But General Grant, being “tired of this nonsense,” thoroughly disgusted with the antics of the party leaders, is not the man patiently to countenance and assist a policy whose inevitably ruinous consequences he clearly perceives; and he indicates the tendency of his revolt against the enormities that are loosening the hold of his party on the people. He intends to separate himself entirely from the Congressional policy and to inaugurate a policy of his own, at the risk of any probable issue with the leaders in Congress; to cut away the dead weight and carry the party nearer to the popular impulse. It is a project that, if wisely acted upon and successfully carried out, will add to his laurels as a soldier the fame of a great political leader, without which fame his name will be impressed on the history of the time like that of many others, as a brave and skilful soldier, but with which his name will eventually stand alone in the history of the great American crisis. An issue between Grant and the leaders in Congress is the imminent fact of the day, and his resolution to have a Chief Justice of his own choosing has already shown how easily such an issue may be made. Should General Grant’s endeavor to free his party from the burdens that it unprofitably bears receive the co-operation of any considerable portion of the party leaders success in the admirable project proposed would be certain and easy; but it is far more likely that he will awaken the hostility and meet the furious opposition of the party leaders, and then his ultimate success will be gained in a struggle that may make its triumphs all the more precious to the public. It is clear why the party leaders will oppose him. They are no longer interested in the successes of the party, but only in the net result that such successes may secure to them individually—that is to say, they are more interested in the dead weights than in the legitimate party vitality; and the proposition to cut away all the grand schemes of plunder and all that corrupt system of administration that is the ruin of the party North and South is simply a proposition to cut away that which they hold more precious than all beside. Any new departure in this direction, therefore, they will oppose with characteristic ferocity, and they will, of course, endeavor to assimilate the course of the President to that of Andrew Johnson. But the result will be an exposure of their motives and the public exhibition of the fact that the leaders care nothing for the purposes that the people have at heart in party victories. This will be fatal to their standing in popular esteem, and we may see almost as marvellous a political mortality as we saw in 1860. Inevitably such a disintegration would result in the formation of a middle party; for which, indeed, on altogether different reasons, the time is ripe. All the legitimate purposes of the original republican party are gained, and its dismemberment must follow the loss of its objective unless it changes ground, and the only ground it can take is to move a little nearer the opposition, dropping its extreme on one hand as the democrats drop theirs on the other. This would be to repeat the liberal movement of the last campaign, or the frame of that movement; but the animating spirit would be different, for here the impulse would not be captious or personal. This would not be an intrigue of candidates, but would be inspired by the generous patriotic purposes of the need of good government. And in the machinery of this new party General Grant could dictate the succession, and he would have the glory of restoring and reinvigorating with fresh purpose the party that has saved the country from armed foes and may yet save it from the assault of insidious plunderers.
New York Herald, January 20, 1874
“A NATION OF CROAKERS”:
WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 1874
Richard Harvey Cain:
Speech in Congress on the Civil Rights Bill
MR. SPEAKER, I had supposed “this cruel war was over,” and that we had entered upon an era of peace, prosperity, and future success as a nation. I had supposed that after the sad experience of more than five years, after we had sought to heal the wounds the war had made, after we had passed amnesty bills, and, as we thought, had entered upon the smooth, quiet road of future prosperity, we would meet on a common level in the halls of Congress, and that no longer would we brood over the past; that we would strike out a new line of policy, a new national course, and thus succeed in laying broad and deep the foundations of the future welfare of this country; that every man, of every race, of every section of this country, might strike hands and go forward in national progress.
I regret, however, that it again becomes my lot to answer a member from a neighboring State—North Carolina. It was my misfortune a few Saturdays ago to have to answer a gentleman from the same State [Mr. VANCE] in relation to strictures upon my race. I regret that it becomes my duty again, simply in defense of what I regard as a right—in defense of the race to which I belong—to meet the arguments of another gentleman from North Carolina, [Mr. ROBBINS,] to show, if I can, their fallacy, and to prove they are not correct.
The gentleman starts out by saying that if we pass the pending civil-rights bill it may indeed seem pleasant to the northern people, but to his section, and to the South, it will be death. I do not think he is correct, for the reason that they have in the South suffered a great many more terrible things than civil rights, and still live. I think if so harmless a measure as the civil-rights bill, guaranteeing to every man of the African race equal rights with other men, would bring death to the South, then certainly that noble march of Sherman to the sea would have fixed them long ago. [Laughter.]
I desire to answer a few of the strictures which the gentleman has been pleased to place upon us. He states that the civil-rights bill will be death to that section. I cannot see it in that light. We lived together before the war—four millions of colored men, women, and children, with the whites of the South—and there was no special antagonism then. There might have been some friction in some places and in some cases, [great laughter,] but no special antagonism between the two races in the South. I fail, therefore, to see the force of the gentleman’s argument. I would like to ask why, in all conscience, after the measures of education, these noble efforts to educate these “barbarians,” as he terms us, for two hundred years or more—after all the earnest efforts on their part, with their superior civilization, and all the appliances which the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. ROBBINS] claims were brought to bear on these “barbarians”—I ask why there was no such antagonism then, but just at this time? Why, sir, if it be true, as the gentleman says, that such philanthropic efforts have been put forth for the education and improvement of the black race, there would be no occasion for antagonism. It is, I believe, a law of education to assimilate, to bring together, to harmonize discordant elements, to bring about oneness of feeling and sentiment, to develop similarity of thought, similarity of action, and thus tend to carry forward the people harmoniously. That does not seem to have been the case, if the argument of the gentleman from North Carolina is correct. Now, look at the fallacy of the gentleman’s argument. This race of barbarians, in spite of all their disadvantages, had been educated to such an extent that the white community of the South were not afraid of them after their emancipation. Is not that singular?
The gentleman further states that the negro race is the world’s stage actor—the comic dancer all over the land; that he laughs and he dances. Sir, well he may; there are more reasons for his laughing and dancing now than ever before. [Laughter.] There are more substantial reasons why he should be happy now than during all the two hundred years prior to this time. Now he dances as an African; then he crouched as a slave. [Laughter and applause.]
The gentleman further states that not more than eighteen hundred negroes were killed during the four years of the war. The gentleman forgets some battles; he forgets Vicksburgh; I presume he does not remember Petersburgh; he does not know anything of Fort Pillow. He knows nothing about all the great achievements of the black men while Sherman’s army was moving on to victory. He forgets who entered Charleston first; he forgets who entered Richmond first; he forgets all this in the blindness of his prejudice against a race of men who have vindicated themselves so nob
ly on the battle-field. But I will grant the gentleman the charity of dwelling no longer on that point.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman states that during the struggle for freedom four millions of negroes lifted no hand to liberate themselves; that no stroke was made by them to deliver themselves from their thralldom; yet a few moments afterward he makes the statement that their kind-heartedness prevented them from rising up and destroying the wives and children of the rebel soldiers who were at the front. I accept the admission. Sir, there dwells in the black man’s heart too much nobleness and too much charity to strike down helpless women and children when he has a chance to do so. No; though the liberty of our race was dear to us, we would not purchase it at such a dastard price as the slaying of helpless women and children, while their husbands and fathers were away. I would scorn the men of my race forever if they had lifted their hands at such a period as that against helpless women and children, who were waiting in silent anxiety the return of their natural and lawful protectors. Our strong black arms might have destroyed every vestige of their homes; our torches might have kindled a fire that would have lighted up the whole South, so that every southern man fighting in the army would have hastened back to find his home in ashes. But our race had such nobleness of heart as to forbear in an hour of such extremity, and leave those men their wives and children.
Sir, I mean no disrespect to the gentleman, but I think the facts will bear me out in the statement that on every occasion on the battle-field where the black man met the white man of the South there was no flinching, no turning back, on the part of the black man. He bravely accepted his part in the struggle for liberty or death.
The gentleman says he still looks upon the whites as the superior race. That may be the case in some respects; but, sir, if they educated us they certainly should not find fault with us if we follow out what they have taught, and show ourselves obedient servants.
But, Mr. Speaker, there is another point. The gentleman states that we would make no movement to achieve our liberty. Why, sir, the education which those gentlemen gave the southern slaves was of a peculiar kind. What school-house in all the South was open to the colored race? Point to one. Name the academy where you educated black men and black women as lawyers or doctors, or in any other department of science or art. Point out the county. Give us the name of the district. Tell the name of the school commissioner. Name the teacher. I will name one. Her name was Missa Douglas. And for the attempt to educate those of our race she was incarcerated in prison, and remained there for five years. That is the only instance, so far as I remember, of the education of the colored people of the South.
Examine the laws of the South, and you will find that it was a penal offense for any one to educate the colored people there. Yet these gentlemen come here and upbraid us with our ignorance and our stupidity. Yet you robbed us for two hundred years. During all that time we toiled for you. We have raised your cotton, your rice, your corn. We have attended your wives and your children. We have made wealth for your support and your education, while we were slaves, toiling without pay, without the means of education, and hardly of sustenance. And yet you upbraid us for being ignorant; call us a horde of barbarians! Why, sir, it is ill-becoming in the gentleman to tell us of our barbarism, after he and his have been educating us for two hundred years. If New England charity and benevolence had not accomplished more than your education has done we would still be in that condition. I thank the North for the charity and nobleness with which it has come to our relief. The North has sent forth those leading ideas, which have spread like lightning over the land; and the negro was not so dumb and not so obtuse that he could not catch the light, and embrace its blessings and enjoy them. Sir, I hurl back with contempt all the aspersions of the gentleman on the other side against my race. There is but very little difference, even now, between the condition of the whites of the South and the condition of the blacks of the South. I have given some attention to the statistics of education in the Southern States. I find this pregnant fact, that there is about 12 per cent. more ignorance existing among the whites in the South than there is among the colored people in the South, notwithstanding the slavery of the colored race. I wish I had the reports here, that I might show the gentleman how the facts stand in reference to his own State especially, because, if I remember correctly, his State shows there is a preponderating aggregate of ignorance in the State of North Carolina, amounting to 60 per cent. and upward, compared with the entire number of the inhabitants in that State.
Tell us of our ignorance—the ignorance of the colored race! Why, Mr. Speaker, it appears to me to be presumption on the part of the gentleman to state that we—we whom they have wronged, whom they have outraged, whom they have robbed, whose sweat and toil they have had the benefit of for two hundred years; whose labor, whose wives, whose children, have been at their beck and call—I say it ill-becomes them to taunt us now with our barbarism and our ignorance. Sir, if he will open to us the school-house, give us some chance, we would not have to measure arms with him now. But even now, Mr. Speaker, although there is such disparity between us and him so far as relates to education and resources, even now we fear not a comparison in the condition of education in the last eight years between the whites and the blacks of North Carolina.
The gentleman, moreover, states that the reason why they did not educate the colored race was that the colored man was not ready. Not ready, Mr. Speaker; if I had that gentleman upon the floor, with my foot upon his neck, and holding a lash over him, with his hands tied, with him bound hand and foot, would he expect that I should boast over him and tell him “You are a coward, you are a traitor, because you do not resist me!” Would he expect me to tell him that when I had him down under my foot, with his hands tied and the lash in my hand lashing his back? Would he tell me that, in conscience, I would be doing justice to him? Oh, no, no! And yet such was the condition in which he had my race. Why, sir, the whipping-post, the thumb-screw, and the lash, were the great means of education in the South. These were the school-houses, these were the academies, these were the great instruments of education, of which the gentleman boasts, for the purpose of bringing these barbarians into civilization. [Applause.] When men boast, they ought to have something to boast of. When I boast, Mr. Speaker, I shall boast of some noble deed. I will boast not of the wrongs inflicted upon the weak; I will boast not of the outrages inflicted upon the indigent; I will not boast, Mr. Speaker, of lashing the weak and trampling under foot any class of people who ought to have my sympathy, nor will I reproach them for being ignorant, when they have been kept away from every means to educate them.
He says we are not ready for it. How long would it have taken us to get ready under their kind of teaching? How long, O Lord, how long! [Laughter and applause.] How long would it have taken to educate us under the thumb-screw, to educate us with the whip, to educate us with the lash, with instruments of torture, to educate us without a home? How long would it have taken to educate us under their system? We had no wives; we had no children; they belonged to the gentleman and his class. We were homeless, we were friendless, although those stars and stripes hanging over your head, Mr. Speaker, ought to have been our protection. That emblem of the Declaration of Independence, initiated by the fathers of the Republic, that all men are born free and equal, ought to have been our protection. Yet they were to us no stars of hope, and the stripes were only stripes of our condemnation.
The gentleman talked something, I believe, about buzzards or crows taking the place of our brave eagle. Sir, the crow would, I think, more beautifully represent the condition of the South now—the croaking bird, you know. They have been croaking ever since the rebellion came on, and they have been croaking against emancipation and the Constitution ever since. They are a nation of croakers, so to speak. Like the crow they are cawing, cawing, cawing, eternally cawing. [Great laughter.] Mr. Speaker, you will pardon me, for I did not expect to speak this morning.
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