The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes

by J. Q. Howard

"The military bill and amendments are peace offerings. We should accept them as such, and place ourselves upon them as the starting-point from which to meet future political issues as they arise."

"Like other Southern men, I naturally sought alliance with the Democratic party, merely because it was opposed to the Republican party. But, as far as I can judge, there is nothing tangible about it, except the issues that were staked upon the war and lost. Finding nothing to take hold of except prejudice, which can not be worked into good for any one, it is proper and right that I should seek some standpoint from which good may be done."

Quotations like these from prominent Democratic politicians, from rebel soldiers, and from influential rebel newspapers, might be multiplied indefinitely. Enough have been given to show how completely and how exactly the Reconstruction Acts have met the evil to be remedied in the South. My friend, Mr. Hassaurek, in his admirable speech at Columbus, did not estimate too highly the fruits of these measures. Said he:

"And, sir, this remedy at once effected the desired cure. The poor contraband is no longer the persecuted outlaw whom incurable rebels might kick and kill with impunity; but he at once became 'our colored fellow-citizen,' in whose well-being his former master takes the liveliest interest. Thus, by bringing the negro under the American system, we have completed his emancipation. He has ceased to be a pariah. From an outcast he has been transformed into a human being, invested with the great National attribute of self-protection, and the re-establishment of peace, and order, and security, the revival of business and trade, and the restoration of the Southern States on the basis of loyalty and equal justice to all, will be the happy results of this astonishing metamorphosis, provided the party which has inaugurated this policy remains in power to carry it out."

The Peace Democracy generally throughout the North oppose this measure. In Ohio they oppose it especially because it commits the people of the Nation in favor of manhood suffrage. They tell us that if it is wise and just to entrust the ballot to colored men in the District of Columbia, in the Territories, and in the rebel States, it is also just and wise that they should have it in Ohio and in the other States of the North.

Union men do not question this reasoning, but if it is urged as an objection to the plan of Congress, we reply: There are now within the limits of the United States about five millions of colored people. They are not aliens or strangers. They are here not by the choice of themselves or of their ancestors. They are here by the misfortune of their fathers and the crime of ours. Their labor, privations, and sufferings, unpaid and unrequited, have cleared and redeemed one-third of the inhabited territory of the Union. Their toil has added to the resources and wealth of the nation untold millions. Whether we prefer it or not, they are our countrymen, and will remain so forever.

They are more than countrymen—they are citizens. Free colored people were citizens of the colonies. The Constitution of the United States, formed by our fathers, created no disabilities on account of color. By the acts of our fathers and of ourselves, they bear equally the burdens and are required to discharge the highest duties of citizens. They are compelled to pay taxes and to bear arms. They fought side by side with their white countrymen in the great struggle for independence, and in the recent war for the Union. In the revolutionary contest, colored men bore an honorable part, from the Boston massacre, in 1770, to the surrender of Cornwallis, in 1781. Bancroft says: "Their names may be read on the pension rolls of the country side by side with those of other soldiers of the revolution." In the war of 1812 General Jackson issued an order complimenting the colored men of his army engaged in the defense of New Orleans. I need not speak of their number or of their services in the war of the rebellion. The Nation enrolled and accepted them among her defendants to the number of about two hundred thousand, and in the new regular army act, passed at the close of the rebellion, by the votes of Democrats and Union men alike, in the Senate and in the House, and by the assent of the president, regiments of colored men, cavalry and infantry, form part of the standing army of the Republic.

In the navy, colored American sailors have fought side by side with white men from the days of Paul Jones to the victory of the Kearsarge over the rebel pirate Alabama. Colored men will, in the future as in the past, in all times of National peril, be our fellow-soldiers. Tax-payers, countrymen, fellow-citizens, and fellow-soldiers, the colored men of America have been and will be. It is now too late for the adversaries of nationality and human rights to undertake to deprive these tax-payers, freemen, citizens, and soldiers of the right to vote.

Slaves were never voters. It was bad enough that our fathers, for the sake of Union, were compelled to allow masters to reckon three-fifths of their slaves for representation, without adding slave suffrage to the other privileges of the slaveholder. But free colored men were always voters in many of the Colonies, and in several of the States, North and South, after independence was achieved. They voted for members of the Congress which declared independence, and for members of every Congress prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution; for the members of the convention which framed the Constitution; for the members of many of the State conventions which ratified it, and for every president from Washington to Lincoln.

Our government has been called the white man's government. Not so. It is not the government of any class, or sect, or nationality, or race. It is a government founded on the consent of the governed, and Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, therefore properly calls it "the government of the governed." It is not the government of the native born, or of the foreign born, of the rich man, or of the poor man, of the white man, or of the colored man—it is the government of the freeman. And when colored men were made citizens, soldiers, and freemen, by our consent and votes, we were estopped from denying to them the right of suffrage.