The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress Page: 356

                                
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THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE.
January 22,
free; $3,000,000,000 have been expended in
setting them free. In the northern States, for
the purpose of carrying on the war, we have run
up a county, township, and State indebtedness
of$1,500,000,000 or $2,000,Q00,Q00more. Five
thousand million dollars have been expended;
five hundred thousand brave white soldiers who
left their families to go into the war; men with-
out property; men whose hearts glowed with
patriotism; have been sacrificed on the altar of
negro philanthropy. Yet the ruling party -is not
content with robbing the South of millions of
dollars invested in slaves and nearly mining the
country to free them, but they seek to inflict a
disgrace upon thc_ Anglo-Saxon race of the
South by coercing them to bestow upon these
slaves political rights after they have been taken
away, from their masters without compensation.
I thi&k it time that we should begin to le-
gislate for white people. What arc the ob-
ject and intent of this bill ? Simply to force
upon an unwilling population, in this indirect
manner-, negro suffrage, when the States of the
gentlemen advocating this measure have not
adopted negro suffrage. The gallant little State
of Connecticut has repudiated negro suffrage
by sixor seveuthousand majority. Why should
you undertake, in this way, to force the doc-
trine of unqualified negro suffrage upon the
southern States when your own Slates repudi-
ated it? I have too much rcvercuce for the
fathers of our Government to give my approval
to such a measure. 1 have not forgotten that
our Government was established for the benefit
of the white population of the country.
I have not forgotten it was white men who
put down the tyranny of England and estab-
lished the principles of liberty on this continent.
I have not forgotten it was the white men of the
northern States who went in thousands to the
banks of the Mississippi to drive back the in-
vaders from our soil. Yet when a soldier who
fought for his country happened to be under
twenty-one years of age, or unnaturalized, lie
was not. permitted to vote, while the, whole class
of negroes must have that right until they adopt
it and puss such laws as will give unqualified
suffrage to the negro race.
Jt will not do to attempt to deny what is the
object of this" hill. This amendment is to con-
stitute one of the barriers, to l>e devised by the
committee of lil'leen, to keep the South out of the
Union. Itisone of the points of that commit-
tee. Its object, is to keep the Slates out. hot
us extend to (he southern people the hand of
fellowship, andsoletus act. that they will regard
tlie Constitution anil the Union more sacredly
than ever before. Let us look upon lliem as the
father looked upon the prodigal son. Lotus look
over their violations of law, and lake them again
into full fellowship. I n this way we will render
the Union stronger than ever; and those south-
ern States will then constitute, as they have done
in the past, a bright galaxy upon the flag of our
country.
The southern people are entitled, in my judg-
ment, to representation without such qualifica-
tions as much as the northern men. When An-
drew Johnson appointed southern men provis-
ional governors of the southern States lie did
it in a spirit of Chn.stianily and humanity. 1
beseech you not to pa-w legislation of this kind,
because it will engender a spirit that will drive
every sentiment of Union from the southern
States. It will inflict an injury upon both the
northern and southern Stales. It will diminish
the representation of New York, Pennsylvania,
and .New Jersey, because it will exclude from
thebasis of representation the negro population
of those States.
[Here the hammer fell.] ,
Mr. CONKUNTG. Mr. Speaker:
_ "Representatives and direct taxes sh-itt bo appor-
tioned among the several States which may be in-
ciuac't withm this Union accordiugtothciviespective
numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the
whole number of free persons, including those bnmid
to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians
not taxed, three fifths 6f all other persons."—Consti-
tution, art. 1, sec. 2.
This is the provision by which apportionment
and representation have till now been regulated
in the United States. It is one of the compro-
mises of the Constitution.
Strange as it may seem to the gentleman from
New Jersey, [Mr. Eogers,] itowes its existence
to the same principle asserted in the pending
amendment. What is that principle? That
political representation does not belong to those
who have no political existence.
The government of a free political society
belongs to its members, and does not belong to
others. If others are allowed to share in its
control, they do so by express concession, not
by right.
It was this principle which rendered neces-
sary such a provision as I have read. It was
this principle which brought that provision into
our national charter.
The slaves of the South were not members
of that political society which formed the Con-
stitution of the United States. They were with-
out personal liberty, and therein they were
without a natural right, not a political right; but
they wore also without political rights, and
therefore they were not members of the political
community.
From this it followed that they were not to be
represented as members.
From this it followed that political power was
not to bo apportioned by treating them as po-
litical persons.
Natural persons they were, producers they
were, and the product of their labor was the
proper subject of taxation.
But direct taxes and representation ought to
be distributed uniformly among the members
of a free Government. All alike should boar
the burdens; all alike should share the benefits.
Here was a clear principle, palpably right
and easy and certain in its application. It
applied itself. It applied itself universally, and
covered the whole case with only one excep-
tion.
I do not treat "Indians not taxed" as an
exception, because uncivilized Indians in their
tribal state were so far beyond the scope within
which (he. Constitution was to act that they were
named only to prevent possible mistake as to
the meaning of language.
Neither was a lixed exception, or even an
obstacle, found in the ease of aliens or unnat-
uralized foreigners.
The Constitution was to leave to the States
and to give fo the Congress power to clothe
foreigners with full political rights as fast as
they should lie prepared to assume them. The
only question remaining, therefore, as fo (hem,
was how they should he treated during the in-
terval between llieir arrival and their naturali-
zation, during' their political nonage.
This question was disposed of in the liberal-
ity in which the Government was conceived.
The political disabilityof aliens was not for this
purpose counted%t all against them, because it
was certain to bo temporary, and they were
admitted at once into the basis of apportion-
ment..
The slave alone was the anomaly and the
nondescript..
A man, and not a man. In flesh and blood,
alive; politically, dead.
A native, ail inhabitant, a producer, but with-
outrocognizcd political attribute orprerngative;
the representative in the system of nothing but
value.
What could bo done with him? He was
nowhere.
It could not be maintained by the slavehold-
ing States that slaves wore persons, to be rep-
resented. It could not be maintained by the
free States that slaves were persons to be taxed.
For these purposes slaves were excluded alto-
gether by the principle 011 which the Govern-
ment was built. They were not embraced with-
in it because they had no political standing in
the States wherein they were held. Without
some special provision, therefore, they would
have been altogether ignored.
Taxes,however,were desirable on the one side
and representation on the other, and for mere
convenience a compromise was invented for the
sake of both.
A purely arbitrary agreement was made and
inserted in the Constitution, an agreement with
nothing to support it but the consent of the par-
tics, based upon the facts as they then sttfod.
It was agreed in substance that the free people
of all the States should be counted alike, and-
should all have their fair share of power as thus
ascertained, and that then the free people of the
slaveholding States should have as much power
beside as would be measured by counting every
slave as three fifths of a ''persondirectta^es
to follow the same rule. The power thus agreed
upon could not be exercised-- by the fractional-
persons themselves, but as somebody else owned,
them, it was so arranged that that same some-
body else should own the political power also.
The covenant, whether wise or not, was op-
erative as long as there was anything for it- to
operate upon.
That time is p.ast. The provision has become
impotent. The fall of slavery has superseded
it. We have nothing now to rely upon ill.its
place but the residue of the second section of
the first article of the Constitution. That, sec-
tion, owing to the rupture of the technical tie
of slavery, would, as it stands, work out results
now which, when the Constitution was made,
were condemned by the judgment of all.
'' Free persons'' was the term employed to
describe all who had political rights and stand-
ing, because only slaves had neither.
But now a new anomaly exists. Four mil-
lion people are suddenly among us not bound-
to any one, and yet not clothed with any polit-
ical rights. They are not slaves, but they are
not, in apolitical sense, "persons."
No figment of slaveryremains with which to.
spell out a right in somebody else to wield for-
them a power which they may not wield them-
selves. This was one of the appurtenances of
property in-man, and has been extinguished
by constitutional amendment, if it was not-de-
stroyed before.
This emancipated multitude has no political
status.
Emancipation vitalizes only natural rights,
not political rights.
Enfranchisement alone carries with it polit-
ical rights, and these emancipated millions are
no more enfranchised now than when they were
slaves.
They never had political power. Their mas-
ters had a fraction of power as masters. But
there are no masters now.
There are no slaves now. The whole rela-
tionship in which the power originated and ex-
isted is gone. Does this fraction of power still
survive? If it does, ❖hat shall become of it?
Where is it to go? •
We are told the blacks are unfit to wield
even a fraction of power, and must not have*
it. That answers the whole question. If the
answer be true, it is the end of controversy.
There is no place logically for this power to go
save to the blacks; if they are unfit to have it,
the power would not exist. It is a power
astray,-without a rightful owner. It should bo
resumed by the whole nation at once.
It should not exist; it docs not exist. Thig
fractional power is extinct.
A moral earthquake has turned fractions into
units, and units into ciphers. Tf a black man
counts at all now, he counts five fifths of a man,
not three fifths. Revolutions have 110 suehfrac-
tions in their arithmetic; war and humanity
join hands to blot them out.
Four millions, therefore, and not three fifths
of four millions, are to be reckoned in herenow,
and all these four millions are, and are to'be,
we are told, unfit for political existence.
Did the framers of the Constitution ever dream
of this? Never, very clearly. Ourfatherstrusted
to gradual and voluntary emancipation, which
would go hand in hand with education and en-
franchisement. They never peered into the
bloody epoch when four million fetters would
be at once melted off in the fires of war. They •
never saw such a vision as we see. Four fail-
lions, each a Caspar Hauser, long shut up in
darkness, and suddenly led out iMgptSe' "fell
flash of noon, and each, we are tolcif too blind-