History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

Mr. Johnson did not think that the North needed such a provision as this amendment to render her able to cope with Southern statesmanship in Congress: "Are not the North and the statesmen of the North equal to the South and the statesmen of the South on all subjects that may come before the councils of the nation? What is there, looking to the history of the two sections in the past, which would lead us to believe that the North is inferior to the South in any thing of intellectual improvement or of statesmanship? You have proved—and I thank God you have proved—that if listening to evil counsels, rendered effective, perhaps, by your own misjudged legislation, and by the ill-advised course of your own population, exhibited through the press and the pulpit, a portion of the South involved the country in a war, the magnitude of which no language can describe—you have proved yourselves, adequate to the duty of defeating, them in their mad and, as far as the letter of the Constitution is concerned, their traitorous purpose. And now, having proved your physical manhood, do you doubt your intellectual manhood? Mr. President, in the presence in which I speak, I am restrained from speaking comparatively of the Senate as it is and the Senate as it has been; but I can say this, with as much sincerity as man ever spoke, that there is nothing to be found in the free States calculated to disparage them properly in the estimation of the wise and the good. They are able to conduct the Government, and they will not be the less able because they have the advice and the counsels of their Southern brethren."

In answer to the position that the Southern States were not possessed of a republican form of government, Mr. Johnson remarked: "Did our fathers consider that any one of the thirteen States who finally came under the provisions of that Constitution, and have ever since constituted a part of the nation, were not living under republican forms of government? The honorable member will pardon me for saying that to suppose it is to disparage the memory of those great and good men. There was not a State in the Union when the Constitution was adopted that was republican, if the honorable member's definition of a republican government is the one now to be relied upon. A property qualification was required in all at that time. Negroes were not allowed to vote, although free, in most of the States. In the Southern States the mass of the negroes were slaves, and, of course, were not entitled to vote. If the absence of the universal right of suffrage proves that the Government is not republican, then there was not a republican government within the limits of the United States when the Constitution was adopted; and yet the very object of the clause to guarantee a republican government—and the honorable member's citations prove it—was to prevent the existing governments from being changed by revolution. It was to preserve the existing governments; and yet the honorable member would have the Senate and the country believe that, in the judgment of the men who framed the Constitution, there was not a republican form of government in existence.

"The definition of the honorable member places his charge of antirepublicanism as against the present forms of constitution upon the ground of the right to vote. I suppose the black man has no more natural right to vote than the white man. It is the exclusion from the right that affects the judgment of the honorable member from Massachusetts. Voting, according to him, is a right derived from God; it is in every man inalienable; and its denial, therefore, is inconsistent and incompatible with the true object of a free government. If it be such a right, it is not less a right in the white man than in the black man; it is not less a right in the Indian than in the white man or the black man; it is not less a right in the female portion of our population than in the male portion. Then the honorable member from Massachusetts is living in an anti-republican government, and he ought not to stay there a moment if he can find any government which would be a government according to his theory. None has existed since the world commenced, and it is not at all likely that any will exist in all time to come; but if there is any such government to be found on the face of the earth, let him leave Massachusetts, let him hug that angelic delusion which he hopes will encircle the whole world, and go somewhere, where he can indulge it without seeing before him every day conclusive evidence that no such illusion exists at home. Leave Massachusetts, I beg the honorable member, just as soon as you can, or you will never be supremely happy."

In conclusion, Mr. Johnson remarked, referring to the recent rebels: "Let us take them to our bosom, trust them, and as I believe in my existence, you will never have occasion to regret it. You will, if the event occurs, look back to your participation in it in future time with unmingled delight, because you will be able to date from it a prosperity and a national fame of which the world furnishes no example; and you will be able to date from, it the absence of all cause of differences which can hereafter exist, which will keep us together as one people, looking to one destiny, and anxious to achieve one renown."

On Tuesday, February 13th, the Senate resumed the consideration of the Basis of Representation. Mr. Summer proposed to amend the proviso recommended by the committee—"all persons therein of such race or color shall be excluded from the basis of representation"—by adding the words "and they shall be exempt from taxation of all kinds."

Mr. Henderson, of Missouri, occupied the attention of the Senate, during a considerable part of this and the following day, in a speech against the proposition of the Committee of Fifteen, which he considered a compromise, surrendering the rights of the negro out of the hands of the General Government into the hands of States not fit to be intrusted with them. In favor of his own amendment prohibiting the States from disfranchising citizens on the ground of color, Mr. Henderson said: "I propose to make the State governments republican in fact, as they are in theory. The States now have the power and do exclude the negroes for no other reason than that of color. If the negro is equally competent and equally devoted to the Government as the Celt, the Saxon, or the Englishman; why should he not vote? If he pays his taxes, works the roads, repels foreign invasion with his musket, assists in suppressing insurrections, fells the forest, tills the soil, builds cities, and erects churches, what more shall he do to give him the simple right of saying he must be only equal in these burdens, and not oppressed? My proposition is put in the least offensive form. It respects the traditionary right of the States to prescribe the qualifications of voters. It does not require that the ignorant and unlettered negro shall vote. Its words are simply that 'no State, in prescribing the qualifications requisite for electors therein, shall discriminate against any person on account of color or race.' The States may yet prescribe an educational or property test; but any such test shall apply to white and black alike. If the black man be excluded because he is uneducated, the uneducated white man must be excluded too. If a property test be adopted for the negro, as in New York, the same test must apply to the white man. It reaches all the States, and not a few only, in its operation. I confess that, so far as I am personally concerned, I would go still further and put other limitations on the power of the States in regard to suffrage; but Senators have expressed so much distrust that even this proposition can not succeed, I have concluded to present it in a form the least objectionable in which I could frame it. It will be observed that this amendment, if adopted, will not prevent the State Legislatures from fixing official qualifications. They may prevent a negro from holding any office whatever under the State organization. It is a singular fact, however, that to-day, under the Federal Constitution, a negro may be elected President, United States Senator, or a member of the lower branch of Congress. In that instrument no qualification for office is prescribed which rejects the negro. The white man, not native born, may not be President, but the native-born African may be. The States, however, may, in this respect, notwithstanding this amendment, do what the Federal Constitution never did."

Mr. Henderson closed his speech with the following words: "The reasons in favor of my proposition are inseparably connected with all I have said. I need not repeat them. Every consideration of peace demands it. It must be done to remove the relics of the rebellion; it must be done to pluck out political disease from the body politic, and restore the elementary principles of our Government; it must be done to preserve peace in the States and harmony in our Federal system; it must be done to assure the happiness and prosperity of the Southern people themselves; it must be done to establish in our institutions the principles of universal justice; it must be done to secure the strongest possible guarantees against future wars; it must be done in obedience to that golden rule which insists upon doing to others what we would that others should do unto us; it must be done if we would obey the moral law that teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves; in fine, it must be done to purify, strengthen, and perpetuate a Government in which are now fondly centered the best hopes of mankind."

Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, addressed the Senate on the pending measure. He made the following interesting historical statements: "As the traveler who has passed a difficult road, when he comes to some high hill looks back to see the difficulties which he has passed, I turn back, and I ask the Senator to turn back, to consider what occurred, as I say, about six years ago. In the session of 1859-60, in the old Senate-chamber, a bill was brought into the Senate of the United States by the then Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown], who was chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, a place which my friend from Maine [Mr. Morrill] now so worthily fills—a bill in aid of the education of the children of this District. The bill proposed to grant certain fines and forfeitures to the use of the schools, and also proposed to tax the people ten cents on every hundred dollars of the property in this District for the purpose of educating the children. That bill proposed to tax the white man and the black man alike; and fearing that the property of the black man would be taxed to educate the child of the white man, I proposed an amendment to the bill, that the tax collected from the black man should go to educate the black man's child.

"There was also a further provision of the bill, that if the District raised a certain amount of money for the education of the children, the Government of the United States would appropriate a like amount from the Treasury. If, for instance, you raised $20,000 by taxes on the people in the District, the Government should pay $20,000 more, to be added to it for the education of the children of the District. I moved the amendment that no child whose father paid any portion of that tax for the education of the children should be excluded from the benefit of it, be he white or black; but that there might be no inconvenience felt, I agreed to an amendment that the black child should not be put into the same school with the white child, but that they should be educated in different schools to be provided for them; but if the black man paid for educating the children of the District, his child should be educated. There was at once an outcry, 'Why, this is social equality of the two races; this is political equality;' and they would not consent that the black child should be educated, even with the money of the black father. That amendment was declared to be carried in the Senate of the United States, and after declaring it was carried, the Senate adjourned, and after the adjournment, the chairman of that committee, Mr. Brown, appealed to me personally if I would not withdraw it. I said to him, 'No, I would never withdraw it; if you tax the black man, the black man should have a part of the money that you raise from him to educate his child.'

"After some days, the bill came up again in the Senate of the United States, and the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, got up and in open Senate appealed to me, 'Will the Senator from New Hampshire withdraw that amendment?' 'Never, Mr. President.' 'Then,' said the Senator from Mississippi, 'I will lay the bill aside, and will not ask the Senate to pass it;' and so the whole scheme failed, because they would not consent that the money of the black man should educate his own child, and they could not vote it to educate a white child.