If Mr Douglass had noticed who clapped him when he said “black men first, & white women afterwards,” he would have seen that they were all men. The women did not clap him. The fact is that the men cannot understand us women. They think of us as some of the slaveholders used to think of their slaves, all love & compassion, with no malice in their hearts, but they thought “The negro is a poor lovable creature, kind, docile, unable to take care of himself, & dependent on our compassion to keep them”; & so they consented to do it for the good of the slaves. Men feel the same today. Douglass, Tilton, & Phillips, think that women are perfectly contented to let men earn the money & dole it out to us. We feel with Alexander Hamilton, “Give a man power over my substance, & he has power over my whole being.” There is not a woman born, whose bread is earned by another, it does not matter whether that other is husband, brother, father, or friend, not one who consents to eat the bread earned by other hands, but her whole moral being is in the power of that person. [Applause.]
When Mr Douglass tells us today that the case of the black man is so perilous, I tell him that wronged & outraged as they are by this hateful & mean prejudice against color, he would not today exchange his sex & color, wronged as he is, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Mr Douglass. Will you allow me a question?
Miss Anthony. Yes; anything for a fight today.
Mr Douglass. I want to inquire whether granting to woman the right of suffrage will change anything in respect to the nature of our sexes.
Miss Anthony. It will change the nature of one thing very much, & that is the pecuniary position of woman. It will place her in a position in which she can earn her own bread, so that she can go out into the world an equal competitor in the struggle for life; so that she shall not be compelled to take such positions as men choose to accord to her & then take such pay as men choose to give her. In our working women’s meetings it was proposed that the question of the decrease of marriages in this country should be taken into consideration, & Mr Croly (of the “World,”) said, “I should like to know what you working women are up to; what has the increase or decrease of marriages to do with working women?” I replied, Send your reporters next Wednesday evening & we will show you. Men say that all women are to be married & supported by men, & the laws & customs & public sentiment are all based on that assumption. Wherever there is a woman loose—for we have sometimes women loose, as they had negroes loose, in slavery, & we have fugitive wives as they had fugitive slaves—whenever there is a woman loose or a fugitive wife, thrown out upon the world for support, she is an interloper, & she is paid but one half or one third the price that men receive. When a woman therefore is thrown upon her own resources, she has to choose one of two things, marriage or prostitution. Then it is getting to be a common saying among men all over the country, “Marriage is too expensive a luxury; men cannot afford it.” There is the explanation. What we demand is that woman shall have the ballot, for she will never get her other rights until she demands them with the ballot in her hand. It is not a question of precedence between women & black men. Neither has a claim to precedence upon an Equal Rights platform. But the business of this association is to demand for every man black or white, & for every woman, black or white, that they shall be this instant enfranchised & admitted into the body politic with equal rights & privileges.
May 12, 1869
A LYNCHING IN TENNESSEE:
NEW YORK, AUGUST 1869
Mark Twain:
Only a Nigger
A DISPATCH from Memphis mentions that, of two negroes lately sentenced to death for murder in that vicinity, one named Woods has just confessed to having ravished a young lady during the war, for which deed another negro was hung at the time by an avenging mob, the evidence that doomed the guiltless wretch being a hat which Woods now relates that he stole from its owner and left behind, for the purpose of misleading. Ah, well! Too bad, to be sure! A little blunder in the administration of justice by Southern mob-law, but nothing to speak of. Only “a nigger” killed by mistake—that is all. Of course, every high toned gentleman whose chivalric impulses were so unfortunately misled in this affair, by the cunning of the miscreant Woods, is as sorry about it as a high toned gentleman can be expected to be sorry about the unlucky fate of “a nigger.” But mistakes will happen, even in the conduct of the best regulated and most high toned mobs, and surely there is no good reason why Southern gentlemen should worry themselves with useless regrets, so long as only an innocent “nigger” is hanged, or roasted or knouted to death, now and then. What if the blunder of lynching the wrong man does happen once in four or five cases? Is that any fair argument against the cultivation and indulgence of those fine chivalric passions and that noble Southern spirit which will not brook the slow and cold formalities of regular law, when outraged white womanhood appeals for vengeance? Perish the thought so unworthy of a Southern soul! Leave it to the sentimentalism and humanitarianism of a cold-blooded Yankee civilization! What are the lives of a few “niggers” in comparison with the preservation of the impetuous instincts of a proud and fiery race? Keep ready the halter, therefore, oh chivalry of Memphis! Keep the lash knotted; keep the brand and the faggots in waiting, for prompt work with the next “nigger” who may be suspected of any damnable crime! Wreak a swift vengeance upon him, for the satisfaction of the noble impulses that animate knightly hearts, and then leave time and accident to discover, if they will, whether he was guilty or no.
Buffalo Express, August 26, 1869
“STRUGGLE FOR THEIR EXISTENCE”:
FRANCE, NOVEMBER 1869
Georges Clemenceau to Le Temps
November 3, 1869. The blacks must henceforth work to better themselves. They have the right to education, they must learn; they have the right to work, they must work; lastly, they have civil and political rights which are effective and powerful weapons, they must use them in their own defense. They must gird up their loins, and struggle for their existence, in Darwin’s phrase, for their physical as well as their moral existence. In a word, they must become men.
Given prosperity, to inspire or strengthen in the individual a sentiment of dignity and power, the result of the comfort it assures and the gratitude it arouses in conscientious souls; given also education, to develop the legitimate degree of refinement which it always produces—in spite of all that these can do, men must still follow the path their fate decrees. Can our aspirations for the blacks be realized? Is it possible that a race which, left to itself, has never contributed to history even rudimentary traces of civilization, can profit sufficiently by contact with a progressive race to pass over at one bound all the intermediary stages which separate it from the latter, and take a place at its side in marching toward the future? Can the African, with his natural indolence, compete successfully with white labor? There are many questions which it would be childish to try to solve a priori, of which the future holds and hides the answers.
In this ruthless struggle for existence carried on by human society, those who are weaker physically, intellectually or morally must in the end yield to the stronger. The law is hard, but there is no use in rebelling. European socialists who complain, not without reason, that some men are too well armed for this struggle, and others too ill, will not have modified the struggle itself, nor its causes, nor its conditions, nor its results, when, if ever, they succeed in putting nearly equal weapons into the hands of everyone. The conditions under which man lives can no doubt be changed, but not man himself, for he cannot be divided from his own passions, evil and good, nor from his self-interest, which is always the mainspring of his individual activity.
If, then, the black man cannot successfully compete with the white man, he is fated to be the victim of that natural selection which is constantly operating under our eyes in spite of everything, and he must eventually go under, in the more or less distant future.
It must be added that the Americans are now making the most laudable efforts to arouse the newly freed slaves to a sense of
the dignity of their present condition. The South is sprinkled with schools, and since the end of the war a whole army of teachers, both men and women, has invaded it. All are at work, and time alone can show of what the black race is capable. As for the Republican party, which has done so much for the negroes in so short a time, considering the strength of the prejudices it had to combat, it will remain in power as long as its work is threatened, as long as the solution it has evolved for the question is not universally accepted by the conscience of the country. Once this result has been accomplished, its rôle will be over and there will be another transformation in the two great parties which rule the American Republic.
“IT SECURES POLITICAL EQUALITY”:
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1870
The New York Times:
Reconstruction Nationalized
HITHERTO THE Republican policy of Reconstruction has been essentially sectional. It has been the means employed by the major power in the Union to extinguish the last signs of the rebellion, and to reëstablish order and authority in the Southern States, in accordance with the principles and purposes which triumphed in the war. The measures employed for the attainment of this object were necessarily exceptional in their nature, and resulted in a reorganization of States on a basis fundamentally different from that which previously existed. The change, though arbitrary, was not unjust,—though radical, it was not illogical. The fact of resistance to the National Government was a sufficient reason for exacting guarantees against the recurrence of conflict. The fact of emancipation introduced a new element into citizenship, imposed upon a race new obligations, and entitled them to new privileges, and rendered inevitable the measures necessary to protect them in the exercise of the power conferred upon them. The proceedings incident to this policy may sometimes have looked harsh and objectionable. But the harshness, wherever it appeared, was simply the exercise of an absolute authority in a case which had resisted milder methods of treatment. And the features most objected to have really been the natural developments of a revolution begun in hostility to the Union, and ending, practically, in the revision of some of its conditions, and the consolidation of its power.
The Fourteenth Amendment invested the colored man with citizenship, and the Reconstruction acts gave him his share of political power. The citizenship was national,—the suffrage was restricted to the States to which those laws applied. Thus the anomaly was presented of a race enfranchised in certain States by virtue of Federal authority, and disfranchised in others by reason of local law. A prejudice begotten of slavery, after having been set at naught in States which once were devoted to its maintenance, was perpetuated in the States which had decreed emancipation, and invested the Southern negro with almost controlling power. The Fifteenth Amendment therefore became necessary, not only to harmonize the conditions of suffrage throughout the Union with the conditions imposed upon the South, but to guarantee those at the South who had coöperated with the National Government against possible political vicissitudes in their own States. The Amendment does this without impairing the control of States over the question of suffrage. It neither enacts universal suffrage, nor forbids the application of tests, whether of education or property, as qualifications for voters. It simply forbids unjust discrimination in the enforcement of tests. In providing that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,”—it secures political equality. The measure was the completion of the work of which emancipation was the commencement. It purges the Union of the last taint of slavery, and makes Reconstruction national.
February 21, 1870
A KLAN INSURRECTION:
NORTH CAROLINA, MARCH 1870
William W. Holden to Ulysses S. Grant
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT OF NORTH CAROLINA,
Raleigh, March 10, 1870.
SIR: I have felt it to be my duty to declare the county of Alamance, in this State, in a state of insurrection.
The copy of my proclamation, herewith inclosed, of date March 7, 1870, contains some of the reasons for this step.
There exists in this State a secret, oath-bound, armed organization, which is hostile to the State government, and to the Government of the United States. Bands of these armed men ride at night through various neighborhoods, whipping and maltreating peaceable citizens, hanging some, burning churches, and breaking up schools which have been established for the colored people. These outrages are almost invariably committed on persons, white and colored, who are most devoted in their feelings and conduct to the Government of the United States.
I cannot rely upon the militia to repress these outrages, for the reason that in the localities in which these outrages occur white militia of the proper character cannot be obtained, and it would but aggravate the evil to employ colored militia. Besides, the expense of calling out the militia would be greater than our people could well bear in their present impoverished condition. Federal troops inspire terror among evildoers, and they have the confidence and respect of a majority of our people. We therefore look to, and rely on, the Federal Government to aid us in repressing these outrages and in restoring peace and good order.
If Congress would authorize the suspension by the President of the writ of habeas corpus in certain localities, and if criminals could be arrested and tried before military tribunals and shot, we should soon have peace and order throughout all this country. The remedy would be a sharp and bloody one, but it is as indispensable as was the suppression of the rebellion.
I trust, sir, that you will issue to the commanding general of this department as stringent orders in this matter as the present laws will allow. The commanding general has been prompt to respond to the extent of the power which he has, but I fear this power will not be adequate to effect the desired result.
I have the honor to inclose a copy of the State law under which my proclamation was issued. Also, a pamphlet containing the testimony of witnesses in the preliminary examination of the Lenoir County prisoners, which will afford some idea of the organization and objects of the Ku-Klux Klan.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, your obedient servant,
W. W. HOLDEN, Governor.
“THE GREATEST CIVIL CHANGE”:
WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 1870
Ulysses S. Grant:
Message to Congress on the Fifteenth Amendment
EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 30, 1870.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable. A measure which makes at once 4,000,000 people voters who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so (with the assertion that “at the time of the Declaration of Independence the opinion was fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race, regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, that black men had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”), is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free Government to the present day.
Institutions like ours, in which all power is derived directly from the people, must depend mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and industry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly enfranchised race to the importance of their striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizen. The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The
Father of his Country, in his Farewell Address, uses this language:
Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message.
I repeat that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of 40,000,000, and increasing in a rapid ratio. I would therefore call upon Congress to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country, and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the Government a blessing and not a danger. By such means only can the benefits contemplated by this amendment to the Constitution be secured.
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