Part 23

From this requirement the bill proceeds to enumerate certain classes excluded from office and also from the elective franchise. This is less stringent than what is known as the Louisiana Bill. It does not exclude citizens who have not held office, unless where they have left their homes within the jurisdiction of the United States and passed within the Rebel lines to give aid and comfort to the Rebellion,--or where they have voluntarily contributed to any loan or securities for the benefit of any of the Rebel States or the central government thereof,--or where, as authors, publishers, editors, or as speakers or preachers, they have encouraged the secession of any State or the waging of war against the United States.

The bill then provides for executive and judicial officers, and for their salaries, under the provisional government; also for grand and petit juries; also for a militia. But all officers, jurors, and militiamen must take the oath that they are not in the excluded classes, and also the oath to support a republican form of government.

The bill then annuls existing legislatures; also the acts of conventions which framed ordinances of secession, and the acts of legislatures since, subject to certain conditions; and it provides that the judgments and decrees of court, which have not been voluntarily executed, and which have been rendered subsequently to the date of the ordinance of secession, shall be subject to appeal to the highest court in the State, organized after its restoration to the Union. Safeguards like these seem essential to the protection of the citizen.

The bill does what it can for education by requiring--

“That it shall be the duty of the governor and legislative council in each of these States to establish public schools, which shall be open to all, without distinction of race or color, to the end, that, where suffrage is universal, education may be universal also, and the new governments find support in the intelligence of the people.”

Such are the provisional governments.

The bill then provides for permanent governments republican and truly loyal. For this purpose the governor must make a registration of male citizens twenty-one years of age, of whatever color, race, or former condition, and, on the completion of this register, invite all to take the oath that they are not in the excluded classes, and also the oath to maintain a republican form of government; and if a majority of the persons duly registered shall take these oaths, then he is to order an election for members of a convention to frame a State constitution. Nobody can vote or sit as a member of the convention except those who have taken the two oaths; but no person can be disqualified on account of race or color. All qualified as voters are eligible as members of the convention.

The constitution must contain in substance certain fundamental conditions, never to be changed without consent of Congress:--

First, That the Union is perpetual;

Secondly, That Slavery is abolished;

Thirdly, That there shall be no denial of the elective franchise, or of any other right, on account of race or color, but all persons shall be equal before the law;

Fourthly, That the National debt, including pensions and bounties to Union soldiers, shall never be repudiated or postponed;

Fifthly, That the Rebel debt, whether contracted by a Rebel State or by the central government, shall never be recognized or paid; nor shall any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave, or any pension or bounty for service in the Rebellion, be recognized or paid;

Sixthly, That public schools shall be established, open to all without distinction of race or color;

Seventhly, That all persons excluded from office under this Act shall be excluded by the constitution, until relieved from disability by Act of Congress.

The constitution must be ratified by the people and submitted to Congress. If Congress shall approve it as republican in form, and shall be satisfied that the people of the State are loyal and well-disposed to the Union, the State shall be restored to its former relations and the provisional government shall cease.

Such is the bill which I should be glad to press upon your attention, creating provisional governments and securing permanent governments. It is not a military bill; and on this account, in spirit and form, if not in substance, it might be preferred to that which you have begun to sanction. Besides, it contains abundant safeguards. I regret much that something like this cannot be adopted. It is with difficulty that I renounce a desire long cherished to see Reconstruction under the supervision of Congress, according to the forms of civil order, without the intervention of military power. I am sure that such a bill would be agreeable to the Unionists of the Rebel States; and this with me is a rule of conduct which I am unwilling to disregard. They are without representation in Congress. Let us be their representatives. I hear their voices gathered into one prayer. I cannot refuse to listen.

* * * * *

If this bill cannot be adopted, then I ask that you shall take at least one of its provisions. Require free schools as an essential condition of Reconstruction. But I am met by the objection, that we are already concluded by the Military Bill adopted a few days ago, so that we cannot establish any new conditions. This is a mistake. There is no word in the Military Bill which can have this interpretation. Besides, the bill is only a few days old; so that, whatever its character, nothing is as yet fixed under its provisions. It contains no compact, no promise, no vested right, nothing which may not be changed, if the public interests require. There are some who seem to insist that it is a strait-jacket. On the contrary, this very bill asserts in positive terms “the paramount authority of the United States.” Surely this is enough. In the exercise of this authority, it is your duty to provide all possible safeguards. To adopt a familiar illustration, these States must be “bound to keep the peace.” Nothing is more common after an assault and battery. But this can be only by good laws, by careful provisions, by wise economies, and securities of all kinds.

Sometimes it is argued that it is not permissible to make certain requirements in the new constitutions, although, when the constitutions are presented to Congress for approval, we may object to them for the want of these very things. Thus it is said that we may not require educational provisions, but that we may object to the constitutions, when formed, if they fail to have this safeguard. This argument forgets the paramount power of Congress over the Rebel States, which you have already exercised in ordaining universal suffrage. Who can doubt, that, with equal reason, you may ordain universal education also? And permit me to say that one is the complement of the other. But I do not stop with assertion of the power. The argument that we are to wait until the constitution is submitted for approval is not frank. I wish to be plain and explicit. We have the power, assured by reason and precedent. Exercise it. Seize the present moment. Grasp the precious privilege. There are some who act on the principle of doing as little as possible. I would do as much as possible, believing that all we do in the nature of safeguard must redound to the good of all and to the national fame. It is in this spirit that I now move to require a system of free schools, open to all without distinction of caste. For this great safeguard I ask your votes.

You have prescribed universal suffrage. Prescribe now universal education. The power of Congress is the same in one case as in the other. And you are under an equal necessity to employ it. Electors by the hundred thousand will exercise the franchise for the first time, without delay or preparation. They should be educated promptly. Without education your beneficent legislation may be a failure. The gift you bestow will be perilous. I was unwilling to make education the condition of suffrage; but I ask that it shall accompany and sustain suffrage.

Mr. President, I plead now for Education. Nothing more beautiful or more precious. Education decorates life, while it increases all our powers. It is the charm of society, the solace of solitude, and the multiple of every faculty. It adds incalculably to the capacity of the individual and to the resources of the community. Careful inquiry establishes what reason declares, that labor is productive in proportion to its education. There is no art it does not advance. There is no form of enterprise it does not encourage and quicken. It brings victory, and is itself the greatest of victories.

In a republic education is indispensable. A republic without education is like the creature of imagination, a human being without a soul, living and moving blindly, with no just sense of the present or the future. It is a monster. Such have been the Rebel States,--for years nothing less than political monsters. But such they must be no longer.

It is not too much to say, that, had these States been more enlightened, they would never have rebelled. The barbarism of Slavery would have shrunk into insignificance, without sufficient force to break forth in blood. From the returns before the Rebellion[96] we learn that in the Slave States there were not less than 493,026 native white persons over twenty years of age who could not read and write,--while in the Free States, with double the native white population, there were but 248,725 native whites over twenty years of age thus blighted by ignorance. In the Slave States the proportion was 1 in 5; in the Free States it was 1 in 22. The number in Free Massachusetts, with an adult native white population of 470,375, was 1,055, or 1 in 446; the number in Slave South Carolina, with an adult native white population of only 120,136, was 15,580, or 1 in 8. The number in Free Connecticut was 1 in 256, in Slave Virginia 1 in 5; in Free New Hampshire 1 in 192, and in Slave North Carolina 1 in 3. In this prevailing ignorance we may trace the Rebellion. A population that could not read and write naturally failed to comprehend and appreciate a republican government.

This contrast between the Rebel States and the Loyal States appeared early. It was conspicuous in two Colonies, each of which exercised a peculiar influence. Massachusetts began her existence with a system of free schools. The preamble of her venerable statute deserves immortality. “That learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers,” her founders enacted that every township of fifty householders should maintain a school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a school to fit youths for the University.[97] This statute was copied in other Colonies. It has spread far, like a benediction. At the same time Virginia set herself openly against free schools. Her Governor, Sir William Berkeley, in 1671, in a reply to the Lords Commissioners of Plantations on the condition of the Colony, made this painful record: “I thank God _there are no free schools_, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them.… God keep us from both!”[98] Thus spoke Massachusetts, and thus spoke Virginia, in that ancient day. The conflict of ideas had already begun. Can you hesitate to adopt the statute so well justified by time? It began in an infant colony. Let it be the law of a mighty republic.

The papers of the day mention an incident, showing how the original spirit of the Virginia Governor still animates these States. A motion to print two hundred copies of the Report of the State Superintendent of Public Education was promptly voted down in the Senate of Louisiana, while a Senator, in open speech, “denounced the public education scheme as an unmitigated oppression, an electioneering device, an imposition, which he intended to bring in a bill to abolish, if they were allowed to go on legislating.” With such brutality is this beautiful cause now encountered. It is as if a savage rudely drove an angel from his tent.

Be taught by this example, and do not hesitate, I entreat you. Remember how much is now in issue. You are to fix the securities of the future, and especially to see that a republican government is guarantied in an the Rebel States. I call them “Rebel,” for such they are in spirit still, and such is their designation in your recent statute. But I ask nothing in vengeance or unkindness. All that I propose is for their good, with which is intertwined the good of all. I would not impose any new penalty or bear hard upon an erring people. Oh, no! I simply ask a new safeguard for the future, that these States, through which so much trouble has come, may be a strength and a blessing to our common country, with prosperity and happiness everywhere within their borders. I would not impose any new burden; but I seek a new triumph for civilization. For a military occupation bristling with bayonets I would substitute the smile of peace. But this cannot be without Education. As the soldier disappears, his place must be supplied by the schoolmaster. The muster-roll will be exchanged for the school-register, and our headquarters will be a school-house.

Do not forget the grandeur of the work in which you are engaged. You are forming States. Such a work cannot be done hastily or carelessly. The time you give will be saved to the country hereafter a thousand-fold. The time you begrudge will rise in judgment against you. It is a law of Nature, that, just in proportion as the being produced is higher in the scale and more complete in function, all the processes are more complex and extended. The mature liberty we seek cannot have the easy birth of feebler types. As man, endowed with reason and looking to the heavens, is above the quadruped that walks, above the bird that flies, above the fish that swims, and above the worm that crawls, so should these new governments, republican in form and loyal in soul, created by your care, be above those whose places they take. The Old must give way to the New, and the New must be worthy of a Republic, which, ransomed from Slavery, has become an example to mankind. Farewell to the Old! All hail to the New!

Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, and Mr. Conness, of California, joined in criticism of Mr. Sumner’s opposition to the employment of the military arm in Reconstruction, protesting particularly against the declaration that States are “about to be born of the bayonet.” To the proposed requirement of a system of free schools in the Rebel States Mr. Frelinghuysen objected: “For us to undertake now to add new conditions to the Reconstruction measure which the Thirty-Ninth Congress adopted I hold to be bad faith.… That is not the way to do business.… Let this nation keep its faith. I hope, Mr. President, that the amendment will not be adopted.” Mr. Patterson, of New Hampshire, would “be glad to have such a requisition laid on all the States of the Union, if it were not unconstitutional. But he wished to ask him [Mr. SUMNER] this question: Does he think it possible to establish a system of common schools in these Southern States corresponding to the common-school system of New England, unless he first confiscates the large estates and divides them into small homesteads, so that there may be small landholders who shall support these schools by the taxation which is laid upon them?”

MR. SUMNER. I do.

MR. PATTERSON. You think it is possible?

MR. SUMNER. I do, certainly,--most clearly.

Mr. Morton said: “The proposition is fundamental in its character; its importance cannot be overestimated; and I hope that it will be placed as a condition, upon complying with which they shall be permitted to return.” Mr. Cole, of California, declared himself “warmly in favor of the amendment.” Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, and Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, spoke against it. The latter thought Mr. Sumner “not open to criticism for the sentiments which he has expressed upon this occasion, nor for the position which he has assumed.” In a humorous vein, he said: “The propositions which the Senator from Massachusetts makes one year, and which are criticized by his colleagues as extreme, inappropriate, and untimely, are precisely the propositions which those colleagues support with greater zeal and vehemence, if possible, than he, the year following. In short, Sir, we can foresee at one session of Congress the character of the propositions and of the arguments with which we are to be favored at the next in this Chamber, by looking to the pioneer man, who goes forward in advance, his banner thrown out, his cause announced, the means by which it shall be carried on and the objects in view proclaimed with force and frankness.”

Mr. Sumner replied:--

MR. PRESIDENT,--The question of power, I take it, must be settled in this Chamber. You have already most solemnly voted to require in every new constitution suffrage for all, without distinction of race or color or previous condition. But the greater contains the less. If you can do that, you can do everything. If you can require that Magna Charta of human rights, you can require what is smaller. It is already fixed in your statutes, enrolled in your archives, that Congress has this great power. I do not say whether it has this power over other States; that is not the question; but it has the power over the Rebel States. That power is derived from several sources,--first, from the necessity of the case, because the State governments there are illegal, and the whole region has passed, as in the case of Territories, under the jurisdiction of Congress: no legal government exists there, except what Congress supplies. There is another source in the military power now established over that region; then, again, in that great clause of the National Constitution by which you are required to guaranty to every State a republican form of government. Here is enough. Out of these three sources, these three overflowing fountains, springs ample authority. You have exercised it by prescribing in their constitutions Suffrage for all. I ask you to go one step further, and to prescribe Education for all.

I am met here by personal objections; I am asked why I have not brought this forward before. Sir, I have brought it forward in season and out of season. I have on the table before me a speech of mine in 1865, where, in laying down the great essential guaranties, I declared them as follows: First, the unity of the Republic; secondly, Enfranchisement; thirdly, the guaranty of the National debt; fourthly, the repudiation of the Rebel debt; fifthly, Equal Suffrage; and, sixthly, Education of the people.[99] Therefore from the beginning I have asked this guaranty, believing, as I do most clearly, that under the National Constitution you may demand it. If you may demand it, if you have the power, then do I insist it is your duty so to do. Duties are in proportion to powers. These great powers are not merely for display or idleness, but for employment, to the end that the Republic may be advanced and fortified.

Then I have been reminded very earnestly by Senators that I have used strong language in saying that these governments will be open to the imputation of being born of the bayonet. This is not the first time I have used that language in this Chamber. From the beginning I have protested against Reconstruction by military power. Again and again I have asserted that it is contrary to the genius of republican institutions, and to a just economy of political forces. I have not been hearkened to. Others have pressed the intervention of military power; and now, as I am about to record my vote in favor of the pending proposition, I cannot but express my sincere and unfeigned regret that Congress did not see its way to a generous measure of Reconstruction purely civil in character, having no element of military power. Such you had before you at the last session in the Louisiana Bill, which I sought to press day by day; and when, at the last moment, the Military Bill was passed, I, from my place here, declared that I should deem it my duty at the earliest possible moment in this session to press the Louisiana Bill, or some kindred measure not military in character.

I was early tutored in the principles of Jefferson. I cannot forget his Inaugural Address, where he lays down among the cardinal principles, or what he calls “the essential principles of our Government,” and consequently those which ought to shape its administration, “The supremacy of the civil over the military authority.” Imbued with this principle, I hoped that Congress would see the way to establish at once civil governments in all those States, and not subject them to military power, except so far as needed for purposes of protection. This is the true object of the army. It is to protect the country,--not to make constitutions, or to superintend the making of constitutions. At least, so I have read the history of republican institutions, and such are the aspirations that I presume to express for my country.

The vote on Mr. Summer’s proposition stood, Yeas 20, Nays 20, being a tie, so that the amendment was lost. Any one Senator changing from the negative would have carried it.

The bill passed the Senate,--Yeas 38, Nays 2. On the amendments of the Senate there was a difference between the two Houses, which ended in a committee of conference, whose report was concurred in without a division.

March 23d, the bill was vetoed by the President. On the same day it was passed again by the House,--Yeas 114, Nays 25,--and by the Senate,--Yeas 40, Nays 7,--being more than two thirds; so that it became a law, notwithstanding the objections of the President.[100]

PROHIBITION OF DIPLOMATIC UNIFORM.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE, ON A JOINT RESOLUTION CONCERNING THE UNIFORM OF PERSONS IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH 20, 1867.

March 20th, Mr. Summer, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, reported the following joint resolution:--

“_Resolved, &c._, That all persons in the diplomatic service of the United States are prohibited from wearing any uniform or official costume not previously authorized by Congress.”

He then stated that it was reported from the Committee unanimously, and that perhaps the Senate would be willing to consider it at once. The resolution was proceeded with by unanimous consent, when Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, remarked: “I do not see what right we have to prevent a minister abroad from wearing the uniform of our army, if he chooses.” Mr. Sumner replied:--

The Senator is aware that a habit exists among our ministers in Europe of wearing uniforms of other countries in the nature of court costumes or dresses; and this is often required before they are presented. The Committee on Foreign Relations, after careful consideration, have unanimously come to the conclusion that it is expedient to prohibit any such uniform or official costume, unless sanctioned previously by Act of Congress. It seems clear that our ministers abroad should not be required by any foreign government to wear a uniform, costume, or dress unknown to our own laws. This is very simple, and not unreasonable.