U. S. Senate Speeches and Remarks of Carl Schurz/State of Virginia

by Carl Schurz

STATE OF VIRGINIA.

Mr. SCHURZ. Mr. President, it is with some reluctance that I enter into this debate. When I became a member of the Senate I formed the intention not to take part in any discussion upon the subject of reconstruction, but to leave that matter to those, my seniors, who had four years of experience of it. This debate, however, has gone beyond the ordinary range. At times it assumed a rather passionate character. We have hear criminations and recriminations passing to and fro. some Senators took it upon themselves to throw suspicion upon the soundness of the Republicanism of other Senators who did not happen to agree with them. Under these circumstances I think it may be appropriate for a Senator who has no long legislative record to incumber him to put in a word to advantage.

It would be well for the Republican members of this body to remember that the ends we wish to attain are, after all, the same; that the anxiety which we feel to attain them is the same also with all of us. As to the means, differences of opinion may legitimately exist, but we should discuss them without impugning the motives of any one. The question before us is one of practical statesmanship.

I am ready to confess that I do not participate in the feelings of those who have pressed the passage of this bill with so much haste. It was my impression that Virginia, having gone out of the Union, as the saying is, of her own volition, having fought against the integrity of this Government, having stood out so many years, might now stay out just a few days longer without any serious detriment to herself and without any danger to the welfare of this Republic. On the other hand, I neither sympathize with those who want to put off the admission of Virginia to an indefinite time, unless it be shown that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of her people to keep Virginia out of participation in the government of her own and our common concerns.

I have been sitting here for three days at the feet of the great lawyers of this body listening to what they said, and I have obtained much useful instruction. But it appeared to me that while they were so arduously discussing the question what measure of power we could employ against the late rebel States, they were rather apt to lose sight of that equally, and perhaps more, important question, what measure of power we ought to employ against them. Permit me to take a wider view of this case than that to which this discussion seems at present confined.

In the beginning of reconstruction the alternative presented itself to us whether we would keep the rebel States under military government until another generation should have grown up untainted by the spirit of slavery, not animated by those fierce passions which had been engendered by the war, a generation that, in one word, might have been expected to enter into the new order of things with readiness; or to take our chances with the present generation as it is in reinstating it in its political rights and in the participation in the government of their own affairs in as safe a manner as it could be done.

The first policy — that of keeping the South under military control, or, as some will have it, under territorial control, under the immediate supervision of the General Government — might, perhaps, as to its practical aspects, have been the best one; but it was very questionable whether if we had attempted to carry out that line of policy we should have been sustained by the great loyal people of the North; and whether it might not one day have happened that the people of the North, being opposed to the policy of military rule, which is so little in accord with the accepted principles of republican government, would sweep the Republican party from power and throw the whole work of reconstruction into utter chaos and confusion. Under such circumstances I conceive that the other policy which was adopted, and which by some has been contemptuously called the tinkering policy, a policy dictated by necessities as they gradually became evident, was, after all, probably the wisest. Whether this was so or not, at any rate every one will acknowledge that it is now too late for a radical change of policy. We have entered upon that course in which the people of the rebel States were to be one after another intrusted with the management of their own affairs, with such restrictions as we saw fit to impose upon them for the purpose of guarding the rights and liberties of the people.

I conceive that the real aim and end of reconstruction was and is to put the rebel States in such condition that they can exercise that constitutional measure of self-government which belongs to the other States without serious danger to the great and beneficent results of our civil war. Two things were to be done to secure that end. In the first place, we had to protect those results from danger, by constitutional amendments and by laws; and in the second place — and I wish to call the attention of the Senate to this point with especial urgency — we had to prepare the people of the late rebel States for identifying themselves with the new order of things. It is evident that we can rely with absolute assurance only upon those constitutional amendments and guarantees which are already irreversibly established, or whose adoption is secured beyond any danger and peradventure. The fifteenth is to complete that series of amendments which are to surround the rights and liberties of the citizens in the southern States, as well as throughout the whole extent of the Republic, with an impregnable bulwark. The question which presses most heavily upon our minds is this: is the fifteenth amendment, which is to crown the arch, which is to complete the system of constitutional guarantees, really safe beyond any peradventure? Some seem to think that it is, others that it is not. I will admit that there is some evidence of a conspiracy against it. We have received news from Georgia which is well apt to alarm even the most sanguine of us. We have some reason to suppose that the Democratic party, which although in a minority in this country is by no means without power, and if without physical power is by no means without moral influence, will attempt everything that it possibly can to defeat that amendment. But of that more presently.

As to the second thing which I spoke of as being necessary to be done, the people of the rebel States may be divided into three classes: first, those who are still full of the old rebel spirit; secondly, those who, although lately rebels, are ready to cut loose from the past and identify themselves with the new order of things; and thirdly, those who always were and are now loyal people. If we want to make self-government a harmless weapon in the hands of the people of the southern State, then — and here I claim the attention of the Senate for what I am going to say — then good policy absolutely dictates that the number of loyal men in the South be, by every possible means strengthened from the number of the second class I have mentioned; that is to say, from that class who, although lately rebels, show now an inclination to accept the new order of things and to identify themselves with it; and in order to accomplish that, those people must not only be prevented from doing what is wrong, but they must also be encouraged in doing that which is right.

Let us now cast a look at the case of Virginia. The people of that State have practically done all that we asked of them. It is true the so-called Radical Republican party in the State of Virginia was defeated; but there is not one Senator on this floor who can deny that those who were successful have at least so far done all that could possibly have been done by those who were defeated. Now these people ask for admission. If they did what they have done in good faith, then I think we have every reason to congratulate ourselves upon the result. Nay, I am going further, and even at the risk of being counted among those whose Republicanism is suspected, am ready to assert that if the people of Virginia did in good faith what they have done, then we have even more reason to congratulate ourselves upon the result than if the State were at this moment controlled by the Radical Republican party; why? Simply because it would be one of the most hopeful signs of the times that we have yet met with. It would indicate that not only those who during the war were all the time loyal, but even those who during the war carried arms against us, those who fought against the authority of the Government, those whom we were accustomed to look upon as our enemies, are ready now to cast out from their minds their old animosities, to take hold of the good work and to step into our ranks, marching with us to the great goal which we desire to attain, equal rights, universal liberty, peace and good will for all the children of the American Republic.

It is said that they did not act in good faith. Sir, I am loath to believe that. On the other hand, I am not sure that there are not some who may have had a secret inclination in that direction, who may have done what they did do believing that they might be permitted to abuse the power thus to be obtained. While I do not believe, while I cannot make myself believe that the Legislature of Virginia which ratified the constitutional amendment, which held out all those fair promises, were such downright villains as to act with the distinct purpose of deceiving us afterward, yet I will admit that we as Senators who have to take care of the great future of this Republic are not permitted to treat these matters lightly. We may remember that there is, to all appearances, a Democratic conspiracy going on against the fifteenth amendment. We may remember that although the Legislature of Virginia may have been inspired by good intentions and by good purposes, yet that they may not be altogether beyond the reach of Democratic influences. We may remember that the Democratic party, under pretense of being the friends of the South, have led them from crime into crime, from deception into deception, from disaster into disaster. We may suspect that his nefarious power of the Democratic party is not entirely spent. It is possible that the Democrats will try Virginia as they are evidently now trying Georgia.

Wise men will not forget that under tempting circumstances there are two things that are apt to seduce men into that which is wrong. One is a foolish, blind, over-confidence which furnishes opportunity for crime under certain assurance of impunity, and the other is an unreasonable distrust throwing suspicion upon every one, even without just cause or reason. You all know that many a man has been made a villain by always being taken for and called a villain. It seems to me that in settling the question of the admission of Virginia we have to avoid both these extremes. I at least consider it my duty to fall into neither one nor the other of these errors.

I am not one of those who say that having passed a certain act of reconstruction, having prescribed certain conditions, and having spoken of the admission of the State after those conditions should have been fulfilled, we are now absolutely bound by plighted faith. To be sure I have not that recollection of four years legislation in the work of reconstruction that other Senators, my seniors on this floor, have. I have voted for one reconstruction act, the one providing for the reconstruction of Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas; and for another providing for the reconstruction of Georgia. I will openly confess that it was not my understanding that as soon as the prescriptions contained in those acts were fulfilled we then at once, without any further looking at them, would be absolutely bound to admit those States. My understanding was that when those conditions should have been fulfilled, as the act states in terms, we would then review the case, and if we saw it was reasonably safe to admit those States, do it. I am, therefore, by no means hampered in this way.

There have been various fundamental conditions submitted here to-day. One of them was proposed by my colleague from Missouri, providing that if the Legislature of Virginia should attempt to rescind the ratification of the fifteenth amendment, then her Senators and Representatives should be ejected from these Halls. I voted against it. I did so because it is at least a doubtful power which was asserted in that fundamental condition, and also because it admitted, by implication, a right on the part of that State which to my mind is no less doubtful.

Another fundamental condition was brought forward by my colleague which, as I am informed, during an accidental absence of mine was voted down. I must confess that I am somewhat sorry for that. I would have voted for it, because it was in exact line with fundamental conditions that had been attached to those acts by which other States had been admitted, because it did not violate in any way those notions which most of us, at any rate, have of the powers of Congress, and because I considered it a legitimate and proper precaution.

But I understand that a similar amendment has been offered with one of the main provisions of the fundamental condition first offered left out. I mean that provision which touched the point, for the violation of which we had to take the reconstruction of Georgia in hand again: the provision that the colored people should have the right to hold office. It seems to me, after that provision has been left out, taht the remainder of that fundamental condition is rather worse than nothing, and I will give my colleague from Missouri my reasons. Had we adopted the whole fundamental condition, covering the whole ground, then the people of Virginia would have understood clearly what we meant, and to what extent we meant it; but having left out of that fundamental condition one of its most important points, if we now adopt the mutilated proposition it may be supposed that we really do require the people of Virginia to conform to the condition as it stands, but that the people of Virginia are completely at liberty to do beyond that whatever they please. I am convinced that the first condition was voted down, not because the Senate did not believe in the rectitude of its provisions, not because the Senate would have slighted the assertion of the right of the negro to hold office, but because a majority of the Senate did not believe in the necessity of attaching to this act fundamental conditions at all. I think I am right in making this assertion. If I am not I will pause to be corrected. [After a pause.] It seems that what I have said is generally accepted as true. But if we do let this mutilated provision go out, then the people of Virginia will have the right to interpret it as they please; it will no longer appear that we did reject the other for the reason that we did not consider any fundamental conditions at all necessary, for that assertion would be contradicted by the accepting of the mutilated one. I say, therefore, I would rather pass the bill without any fundamental condition than with an incomplete one liable to mischievous interpretation.

The Senator from Indiana [Mr. Morton] has given notice of his intention to introduce a preamble to this resolution, which in my opinion covers the whole ground as to the fifteenth amendment. Although that preamble is not yet before the Senate, may I ask the Secretary to read it?

The Secretary read the proposed preamble, as follows:

Whereas the people of Virginia have framed and adopted a constitution of State government which is republican; and whereas the Legislature of Virginia, elected under said constitution and in pursuance of the reconstruction acts of Congress, have ratified the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States; and whereas the performance of these several acts in good faith was a condition-precedent to the representation of the State in Congress: Therefore.

Mr. SCHURZ. Now, Mr. President, it seems to me that this preamble covers substantially the matter of the fifteenth amendment. I will not say that this or that verbal alteration may not be desirable; but the spirit of this preamble speaks for itself. It states that upon the ground of their having fulfilled the conditions which we imposed upon them in good faith we are ready to admit the State of Virginia. It clearly indicates that if they should attempt afterward to undo what they have done we reserve to ourselves the power to use all those remedies which the Constitution puts in our hands. This, it seems to me, is notice enough to the people of Virginia. It shows them that we are not asleep, but at the same time it tells the people of Virginia, “We do not express any distrust in your intentions; we declare here that you have done what you did do in perfect good faith; we want to treat you like gentlemen, as we want to be treated like gentlemen by you.” We tell them that we do not expect them to commit the meanness of a fraud, and at the same time that we are fully aware that if such a thing should happen against our expectation we have the power and the will to redress the wrong which mischievous men may attempt to perpetrate against the people.

I am glad that the amendment offered by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Edmunds] was adopted, because a decent respect for the laws which Congress has passed would seem to require that the disqualifications imposed by the fourteenth amendment should not be entirely disregarded. Whether those disqualifications can long be maintained or not I am not here to investigate. I am inclined to think that they cannot; but they exist at present, and as long as they do exist we have not only the right but it is evidently our duty that we should as lawgivers pay respect to them.

Further, Mr. President, I would not go. I am compelled to say that I cannot follow the lead of my distinguished friend from Massachusetts, [Mr. Sumner,] from whom I never dissent without regret, in basing obstructions to the readmission of the State of Virginia upon the ground that the election was fraudulent, or that the test-oath of 1862 should be imposed upon the members of the Virginia Legislature. If the election was fraudulent, if we had any satisfactory evidence of that, then what are we legislating for? Then our duty seems to me entirely clear; there is then no alternative for us; then we must not say we will, upon the ground of that election, admit the State of Virginia upon this or that condition after the application of the test-oath of 1862, but it is then our solemn duty, our only duty, to set that fraudulent election aside; nothing more and nothing less.

Mr. SUMNER. Will my friend allow me to remind him that the Senate has refused to hear evidence on the subject? Loyal people have come up here and knocked at the door of the Judiciary Committee and found it locked. A memorial has been presented to the Senate setting forth outrages in the State and showing fraud and disloyalty, and that memorial has been met by sneers. That is the position of the case.

Mr. SCHURZ. Will my distinguished friend from Massachusetts permit me to reply, that if he himself believed the allegations of those men, then it was his duty to introduce a bill to set the fraudulent election aside, and not to apply the test-oath to the Legislature so elected, leaving that Legislature in existence.

Mr. SUMNER. My friend must pardon me if I differ from him as to the means. The true way was for the Senate to hear the case. This whole measure has been pushed precisely as other measures at other times under the lash of slavery have been pushed, and no opportunity has been given to know the truth. That is the melancholy fact in this case.

Mr. SCHURZ. Mr. President, a great many months have passed since the election in Virginia took place. The opinion of a very distinguished authority, which the Senator from Massachusetts not only recognizes but produced in this body as an authority in this case superior to all others, has been heard upon the subject; I mean the authority of General Canby. His testimony as to the election in Virginia is upon record; he tells us that there may have been here and there some local irregularities, but that in his opinion there have been no more irregularities there than in the elections of other States.

Will the Senator from Massachusetts permit me to call his attention to another case? Does he not know that at the present moment the Conservatives of Texas are coming up here asserting exactly the same thing on their part that is asserted with regard to the election in Virginia; that Jack Hamilton and his followers are pretending that the election in Texas was carried by the machinery of the military power; and that upon exactly the same ground that election must be set aside upon which the Senator desires that the election in Virginia should be set aside?

Besides, we have been discussing this measure for three or four days; we have heard a memorial read in this Hall from Virginia loyalists who made this and that assertion. May it not be supposed that if they were really so profoundly convinced that the election was fraudulent, that the election had been carried by violence, they would have used those four or five months to put the evidence they themselves could have collected in the hands of some of their friends in the Senate, and thus defeat the statements made by General Canby? Mr. President, this hearsay evidence with regard to fraud and violence in elections is a two-edged sword. If we admit it in the case of Virginia I do not, upon my soul, see how we can reject it in the case of Texas. If we go into that business I humbly submit that there will be no end of it.

But I say again — and I cannot let the Senator from Massachusetts escape upon that point so easily — if it was really his opinion that the election was fraudulent, that the election had been controlled by violence, then it was not only his right, but holding the opinions he does his manifest duty, to bring in a bill here to set that election aside, and during the discussion of that bill to force the Senate to take the evidence which it might have been possible to adduce. Nothing of the kind was done.

As to the test-oath, as far as I am aware the oath of 1862 has not been administered to the members of any of the reconstructed Legislatures so far. If I am incorrect in this, I may easily be corrected. But suppose we adopt that policy, what would it lead to in the case of Virginia? The bill of the Senator from Massachusetts, as far as I know — and I may say that by way of illustration, although that bill is not up for discussion in the Senate to-night — does not provide who shall fill the seats of the legislators thus to be thrown out by the application of the test-oath. In all probability he desires, as the memorialists demand, that those who remained in the minority should fill the seats of those who now claim them by right of majority.

Now let me call to the attention of the Senate this fact, a fact which unfortunately we have been observing in a great many of the reconstructed States: we certainly give all credit to the loyal people of those States; our sympathies are certainly with them; we want their rights protected; we want them to exercise their political power without let or hinderance; we want them to have all they can rightfully claim to have; but I respectfully submit that in some of the reconstructed States many of the leaders of the Radical Republican party have not given us a very exalted idea of their political wisdom. It is unfortunately true that in some, and perhaps even in a good many of those States, disruptions of the Republican party have taken place, and in all probability in consequence of some gross mismanagement on the part of the Republican leaders themselves. While I will not proceed to weigh whether those who by the application of the test-oath would be put into the seats of the Virginia Legislature would do a great deal better — possibly they might — than those who might be ejected, yet it is certainly true that it is a very grave question whether it would be wise on our part to interrupt all that has been done, for the purpose of throwing the whole political power in that State in the hands of politicians who have disrupted the Republican party there, and who, to repeat my own expression, have by no means given us a very exalted idea of their political wisdom.

We heard that memorial read here the day before yesterday. I must confess, although some of the points in that memorial seemed entitled to consideration, yet there was a great deal of very small talk in that document, and I would very seriously hesitate before confiding the most delicate task of a statesmanlike reconstruction in the great State of Virginia to the hands of the persons who stand there as the authors of that memorial. I think it would require much persuasion to make me select those very individuals for a work so difficult and of such tremendous importance. Are we at liberty to forget that while some of the loyalists of Virginia come here pretending that nothing in the world can help them but the test-oath, another and a very respectable portion, in point of numbers at least if not also in point of character, of the Republican party of Virginia come here and urge and implore us to admit the State of Virginia as soon as it can possibly be done? Is not that equally true? Does not the defeated candidate for Governor knock at your doors and entreat you “to admit the State without delay?” Are not other respectable Republicans of Virginia here saying the same thing? And when we come to weigh the testimony of these two fractions of the Republican party one against the other are you so sure to which of those two fractions you would give the preference? Certainly I am not. Certainly I shall be very slow to throw myself sould and body into the arms of those who the day before yesterday presented that memorial to this honorable body, and to disregard the advice of all others.

But consider well what other effect the application of the test-oath and the disorganization of that Legislature would have upon the affairs of the State of Virginia. It would most certainly tend to throw a very large number of those late rebels, who have shown and demonstrated a willingness to join us and to identify themselves with the new order of things, back into the ranks of the rebel Democracy. Well-disposed men of that class would be discouraged by our proceedings; for people, however good their intentions may be, do not like by any means to be told to their faces, time and again, “You are scoundrels; go your way.” I submit to this honorable body whether we have any expectation of gaining more by taking them or by repelling them. Considering that the only way in which we can form a working, coöperative, loyal majority in such States as Virginia, is by drawing the whole number of those who are willing to join their fortunes to ours, from the rebel ranks into ours, would it be wise, when they come and knock at our doors, to say to them, “Go; we have nothing in common with you?” We do not stand here to legislate for to-day of for to-morrow. We legislate for the great future of the American people. We have to achieve that in common with a great many of those who in the late struggle of the rebellion stood against us, and we cannot afford to forget this.

For these reasons I am sorry to say that I cannot go with my distinguished friend from Massachusetts in this matter. I repeat that it is not because of what is said of plighted faith. I do not understand it so. If I considered it necessary for the salvation of our great cause I would not hesitate to pile new conditions up mountain high, for I owe my first duty to the great cause we serve, and my second duty only to the rebel States. But with me it is a very grave question whether we do not injure, and very seriously and materially injure our great cause, to which I owe my first duty, by recklessly playing with the rebel States, to whom I acknowledge only the second.

I, for my part, do not by any means indulge in the delusion that if we admit the State of Virginia there will be an end of all trouble there; that there will be no more violence, no more breaking of laws; that there will be no more attempts to upset the new order of things. We shall, perhaps, in the course of events be obliged to go to the utmost verge of our constitutional powers to redress the attempts that may be made there; but I assert, sir, and I am sure all our friends here from the South will support me in the assertion, that we cannot prevent those things by mere test-oaths and by acts of Congress. There will be time needed to correct such evils. We cannot do it by holding on and confining ourselves to what my colleague called the “grip” policy, although I admit that to a certain point that grip policy has been doing very essential service. I do not deny that there was a time when such things, restrictions, exclusions from the ballot-box, &c., were indispensable, and when they operated well; but I submit that the time is near when the “grip” policy, after having been an efficient expedient for some time, will become a curse in the natural development of southern affairs and in the regeneration of southern society.

The system of disabilities which is part and parcel of the “grip” policy will certainly fall, whether you desire it or not, and I think its fall is not very distant. I declare here my solemn conviction that as soon as the fifteenth amendment is passed, and every colored man in the United States is empowered by the Constitution to cast his vote at the ballot-box, the system of political disabilities will fall or it will drag down the party that attempts to maintain it. We have to look that fact in the face, and there is no escaping from it. Considering this, I ask you, since the late rebels will necessarily be an element of strength in the southern States, will it be prudent for us to artificially isolate the loyal people of the South by excluding from them, by driving away from them all the aid that they might obtain from the well disposed in the late rebel ranks? Will it be prudent for us that we should repel all those fair advances that are made on the part of late rebels? Will it be wise that we should day after day tell all those that are well intentioned, “You are scoundrels, and we will treat you as scoundrels whatever you may do and whatever you may be willing to do?” Is it wise to kindle new and bitter animosities in the breasts of those who now seem to be upon the point of losing the old ones, and to do that just at a period of time when you cannot expect much longer to withhold from them the power to act upon those new animosities?

I repeat, sir, we do not legislate only for to-day and for to-morrow; we legislate for great objects which reach beyond this hour and this single case; and it appears to me the only wise policy that we can adopt is, while maintaining an attitude — and I think such an attitude we do maintain — which plainly tells them that we will not permit ourselves to be trifled with by them, they will neither be trifled with by us, that we should encourage every good impulse there is in them, and that to those good impulses we should give as wide a range and as much power to act themselves out as we with safety can. It is time to close up the quarrels of the past which divided us, and to bring up before their eyes the great interests of the present and of the future which are to unite us. Certainly, sir, we do not render the loyal people in the South a service if we keep that question much longer alive which is always apt to stir up again and again the fires of fierce passion, but we shall render them a true service if we adopt such a policy as will be apt to lead all the well disposed of our late enemies into our ranks; as will make it manifest to their minds that this is their country just as well as it is ours; that they have just as much interest in its welfare as we have; that the honor of the American Republic must be as dear to them as it is to us; that we have common blessings to enjoy; that we have a common future to achieve. There will be irreconcilables, there will be incorrigibles, no doubt; but there are also men among them, and in my own State I know not a few, who will come to us as soon as we tell them “Come, and you will be welcome.”