History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"Sir, what is 'appropriate legislation' on the subject, namely, securing the freedom of all men? It can be nothing less than throwing about all men the essential safeguards of the Constitution. The 'right to bear arms' is not plainer taught or more efficient than the right to carry ballots. And if appropriate legislation will secure the one, so can it also the other. And if both are necessary, and provided for in the Constitution as now amended, why, then, let us close the question of congressional legislation.

"Let us not take counsel of our own fears, but of our hopes; not of our enemies, but of our friends. By all the memories which cluster about the pathway in which we have been led; by all the sacrifices, suffering, blood, and tears of the conflict; by all the hopes of a freed country and a disenthralled race; yea, as a legacy for mankind, let us now secure a free representative republic, based upon impartial suffrage and that human equality made clear in the Declaration of Independence. To this entertainment let us invite our countrymen and all nations, committing our work, when done, to the verdict of posterity and the blessing of Almighty God."

On the day following, Mr. Saulsbury took the floor. His speech, ostensibly against the pending measure, was a palliation of the conduct of the Southern States, and a plea for their right of being admitted to representation in Congress. All that the Senator said directly upon the subject under discussion was contained in the following paragraph:

"Now, suppose your constitutional amendment passes. If it passes, it ought to meet with the respect of some body. If this constitutional amendment shall be presented to the States who are now represented in Congress, and shall be adopted by simply three-fourths of those States, is there any body that will have the least respect for it? Then suppose you could go with the bayonet—which I think now, under the brighter dawn of a better day which we begin to realize, you are not going to have the liberty to do—suppose you were to go with the bayonet and present it to the other eleven States, and they, acting under duress, not as free agents and as free men, could get some people in their section so miserable and poor in spirit and craven in soul as to vote to adopt in their Legislatures such an amendment, would it command the respect of any body in this land? Not at all. Open your doors, sir; admit the Representatives of the Southern States to seats in this body; require no miserable degrading oath of them; administer to them the very oath that you first took when you entered this body, and the only oath that the Constitution of the United States requires, and the only oath which Congress has any right to exact, an oath to support the Constitution of the United States; and then, if you think your Constitution is defective, if you think it needs further amendment, or if you have not sufficiently exhausted your bowels of mercy and love and kindness toward your sable friends whose shadows darken this gallery every day, submit your amendments to the States represented in the Congress of the United States; and if they choose, acting freely as citizens of their States, to agree to your amendments, it will command the respect of themselves, but still it will not command mine. I should despise a people who would voluntarily assume so degrading a position."

On the 7th of March, Mr. Sumner occupied the attention of the Senate for three hours, with a second speech in opposition to the proposed constitutional amendment. He used very strong language to express his abhorrence of the proposition: "It reminds me of that leg of mutton served for dinner on the road from London to Oxford, which Dr. Johnson, with characteristic energy, described 'as bad as bad could be, ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed.' So this compromise—I adopt the saying of an eminent friend, who insists that it can not be called an 'amendment,' but rather a 'detriment' to the Constitution—is as bad as bad can be; and even for its avowed purpose it is uncertain, loose, cracked, and rickety. Regarding it as a proposition from Congress to meet the unparalleled exigencies of the present hour, it is no better than the 'muscipular abortion' sent into the world by the 'parturient mountain.' But it is only when we look at the chance of good from it that this proposition is 'muscipular.' Regarding it in every other aspect it is infinite, inasmuch as it makes the Constitution a well-spring of insupportable thralldom, and once more lifts the sluices of blood destined to run until it comes to the horse's bridle. Adopt it, and you will put millions of fellow-citizens under the ban of excommunication; you will hand them over to a new anathema maranatha; you will declare that they have no political rights 'which white men are bound to respect,' thus repeating in a new form that abomination which has blackened the name of Taney. Adopt it, and you will stimulate anew the war of race upon race. Slavery itself was a war of race upon race, and this is only a new form of this terrible war. The proposition is as hardy as it is gigantic; for it takes no account of the moral sense of mankind, which is the same as if in rearing a monument we took no account of the law of gravitation. It is the paragon and masterpiece of ingratitude, showing more than any other act of history what is so often charged and we so fondly deny, that republics are ungrateful. The freedmen ask for bread, and you send them a stone. With piteous voice they ask for protection. You thrust them back unprotected into the cruel den of their former masters. Such an attempt, thus bad as bad can be, thus abortive for all good, thus perilous, thus pregnant with a war of race upon race, thus shocking to the moral sense, and thus treacherous to those whom we are bound to protect, can not be otherwise than shameful. Adopt it, and you will cover the country with dishonor. Adopt it, and you will fix a stigma upon the very name of republic. As to the imagination, there are mountains of light, so are there mountains of darkness; and this is one of them. It is the very Koh-i-noor of blackness. Adopt this proposition, and you will be little better than the foul Harpies who defiled the feast that was spread. The Constitution is the feast spread for our country, and you are now hurrying to drop into its text a political obscenity, and to spread on its page a disgusting ordure,

"'Defiling all you find,
And parting leave a loathsome stench behind.'"

Having presented his objections to the pending proposition, at great length, he summed them up as follows: "You have seen, first, how this proposition carries into the Constitution itself the idea of Inequality of Rights, thus defiling that unspotted text; secondly, how it is an express sanction of the acknowledged tyranny of taxation without representation; thirdly, how it is a concession to State Rights at a moment when we are recovering from a terrible war waged against us in the name of State Rights; fourthly, how it is the constitutional recognition of an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color; fifthly, how it petrifies in the Constitution the wretched pretensions of a white man's government; sixthly, how it assumes what is false in constitutional law, that color can be a 'qualification' for an elector; seventhly, how it positively ties the hands of Congress in fixing the meaning of a republican government, so that, under the guarantee clause, it will be constrained to recognize an oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, and monopoly founded on color, together with the tyranny of taxation without representation, as not inconsistent with such a government; eighthly, how it positively ties the hands of Congress in completing and consummating the abolition of slavery according to the second clause of the constitutional amendment, so that it can not, for this purpose, interfere with the denial of the elective franchise on account of color; ninthly, how it installs recent rebels in permanent power over loyal citizens; and, tenthly, how it shows forth, in unmistakable character, as a compromise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent, and utterly shameful of any in our history. All this you have seen, with pain and sorrow, I trust. Who that is moved to sympathy for his fellow-man can listen to the story without indignation? Who that has not lost the power of reason can fail to see the cruel wrong?"

Mr. Doolittle mentioned some facts which he thought would prove the apprehension of an increase of the basis of representation in the South to be without foundation. "The destruction of the population," said he, "both white and black, during the civil war, has been most enormous. Of the white population, there were in those States in 1860, of white males over twenty years of age, about one million six hundred thousand. Nearly one-third of that white population over twenty years of age has perished. The actual destruction of the black population since 1860 has been at least twenty-five per cent. of the whole population. The population of the South has been so destroyed and wasted and enfeebled in consequence of this war, that I do not for one, I confess, feel those apprehensions which some entertain that, if they are admitted to representation under the Constitution just as it stands, they will have any increase of Representatives. My opinion is, that after the next census their representation will be diminished unless emigration from the North or from Europe shall fill up their population and increase it so as to entitle it to an increased representation."

Mr. Doolittle argued that the amendment was capable of being evaded by a State disposed to disfranchise colored men: "I do not see," said he, "that there is any thing in the resolution which would prevent South Carolina or any other State from passing a law that any person who was born free, or whose ancestors were free, should exercise the elective franchise, and none others. That would exclude the whole of the colored population, and yet would leave the State to have its full representation. There is nothing which would prevent the State of South Carolina or any other State from saying that only those persons who had served in the military service, and their descendants, should exercise the elective franchise. That would exclude the colored population, and the Union population, too, if they refused to serve in the army."

Mr. Doolittle closed his remarks by advocating an amendment basing representation upon actual voters under State laws.