History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. William Horatio Barnes
Bingham.—"I understood the gentleman to say, that the colored race had failed to strike for their rights during the late rebellion. I wish to remind the gentleman of the fact, which ought to bring a blush to the cheek of every American citizen, that at the beginning of this great struggle, a distinguished general, who, I have no doubt, received the political support of the gentleman himself for the Presidency, and who, then at the head of an American army within the Commonwealth of Virginia, issued his proclamation, as general in command of the army, notifying the insurgents in arms against the Constitution that, if their slaves rose in revolt for their liberty, he, Major-General McClellan, by the whole force of the army at his command, would crush them with an iron hand. Yet the gentleman gets up here to-day, after a record of that sort, to cast censure upon this people because they did not strike for their liberties against the combined armies of the republic and the armies of treason!"
Mr. Chanler.—"My honorable friend from Ohio may have made a good point against General McClellan, but he has made none against me. I admit that they have made successful insurrections, but my argument was not to the effect that the negro race was not capable of the bloodiest deeds. I avoided entering into that question. I asserted that they had made successful insurrection; that they had held the white race under their heel in Hayti and St. Domingo. I would only say, with regard to this question of race, that I assert there is no record of the black race having proved its capacity for self-government as a race; that they have never struck a blow for freedom, and maintained their freedom and independence as individuals when free. I appeal to history, and to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Bingham], and I speak as a student of history, and the representative of a race whose proudest boast is that their capacity for self-government is the only charter of their liberty. I assail no race; I assail no man. I have taken the greatest pains to prove that the inalienable rights of the black man are as sacred to me as those inalienable rights I have received from my God. If the gentleman misunderstood me, I hope he will accept this explanation. If I have not met his question, I will now yield the floor to him to continue."
Mr. Bingham.—"And I continue thus far, that the gentleman's speech certainly has relation to the rights of the black man within the Republic of the United States. What he may say of their history outside of the jurisdiction of this country, it is not very important for me to take notice of. But inasmuch as the gentleman has seen fit, in his response to what I said, to refer to the testimony of history, I will bear witness now, by the authority of history, that this very race of which he speaks is the only race now existing upon this planet that ever hewed their way out of the prison-house of chattel slavery to the sunlight of personal liberty by their own unaided arm. So much for that part of the gentleman's argument as relates to history."
Mr. Chanler.—"Does the gentleman allude now to what has been done in other lands than this? I ask the question because he says he does not like me to go outside of the jurisdiction of this country, and I therefore ask him not to go too far into Africa."
Mr. Bingham.—"I am not in Africa. I refer to what the gentleman referred to himself. The insurrection in St. Domingo, I say, stands without a parallel in the history of any race now living on this earth, and I challenge the gentleman to refute that statement from history."
Mr. Chanler.—"That is admitted."
Mr. Bingham.—"That is admitted. Then I want to know, with a fact like that conceded, what sort of logic, what sort of force, what sort of reason, what sort of justice is there in the remark of the gentleman made here in a deliberative assembly touching the question of the personal enfranchisement of the black race, when he says in the statement here, right in the face of that fact, that they only are entitled to their liberty who strike the blow for and maintain their liberty? They did strike the blow in Hayti, and did maintain their liberty there. They struck such a blow for liberty there as no other race of men under like circumstances ever before struck, now represented by any organized community upon this planet; and that the gentleman conceded. And yet this sort of argument is to be adduced here as reason why these people in the District of Columbia should not receive the consideration of this House, and be protected in their rights as men. If the gentleman's remark is not adduced for that purpose, then it is altogether foreign to our inquiry. If the gentleman can assign any other reason for the introduction of any such argument as that, I should like to hear him."
Mr. Chanler.—"I merely wish to say, in reply to the gentleman, that I have read history a little further back. I remember when the British fleet and the British army held out a similar threat to the white race of this country. The proclamation of General McClellan did keep down the negroes; and this fact proves what I assert—that they are a race to be kept under. No race capable of achieving its liberty by its own efforts, would have listened for one moment to the paper threats of all the generals in the world. The negroes listened to McClellan, and they shrank behind the bush. They are bushmen in Africa. They are a dependent race, unwilling—I assert it from the record of history—unwilling to assert their independence at the risk of their lives. By their own efforts they never have attained, and I firmly believe they never will attain, their liberty."
Mr. Bingham replied: "I desire to say to the gentleman from New York, when he talks of being a 'student of history,' that before the tribunal of history the facts are not against me nor against the colored race. I beg leave to say to the gentleman that these people have borne themselves as bravely, as well, and, I may add, as wisely during the great contest just closed, as any people to whom he can point, situated in like circumstances, at any period of the world's history. They were in chains when the rebellion broke out. They constituted but one-sixth of the whole body of the people. By the terms of the Constitution of the United States, if they lifted a hand in the assertion of their right to freedom, they were liable that moment to be crushed by the combined power of the Republic, called out, in pursuance of the very letter of the Constitution, 'to suppress insurrection.' Yet, notwithstanding the fact that their whole living generation and the generations before them, running back two centuries, had been enslaved and brutalized, reduced to the sad and miserable condition of chattels, which, for want of a better name, we call a 'slave'—an article of merchandise, a thing of trade, with no acknowledged rights in the present, and denied even the hope of a heritage in the great hereafter—yet, sir, the moment that the word 'Liberty' ran along your ranks, the moment that the word 'Emancipation' was emblazoned upon your banners, those men who, with their ancestors, had been enslaved through five generations, rose as one man to stand by this republic, the last hope of oppressed humanity upon the earth, until they numbered one hundred and seventy-five thousand arrayed in arms under your banners, doing firmly, unshrinkingly, and defiantly their full share in securing the final victory of our arms. I have said this much in defense of men who had the manhood, in the hour of the nation's trial, to strike for the flag and the unity of the republic in the tempest of the great conflict, and to stand, where brave men only could stand, on the field of poised battle, where the earthquake and the fire led the charge. Sir, I am not mistaken; and the record of history to which I have referred does not, as the gentleman affirms it does, make against me."
Mr. Grinnell, of Iowa, in reply to Mr. Chanler, said: "He [Mr. Chanler] proceeds to say that they are now, as a class, dependent as when they were brought from their native wilds in Africa. Sir, I believe if the gentleman were master of all languages, if he were to attempt to put into a sentence the quintessence, the high-wines, and sublimation of an untruth, he could not have more concentrated his language into a libel.
"What is the fact, sir? It is perfectly notorious that these four million slaves have not only taken care of themselves amid all the ingenious impediments which tyrants could impose, but they have borne upon their stalwart shoulders their masters, millions of people, for a century. Why, sir, it seemed as impossible for a man to swim the Atlantic with Mount Atlas upon his back, or make harmonious base to the thunders of heaven. But these men have achieved the world's wonder—coming out from the tortures of slavery, from the prison-house, untainted with dishonor or crime, and out of the war free, noble, brave, and more worthy of their friends, always true to the flag.
"Mr. Speaker, it was in fable that a man pointed a lion to the picture which represented the king of the forest prostrate, with a man's foot on his neck, and asked what he thought of that. The reply was, 'Lions have no painters.' For days the unblushing apostles of sham Democracy have in this House drawn pictures of the ignorance