I couldn’t help suggesting that, according to the appearances then, there wasn’t much chance for his doing a great deal very soon either to honor or dishonor the South in the Senate.
“Oh, he must get in soon. It won’t be possible to refuse admission to such men. The position of the Republicans is so utterly untenable that they must soon find it out.”
The Republican party, he insisted, was not at all an Administration party. “It is only coquetting with Mr. Johnson. Pretty soon it will turn against him openly.”
I suggested that, as it had control of both houses, in any event it made very little difference whether Mr. Johnson agreed with it or not, so far as the present question, the immediate admission of the Southern Representatives, was concerned.
“Ah, but the present Congress doesn’t reflect the real views of the Northern people. It was elected under a war pressure, and it is proving itself utterly unfit to deal with the issues which the peace has brought forward. You may be right about the admission of Southern members now; but the next Congress will soon fix things.”
Nothing, he thought, could exceed the indignity with which Congress had treated honorable Southern gentlemen elected to it in good faith by Southern constituencies, in refusing them the empty privilege of seats on the floor. That was an extraordinary way to meet the returning loyalty of the South. Perhaps it was honest in thinking them not entitled to membership; but the refusal of seats to men bearing certificates of election was a gross and studied discourtesy which could not be forgotten or forgiven.
Among men of Mr. Rozier’s class I found a general disposition to restrict rather than extend the suffrage. Negro suffrage, they argued, would only be another step in a path which had already led to most of our existing troubles. Too many voted now, instead of too few. What business had any man to cast a vote for the imposition of taxes who had no taxes to pay? What right had any man to a share in shaping the legislation of the country who had no settled interest in the country? Or what sort of government could be expected from the votes of men too ignorant to know anything about government? In short, no man ought to vote unless he had landed property and was educated. The gentlemen of the country should be the ruling class of the country.
But this was only the talk of the clubs and the dinner-tables. The mob who made up the Rebel vote and the Rebel army, and who now furnish the substratum for the universal Rebel feeling, heard nothing of such sentiments. The discussion of them—like their principles themselves—belonged exclusively to the “natural governing classes,” and in a special degree to the late slaveholders.
Still, no evils of republican institutions were likely now to drive them out of the country. They had heard enough from their Mexican explorers. Bad as the nigger equality was here, they had discovered it to be much worse there and in Brazil. But their whole hearts were with the Imperialist party in Mexico. Part of this came from the French sympathies of a large portion of the population; another part was due to a general preference for monarchical institutions. The Monroe doctrine had come to be considered a Yankee notion. The impression common at the North, that war with France would help heal the wounds of our own strife, was manifestly untrue, as to Louisiana. It would there be regarded as another Yankee crusade. It would probably meet no open resistance; but it would unquestionably find no support, unless of the coldest.