USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 6
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months' preliminary notice of his purpose-purely as a war measure, a hostile, and not a judicial, act done and ordered by the commander in the progress of his campaign, as a method of effectively prosecuting war.
The Senator's language in the following extract from his speech is a singular exhibition of his sagacity and prophetic foreshadowing of the feeling that would pervade the country as soon as the Rebellion had been subdued :
" Sir, when this Rebellion has been put down and suppressed, the arts of peace and the comities of peace will be our duty and our office. We shall not feel then that the time has come to institute a gene- ral assize, a general inquiry, all over the country in rebellion, for the purpose of punishing by indict- ment, trial, conviction, sentence, forfeiture of estate. The honorable Senator from Vermont gave you an illustration of the effect of such an undertaking, when he told you the fate of Jeffreys, who under- took, after the suppression of the rebellion in England, to punish those who had been engaged in it. All that is practicable to be done now, and all that ought to be done, should be done with reference to putting down the Rebellion; and instead of shirking the responsibility, instead of passing a bill with provisions to be executed hereafter, instead of throwing upon the President the responsibility of judg- ing what ought to be done, this Congress, under the Constitution, the great war council of the nation, ouglit to have the manliness to do their duty, and to advise the President, to authorize the President and to direct the President what is proper to be done in the premises."
During the same session, Mr. Morrill, as Chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, made a report and introduced a bill for the emancipation of the slaves in that District. On the 3d of April the Senate passed the bill by the decisive vote of 29 to 14. It had been debated for many days, and its passage resisted by all the argument and parlia- mentary artifice the minority could command. Mr. Morrill led the debate with great ear- nestness and ability, speaking much more frequently than any other Senator. During a colloquy with Garrett Davis of Kentucky, who had used Scripture, poetry, law, and con- stitution to stem the breasting flood that was everywhere breaking down the old barriers of slavery and barbarism, he covered himself with honor not only by the soundness of his constitutional opinions, the strength of his law, the readiness of his replies, but by the apt- ness and beauty of the poetic allusions by which he confounded his adversary. The pass- age is worth recording, as it shows how splendidly our Senator was equipped to cope with his most eloquent adversaries, not only with the weapons of justice and right, but with the graces of oratory and familiarity with the great classics of the English language.
" The honorable Senator says, 'Show me a statute on this subject, giving me a right to my horse, which does not give me the same right to my slave.' Well, I will refer him to a positive statute on this subject-a statute that I know will command his respect and his veneration:
"'And God blessed them-'"
" Mr. Davis-Will the honorable Senator permit me to ask him a question ?"
" Mr. Morrill-When I have read my authority I will.
"'And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
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earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.'
"The commentary of the great English commentator runs back to that as the origin of the right of property; and here is the obvious distinction between the right of persons and the right of things. Man has dominion over things; he has no dominion over persons-"
" Mr. Davis-Would the courtesy of the gentleman allow me a word now?"
"Mr. Morrill-Certainly."
"Mr. Davis-I will ask the honorable Senator from Maine if he ever knew any property to be recovered in a court of justice upon that law, or ever knew a claim to property to depend on the law which he has just read, in a court of justice ?"
"Mr. Morrill-We never had any occasion to plead that statute in my part of the country, yet it is always recognized. This reasoning of the honorable Senator is not new. He will not suspect me of running any offensive parallel here; but I will read from another work which not only recognizes the reasoning of the honorable Senator, but recognizes the principle to which I refer. Here is the reason- ing of the spirit of evil, as told by the angel Michael to Adam, according to England's great poet. It . ran in this wise. He was relating to Adam what should take place after the fall, and he says:
"'Till one shall rise Of proud, ambitious heart; who, not content With fair equality, fraternal state, Will arrogate dominion undeserved Over his brethren, and quite dispossess Concord and law of nature from the earth; Hunting (and men, not beasts, shall be his game)
With war and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his empire tyrannous: A mighty hunter thence he shall be styled
Before the Lord; as in despite of Heaven, Or from Heaven, claiming second sovranty; And from rebellion shall derive his name, Though of rebellion others he accuse.'
"Now let us hear the answer:
"'Whereto thus Adam, fatherly displeased:
O execrable son! so to aspire
Above his brethren; to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given: He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over man He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left to human free.'"
In February, 1863, a bill for the incorporation of an institution for the education of colored youth of the District of Columbia was before the Senate. It is hard to see what objection could legitimately be made to this mere routine piece of legis- lation, or why any persons using their own funds to promote the education of any
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class of the people should be refused an act of incorporation for that purpose. The new State of Virginia was then represented in part in the Senate by Mr. Carlile, who, together with Mr. Davis of Kentucky, Cowan of Pennsylvania, and a few others, seemed then to represent the old border-State prejudice against colored people.
Mr. Carlile said :
"There has been heretofore a jealousy against creating corporations even for laudable purposes. Why not leave to private enterprise, to the promptings of parental affection, the power of educating the children ? Why shall the Government undertake to step in between the parent and child, and pro vide the means of educating the child ? Is it not calculated, by relieving the parent of the duties which properly devolve upon him, to make him worthless and careless, and neglectful of those duties which Nature has imposed upon him? But before we are called upon to sanction this law, I trust some good reason will be given why it is the business of the state to educate the negroes of the country."
Mr. Morrill broke forth in response to these antiquated ideas in this impulsive strain:
"Great, gracious God ! Has it come to this, that in the American Congress, and at this late day, an honorable Senator shall rise here and enter his protest against a measure of public, popu- lar education ? Is there a civilized nation on the globe that has not, within the last fifteen years, turned its attention to the education of the people, and that has not embarked in it and made it a matter of State concern, not only as beneficial to individuals, the social compact, but to the security of the State? I should like to know what sort of American statesmanship that is which enables a Senator to rise here, in his place, and to arraign a measure designed to educate the people ! For that, allow me to say, was one of the positions taken by the Senator from Virginia, and he prided himself apparently on the fact that in the region of the country in which he was raised education was left to private enterprise. How well that great duty has been there per- formed I care not to say. The history of the country knows. But, sir, I come from a region of country the people of which prize public education; hold public education as a great duty, the first great duty of the State, to be religiously performed ; and if New England can boast of any- thing it is her system of education, which gives to every child, no matter whether he is high or low born, a fair chance to succeed in the world. That is her glory, and to-day, amid tlie menaces, impotent as they are, that fall about New England, she can put them at defiance by her moral power on the continent by reason of her system of public education. But what struck me as a little peculiar in the objection of the Senator from Virginia was the sensitiveness he displayed to the fact that it was a measure designed to educate the negro. I say to that honorable Senator, that whether now or hereafter there is to be a system of public education for the negro by the United States or by the States, I trust that it will never occur that in the Congress of the United States it is thought proper or expedient to raise an objection against private individuals educating the negro if they choose to do so. In other words, I trust the time has come or is soon to come when it may be lawful, expedient, and proper to allow the negro at least to be educated if he can-and that is all this bill proposes. The bill proposes simply to incorporate certain persons who desire the privilege of spending their own money, not taxing the people, not asking Congress to appropriate money, for the education of negroes."
The bill passed by a decisive majority.
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In the session of January 12, 1866, Mr. Morrill, from the same committee, reported a bill conferring the suffrage upon the colored citizens of the District, and it ultimately became a law. It cannot be denied that there were some results of the extension of the suffrage to a large class of ignorant and easily influenced persons, both at the seat of the National Government and in several of the rebel States, that were not entirely satisfactory. But suffrage was the logical sequence of eman- cipation, and both, with the somewhat premature fruits of mixed evil and good,-the latter greatly in excess,-were the legitimate and unavoidable results of the civil war, and the violent methods by which the nation was called to deal with the problem of slavery. When the bill was before the Senate, an amendment was adopted restricting its application to such persons as could read and write. On motion of Mr. Trumbull of Illinois, this provision had been stricken out and the bill recommitted. Mr. Morrill continued to press the bill upon the attention of the Senate, and calling it up on the Ioth of December, made a strong speech in its advocacy, in which he said :
" At the formation of the National Constitution in only one of the States was the negro excluded from the exercise of the right on account of his race or color.
"The proposition of the bill is to restore the American rule of suffrage at the National capital, to place it upon the Republican principle; to make our legislation conform to the constitution, laws, usages, sentiments, and opinions of the States at the revolutionary era of the Republic, when universal liberty was an aspiration alike of statesmen and people.
" In the early constitutions of the States this principle was everywhere recognized and enforced.
"The disability which attached to the African slave was because of condition, and not of race or color, and everywhere the adult freeman was deemed entitled to the exercise of the elective franchise. The disability of condition now has been abolished. In the progress of events, the development of free institutions, the expansion of the principles of popular rights, the abolition of slavery, by the providence of God we have become a nation of free men in fact as in name. The emancipated slave has become a free man and a citizen, belongs to the body of the American people, and is no longer the subject of exclusion by either State or nation. Sir, the constitutional amendment which emancipated the slave gives Congress the power to make that freedom of the slave complete. In the spirit of that provision, Congress at its last session enacted that every per- son born in the United States is a citizen thereof, and entitled to protection in his civil rights. It remains now to recognize that political equality which is the common right of the American citizen.
" All attempts in this country to keep alive the old ideas of orders of men, distinctions of class, noble and ignoble, superior and inferior, antagonism of races, are so many efforts at insurrection and anarchy.
" In a nation of professed freemen whose political axioms are those of universal liberty and human rights, no public tranquillity is possible while these rights are denied to portions of the American people. We have taken into the bosom of the Republic the diverse elements of the nationalities of Europe, and are attempting to mould them into National harmony and unity, and are still inviting other millions to come to us. Let us not despair that the same mighty energies and regenerating forces will be able to assign a docile and not untractable race to its appropriate place in our system."
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The bill, in spite of strenuous opposition in the Senate and by the local influence, finally passed and committed Congress to the policy of universal suffrage as a basis of Reconstruction.
On the 5th of February, 1868, Mr. Morrill addressed the Senate in defence of the gene- ral policy of Congress to reconstruct the constitutions of the rebel States on the basis of citizenship and suffrage for all the people, without reference to race, color, or previous con- dition. President Johnson had resolutely set himself at work to bring back the so-called loyal people of the States formerly in rebellion, and to enable them to form new State governments that should recognize and protect the freedom of the colored men, but should exclude them from suffrage, and from all participation in the Government. So far as it was tried, this policy had only resulted in restoring political power to the rebels; and they used this power to harass and oppress the colored men, and to introduce a state of anarchy and lawlessness into the South as unfavorable to order, good government, and prosperity as civil war.
Some of the Northern Senators became alarmed at the radical change which negro suffrage seemed to imply, and turned back with Johnson toward a more timid and con- servative policy. Mr. Morrill's speech was a recapitulation of their arguments, and a con- clusive answer to them. He said :
" We are charged specifically with ' disrobing the white race to enrobe the black race.'. We are charged specifically with violating the Constitution of the United States, 'in order to give power and dominion over the white to the black.' Outlawry of the white race ! Naturally enough one asks him- self who is the white race here referred to of which Senators on this floor aspire to be the champions ? When the white race is referred to here as having been legislated against by Congress, who is meant ? The class of white men who have dominated in the South for the last thirty years-they, and nobody else ; the white men who are in power under the sham States set up by Executive usurpation, and exercising that power exclusively to the oppression of the rest of the population of the South. And who are they ? Men whose hands are freshly imbued in the blood of our children ; men who for thirty years have cherished the malignant passion of hatred to this Government which eventuated in civil war and blood ; men, moreover, who for a generation-nay for two hundred years-have cherished a fiend- ish lust for dominion over their fellow-man, in defiance of the law of God, the principles of our holy religion, and the laws of every civilized nation on earth. This is the party in court ; this is the white race between which and the representatives of the loyal American people, the Senators who have precipitated this debate, and who have made it incumbent upon Congress to consider it, interpose and volunteer their arguments and their sympathy to defend."
It had been contended that in as much as all the Ordinances of Secession were null and void, and the rebel States never having been legally out of the Union, the cessation of the war restored them to all their original rights. Mr. Morrill replied, that though their paper acts of secession and separation were mere nullities, their levying war upon the Gov- ernment was not a nullity, but a terrible fact, and that the war they precipitated involved
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them in treason, destroyed their constitutions, overthrew their local institutions, and sub- verted their rights; and that as a conquered party in a wantonly provoked but long and terrible war, they had no rights but such as their conquerors might award to them. He said :
" The Senator from Maryland sees very clearly that if we have been at war certain war rights have been acquired by the Government; the nation would be victor; somebody would be defeated; rights would be acquired or lost according to the success or the defeat of the respective parties to the war. So the honorable Senator early concurred in the ground taken by Mr. Buchanan and by those who held that we had no remedy against the rebel States by war ; and that the only exercise of authority by Congress, or the President, or the nation at large, was the exercise of the police power of the Govern- ment to put down insurrection ; and that we liad, under the Constitution, no authority whatever for war ; that war was destruction of the Union, and could not be exercised.
"In the judgment of the nation I do not think this was correct. As a legal point, I am sure it was ingeniously taken ; but it has lost its power for good or ill: it was overruled by the judgment of of the nation ; it was overruled by Congress ; it was overruled by the Executive; and, unfortunately for the argument, it was overruled by the Supreme Court of the United States. The contest was a war ; and the nation had all the right of a nation at war; and the results of the war involved the enemy, the domestic enemy, in all the pains and penalties and forfeitures and disabilities of a nation at war. That is the verdict of all the departments of this Government-legislative, executive, and judicial, and it is conclusive. Taking South Carolina for illustration, as she led the way to armed rebellion, there was not in 1862 any officer in the whole State under oath to support the Constitution of the United States. That condition of things remained until the close of the Rebellion, so that at the close of the Rebellion there was no officer and of course no function in that State.
" At the close of the war what was the condition of the State? Disorganized, by its own act-by the abjuration of every officer who could perform a function. How could it be reanimated? On the theory of my argument, they had lost all their rights ; they had been engaged in war, and had been overthrown ; they had been treated as a public enemy, and had been conquered, and had lost all civil and political rights, and were in a state of absolute disability. There was not only no officer in South Carolina to perform the functions of office, but there were no persons in South Carolina who were eligible to office. How, then, was Government to be revived ? The people, just defeated as a public enemy, could not do it; they were under the disabilities of a public enemy-in a state of total political and civil disability. Some sovereign power, some power outside of themselves, must relieve them from this disability, and give them permission to reorganize those Governments."
But the Scnator's retort upon Garrett Davis of Kentucky was one of the most striking and effective passages in this great speech. Nothing in the history of Congress, unless we except Mr. Webster's reply to Hayne, surpasses this parliamentary colloquy, so decorous, so impersonal, so courteous, and at the same time so crushing and unanswerable in argu- ment.
" These notions of the effects of the war on these States are not novel. I am saying nothing new, and surely nothing unusual in the Senate. Those who took the ground that the nation had a remedy in war knew in the beginning that these would be its results. They knew that it would be attended with
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the utter overthrow of State governments, the utter annihilation of slavery and all its interests. They anticipated that, contemplated it, and, so far as its introduction into this Chamber is concerned, it was not original with this side of the House : it originated with the Opposition. The honorable Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Davis], far-seeing, indefatigable, philosophic in his speculations upon history and upon current events, saw it the first ten days after he entered this Chamber in 1861, and proposed to provide for it. He saw that the war-cloud which was then overhanging the nation and threatening to involve every part of it in war-fearful, fratricidal, general war-would be attended with the results of war ; that it would give the nation rights of war ; that it would inflict upon the enemy forfeitures and disabilities of war ; and he would provide for that state of things; and I proclaim him here and now to the nation as the great originator and inventor of the whole theory of the results which we are pro- viding for in our policy of Reconstruction. He was the great inventor of the term, now become historic, 'Reconstruction.'
"On the 13th of February, 1862, the Senator introduced a series of resolutions, in which he under- took to embody the principles of the war, the power of the Government and the liability of those who oppose it. My purpose was in part to compliment the Senator for his intuitive sense of the rights of the Government, and for his elaboration of those rights in the form of a statement so early as 1862, and to give him the full credit of having been the originator of Congressional Reconstruction, Precisely the state of things which he contemplated in these resolutions came to pass. He then said to the rebels : If you resist my admonition, if you continue fighting, if you bring on general war, if you put yourselves in the attitude of public enemies, not only pains and penalties shall come to you, not only forfeiture of property and of civil and political rights, but when the great destruction of State constitutions, when the day of subversion comes, then the nation will interpose, and it will be the duty-nay, the necessity-of the nation to interpose, to do what ?- to ' reconstruct,' readjust the disordered parts, reconstruct State constitutions in harmony with the changed state of things produced by the war. Now let me read the emphatic parts of the last resolution :
"' That the United States Government should march their armies into all the insurgent States and promptly put down the military power which they have arrayed against it, and give protection and security to the loyal men thereof.'
"Give protection to ' the loyal men,' carry the sword for the rebels, the olive branch for the loyal
men. That is what we are doing now."
" Mr. Sumner-And the phrase is 'loyal men,' without distinction of color. [Laughter.]"
"Mr. Morrill, of Maine-I did not notice that, but of course 'all loyal' men, of necessity, includes the colored men."
"Mr. Sumner-Of course. [Laughter.]"
"Mr. Morrill, of Maine-And the resolution proceeds :
"' Give protection and security to the loyal men thereof.'
" To what end are you to give security to the loyal men ?
"' To enable them to reconstruct'-
That is it. There is the word-
'to reconstruct their legitimate State governments.'
"Now, what if they do not do it ?
"' And if the people of any State cannot, or will not, reconstruct their State Government and return to loyalty and duty, Congress should provide a government for such State as a Territory of the United States.'
"It was never proposed to treat them absolutely as Territories on this side of the Chamber. I think
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after that declaration, it is hardly worth while for us to speculate about ' States in the Union or out of the Union.' If, as early as 1862, the honorable Senator from Kentucky contemplated that in the progress of events these States would be in the position of Territories, when it would be proper for the Congress of the United States to treat them as Territories and give them governments as Territories, I am inclined to think it is hardly worth while for us to quibble on nice points."
This speech of Morrill closed a long and eloquent debate, participated in by the great political leaders on both sides of the Chamber, and was at the time characterized by his colleague, Mr. Fessenden, a man never profuse in compliments, as the ablest speech of the whole debate.
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