"We are to answer for our treatment of the colored people of this country, and it will prove in the end impracticable to secure to men of color civil rights unless the persons who claim those rights are fortified by the political right of voting. With the right of voting, every thing that a man ought to have or enjoy of civil rights comes to him. Without the right to vote, he is secure in nothing. I can not consent, after all the guards and safeguards which may be prepared for the defense of the colored men in the enjoyment of their rights—I can not consent that they shall be deprived of the right to protect themselves. One hundred and eighty-six thousand of them have been in the army of the United States. They have stood in the place of our sons and brothers and friends. They have fallen in defense of the country. They have earned the right to share in the Government; and if you deny them the elective franchise, I know not how they are to be protected. Otherwise you furnish the protection which is given to the lamb when he is commended to the wolf.
"There is an ancient history that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took refuge in the chief assembly of Athens, in the bosom of a member of that illustrious body, and that the senator in anger hurled it violently from him. It fell to the ground dead, and such was the horror and indignation of that ancient but not Christianized body—men living in the light of nature, of reason—that they immediately expelled the brutal Areopagite from his seat, and from the association of humane legislators.
"What will be said of us, not by Christian, but by heathen nations even, if, after accepting the blood and sacrifices of these men, we hurl them from us and allow them to be the victims of those who have tyrannized over them for centuries? I know of no crime that exceeds this; I know of none that is its parallel; and if this country is true to itself, it will rise in the majesty of its strength and maintain a policy, here and every-where, by which the rights of the colored people shall be secured through their own power—in peace, the ballot; in war, the bayonet.
"It is a maxim of another language, which we may well apply to ourselves, that where the voting register ends the military roster of rebellion begins; and if you leave these four million people to the care and custody of the men who have inaugurated and carried on this rebellion, then you treasure up for untold years the elements of social and civil war, which must not only desolate and paralyze the South, but shake this Government to its very foundation."
Soon after the close of Mr. Boutwell's speech, Mr. Darling's motion to postpone and Mr. Hale's motion to amend having been rejected, a vote was taken on the bill as reported by the committee. The bill passed by a vote of one hundred and sixteen in the affirmative—fifty-four voting in the negative.
The friends of the measure having received evidence that it would not meet with Executive approval, and not supposing that a vote of two-thirds could be secured for its passage over the President's veto, determined not to urge it immediately through the Senate.
There was great reluctance on the part of many Senators and members of the House to come to an open rupture with the President. They desired to defer the day of final and irreconcilable difference between Congress and the Executive. If the subject of negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was kept in abeyance for a time, it was hoped that the President's approval might meanwhile be secured to certain great measures for protecting the helpless and maintaining the civil rights of citizens. To accomplish these important ends, the suffrage bill was deferred many months. The will of the majority in Congress relating to this subject did not become a law until after the opening of the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress.
CHAPTER V.
THE FREEDMEN.
Necessities of the Freedmen — Committee in the House — Early movement by the Senate in behalf of Freedmen — Senator Wilson's Bill — Occasion for it — Mr. Cowan moves its reference — Mr. Reverdy Johnson advises deliberation — A question of time with Mr. Sherman — Mr. Trumbull promises a more efficient bill — Mr. Sumner presents proof of the bad condition of affairs in the South — Mr. Cowan and Mr. Stewart produce the President as a witness for the defense — Mr. Wilson on the testimony — "Conservatism" — The bill absorbed in greater measures.