A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (41 page)

(March 28, 1869)

Child (1802–1880) was one of nineteenth-century America's best-known women—a literary innovator, social reformer, and progressive. She cut a wide publishing swath, including novels, short stories, children's literature, journalistic sketches, domestic advice books, antislavery fiction, and works on aging. A fervent critic of racism and slavery, Child used her pen to chronicle the horrors of the “peculiar institution” and to champion a nation reconstructed on a basis of racial equality. In 1869, she published an appeal to President Grant and Congress to redress Johnson's failure to institute land reform and provide homesteads for the freedpeople, “by confiscation, fines, or sale for taxes.”

In the March number of the
American Missionary
is a very interesting account of Moses Fisher. Taking advantage of the confusion of wartime, he absconded from his master's premises, and started with his family for the United States camp. They travelled forty miles through the deepest recesses of the woods, careful to keep in solitary places, lest they should be seized and dragged back into slavery. The parents carried on their heads their little stock of rags, dishes, and kettles, and the children trudged after, leading their blind old grandmother. How many such groups the stars looked down upon, while the armies of the North were fighting for one idea and slowly finding another! At last, the weary fugitives came in sight of the United States flag, and under cover of the night crept into the camp. There they poured forth their grateful hearts in thanks to God for the freedom they had gained, and there they remained to render willing and faithful service for the protection they received. A Bible was wrapped up in the rags they “toted” on their heads. None of them could read a word of it; but Moses felt assured he had a treasure shut up there, that some time or other would be unlocked for him. All through the war, he guarded it carefully, sleeping with it under his head, and hiding it in safe places in time of danger.

When the war was over, Moses, with thousands of his brothers, were left without resources, to wander among a people who hated them for their loyalty to the United States. There were thousands of acres of wild land in the South, but none for the homeless freedmen. A timid Congress “dawdled” away its opportunities, and the President busied himself with restoring plantations to rebel masters. They were all too much occupied with conciliating the Democratic Party, to think of providing the black soldiers and servants of the United States army with a patch of ground whereon to raise food for their families.

But no discouragements could dishearten Moses Fisher. He had nothing but his wife and children, his rags and kettles. But he made a bargain with a white man to clear up an almost impenetrable swamp, for the privilege of cultivating for three years such land as he could subdue. There the whole family toiled at ditching and grubbing the soil, with such rude implements as they could contrive. In summer, the mother and children picked berries and carried them to market; at other times, they made up bundles of light-wood, which they carried on their backs in search of purchasers. In one season, the mother and her little girl picked and sold forty-three dollars worth of berries; and the father and his little boy tapped and dipped two hundred and sixty dollars worth of turpentine; but of this sum he was obliged to give half to the owner of the soil. Undismayed by the formidable obstacles they had to contend with, this brave family toiled on, month after month, cutting away thick under-brush, grubbing up tangled roots, and planting corn and potatoes. With the logs they hewed they made themselves a comfortable shelter, and a few rude articles of furniture. Before their harvest was ripe, a log-barn was erected wherein to store it. In a shattered box brought from the army was stored the precious Bible, which as yet none of them could read. But at last some of the noble army of Northern teachers penetrated into that region. The nearest school was five miles off. But for two years the little boy and girl trudged thither in the morning and back again in the afternoon, scarcely ever missing a day. From their little tongues the patient and trusting father at last heard the contents of the Bible he had treasured so long. One day the Northern teacher walked home with these bright, industrious children, and was warmly welcomed by the grateful parents. They showed with great satisfaction the hundred bushels of corn which they had stored in their little barn. The Bible was brought from its box and its history related. “All the while I was toting it about,” said Moses, “I knowed there was a heap o' good inside of it, and I had faith that some time or other it would come out of it to me; and now my little children are teaching me the heavenly message.”

This simple story of persevering faith and patience affected me deeply; and it made it harder than ever to forgive Congress for not having provided these poor outcasts of slavery with small homesteads of their own, at moderate prices. Poor Moses, after wearing out his muscles with incessant toil for three years, will not own one rood of the land he has cleared. He will still be landless and homeless, and compelled for daily food to submit to the hard terms of grasping, unpitying masters, who are accustomed to consider his race fore-ordained to toil without wages. If it had been made easy for the freedmen to become owners of land, how much their industry would have been stimulated and the wealth of the nation increased! Nothing improves the characters of human beings like having a home of their own; and a country has no element of prosperity so certain as that of laborers who own the soil they cultivate. . . .

I never for one moment wished that any class or condition of men at the South should be without homesteads and the means of obtaining an independent living by their own industry and enterprise. To the “poor whites” who fought against us in the blindness of their ignorance, I would offer every facility for obtaining as much land as they would cultivate, and I would try to raise them up to the idea that honest labor is honorable above all things. And though my sympathies do not flow out so readily to the slaveholders as to their victims, white and black, I do not forget that they also were the victims of a bad institution, and that we, if we had been brought up under the influences of slavery, should have formed the same bad habits and the same false principles. Their sons will mature into truer manhood, under a better order of things. And I should be sorry to see the generation that is passing away deprived of homesteads and a sufficiency of land. Incurably violent and arrogant as they are, I would not impoverish them if I could. But I
would
so manage affairs, by confiscation, fines, or sale for taxes, that one rebel master should not hold in his exclusive possession from one thousand to twenty thousand acres, while his loyal laborers cannot own ground enough for a potato patch. In some way or other, this great evil
can
be remedied, and the good of all classes in the country requires that it
should
be remedied, as soon as possible.

(Ratified February 3, 1870)

The Fifteenth Amendment (passed by Congress on February 26, 1869, and ratified by the states on February 3, 1870) was the last of the three Reconstruction Amendments and the final measure framed by Congress with hopes of paving the way to true equality. The amendment specified that suffrage for citizens “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and included an enforcement provision. Significantly, while the Reconstruction Acts riveted black enfranchisement on the former Confederate states, this amendment forced universal suffrage on the Northern states, which had stubbornly resisted enfranchising black men, even after emancipation. As its critics have pointed out, for all its promise the Fifteenth Amendment failed to address restrictions on office holding, disfranchisement by legal subterfuge, and the general disfranchisement of women, white and black.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

(April 22, 1870)

On April 22,1870, Douglass came to Albany, New York, to participate in that city's celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. His evening speech, just one of many talks he delivered to commemorate the amendment, electrified the overflow audience in Tweddle Hall. According to Douglass, the long-awaited suffrage amendment ushered in a new day for black men, finally giving them a future in America. It signified “progress, civilization, knowledge, manhood” and presented blacks not only with exhilarating new opportunities but grave new responsibilities. The black leader prophesied that the Fifteenth Amendment would bind Americans together and contribute to a stronger Union.

. . . You did not expect to see it; I did not expect to see it; no man living did expect to live to see this day. In our moments of unusual mental elevation and heart-longings, some of us may have caught glimpses of it afar off; we saw it only by the strong, clear, earnest eye of faith, but none dared even to hope to stand upon the earth at its coming. Yet here it is. Our eyes behold it; our ears hear it, our hearts feel it, and there is no doubt or illusion about it. The black man is free, the black man is a citizen, the black man is enfranchised, and this by the organic law of the land. No more a slave, no more a fugitive slave, no more a despised and hated creature, but a man, and, what is more, a man among men.

Henceforth we live in a new world. The sun does not rise nor set for us as formerly. “Old things have passed away and all things have become new.”

I once went abroad among men with all my quills erect. There was cause for it. I always looked for insult and buffetings, and was seldom disappointed in finding them. Now civility is the rule, and insult the exception.

At last, at last, the black man has a future. Heretofore all was dark, mysterious, chaotic. We were chained to all the unutterable horrors of never ending fixedness. Others might improve and make progress, but for us there was nothing but the unending monotony of stagnation, of moral, mental and social death. The curtain is now lifted. The dismal death-cloud of slavery has passed away. Today we are free American citizens. We have ourselves, we have a country, and we have a future in common with other men.

One of the most remarkable features of this grand revolution is its thoroughness. Never was revolution more complete. Nothing has been left for time. No probation has been imposed. The Hebrews tarried in the wilderness forty years before they reached the land of promise. The West India slaves had their season of apprenticeship. Feudal slavery died a lingering death in Europe. Hayti rose to freedom only by degrees and by limited concessions. Religious liberty as now enjoyed came only in slow installments; but our liberty has come all at once, full and complete. The most exacting could not ask more than we have got; the most urgent could not have demanded it more promptly. We have all we asked, and more than we expected.

Even William Lloyd Garrison (I speak it not reproachfully) halted when the advance to suffrage was sounded; and he was not alone. It seemed too much to ask, that a people so long accustomed to the restraints of slavery should be all at once lifted into the complete freedom of citizenship. It was too fast and too far. For once, the clear-eyed preacher, pioneer and prophet failed to discern the signs of the times. While the midnight darkness of slavery lasted, none more clearly than he saw the true course, or more steadily pursued it; but the first streak of daylight confused his vision, and he halted; while at halt, a part of the hosts he had led moved on. While we can never fully pay the debt of gratitude we owe to William Lloyd Garrison for his long and powerful advocacy of our emancipation from chattel slavery, other names loom up for grateful mention when equal suffrage is under consideration.

We cannot be too grateful to the brave and good men through whose exertions our enfranchisement has been accomplished. It would, of course, be impossible to do justice to all who have participated in this noble work. We have no scales by which to weigh and measure the value of our individual benefactors. This must be left to other times and other men. Impartial history will bring many who are obscure for a moment into future notice, and will shower upon their memories all merited honors. In this hour of joy and gratitude we can do no more than view the grand army as a whole, and bow our heads in warmest admiration and gratitude to all. . . .

But what does this Fifteenth amendment mean to us? I will tell you. It means that the colored people are now and will be held to be, by the whole nation, responsible for their own existence and their well or ill being. It means that we are placed upon an equal footing with all other men, and that the glory or shame of our future is to be wholly our own. For one, I accept this new situation gladly. I do so for myself and I do so for you; and I do so in the full belief that the future will show that we are equal to the responsibility which this great measure has imposed upon us.

What does this measure mean? I will tell you. It means progress, civilization, knowledge, manhood. It means that you and I and all of us shall leave the narrow places in which we now breathe, and live in the same comfort and independence enjoyed by other men. It means industry, application to business, economy in the use of our earnings, and the building up of a solid character—one which will deserve and command the respect of our fellow citizens of all races. It means that color is no longer to be a calamity; that race is to be no longer a crime; and that liberty is to be the right of all.

The black man has no longer an apology for lagging behind in the race of civilization. If he rises the glory is to be his, if he falls the shame will be his. He is to be the architect of his own fortunes. If we are despised, it is because we make ourselves despicable, if we are honored it is because we exhibit qualities deserving of honor. Character, not color, is to be the criterion. A great many of the American people are disturbed about the present state of things. They like a strong government. Carlyle says we are rushing to ruin with cataract speed. Others are croakers in the mournful style of Poe's raven—we shall never again see such days as were the earlier days of our republic, say they—never such statesmen as Clay, Calhoun, Webster, and others. The two races cannot work well together. However, he would let the croakers croak on. He never felt more hopeful than now, and the croakers do not disturb him. We had them during the war, and we shall continue to have them. During the dark hours of the war, when we needed strong words to hold us up, there were croakers. They said we never would put down rebellion, or abolish slavery, or reconstruct the South, and we have accomplished all. South Carolina has adopted all the amendments.

He compassionated his Democratic brethren. They are in a state of honest alarm, and we ought to say some word of comfort to them. He would tell his Democratic friends, that Jefferson wrote the Fourteenth Amendment. That amendment is but the carrying out of Democratic doctrine—that all men are created equal, and have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We gave the credit to Garrison, Lundy, and others. When God told the children of Israel to go free, the great truth had its origin.

We are a great nation—not we colored people particularly, but all of us. We are all together now. We are fellow-citizens of a common country. What a country—fortunate in its institutions, in its Fifteenth amendment, in its future. We are made up of a variety of nations—Chinese, Jews, Africans, Europeans, and all sorts. These different races give the Government a powerful arm to defend it. They will vie with each other in hardship and peril, and will be united in defending it from all its enemies, whether from within or without.