History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States. William Horatio Barnes
in favor of the measure by a majority of sixteen thousand.
Mr. Julian, of Indiana, having obtained the floor near the hour of adjournment, made his argument on the following day, when the consideration of the question was resumed. In answer to the objection that negro voting would "lead to the amalgamation of the races or social equality," he said: "On this subject there is nothing left to conjecture, and no ground for alarm. Negro suffrage has been very extensively tried in this country, and we are able to appeal to facts. Negroes had the right to vote in all the Colonies save one, under the Articles of Confederation. They voted, I believe, generally, on the question of adopting the Constitution of the United States. They have voted ever since in New York and the New England States, save Connecticut, in which the practice was discontinued in 1818. They voted in New Jersey till the year 1840; in Virginia and Maryland till 1833; in Pennsylvania till 1838; in Delaware till 1831; and in North Carolina and Tennessee till 1836. I have never understood that in all this experience of negro suffrage the amalgamation of the races was the result. I think these evils are not at all complained of to this day in New England and New York, where negro suffrage is still practiced and recognized by law."
In answer to the argument that a "war of races" might ensue, Mr. Julian said: "Sir, a war of races in this country can only be the result of denying to the negro his rights, just as such wars have been caused elsewhere; and the late troubles in Jamaica should teach us, if any lesson can, the duty of dealing justly with our millions of freedmen. Like causes must produce like results. English law made the slaves of Jamaica free, but England failed to enact other laws making their freedom a blessing. The old spirit of domination never died in the slave-master, but was only maddened by emancipation. For thirty years no measures were adopted tending to protect or educate the freedmen. At length, and quite recently, the colonial authorities passed a whipping act, then a law of eviction for people of color, then a law imposing heavy impost duties, bearing most grievously upon them, and finally a law providing for the importation of coolies, thus taxing the freedmen for the very purpose of taking the bread out of the mouths of their own children! I believe it turns out, after all, that these outraged people even then did not rise up against the local government; but the white ruffians of the island, goaded on by their own unchecked rapacity, and availing themselves of the infernal pretext of a black insurrection, perpetrated deeds of rapine and vengeance that find no parallel anywhere, save in the acts of their natural allies, the late slave-breeding rebels, against our flag. Sir, is there no warning here against the policy of leaving our freedmen to the tender mercies of their old masters? Are the white rebels of this District any better than the Jamaica villains to whom I have referred? The late report of General Schurz gives evidence of some important facts which will doubtless apply here. The mass of the white people in the South, he says, are totally destitute of any national feeling. The same bigoted sectionalism that swayed them prior to the war is almost universal. Nor have they any feeling of the enormity of treason as a crime. To them it is not odious, as very naturally it would not be, under the policy which foregoes the punishment of traitors, and gives so many of them the chief places of power in the South. And their hatred of the negro to-day is as intense and scathing and as universal as before the war. I believe it to be even more so. The proposition to educate him and elevate his condition is every-where met with contempt and scorn. They acknowledge that slavery, as it once existed, is overthrown; but the continued inferiority and subordination of the colored race, under some form of vassalage or serfdom, is regarded by them as certain. Sir, they have no thought of any thing else; and if the ballot shall be withheld from the freedmen after the withdrawal of military power, the most revolting forms of oppression and outrage will be practiced, resulting, at last, in that very war of races which is foolishly apprehended as the effect of giving the negro his rights."
A serious question confronted Mr. Julian, namely: How could Representatives from States which negroes by constitutional provision are forbidden to enter, be expected, to vote for negro suffrage in this District? He said: "In seeking to meet this difficulty, several considerations must be borne in mind. In the first place, the demand for negro suffrage in this District rests not alone upon the general ground of right, of democratic equality, but upon peculiar reasons superinduced by the late war, which make it an immediate practical issue, involving not merely the welfare of the colored man, but the safety of society itself. If civil government is to be revived at all in the South, it is perfectly self-evident that the loyal men there must vote; but the loyal men are the negroes and the disloyal are the whites. To put back the governing power into the hands of the very men who brought on the war, and exclude those who have proved themselves the true friends of the country, would be utterly suicidal and atrociously unjust. Negro suffrage in the districts lately in revolt is thus a present political necessity, dictated by the selfishness of the white loyalist as well as his sense of justice. But in our Western States, in which the negro population is relatively small, and the prevailing sentiment of their white people is loyal, no such emergency exists. Society will not be endangered by the temporary postponement of the right of negro suffrage till public opinion shall render it practicable, and leaving the question of suffrage in the loyal States to be decided by them on its merits. If Indiana had gone out of her proper place in the Union, and her loyal population had been found too weak to force her back into it without negro bullets and bayonets, and if, after thus coercing her again into her constitutional orbit, her loyalists had been found unable to hold her there without negro ballots, the question of negro suffrage in Indiana would most obviously have been very different from the comparatively abstract one which it now is. It would, it is true, have involved the question of justice to the negroes of Indiana, but the transcendently broader and more vital question of national salvation also. Let me add further, that should Congress pass this bill, and should the ballot be given to the negroes in the sunny South generally, those in our Northern and Western States, many of them at least, may return to their native land and its kindlier skies, and thus quiet the nerves of conservative gentlemen who dread too close a proximity to those whose skins, owing to some providential oversight, were somehow or other not stamped with the true orthodox luster.
"The ballot should be given to the negroes as a matter of justice to them. It should likewise be done as a matter of retributive justice to the slaveholders and rebels. According to the best information I can obtain, a very large majority of the white people of this District have been rebels in heart during the war, and are rebels in heart still. That contempt for the negro and scorn of free industry, which constituted the mainspring of the rebellion, cropped out here during the war in every form that was possible, under the immediate shadow of the central Government. Meaner rebels than many in this District could scarcely have been found in the whole land. They have not been punished. The halter has been cheated out of their necks. I am very sorry to say that under what seems to be a false mercy, a misapplied humanity, the guiltiest rebels of the war have thus far been allowed to escape justice. I have no desire to censure the authorities of the Government for this fact. I hope they have some valid excuse for their action. This question of punishment I know is a difficult one. The work of punishment is so vast that it naturally palsies the will to enter upon it. It never can be thoroughly done on this side of the grave. And were it practicable to punish adequately all the most active and guilty rebels, justice would still remain unsatisfied. Far guiltier men than they are the rebel sympathizers of the loyal States, who coolly stood by and encouraged their friends in the South in their work of national rapine and murder, and while they were ever ready to go joyfully into the service of the devil, were too cowardly to wear his uniform and carry his weapons in open day. But Congress in this District has the power to punish by ballot, and there will be a beautiful, poetic justice in the exercise of this power. Sir, let it be applied. The rebels here will recoil from it with horror. Some of the worst of them, sooner than submit to black suffrage, will doubtless leave the District, and thus render it an unspeakable service. To be voted down and governed by Yankee and negro ballots will seem to them an intolerable grievance, and this is among the excellent reasons why I am in favor of it. If neither hanging nor exile can be extemporized for the entertainment of our domestic rebels, let us require them at least to make their bed on negro ballots during the remainder of their unworthy lives. Of course they will not relish it, but that will be their own peculiar concern. Their darling institution must be charged with all the consequences of the war. They sowed the wind, and, if required, must reap the whirlwind. Retribution follows wrong-doing, and this law must work out its results. Rebels and their sympathizers, I am sure, will