Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  I tell the opposers of this Government, I care not from what quarter they come, East or West, North or South, “You that are engaged in the work of breaking up the Government are mistaken. The Constitution of the United States and the principles of free Government are deeply rooted in the American heart, and all the powers combined cannot destroy that great instrument—that great chart of freedom.” Their attempts, though they may seem to succeed for a time, will be futile. They might as well undertake to lock up the winds or chain the waves of the ocean and confine them within limits; they might as well undertake to repeal the Constitution, and, indeed, it seems now to be supposed that can be repealed by a concurrent resolution, [laughter;] but when the question is submitted to popular judgment and to the most of the people, these men will find that they might just as well introduce a resolution to repeal the law of gravitation; the attempt to keep this Union from being restored is just about as feasible as would be resistance to the great law of gravitation, which binds all to a common centre. The great law of political gravitation will bring back these States, and replace them in all their relations to the Federal Government. Cliques and cabals and conspiracies and machinations, North or South, cannot prevent this great consummation. [Tremendous applause.] All that is wanted is time. Let the American people get to understand what is going on, and they will soon manifest their determination. By way of exclamation, let me say that I would to God the whole American people could be assembled here to-day as you are. I wish there were a vast amphitheatre here capacious enough to sustain the whole thirty millions, and they could witness the great struggle going on to preserve the Constitution of their fathers. They would soon settle the question if they could once see how things are; if they could see the kind of spirit that is manifested in the effort to break up the real principles of free government. When they come to understand who was for them and who against them; who was for ameliorating their condition and who for elevating them by preserving their Government, if the combatants could stand before them, and there could be a regular set-to between the respective gladiators, in the first tilt that might be made you would find that the enemies of the country would be crushed, and the people would sustain its friends and the friends of Constitutional liberty. [Great cheering.] My fellow-citizens, I have detained you much longer than I intended. [“Go on, go on.”] But we are in a great struggle, and I am your instrument, and I have thought it best to express myself frankly. When I ask you, have I usurped authority? Who is there in this country I have not toiled and labored for? Where is the man or the woman, either in private life or public life, that has not always received my attention and my time? Sometimes it has been said, Pardon me for being a little egotistical, but we are engaged in a friendly and familiar conversation. That that JOHNSON is a lucky man. [Laughter.] They can never defeat him. [Laughter.] Now I will tell you what constitutes my good luck. It is in doing right and being for the people. [Great applause.] The people somehow or other, although their sagacity and good judgment are very frequently underrated and underestimated, generally get to find out and understand who is for them and who is against them. They do it by instinct, if in no other way. They know who is the friend; they know in whom they can confide. So far, thank God, I can lay my hand upon my bosom, and state with heartfelt satisfaction that in all the positions in which I have been placed—and I have been placed in many that were as trying as any in which mortal man has ever been placed—I have never deserted them, nor do I believe they will desert me. [No, no, and applause.] Whom have I betrayed, what principle have I violated, what sentiment have I swerved from, can those who assail me put their finger upon any one. No, no; in all the speeches that have been made, no one has dared to put his finger upon a single principle I ever asserted from which I have deviated. Have you not heard some of them at some time attempt to quote my predecessor who fell a martyr to his country’s cause, but they can give no sentiment of his that is in opposition or in contradiction to anything that I have done. The very policy that I am now pursuing was pursued by me under his administration—I having been appointed by him in a particular position for that very purpose. An inscrutable Providence saw proper to remove him from this to, I trust, a better world, and I came into his place, and there is not a principle of his in reference to the restoration of the Union from which I have departed. None. Then the war is not simply upon me, but it is upon my predecessor also. I have tried to do my duty. I know that some are envious and jealous, and speak of the White House as having attractions for the President. Let me say to you, the charms of the White House have as little influence upon me as upon any individual in this country, and much less upon me than upon those who are talking about it. The little that I eat and wear does not amount to much, and the difference between what is enough to sustain me and my little family. It is very small, for I am not kin to many folks by consanguinity, though by affinity I am akin to everybody. The difference between the little that suffices for my stomach and back, and more than enough, has no charms for me. The proud and conscious satisfaction of having performed my duty to my country, to my children and to the inner man is all the reward that I ask. [Great applause.]

  In conclusion, let me ask this vast concourse here to-day, this sea of upturned faces, to come with me, or I will go with you, and stand around the Constitution of our country. It is again unfolded. The people are invited to read and understand, to sustain and maintain its provisions. Let us stand by the Constitution of our fathers, though the heavens themselves should fall, though faction should rage, though taunts and jeers may come, though abuse and vituperation may be poured out in the most virulent form. I mean to be found standing by the Constitution of my country. Stand by the Constitution as the chief ark of our safety, as the palladium of our civil and our religious liberty. Yes, let us cling to it as a mariner clings to the last plank when the night and the tempest close around him. Accept my thanks, my countrymen, for the indulgence you have extended to me while submitting to you extemporaneously and, perhaps, incoherently the remarks which I have now made. Let us go away forgetting the past and looking to the future, resolved to endeavor to restore our Government to its pristine purity, trusting in Him who is on high, but who controls all here below, that ere long our Union will be restored, and that we shall have peace not only with all the nations of the earth, but peace and good will among all parts of the people of the United States. I thank you for the respect you have manifested to me on this occasion, and if the time shall come during the period of my existence when this country is to be destroyed and its Government overturned, if you will look out you will find the humble individual who stands before you there with you endeavoring to avert its final destruction.

  The President retired amidst a storm of applause.

  1866

  WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 1866

  Andrew Johnson:

  Veto of the Civil Rights Bill

  WASHINGTON, D. C., March 27, 1866.

  To the Senate of the United States:

  I regret that the bill, which has passed both Houses of Congress, entitled “An act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights and furnish the means of their vindication,” contains provisions which I can not approve consistently with my sense of duty to the whole people and my obligations to the Constitution of the United States. I am therefore constrained to return it to the Senate, the House in which it originated, with my objections to its becoming a law.

  By the first section of the bill all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States. This provision comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called gypsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks, people of color, negroes, mulattoes, and persons of African blood. Every individual of these races born in the United States is by the bill made a citizen of the United States. It does not purport to declare or confer any other right of citizenship
than Federal citizenship. It does not purport to give these classes of persons any status as citizens of States, except that which may result from their status as citizens of the United States. The power to confer the right of State citizenship is just as exclusively with the several States as the power to confer the right of Federal citizenship is with Congress.

  The right of Federal citizenship thus to be conferred on the several excepted races before mentioned is now for the first time proposed to be given by law. If, as is claimed by many, all persons who are native born already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the passage of the pending bill can not be necessary to make them such. If, on the other hand, such persons are not citizens, as may be assumed from the proposed legislation to make them such, the grave question presents itself whether, when eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in Congress at the present time, it is sound policy to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States. Four millions of them have just emerged from slavery into freedom. Can it be reasonably supposed that they possess the requisite qualifications to entitle them to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States? Have the people of the several States expressed such a conviction? It may also be asked whether it is necessary that they should be declared citizens in order that they may be secured in the enjoyment of the civil rights proposed to be conferred by the bill. Those rights are, by Federal as well as State laws, secured to all domiciled aliens and foreigners, even before the completion of the process of naturalization; and it may safely be assumed that the same enactments are sufficient to give like protection and benefits to those for whom this bill provides special legislation. Besides, the policy of the Government from its origin to the present time seems to have been that persons who are strangers to and unfamiliar with our institutions and our laws should pass through a certain probation, at the end of which, before attaining the coveted prize, they must give evidence of their fitness to receive and to exercise the rights of citizens as contemplated by the Constitution of the United States. The bill in effect proposes a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy, and patriotic foreigners, and in favor of the negro, to whom, after long years of bondage, the avenues to freedom and intelligence have just now been suddenly opened. He must of necessity, from his previous unfortunate condition of servitude, be less informed as to the nature and character of our institutions than he who, coming from abroad, has, to some extent at least, familiarized himself with the principles of a Government to which he voluntarily intrusts “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet it is now proposed, by a single legislative enactment, to confer the rights of citizens upon all persons of African descent born within the extended limits of the United States, while persons of foreign birth who make our land their home must undergo a probation of five years, and can only then become citizens upon proof that they are “of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.”

  The first section of the bill also contains an enumeration of the rights to be enjoyed by these classes so made citizens “in every State and Territory in the United States.” These rights are “to make and enforce contracts; to sue, be parties, and give evidence; to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property,” and to have “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.” So, too, they are made subject to the same punishment, pains, and penalties in common with white citizens, and to none other. Thus a perfect equality of the white and colored races is attempted to be fixed by Federal law in every State of the Union over the vast field of State jurisdiction covered by these enumerated rights. In no one of these can any State ever exercise any power of discrimination between the different races. In the exercise of State policy over matters exclusively affecting the people of each State it has frequently been thought expedient to discriminate between the two races. By the statutes of some of the States, Northern as well as Southern, it is enacted, for instance, that no white person shall intermarry with a negro or mulatto. Chancellor Kent says, speaking of the blacks, that—

  Marriages between them and the whites are forbidden in some of the States where slavery does not exist, and they are prohibited in all the slaveholding States; and when not absolutely contrary to law, they are revolting, and regarded as an offense against public decorum.

  I do not say that this bill repeals State laws on the subject of marriage between the two races, for as the whites are forbidden to intermarry with the blacks, the blacks can only make such contracts as the whites themselves are allowed to make, and therefore can not under this bill enter into the marriage contract with the whites. I cite this discrimination, however, as an instance of the State policy as to discrimination, and to inquire whether if Congress can abrogate all State laws of discrimination between the two races in the matter of real estate, of suits, and of contracts generally Congress may not also repeal the State laws as to the contract of marriage between the two races. Hitherto every subject embraced in the enumeration of rights contained in this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging to the States. They all relate to the internal police and economy of the respective States. They are matters which in each State concern the domestic condition of its people, varying in each according to its own peculiar circumstances and the safety and well-being of its own citizens. I do not mean to say that upon all these subjects there are not Federal restraints—as, for instance, in the State power of legislation over contracts there is a Federal limitation that no State shall pass a law impairing the obligations of contracts; and, as to crimes, that no State shall pass an ex post facto law; and, as to money, that no State shall make anything but gold and silver a legal tender; but where can we find a Federal prohibition against the power of any State to discriminate, as do most of them, between aliens and citizens, between artificial persons, called corporations, and natural persons, in the right to hold real estate? If it be granted that Congress can repeal all State laws discriminating between whites and blacks in the subjects covered by this bill, why, it may be asked, may not Congress repeal in the same way all State laws discriminating between the two races on the subjects of suffrage and office? If Congress can declare by law who shall hold lands, who shall testify, who shall have capacity to make a contract in a State, then Congress can by law also declare who, without regard to color or race, shall have the right to sit as a juror or as a judge, to hold any office, and, finally, to vote “in every State and Territory of the United States.” As respects the Territories, they come within the power of Congress, for as to them the lawmaking power is the Federal power; but as to the States no similar provision exists vesting in Congress the power “to make rules and regulations” for them.

  The object of the second section of the bill is to afford discriminating protection to colored persons in the full enjoyment of all the rights secured to them by the preceding section. It declares—

  That any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, shall subject, or cause to be subjected, any inhabitant of any State or Territory to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by this act, or to different punishment, pains, or penalties on account of such person having at any time been held in a condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, or by reason of his color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be punished by fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, in the discretion of the court.

  This section seems to be designed to apply to some existing or future law of a State or Territory which may conflict with the provisions of the bill now under consideration. It provides for counteracting such forbidden leg
islation by imposing fine and imprisonment upon the legislators who may pass such conflicting laws, or upon the officers or agents who shall put or attempt to put them into execution. It means an official offense, not a common crime committed against law upon the persons or property of the black race. Such an act may deprive the black man of his property, but not of the right to hold property. It means a deprivation of the right itself, either by the State judiciary or the State legislature. It is therefore assumed that under this section members of State legislatures who should vote for laws conflicting with the provisions of the bill, that judges of the State courts who should render judgments in antagonism with its terms, and that marshals and sheriffs who should, as ministerial officers, execute processes sanctioned by State laws and issued by State judges in execution of their judgments could be brought before other tribunals and there subjected to fine and imprisonment for the performance of the duties which such State laws might impose. The legislation thus proposed invades the judicial power of the State. It says to every State court or judge, If you decide that this act is unconstitutional; if you refuse, under the prohibition of a State law, to allow a negro to testify; if you hold that over such a subject-matter the State law is paramount, and “under color” of a State law refuse the exercise of the right to the negro, your error of judgment, however conscientious, shall subject you to fine and imprisonment. I do not apprehend that the conflicting legislation which the bill seems to contemplate is so likely to occur as to render it necessary at this time to adopt a measure of such doubtful constitutionality.