Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  “A tale unfold whose lightest word

  Would harrow up thy soul.”

  It has been asserted that protection for the colored people only has been demanded; and in this there is a certain degree of truth, because they are noted for their steadfastness to the Union and the cause of liberty as guarantied by the Constitution. But, on the other hand, this protection is equally desired for those loyal whites, some to the manner born, others who, in the exercise of their natural rights as American citizens, have seen fit to remove thither from other sections of the States, and who are now undergoing persecution simply on account of their activity in carrying out Union principles and loyal sentiments in the South. Their efforts have contributed largely to further reconstruction and the restoration of the southern States to the old fellowship of the Federal compact. It is indeed hard that their reward for their well-meant earnestness should be that of being violently treated, and even forced to flee from the homes of their choice. It will be a foul stain upon the escutcheon of our land if such atrocities be tamely suffered longer to continue.

  In the dawn of our freedom our young Republic was widely recognized and proudly proclaimed to the world the refuge, the safe asylum of the oppressed of all lands. Shall it be said that at this day, through mere indifference and culpable neglect, this grand boast of ours is become a mere form of words, an utter fraud? I earnestly hope not! And yet, if we stand with folded arms and idle hands, while the cries of our oppressed brethren sound in our ears, what will it be but a proof to all men that we are utterly unfit for our glorious mission, unworthy our noble privileges, as the greatest of republics, the champions of freedom for all men? I would that every individual man in this whole nation could be aroused to a sense of his own part and duty in this great question. When we call to mind the fact that this persecution is waged against men for the simple reason that they dare to vote with the party which has saved the Union intact by the lavish expenditure of blood and treasure, and has borne the nation safely through the fearful crisis of these last few years, our hearts swell with an overwhelming indignation.

  The question is sometimes asked, Why do not the courts of law afford redress? Why the necessity of appealing to Congress? We answer that the courts are in many instances under the control of those who are wholly inimical to the impartial administration of law and equity. What benefit would result from appeal to tribunals whose officers are secretly in sympathy with the very evil against which we are striving?

  But to return to the point in question. If the negroes, numbering one-eighth of the population of these United States, would only cast their votes in the interest of the Democratic party, all open measures against them would be immediately suspended, and their rights, as American citizens, recognized. But as to the real results of such a state of affairs, and speaking in behalf of those with whom I am conversant, I can only say that we love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery; consequently we hope to keep clear of the Democrats!

  In most of the arguments to which I have listened the ­positions taken are predicated upon the ground of the unconstitutionality of the bill introduced by the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. SHELLABARGER.] For my part, I am not prepared, Mr. Speaker, to argue this question from a constitutional standpoint alone. I take the ground that, in my opinion, lies far above the interpretation put upon the provisions of the Constitution. I stand upon the broad plane of right; I look to the urgent, the importunate demands of the present emergency; and while I am far from advocating any step not in harmony with that sacred law of our land, while I would not violate the lightest word of that chart which has so well guided us in the past, yet I desire that so broad and liberal a construction be placed upon its provisions as will insure protection to the humblest citizen, without regard to rank, creed, or color. Tell me nothing of a constitution which fails to shelter beneath its rightful power the people of a country!

  I believe when the fathers of our country framed the Constitution they made the provisions so broad that the humblest, as well as the loftiest citizen, could be protected in his inalienable rights. It was designed to be, and is, the bulwark of freedom, and the strong tower of defense, against foreign invasion and domestic violence. I desire to direct your attention to what is imbodied in the preamble, and would observe that it was adopted after a liberal and protracted discussion on every article composing the great American Magna Charta. And like a keystone to an arch it made the work complete. Here is what it declares:

  “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

  If the Constitution which we uphold and support as the fundamental law of the United States is inadequate to afford security to life, liberty, and property—if, I say, this inadequacy is proven, then its work is done, then it should no longer be recognized as the Magna Charta of a great and free people; the sooner it is set aside the better for the liberties of the nation. It has been asserted on this floor that the Republican party is answerable for the existing state of affairs in the South. I am here to deny this, and to illustrate, I will say that in the State of South Carolina there is no disturbance of an alarming character in any one of the counties in which the Republicans have a majority. The troubles are usually in those sections in which the Democrats have a predominance in power, and, not content with this, desire to be supreme.

  I say to the gentlemen of the Opposition, and to the entire membership of the Democratic party, that upon your hands rests the blood of the loyal men of the South. Disclaim it as you will the stain is there to prove your criminality before God and the world in the day of retribution which will surely come. I pity the man or party of men who would seek to ride into power over the dead body of a legitimate opponent.

  It has been further stated that peace reigned in the rebellious States from 1865 until the enactment of the reconstruction laws. The reason of this is obvious. Previous to that time they felt themselves regarded as condemned traitors, subject to the penalties of the law. They stood awaiting the sentence of the nation to be expressed by Congress. Subsequently the enactments of that body, framed with a spirit of magnanimity worthy a great and noble nation, proved that, far from a vindictive course, they desired to deal with them with clemency and kindness. This merciful plan of action proved to be a mistake, for cowardice, emboldened by the line of policy of the President, began to feel that judgment long delayed meant forgiveness without repentance. Their tactics were changed, and again a warlike attitude was assumed, not indeed directly against the General Government, but against those who upon southern soil were yet the staunch supporters of its powers. Thus is it evident that if only the props which support such a fabric could be removed the structure must necessarily fall, to be built again by other hands. This is the animus of the Ku Klux Klan, which is now spreading devastation through the once fair and tranquil South.

  If the country there is impoverished it has certainly not been caused by the fault of those who love the Union, but it is simply the result of a disastrous war madly waged against the best Government known to the world. The murder of unarmed men and the maltreating of helpless women can never make restitution for the losses which are the simply inevitable consequence of the rebellion. The faithfulness of my race during the entire war, in supporting and protecting the families of their masters, speaks volumes in their behalf as to the real kindliness of their feelings toward the white people of the South.

  In conclusion, sir, I would say that it is in no spirit of bitterness against the southern people that I have spoken to-day. There are many among them for whom I entertain a profound regard, having known them in former and brighter days of their history. I have always felt a pride in the prestige of my native State, noted as she has been for her noble sons, with their lofty intellect or tried sta
tesmanship. But it is not possible for me to speak in quiet and studied words of those unworthy her ancient and honorable name, who at this very day are doing all they can do to deface her fair records of the past and bring the old State into disrepute.

  I can say for my people that we ardently desire peace for ourselves and for the whole nation. Come what will, we are fully determined to stand by the Republican party and the Government. As to our fate, “we are not wood, we are not stone,” but men, with feelings and sensibilities like other men whose skin is of a lighter hue.

  When myself and colleagues shall leave these Halls and turn our footsteps toward our southern homes we know not but that the assassin may await our coming, as marked for his vengeance. Should this befall, we would bid Congress and our country to remember that ’twas—

  “Bloody treason flourish’d over us.”

  Be it as it may, we have resolved to be loyal and firm, “and if we perish, we perish!” I earnestly hope the bill will pass.

  April 1, 1871

  PRESERVING LOCAL GOVERNMENT:

  WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 1871

  James A. Garfield:

  from Speech in Congress on the Enforcement Bill

  Mr. SPEAKER: I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendent genius whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud can obscure.

  The distinguished gentleman [Mr. SHELLABARGER] who introduced the bill from the committee very appropriately said that it requires us to enter upon unexplored territory. That territory, Mr. Speaker, is the neutral ground of all political philosophy; the neutral ground for which rival theories have been struggling in all ages. There are two ideas so utterly antagonistic that when, in any nation, either has gained absolute and complete possession of that neutral ground, the ruin of that nation has invariably followed. The one is that despotism which swallows and absorbs all power in a single-central, government; the other is that extreme doctrine of local sovereignty which makes nationality impossible and resolves a general government into anarchy and chaos. It makes but little difference as to the final result which of these ideas drives the other from the field; in either case, ruin follows.

  The result exhibited by the one, was seen in the Amphictyonic and Achæan leagues of ancient Greece, of which Madison, in the twentieth number of the Federalist, says:

  “The inevitable result of all was imbecility in the government, discord among the provinces, foreign influences and indignities, a precarious existence in peace and peculiar calamities in war.”

  This is a fitting description of all nations who have carried the doctrine of local self-government so far as to exclude the doctrine of nationality. They were not nations, but mere leagues bound together by common consent, ready to fall to pieces at the demand of any refractory member. The opposing idea was never better illustrated than when Louis XIV entered the French Assembly, booted and spurred, and girded with the sword of ancestral kings, and said to the deputies of France, “The State! I am the State!”

  Between these opposite and extreme theories of government, the people have been tossed from century to century; and it has been only when these ideas have been in reasonable equipoise, when this neutral ground has been held in joint occupancy, and usurped by neither, that popular liberty and national life have been possible. How many striking illustrations of this do we see in the history of France! The despotism of Louis XIV, followed by reign of terror, when liberty had run mad and France was a vast scene of blood and ruin! We see it again in our day. Only a few years ago the theory of personal government had placed into the hands of Napoleon III absolute and irresponsible power. The communes of France were crushed, and local liberty existed no longer. Then followed Sedan and the rest. On the 1st day of last month, when France was trying to rebuild her ruined Government, when the Prussian cannon had scarcely ceased thundering against the walls of Paris, a deputy of France rose in the National Assembly and moved as the first step toward the safety of his country, that a committee of thirty should be chosen, to be called the Committee of Decentralization. But it was too late to save France from the fearful reaction from despotism. The news comes to us, under the sea, that on Saturday last the cry was ringing through France, “Death to the priests, and death to the rich!” and the swords of the citizens of that new republic are now wet with each other’s blood.

  EQUIPOISE OF OUR GOVERNMENT.

  The records of time show no nobler or wiser work done by human hands than that of our fathers when they framed this Republic. Beginning in a wilderness world, they wrought unfettered by precedent, untrammeled by custom, unawed by kings or dynasties. With the history of other nations before them, they surveyed the new field. In the progress of their work they encountered these antagonistic ideas to which I have referred. They attempted to trace through that neutral ground the boundary line across which neither force should pass. The result of their labors is our Constitution and frame of government. I never contemplate the result without feeling that there was more than mortal wisdom in the men who produced it. It has seemed to me that they borrowed their thought from Him who constructed the universe and put it in motion. For nothing that more aptly describes the character of our Republic than the solar system, launched into space by the hand of the Creator, where the central sun is the great power around which revolve all the planets in their appointed orbits. But while the sun holds in the grasp of its attractive power the whole system, and imparts its light and heat to all, yet each individual planet is under the sway of laws peculiar to itself.

  Under the sway of terrestrial laws, winds blow, waters flow, and all the tenantries of the planet live and move. So, sir, the States move on in their orbits of duty and obedience, bound to the central Government by this Constitution, which is their supreme law; while each State is making laws and regulations of its own, developing its own energies, maintaining its own industries, managing its local affairs in its own way, subject only to the supreme but beneficent control of the Union. When State rights run mad, put on the form of secession, and attempted to drag the States out of the Union, we saw the grand lesson taught, in all the battles of the late war, that a State could no more be hurled from the Union without ruin to the nation, than could a planet be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it, to chaos and ruin, the whole solar universe.

  Sir, the great war for the Union has vindicated the centripetal power of the nation, and has exploded, forever I trust, the disorganizing theory of State sovereignty which slavery attempted to impose upon this country. But we should never forget that there is danger in the opposite direction. The destruction or serious crippling of the principle of local government would be as fatal to liberty as secession would have been fatal to the Union.

  The first experiment which our fathers tried in government-­making after the War of Independence was a failure, because the central power conferred in the Articles of Confederation was not strong enough. The second, though nobly conceived, became almost a failure because slavery attempted so to interpret the Constitution as to reduce the nation again to a confederacy, a mere league between sovereign States. But we have now vindicated and secured the centripetal power; let us see that the centrifugal force is not destroyed, but that the grand and beautiful equipoise may be maintained.

  But, sir, the President has informed us in his recent message, that in some portions of the Republic wrongs and outrages are now being perpetrated, under circumstances which lead him to doubt his power to suppress them by means of existing laws. That new situation confronts us. I deeply regret that we were not able to explore the length, breadth, and depth of this new danger before we undertook to provide a legislative remedy. The subject is so obscured by passion that it is hardly possible for Congress, with the materials now in our possession, to know the truth of the case, to understand ful
ly the causes of this new trouble, and to provide wisely and intelligently the safest and most certain remedy.

  But enough is known to demand some action on our part. To state the case in the most moderate terms, it appears that in some of the southern States there exists a wide-spread secret organization, whose members are bound together by solemn oaths to prevent certain classes of citizens of the United States from enjoying these new rights conferred upon them by the Constitution and laws; that they are putting into execution their design of preventing such citizens from enjoying the free right of the ballot-box and other privileges and immunities of citizens, and from enjoying the equal protection of the laws. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt of the power of Congress to provide for ­meeting this new danger, and to do so without trenching upon those great and beneficent powers of local self-government lodged in the States and with the people. To reach this result is the demand of the hour upon the statesmanship of this country. This brings me to the consideration of the pending bill.