History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States

by William Horatio Barnes

"Much has been said, on the part of those who oppose the bill, on the subject of its injustice to the white inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. Abstract this from the excited declamation to which you have listened, and what is left is but the old revolting argument in favor of slavery, and a selfish appeal to prejudice and ignorance. It is insisted that a majority of the white voters of the District are opposed to the contemplated law, that they have recently given a public expression of their opinion against it, and that for that reason it would be unjust and oppressive in Congress to pass this law. In my judgment, this is a question not concerning alone the wishes and prejudices of the seven thousand voters who dwell in this District, but involving, it may be, the honor, the justice, the good faith, and the magnanimity of the great nation which makes this little spot the central seat of its empire and its power.

"If it concerns the honor of the United States that a certain class of its people, in a portion of its territory subject to its exclusive jurisdiction and control, shall, in consideration of the change which has taken place in its condition, and of the fidelity which it has exhibited in the midst of great and severe trials, be elevated somewhat above the political degradation which has hitherto been its lot, shall the United States be prevented from the accomplishment of that great and generous purpose by the handful of voters who temporarily encamp under the shadow of the Capitol? It may be that the determination of a question of so much importance as this belongs rather to the people of the United States, through their Representatives in Congress assembled, than to the present qualified voters of this District. Sir, the field of inquiry is much wider than the District of Columbia, and the problem to be solved one in which not they alone are interested. When Congress determined that the time had come when slavery should be abolished in this District, and the capital of the nation should no longer be disgraced by its presence, did it pause in the great work of justice to which it laid its hand to hear from the mayor of Washington, or to inquire whether the masters would vote for it? It is not difficult to conjecture what the fate of that great measure would have been had its adoption or rejection depended upon the voters of this District.

"Shall we be told, sir, that if the Representatives of the people of twenty-five States are of the opinion that the laws and institutions which exist in the seat of Government of the United States ought to be changed, that they are not to be changed because a majority of the voters who reside here do not desire that change? Will any man say that the voices of these seven thousand voters are to outweigh the voices of all the constituencies of the United States in the capital of their country? I dismiss this objection, therefore, as totally destitute of reason or weight. It is based upon a fallacy so feeble that it is dissipated by the bare touch of the Constitution to it.

"Whatever is the duty of the United States to do, that is for their interest to do. The two great facts written in history by the iron hand of the late war are, first, that the Union is indissoluble, and second, that human slavery is here forever abolished. From these two facts consequences corresponding in importance with the facts themselves must result: from the former, a more vigorous and powerful nationality; from the latter, the elevation and improvement of the race liberated by the war from bondage, as well as a higher and more advanced civilization in the region where the change has taken place. It is impossible to say that the African race occupies to-day the same position in American affairs and counts no more in weight than it did before the rebellion. You can not strike the fetters from the limbs of four million men and leave them such as you found them. As wide as is the interval between a freeman and a slave, so wide is the difference between the African race before the rebellion and after the rebellion. You can not keep to its ancient level a race which has been released from servitude any more than you can keep back the ocean with your hand after you have thrown down the sea-wall which restrained its impatient tides. Freedom is every-where in history the herald of progress. It is written in the annals of all nations. It is a law of the human race. Ignorance, idleness, brutality—these belong to slavery; they are her natural offspring and allies, and the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Chanler,] who consumed so much time in demonstrating the comparative inferiority of the black race, answered his own argument when he reminded us that the Constitution recognized the negro only as a slave, and gave us the strongest reason why we should now begin to recognize him as a freeman. Sir, I do not doubt that the negro race is inferior to our own. That is not the question. You do not advance an inch in the argument after you have proved that premise of your case. You must show that they are not only inferior, but that they are so ignorant and degraded that they can not be safely intrusted with the smallest conceivable part of political power and responsibility, and that this is the case not on the plantations of Alabama and Mississippi, but here in the District of Columbia. Nay, you must not only prove that this is the general character of this population here, but that this condition is so universal and unexceptional that you can not allow them to take this first step in freedom, although it may be hedged about with qualifications and conditions; for which of you who have opposed this measure on the ground of race has proposed to give the benefit of it to such as may be found worthy? Not one of you. And this shows that your objection is founded really on a prejudice, although it assumes the dignity and proportions of an argument. The real question, sir, is, can we afford to be just—nay, if you please, generous—to a race whose shame has been washed out in the consuming fires of war, and which now stands erect and equal before the law with our own? Shall we give hope and encouragement to that race beginning, as it does now for the first time, its career of freedom, by erecting here in the capital of the republic a banner inscribed with the sacred legend of the elder days, 'All men are born free and equal?' or shall we unfurl in its stead that other banner, with a strange device, around which the dissolving remnants of the Democratic party in this hall are called upon to rally, inscribed with no great sentiment of justice or generosity, but bearing upon its folds the miserable appeal of the demagogue, 'This is a white man's Government?' When you inaugurate your newly-discovered political principle, do not forget to invite the colored troops; beat the assembly; call out the remnants of the one hundred and eighty thousand men who marched with steady step through the flames and carnage of war, and many of whom bear upon their bodies the honorable scars received in that unparalleled struggle and in your defense, and as you send your banner down the line, say to them, 'This is the reward of a generous country for the wounds you have received and the sufferings you have endured.'

"Shall we follow the great law to which I have referred—the law that liberty is progress—and conform our policy to the spirit of that great law? or shall we, governed by unreasonable and selfish prejudices, initiate a policy which will make this race our hereditary enemy, a mine beneath instead of a buttress to the edifice which you are endeavoring to repair? Sir, I do not hesitate to say that, in my opinion, it were better to follow where conscience and justice point, leaving results to a higher Power, than to shrink from an issue which it is the clear intention of Providence we shall face, or to be driven from our true course by the chimeras which the excited imaginations of political partisans have conjured up, or by the misty ghosts of long-buried errors."

Mr. Van Horn, of New York, while willing to accept the bill as originally presented, preferred it as modified by Mr. Hale's amendments. In his speech he charged those who had opposed the bill as laboring in the interest of slavery.

"They seem to have forgotten," he said, "in their advocacy of slavery, that we have passed through a fierce war, begun by slavery, waged against the Government by slavery, and solely in its interest to more thoroughly establish itself upon the Western Continent, and crush out the best interests of freedom and humanity; and that this war, guided on our part by the omnipotent arm of the Invisible, made bare in our behalf, has resulted in a most complete overthrow of this great wrong; and by the almost omnipotent voice of the republic, as now expressed in its fundamental law, it has no right to live, much less entitled to the right of burial, and should have no mourners in the land or going about the streets. Such speeches as those of the gentlemen from New Jersey, [Mr. Rogers,] and from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Boyer,] and my colleague and friend, [Mr. Chanler,] who represents, with myself, in part, the Empire State, carry us back to the days and scenes before the war, when slavery ruled supreme, not only throughout the land, by and through its hold upon power, which the people in an evil hour had given it, but here in these halls of legislation, where liberty and its high and noble ends ought to have been secured by just and equal laws, and the great and paramount object of our system of government carried out and fully developed. They seem to forget that liberty and good government have been on trial during these five years last past of war and blood, and that they have succeeded in the mighty struggle. They forget that Providence, in a thousand ways, during this fierce conflict, has given us evidence of his favor, and led us out of the land of bondage into a purer and higher state of freedom, where slavery, as an institution among us, is no more. Why do they labor so long and so ardently to resurrect again into life this foul and loathsome thing? Why can not they forget their former love and attachments in this direction, and no longer cling with such undying grasp to this dead carcass, which, by its corruptions and rottenness, has well nigh heretofore poisoned them to the death? Why not awake to the new order of things, and accept the results which God has worked out in our recent struggle, and not raise the weak arm of flesh to render null and void what has thus been done, and thus attempt to turn back the flow of life which is overspreading all, and penetrating every part of the body politic with its noble purposes and exalted hopes?"

Thursday, January 18, was the last day of the discussion of this important measure in the House of Representatives. When the subject was in order, Mr. Clarke, of Kansas, "as the only Representative upon the floor of a State whose whole history had been a continual protest against political injustice and wrong," after having advocated the bill by arguments drawn from the history of the country and the record of the negro race, remarked as follows: "This cry of poverty and ignorance is not new. I remember that those who first followed the Son of man, the Savior of the world, were not the learned rabbis, not the enlightened scholar, not the rich man or the pious Pharisee. They were the poor and needy, the peasant and the fisherman. I remember, also, that the more learned the slaveholder, the greater the rebel. I remember that no black skin covered so false a heart or misdirected brain, that when the radiant banner of our nationality was near or before him, he did not understand its meaning, and remained loyal to its demands. The man capable of taking care of himself, of wife and children, and, in addition to his unrequited toil, to hold up his oppressor, must have intelligence enough, in the long run, to wield the highest means of protection we can give.

"But, sir, it is for our benefit, as well as for the benefit of the proscribed class, that I vote for and support impartial manhood suffrage in this District. We can not afford, as a nation, to keep any class ignorant or oppress the weak. We must establish here republican government. That which wrongs one man, in the end recoils on the many. Sir, if we accept, as the Republican party of the Union, our true position and our duty, we shall nobly win. If we are false and recreant, we shall miserably fail. Let us have faith in the people and the grand logic of a mighty revolution, and dare to do right. Class legislation will be the inevitable result of class power; and what would follow, so far as the colored race are concerned, let the recent tragedy of Jamaica answer.

[Illustration: Hon. Sidney Clarke.]