Inside the building a tired, thin man with deeply furrowed face pushed back his chair and for a moment covered his eyes with his hand. Then he glanced toward the window, and his mouth crooked into a smile. He’d have to explain at home. Again he had stayed out all night. His desk was covered with papers. He would go home now, drink some coffee. That morning he proposed to demand the floor. He had something to say. He paused a moment and re-read one scribbled paragraph:
“This is not a white man’s Government, in the exclusive sense in which it is said. To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates the fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is Man’s Government, the Government of all men alike; not that all men will have equal power and sway within it. Accidental circumstances, natural and acquired endowment and ability, will vary their fortunes. But equal rights to all the privileges of the Government is innate in every immortal being, no matter what the shape or color of the tabernacle which it inhabits. Our fathers repudiated the whole doctrine of the legal superiority of families or races, and proclaimed the equality of men before the law. Upon that they created a revolution and built the Republic.”[26]
Thaddeus Stevens arranged the papers in a neat pile, straightened his wig and stood up. Then he took down his overcoat from the rack and put it on. His feet echoed in the dim, empty corridor. A Negro attendant in the lobby saw him coming. The dark face lit up with a smile and his greeting sang like a tiny hymn.
“Good mawnin’, Mistah Stevens—Good mawnin’ to you, sah!”
And Thaddeus Stevens did not feel the chill in the air as he walked down the steps and out into the wet, gray dawn.
“The war is not over!” Douglass said grimly to his son Lewis. “The battle is far from won. Not yet can I unfurl John Brown’s flag in a land of the free!”
On the other hand, he knew the battle was not lost. But the Abolitionists’ fundamental tenet of “moral persuasion” would have to have a firm structure of legislation—or the house would come tumbling down.
Stout girders for this structure were being lifted all over the land, in the least expected places.
On January 1, 1867, the African Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia, was packed for an Emancipation Celebration. In the midst of the singing and praying and shouting a young white man rose in the audience and, going forward, asked if he might say a word.