Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  June 21, 1865

  “SHAME & DISASTER”:

  MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 1865

  Charles Sumner to Gideon Welles

  Cotuit. Port—Mass.

  4th July ’65

  My dear Sir,

  Yr kind letter has followed me to this retreat by the sea-shore where I am for a few days with Mr Hooper.

  What you say of the policy of the Administration, although not new to me, is indescribably painful. Of course, this policy, if carried out, inevitably breaks up the Republican party, & carries the President into the arms of the copperheads, who already praise him & lure him on to destruction. Can not the Cabinet save him & thus save the country?

  Never since I have been in public life has there been any question on which public opinion was so prompt & spontaneous. The President had only to say the word, & he had the whole country at his back. All were ready to follow him in the path required by the Declaration of Independence. How he could go in the opposite direction is incomprehensible.

  The question is naturally asked, where does the Presdt. get the power to re-organize a State? It would be difficult to say where. But, if he undertakes to exercise this power, he must proceed according to the requirements of the Declaration of Independence.

  His present course in reviving the old Oligarchy of the skin & attempting to build reformed governments upon it is offensive (1) to the national safety which it endangers; (2) to national justice which it shocks; (3) to the Constitution, which it sets aside & (4) to God Almighty, Whom it insults.—

  Seeing this policy thus, I can not recognize it as “within constitutional limits.” It defies the highest principles of the Constitution, which are found in the national safety, national justice, & the requirements of a republican govt. It openly sanctions a govt which is not founded on “the consent of the governed” &, therefore, cannot be republican in form.

  Nor can I consider such a policy as any thing but the worst kind of “aggression.” It is flagrantly “aggressive” on Human Rights.

  Of course it utterly “incompatible with that harmony which it is desirable to maintain among those who have been faithful to the cause of the Union.”

  As to the power of the Federal Govt. over this subject in the rebel states, it is the same as the power to suppress the Rebellion, to carry on the war or to decree Emancipation, with that larger untried power superadded “to guarantee a Republican form of govt.,” which at this moment it is bound to enforce in the rebel states.

  It is because the difficulties of reorganizing the rebel states are so great, that the Govt. must proceed according to the rules of justice & the natural laws. We must have nature & God on our side.

  There is no right reserved to any State, inconsistent with the national peace & security—especially can there be no right, according to the language of Burke, “to turn towards us the shameful parts of the Constitution,” & insist that these—& these only—shall be recognized.

  There is no question of “forfeiture,” but simply a question of fact. The old state govts. are vacated. This is enough. Of course, for the time being, the power is with the Federal Govt., represented by Congress, which must proceed to set up republican govts.

  The complications & antagonisms sure to come from this ill-considered policy are already apparent in the inability of the Provisional Governors to take the oath of office prescribed by Congress without perjury. It is idle to say that their office is not included within the Act of Congress. (1) It is a national office, under the national govt; paid by the National Treasury, (2) It is clearly within the spirit, if not the letter of the statute, (3) It is a notorious fact, that the object of Congress was to prevent any men who could not take that oath of office from having any thing to do with the great work of re-organization, all of which must be put into the hands of men who have been loyal always.

  But I have faith in my country. The right will prevail. The present policy will come to shame & disaster; & the true principles will at last be recognized. I tremble to think how much of agitation, trouble & strife the country must pass through, in order to recover from the false move which has now been made.

  I write to you plainly, as I have always been in the habit of speaking on public questions. The question is too serious for hesitation. The discussion has begun, & it will not stop until Human Rights are recognized & the Providence of God is vindicated.

  Believe me, my dear Sir,

  very sincerely Yours,  Charles Sumner

  THE DANGER OF REBELS IN CONGRESS:

  MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 1865

  Wendell Phillips to the

  National Anti-Slavery Standard

  To the Editor of the Standard.

  LET me call your attention and that of the country to the danger pointed out in the following extract from the letter of an acute and vigilant friend:

  “President Johnson is rapidly issuing proclamations for the reorganization of all the Rebel States. The Governors appointed are old politicians who know all the ropes. Is it not their design, and will they not be able, before next December to make all their new Constitutions and elect new Governors and full Congressional delegations? Then what is to prevent those States from presenting themselves, fully accredited, on the floor of the new Congress, and participating in its organization. They will claim, as President Johnson does, that their States have never been out of the Union; that the government declares (as it will) the rebellion suppressed and military occupation withdrawn, and that they now resume their relations with the Federal Government, which have been only temporarily suspended. In this claim they will be backed by the whole power of the Administration, and this is the trap to be sprung on us. The Clerk of the House, you remember, presides until a new Speaker is elected. If he had firmness enough to refuse to receive the credentials of these rebel members, and to refuse to count their votes, this danger might be averted. But can we count on so much virtue in any politician? We may, perhaps, baffle this plan in the Senate. That body being always organized, no members can be admitted without the concurrence of the rest. But how long would even the Senate stand up against the action of the House of Representatives and enormous pressure of every other kind?

  “I believe that this attempt will be made at the next meeting of Congress. Possibly South Carolina might be kept out, but even that is doubtful. I may exaggerate the importance of this matter, but that the attempt will be made there can be no doubt.”

  The importance of these suggestions cannot be over-­estimated, and every means should be taken to avert this peril. We have been counting on the possibility of rallying a majority of the legally elected members of Congress to keep the members from Rebel States out of Congress, at least till they consented to certain conditions—ratifying the Anti-Slavery Amendment and other matters. Some sanguine friends believe they can be kept out until they agree to give the negro the right to vote. But, according to this rebel plot, the Southern members may enter Congress without agreeing to the Anti-Slavery Amendment or to any other conditions. Once inside the doors, they may take part in all the discussions and votes affecting themselves and their claims, and may checkmate the Anti-Slavery Amendment itself. In fact, our fate rests in the hands of the CLERK OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. I know nothing about him; but how few men in the nation could be trusted to stand firm in such a post! The whole North should be roused to guard against this danger. If the Rebel States in their present mood, can, in any way, get inside Congress, and wield EIGHTY-FOUR VOTES there, and more especially if they can get there unpledged to any conditions and wield those votes, then truly the “South” will be as strong as ever, and the Negro almost as defenceless.

  Yours,          WENDELL PHILLIPS.

  National Anti-Slavery Standard, July 8, 1865

  “THE WHITE RACE ALONE”:

  MARYLAND, AUGUST 1865

  Francis Preston Blair to Andrew Johnson

  Silver Spring Augt. 1. 1865

  My dear Mr. President


  Having been in some degree associated with the leading men who have shaped the course of the liberal party during the last half century, & indulged in conferring with them in the measures proposed to advance its cause, I venture to express my views to you, now its champion, on a most important epoch, involving the fate of Republican Institutions throughout this continent and possibly beyond it.

  Observe what vast questions already emerge from the rebellion. First—The policy of grafting the black race on the white race in the administration of the Government founded by the latter for its own behoof, involving in its result that of making it a hybrid Government to suit a motley hybrid race. Next—The policy of violating the rights of the States guarantied by the constitution, securing to them the regulation of the suffrage to provide for their municipal legislation as States, as well as for that of the nation, through the election of the President & Congress of the United States. And third—The policy of permitting the potentates of Europe to plant a monarchy in the midst of our Continent, thus to hold the key of the Isthmus—to open or shut the gate of the Oceans between our Atlantic & Pacific possessions and to array a great military Power on both flanks of our Republic wielded by a despot, prompt at any moment to strike it on the east or west of the Rocky mountains, to divide it or dissolve it entirely & partition it like Poland.

  Now you have taken your stand on all the issues which have arisen from the rebellion, or rather which originated it, as they were all lurking in the Slavery which European monarchs imposed on our country & which their policy instigated Southern masters to employ to destroy our Government. The rebellion is crushed and with it the Slavery that animated it, but like the Hydra it puts out new heads—from the vines of the old trunk. It sprouts out with the bold front of negro equality. Negro suffrage shouts out on one side with a political aspect and on the other we have the social aspect to emerge in the shape of amalgamation. What can come of this adulteration of our Anglo-Saxon race and Anglo-Saxon Government by Africanization, but the degradation of the free spirit & lofty aspirations which our race inherited from their ancestry and brought to this continent; and turn that whole portion of it engaged as manual Operatives into that class of mongrels which cannot but spring from the unnatural blending of the blacks & whites in one common class of laborers and giving to both an assimilation through that color, which has unhappily marked servitude during all generations from the days of Ham. The result would inevitably be to make a distinction in caste and put a brand on all our race associated in employment with people of color & crisped hair. It would not create equality between those thus associated and those engaged in professional & political pursuits. It would hasten the creation of a lower order—a serfdom—a foundation for an Aristocracy crowned with Royalty.

  This is the real scope of all the enemies of our Government at home and abroad. To avoid such results our fathers constituted a Government in which the white race alone were invested with all the rights it conferred. That race have hitherto held it exclusively as their heritage. They were its sole Freeholders. It was the property of its creators and none can claim rights in it without their consent. It was for this reason that the popular Sovereignty exerted through the suffrages of the people was committed by the national constitution to the guardianship & control of the State Governments which are nearest to the people. But now that paramount power which was given to the states of the South as well as the North, the partizans of the negro race in the latter, insist must be stript from the former & in effect the rights of Government in the south conferred on the freedmen. This state of things would introduce the San Domingo problem in all the States of the South and the question of mastery between the races would be decided by the States of the North in declaring how many of the white race should remain under its ban of disfranchisement to subject it to the black race, all of which is enfranchised.

  From the tenor of the Faneuil Hall appeal which comes to this issue, it would seem to be the purpose of those speaking for the party in New England, who look upon the result of the war as giving them the South as a conquest, that Congress is to vote out every representative who presents himself from a State which does not resign its constitutional right to regulate the suffrage of its people. This is simply an attempt at revolution, a breach of the Union by a vote of Congress.

  The idea that suffrage will produce equality between the two races at the South is illusory. The black freedmen will find the prejudices of caste increased among the mass of white laborers by the new priviledge. They will become competitors with the superior race in that which touches their pride and it will be found more than was necessary to get under the wing of the master who hires them, for protection. They will be obliged to have white leaders at the polls as they had in the camps of both armies & those who hire them will control their ballot more absolutely than has ever been done by persons occupying similar relations because their safety will depend upon their employers in the exercise of their priviledge in the service of an increased prejudice & more powerful caste. It is absurd to suppose that the rich, educated, intelligent men will not command the suffrages of their negro hirelings if they venture to bring them to the polls to assert equality with the whites. The Indians although always a free race in this country & accustomed to Government, never could attain in the States in which they were embodied, the equality which a fraction of the North insist on giving the negroes in the south against the will of the mass of the whites in those States. The Indians melted away under that process of civilization now contemplated for the blacks. The result of the contact of races marked by nature to be distinct has induced all the great statesmen of our country to look to colonization & segregation as the means of saving the colored race & giving to them a Government of their own & with it the equality and independence they desire & deserve. The party who oppose this scheme, (yours as well as your predecessors), have no expectation of maintaining equality for the emancipated by suffrage. They assert it for them, some with a view to drive the whites from the Gulf States—others with the design of keeping those States out of the Union. To vote their members of congress out because those States refuse to obey the behests of other States as to the regulation of the right of suffrage, committed to them by the constitution, is to vote a dissolution of the Union—a subversion of the constitution. The pretense of establishing negro equality in a country which is compelled by the fist of the central Government to submit its suffrage to its control, makes the idea of equality with the arbitrary power asserting this superiority, absolutely absurd. If the Representatives of a state in one section are expelled because it does not surrender its constitutional rights, may not a state in another section be expelled because it will not surrender some of its rights at the dictation of a majority in congress? Why not expell the representatives from California & Oregon for refusing the suffrage to the Chinese & the whole group of the North eastern States for refusing it to free negroes? This movement against the south has its motive in the ambition which prompted Mr. Chase to say at the beginning of the rebellion, “Let the Seceding States go, they are not worth fighting for.”

  This issue to deny equality to the Southern States on the pretense of giving Equality to the negroes, is renewed by the Faneuil Hall programme—an Essex Junto of modern date, who have improved on the consolidation schemes of their prototypes. It was first made at the last session of congress against your predecessor by those calling themselves his friends. They carried a bill through congress to defeat his plan of giving the States the rights of which they were deprived by usurpation. He crushed the attempt by withholding his consent. They appealed to the people & sought to defeat his re-election but they were defeated and now in disregard of the verdict pronounced by the people they have renewed their efforts to compass their object. At the last congress the Democratic party sustained Mr. Lincoln, while opposed by his so called political friends. The people north & south who are at heart in favor of popular Sovereignty & of States rights to maintain it, will sustain you in your effort to
accomplish the design of your predecessor, as they sustained him against the intriguers in his own cabinet and their abetters in congress.

  Can you not lend your aid—at least give your countenance to those fighting your battle for the fundamental principles of our federal system, against those in high places, who profess party allegiance to you when in fact they are destroying that party & intending to destroy you? Your position enables you to help those struggling for the Country’s cause by simply adjusting the weights in the high stations around you, so as to manifest your inclinations. Mr. Lincoln did not do this & the weight of the members of his administration were found in the scale against him. The men in congress most active in carrying the vital measure against him were in the closest confidence with the highest cabinet officers and they used their official patronage & commanding personal influence to thwart the Presidents great scheme of adjusting the Union. Would it be well now when a new epoch has arrived casting the whole burden of reorganizing our disjointed fabric on your hands, to work with the same instruments, that marred the wise patriotic designs of your predecessor? Assistants that worked con amore with the professing friends in Congress, ever ready to betray him, not only voting against his leading measures openly, but secretly intriguing to defeat his re-election. The principal men to whom I here point are still in congress. They are still in cooperation with those wielding your Departments and they are still more inimical to your measures & to your re-election than they were to Mr. Lincolns. Is it safe in such a boisterous time to embark on a new voyage keeping them at the helm, to steer your vessel through the currents of the approaching elections & the coming Congress? If your administration is committed by the same heads of Departments to the same hands in congressional committees—if they are to shape all movements of the body & apply the influence controlled by the Secretaries to array the rank and file under such leaders, will not your fate be worse than Mr. Lincoln’s, the accumulation of your burden being greater & the preparation of your opponents to break you down, being vastly increased; You can do nothing to appease the ambition of these aspiring men. They look beyond you & rely on their measures to defeat you as the means of compassing their own ends. You must appeal to the people and rely upon the power of your principles to accomplish the general work you & they have at heart, to make you victorious. To do this you have only to say “out upon this half-faced fellowship”—to have your Assistants in the great executive trust you wield, like yourself outspoken—thorough—uncompromising in the maintenance of the constitutional cause now at stake & ready to hazard all in its defense. I have never doubted your purpose to take this stand. I think you intimated as much to me some months since & I write only to say that I think this is the accepted time. The motions of the coming elections are felt already in the great States of New York Ohio & Pennsylvania. The Democracy which gave such immense votes against Lincoln during a war that commanded even their approval at heart, are now in favor of all the objects you design to accomplish by it. You indeed make it their war by the consequences you bring from it, and those men who now seek to pervert those consequences into a defeat of the restoration of the Union, with equality among the States, deserve to forfeit the favor they gained by giving the war their countenance. The Democrats will nominate candidates pledged to support all your leading policy. Their opponents are already out in Massachusetts and other states with manifestos not only at war with your avowed policy but abhorent to the constitution & tending to make Congress a revolutionary club—a convention of northern representatives bent on subjecting the south to their will and using negro enfranchisement as the means of the disfranchisement of our white brethren of that section, of their equality as citizens and states in the Union.