Unless, in the process of the reorganization, we build upon the principle laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, there is no assurance that the different elements of which our social and political state is composed will subsist in harmony and tranquil coöperation. In that direction lies our way to political safety. If we attempt to build upon any foundation of inequality between races and castes, we shall find a condition of things prevailing similar to that which has been the source of so many calamities to Ireland.
The first blast against Andrew Johnson was sounded by Wendell Phillips at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston, May 31, on a resolution offered by himself affirming that
The reconstruction of the rebel states without negro suffrage is a practical surrender to the Confederacy and will make the anti-slavery proclamation of the late President, and even the expected amendment of the Constitution utterly inefficient for the freedom and protection of the negro.
This resolution was supported by Phillips in a spirit of blind fury. Every life and every dollar that had been spent by the North had been stolen, he contended, if this policy should prevail, and "there was but one way in which the people could still hold the helm of affairs, and that was by a repudiation of the entire war debt!" Such a party would have his voice and vote until God called him home. "Better, far better, would it have been for Grant to have surrendered to Lee, than for Johnson to have surrendered to North Carolina."
The New York Tribune, June 2, took notice of Phillips, and, after adverting to his intemperate attacks on Salmon P. Chase and Abraham Lincoln in the past, turned to his "like delicate attentions" to Mr. Lincoln's successor.
President Johnson [it said] believes in, and favors, the extension of the elective franchise to blacks, but since he holds that no state has gone out, or could go out, of the Union, he believes that the Southern state constitutions stand as before, and that the right of suffrage stands as before until legally changed. We do not insist [it continued] that this is the true doctrine—we do not admit an unqualified right in the enfranchised people of any state to do as they will with the residue. Yet we insist that President Johnson's view is one that a true man may honestly, conscientiously hold—may hold it without being a hypocrite, a demagogue, or a tool of the slave power. And we think few considerate persons will deny that it is greatly desirable, if the desired reparation in the status of the freedmen can be achieved through the several states rather than over them—that it would be more stable, less grudging, more real, if thus accomplished. In fact, we should prefer waiting a year or two, or accepting a limited enfranchisement, to a full recognition of the Equal Rights of Man by virtue only of a presidential edict, or order from the War Department, or even an act of Congress.
The New York Times, June 21, concurred, saying:
It is an open question whether the Government should or should not attempt to secure suffrage to the Southern blacks; the best men may differ about it.
It scored Wendell Phillips for advocating repudiation of the national debt as a cure for any other evil whatsoever.