Part 10

“And upon this act, sincerely believed to be _an act of justice warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity_, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

But the argument for Enfranchisement, which is nothing but the complement of Emancipation, is the same. Enfranchisement is not only intrinsically just, but necessary to the safety of the Republic. There is no reason, point, or argument once urged for Emancipation which may not be urged now for Enfranchisement. I do not err, when I say that Emancipation itself will fail without Enfranchisement.

By Enfranchisement I mean the establishment of the Equal Rights of All, so that there shall be no exclusion of any kind, civil or political, founded on color, and the promises of the Fathers shall be fulfilled. Such a measure will be, in the words of President Lincoln, “an act of justice warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity.”

As an act of justice, Enfranchisement has a necessity of its own. No individual and no people can afford to be unjust. Such an offence carries a curse, which, sooner or later, must drag its perpetrator to ruin. But here necessity from considerations of justice is completed and intensified by positive requirements of the national safety, plainly involved in the performance of these promises.

Look at the unhappy freedman blasted by the ban of exclusion. He has always been loyal, and now it is he, and not the Rebel master, who pays the penalty. From the nature of the case, he must be discontented, restless, anxious, smarting with sense of wrong and consciousness of rights denied. He does not work as if taken by the hand and made to feel the grasp of friendship. He is idle, thriftless, unproductive. Industry suffers. Cotton does not grow. Commerce does not thrive. Credit fails; nay, it dies before it is born. On the other hand, his Rebel master, with hands still red with the blood of fellow-countrymen, is encouraged in that assumption of superiority which is part of the Barbarism of Slavery; he dominates as in times past; he is exacting as of old; he is harsh, cruel, and vindictive; he makes the unprotected and trembling freedman suffer for the losses and disappointments of the Rebellion; he continues to insult and prostitute the wife and children, who, ceasing to be chattels, have not ceased to be dependants; he follows the freedman to by-ways and obscure places, where once again he plays master and asserts his ancient title as lord of the lash. Scenes of savage brutality and blood ensue. All this, which reason foretells, the short experience of a few months already confirms. And all this you sanction, when you leave the freedman despoiled of his rights.

But the freedman, though forbearing and slow to anger, will not always submit to outrage. He will resist. Resistance will be organized. And here begins the terrible war of races foreseen by Jefferson, where God, in all His attributes, has none which can take part with the oppressor. The tragedy of San Domingo will be renewed on a wider theatre, with bloodier incidents. Be warned, I entreat you, by this historic example. It was the denial of rights to colored people, upon successive promises, which caused that fearful insurrection. After various vicissitudes, during which the rights of citizenship were conferred on free people of color and then resumed, the slaves at last rose; and here the soul sickens at the recital. Then came Toussaint l’Ouverture, a black of unmixed blood, who placed himself at the head of his race, showing the genius of war, and the genius of statesmanship also. Under his magnanimous rule the beautiful island began to smile once more: agriculture revived; commerce took a new start; the whites were protected in person and property; and a Constitution was adopted acknowledging the authority of France, but making no distinction of race or color. In an evil hour this policy was reversed by a decree of Napoleon Bonaparte. War revived, and the French army was compelled to succumb. The connection of San Domingo with France was broken, and this island became a black republic. All this dreary catalogue of murder, battle, sorrow, and woe began in denial of justice to the colored race. And only recently we have listened to a similar tragedy from Jamaica, thus swelling the terrible testimony. Like causes produce like effects; therefore all this will be ours, if we madly persist in the same denial. The freedmen among us are not unlike the freedmen of San Domingo or Jamaica; they have the same “organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,” and, above all, the same sense of wrong, and the same revenge.

To avoid insurrection and servile war, big with measureless calamity, and even to obtain the security essential to industry, agriculture, commerce, and the national credit, you must perform the promises of the Republic, originally made by our fathers, and recently renewed by ourselves. But duty done will not only save you from calamity and give you security; it will also prepare the way for the great triumphs of the future, when through assured peace there shall be tranquillity, prosperity, and reconciliation, all of which it is vain to expect without justice.

The freedman must be protected. To this you are solemnly pledged by the Proclamation of President Lincoln, which, after declaring him “free,” promises to _maintain_ this freedom, not for any limited period, but for all time. But this cannot be, so long as you deny him the shield of _impartial laws_. Let him be heard in court, and let him vote. Let these rights be guarded sacredly. Beyond even the shield of _impartial laws_, he will then have the protection which comes from the consciousness of manhood. Clad in the full panoply of citizenship, he will feel at last that he is a man. At present he is only a recent chattel, awaiting your justice to be transmuted into manhood. Would you have him respected in his rights, you must begin by respecting him in your laws. Would you maintain him in freedom, you must begin by maintaining him in the equal rights of citizenship.

And now the national safety is staked on this act of justice. You cannot sacrifice the freedman without endangering the peace of the country and the stability of our institutions. Everything will be kept in jeopardy. The national credit will suffer. Business of all kinds will feel the insecurity. The whole land will gape with volcanic fire, ready to burst forth in fatal flood. The irrepressible conflict will be prolonged. The house will continue divided against itself. From all these things, Good Lord, deliver us! But, under God, there is but one deliverance, and this is through justice.

I have said that the national credit will suffer; but this does not disclose the whole financial calamity. It is idle to suppose that recent rebels, restored to privileges of citizenship, will vote cordially for the national debt incurred in the suppression of their rebellion, or that they will willingly tax themselves for interest on the enormous outlays by which their darling Slavery has been overthrown. The evidence shows them already set against any such contribution. As time advances, and their power is assured, in conjunction with Northern sympathizers, they will openly oppose it; or, if they consent to recognize it, they will impose the condition that the Rebel debt shall be recognized also. All this is inevitable, if you give them the power; it is madness to tempt them. But they will not have the power, if the promises to the freedman are performed. Here again justice to the freedman becomes a necessity.

Sometimes it is said that we must not require justice to the freedman, because justice is still denied to the colored citizen in Connecticut and New York. Idle words, of inconceivable utterance! as if the two cases bore any imaginable resemblance! There are rivers in the North and rivers in the South, but who says that on this account the two regions are alike? The denial of justice to the colored citizens in Connecticut and New York is wrong and mean; but it is on so small a scale that it is not perilous to the Republic, nor is it vital to the protection of the colored citizen and the protection of the national creditor. You are moved to Enfranchisement in Connecticut and New York for justice to a few individuals only; but you are moved to it in the Rebel States for justice to multitudes, also to save the Republic, imperilled by injustice on a gigantic scale, and to supply needful protection to the national freedman and the national creditor. From failure on our part, there is in one case little more than shame, while in the other there is positive danger, involving the fate of the national freedman and the national creditor, to whom we are bound by the most solemn ties. To a good man, injustice, even on a small scale, is not tolerable; he feels the necessity of resisting it; but where the victims are counted by millions, this necessity becomes a transcendent duty, quickened and invigorated by all the instincts of self-preservation. Therefore, I say again, for the national safety, redeem these promises of the Fathers, and your own.

It is sometimes asserted that the National Constitution expressly reserves to the States the power of determining who shall vote, because it declares that “the electors in each State shall have the _qualifications_ requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.” But this assumption proceeds on the fatal error, that, at any time under the Constitution, which makes no distinction of color, there can be any such oligarchical distinction as a “qualification” founded on color. Even assuming that in a period of peace this might be done, yet, beyond all doubt, at the present moment, from the necessity of the case, from the Rights of War, from the Constitutional clause of guaranty, and from the Constitutional Amendment, Congress, by its quadruple powers, is completely authorized to do all it thinks best for the national security and the national faith in the Rebel States. As well question Farragut in the maintop of his steamer, Sherman in his march across Georgia, or Grant in the field before Richmond, as question the authority of Congress in the present crisis. But, if the authority exists, it must be exercised.

II.

And this brings me to the next form of this necessity and duty, as they appear in the guaranty clause of the Constitution. It is expressly declared that “the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” These words, when properly understood, leave no alternative. They speak to us with no uncertain voice. But they must be understood. The Rebel States, while providing constitutional safeguards for property in man, and, according to the vaunt of their Vice-President, making Slavery the corner-stone of the new Government, yet follow our Constitution in the formal guaranty of a republican form of government.[46] Defiantly they assume that Slavery is not inconsistent with such a government. To this degrading assumption we must reply, not only for the national cause, but that republican governments may not suffer.

The magnitude of the question before us is seen in the postulate with which I begin. Assuming that there has been a lapse of government in any State, so as to impose upon the United States the duty of executing this guaranty, then do I insist that it is a bounden duty to see that such State has a “republican form of government,” and, in the discharge of this bounden duty, we must declare that a State, which, in the foundation of its government, sets aside “the consent of the governed,” which imposes taxation without representation, which discards the principle of Equal Rights, and lodges power exclusively with an Oligarchy, Aristocracy, Caste, or Monopoly, cannot be recognized as a “republican form of government,” according to the requirement of American institutions. Even if it may satisfy some definition handed down from antiquity or invented in monarchical Europe, it cannot satisfy the solemn injunction of our Constitution. For this question I now ask a hearing. Nothing in the present debate can equal it in importance. Its correct determination will be an epoch for our country and for mankind.

Believe me, Sir, this is no question of theory or abstraction. It is a practical question, which you are summoned to decide. Here is the positive text of the Constitution, and you must affix its meaning. You cannot evade it, you cannot forget it, without abandonment of duty. Others in vision or aspiration have dwelt on the idea of a Republic, and they have been lifted in soul. You must consider it not merely in vision or aspiration, but practically, as legislators, seeking a precise definition, to the end that the constitutional “guaranty” may be performed. Your powers and duties are involved in this definition. The character of the Government founded by our fathers is also involved in it.

There is another consideration not to be forgotten. In affixing the proper meaning to the text, and determining what is a “republican form of government,” you act as a court in the last resort, from which there is no appeal. You are sole and exclusive judges. You may decide as you please. Rarely in history has such an opportunity been offered to the statesman. You may raise the name of Republic to majestic heights of justice and truth, or you may let it drag low down in the depths of wrong and falsehood. You may make it fulfil the idea of John Milton, when he said that “a commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body”;[47] or you may let it shrink into the ignoble form of a pretender, with the name of Republic, but without its soul.

Before considering this vital question, it is proper to regard the origin of this “guaranty,” and see how it obtained place in the Constitution. Perhaps there was no clause more cordially welcomed; nor does it appear that it was subjected to any serious criticism in the National Convention or in any State Convention. It is not found in the Articles of Confederation; but we learn from the “Federalist”[48] that the want of this provision was felt as a capital defect in the plan of the Confederation. Mr. Madison, in a private record, made in advance of the National Convention, and which has only recently seen the light, enumerates among defects of the Confederation what he calls “want of guaranty to the States of their Constitutions and laws _against internal violence_”; and he then proceeds to anticipate danger from Slavery, which could be counteracted only by such “guaranty.” Showing why this was needed, he says, that, “according to _republican theory_, right and power, being both vested in the majority, are held to be synonymous; according to fact and experience, a minority may, in an appeal to force, be an overmatch for the majority”; and he remarks, in words which furnish a key to the “guaranty” afterwards adopted, “Where Slavery exists, the _republican theory_ becomes still more fallacious,”--thus showing, that, at its very origin, it was regarded as a check upon Slavery.[49]

Hamilton was not less positive than Madison. In his sketch of a Constitution, communicated to Madison, and preserved by him,[50] this “guaranty” is found; and in the elaborate brief of his argument on the Constitution, it is specified as one of its “miscellaneous advantages.” The last words of this remarkable paper are “guaranty of republican governments.”[51] Randolph, of Virginia, in his sketch of a Constitution, proposed the “guaranty,” and, in a speech setting forth the evils of the old system, he said of the remedy, that “the basis must be the _republican principle_.”[52] Colonel Mason, of Virginia, taking up the same strain, said, that, though the people might be unsettled on some points, they were settled as to others, among which he put foremost “an attachment to _republican government_.”[53]

The proposition in its earliest form was, “that a republican government, and the territory of each State, except in the instance of a voluntary junction of government and territory, ought to be guarantied by the United States to each State.”[54] This was afterward altered so as to read, “that a republican Constitution and its existing laws ought to be guarantied to each State by the United States.” Gouverneur Morris thought that the proposition in this form was “very objectionable,” and he added, that “he should be very unwilling that such laws as exist in Rhode Island should be guarantied.” On discussion, it was amended, at the motion of Mr. Wilson, the learned and philosophical delegate from Pennsylvania, afterward of the Supreme Court of the United States, so as to read, “that _a republican form of government_ shall be guarantied to each State, and that each State shall be protected against foreign and domestic violence,” and in this form it was unanimously adopted.[55] Afterward it underwent modification in the Convention and in the Committees of Detail and Revision, until it received the final form it now has in the Constitution:[56]--

“_The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government_, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive, when the Legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence.”

Thus stands the “guaranty.” If further reason be required for its introduction into the Constitution, it will be found in the prophetic language of the “Federalist”:--

“It may possibly be asked, what need there could be of such a precaution, and whether it may not become a pretext for alterations in the State governments without the concurrence of the States themselves. These questions admit of ready answers. If the interposition of the General Government should not be needed, the provision for such an event will be a harmless superfluity only in the Constitution. _But who can say what experiments may be produced by the caprice of particular States, by the ambition of enterprising leaders, or by the intrigues and influence of foreign powers?_”[57]

The very crisis anticipated has arrived. “The caprice of particular States,” and “the ambition of enterprising leaders” have done their worst. And now the “guaranty” must be performed, not only for the sake of individual States, but for the sake of the Union to which they all belong, and to advance the declared objects of the Constitution, specified in its preamble.

The text of this great contract is worthy of study. No stronger or more comprehensive words could be employed, whether we regard the object, the party guarantying, or the party guarantied. The express object is “a republican form of government.” This is plain. The party guarantying is not merely the Executive or some specified branch of the National Government, but “the United States,” or, in other words, the Nation. The Republic, which is the impersonation of all, guaranties “a republican form of government”; and every branch of the National Government must sustain the guaranty, including especially Congress, where is the collected will of the people. The obligation is not less broad, when we consider the party guarantied. Here there can be no evasion. The guaranty is not merely for the advantage of individual States, but for the common defence and the general welfare. It is a guaranty to each in the interest of all, and therefore a guaranty to all. And such is the solidarity of States in the Union, that the good of all is involved in the good of each. For each and all, then, this guaranty must be performed, when the _casus fœderis_ arrives. As guarantor, the Republic, according to a familiar principle, is to act on default of the party guarantied; and then the duty is fixed in all its amplitude.

The testimony is complete. This clause was no hasty or accidental amendment, creeping into the Constitution by stealth or compromise, obscure in language and open to various interpretation, but a solemn act, couched in few, lucid, unmistakable words; and its precise purpose was just what so plainly appears,--to keep all the States truly “republican,” and make the whole numerous people, in the development of the future, homogeneous and one. By these words the Nation is not only empowered, but commanded, to perform the great guaranty. Power and duty here concur. Mr. Webster was right, when he called this provision “a very stringent article, drawing after it the most important consequences, and all of them good consequences.”[58]

The question, then, returns, What is “a republican form of government,” according to the requirement of the National Constitution? Mark, if you please, that it is not the meaning of this term according to Plato and Cicero, not even according to examples of history, nor according to definitions of monarchical writers or lexicographers,--but what is “a republican form of government” according to the requirements of the National Constitution? Of course these important words were not introduced and unanimously adopted without purpose. They must be interpreted so as to have real meaning. Any interpretation rendering them insignificant must be discarded as irrational and valueless, if not dishonest. They cannot be treated as a phrase only, nor a dead letter, nor an empty figure-head. Nor can they be treated as profession and nothing more, so that the Constitution shall merely _seem_ to be republican, reversing the old injunction, “To be rather than to seem,”--_Esse quam videri_. They must be treated as real. Thus interpreted, they become at once a support of Human Rights and a balance-wheel to our whole political system.

In determining their signification, I begin by putting aside what is vague, unsatisfactory, and inapplicable, in order to bring the inquiry directly to American institutions.

I put aside all illustration derived from the speculations of ancient philosophers, because, on careful examination, it appears that the term “Republic,” as used by them, was so absolutely different from any idea among us as to exclude their definition from the debate. This captivating term is of Roman origin. It is the same as “commonwealth,” and means the public interest. As originally employed, it was not a specific term, describing a particular form of government, but a general term, embracing all governments, whether kingly, aristocratic, democratic, or mixed. Its equivalent in Greece was “polity,” being the general term for all governments. Therefore the definition of a Republic, according to these ancients, is simply the definition of an organized government, whether kingly, aristocratic, democratic, or mixed. Following this definition, the words of the Constitution are only the guaranty of an organized government, without determining its character. This, of course, leaves open the very question under consideration.