History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. William Horatio Barnes
States which accord them the fewest political privileges; and in those States which have granted them the right of suffrage they seem to see but few attractions. In Maryland there were, in 1860, 83,942 free people of color; in Pennsylvania, 56,949; in Ohio, 36,673. In neither of those States were they voters. In the State of New York, where they could not vote except under a property qualification, which excluded the most of them, they numbered 49,005. But in Massachusetts, where they did then and do now vote, there were but 9,602. And in all New England, (except Connecticut, where they are not allowed to vote,) there were at the last census but 16,084. If the American negro, in his desire and capacity for self-government, bore any resemblance to the Caucasian, he would distinguish himself by emigration; and, spurning the soil which had enslaved his race, he would seek equality and independence in a more congenial clime. But the spirit of independence and hardy manhood which brought the Puritans to the shores of a New England wilderness he lacks. He will not even go to Massachusetts now, although, instead of a stormy ocean, his barrier is only an imaginary State line, and instead of a howling wilderness, he is invited to a land resounding with the myriad voices of the industrial arts, and instead of painted savages with uplifted tomahawks, he has reason to expect a crowd of male and female philanthropists, with beaming faces and outstretched hands, to welcome him and call him brother. There will he find lecturers to prove his equality, and statesmen to claim him as an associate ruler in the land. If he cares for these things, or is fit for them, why does he linger outside upon the very borders of his political Eden? Why does he not enter into it—avoiding Connecticut in his route—and take possession? The fact is, that the fine political theories set up in his behalf are not in accordance with the natural instinct of the negro, which, in this particular, is truer than the philosophy of his white advisers.
"They are but superficial thinkers who imagine that the organic differences of races can be obliterated by the education of the schools. The qualities of races are perpetuated by descent, and are the result of historical influences reaching far back into the generations of the past. An educated negro is a negro still. The cunning of the chisel of a Canova could not make an enduring Corinthian column out of a block of anthracite; not because of its color, but on account of the structure of its substance. He might indeed, with infinite pains, give it the form, but he could not impart to it the strength and adhesion of particles required to enable it to brave the elements, and the temple it was made to support would soon crumble into ruin."
Mr. Schofield, of Pennsylvania, said: "The cheapest elevator and best moralizer for an oppressed and degraded class is to inspire them with self-respect, with the belief in the possibility of their elevation. Bestow the elective franchise upon the colored population of this District, and you awaken the hope and ambition of the whole race throughout the country. Hitherto punishment has been the only incentive to sobriety and industry furnished these people by American law. They were kept too low to feel disgrace, and reward was inconsistent with the theory of 'service owed.' Let us try now the persuasive power of wages and protection. If colored suffrage is still considered an experiment, this District is a good place in which to try it. The same objections do not exist here that are urged on behalf of some of the States. No constitutional question intervenes. Here, at least, Congress is supreme. The law can be passed, and if it is found to be bad, a majority can repeal it. The colored race is too small in numbers here to endanger the supremacy of the white people, but large and loyal enough to counteract to some extent disloyal proclivities.
"Both the precept and practice of our fathers refute the allegation that this is exclusively a white man's government. If we can not now consent to so slight a recognition, as proposed by this bill, of the great underlying theory of our Government, as declared and practiced by our fathers, we are thrown back upon that new and monstrous doctrine, that the five millions of our colored population, and their posterity forever, have no rights that a white man is bound to respect.
"Who pronounces this crushing sentence? The political South. And what is this South? The Southern master and his Northern minion. Have these people wronged the South? Have they filled it with violence, outrage, and murder? No, sir; they are remarkably gentle, patient, and respectful. Have they despoiled its wealth or diminished its grandeur? No, sir; their unpaid toil has made the material South. They removed the forests, cleared the fields, built the dwellings, churches, colleges, cities, highways, railroads, and canals. Why, then, does the South hate and persecute these people? Because it has wronged them. Injustice always hates its victim. They are forced to look to the North for justice. And what is the North? Not the latitude of frosts; not New England and the States that border on the lakes, the Mississippi, and the Pacific. The geographical is lost in the political meaning of the word. The North, in a political sense, means justice, liberty, and union, and in the order in which I have named them. Jefferson defined this 'North' when he wrote 'all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This North has no geographical boundaries. It embraces the friends of freedom in every quarter of this great republic. Many of its bravest champions hail from the geographical South. The North, that did not fear the slave power in its prime, in the day of its political strength and patronage, when it commanded alike the nation and the mob, and for the same cruel purpose, will not be intimidated by its expiring maledictions around this capital. The North must pass this bill to vindicate its sincerity and its courage. The slave power has already learned that the North is terrible in war, and forgiving and gentle in peace; let its crushed and mangled victims learn from the passage of this bill, that the justice of the North, unlimited by lines of latitude, unlimited by color or race, slumbereth not."
Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, followed: "In preparing to begin the work of reconstructing the grandest of human governments, shattered for a time by treason, and in endeavoring to ascertain what we should do, and how and when it should be done, I have consulted no popular impulse. Groping my way through the murky political atmosphere that has prevailed for more than thirty years, I have seated myself at the feet of the fathers of our country, that I might, as far as my suggestions would go, make them in accordance with the principles of those who constructed our Government. I can make no suggestion for the improvement of the primary principles or general structure of our Government, and I would heal its wounds so carefully that it should descend to posterity unstained and unmarred as it came, under the guidance of Providence, from the hands of those who fashioned it.
[Illustration: Hon. William D. Kelley, representative from
Pennsylvania.]
"For whom do we ask this legislation? In 1860, according to the census, there were fourteen thousand three hundred and sixteen colored people in this District, and we ask this legislation for the male adults of that number. Are they in rags and filth and degradation? The tax-books of the District will tell you that they pay taxes on $1,250,000 worth of real estate, held within the limits of this District. On one block, on which they pay taxes on fifty odd thousand dollars, there are but two colored freeholders who have not bought themselves out of slavery. One of them has bought as many as eight persons beside himself—a wife and seven children. Coming to freedom in manhood, mortgaged for a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars as his own price, he has earned and carried to the Southern robber thousands of dollars, the price extorted for his wife and children, and is now a freeholder in this District. They have twenty-one churches, which they own, and which they maintain at an annual cost of over twenty thousand dollars. Their communing members number over forty-three hundred. In their twenty-two Sunday-schools they gather on each Sabbath over three thousand American children of African descent. They maintain, sir, to the infamous disgrace of the American Congress and people, thirty-three day schools, eight of which are maintained exclusively by contributions from colored citizens of the District; the remainder by their contributions, eked out by contributions from the generous people of the North; and every dollar of their million and a quarter dollars of real estate and personal property is taxed for schools to educate the children of the white people of the District, the fathers of many of those children having been absent during the war fighting for the Confederacy and against our constitutional flag. Who shall reproach them with being poor and ignorant while Congress, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the District, has, till last year, robbed them day by day, and barred the door of the public school against them? Such reproach does not lie in the white man's mouth; at any rate, no member of the Democratic party ought to utter it."
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