Reconstruction

by Brooks D. Simpson

  Thus, Mr. Speaker, our people have been deceived. You further told us to reconstruct our State governments according to your demands. The State of Virginia was told to reconstruct as the Northern States proposed and we should come back on equal terms. We were told that all we had to do was to say in our constitution slavery was abolished, and no claim would ever be made for emancipated slaves. We were told to repudiate the confederate debt, which was worth something to our people. After we had done all this and our representatives knocked at the doors of Congress for admission, you sent them back. You sent back the men who were elected under that constitution to this House.

  When we at last got in here you started again upon a mission in which there is nothing but bad blood, a mission in which there is a stirring up of bad feeling, in which there can be no good to the black man or to the white man. If I were to go to stir up the laboring men in the State of Massachusetts, what would you think of it? What would you think if I went to Pennsylvania to stir up the “Molly Maguires” against the men who own the coal-mines? What would you think if I went to the manufacturing towns in New England to stir up bad blood between the manufacturers and their employés? What would you think if I told the laboring men there that they had been cheated—that they had been cheated by the manufacturers out of the just profits of their labor? What would you think if I indulged in such demagogism throughout the country? Would you think me an intelligent, faithful, honest man? Yet that is what your party is doing in the South. You go into our States and tell these people that we have robbed them; that we have oppressed them; that we did these things for a long series of years, and that now you intend to give them the right to put the bottom rail on the top. It will soon get to the bottom again if it has not the brains to stay at the top. You cannot put a man up that way by force who ought to remain at the bottom. We cannot force them to do what they do not want to do.

  We have been buying your goods ever since the war. We took your money gladly and bought your goods for the articles we raised—cotton and tobacco. Now, you are doing all this, and for no good. You are doing it when it can do no good to the black man. I believe you have not a laboring population in your State any better off than the black man is in Virginia. We have never had a riot. We have no lynching there. We have no cries of “bread or blood,” or strikes, or anything of that sort there. The laboring man there has plenty to eat and dresses just as well as his former master used to do, and frequently a great deal better—at all events a good deal better on Sunday. We are in peace. We are in quiet. You are trying to throw a fire-brand in among us and to stir up one part of the population against the other; and God forgive you your imbecility if you do not know it is wrong.

  This is the result of your bill. Who are driving you on in the South? Men who have reaped the advantage of all the wrongs that have been perpetrated there; men who came there to reap that advantage, and have got rich by it; and other men who have got into all the Federal offices that have been distributed all over the South for corrupting the few weak-kneed people who live there. Or you send strangers among us to rule us and make profit out of our taxation. This has been done, and yet you say you are a Christian people. And in the face of all this we are called “ruffians;” we are called hard names, bitter epithets are used against us; and you hug the pious delusion to your souls that you are doing God service in all this cruelty and all this wrong.

  Well, there is an old man, an old client of mine down in Virginia, who had a way of drawing consolation from subjects in which to other eyes it seemed least likely to exist. He always drew some consolation from the result of any event no matter what it was, and, as a final result, “Thank God there is a hell.” I am mighty near in this case now. I thought when I saw the republicans last winter voting upon this bill that you would say this: “There is no use in crowding these people any longer,” even if it be but prejudice.

  Prejudices exist everywhere. What was it but prejudice that caused the English nation to sacrifice thousands of men and millions of dollars in India? It was the prejudice which the sepoy had about putting mutton tallow on his cartridge instead of lard. This prejudice of his was nothing in itself, but it was so woven into his nature that he could not escape from it. And if we give you the power to say, if we are charitable enough to admit now that our opposition was from mere prejudice, you might be magnanimous enough, you might be bold and strong enough to say, when in the contest of arms from sheer weakness and exhaustion we went down, yet you had found us foemen worthy of your steel; when we went down you might have the magnanimity to say, “Now you are down we will not tread upon you or persecute you any longer.” But am I to believe that the men who were brave enough to stand against the desperate charges and attacks we made against the northern troops from Manassas to Appomattox Court House are not men enough to stand up before the country and say, “We will not do this wicked and iniquitous thing against a brave and defenseless people?” Am I to believe the men whom I thought brave and chivalrous and strong and honorable have got in their hearts a spirit to persecute a man when the sword is out of his hand and his musket is thrown away?

  February 3, 1875

  “THE PRIDE OF BLOOD AND RACE”:

  WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 1875

  Charles A. Eldredge:

  Speech in Congress on the Civil Rights Bill

  Mr. ELDREDGE. Mr. Speaker, I stand before the House at this time a specimen of the effects of the civil-rights bill. I can assure the House that if its effect on the administration of this Government is as disastrous——

  The SPEAKER pro tempore, (Mr. GARFIELD in the chair.) The gentleman will suspend until the House comes to order. The confusion is so great that nothing he says can be heard.

  Mr. ELDREDGE, (after a pause.) I remark in continuation of the sentence which I had commenced that if the effect of the administration of the civil-rights bill upon the country is as disastrous as resistance to its passage through the House has been to me and to my health, it would be a sufficient argument against its passage.

  Mr. Speaker, in the remarks I have to make in opposition to the bill now before the House I intend little more than to enter my protest against further legislation upon the subject. I have heretofore and frequently discussed the principles involved in this bill, and in various forms of argument, as well as I was able, endeavored to present the constitutional objections, the impolicy, and the danger of this class of legislation. The convictions of the past have been confirmed and strengthened, and the dangers apprehended and pointed out more than realized in the experience of the results. Indeed, the legislation of Congress since the close of the war upon the negro question, and the effects of that legislation upon the Southern States and even upon the Union itself, stand a perpetual reproach to the party by whom it was enforced, and an ever-present remonstrance and protest against further enactments in the same direction.

  It ought to be enough to “call a halt” that entire States, once proud and majestic commonwealths, are in ruins, lying prostrate before us, in the very struggle and article of death—the work of our legislation. Look at South Carolina; that once proud and prosperous State with her three hundred thousand property-holders, two hundred and ninety thousand of them white, including the intelligent, educated, refined men and women of the whole State, subjected by this kind of legislation to the control, domination, and spoliation of an uneducated, semi-barbarous African race just emancipated from the debasing and brutalizing bonds of slavery. Look at Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana, once the most genial and fairest portion of the Republic—grand, mighty States of the Union, marching rapidly and proudly forward in the outward and upward march of wealth and civilization, rent and torn by civil strife, ravaged, desolated, and destroyed by actual war—a war of races brought on and kept up by congressional legislation. This state of things is not the result of natural causes, but it is the result of the unnatural relation in which the two races have been placed to each other. It is the result of the conflic
t which may always be expected when it is attempted to subject men of culture, civilized men, men accustomed to freedom, to the domination and rule of brute force. The history of the world furnishes no instance of harmonious government brought about by the forced equality and commingling of such antagonistic forces, and certainly not by the subjugation of the intellectual to the physical. The white race, with its pride of blood, the memory of its achievements, the consciousness of its superiority and power, will never brook African equality or live under Africanized governments; and the sooner this truth is realized by American statesmen the sooner will the remedy for the evils that are upon us be devised.

  Sir, this negro question is the mightiest problem of the age; none of half its magnitude, so far as the future of the Republic is concerned, confronts the statesman of this country to-day. It will not do longer to treat it as a mere partisan question or allow the passions evoked by the war to control legislation in regard to it. The excuses heretofore made for imposing African governments upon the southern white men will not do. Higher consideration must control. You cannot turn from this sickening reality and foul work of your hands with the flippant and senseless plea so often interposed, even if it were true, (which it is not,) that slavery embruted and unfitted the emancipated negro for the duties devolved upon him for the government of himself and those you have placed under him, and that it is only a just retribution upon his former master who had so long oppressed him.

  This retort, which has been so successful in prejudicing the ignorant and thoughtless and so effectively used in persuading your partisan followers, will not avail at the bar of statesmanship. The very statement refutes itself. It matters not now who was or was not responsible for slavery, whom it injured, or how deep the degradation and wrong it wrought. The question for the statesman is and always was, in view of the facts, what are the demands of patriotism? So far as the freedmen were concerned in introducing them into the governing force of the country, as a part thereof, it was a question of their fitness for the duties imposed and no other consideration should have entered into its determination. No partisan consideration should have been allowed to divert the mind from the real question involved.

  Are they according to the fundamental principles that underlie our system, in the broad light of our civilization, qualified according to the requirement and experience of enlightened statesmanship to govern themselves as a race, as a people? Nay more, is it safe and wise, considering only the true interest of the Republic, to intrust them not only with the government of themselves, but with the government of their former masters, their wives and children and all the vast and varied interests of state? None but the merest partisan and demagogue could pretend that by an act of legislation the negro race can be invested all at once with those high qualities of statesmanship, that self-control, that moderation of conduct, that consideration for individual rights, those sensibilities and refinements, that sense of reciprocal duties and obligations, and those exalted ideas of government which, whatever the white race now possesses, whatever it now is, have been the growth and accumulations of ages and have sprung from and are a part of our civilization.

  In making these suggestions I would not disparage or discourage the negro race. I would not deprive them of any legal right. Nor would I throw any impediment in the way of their growth and development as men. They should have a fair field and an equal chance in the race of life—a full, free opportunity to overcome all natural or acquired prejudices against them, and to demonstrate if they can that they are capable of attaining to the high civilization of the white race. To put them in places of trust, of responsibility, and power without any qualification, without any preparation, is simply to do them the greatest possible injury and at the same time, whenever it is done, to endanger our system of republican government. This has been done already to the great detriment of both the black and white races.

  No man or community of men, no race or people on the face of the earth, ever was thrust forward by any other people or race, so far as legislation can put them forward, so rapidly and so regardless of the welfare of both races as the white race has the negro of America. I do not believe there is a candid man, certainly no statesman, who will now deny that the investiture of the great mass of ignorant, stupid negroes with the power of government was a mistake. It would have been far better, in my judgment, for the black race, for its future as well as its present well-being, to have required some previous preparation, some educational qualification as a condition to the exercise of the right of suffrage. It would have been more in consonance with our system, the corner-stone of which we profess is the intelligence of the people, to have made intelligence the condition of the exercise of the exalted privilege and duty of governing in common with the white race. This, I believe, would have stimulated the black man to greater efforts and given him a better appreciation of the privilege itself. It would have modified his conceit and been an inducement to acquaint himself with the duties he would take upon himself; it would have moderated his demands for place and power by a better comprehension of the great responsibility imposed, and it would have made him far less offensive and obnoxious to those whose conviction and prejudice were against the equality the law conferred. In any and every view that can be taken of the subject it would have been better both for the negro and the white man, for the whole country, to have had some period of probation and preparation, some learning and knowledge of the science of government as a prerequisite to its administration, and as some assurance of his fidelity to and capability for the performance of the duties required.

  Sir, I will not deny it must be admitted on all hands, that the negro has not been justly and fairly dealt by. He has not been sincerely and candidly treated by those who have made the greatest professions of being his friends. His present nor his future welfare nor any of his greatest interests as a man and a citizen of the Republic in his relations with the white race have been much considered in the legislation claimed to be in his interest and for his advantage. He has been made the sport and convenience of the republican party ever since his emancipation; he has been a sort of shuttlecock cast about for the amusement or advantage of those who have made him believe they were his special guardians and friends. The right or privilege of suffrage, for which so much is demanded of him by those who still for their own purposes champion his cause and claim to be par excellence his friends, was not conferred because of love for him or his race or any real advantage it was believed it would be to him, but because it was supposed it would add to and strengthen their political party and prolong their power. Herein was committed the grand error, mistake, blunder, or crime, whichever it should be called, upon the negro question. Both he and the State and all the most vital interests of both have been sacrificed and made subservient to the supposed interests of a mere political party.

  The black man has been literally forced into his present attitude in relation to the white race; forced, too, without knowledge or any comprehension of what is to be the result. He is little to be blamed for the condition in which he now is or the circumstances that surround him. He has been and is being “ground as between the upper and the nether millstone” by two antagonistic and opposing forces. He is no longer loved by either except for the use that can be made of him, and his welfare is at all times sacrificed to the paramount interest of party. The pretended affection of the republican party has been his delusion and snare. It deluded him into faith in its friendship and into its support, and thereby into sharp and hostile antagonism with those among whom he was reared and must live, and with whom every interest of happiness and prosperity demands he should be friends. It deluded him into the giving up of a real for a pretended friendship, and caused him to sacrifice the toleration and encouragement of those whose interests were in common with his own for those who had nothing in common with him and who could never care for him except in so far as he strengthened them in the control of political and partisan power. It induced him to separate from a
nd antagonize his natural ally and friend in an unnatural and partisan alliance with men who had no higher motive than to use him for their own selfish purposes, regardless of the consequences to him or his race.

  Mr. Speaker, it would be interesting and instructive, if we had time, to commence at the beginning of the history of the republican party upon the negro question and note its development and progress step by step down to the present time. I think we should be able to see and comprehend the motive by which it has been actuated and controlled. We should see how at one time or another it has disavowed with indignant denial most or all of the measures it has afterward advocated and enforced. We should see that party exigencies and party considerations alone have controlled it in the most of what it has done. We would then see how little the welfare and advantage of the colored race had entered into the consideration or controlled its action in relation thereto.