156 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



December, 1866, they were confronted by the 

 fact that every proposition of compromise had 

 been rejected; every half-way measure had 

 been spurned by the rebels themselves, and they 

 had nothing left to do but to begin the work 

 of reconstruction themselves; and in February, 

 1867, Congress for the first time entered upon 

 the execution of the guarantee provided for in 

 the Constitution by the passage of the first re- 

 construction law. A supplementary bill was 

 found necessary in March, another one in July, 

 and I believe another is found necessary at this 

 time ; but the power is with Congress. What- 

 ever it shall deem necessary, whether it be in 

 the way of colored suffrage, whether it be in 

 the way of military power whatever Congress 

 shall deem necessary in the execution of this 

 guarantee, is conclusive upon the courts, upon 

 every State, and upon the people of this nation. 



" Sir, when Congress entered upon this work 

 it had become apparent to all men that loyal 

 republican State governments could not be 

 erected and maintained upon the basis of the 

 white population. We had tried them. Con- 

 gress had attempted the work of reconstruc- 

 tion through the constitutional amendment by 

 leaving the suffrage with the white men, and 

 by leaving with the white people of the South 

 the question as to when the colored people 

 should exercise the right of suffrage, if ever; 

 but when it was found that those white men 

 were as rebellious as ever, that they hated this 

 Government more bitterly than ever ; when it 

 was found that they persecuted the loyal men, 

 both white and black, in their midst; when it 

 was found that Northern men who had gone 

 down there were driven out by social tyranny, 

 by a thousand annoyances, by the insecurity 

 of life and property, then it became apparent 

 to all men of intelligence that reconstruction 

 could not take place upon the basis of the 

 white population, and something else must be 

 done. 



" tfow, sir, what was there left to do ? Either 

 we must hold these people continually by mili- 

 tary power, or we must use such machinery 

 upon such a new basis as would enable loyal 

 republican State governments to be raised up ; 

 and in the last resort, and I will say Congress 

 waited long, the nation waited long, experience 

 had to come to the rescue of reason before the 

 thing was done in the last resort, and as the 

 last thing to be done, Congress determined to 

 dig through all the rubbish, dig through the 

 soil and the shifting sands, and go down to the 

 eternal rock, and there, upon the basis of the 

 everlasting principle of equal and exact jus- 

 tice to all men, we have planted the column of 

 reconstruction; and, sir, it will arise slowly 

 but surely, and 'the gates of hell shall not 

 prevail against it.' Whatever dangers we 

 apprehend from the introduction of the right 

 of suffrage of seven hundred thousand men, 

 just emerged from slavery, were put aside in 

 the presence of a greater danger. Why, sir, 

 let me say frankly to my friend from Wiscon- 



sin that I approached universal colored suf- 

 frage in the South reluctantly. Not because I 

 adhered to the miserable dogma that this was 

 the white man's Government, but because I 

 entertained fears about at once intrusting a 

 large body of men just from slavery, to whom 

 education had been denied by law, to whom 

 the marriage relation had been denied, who 

 had been made the basest and most abject 

 slaves, with political power." 



Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, followed in reply, 

 saying: "The honorable member places the 

 authority to pass the bills upon your table ex- 

 clusively under that clause in the Constitution 

 which provides that 



The United States shall guarantee to every State in 

 this Union a republican form of government. 



" He renounces (and I was glad, though not 

 surprised to hear it), and he almost denounces, 

 the doctrine that Congress or any department 

 of the Government can wander from the Con- 

 stitution for the purpose of finding any author- 

 ity outside for any measures which it may think 

 proper to adopt. He relies, therefore, exclu- 

 sively upon the clause of which I have spoken. 

 The logical acumen of the honorable member 

 has evidently taught him, in his careful study, 

 for which he deserves the credit that every 

 member deserves who appears before this 

 body prepared, understanding the matter of 

 which he professes to speak he must have 

 discovered, in his meditations in his closet, that 

 he would be unable to invoke the aid of that 

 clause for the support of these measures un- 

 less he could interpolate into the clause a word 

 not to be found in it. I do not mean by using 

 the word ' interpolate ' to say any thing offen- 

 sive to the honorable member, for that I am 

 sure he knows I am incapable of. I could not 

 do it without warring against my own feelings. 

 What I mean to say is, that he believed it to 

 be necessary for the purpose of his proposition 

 to read the clause as if it contained a word 

 not to be found in it. He therefore reads it as 

 if our fathers had written it, that the United 

 States shall guarantee to every State in this 

 nnion a 'loyal' republican form of govern- 

 ment. That there is no such phrase to be 

 found in the clause the honorable member 

 conceded ; but he placed his right to consider 

 it as virtually within the clause upon the 

 ground that loyalty is inherent, and must 

 therefore be considered as existing both in re- 

 lation to that clause and every other part of 

 the instrument. 



"Mr. President, unless I am greatly mis- 

 taken, the honorable member is evidently in 

 error. When the Constitution was being framed, 

 there were thirteen States, each of which was 

 then sovereign ; each of which, not only in the 

 judgment of its own people, but in the judg- 

 ment of all the other States, was republican in 

 form. That was a time when each, therefore, 

 was to be considered in that particular as stand- 

 ing upon the same footing with all the rest. 

 The object of the Convention was to preserve 



