USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 51
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LATER RECONSTRUCTION ACTS
freemen ; but a second supplementary reconstruction bill, intro- duced by Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, was passed over the President's veto in both Houses, July 19, and on August 7, Samuel Bowle's paper admitted its defeat and declared that the establishment of "an impartial but educated suffrage," which it had advocated, had been "sacrificed to party necessity."
LATER RECONSTRUCTION ACTS (1868-1869)
June 22, 1868, the bill to admit the State of Arkansas to representation in Congress on the fundamental condition that "therej shall never be in said State any denial or abridgement of the elective franchise, or of any other right, to any person by reason or on account of race or color," was passed over the President's veto in both Houses. A more general recon- struction act (July 21) for the admission of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, when they should have complied with certain conditions in- cluding the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, became a law in spite of the presidential disapproval. July 20, both Houses passed over the presidential veto a joint resolution excluding from the electoral college the votes of States, lately in rebellion, which had not been reorganized.
The presidential election of 1868 afforded another oppor- tunity for the electorate of Massachusetts to express their ap- proval or disapproval of the consistent support given by the Bay State representatives to this drastic reconstruction legisla- tion. The result was an overwhelming endorsement of the radical delegation, while in the Connecticut Valley, where the Springfield Republican was supposed to wield its greatest in- fluence, William B. Washburn of Greenfield received six times as many votes as his nearest competitor.
The sentiment of the State is still more strikingly shown by the triumphant reelection for a fourth term, from 1869, of Charles Sumner, the radical leader of the United States Sen- ate, he receiving 37 out of 39 votes in the State Senate, and 216 out of 232 votes in the House of Representatives.
The election of 1869 in Virginia, held under the provisions of a bill affecting Mississippi and Texas as well, introduced by Butler of Massachusetts and passed by both Houses in
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April of that year, was characterized by Sumner in the Senate as "one huge, colossal fraud." He declared that the Old Dominion was "still smoking with rebellion" and that its new constitution was "dabbled in Blood." He insisted that if Virginia were to come back into the Union at all, certain fundamental conditions should be imposed to insure her future good conduct. As a result, Virginia was finally admitted into the Union (January 27, 1870) under condition that the State constitution should never be so amended as to deprive any class of citizens of the right to vote, to hold office, or to have school privileges on account of race, color, or previous con- dition of servitude.
In the House, Benjamin F. Butler, who had succeeded Thaddeus Stevens as chairman of the Joint Committee on Re- construction, reported a bill for the admission of Georgia on similar conditions, with a provision extending the terms of Governor Bullock and the then existing State legislature for two years. An amendment offered by Bingham, of Ohio, striking out this latter provision, was adopted 115 to 71. This action was denounced by both Sumner and Wilson, the latter declaring that "law or no law, we want to keep the State government in power." Nevertheless, the bill with the House amendment passed both houses and was approved by the President.
KU KLUX KLAN AND AMNESTY (1868-1871)
The outrages committed by the secret organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, which reached their climax in 1868, aroused the indignation of Senator Wilson, who wrote to General Grant in May, 1869: "Can nothing be done to stop the outrages in Georgia? These political murders should cease. Nothing animated the people more in the canvass than the idea that the rebel outrages should be stopped. They were checked much by your election; still they go on and many of our best friends say that we do nothing to stop them and that we rather say nothing about them." In a fiery speech in the Senate, Sumner denounced the "bloody orgies of this fiendish organization."
In response to the aroused public opinion of the North,
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KU KLUX KLAN AND AMNESTY
Congress, after an investigation and report by a Senate Com- mittee of which Wilson was a member, and a joint committee of which Butler was one of the shining lights, passed in suc- cession three enforcement acts-the last one, approved April 20, 1871, being sometimes known as the "Ku Klux Act." By its terms, the President was given extraordinary powers to preserve order and to prevent acts of violence, including the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, which was actually done in the case of certain counties of South Carolina. In favor of this drastic legislation Senator Wilson said: "What we want to do is to put down the Ku Klux organizations, which are the illegitimate descendants of the legalized patrol system that once existed in the South, now carried on without law. Crimes are committed under it that are shocking and appalling." .
In December, 1871, Sumner insisted upon offering his supplementary Civil Rights Bill as an amendment to the Amnesty Bill, which killed the bill. The following year, he succeeded in securing the adoption of the same amendment by the casting vote of Vice-President Colfax; but it failed to se- cure the necessary two thirds to override the President's veto. Later in the same year, the Senate rejected Sumner's civil rights amendment and passed the General Amnesty Bill, mak- ing eligible to office all former Confederate soldiers and civilians except a few hundred, by a vote of 38 to 2, Sumner voting in the negative. In February, 1875, more than a year after Sumner's death, a similar Civil Rights Bill, reported from the Judiciary Committee by General Butler of Massa- chusetts, became a law, only to be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883.
Sumner, in spite of his radical stand on all measures con- cerning reconstruction in the South, continued to have behind him the overwhelming public sentiment of Massachusetts. It was only when he showed leniency towards those who had engaged in rebellion by the introduction of his bill to omit the names of civil war battles from the Army Register and the regimental colors, that he was censured by the legislature of his State. To the credit of Massachusetts, just before his death this resolution of censure was rescinded.
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THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT (1866-1868)
Reference has already been made to the Civil Rights Bill, which was passed over President Johnson's veto in April, 1866, both Massachusetts Senators and all the Massachusetts Representatives voting in its favor ; and also to Sumner's per- sistent fight for the enactment of a supplementary and more comprehensive measure, granting full civil rights to the freed- men, which was finally enacted into law shortly after his death. It was felt at the time by the best constitutional law- yers, both in and out of Congress, that a mere statute of this kind transcended the constitutional powers of Congress. Ac- cordingly, three weeks after the passage of the first Civil Rights Bill, Thaddeus Stevens reported from the Joint Com- mittee on Reconstruction a joint resolution to amend the Con- stitution, which contained in its five sections all the essential provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment as finally passed.
In the long debate which ensued upon this proposed amend- ment to the fundamental law, four of the Massachusetts Representatives took part. Eliot, of New Bedford, advocated the passage of the amendment as replacing the false corner stone of the republic by "a corner stone of righteousness, solid and square and true." Boutwell, of Groton, spoke of the justice of the measure, and called attention to the fact that "every traitor of the South and sympathizer of treason in the North" sustained the policy of President Johnson and the Democratic party in their opposition to it. Dawes, from the western part of the State, heartily supported it, although op- posed to the section disenfranchising those formerly engaged in rebellion. General Banks, of Waltham, although giving the amendment his support, felt that it did not go far enough. Samuel Bowles, in the Springfield Republican of November 22, 1866, referred to the proposed amendment as "a shabby piece of joiner work." After the closing argument of Thad- deus Stevens, in which he declared that he would not give a snap of his finger for the measure without the provision ex- cluding rebels from the right to hold office, the resolution passed the House by the overwhelming vote of 128 to 37, all of the Massachusetts Representatives being recorded in its favor.
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THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
When the joint resolution providing for the submission of the Fourteenth Amendment reached the Senate, Sumner criticized it because it did not by its terms provide for uni- versal Negro suffrage; and offered an amendment to that effect which received only eight votes. The Boston Advertiser expressed its disapproval of Sumner's attitude, as did Profes- sor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University in an article appearing in the paper of the New England Publication So- ciety under date of March 16, 1866. The amendment as at first submitted to the Senate failed of passage; but with certain amendments it finally passed (June 8) by a vote of 33 to 11, both Sumner and Wilson being recorded in its favor. The House concurred in the Senate amendments, all of the Massachusetts members voting "aye," and it was re- luctantly submitted by the President and his Secretary of State to the several States. Not until July 20, 1868, did Secre- tary Seward make public proclamation of his certificate that the requisite number of States had ratified the amendment and it was a part of the Constitution.
APPLICATION OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT (1871-1897)
The citizenship clause and the clause prohibiting any State from depriving "any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law," as set forth in the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, have been frequently invoked and uniformly enforced by the Supreme Court of the United States. The provisions of the same section, prohibiting a State from making or enforcing any law "which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States," or which "denies to one person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," were undoubtedly intended by the framers of the amendment to incorporate the substance of the Civil Rights Act and to insure to the Negroes of the South the same civil rights as the white population. They have largely failed of their purpose. The Supreme Court has so interpreted these provisions in the famous Slaughter House Cases and in subsequent decisions, that in many of the South- ern States the Negro is still deprived of many of the rights
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he enjoys in the States of the North. This fact, coupled with the higher wage scale in the North, accounts for the large migration of colored people to the Northern States in recent years. It also accounts for the repeated attempts in Congress to secure the enactment of an antilynching bill, granting to the Federal courts jurisdiction to protect the lives and liberties of citizens of the United States whenever the State courts either refuse or neglect to afford such protection. Bills of this character were introduced in the Sixty-fourth, Sixty-fifth, Sixty-sixth, and Sixty-seventh Congresses by Representative Dyer, of Missouri, Moore, of Indiana, and Dallinger, of Massachusetts; and in the Sixty-seventh Congress (1921- 1923) a bill based on the bills of these three Representatives was reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary, after a protracted debate finally passed the House, and was favor- ably reported in the Senate, only to fail in the latter body as the result of the threat of Senator Underwood, of Alabama, that unless the bill was laid aside no further business would be transacted during that session.
The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment contains a mandatory provision requiring that, when the right to vote at any National or State election is denied by any State to any citizens of the United States of legal age residing therein, the representation of such State in Congress shall be correspond- ingly reduced. Although it is a well-known fact that, ever since United States troops were removed from the Southern States in President Hayes's administration, the suffrage to all intents and purposes has been denied to the bulk of the Negro population of the South, Congress has never seen fit to carry out the mandatory provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was obviously intended by the framers of that amendment to meet just such a contingency.
SUBSEQUENT ISSUES OF RECONSTRUCTION (1891-1920)
Various attempts have since been made by members of Con- gress having large Negro constituencies to induce Congress to take action, the most recent being that of Congressman George Holden Tinkham, of Massachusetts, representing a Boston district. In December, 1920, the year in which the
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NEGRO SUFFRAGE
decennial census was taken for the purpose of determining the basis for a new apportionment of Representatives in Congress, Tinkham issued a statement, in which he presented some startling figures and reiterated his appeal for the enforcement by Congress of the mandatory provision of the Constitution. He subsequently introduced resolutions for "an investigation as to the extent to which the right of vote is denied or abridged to certain citizens of the United States," the total vote cast in each State, the registration and election laws of those States being set forth in a series of preambles. The public attention aroused by these propositions combined with other reasons in preventing the passage of any apportionment bill.
QUESTION OF NEGRO SUFFRAGE (1864-1867)
Charles Sumner, the recognized leader of the radical Re- publicans in the Senate, from the very outset advocated the granting of full political as well as complete civil rights to the Negro. In July, 1864, he attempted to amend the First Reconstruction Bill by striking out the word "white," which would have conferred full suffrage upon the freedman. In the famous debate upon the bill for the admission of the State of Louisiana in pursuance of the policy of the Lincoln adminis- tration, Sumner opposed the admission of any State without an absolute guarantee of freedom and equality of all races, including the right of suffrage, and he resorted to the filibuster as a means of defeating the bill, in which effort he was suc- cessful. For his victory at this critical time he received the congratulations of Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbury, Frank B. Sanborn, and Francis W. Bird.
Shortly after President Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson expressed himself, in a personal interview, as agree- ing with Sumner that the new governments in the seceded States should be "founded on the consent of the governed without any distinction of color." But when the new Presi- dent, by his proclamations for the recognition of the Southern States, demonstrated that he was opposed to Negro suffrage, the Massachusetts Senator proceeded to fight him with the utmost vigor and continued the fight to a successful conclusion. In a letter addressed to the colored citizens of North Carolina,
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May 13, 1865, he advised them to insist upon all the rights and privileges of citizenship. In a memorial address on Abraham Lincoln delivered in Boston, he said: "The argument for colored suffrage is overwhelming. It springs from the necessity of the case as well as from the rights of man. This suffrage is needed for the security of the colored people, for the stability of the local government and for the strength of the Union. Without it there is nothing but insecurity for the colored people, instability for the local government, and weakness for the Union, involving, of course, the national credit." Three weeks later a mass meeting was held in the same city in behalf of equal suffrage, of which Theophilus Parsons, the well-known author of legal text books, was chairman, and at which Richard H. Dana was the principal speaker.
In September, 1865, Sumner, as chairman of the Republican State Convention at Worcester, made a most eloquent speech in favor of full Negro suffrage; and the enthusiastic reception which his address met with clearly demonstrated that, what- ever the opinion might be in other parts of the country, the people of Massachusetts were determined to follow his leader- ship. Despite the opposition of such men as Governor Andrew and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, the convention in its platform contained a plank declaring full Negro suffrage to be a necessary condition of the reconstruc- tion policy. Similar action was taken by Republican State Conventions in Vermont, Iowa, and Minnesota.
Events proved that Sumner was in advance of his times. Even as late as 1866, as James G. Blaine points out, the great mass of the Republicans stopped short of the demand for the conferring of suffrage on the Negro, and in that year Sumner's equal-suffrage amendment to the bill for the admis- sion of Colorado, a Northern State, received only seven votes in the Senate. In fact, it was not until January, 1867, that Sumner's bill granting the right of suffrage to negroes in the District of Columbia became a law; and not until a year later did Sumner succeed in incorporating his equal-suffrage amend- ment in the bills for the admission of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana, all of which were passed over the presidential veto.
Courtesy of Halliday Historic Photograph Co. CHARLES SUMNER
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THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT
INTRODUCTION OF THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT (1869)
From the radical Republican point of view, the great defect of the Fourteenth Amendment was its tacit recognition of the right of States to disfranchise their Negro citizens, if they so chose and were willing to run the risk (which events have proved was no risk at all) of having their representation in Congress reduced. Accordingly, January 9, 1869, Representa- tive Boutwell of Massachusetts, always a firm believer in Negro suffrage, and, as we have seen, Stevens's faithful lieu- tenant in securing the enactment of the Reconstruction Acts as well as in the impeachment of President Johnson, reported from the Committee on the Judiciary a joint resolution, em- bodying an amendment to the Constitution to the effect that the right of no citizen to vote should be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. In speaking for the resolu- tion, Mr. Boutwell said: "If we secure to all the people of the country, without distinction of race or color, the privilege of the elective franchise, we have then established upon the broadest possible basis of republican equality the institutions of the country."
While this proposed amendment was being debated in the House, a joint resolution of similar import was reported in the Senate by its Judiciary Committee, except that the Senate resolution included in its language the right of citizens to hold office as well as to vote. During the debate which ensued in the Senate, Sumner, to the surprise of every one, made an elaborate speech against the proposed amendment on the ground that it was unnecessary, and that the same result could be accomplished just as easily and much more quickly by an act of Congress. In this speech he reviewed at length his record from the time he first took his seat in the Senate in 1851, and his consistent fight for the abolition of slavery and the granting to the Negro of full and complete civil and political rights. He contended that the proposed amendment was an unnecessary and uncalled for reflection upon the Con- stitution which, since the adoption of the Thirteenth Amend- ment, should be interpreted in the light of the Declaration of Independence; that whatever legislation was enacted for
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"human rights" was constitutional, and that there could be no such thing as "State rights as against human rights." It was this speech which caused Richard H. Dana to remark that Sumner cared nothing for the Constitution, was impatient of law, and considered his oath to have been to support the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution of the United States.
THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT ADOPTED (1869-1870)
Henry Wilson, the other Massachusetts Senator, spoke in favor of the proposed amendment, contending that the Repub- lican party "was fully committed to equality of rights and privileges" and was bound in consistency to "seize every opportune occasion to make the Constitution and laws of the country in harmony with its sublime creed." He offered a substitute amendment, which was adopted, providing that no discrimination should be made in the exercise of the elective franchise or in the right to hold office on account of "race, color, nativity, property, education, or religious creed." The resolution in its amended form passed the Senate by a vote of 35 to 11, Sumner not voting. The House also passed it with amendments by a vote of 140 to 37. A committee of con- ference shaped the amendment into the form in which it now appears in the Constitution; it mentions only the right to vote and enumerates only the discriminations as to "race, color, and previous condition of servitude." This conference report was duly accepted by both Houses and the amendment was sub- mitted to the State legislatures on February 27, 1869. It was declared to have been ratified by the legislatures of 29 of the 37 States by proclamation of the Secretary of State, dated March 30, 1870. Sumner refrained from voting, but all the Massachusetts Representatives voted "aye," except Baldwin, who was absent-even including Dawes, who, four years be- fore, had addressed his neighbors in Pittsfield in support of President Johnson's policy of reconstruction and in opposition to Negro suffrage.
In spite of Sumner's refusal to vote for the Fifteenth Amendment, the fact remains that his successful fight against the Louisiana Bill in 1865, as Pierce says, "rallied the anti-
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NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN EFFECT
slavery masses to his advanced position, to which, after agita- tion and contention the people were yet to come. For weal or woe, whether it was well or not for the black man and the country, it is to Sumner's credit or discredit as a statesman, that suffrage, irrespective of color, became fixed and universal in the American system. . .. Among public men he was the only one who resolutely held the position-alike against one President and then another-that the reconstruction should make that people [i.e., the colored people] finally and irrev- ocably citizens on the same terms as white men, or it should not go on." Rhodes, the caustic critic of the congressional policy of reconstruction, names, as the three men responsible for it, "Andrew Johnson by his obstinacy and bad behaviour, Thaddeus Stevens by his vindictiveness and parliamentary tyranny, and Charles Sumner by his pertinacity in a misguided humanitarianism."
NEGRO SUFFRAGE IN EFFECT (1869-1894)
With the withdrawal of the troops from the South in 1878, the Fifteenth Amendment practically ceased to be operative in the eleven former Confederate States. To be sure, the Federal election laws, which had been enacted during the reconstruc- tion period, remained upon the statute book; but in the absence of Federal bayonets, like the Fifteenth Amendment those laws remained a dead letter. In 1890, however, Henry Cabot Lodge, then Republican Representative from Massachusetts, introduced a more effective federal-election measure for the enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment, to which its Demo- cratic opponents promptly gave the name of the "Force Bill." This bill, which proposed for effective Federal supervision of the conduct of national elections, was favorably reported to the House and, after a bitter and protracted partisan debate, passed the House, July 2, 1890, by the exceedingly close vote of 155 to 149. In the Senate it was referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections of which Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts was chairman, which reported a bill with substantially the same general provisions, thereafter known as the Hoar Federal Election Bill.
In the Senate, the Southern Democrats had a better chance
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to filibuster than was afforded by the rules of the House as interpreted and enforced by Speaker Thomas B. Reed-nick- named "Czar Reed" by his political opponents. Moreover they received aid from the eight Republican Senators from the four new Rocky Mountain States, which, although small in population, had been admitted to the Union in order to in- crease the slight Republican majority in the Senate. As the Western States were more interested in obtaining a market for their silver than in enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Southern Senators were more concerned in defeating the "Force Bill" than in the possible consequences of a deprecia- tion of the currency, it was very easy to arrange for an ex- change of votes. Consequently, the Silver Purchase Act of 1890 became a law, with such adverse results that a Demo- cratic President three years later called a special session of Congress to secure its repeal. On the other hand, the Lodge- Hoar federal-election bill failed to pass and was never revived. As the Boston Herald facetiously put it: "Uncle Hoar's min- ing-camp Senators came home to roost." Thus ended the last attempt to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by "appro- priate legislation," and in 1894, with a Democratic President in the White House and a Democratic majority in both Senate and House, all the laws providing for Federal supervision over national elections in the States were repealed.
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