244

THE PRESIDENT'S VETO.

there and not subject to any foreign power (excluding Indians not taxed), of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party should have been duly convicted;" these citizens should have the right, in every State and territory, equally with white men, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, to give evidence, to inherit, to purchase, hold and convey real and personal property, and to enjoy the full benefit of all laws; and they should be subject to like pains and punishments, and to none other. The penalty for depriving any person of these rights was fixed at a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or imprisonment for not longer than one year, or both, at the discretion of the court. Jurisdiction of offenses under the act was given to the District Circuit Courts of the United States, with right of appeal to the Supreme Court.1

2

The arguments which carried the bill through Congress were essentially the same as those which had carried through the Thirteenth Amendment. The veto message presented most of the arguments advanced against the measure. The definition of citizens, said the President, was too comprehensive, for it included the "Chinese of the Pacific coast, Indians subject to taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks." It did not purport to confer any other right of citizenship than Federal citizenship. It gave these classes of persons no status as citizens of States. The power to confer State citizenship belonged as exclusively to the States as the power to confer the right of Federal citizenship belonged to Congress. The bill was an innovation.

1 Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV, p. 27.

2 For the veto message, March 27, 1866, see Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, VI, 405-413.

If all native born Americans were citizens of the United States, by virtue of the Constitution, the bill was unnecessary; if they were not citizens, as might be assumed from the bill itself, the grave question was presented whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States were unrepresented in Congress, it was sound policy to make the entire colored population, and all other excepted classes, United States citizens. Could it be reasonably supposed that males, just emerging from slavery into freedom, possessed the requisite qualifications to entitle them to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States? The people of the several States had not expressed such a conviction. It was unnecessary to declare them citizens in order to secure them in the enjoyment of the civil rights which the bill proposed to confer. Domiciled aliens and foreigners already possessed these rights by Federal and State laws, and these were sufficient to give like protection to those for whom the bill provided special legislation. It had always been the policy of the Government to require all persons, who were strangers to our institutions and laws, to pass through a period of probation for the purpose of giving evidence of their fitness to receive, and exercise, the rights of citizens. The bill discriminated against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners in favor of the negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues of freedom had been suddenly opened. He must, of necessity, lack knowledge of the nature and character of our institutions.

The rights which the bill proposed to give the negro in every State and territory were not objectionable, if granted by the proper authority. The bill attempted to establish, by Federal law, a perfect equality between the white and colored races, in every State in the Union,a plain invasion of the vast field of State jurisdiction.

It would forever preclude the exercise, by any State, of any power of discrimination between the races. Laws North and South forbade marriages between negroes and whites; and the discrimination was an instance of State policy. Had Congress the power to legislate on the internal policy and economy of the States? If it could declare by law who should hold lands, or testify, or make contracts, then by law it could also declare who, without regard to color or race, had the right to sit as judge or jury, or to hold any office, and, finally, to vote in every State and territory. In brief, the whole bill was an invasion of the rights, privileges and immunities of the States. On the sixth of April, by a vote of more than two to one, the bill passed the Senate, notwithstanding the President's objections, and three days later, by a vote of nearly three to one, passed the House.

This great act was the beginning of much legislation on behalf of the colored race. In the supervision of the Freedmen's Bureau, schools for the negroes had been started in many localities in the South, but they at once became objects of hostility and attack from evil disposed whites. Next to food, clothing and employment, the great need of the race was schools. Co-education with the whites

was practically impossible. Kentucky boldly took up the solution of the problem and inaugurated a system of separate schools. In July, Congress granted land in the city of Washington for the sole use of schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the first Federal act of the kind.1 It indicated the attitude of the Government toward the great educational problem of the century. In July, by a joint resolution of Congress,2 Tennessee

1 July 28, 1866, Statutes at Large, XIV, 343.

2 Statutes at Large, XIV, 364, July 24, 1866; Globe, April 30, 1866, p. 2282; carried in the Senate, 28 to 4, July 21; Globe, p. 4007; in the House, July 23, 93 to 26; Globe, p. 4056.

was restored to her practical relations to the Union. Though the President signed the resolution, he objected to it as "anomalous, unnecessary and inexpedient." If a resolution of the kind was necessary, as a conditioned precedent to the admission of members of Congress, "it would happen, in the event of a veto by the Executive, that Senators and Representatives could only be admitted to the halls of legislation by a two-thirds vote of each House." The resolution recited that the State had ratified both the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, but its restoration to the Union could be made only with the consent of Congress.1 The President thought that the resolution should have been passed and approved before any amendment to the Constitution had been submitted to the Tennessee legislature, otherwise the inference was deducible that while, in the opinion of Congress, the people of the State might be too strongly disloyal to be entitled to representation, nevertheless, during the suspension of their "former proper practical relations to the Union," they might have an equally potent voice with other loyal States in propositions to amend the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified by Tennessee and by other Southern States, and the political existence of these, and their relations to the Federal Government had been fully recognized and acknowledged by the President. In other words, Tennessee had for eight months been restored to the Union.2 The President's objections clearly intimated the radical difference between his policy of reconstruction and that of Congress.

1 Congress had passed the joint resolution proposing the fourteenth amendment, on the 16th of June, and Tennessee had ratified it on the 19th of July. See infra, pp. 300, 301.

2 See President's message on the joint resolution of restoring Tennessee, July 24, 1866; Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, VI, 395.

248

NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

But the spirit of the civil rights bill was dictating other radical legislation. The veto had apprehended the extension of the right of suffrage to the negro by federal law, and Johnson's fears were realized on the eighth of January, when Congress conferred the right to vote on the negroes of the District of Columbia.1 The bill was bitterly opposed in both Houses, but it passed by overwhelming majorities.2

3

In his veto message, the President marshaled the principal arguments which had been heard against it. The question of negro suffrage in the District, when submitted at a special election in December, had called out a much larger vote than usual, yet only thirty-five ballots had been cast in its favor, in Washington, and only one, in Georgetown; the bill, therefore, entirely disregarded the wishes of the people of the District. Though, by the Constitution, the District was subject to Congress, that body was bound to observe the letter and spirit of the supreme law. No legislature of New York, Pennsylvania, or Indiana would arbitrarily, and against the express will of the majority of the people whom it represented, force the presence of the negro race upon them, as voters, and make them eligible for office without any other qualification than a brief term of residence within the State. New York discriminated between free persons of color and whites, as voters, and Pennsylvania and Indiana excluded them from the right of suffrage. The question was a local one and should be settled by the citizens of the District.

1 January 8, 1867. Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV, p. 375.

2 It was introduced by Senator Wade of Ohio, December 4, 1865.

Globe, p. 1.

Amended and passed the Senate, December 13, 32

to 13, and passed the House, December 14, by 127 to 46.

3 6,521 against and 35 for negro suffrage.

4 812 against and 1 for the extension.