Mr. Downing. Apply what you have said, Mr. President, to South Carolina, for instance, where a majority of the inhabitants are colored.
The President. Suppose you go to South Carolina; suppose you go to Ohio. That doesn’t change the principle at all. The query to which I have referred still comes up when Government is undergoing a fundamental change. Government commenced upon this principle; it has existed upon it; and you propose now to incorporate into it an element that didn’t exist before. I say the query comes up in undertaking this thing, whether we have a right to make a change in regard to the elective franchise in Ohio, for instance, whether we shall not let the people in that State decide the matter for themselves.
Each community is better prepared to determine the depository of its political power than anybody else, and it is for the Legislature, for the people of Ohio to say who shall vote, and not for the Congress of the United States. I might go down here to the ballot-box to-morrow and vote directly for universal suffrage; but if a great majority of the people said no, I should consider it would be tyrannical in me to attempt to force such upon them without their will. It is a fundamental tenet in my creed that the will of the people must be obeyed. Is there anything wrong or unfair in that?
Mr. Douglass (smiling.) A great deal that is wrong, Mr. President, with all respect.
The President. It is the people of the States that must for themselves determine this thing. I do not want to be engaged in a work that will commence a war of races. I want to begin the work of preparation, and the States, or the people in each community, if a man demeans himself well, and shows evidence that this new state of affairs will operate, will protect him in all his rights, and give him every possible advantage when they become reconciled socially and politically to this state of things. Then will this new order of things work harmoniously; but forced upon the people before they are prepared for it, it will be resisted, and work inharmoniously. I feel a conviction that driving this matter upon the people, upon the community, will result in the injury of both races, and the ruin of one or the other. God knows I have no desire but the good of the whole human race. I would it were so that all you advocate could be done in the twinkling of an eye; but it is not in the nature of things, and I do not assume or pretend to be wiser than Providence, or stronger than the laws of nature.
Let us now seek to discover the laws governing this thing. There is a great law controlling it; let us endeavor to find out what that law is, and conform our actions to it. All the details will then properly adjust themselves and work out well in the end.
God knows that anything I can do I will do. In the mighty process by which the great end is to be reached, anything I can do to elevate the races, to soften and ameliorate their condition I will do, and to be able to do so is the sincere desire of my heart.
I am glad to have met you, and thank you for the compliment you have paid me.
Mr. Douglass. I have to return to you our thanks, Mr. President, for so kindly granting us this interview. We did not come here expecting to argue this question with your Excellency, but simply to state what were our views and wishes in the premises. If we were disposed to argue the question, and you would grant us permission, of course we would endeavor to controvert some of the positions you have assumed.
Mr. Downing. Mr. Douglass, I take it that the President, by his kind expressions and his very full treatment of the subject, must have contemplated some reply to the views which he has advanced, and in which we certainly do not concur, and I say this with due respect.
The President. I thought you expected me to indicate to some extent what my views were on the subjects touched upon in your statement.
Mr. Downing. We are very happy, indeed, to have heard them.
Mr. Douglass. If the President will allow me, I would like to say one or two words in reply. You enfranchise your enemies and disfranchise your friends.
The President. All I have done is simply to indicate what my views are, as I supposed you expected me to, from your address.
Mr. Douglass. My own impression is that the very thing that your Excellency would avoid in the Southern States can only be avoided by the very measure that we propose, and I would state to my brother delegates that because I perceive the President has taken strong ground in favor of a given policy, and distrusting my own ability to remove any of those impressions which he has expressed, I thought we had better end the interview with the expression of thanks. (Addressing the President.) But if your Excellency will be pleased to hear, I would like to say a word or two in regard to that one matter of the enfranchisement of the blacks as a means of preventing the very thing which your Excellency seems to apprehend—that is a conflict of races.
The President. I repeat. I merely wanted to indicate my views in reply to your address, and not to enter into any general controversy, as I could not well do so under the circumstances.
Your statement was a very frank one, and I thought it was due to you to meet it in the same spirit.
Mr. Douglass. Thank you, sir.
The President. I think you will find, so far as the South is concerned, that if you will all inculcate there the idea in connection with the one you urge, that the colored people can live and advance in civilization to better advantage elsewhere than crowded right down there in the South, it would be better for them.
Mr. Douglass. But the masters have the making of the laws, and we cannot get away from the plantations.
The President. What prevents you?
Mr. Douglass. We have not the single right of locomotion through the Southern States now.
The President. Why not; the government furnishes you with every facility.
Mr. Douglass. There are six days in the year that the negro is free in the South now, and his master then decides for him where he shall go, where he shall work, how much he shall work—in fact, he is divested of all political power. He is absolutely in the hands of those men.
The President. If the master now controls him or his action, would he not control him in his vote?
Mr. Douglass. Let the negro once understand that he has an organic right to vote, and he will raise up a party in the Southern States among the poor, who will rally with him. There is this conflict that you speak of between the wealthy slaveholder and the poor man.
The President. You touch right upon the point there. There is this conflict, and hence I suggest emigration. If he cannot get employment in the South, he has it in his power to go where he can get it.
In parting, the President said that they were both desirous of accomplishing the same ends, but proposed to do so by following different roads.
Mr. Douglass, on turning to leave, remarked to his fellow delegates: “The President sends us to the people, and we go to the people.”
The President. Yes, sir; I have great faith in the people. I believe they will do what is right.
February 7, 1866
Washington, February 7, 1866.
Mr. President:
In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety, as well as your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss or to listen to a reply to the views and opinions you were pleased to express to us in your elaborate speech to-day, the undersigned would respectfully take this method of replying thereto. Believing as we do that the views and opinions you expressed in that address are entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest interests of our race as well as our country at large, we cannot do other than expose the same, and, as far as may be in our power, arrest their dangerous influence. It is not necessary at this time to call attention to more than two or three features of your remarkable address:
1. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take exception is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility on the part of the former slaves toward the poor white people of the South. We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that it is entirely reciprocal. But you obviously commit an er
ror by drawing an argument from an incident of a state of slavery, and making it a basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility between the whites and blacks of the South is easily explained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendency over both the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them.
They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters received their slave-catchers, slave-drivers, and overseers. They were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters when any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. Now, sir, you cannot but perceive that, the cause of this hatred removed, the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed, and you must see that it is altogether illogical (and “putting new wine into old bottles,” “mending new garments with old cloth”) to legislate from slaveholding and slave-driving premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom.
2. Besides, even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defence, and clothe him whom you regard as his enemy in the panoply of political power? Can it be that you would recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast down the defenceless? Can you, by any possibility of reasoning, regard this as just, fair, or wise? Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between the races is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another, by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes. First pure, then peaceable.
3. On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach very much could be said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the usefulness of the black man in time of peace as a laborer in the South, and in time of war as a soldier at the North, and the growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing adaptation to a high state of civilization in this his native land, there can ever come a time when he can be removed from this country without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace. Besides, the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name a greater infamy than to suppose that negroes could be tolerated among them in a state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and must be cast away, driven into exile, for no other cause than having been freed from their chains.
OBJECTIONS TO THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU:
WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 1866
Joseph S. Fullerton to Andrew Johnson
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.
Washington, February 9th 1866.
In reply to your verbal request I have the honor to submit the following objections to an Act now before Congress providing for the enlargement of the powers of the Freedmens Bureau.
1st. It is class legislation, conferring peculiar benefits on certain citizens, excluding or withholding the same from other citizens of the same locality.
2d. I believe its provisions if carried out will be injurious to the freedman in preventing him from acquiring a position as an independent citizen. This can only be done through his own exertions; by harmonizing his interests with those of the white people of the South; and by exercising such a spirit of forbearance and moderation as will overcome the prejudices that exist against him on the part of the white race of the South.
3d. There will be great danger of the organization becoming a political machine, thus destroying any usefulness it might otherwise have in the advancement of the interests of the freedman.
4th. The great expense to the government of conducting the Bureau.
5th. Objected to, because the contemplated organization is not necessary, as the interests of the freedman can be as well or better cared for by the military arm of the government, at a small expense additional to the necessary expense of supporting the Army.
The Act provides for the relief of “Freedmen and Loyal Refugees,” which means that it provides for Freedmen only. There is now no such class as “Loyal Refugees.” These are “catch” words which give to the Act the appearance of general legislation—Legislation for both the poor loyal whites and the blacks of the South. Had the intention been to furnish relief to the loyal whites, it would have been easy to insert the words “for relief of Freedmen & Loyal whites.” When the Act, approved March 3d. 1865,—originally establishing the bureau, was passed there were a large number of persons in the border States and within the lines of our Armies who on account of their loyalty to the government, had been driven or forced to fly from their homes in the South. These persons, generally being poor and without the necessities of life, were a charge upon the Government, and such were contemplated in the legislation for “Loyal Refugees.” The war has ended; the country is at peace, and all of such persons have been provided for elsewhere, or have returned to their former homes, so that now there is no class known as “Loyal Refugees.” After the surrender of the rebel armies, and until late in the following fall many refugees were furnished by the Commissioner of this Bureau with transportation to their homes, but none apply for such assistance now. Under the construction of this expression, the Agents of this Bureau have been instructed not to furnish supplies to the poor whites of the South, even to those who had been within the lines of our army and had returned to their homes, for they were not then “refugees.” The Act then is to give relief only to “Freedmen.” Commissary, Quarter master and Medical supplies are to be furnished to this class of persons; public lands are to be set apart and reserved especially for them; sights for schools and asylums, under certain conditions, are to be purchased, and special courts or tribunals are to be established for them by the Government. For the poor loyal whites of the South, even those who have served in our Army, there is nothing.
Aside from the fact of this being class legislation, it is such as will intensify, on the part of the poor whites of the South, the hatred that already exists between them and the blacks. This of course will be more or less disastrous to the latter class. When these poor whites realize that they have no special friends in the Bureau Agents sent south by the Government; that certain lands are not set apart for them; that Schools are not provided; that Government stores are not furnished; and that the freedman even has his special tribunals, backed by military power, where he can obtain very summary process, while they must wait for the slow and uncertain action of Civil Courts, then they will surely think that the Government intends to desert and discriminate against them, instead of raising them up from the political subjection in which they also have been held by the ruling class of the South.
As slavery has been “constitutionally” abolished the old State slave codes are now null and void, and the military force of the Government in the South, if necessary, can prevent their execution. Congress also has power under the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, to enforce said amendment by appropriate legislation. Would it not be better then for Congress to pass an Act declaring all slave codes, or state laws that abridge the personal liberty of the freedmen, inoperative, and give the Agents of the government power to enforce such Act, rather than to set up an immense civil or semi-military government, within a civil government, to be placed in the hands of, in many cases, inexperienced or bad men—strangers to the people—, for the protection of a certain class in the South?
The effect of establishing the Bureau upon the basis contemplated by this Act will be, I believe, to prevent the freedman, in a great measure, from ac
quiring that independence and self-reliance so necessary for his advancement. The Bureau as at present organized has been in existence for nearly ten months. During this time some damage and much good has been done by its agents. By some the freedman has been told that it is necessary for him, though free, to labor and work out his own salvation; by all he has been told that he is free. He knows now that he is free and with the tuition he has received he is now much better able to take care of himself, if let alone, than is generally supposed by his friends.
The bureau in its operations almost necessarily takes the place of a master. To it many of the freedmen look entirely for support, instruction and assistance. Even in those States where all civil rights have been conferred upon the freedman he does not go to the State Courts for a remedy, but to the bureau, for the process of civil law is too slow and the proceedings are not sufficiently convenient. The agents of the bureau decide for whom he shall work, for how much and when, and approve or disapprove all of his Contracts for labor. They have control in many places of his churches and schools, and some of them are endeavoring to control his finances. Special tribunals are to be organized in certain states for the trial of all cases where freedmen are concerned. Any system of Courts or Laws that look to the protection of a particular class must be objectionable and will be damaging in the end to such persons. It keeps them from endeavoring to gain admission to the state courts where they can obtain justice on the same footing as others. If we can judge from the past these courts will discriminate more against the white man than the State Courts can against the black. Some of these now in existence have been presided over by men inexperienced in law and evidence; men of strong prejudices in favor of the black men, who decide cases without reference to law, but the “right” as the right appears to them. Of course such justice is a farce, that pleases the black and exasperates the white. It is a bad plan by which to compell the people of the south to make just laws for the blacks: wholesome laws cannot be made under force. The longer these Courts remain in existence the harder it will be to give them up, and when given up the freedman, I fear, will be left in a worse condition than if they had not been established. The longer the offices of the bureau extend personal assistance to the freedman the less will he be prepared to take care of himself. Habitual dependence will prevent any class of people from making exertions for themselves.
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