The Clansman. Jr. Thomas Dixon
years, haven’t you!” sneered the Commoner. “What right had you under the Constitution to declare war against a ‘sovereign’ State? To invade one for coercion? To blockade a port? To declare slaves free? To suspend the writ of habeas corpus? To create the State of West Virginia by the consent of two states, one of which was dead, and the other one of which lived in Ohio? By what authority have you appointed military governors in the ‘sovereign’ States of Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana? Why trim the hedge and lie about it? We, too, are revolutionists, and you are our executive. The Constitution sustained and protected slavery. It was ‘a league with death and a covenant with hell,’ and our flag ‘a polluted rag!’ ”
“In the stress of war,” said the President, with a far-away look, “it was necessary that I do things as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy to save the Union which I have no right to do now that the Union is saved and its Constitution preserved. My first duty is to re-establish the Constitution as our supreme law over every inch of our soil.”
“The Constitution be d——d!” hissed the old man. “It was the creation, both in letter and spirit, of the slaveholders of the South.”
“Then the world is their debtor, and their work is a monument of imperishable glory to them and to their children. I have sworn to preserve it!”
“We have outgrown the swaddling clothes of a babe. We will make new constitutions!”
“ ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’ ” softly spoke the tall, self-contained man.
For the first time the old leader winced. He had long ago exhausted the vocabulary of contempt on the President, his character, ability, and policy. He felt as a shock the first impression of supreme authority with which he spoke. The man he had despised had grown into the great constructive statesman who would dispute with him every inch of ground in the attainment of his sinister life purpose.
His hatred grew more intense as he realized the prestige and power with which he was clothed by his mighty office.
With an effort he restrained his anger, and assumed an argumentative tone.
“Can’t you see that your so-called States are now but conquered provinces? That North Carolina and other waste territories of the United States are unfit to associate with civilized communities?”
“We fought no war of conquest,” quietly urged the President, “but one of self-preservation as an indissoluble Union. No State ever got out of it, by the grace of God and the power of our arms. Now that we have won, and established for all time its unity, shall we stultify ourselves by declaring we were wrong? These States must be immediately restored to their rights, or we shall betray the blood we have shed. There are no ‘conquered provinces’ for us to spoil. A nation cannot make conquest of its own territory.”
“But we are acting outside the Constitution,” interrupted Stoneman.
“Congress has no existence outside the Constitution,” was the quick answer.
The old Commoner scowled, and his beetling brows hid for a moment his eyes. His keen intellect was catching its first glimpse of the intellectual grandeur of the man with whom he was grappling. The facility with which he could see all sides of a question, and the vivid imagination which lit his mental processes, were a revelation. We always underestimate the men we despise.
“Why not out with it?” cried Stoneman, suddenly changing his tack. “You are determined to oppose negro suffrage?”
“I have suggested to Governor Hahn of Louisiana to consider the policy of admitting the more intelligent and those who served in the war. It is only a suggestion. The State alone has the power to confer the ballot.”
“But the truth is this little ‘suggestion’ of yours is only a bone thrown to radical dogs to satisfy our howlings for the moment! In your soul of souls you don’t believe in the equality of man if the man under comparison be a negro?”
“I believe that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will forever forbid their living together on terms of political and social equality. If such be attempted, one must go to the wall.”
“Very well, pin the Southern white man to the wall. Our party and the Nation will then be safe.”
“That is to say, destroy African slavery and establish white slavery under negro masters! That would be progress with a vengeance.”
A grim smile twitched the old man’s lips as he said:
“Yes, your prim conservative snobs and male waiting-maids in Congress went into hysterics when I armed the negroes. Yet the heavens have not fallen.”
“True. Yet no more insane blunder could now be made than any further attempt to use these negro troops. There can be no such thing as restoring this Union to its basis of fraternal peace with armed negroes, wearing the uniform of this Nation, tramping over the South, and rousing the basest passions of the freedmen and their former masters. General Butler, their old commander, is now making plans for their removal, at my request. He expects to dig the Panama Canal with these black troops.”
“Fine scheme that—on a par with your messages to Congress asking for the colonization of the whole negro race!”
“It will come to that ultimately,” said the President firmly. “The negro has cost us $5,000,000,000, the desolation of ten great States, and rivers of blood. We can well afford a few million dollars more to effect a permanent settlement of the issue. This is the only policy on which Seward and I have differed——”
“Then Seward was not an utterly hopeless fool. I’m glad to hear something to his credit,” growled the old Commoner.
“I have urged the colonization of the negroes, and I shall continue until it is accomplished. My emancipation proclamation was linked with this plan. Thousands of them have lived in the North for a hundred years, yet not one is the pastor of a white church, a judge, a governor, a mayor, or a college president. There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks. We can have no inferior servile class, peon or peasant. We must assimilate or expel. The American is a citizen king or nothing. I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into our social and political life as our equal. A mulatto citizenship would be too dear a price to pay even for emancipation.”
“Words have no power to express my loathing for such twaddle!” cried Stoneman, snapping his great jaws together and pursing his lips with contempt.
“If the negro were not here would we allow him to land?” the President went on, as if talking to himself. “The duty to exclude carries the right to expel. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro in the tropics, and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. It was the fear of the black tragedy behind emancipation that led the South into the insanity of secession. We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable. The Nation cannot now exist half white and half black, any more than it could exist half slave and half free.”
“Yet ‘God hath made of one blood all races,’ ” quoted the cynic with a sneer.
“Yes—but finish the sentence—‘and fixed the bounds of their habitation.’ God never meant that the negro should leave his habitat or the white man invade his home. Our violation of this law is written in two centuries of shame and blood. And the tragedy will not be closed until the black man is restored to his home.”
“I marvel that the minions of slavery elected Jeff Davis their chief with so much better material at hand!”
“His election was a tragic and superfluous blunder. I am the President of the United States, North and South,” was the firm reply.
“Particularly the South!”