Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

States, residents in South Carolina, against the infamous provisions of the ordinance, which required them to abjure the allegiance which they owed their country." Was it not a disgrace to the republic that, for fidelity to the United States, men could not be protected by national law against degrading punishments, inflicted on slaves and felons by State laws. The second proposition provided for the equalization of representation among all the citizens of the Union, without discrimination. If this amendment was ratified, and New York, with her colored population of fifty thousand, should discriminate against them, as to the elective franchise, except in cases of crime, she to that extent would lose her representative power in Congress.

On the third proposition, the disqualification of certain voters until 1870, the defenders of the resolution were greatly divided. Some, like Thaddeus Stevens, would disqualify them forever. Of the authority of the people of the United States to disfranchise all lately in rebellion, there was no doubt. If Congress had power to disfranchise rebels for life, from holding office under the United States, as a bill to that effect at this time before Congress proved,1 it could take from them the right to vote until 1870 as well by law as by constitutional amendment. The question was not one of power, but of policy. The letter and intention of the Constitution was clear, that the certificate of election of Presidential electors, under the great seal of the State, was final and conclusive evidence to Congress, except when the certificate showed that the electors had been appointed on some other day than that fixed by law. Congress could not go behind the certificates, nor

1 This was the reconstruction bill which, amended, became the act of March 2, 1867; Statutes at Large, XIV, 428-430. It was under discussion at this time.

260

THE CONFEDERATE DEBT.

could the two Houses separately, or in joint convention, investigate the question. "The appointment of electors for President and Vice-President is the act of a State, not of individuals." On this point the Constitution was explicit, therefore, unless the provision in the Constitution that "each State shall appoint the electors in such manner as the legislature thereof shall direct," was changed, the proposed amendment would be of no avail. The new amendment would not disqualify any supporter of the rebellion from voting at elections for State officers, nor from being appointed a presidential elector; therefore, as the supporters of the late rebellion were largely in the majority in every insurrectionary State, they could elect a State legislature, which, from anything in the amendment, might appoint rebels as presidential electors. Other amendments to the Constitution might be required to enforce this one.

The proposition, to repudiate the Confederate debt and forbid compensation for slaves, involved the future fidelity of the Nation. "It was a declaration, in solemn form, that the resources of this great country should be used, in the future, to maintain inviolate the plighted faith of the Nation to its dead and its living defenders.1

But there were many who opposed the amendment and none more ably than Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania. Its first proposition, he said, violated the policy of discrimination, which heretofore had been exclusively exercised by the States and which should continue; it related to State citizenship. There was no occasion whatever for the exercise of federal power at variance with the wishes of the people of the States respecting the two races. It would be well if the colored race could be placed in the

1 Congressional Globe, May 10, 1866, pp. 2541-2544.

same political condition as in Pennsylvania,1 but this matter of the elective franchise should be left to the States themselves. If the United States had the right to interfere in behalf of one group of rights, and of all, indeed, save the suffrage, how long would it be before Congress would be tearing down every barrier? It was only fear of the people that restrained Congress, now, from adopting this amendment, and the privilege of determining who should vote within the States would soon be assumed by that body. Clearly it was only the timidity of the party in power that restrained it from ingrafting negro suffrage upon the Constitution and forcing it upon the people.

The second proposition was ambiguous. Did it mean that males over twenty-one years of age, not allowed to vote, should not be counted in the basis of representation, or, that the diminution of representation was to be in the proportion they bore to the voters? In either case, representation might wholly be denied, or greatly abridged.

1 The constitution of 1838 (Article III, Section 1) limited the elective franchise to white freemen. The constitution of 1776 (Section VI) gave freemen the right to vote without discrimination of race or color, as did that of 1790. (Article III, Section 1.) The committee that reported the article on the elective franchise in the constitution of 1790 limited the right to vote to white male citizens. "Albert Gallatin, who was a member of that convention, thought that the word 'white' was too indefinite; that it might exclude him from the rights of a voter." Gallatin's complexion was dark enough to cause him to object to the discriminating word "white." Debates, Pennsylvania Convention, 1838, Vol. III, p. 87. This interesting situation is not verified by the minutes of the convention of 1789-1790. See its proceedings, 1825, pp. 158, 199, 200, 253. The question of the extension of the right to vote to free persons of color was discussed at great length in the convention of 1838; see Vol. II, pp. 470-560; Vol. III, pp. 82134. The question in 1838 was of interest because the insertion of the word "white" disfranchised free persons of color who had voted under the constitution of 1789.

262

EXCLUSION FROM REPRESENTATION.

The proposition would make an entire change in the basis of representation "which should in every country rest upon the inhabitants." There was the less need of change because a large portion of the people, with whom the North hoped to live for all time on terms of peace and equity, were not present in Congress to give their views and to consider the effect this legislation would have upon their interests.

The injustice and evident purpose of the third proposition was admitted even by its supporters; it was intended to secure what the party in power most wished—an entire disagreement to the whole scheme by the eleven Southern States and their exclusion from representation in Congress, indefinitely. The whole resolution was a “plan of disunion, and it was a deception to call it otherwise." The friends of the Union, whatever their name, must cooperate to defeat the measure, or the Union would be sundered. It would be destroyed by those who "arrogated to themselves to be its especial defenders." The President had steadily pursued the policy marked out by Lincoln. He had brought the country safely along, until now. All that was required, to complete and make the Union perfect, was to admit to Congress the loyal representatives from the late rebel States. Their ordinances of secession were null and void; they were in the Union; they had never been out, and they were entitled legally to representation. Whenever the people in any of them elected Union men of undoubted loyalty, it was the duty of Congress to admit them. Those who were permanently identified with the Confederacy and who now claimed seats in Congress from Southern States, "should be immediately rejected and their constituents requested to elect Union men in their places. The proposed amendment involved the whole issue of reconstruction. No

real or hearty peace could come from its adoption. "Let us leave the war path," concluded Randall, "and return to the ways of friendship and peace."1

The debate on amendments, some of which had been adopted by the House before the appointment of the grand Committee on Reconstruction, had gone over the ground so thoroughly that its joint resolution was passed almost by an immediate vote. Garfield wished to amend it so as forever to exclude from any office of trust or profit under the government of the United States, all persons who had voluntarily adhered to the Southern Confederacy, or given it aid or comfort, but by a vote of one hundred and twenty-eight to thirty-seven, the House passed the resolution as it was reported.3

2

Among the greatly distinguished men who supported it were James A. Garfield and Rutherford B. Hayes, destined to be chosen Presidents of the United States; George W. Julian, the standard bearer of free soil, who had voted for the Thirteenth Amendment and now cast his vote for the Fourteenth; Boutwell and Washburn, Windom, Cullom and Colfax; Thaddeus Stevens, whose withering sarcasm and impassioned speech was soon to be heard in impeachment of the President, the leader of his party in the House, and whose vehement advocacy of the resolution had almost given it his name; and James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling, for whom the years held copious stores of strife, contest and disappointment. Most distinguished of the thirty-seven who recorded their votes against the resolution was Samuel J. Randall, who was destined to succeed (save for the brief speakership of Michael C. Kerr, who now also voted against the measure) James G. Blaine

1 Globe, May 10, 1866, pp. 2530-2531.

2 Globe, p. 2545.

8 The resolution passed the House, May 10.

« AnteriorContinuar »