congress passed a resolution recommending the Fifteenth Amendment for ratification by the Legislatures of the several States. On the 30th of March, 1870, President U. S. Grant sent a special message to Congress, calling the attention of that body to the proclamation of the Secretary of State in reference to the ratification of the Amendment by twenty-nine of the States.
Special Message of President Grant on Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment:
"To the Senate and House of Representatives:
"It is unusual to notify the two houses of Congress, by message, of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the XVth Amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable. A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, (with the assertion that, 'at the time of the Declaration of Independence, the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect,') is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day.
"Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly-enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws I would say, withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen. The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The 'Father of his Country,' in his farewell address, uses this language: 'Promote, then, as a matter of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of the government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.' In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message.
"I repeat that the adaption of the XVth Amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of forty millions, and increasing in a rapid ratio.
"I would therefore call upon Congress to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country; and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing and not a danger. By such means only can the benefits contemplated by this amendment to the Constitution be secured.
"U. S. Grant.
Executive Mansion, March 30, 1870."
Certificate of Mr. Secretary Fish Respecting the Ratification of the XVth Amendment to the Constitution, March 30, 1870.
"Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States.
"To all to whom these presents may come, greeting:
"Know ye that the Congress of the United States, on or about the 27th day of February, in the year 1869, passed a resolution in the words and figures following, to wit:
"A Resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of both houses concurring.) That the following article be proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the Constitution, namely:
"ARTICLE XV.
"Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
"Sec. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
"And, further, that it appears, from official documents on file in this department, that the amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the legislatures of the States of North Carolina, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maine, Louisiana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, Vermont, Virginia, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Texas; in all, twenty-nine States.
"And, further, that the States whose legislatures have so ratified the said proposed amendment constitute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States.
"And, further, that it appears, from an official document on file in this department, that the legislature of the State of New York has since passed resolutions claiming to withdraw the said ratification of the said amendment which had been made by the legislature of that State, and of which official notice had been filed in this department.
"And, further, that it appears, from an official document on file in this department, that the legislature of Georgia has by resolution ratified the said proposed amendment.
"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of the 2d section of the act of Congress, approved the 20th day of April, 1818, entitled "An act to provide for the publication of the laws of the United States, and for other purposes," do hereby certify, that the amendment aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution of the United States.
"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.
"Done at the city of Washington, this 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord, 1870, and of the independence of the United States, the ninety-fourth.
[SEAL.]
"Hamilton Fish."
The Emancipation Proclamation itself did not call forth such genuine and wide-spread rejoicing as the message of President Grant. The event was celebrated by the Colored people in all the larger cities North and South. Processions, orations, music and dancing proclaimed the unbounded joy of the new citizen. In Philadelphia Frederick Douglass, Bishop Jabez P. Campbell, I. C. Wears, and others delivered eloquent addresses to enthusiastic audiences. Mr. Douglass deeply wounded the religious feelings of his race by declaring; "I shall not dwell in any hackneyed cant by thanking God for this deliverance which has been wrought out through our common humanity." A hundred pulpits, a hundred trenchant pens sprang at the declaration with fiery indignation; and it was some years before the bold orator was able to make himself tolerable to his people. There was little of the spirit of tolerance among the Colored people at the time, and upon such an occasion the remark was regarded as imprudent, to say the least.
A new era was opened up before the Colored people. They were now for the first time in possession of their full political rights. On the 25th of February, 1870, Hiram R. Revels took his seat as United States Senator from Mississippi. On the 9th of January, 1861, Mississippi passed her ordinance of secession, and Jefferson Davis resigned his seat as United States Senator. Within a brief decade a civil war had raged for four and a half years; and after the seceding Mississippi had passed through the refining fires of battle and had been purged of slavery, she sent to succeed the arch traitor a Negro,[123] a representative of the race that Mr. Davis intended to be the corner-stone of his new government!![124] It was God's work, and marvellous in the eyes of the world. But this was not all. Just one year from the day and hour Senator Revels took his seat in the United States Senate, on the 24th of February, 1871, Jefferson F. Long, a Negro, was sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia, the State of Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederate States!! And then, as if to add glory to glory, the American Government despatched E. D. Bassett, a Colored man from Pennsylvania, as Minister Resident and Consul-General to Hayti! And with almost the same stroke of his pen, President Grant sent J. Milton Turner, a Colored man from Missouri, as Resident Minister and Consul-General to Liberia! Mr. Bassett came from Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was written and proclaimed, and where the noble Dr. Franklin had stood against the slavery compromises of the Constitution! Philadelphia, then, the birthplace of American Independence, had the honor of furnishing the first Negro who was to illustrate the lofty sentiment of the equality of all men before the law. And the republic that Mr. Bassett went to had won diplomatic relations with all the civilized powers of the earth through the matchless valor and splendid statesmanship of Toussaint L'Ouverture. This was a black republic that had a history and a name among the peoples of the world.
Mr. Turner went from Missouri, the first State to violate the ordinance of 1787, and to establish slavery "northwest of the Ohio" River. He went to a republic on the West Coast of Africa that had been built by the industry, intelligence, and piety of Negroes who had flown from the accursed influences of American slavery. The slave-ships had disappeared from the coast, and commercial fleets, from all lands came to trade with the citizens of a free republic whose ministers were welcomed in every court of Europe, and whose official acts were clothed with the authority and majesty of "the Republic of Liberia!"