History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 30

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104

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"I come now to speak more properly on the subject of negro suffrage. The Consti- tution of the United States has referred the question of suffrage to the several States. This may have been right, or it may have been wrong. I merely speak of the subject as it stands, and say that the question of suffrage is referred by the Constitution to the several States. It first provides that such persons as had a right to vote by the laws of the State for a mem-

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ber of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature should have a right to vote for members of Congress. It then, in another provision, declares that the States may, in any manner they may see proper, appoint or elect their presidential electors, so that the whole question of suf- frage has, by the Constitution, from the beginning been referred to the several States. Now, it has been proposed by some to avoid the operation of this provi- sion by excluding members of Congress from the Southern States until such time as they shall incorporate negro suffrage in their State constitutions-to say to them, 'We will keep you out of your seats until such time as the State from which you come shall amend its constitution so as to provide for negro suffrage.'

"This is one way in which to avoid the force of the constitutional provisions. There is another plan, and that is the the- ory which regards these States as being out of the Union and holding them as con- quered provinces, subject to the jurisdic- tion of Congress, like unorganized terri- tory, saying that Congress has the power to provide for calling conventions in these States, just as in the territory of Dakota, and may prescribe the right of suffrage and determine who shall vote in electing delegates to these conventions, just as in the territory of Dakota; that it may then determine whether it will accept the con- stitution offered, as might be determined in the case of any other territory.

"I will not stop to argue this question at length, but will say this, that from the beginning of the war up to the present time every message of the President, every proclamation, every State paper and every act of Congress has proceeded upon the hypothesis that no State could secede from the Union ; that once in the Union, always in the Union. Mr. Lincoln in every proc- lamation went on the principle that this war was an insurrection-a rebellion against the Constitution and the laws of the United States; not a rebellion of States, but a rebellion of the individuals, the people of the several Southern States, and every man who went into it was per- sonally and individually responsible for his acts and could not shield himself under the action or authority of his State. He went on the principle that every ordinance of secession, every act of the legislatures of the rebel States in that direction was a

nullity, unconstitutional and void, having no legal force or effect whatever, and that as these States were, according to law, in the Union, their standing could not be af- fected by the action of the people-that the people of these States were personally responsible for their conduct, just as a man is responsible who violates the statute in regard to the commission of murder, and to be treated as criminals, just as the authorities thought proper-that the peo- ple of a State can forfeit their rights, but so far as their action is concerned, in a legal point of view, they had no power to affect the condition of the State in the Union. Every proclamation and every act of Congress have proceeded upon this hypothesis. Mr. Buchanan started out with the proposition that this was a rebel- lion of States. He said we could not co- erce a State. Our reply was, we have nothing whatever to do with States, we will coerce the people of the States, hold- ing every man responsible for his conduct.

"This was our answer to Mr. Buchanan. Upon this hypothesis we have just put down the rebellion. But it is now pro- posed by some that we shall practically admit that the Southern States did secede -that they did go out of the Union-that the work of secession was perfect, was ac- complished-that the States are out of the Union -- that a government de facto was established. and that we now hold these States as conquered provinces, just as we should hold Canada if we were to invade it and take possession of it. As a conse- quence of this doctrine, Jeff Davis can not be tried for treason because he is not a traitor -- not a violator of the law, but the head of a government de facto-the ruler of a conquered province, and we have no more power to try him for treason than we would to try the Governor of Canada for such an offense in case he should fall into our hands during a hostile invasion of his territory. That is what this doc- trine leads to. It leads to a thousand other evils and pernicious things never contemplated in the nature of our Govern- ment.

"Another consequence which would flow from the admission of that doctrine (and I propose to argue that at some other time) would be that we would be called upon to pay the rebel debt. If we admit that these States were out of the Union

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for one moment, and we were to be re- garded in the light of belligerents, it would be insisted upon at once that when we took them back we took them with their debts, as we would take any other con- quered province or State. I do not pro- pose to argue that question any further at this time.

"The question of negro suffrage is one which threatens to divide us to some ex- tent, and is surrounded with many prac- tical difficulties. I reject in advance all schemes of colonization, as they are im- practicable. We have no right to insist upon colonizing the negro. He is an American, born in this country, and he has no other country. When he desires to emigrate he has a perfect right to do so, but his emigration must depend upon his own volition. I believe that the time will come when every man in the country, white and black, will have the right of suf- frage, and that suffrage should not depend upon color-that there is nothing in that which should make a distinction. I be- lieve that in the process of years every man, whatever his color, whether in In- diana or in South Carolina, will come to enjoy political rights. (Applause.)

"The right to vote carries with it the right to hold office. You cannot say that the negro has a natural right to vote, but that he must vote only for white men for office. The right to vote carries with it the right to be voted for. When that right is conferred you can make no discrimina- tion, no distinction against the right to hold office, and the right to vote in a State carries with it the right to vote for Presi- dent and members of Congress, and for all Federal officers. The right of suffrage be- ing conferred in South Carolina, for State purposes, under our Constitution, as I have pointed out before, carries with it the right to vote for President and Vice- President and members of Congress.

"In regard to the question of admitting the freedmen of the Southern States to vote, while I admit the equal rights of all men, and that in time all men will have the right to vote without distinction of color or race, I yet believe that in the case of four millions of slaves just freed from bondage there should be a period of pro- bation and preparation before they are brought to the exercise of political power. Let us consider for one moment the con- dition of these people in the Southern

States. You cannot judge of the general condition of the freedmen and negroes upon the plantation by what we hear of the schools established at Hilton Head, Norfolk and other places where a few en- thusiastic and philanthropic teachers are instructing the negroes. I have no doubt many of them are making rapid progress, but these are only as one in many thou- sands. Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the negroes in the South live on the plantations, and you cannot judge of the condition of the great mass by those who live in the towns. You must consider the condition of the whole mass. What is that condition ? Perhaps not one in five hun- dred-I may say one in a thousand-can read, and perhaps not one in five hundred is worth five dollars in property of any kind. They have no property, personal or real. They have just come from bondage and all they have is their own bodies.

"Their homes are on the plantations of these men, and they must depend for sub- sistence on the employment they receive from them. Look at their condition. As I said before, only one in five hundred can read-many of them until within the last few months were never off the plantation; most of them never out of the county in which they live and were born, except as they were driven by the slave drivers. Can you conceive that a body of men, white or black, who have been in this con- dition, and their ancestors before them, are qualified to be immediately lifted from their present state into the full exercise of political power, not only to govern themselves and their neighbors, but to take part in the government of the United States? Can they be regarded as intelli- gent and independent voters? The mere statement of the fact furnishes the answer to the question. To say that such men- and it is no fault of theirs; it is simply their misfortune and the crime of the na- tion-to say that such men, just emerging from this slavery, are qualified for the exercise of political power, is to make the strongest pro-slavery argument I ever heard. It is to pay the highest compli- ment to the institution of slavery.

"What has been our practice for many years? We have invariably described slavery as degrading to both the body and soul. We have described it as bringing human beings down to the level of the beasts of the field. We have described it

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as a crime, depriving the slaves of intel- lectual and moral culture and of all gifts which God has made the most precious. If we shall now turn around and say that this institution has been a blessing to the negro instead of a curse; that it has quali- fied him for the right of suffrage and the exercise of political power, we shall stul- tify ourselves and give the lie to those dec- larations upon which we have obtained political power.

"Let me inquire for a single moment, in what condition is Indiana to urge negro suffrage in South Carolina, or in any other State? Let us consider the position we occupy. We have, perhaps, twenty-five thousand colored people in this State. Most of them can read and write; many of them are very intelligent and excellent citizens, well-to-do in the world, well qual- ified to exercise the right of suffrage and political power. But how stands the mat- ter? We not only exclude them from vot- ing, we exclude them from testifying in the courts of justice. We exclude them from our public schools and make it un- lawful and a crime for them to come into the State of Indiana at any time subse- quent to 1850. No negro who has come into our State since 1850 can make a valid contract; he cannot acquire title to a piece of land because the law makes the deed void, and every man who gives him em- ployment is liable to prosecution and fine. I sent out the Twenty-eighth Indiana col- ored regiment, recruited with great diffi- culty and at some expense. It has been in the field two years. It has fought well on many occasions and won the high opin- ion of officers who have seen it. We got credit on our State quota for every man who went out. Yet, according to the Con- stitution and laws of Indiana more than one-half of the men in that regiment have no right to come back again, and if they do come back they are subject to prosecu- tion and fine; and any man who receives them or employs them is also liable to pun- ishment. Now, can Indiana, in this con- dition-with twenty-five thousand colored men in her borders, to whom she denies suffrage and political power, and almost all civil rights, with what face, I say, can Indiana go to Congress and insist upon giving the right of suffrage to the negroes in the Southern States? If her Congress- men ask to do this they will naturally be asked in turn, 'What have you done with

these people in your own State? You have nad them for many years. You have long had an opportunity to make this issue as to whether they ought to have these rights. Their mental and moral condition is much superior to that of the great mass of the freedmen in the Southern States.'

"What have you done? You have done nothing. I ask you, what would be the moral strength of any politician present- ing these questions in Congress ? I ask how any member of Congress from Indiana, who has not made the issue at home, can present himself and urge the right of Con- gress to enfranchise the negroes in the Southern States? It may be said that there are only a few of them in Indiana, and it is not important. But if the few who are here have a right, moral or nat- ural, to the franchise, when you refuse it to the few you refuse it to all. When you refuse it to 25,000 you violate sound prin- ciples just as much as if you refuse it to five millions. I tell you these Northern States can never command any moral force on that subject until they shall first be just to the negroes at home.

* * *

"If you enfranchise all the negroes in these States you will have at least twenty negro votes to one white vote, and in the work of reconstructing the States of South Carolina, Alabama and Florida you would have a larger proportion-perhaps thirty colored votes to one white vote. Now, I ask you, what is to be the effect of that? The first effect would be to erect colored State governments. Under such a condition of things the negro would no more vote for a white man than you would vote for a black man. They would no more elect a white man than they would elect a black man. Human nature is the same, whether in a white or colored skin. There would be nothing that would confer more pleasure upon a man of that race, of course, than the elevation to political power of a man of his own race and color. Having secured power, they would retort upon us that which we have so steadily practiced upon them. If you give them the votes they will elect men of their own color. And we would have no right to blame them. We would think rather bad- ly of them if they did not. I would ask you if the negroes of Hayti, or any other place where they are in the majority, have ever elected a white man to office? Under

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Mr. Sumner's plan you will give them an overwhelming majority in every one of these States, and you will give them the political power of the South. That they will exercise that power by electing men of their own color is absolutely certain. Believing that human nature is the same under different complexions, that the ne- groes are not differently constituted from ourselves, and that they have like passions with us, we cannot doubt how this power will be exercised.

"Some will say that if they can find colored men qualified, all right. There are enough colored men of education in the North to go South and fill every office there, and I have no doubt they stand ready to do it. Here we deny them almost every right, except that of personal lib- erty, and it is so in Illinois and some of the other Northern States; and when you present to them the prospect of holding the highest offices in the gift of the people of the Southern States, rest assured they will embrace it. They will have colored Governors, and colored members of Con- gress, and Senators and Judges of the Su- preme Court, etc. Very well; and sup- pose they do send colored Senators and Representatives to Congress? I have no doubt you will find men in the North will- ing to sit beside them, and will not think themselves degraded by doing so. I have nothing to say to this. I am simply dis- cussing the political effect of it. In every State where there is a colored State gov- ernment, a negro for Governor and a ne- gro for Supreme Judge, white emigration will cease. There will be no more white emigration to any such State. You cannot find the most ardent anti-slavery man in Wayne county who will go and locate in a State that has colored State govern- ment. You will absolutely shut off at once, and effectually, too, all emigration from the Northern States, and from Europe, too, whenever that event shall happen. Thus they will remain permanently col- ored States in the South. The white men who are now there would remove from them and would not remain under such dominion.

"Very well, say some, that is all very well if we can get the negroes to go there. But let me say that in such case the col- ored States would be a balance of power in this country. I ask, is it desirable to have a colored State government? I say

it is not. It is not for many reasons. One reason is, that such States would contin- ually constitute a balance of power. They would be bound together by the strongest tie that ever binds men together-the tie of color and race-the tie of a down-trod- den and despised race. As three hundred thousand slave holders by a common tie were able to govern this nation for a long time, so four millions of people, bound to- gether by a much stronger tie-despised by the whole world as they have been- would constantly vote to act together and their united vote would constitute a bal- ance of power that might control the gov- ernment of the nation.

"I submit, then, however clearly and strongly we may admit the natural rights of the negro-I submit to the intelligence of the people-that colored State govern- ments are not desirable; that they will bring about results that are not to be hoped for: that finally they would threat- en to bring about, and, I believe, would result in a war of races.

"Now the question comes up, how can this thing be avoided and yet confer upon the negro his rights? Well, if I had the power I will tell you how I would avoid it. I believe it will be the way in which it will be ultimately worked out, for I be- lieve the time will come when these rebel States will confer upon the negro the right of suffrage. If I had the power I would arrange it in this way : I would give these men just emerged from slavery a period of probation and preparation; I would give them time to acquire a little property and get a little education; time to learn something about the simplest forms of business and prepare themselves for the exercise of political rights. By that time these Southern States will have been so completely filled up by immigration from the North and from Europe that the ne- groes will be in permanent minority. Why? Because the negroes have no immi- gration-nothing but the natural increase -while we have immigration from all the world, and natural increase besides. Thus, by postponing the thing only until such time as the negroes are qualified to enjoy political rights, the dangers I have been considering would have fully passed away. Their influence would no longer be dan- gerous in the manner I have indicated and a conflict of races would not be more like- ly to happen there than it now is in Mas-

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sachusetts. In Massachusetts the negroes have exercised political rights for twenty- five years, and yet there has been no dis- turbance there-no conflict of races. Why? Because the negroes have been in the minority. They cannot elect a man of their own color to any office to bring up that prejudice of race. I believe what I have stated will be the way in which the question will work itself out. But, under the policy of Mr. Sumner, we are to ex- clude twenty out of every twenty-one men in the Southern States and bring forward colored voters to fill the places of those excluded. The inevitable result of that policy would be to establish colored State governments and a colored balance of power in this Republic, a thing which I think most desirable to avoid."

That the Republicans of Indiana, under the leadership of Governor Morton, cher- ished a high regard for Andrew Johnson is evidenced by this plank in their State platform, adopted in February, 1864:

"Resolved, That the gratitude of the American people is due to Andrew John- son of Tennessee for his unselfish devotion to the cause of the Union, and his patriotic and successful efforts for the overthrow of the rebellion, and that we present his name as the choice of our people for the Vice-Presidency of the United States."

At the Republican State Convention held in February, 1866, these resolutions were given precedence in the platform adopted by the Indiana Republicans :

"Resolved, That we have full faith in President Johnson and his Cabinet, and in the Union members of both houses of Congress, and in the sincere desire and determination of all of them to conduct the affairs of the Government in such manner as to secure the best interests of the whole people; and we hereby declare that we will sustain them in all constitu- tional efforts to restore peace, order and permanent union.

"Resolved, That in Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, we recog- nize a patriot true, and a statesman tried ; that we will support him in all his consti- tutional efforts to restore national author- ity, law and order among the people of the States lately in rebellion, on the basis of equal and exact justice to all men; and

that we pledge to the administration, ex- ecutive and legislative, our united and hearty co-operation in all wise and pru- dent measures devised for the security of the Government against rebellion and in- surrection in times to come.

"Resolved, That whilst we endorse the President of the United States in his con- stitutional efforts for the safety of the Union, and the restoration of law and or- der, we do hereby express our entire confi- dence in the Union majority in Congress and pledge to it our cordial support.

"Resolved, That it is the province of the legislative branch of the General Gov- ernment to determine the question of re- construction of the States lately in rebel- lion against that Government; and that, in the exercise of that power, Congress should have in view the loyalty of the peo- ple in those States, their devotion to the Constitution, and obedience to the laws; and until the people of those States, by their acts, prove themselves loyal to the Government, they should not be restored to the rights and position enjoyed and occupied by them before their rebellion."

This endorsement of President Johnson was unstintedly given five months after the delivery of Governor Morton's incisive speech at Richmond, and doubtless re- flected the views of the Republican party at that time, although there had been some criticism of Morton's views by the radical element, led by Geo. W. Julian and other champions of abolitionism.

It is worthy of note that while the Re- publicans carried Indiana by 20,000 major- ity in 1864 and by 14,000 in 1866, their majority at the October election in 1868 dwindled down to a little over one thou- sand. The defenders of the Union who survived the vicissitudes of camp life, forced marches, and the carnage of battle, had returned to their firesides and re- sumed their peaceful occupations, evident- ly did not take kindly to the repudiation of the principles espoused by Governor Mor- ton at Richmond in 1865, else the Repub- lican majorities would not have melted away as they did. No inconsiderable num- ber of Republicans refused to exchange Lincolnism for Jacobinism.

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[CHAPTER XXX.]

DEMOCRATIC PATRIOTISM

THE SPLENDID WAR RECORD OF INDIANA DEMOCRATS, AS WELL AS DEMOCRATS OF OTHER STATES

(By Major Geo. E. Finney, Editor Martinsville Democrat.)

P ATRIOTISM is a positive quali- the implements of war to repel a large sec- ty. It is the foundation stone tional contingent of their own party in an insane purpose to destroy the Union. on which rests the integrity of a nation. It binds, cements, conserves in unity and strength the institutions of a people. Without it no nation could be strong, nor long preserve its autono- my - could long enjoy internal peace or external comity. The love of country is not a natural gift, but comes from rea- son. Habit, observation and education at- tach us to it, and not instinct. In a re- public such as ours partisanism may grow so strong as to weaken patriotism, and though parties are necessary to preserve a just equilibrium between diverging inter- ests, their tendency to weaken patriotism should be guarded against with extreme care, and this is a lesson not taught with sufficient pertinacity. To illustrate this fact it is only necessary to present the political state of the public mind just previ- ous to the outbreak of the civil war, and which in the same words will give the reader and student of today a clearer view of the deep strength of patriotism that characterized the Democrat of the North of that day, inducing him to enlist himself in the cause destined to preserve intact the national existence of the Union, and to offer life if need be to thwart the purpose of those who for partisan ends would dis- member it.

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History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 30

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926 Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1104

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104