A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (42 page)

(May 19, 1870)

Within three months of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Congress found it necessary to pass a series of Enforcement Acts to protect freedmen, Southern Unionists, and Republicans from violent acts by formal and informal paramilitary terrorist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. Congress had heated debates over passage of each Enforcement Act, with Democrats and conservatives arguing that they signified a dangerous move toward centralization and denial of states' rights. In 1870, Carl Schurz, then a senator from Missouri, defended the first Enforcement Act as necessary to protect the rights of the newly enfranchised and to suppress fraud, intimidation, and violence then rampant in the South.

The May 31, 1870, act empowered the federal courts and the president (by mobilizing the army) to punish persons who interfered with voting rights. The February 28, 1871, act authorized federal supervision of congressional elections. The third act (April 20, 1871) outlawed groups like the Klan and authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if necessary.

. . . Does this bill really take away from the States the power to legislate on the subject? Look at it closely. Does it? Not at all, sir. It leaves the States just as free as they ever were to legislate for the prompt and vigorous enforcement of protection of the right of every voter to the free exercise of the suffrage. Does it not? In that respect it does not impose the least restriction on the power of the States. In that direction the States may go just as far as they please. But the bill does provide that a State shall no longer have the power to swindle any of its citizens out of their rights.

A State shall have full power to do that which is right in its own way; but it is prohibited from doing that which is wrong in any way. It is this, I suppose, that Democrats will insist upon calling an arbitrary limitation of State rights. Or is it true, what is asserted also, that this legislation does not find anything analogous in the Constitution of the United States? In the Constitution, sir, we find one clause which ordains that no State shall have the power to grant titles of nobility. What does that mean? It means that no State shall elevate, by the grant of privileges, one class of its citizens above the rest. And what is contemplated by the fifteenth amendment and by the law designed to enforce it? That no State shall have the power to degrade, by the withholding of rights, any portion of its citizens below the rest. Is not the correspondence here evident? But here suddenly the indignation of our Democratic friends is aroused, and in the prohibition to degrade men they find an intolerable encroachment on State-rights and local self-government. And just there, I apprehend, is the rub. It is not so much the technicalities of the bill; it is the spirit, the purpose of the bill they oppose. It is as the Senator from Maryland has just openly and boldly proclaimed, that if the bill were ever so perfect, he would vote against it on general principles. He nods his assent; and I am sure I cannot mistake him; and the same thing we have been given to understand by every Democratic Senator who has addressed the Senate on this question.

Let us see what their complaints are, then. Strip them of all the verbiage of technical points, sift them to the bottom, and you will find there a residue of the old proslavery logic still. As they once asserted that true liberty implied the right of one man to hold another man as his slave, they will tell you now that they are no longer true freemen in their States because under the authority of the States they can no longer deprive other men of their rights. As they once asserted that true self-government consisted in the power of a State to exclude a large portion of its citizens from self-government, so they will say now that we strike a blow at self-government because we insist upon legislation securing every citizen of the States in the enjoyment of self-government. Is it not so?

Destruction of self-government! What a prodigious discovery our Democratic associates have made! Sir, it is not because this bill lays its hands upon self-government to destroy it, but because by the fifteenth amendment, and the legislation made in pursuance thereof, the general sway of self-government is to be for the first time established all over this country, that I am in favor of the principles of this act. What is true self-government? What does it consist in? True self-government consists in a political organization of society which secures to the generality of its members, that is to say, to the whole people, and not to a part of them only, the right and the means to coöperate in the management of their common affairs, either directly, or, where direct action is impossible, by a voluntary delegation of power. It ceases to be true self-government as soon as the powers of government are conferred as an exclusive privilege on one portion of the people and are withheld from the rest. And how is self-government exercised? By the right of suffrage. The representative system knows no other instrumentality. Suffrage is the means by which it lives and breathes.

To make self-government true, general and secure, therefore, the right of suffrage must be made secure to the generality of the citizens. You limit the right of suffrage by arbitrary exclusions, and just in that measure and to that extent will you impair the integrity of self-government. Protect every citizen in the free exercise of the right of suffrage and you do the thing best calculated to make self-government a general and living reality. I do not express any opinion here of the policy of restricting suffrage by an educational test, for it will not affect the principle.

And now the Democrats accuse us of destroying self-government by the very means which are instrumental in securing it in all the subdivisions of the Republic. I repeat, there never was a more preposterous charge. Sir, in a very large portion of this Republic that which could justly be called self-government of the people never existed. Now, at last, we are establishing it there by placing the right of suffrage on the broadest democratic basis, thus making the people of all the States, in the true sense of the term, self-governing bodies. And it is for this that we are denounced by our Democratic friends here as the sworn enemies of self-government and State-rights. Sir, I apprehend it is not for self-government and State-rights that our Democratic associates are standing up; but, drawing logical conclusions from the reasoning they have been indulging in, it is for State wrongs they contend. It is not for the liberty of all, but it is for the liberty of one to restrict and impair the liberty of another. It is not for true self-government of the people, but it is for the government of one part of the people over another part.

The time is past, sir, when the cry of State-rights will serve as a guise for such pretensions. I, too, am a friend and earnest advocate of State-rights, as far as State-rights are the embodiment of true local self-government. True, I do not cling to those traditional notions which an historical period now passed by and absolved has brought down to us. I do not cherish that sentimental—I might almost say that superstitious—reverence for individual States, which attributes to them as historical persons a sort of transcendental sanctity; but I do believe that their value can hardly be overestimated as compact political sub-organizations, through which and in which the self-government of the people is exercised, and within which it finds its most appropriate and efficient organs. I am therefore in favor of leaving to the States as large a scope of independent action as may be consistent with the safety of the Republic and the rights of the citizens.

In fact, sir, in my opinion, true local self-government is the great fountain from which the popular mind draws its healthiest and most invigorating inspirations. It is not only a machinery of political action, but it is one of the most efficient educational agencies of our social system. There is nothing better calculated to make a man understand and protect his interests, nothing more inspiring and instructive to the heart and mind of man than the independent management of his own affairs, upon his own responsibility; and there is nothing more inspiring and invigorating to a community of men, than free cooperation for common ends on a common responsibility in which the interest of each individual is involved.

That, sir, is what puts men upon their own feet. When they have accustomed themselves to depend on their own wisdom or energy for success, and to blame themselves and not others for failure and mishap in individual and common concerns, then they will become truly independent beings, such as the citizens of a democratic republic ought to be. Therefore, it is of high importance that as many responsibilities as possible should be laid at the door of every citizen by local self-government.

We are apt to grow eloquent in the praise of the educational systems established in many of our States. They are, indeed, praiseworthy: and yet they are as such by no means superior to the educational systems enjoyed in some other countries.

It may be said that in some German States the system is even better developed than in the most advanced States of New England; and yet we perceive here a higher average of popular intelligence. We find that the American is generally quicker of perception, readier in the comprehension of the practical problems of life, more vigorous and energetic in action, than people formed by a better school system elsewhere. Why is this so? Not because our babies are born smarter here; not because our boys and girls learn to read, write and cipher better in our schools; not because their instruction in geography and natural science is more thorough; but the reason is, that as soon as the young American issues from the hands of his schoolmaster and enters the arena of practical life, he finds in the rights and duties and responsibilities of self-government a more powerful incentive and a larger field for the exercise of all his faculties and for the immediate application of all his acquirements. Thus self-government and popular education aid, inspire and complement one another; and hence the great results we observe.

And now let me impress upon our Democratic friends that for this very reason nothing is more important, nay, more necessary, for the harmonious development of the social forces of this Republic, as they now stand side by side and have to work together, than that all, even the lowliest classes of the people, should be drawn within the circle of this beneficent combination of educational influences, and that they should be carefully protected in their complete enjoyment. And if you study our social problems without prejudice you will find that just this is one of the most valuable results of that Constitutional revolution which so sorely distresses the Democratic mind.

But for the precise reason which I have just indicated the revolution which is to protect all American citizens in the exercise of self-government ought not to be carried so far as to encroach upon its legitimate scope. I am, therefore, strenuously opposed to all unnecessary accumulation of powers in the hands of the General Government, and especially to any undue centralization of administrative functions. In my opinion, and I say this to my party friends, it would be well for us to bridle that tendency which we have so frequently had occasion to observe, to thrust the hand of the National Government into local affairs on every possible occasion, and even to disregard and throw aside the most fundamental safeguards of popular rights for the correction of passing abuses.

I know it is fashionable to call that radicalism; but I apprehend it is false radicalism in the highest degree. We ought not to accustom ourselves, nor those who are to follow us in these seats, to the employment of arbitrary powers, and still less ought we to accustom the people to look always to the National Government for redress whenever anything goes wrong in their home concerns. Destroy their habit of holding themselves responsible for the management of their home affairs, deprive them of the great lesson of failure to be corrected by themselves, and they will soon cease to study and understand the nature of the evils under which they labor, as well as the remedies to be applied. Thus the educating power of our institutions will be fatally impaired.

There can be nothing more preposterous, in my opinion, than the system prevailing in some foreign countries, where the people are permitted to vote upon the greatest and most complicated questions of general policy while they are not permitted to manage upon their own responsibility their home affairs at their own doors; the great popular school of political knowledge and experience, which consists in self-government, being thus closed to them. Certainly, it is not to be wondered at if in such countries universal suffrage becomes a mere instrument in the hands of despotism; an instrument which, indeed, may serve from time to time to subvert one form of despotism, but only to substitute for it another.

Therefore I am for State-rights as the embodiment of true and general self-government, and I am convinced that this is the prevailing sentiment among the American people. It would be a sad day for this Republic if it should cease to be so. It is true the exigencies of the civil war have quite naturally developed a tendency to accumulate and centralize power in the hands of the National Government, and while that accumulation was necessary to save the existence of the Republic, the people of the United States willingly and patriotically and cheerfully acquiesced in it; but as soon as the pressure of necessity ceases, as soon as it becomes apparent that the great problems for the solution of which we are struggling may be solved just as well by the simple operations of local self-government as by the interference of the National power, then the tide will just as certainly set in the opposite direction. I am sure the people of the United States will never countenance an accumulation of power merely for power's sake, and the Republican party will do well to consider whether it is not better for their usefulness and ascendancy to direct than to resist that tide.