Rights of the Coloured Race to Citizenship and
Representation: and the Guilt and Consequences of
Legislation Against Them
By
George B. Cheever
1864
EIGHTS OP THE COLOURED RACE
TO
CITIZENSHIP AND REPRESENTATION\
and the guilt and consequences of
LEGISLATION AGAINST THEM.
A DISCOURSE
DELIVERED IN THE
Hall of Representatives of the United States, in Washington, D. C.,
MAY 29, 1864,
BY
Rev. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D.,
Pastor of the Church of the Puritans, in the City of New York.
new york:
FRANCIS & LOUTREL, PRINTERS, 45 MAIDEN LANE
1864.
EIGHTS OF THE COLOUEED EACE,
and the
IMPIETY OF LEGISLATION AGAINST THEM.
Ezekiel—xxii: 29, 30, 31.
The People of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery, and
have vexed the poor and needy; yea, they have oppressed the stranger
wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them that should make up the
hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy
it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon
them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; their own ways
have I recompensed upon their heads saith the Lord God.
An appalling resemblance forces itself npon onr notice
between the career of the Jewish nation on the verge of its ruin,
and the present condition of our own country under the judg¬
ments of the Almighty. The same sin has brought us to the
same penalty.
Had the divine indictment against the Jewish rulers, govern¬
ment, church, and people, been committed to the prophet to be
employed against ourselves, it could not have been drawn with
greater accuracy.
Let us trace some of the counts, and their application; the
nature of our controversy against God; the violation of our
covenant with Him, in the perversion of our own Constitution
and Government for the oppression of millions: the impiety,
injustice, and inhumanity of our legislation against the coloured
race, on account of their colour; the right of that race, as well as
4
our own, to the benefits of a republican form of government;
and the inevitable consequences, if we do not repent, and exe¬
cute justice for them, without respect to persons.
COUNTS OF THE INDICTMENT.
The people of the land have used oppression. They have
dealt with it as their policy, used it as an instrument of power,
and made it the means of their prosperity.
They have oppressed the stranger, a sacred class, guarded by
special provisions in the divine law. They have disregarded
and violated the peculiar injunctions and claims of God and
humanity in behalf of that class.
They have done this wrongfully, in an exasperating and wan¬
ton defiance, not only of the spirit of their own Constitution, and
of the law of natural equity, but against the letter of their own
covenant and laws of liberty and justice. They have thus
belied the nature of the institutions, both of freedom and
Christianity.
They have exercised themselves in robbery, and have vexed
the poor and needy, under tlie drill of pretended guarantees
therefor, and under the assumption of a necessity, through the
binding force of such guarantees. They have done this in direct
violation of the national covenant with God and the people, by
means of a false interpretation of that covenant, carried into a
mighty power of precedent in judicial decisions, and tyrannical
practice, admitted to have been against conscience, and yet
obligatory by political compact.
In this they have been sustained by an unrighteous theology,
maintaining the dispensing power of an oath to do evil, as
releasing us from the divine obligation to do good. A pre¬
tended engagement in behalf of the oppressor is alleged as of
greater force than the command of God to interfere in behalf of
the oppressed. They have permitted the unrighteous statute to
be passed, and then have " willingly walked after the command¬
ment," and urged the necessity of obeying it, as a justification
of their wickedness, notwithstanding the admission that God
and conscience were against it. The prophets prophecy false
5
things, and the princes bear rule by their means, and the people
choose to have it so.
Now, considering the known and admitted object of govern¬
ment, as ordained of God, to protect the innocent and the weak
from injury and oppression, by interfering against the oppressor
in behalf of the oppressed, the great crime of this nation, after
the practice and growth of such oppression for eighty years into
a system, and the increase of the number of its victims to four
millions, is this, namely, to have pledged itself not to interfere
against the sum of all villainies, not to do what God has organ¬
ized and commissioned the government on purpose that it might
and should do; pledged itself not to obey the command and
accomplish the purpose of God in government, not to interfere
against slavery where it is.
This pledge and obligation are asserted on pretense of an
oatli; which oath cannot be found, either in words or in mean¬
ing, nor any history or record of it, nor any reference to it; nor
was ever assumed or administered, either by or to the nation, or
its chief magistrate, or judges, or legislators; but which, never¬
theless, is always asserted and supposed, and by a large portion
of the Church itself, and the ministry, has been built upon as
the statute supreme of our political theology.
the controversy against god.
It is manifest that this controversy is with God. We are
fighting against God, and while this is the case, we cannot pre¬
vail.
Even now, in the very centre of this rebellion and conflict we
have renewed our original sin, the very sin on account of which
God is striking us. We have put the iniquity into direct legis¬
lation. We have dared to make the colour of the skin the ground
on which we adjudge a whole race of millions of our fellow
beings to slavery. Instead of delivering them at God's command,
we deliberately consign them by law to perpetual contempt and
oppression. We inflict upon them what our fathers resisted
unto the death, when Great Britain inflicted it on them. En¬
during it themselves, our fathers called it slavery, and went into
a seven years war for the right of representation. The whole
6
nation did not tlien number so many as the millions whom we
have since then reduced to slavery, and whom we now propose,
amidst the very fire of the judgments of God against that slav»
ery, to deprive of their political and personal rights, by new
legislation on account of the colour of their skin.
This is the climax. dSTo tribe, no government, could do worse
than this, take away the rights of human nature, by deliberate
legislation, on account of the tincture of the human skin.
We have said that we. can obtain a right to interfere with
slavery only by the war power, that we can attempt to deliver
or to elevate any of the victims of our tyranny only by martial
necessity, not by law. But we can apply the power of legisla¬
tion to injure and degrade them. It would seem that it is con¬
stitutional to legislate against them, but not in their behalf.
Indeed, it is averred that nothing but war can release us from
the constitutional obligation of oppressing them. Nothing
under heaven, whether in peace or war, prevents us from the
right, or can suppress the wickedness, of legislating against
them, and yet nothing but ultimate necessity for our own benefit
can give us the right of setting them free and protecting them.
What shall be said of a government, church, and people, main¬
taining, under all circumstances, the right of oppression by law,
if it is judged expedient, but disavowing all right of protection
and beneficence, all right of doing justice, except in a state of
war ? We are delivered, by the Constitution, and bound by our
oath, to do all these abominations, but only the war-power re¬
leases us to do justice. Such is the doctrine—a horror of thick
darkness.
And we agreed to amend our Constitution in behalf of slavery,
so as to forbid Congress from ever interfering against this wicked¬
ness. And wre agreed also to make that amended article, of all
others, sacred and perpetual against any future amendment.
There might be some future outbreak of virtue, humanity, jus¬
tice ; Ave provided against it. And Ave elected our President on
the pledge of never interfering against slavery in the slave
States; 011 the pledge of never doing AAThat God has ordained
government on purpose to do; on the pledge of never doing
justice, or permitting justice to be done, to millions in bondage;
on the pledge of never interfering in their behalf. From the
7
moment of that impious pledge, we never have had one moment's
peace or union. The rebellion broke out, yet we continued to
affirm and obey our pledge, adding that we could not do any¬
thing against slavery, even under the war power, except on the
justification of an ultimate and indispensable necessity. Thus
we have nearly ruined the country, to avoid striking slavery.
the testimony of washington.
Ho such monstrosity as this was ever admitted by the fathers.
It was their opinion that the emancipation of the slaves by law
was constitutional and proper. The testimony of Washington
is conclusive on this point. " There is not a man living," said
he, in his letter to Robert Morris, " who wishes more sincerely
than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery, but
there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can, be
accomplished, and that is, by the legislative authority, and
this, so far as my suffrage will go, shall not be wanting." Again,
to Mr. Mercer, " It is among my first wishes to see some plan
adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by
law."
By law, under the Constitution as it is; by law, according to
the powers and in pursuance of the objects of the Constitution,
which were and are liberty and justice, nothing else. Washing¬
ton did not say, by amendment of the Constitution, but plainly
by legislative authority and enactment, according to the Consti¬
tution. You cannot find an intimation that anything else was
necessary, or that any alteration in the Constitution would be
necessary in order to prepare the way for doing justice by such
legislation. lie would give his suffrage for the abolition of
slavery in this country by the existing legislative authority ; he
would have slavery abolished by law. lie was not writing or
dreaming of a constitutional impossibility.
It never entered into Washington's mind to imagine that the .
iniquity of slavery was a disease and obligation congenital with
our Constitution, or that we were constitutionally inhibited from
legislating against it, or constitutionally sworn to defend or pro¬
tect it. This refinement was reserved for those whose conscience
8
forbids tiem from acting on moral considerations. "Washington
regarded moral considerations as the first and highest, and all
others, indeed, as based on those. He never dreamed of any
power of morality and justice being conferred or gained by
what is called the war power, which was not first of all con¬
ferred and made obligatory by the nature of justice, and by
the very object and necessity of government, being the protec¬
tion of the rights of all.
DIABOLICAL DOCTEINE OF THE SACREDNESS OF AN IMMORAL OATII.
The diabolism of immorality, which holds a nation or an indi¬
vidual to be bound by an immoral oath, is wholly a modern
invention of politicians and theologians, to excuse ourselves for
•not putting away the iniquity of slavery, by the pretense of a
religious obligation, to sanction and maintain it, a bond averred
more binding than the law of God. Hence the possibility of an
announcement so monstrous as this, namely, that though the
pledge of slavery was against our conscience, yet, having taken
it, our faithfulness to it, in opposition to conscience, was the
highest proof of national virtue, the result of the largest liberty,
and the fruit of the purest religious faith. And this, that
although slavery is so wrong, that if it be not wrong, nothing
under heaven is wrong, yet we are bound by oath to sustain it.
OBLIGATION OF INTERFERING AGAINST OPPRESSION.
A grave and criminal responsibility rests upon those who
have held and taught such erroneous views of our Constitution,
setting it in a matter of morality against the law of God, and
then maintaining its supremacy, anything in the divine law to
the contrary notwithstanding. Beyond question it has been
these doctrines that have caused the nation to persist so long in
tolerating and maintaining slavery; and it is these same doc¬
trines that have produced the rebellion and war; since, except
for these teachings, and under the true interpretation of the
Constitution, the country would have thrown off this iniquity,
peacefully, constitutionally, long ago.
And as to theology, what shall be said of that system which
teaches men and nations to obey man rather than God, and to
9
forbear from interfering against slavery, and to maintain an
alleged compact with the enslavers ? Christianity so tanght is
caricatured, and may sit at the feet of Paganism itself for light.
Let me refer you to antiquity for an example of virtuous action
and opinion, in the very case of being required to forbear from
interfering against the oppressor and in behalf of the oppressed ;
let me ask you to note the judgment of the Grecian mind upon
it. You will find it in the tragedy of Antigone, who is ques¬
tioned and threatened with death for the crime of having given
burial to the corpse of her dead brother, in defiance of the pro¬
clamation of the king forbidding it.
" Have you dared to transgress these laws," asks the chorus,
generally a conservative and time-serving body; " and did you
know the proclamation forbidding this act of humanity ?"
Antigone makes answer, and it might have been Daniel in
the Old, or Peter in the Hew Testament, declaring that we must
obey God rather than man. " It was not Jove who heralded
these commands, nor Justice, that dwells with the gods, who estab¬
lished such laws as these among men ; neither did I believe that
your proclamations possessed authority, or gave the right, to
transgress the unwritten, eternal, and unchangeable laws of the
gods. For, not now, nor of yesterday, but eternally, they live,
and no one knows from what time they had their being. I
would not, through fear of the spirit of any man, pay to the
gods the penalty of their violation. Por I knew that I must die,
even though you had not proclaimed it, and if I die before my
day, I count it gain; this sorrow is nothing. But if I had suf¬
fered him who was born of my mother to lie in death an un-
buried corpse, in that case I would indeed have sorrowed ; in this
I sorrow not. And if I seem to you in this thing to have done
what is foolish, I merely incur the imputation of folly from a
fool."
This was the grandeur of a pagan conscience. Think of the
nobleness of these declarations, and remember that these are
flashes of the untaught reason of mankind; untaught, I mean,
by divine Revelation; gleams of Justice, righteousness and
natural humanity, from that universal conscience, which shows
the law of God written in the heart, before it had received the
sunlight of the law on Sinah These were the lessons of Grecian
2
10
Theology, in that wondrous literature, which always regarded
the science of divine law as the noblest subject of thought and
culture among literary men and statesmen. Consider liow far
in advance of these principles our age ought to have been ; how
the Christian culture and statesmanship of a generation so far
downwards in the lapse of time as nineteen centuries from the
Christian era, ought to have taken up these first principles of the
natural consciousness of man, and carried them onward from
the doubtfulness and dim majesty of a rare vision, into the cer¬
tainty and supremacy of a fixed principle of action, as unques¬
tionable as the laws of nature, and no more to be disregarded
than those.
This noble Grecian Woman teaches what American Chris¬
tianity and statesmanship do not. " You command me not to
interfere against this cruelty, because you say the cruelty is
required and guaranteed by law, and I am bound to forbear
from interfering to deliver the victim of it, and you threaten me
with death if I do interfere. I tell you, I had rather die than
not interfere. The law of justice, humanity, and Heaven com¬
mands me to interfere, and no terror of man or unjust human
law shall persuade me to violate the divine law. You threaten
me with death if I act humanely, but death in such a case would
be no sorrow to me. But if I had not interfered in behalf of
the victims of your cruelty, that indeed would have been to nJe
a sorrow greater than death."
Which now is the purest theology ? the Grecian or American ?
The Pagan or the so-called Christian ? And which, applied to
national duty and life, is most deserving to be called tfie fruit of
tlie largest liberty, the product of the purest Christian faith ?
Such were the principles of a vast multitude up to the break¬
ing forth of tlie rebellion. The four millions held in slavery
might have multiplied to ten, and so long as our Union was un¬
interrupted, not one check, or interference, or rebuke, or injunc¬
tion against it should be administered. On the contrary, we
agreed so to amend the Constitution as to render interference for¬
ever impossible. We were excused as a nation from ever inter¬
fering against slavery where it was, and that forbearance—
leaving four millions in perpetual slavery—was proclaimed as a
virtue of national fidelity to the guarantees of the Constitution,
11
so-called, and a virtue of which we might be proud, as being the
product of the largest liberty and the purest Christian faith. The
peculiar structure of our Government, compounded of a compro¬
mise between national and State sovereignties, put it out of our
power to forbid four millions of our own citizens being held as
slaves, and made it wrong in us to interfere, or attempt to rescue
them.
"Whenever there is feebleness and compulsion, there is some
excuse; but for a nation with all but omnipotence boasted in its
hands, there is none. For such a nation to inflict upon its ruler,
as the condition of being chosen, a pledge that he would not
interfere against slavery, was at once the greatest crime and in-
tensest meanness, being wholly unnecessary; and for a ruler to
accept that pledge, for the sake of power, with the intention
afterwards of pleading it as a justification for not executing the
Constitution and the laws in behalf of the oppressed, was in like
manner the deliberate choice of a course forbidden by the
Almighty. If governments are divinely constituted, it is that
they may protect the injured and the innocent; and if rulers
have any commission from God, it is that they interfere to
deliver the injured and the innocent out of the hands of their
enemies, and execute justice in their behalf.
NATURE OF THAT REPUBLICANISM; AND CHRISTIANITY WHICH SUS¬
TAINS SLAVERY AS A CONSTITUTIONAL INSTITUTION.
I have said that we have thus belied, in the presence of the
watching nations, the institutions both of freedom and Chris¬
tianity. The republicanism and the religion of this nation, that
of all others on earth most earnestly boasted of the purity of both
these provisions, have been caricatured, and made a scoffing and
contempt, by our example. We have done our best to fill the
world with political and religious infidelity and atheism. The
indictment of God against the scandalizing Jews, who, by the
same sins, had slandered His attributes, and defiled His sanctu¬
ary, and perverted His statutes among the heathen of old, ran
thus : " Sodom, thy sister, hath not done, she nor her daughters,
as thou hast done, thou, and thy daughters." And the statutes
of the heathen were not so bad, so intense a system of the dy-
12
namics of unrighteousness, as the falsification of the divine sta¬
tutes by the corrupt and wicked .practices of those who boasted
of them. And just so, the product of our republicanism and
Christianity, with slavery as the fruit and representative of both,
is more pernicious, immoral, oppressive, than that of any des¬
potism in the world.
Institutions of civil society are justly judged by their results
in a period of generations. The result of our republican insti¬
tutions, after eighty years spontaneous trial, has been the en¬
slavement of four million blacks and five million whites in a na¬
tion of thirty millions, and the thing maintained as Constitu¬
tional, and the people pledging themselves never to interfere
against it, and electing their chief magistrate on such a pledge,
and agreeing that the Constitution itself should be remodelled
in favor of slavery, and being so altered, should, in that respect,
be forever incapable of being amended in favor of liberty. That
is the record which we have provided for history ; that is the
way in which, ever since we assumed constitutional independ¬
ence as a republic, we have made history. Anything to the con¬
trary, God has made, not we; for we have never set a single slave
free of our own accord, nor as the operation of our institutions,
nor by necessity of constitutional freedom and justice, nor by
the nature of republicanism; but avowedly with reluctance, only
on compulsion, entering our protest at every step against the
accusation of ever having entertained the intention of treason
against slavery. In all the freedom we have effected, we have
put in the plea of necessity, as for a crime, as having unwill
ingly violated the law of slavery averred in the system of pre¬
tended guarantees in its behalf; which guarantees, and not those
of justice and liberty, we seem to have regarded as the object of
our oath of fidelity to the Constitution.
Meantime, in the practical working of our republic, we have
made four millions of black slaves and five millions of whites in
the short space of eighty years. There is not another nation on
the face of the earth that has accomplished such a work as this.
During that period, England, a monarchy, has freed eight hun¬
dred thousand slaves, by supremacy of governmental action, in
a time of peace. Russia, an imperial despotism, has freed more
in number than the population of our whole nation, by govern-
13
mental action in time of peace. There never was such a dictum
advanced by any despotism as that government had no right to
interfere against slavery in a time of peace, or that tHe peculiar
structure of a despotism forbade it from so interfering. On the
contrary, it has always been admitted that justice and freedom
were the functions of government, and during this period of our
probation as a republic, these European governments have,
though late, fulfilled those functions, while we have been fulfill¬
ing the work of the slavery of four millions direct, and five other
millions intermediate.
It is not to be disputed, that the five millions of what
is called " poor white trash" at the South, the product of
slavery, are in a more enslaved, degraded, and wretched condi¬
tion, than any equal number of the laborers, or peasantry, or
free classes of the people, under any Government in Europe.
Yet they are the result of the workings of our republicanism,
holding in its bosom, as a " Constitutional Institution," the sys¬
tem of slavery, and maintaining fidelity to that system, and non¬
interference against it, as the law of our liberty, and—the fruit
of our religious and political faith. Four millions of black
slaves, five millions of whites, produced in eighty years, out of a
nation of thirty millions, under a republican form of govern¬
ment, with the right of representation as an elementary princi¬
ple. We might have been satisfied with this.
But we now propose a new exhibition of the nature of repub¬
licanism in this line, by resolving that a population greater than
that of our whole nation in the revolutionary war, shall not be
permitted to enjoy the benefits of a republican form of govern¬
ment, which, nevertheless, we propose to guarantee to rebels in
arms against us. But the whole coloured race of loyal citizens
shall be excluded from these benefits, shall not be permitted to
have any right of representation, or any representatives, but
shall be taxed and tortured without representation, merely for
the colour of their skin.
In 1771 we declared that "the end of goverment would be
defeated by the British Parliament exercising a power over the
liberty of American subjects who are not there represented
and we affirmed that " the liberties of no less than three mil¬
lions of people, with that of all their posterity, were staked on
14
this question." In 1864, we declare that the end of government
for the whites is attained by this ver}7 tyranny, and that the
liberty and rights of four millions of blacks are not be regarded
as of the least importance, in comparison with the establishment
of the union of twenty-five millions of whites. Such is the dif¬
ference between our patriotism and that of our fathers.
In 1774, we declared that the subjection of the people to the
payment of taxes imposed without the consent of their repre¬
sentatives was the reduction of them to slavery. In 1864, we
reduce four millions to such slavery.
We perpetrate or propose all this injustice against this tor¬
tured race, along with incessant parade of our jealous watchful¬
ness for liberty, and care for justice, not conscious of any
inconsistency. It is a singularly depraved and odious devel¬
opment of character.; a combination of cruelty and hypocrisy,
always the result of the habitual violation of justice, and the
justification of such violation on the ground of expediency.
There were those in our Saviour's time who would rob father
and mother on pretense of a scrupulous regard to their obliga¬
tions to the Temple. It was corban, the property of the
Temple, pre-engaged, if they were solicited for money, or
natural justice. They could strain at this gnat and swallow
that camel. And so can we.
The store of whiskey on hand cannot be taxed by us, because
the rights of proprietors and distillers are sacred, and we are too
just to introduce an unjust or unequal principle into legislation.
But, in order to strike down the rights of the blacks, we violate
the Constitution, and vitiate the streams of legislation, by a
spring of injustice in its very central element.
We could not repeal the infamous fugitive-slave bill, but re-
enacted the slave law of 1793, because we respected " Southern
rights." At the very same moment, we have prepared a bill of
legislation for the Southern country, actually enshrining the
principle by acting it out, that black men have no rights that
white men are bound to respect. The rights of white skins are
sacred with our legislators, but not the rights of man. We
insult humanity itself, out of respect to the most unchristian
of inhuman prejudices.
15
It has been publicly averred by Americans of distinction, not
only at home but in Europe, that such is the peculiar structure
of our government, that we are prevented from interfering
against slavery where it is, and are compelled to guarantee its
security, and to forbear from any attempt to deliver the en¬
slaved : that is, it is inhibited by the law of its own nation from
tne possibility of performing the functions of a just government,
and is a machinery for " shoving back mankind into barbarism."
Now, when we affirm that our constitution guarantees slavery,
and that we are bound not to interfere against slavery, we affirm
that the product of our Republic is slavery. And thus far we
have done nothing to correct that impression; because, although
jompelled—by the Almighty checkmating us with this rebellion
—to move against slavery, we have avowed, and still do avow,
that this was only by necessity; that we could not have interfered
against slavery by the civil power of the government; and that
even our interference by the war power is subject to nullification
in our Supreme Court of Justice. Such is our own representa¬
tion of ourselves.
Other forms of government have produced freedom, other
political climates, as well as ours; but ours has perfected slavery.
It is not an incident, but a legitimate, inevitable result—the
only peculiar result wherein we have the preeminence over all
nations. For it is argued to all the world, argued before God,
in justification for the existence of slavery among us to this day,
that the connection of our State and General Governments is
such, that the State Governments have supreme control over
the institution, so called, of slavery, and over the victims of it,
and the Federal Government cannot prevent it; slavery being
thus set forth as an institution of the republicanism of this land.
And it is argued that nothing but necessity—military and in¬
dispensable necessity—allows us to interfere with it, which we
would not have done unless compelled against our will and
Constitution. That is, our Republicanism bound us over to
slavery, and if we renounced it, or whenever, or in whatever
degree we renounced it, we did it not because justice or republi¬
canism authorized or required it, but necessity against our
republicanism.
Row, it is incontrovertible that we allow this charge; we
16
plead guilty to such an enormity as being the nature of our
republicanism, unless, being given the opportunity, we emanci¬
pate the slaves, as an act of justice, and the requirement of the
nature of our government. If we have to amend our Constitu¬
tion, in order that we may emancipate, this is the admission
that constitutional republicanism in this country includes sla¬
very, and that we voluntarily maintained it, until compelled to
interfere against it, rather than have our whole government and
national existence destroyed by it.
Yet we taunt the governments of Europe, and the people, with
an assumed contrast between their oppression and our freedom.
"We say that in England, for example, it is only the ruling
classes that enjoy the highest freedom. In America there is
nothing better. The ruling classes in America are free to make
slaves of others. The subjected and inferior classes in America
are enslaved, to the number of four millions, and, adding what
is called the white trash, nine millions or ten—say one-tliird of
the whole population of the country, under the boasted freedom
of a republican government, in a condition more degraded
than the same proportion of the population of any country in
Europe.
And we propose to add to this the perpetual excl usion of all
possibility of freedom, by taking from millions all the rights of
representative government on account of the colour of the skin I
FOUR DISTINCT FORMS OF TIIIS INJUSTICE.
This impiety has now been perpetrated in four distinct par*
ticulars, by this Congress, in as many distinct abuses of their
power : First, in legislation against coloured soldiers. Second,
in legislation against coloured citizens in territories, as in the
case of the Territory of Montana, condemning that territory
to the perpetual crime of an article against colour, excluding the
blacks from the privilege of representation. Third, in legisla¬
tion against coloured citizens in the] rebel States, proposing to
give to the rebels themselves, on being conquered, a republican
form of government, but to exclude the loyal citizens from the
special benefits and rights belonging to them under such govern¬
ment, and to hold them down forever as an inferior, oppressed
17
race, to be forever oppressed, because of their colour. Fourth,
in legislation for and over the District of Columbia and the
city of Washington, excluding coloured citizens there, forever, on
account of their colour, from the right of representation, the
right of citizenship.
This last instance, is that in which the insult and the cruelty
rise in some respects to the worst climax before God, because
there all possible forms and degrees of authority and power are
concentrated, by the Constitution, and the consent of all the
States; and, there never has been a question that Congress could
do what they pleased with the coloured race in this district, and
might bless and benefit them indefinitely, without possibility of
contradiction. And there, where our legislators might have set
the example and the model of a kind, wise, paternal, just, and
free government over this race, and developed a full experiment
for their regeneration and elevation, social and civil; an exam¬
ple that would have been followed everywhere ; they are setting
the precedent of oppression and degradation, perpetual, in its
normal and decisive element ; connecting the ineradicable ele¬
ment of colour, with the inevitable execution of oppression by
law on account of colour, and erecting into law, in regard to the
coloured race, the essential ingredient of slavery; that element
that provides the way for, and renders almost certain, every
other form of slavery, and against which therefore, as to them¬
selves, our fathers fought and rebelled; the denial and with¬
holding of the right of representation, which is an oppression
that makes a despotism everywhere, but, introduced under the
form and pretense of a republic, for the injury of a particular
class, makes that class doubly tortured and enslaved.
Under the name of a bill to preserve the purity of elections,
you contrive a bill for the enslavement of the coloured race. If
we take the definition of slavery from our fathers of the revolu¬
tion, as being the denial of the right of representation, this bill
is literally a bill for re-enslaving the coloured race; for it restricts
the right of voting, that is the right of a representative govern¬
ment, to whites. This is done in the midst of the thunderbolts
of God's judgments against us on account of our injustice to
the coloured race. A bill for the purity of elections ! Most con¬
scientious legislators, whose dread of introducing an unjust
3
18
principle into legislation, prevents tliem from taxing whiskey
on hand, and whose watchfulness for the purity of a republican
government, constrains them to rob four millions of free persons
of their liberties ! It should be called a bill for rendering elec¬
tions in "Washington utterly and forever impure, and for setting
the example and the rule of such impurity, to the nation, by
excluding the coloured race from the rights and privileges of a
representative government, as claimed by the whites !
CIRCUMSTANCES AND QUALITIES OF EXASPERATION IN THE CRIME.
Let us now look at some of the exasperating circumstances
under which we have inflicted such injustice :
1. We have been employing this coloured race as laborers and
soldiers, to help saye ourselves and our country from that des¬
truction, which is threatened on account of their oppression.
While we are thus employing them, putting them in the front
to receive the bullets of our enemies, we have refused to pro¬
tect them, we have robbed them of their wages, and are now
passing special laws providing for their eternal degradation,
should we by their means, or any other way, gain the
victory.
2. We have done this under the form of an oath "or pledge
to them that they should be free, and that their freedom (mean¬
ing, if there be any meaning in language, or honesty in an
oath, the same freedom that ourselves enjoy) should be assured
and protected for them by the whole power of the United
States.
3. We have done this in connection with the offer of a re¬
publican form of government to all other citizens, especially
the rebels now in arms, in the midst of which offer we have
inserted the provision excluding the black portion of our citi¬
zens, on account of their colder.
\
4. In connection with the proclamation of amnesty to all the
rebels who will return into the Union at any time, pledging to
id
them the restoration of all their rights, and among others the
right of eternal despotism over the coloured objects of their
tyranny. For they may exercise this despotism, as fully and
satisfactorily, to all intents and purposes, by forever excluding
the coloured race from the right of representation, the right of
any will or voice in the manner in which, or the laws by which,
they are to be governed, as by slavery itself.
5. We have inflicted this injustice, this penalty as for crime,
again&t colour, in connection with the fact of the indefiniteness
and uncertainty of the allegation of colour, and the impossibility
of deciding, in multitudes of cases, who are persons of colour;
thus enforcing, under pressure of the certainty and determin-
ateness of law, the most intolerable injuries and penalties, on
account of a supposed, but indeterminate quality of complex¬
ion, the bare assertion of which, even though not existing,
nevertheless exposes the victims of this cruelty, so charged, to
perpetual punishment; and even if existing, furnishes no
guage, how far, and no method of proof, except by resorting to
the allegation of race, which is simply laying hold of one crime
of oppression to support another.
To prove a person to be a person of colour, you have to prove
him of the African race, and to prove him of the African race,
you have to prove that he has black blood in him; and yet
farther, you have to prove exactly how much of that blood con¬
stitutes him of that race, and how much American blood con¬
stitutes him of the American race. And to bring these things
within the province of law, so as to constitute an indictment for
your purpose, you must have and must show a statute providing
that descent from the African race constitutes persons of colour,
and not only so, but defining how many degrees of blood consti¬
tutes the charge of colour, otherwise you cannot convict, cannot
exclude from the privileges of freedom, on the ground of colour,
persons whom a court room of witnesses would be compelled to
pronounce as white as the judges on the bench or the jurors on
the jury.
The indefiniteness of this charge of the colour of the skin, by
which alone you seek to deprive millions of your fellow beings
of that privilege of representative freedom for which your fathers
bled and died, and in dying for wliich^ you pronounce them the
20
fathers of your own freedom, is perhaps the most diabolical ele¬
ment of all in the concoction of this wickedness, the most in¬
sulting towards the majesty of God, the most fraudful against
the rights of man, especially taking into consideration the solemn
declaration of your fathers, that the rights for which they con¬
tended unto the death, for themselves and their posterity, were
the rights of human nature, not of the skin.
" Let it ever be remembered, finally," said 'Madison, " that it
has ever been the pride and boast of America, that the rights
for which she contended, were the eights of human nature."
The truth of the fathers' boast, is the bitterest sarcasm and re¬
proach of their descendants. Our fathers' patriotism was of the
heart; ours is of the skin. If God should turn the skin of every
man black, that has voted for such oppression of his brother, it
would be but a fitting though very slight retribution for so great
a crime.
6. This oppression has been resolved upon in connection with
the fact that it establishes a bill of attainder, whereby a taint of
blood, attended with dreadful penalties, is conveyed down from
parents to children, directly in violation of express articles of the
Constitution, forbidding such attainder, as well as in violation
of the principles of justice, human and divine.
It was objected against the bill for the confiscation of rebel
property that such confiscation was of the nature of a bill of
attainder. It was answered that the word attainder was techni¬
cal, and could not be applied to such confiscation, not having
any reference thereto. It was answered back, that it applied in
equity, and that it was attainder forbidden by the Constitution,
if we deprived children of their property on account of the
crimes of their parents. And the President accordingly refused
his assent to such confiscation.
But what shall be said of the proposed confiscation of personal
rights ? If the confiscation of property on account of treason
was affirmed to have been a violation of the Constitution, being
asserted to be in equity, of the nature of a bill of attainder for¬
bidden by the Constitution, then much more the confiscation of
personal rights without any crime alleged or imagined; much
more the deprival of freedom, the taking away from innocent
21
persons of the dearest rights of freedom, on account of the colour
of the parents descending to the children.
In the first place, the taking away of such rights from the
parents on account of colour is a most daring, cruel and heaven-
defying crime, if it stopped there. But the making of that pun¬
ishment to descend to the children is a much worse and more
malignant crime. It is a compound crime, increasing both in
arithmetical ratio and geometrical progression. It is a national
immorality at compound interest. It is as if our legislators had
contrived a lightning rod of damnation, sending down through
all generations both the gangrene of this iniquity, and the wrath
of God, kindling a fire in his anger that will burn to the lowest
hell, even as it makes a corruption in our sin, that will putrify
the morals of our latest posterity.
Should we recover from this rebellion, the insertion of such a
privilege of cruelty, such a license and fixture of crime, in our
legislation, is the sowing of a whirlwind of revolt and desolation
for a future generation. It is the inevitable provision of future
wrath, strife, civil war, local riots, the upheaval and upbreaking
of governments and institutions. The men who voted for this
will receive the just curses of an injured world. "With what
execration should the statesman be loaded," said Jefferson," who,
permitting one-half of the citizens thus to trample on the rights
of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies)
destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the
other."
Citizenship, under a republican form of government, carries
with it the right of suffrage, irrespective of race or colour. If
the right of suffrage be restricted, it must be on other grounds,
and in regard to all persons equally. For example, no man
ought to be allowed to vote who cannot read and write. There
are thousands of blacks who can read and write, but are not al¬
lowed to vote because they are black, while there are thousands
of whites who cannot read nor write, but are allowed to vote
because they are white. Persons are brought by emigration
from Europe, and carried to the polls by ship loads, who can
neither read nor "write, while intelligent and educated persons
born in this country are forbidden the privilege of voting.
There ought to be a uniform suffrage law; but to base it upon
22
colour is the extreme of injustice and wrong. In the bill provid¬
ing a republican government 110 colour should have been men¬
tioned. To mention it, in order to exclude the coloured race from
the privilege of representation, is to make them slaves. It is to
renew and perpetuate the slaveholding oligarchy and aristocracy
that has so long governed the land. They will hold their power
as of old by means of the millions thus put under subjection to
them. They will come back into the Union with that power,
as imperious and insolent as ever; and this is the status un¬
changed which onr foreign diplomacy, at the opening of the
rebellion, pledged for them.
The coloured race being excluded from representation, their old
owners, the white race, will hold it for them, as an increased
political power in the government of the country. These four
millions of disfranchised persons will continue to give to the
South, nevertheless, a preponderating representation, the slave-
holding States having always been allowed, in the apportionment
of representatives in Congress, sixty per cent, of the slave popu¬
lation who, though they had no vote for themselves, manufactured
votes for their masters and ours. They will still do the £ame
thing. A State containing three hundred thousand slaves has
always held, on account of representatives on that basis, a supe¬
rior power in the House of Representatives equal to the repres¬
entation of 180,000 free citizens. How, if the slaves being eman¬
cipated are yet allowed no representation for themselves, no
Voice in the government, the same State will still have, on their
account, a preponderance of 800,000 votes; so that 000,000
citizens in Hew York or Hew England would have only the
same strength in the House of Representatives as 300,000 in
Georgia or South Carolina. This is one of the consequences of
withholding the right of representation from the coloured race
under our present Constitution.
But the present Congress are assuming the power of prescrib¬
ing the conditions of suffrage, and are exercising the authority
beforehand, to direct the legislation of the States, by exclusion
of a certain class of citizens of the United States from the privi¬
lege of representation, on the ground of colour. They have as¬
sumed the power of determining who shall and who shall not
exercise the right of suffrage, and they have resolved that whites
23
alone shall exercise it. They need not have legislated on the
subject at all. There was no call for it.
It is a crusade against the coloured race, doubly and inexcusably
wanton, because (in the instance of this outrage in Montana for
example,) it is affirmed that God and nature have ordained al¬
ready that no coloured persons shall ever live in the territory of
Montana. Why, then, go out of the way to proscribe them be¬
forehand ? Why add this insult to the injuries heaped upon the
race who, by hundreds of thousands are offering their life for the
salvation of our country, and whose bones, in the resurrection,
will bear witness not so much against the rebels that murdered
them, as against the country that proscribed them %
The thing is so unnecessary and exasperating an impiety be¬
fore God and against man, so superfluously ungrateful, and base
and wicked, that it is a wonder that God lets us live long enough
to complete the crime. It is amazing that God has not given a
commission to the rebel armies to march upon Washington and
put every one of these heaven-defying legislators to the sword.
It is such studied insult and impiety ! The Common Council
of Gomorrah could hardly have contrived anything worse.
7. It is in violation of the official oath of the President and
Congress, who, being provided by the Constitution with the
power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, so that they
could make, as tliey are bound to make, all persons born within
the United States citizens, without respect to person, and being
sworn to provide for all a republican form of government, were
bound to see to it that no citizens were deprived of their right
of representation under such government. Citizenship carries
with it all rights, except those by law prevented—law equal and
just for all parties. Neither colour nor race were ever contem¬
plated or named in the Constitution as among those disqualify¬
ing causes, and, therefore, we are bound to prevent any such
oppression, by our oath to see that the Constitution and the laws
be executed.
8. It is in violation of particular treaties, which are covenants
and laws as sacred as the Constitution. The treaty with France,
at the time when Louisiana was ceded to this country, bound
24
this nation to protect, in all the privileges of free citizens, under
a representative government, the free subjects of the province
thus ceded. Among these are many thousands of free coloured
persons, at the present day, intelligent, patriotic, loyal, whom
this iniquitous legislation deprives, on account of their colour, not
only of a natural and guaranteed right under our government,
but of a right sworn to them as a class by treaty, knowing them
to have been thus coloured. While millions of the Irish race,
ignorant, unable to read or write, have been admitted to the
privilege of suffrage, these have been shut out, in violation of a
treaty which the President is sworn to fulfill.
9. All this has been done in the midst of the storm of divine
vengeance in behalf of the oppressed and against their oppres¬
sors, in the midst of the most terrible war and carnage on ac¬
count of Slavery, and while we have concocted a bill purporting
to be the provision of the blessings of a republican form of gov¬
ernment for States now in rebellion against our Union. We
have set in the midst of this bill for the protection of eight mil¬
lions of whites in rebellion, a provision disfranchising and brand¬
ing for perpetual disfranchisement and oppression, four millions
of blacks, four millions not in rebellion, four millions of loyal
persons, to whom we have guaranteed their freedom. By express
provision in this bill we exclude all these on account of their
colour from the privileges which we guarantee to the rebels on
account of their rebellion. This is a compound of hypocrisy
and oppression before God, unexampled in history.
10. In this degradation of the colored race by law we imitate
the government of the rebel Confederacy, and adopt their
foundation. Alexander Stevens, the Yice-President of the rebel
Confederacy, laid down its fundamental principle thus: " Our
new government rests upon the great truth that the negro is not
equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the su¬
perior race, is his natural and moral condition." This is the
very law now chosen by our present Congress as one of the
foundation stones of the new republican form of government
proposed to be guaranteed for the Southern States. It is part
of our new Declaration of Independence, that the negro is not
equal to the white man, subordination to the superior race being
25
his natural and moral condition. The men that could put this
into the power of legislation would be prepared to add slavery,
if found necessary to carry out their plan of subordination. If
the blacks cannot be kept subordinate as free, they will be made
slaves by the same authority and people who resolved by law
that they should be subordinate.
CONCLUSION AND CONSEQUENCES.
The continued robbery of the coloured race by law ; the re-
enslavement of thousands without any notice of the outrage
taken by the President; the return of slaves to slavery in so
many cases by Generals of the army, and never one punished,
though known, every case a violation of law ; the continuance
and execution of the fugitive slave law, up to the fourth year
of the rebellion; the re-enactment of the fugitive slave law in
that year under pretense of a bill repealing it, the infamy of its
re-enactment on the ground of a regard to Southern rights, the
rights of rebels and traitors against the government to traffic in
the flesh of the citizens of the government as their property;
the attempt to expatriate the coloured race ; the assumption of
the right on our part to deal with them as we please, disregard¬
ing their rights, in fact acting on the principle that black men
have no rights that white men are bound to respect; the re¬
luctance with which we have granted them any degree of
justice ;—all this, in the midst of the divine judgments, on ac¬
count of these very sins! We need not go far to find reasons
for disaster and defeat.
Olustee, Red River, Fort Pillow, Plymouth, followed on the
heels of our own iniquitous legislation. The defeat of Gen.
Banks, all the disasters in Louisiana, may be traced directly to
our own madness and impiety in re-establishing slavery, and
playing into the hands of the slave-power.
The crime of oppression by law on account of colour is a re¬
newal of the sin on account of which God [is judging and
punishing the land. It is as bold and impudent as when the
profane prince of Israel selected his Midianitish paramour,
amidst the weepings of the Ration, under chastisement for that
crime, and marched with her into a tent of adultery in open
4
26
day. The plague is gone forth for such impiety. It is as if the
leaders of the people had raked the embers still smoking with
the half consumed carcasses of Achan and his fellow criminals,
and moulded an idol out of the blackened wedge of gold. It is
an attempted rebuilding of a leprous house with the very stones
that God had ordered to be burned to powder.
A republican form of government is grounded on the right of
representation without respect to persons. The right of repre¬
sentation includes and necessitates the right of suffrage. If that
right be restrained, it can only be for reasons that change it from
a right to a wrong, as lunacy, or crime, or ignorance, or on
grounds that apply equally to the whole inhabitants of the coun¬
try, as minorsliip. But no class or race can be defrauded of
that right, by reason of race or colour, without an oppression that
is next to slavery, and that our fathers called slavery, and justi¬
fied revolution and war rather than themselves endure it.
The right of representation is universal. If colour prevents it,
then, if all were black, there could be no right of representation,
no republican government. Africa is consigned to perpetual
despotism. If race prevents it, then certain races on the globe
can never enjoy a republican government. But the fraud on
the ground of colour is at once the most insolent and impious to¬
wards God, and inhuman against man that ever was undertaken.
It is oppression of the bitterest, most scornful, most galling and
degrading kind. It sets the heel of the nation on the soul. It
prevents the possibility of educating and elevating the unfor¬
tunate race thus branded. It is caste, worse than Asiatic Hin¬
doo, Heathen, because Christian. If the Christian church sub¬
mits to it, it degrades and demoralises the Christian Church. It
is an injury inflicted by a conquering people, under pretense of
emancipation, perhaps more sinful than the actual slavery im¬
posed under pretense of ownership. There is no reason for it;
it is superfluous; there is no possible advantage to be gained
from it; it is pure, diabolical prejudice, the choice of evil, when
good was equally convenient.
This question, if you leave it unsettled, will continue to con¬
vulse the State, even if this rebellion should be crushed and our
Union restored, which it is not lively God will permit, with
these millions built as objects of torture into it.
27
Every year it will be more necessary to settle it, yet every
year more difficult. Prejudice will be renewed and strength¬
ened; the envy, jealousy, and hatred of class and caste that
already have filled our cities with riot and bloodshed will
grow. It will be a thousand fold more difficult to eliminate
colour from your legislation than it would have been, to keep
it out; to repeal the law granting a monopoly of representa¬
tion to the whites, and setting apart the blacks as excluded
from that right, than to amend or nullify those laws, once
passed. There is this woe to them that decree unrighteousness,
and that write grievousness which they have prescribed: they
never can undo the evil they have done.
As to the consequences, it is sowing the wind to reap the
whirlwind. You may trample upon this race fresh from slavery,
while their limb3 are stiff and cramped from the habit of their
manacles, and while the intellect and heart are accustomed to
the sentiment of degradation, but let the race grow from four
millions to ten, and ten million trained intellects and athletic
frames will be in rebellion against you.
It needs no prophetic intuition to foresee the result. You are
laying the foundation of a second St. Domingo baptism in blood.
You are providing the certainty of a future independent empire
and government of blacks in the South of your own country.
By the time they are ten millions, you may think that you will
be fifty, and will have nothing to fear from them. You are now
twenty millions, and have not yet conquered eight million whites
in rebellion. Make your calculations accordingly. The ten
million blacks will not be such as they are now. They will be
educated to a certain degree, in spite of your exclusion of them
from the right of representation; they will become a military
power; they will be smarting under their own wrongs, will be
consolidated by some Toussaint whom God will raise up, and you
cannot conquer them. They will have a juster cause, a more
righteous argument, than our fathers had in the revolution against
Great Britain; and we a cause even worse, after all the issues
and lessons of this rebellion and war, than that of the Confed-
earte rebels now against ourselves.
Perhaps that is to be the result, through our fool-hardy, im¬
piety and infatuation. And if it be so, God's will be done! The
28
whole universe will hail with hallelujahs the final triumphant,
independence on this continent of the race whom we so long
held as slaves, and afterwards as serfs on account of tlieir colour*
and will shout over the defeat and shame of the proud oppres¬
sing white nation. The spread-eagleism of the Monroe doctrine
of these haughty pale faces will come to a fit conclusion in the
possession of the choicest portion of the United States as an in¬
dependent kingdom by a coloured race! The attributes of God
will be vindicated, as no respector of persons. The dying kiss
of the martyr of the coloured race imprinted on the babe, in his
way to the gallows, will prove to have been the prophecy of re¬
generation and dominion, but our Sun will go down wliile it
is yet noon.
The question is still, Barabbas or Christ ? It has been in
public judicature now these three years, whom will this nation
—its people, government, president, legislators—put to death,
and whom will they spare and justify? And still Pilate stands
and washes his hands before all the people, and asks: Whom
will ye that I shall deliver unto you—Barabbas or Christ ? The
question will soon be settled. And if the coloured race be not
released and delivered; if in the majesty of righteousness and
national justice we do not deliver them, then their continuance
in bondage will be with that awful condition—His blood be
upon us and upon our children!
May the God of all our mercies save us from such perdition!
We must return to him, and to the fulfilment of that work of
justice, and righteousness, which is the only work for which
God has ordained governments on earth. IIe that ruletit
over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. May God
bestow upon us such a man, who will " make up the hedge and
stand in the gap before God for the land, that he may not des¬
troy it."
•••••