Again the Radical wing of his party demanded of the President the impossible.
The Abolitionists had given a tardy and lukewarm support in return for the issue of the Proclamation of Emancipation. Their support lasted but a few days. Through their spokesman, Senator Winter, they demanded now the whole loaf. They had received but half of their real program. They asked for a policy of reconstruction in the parts of Louisiana and Tennessee held by the Union army in accordance with their ideas. They demanded the ballot for every slave, the confiscation of the property of the white people of the South and its bestowment upon negroes and camp-followers as fast as the Union army should penetrate into the States in rebellion.
Senator Winter's argument was based on sound reasoning theoretically whatever might be said of its wisdom as a National policy.
"Your Emancipation Proclamation," he declared to the President, "provides for the arming and drilling of negro soldiers to fight for the Republic. If they are good enough to fight they are good enough to vote. The ballot is only another form of the bayonet which we use in time of peace——"
"Correct, Senator," was the calm reply, "if we are to allow the negro race to remain in America in physical contact with ours. But we are not going to do this. No greater calamity could befall our people. Colonization and separation must go hand in hand with the emancipation of these children of Africa. I incorporated this principle in my act of emancipation. I have set my life on the issue of its success. As a matter of theory and abstract right we may grant the suffrage to a few of the more intelligent negroes and the black soldiers we may enroll until they can be removed——"
"Again we deal with a Southerner, Mr. President!" the Senator sneered.
"So be it," was the quiet answer. "I have never held any other views. They were well known before the war. But two years before my election I said in my debate with Douglas:
"'I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with white people. I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will forever forbid the two living together on terms of social and political equality."
"Yet," the Senator sneered, "you can change your mind. You said in your Inaugural that you had no intention or right to interfere with the institution of Slavery. You did so just the same."
"As an act of war to save the Union only. But mark you, I have always hated Slavery from principle for the white man's sake as well as the negro's. I am equally determined on principle that the negro race after it is free shall never be absorbed into our social or political life!"