"It was done again, as you may remember, in the case of the Cherokees, in December, 1835. There again a class was naturalized by treaty."
Some amendments having been proposed, the bill was recommitted to the Committee on the Judiciary, with the understanding that it should be returned for consideration on Thursday of the following week.
Accordingly, on that day, March 8, the consideration of the bill being resumed, Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, addressed the House, He viewed the bill as beneficent in its provisions, since it made no discriminations against the Southern rebels, but granted them, as well as the negro, the rights of citizenship.
"A question might naturally arise whether we ought again to trust those who have once betrayed us; whether we ought to give them the benefits of a compact they have once repudiated. Yet the spirit of forgiveness is so inherent in the American bosom, that no party in the country proposes to withhold from these people the advantages of citizenship; and this is saying much. With a debt that may require centuries to pay; with so many living and mutilated witnesses of the horrors of war; with so many saddened homes, so many of the widowed and fatherless pleading for justice, for retribution, if not revenge, it speaks well for the cause of Christian civilization in America that no party in the country proposes to deprive the authors of such immeasurable calamity of the advantages of citizenship.
"But the election must be made. Some public legislative act is necessary to show the world that those who have forfeited all claims upon the Government are not to be held to the strict rigor of the law of their own invoking, the decision of the tribunal of their own choosing; that they are to be welcomed back as the prodigal son, whenever they are ready to return as the prodigal son.
"The act under consideration makes that election. Its terms embrace the late rebels, and it gives them the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens of the United States, though it does not propose to exempt them from punishment for their past crimes.
"I might consent that the glorious deeds of the last five years should be blotted from the country's history; that the trophies won on a hundred battle-fields, the sublime visible evidences of the heroic devotion of America's citizen soldiery, should be burned on the altar of reconstruction. I might consent that the cemetery at Gettysburg should be razed to the ground; that its soil should be submitted to the plow, and that the lamentation of the bereaved should give place to the lowing of cattle. But there is a point beyond which I will neither be forced nor persuaded. I will never consent that the Government shall desert its allies in the South, and surrender their rights and interests to the enemy, and in this I will make no distinction of caste or color, either among friends or foes."
Mr. Raymond, of New York, was impressed with the importance of the measure. "Whether we consider it by itself, simply as a proposed statute, or in its bearings upon the general question of the restoration of peace and harmony to the Union, I regard it as one of the most important bills ever presented to this House for its action, worthy, in every respect, to enlist the coolest and the calmest judgment of every member whose vote must be recorded upon it."
He was in favor of the first part of the bill, which declares "who shall be citizens of the United States, and declares that all shall be citizens without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, who are, have been, or shall be born within the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.
"Now, sir, assuming, as I do, without any further argument, that Congress has the power of admitting to citizenship this great class of persons just set free by the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing slavery, I suppose I need not dwell here on the great importance to that class of persons of having this boon conferred upon them.