It was my original intention to speak of the various schemes of reconstruction claiming the consideration of the country. But they have become too numerous, and are generally too well known, to be detailed here. The Southern plan is simple; it is this: that the States, lately so eager to destroy the Union, are now entitled to all their former rights and privileges in that Union. Their haste to withdraw their representatives from Congress, is more than equalled by their anxiety to get them back in their seats. They consider it hard that, at the end of the most stupendous rebellion and the bloodiest civil war that ever shook the planet, they cannot quietly slip back in their places, and, the sword having failed, take up once more the sceptre of political power they so rashly flung down. Often, in conversation with candid Southern men, impatient for this result, I was able to convince them that it was hardly to be expected, that the government, emerging victorious from the dust of such a struggle, and finding its foot on that sceptre, should take it off with very great alacrity. And they were forced to acknowledge that, had the South proved victorious, its enemies would not have escaped so easily.
This plan does not tolerate the impediment of any Congressional test oath. When I said to my Southern friends that I should be glad to see those representatives, who could take the test oath, admitted to Congress, this was the usual reply:—
“We would not vote for such men. We had rather have no representatives at all. We want representatives to represent us, and no man represents us who can take your test oath. We are Rebels, if you choose to call us so, and only a good Rebel can properly represent us.”
This is the strongest argument I have heard against the admission of loyal Southern members to Congress. And if the white masses of the lately rebellious States are alone, and indiscriminately, to be recognized as the people of those States, it is certainly a valid argument.
“It is enough,” they maintained, “that a representative in Congress takes the ordinary oath to support the government; that is a sufficient test of his loyalty;”—forgetting that, at the outbreak of the rebellion, this proved no test at all.
Such is the Southern plan of reconstruction. Opposed to it is the plan on which I believe a majority of the people of the loyal States are agreed, namely, that certain guaranties of future national tranquillity should be required of those who have caused so great a national convulsion. But as to what those guaranties should be, opinions are divided, and a hundred conflicting measures are proposed for the settlement of the difficulty.
For my own part, I see but one plain rule by which our troubles can be finally and satisfactorily adjusted; and that is, the enactment of simple justice for all men. Anything that falls short of this falls short of the solution of the problem.
The “Civil Rights Bill,”—enacted since the greater portion of these pages were written,—is a step in the direction in which this country is inevitably moving. The principles of the Declaration of Independence, supposed to be our starting-point in history, are in reality the goal towards which we are tending. Far in advance of our actual civilization, the pioneers of the Republic set up those shining pillars. Not until all men are equal before the law, and none is hindered from rising or from sinking by any impediment which does not exist in his own constitution and private circumstances, will that goal be reached.
Soon or late the next step is surely coming. That step is universal suffrage. It may be wise to make some moral or intellectual qualification a test of a man’s fitness for the franchise; but anything which does not apply alike to all classes, and which all are not invited to attain, is inconsistent with the spirit of American nationality.
But will the Southern people ever submit to negro suffrage? They will submit to it quite as willingly as they submitted to negro emancipation. They fought against that as long as any power of resistance was in them; then they accepted it; they are now becoming reconciled to it; and soon they will rejoice over it. Such is always the history of progressive ideas. The first advance is opposed with all the might of the world until its triumph is achieved; then the world says, “Very well,” and employs all its arts and energies to defeat the next movement, which triumphs and is finally welcomed in its turn.