Volume II Part 3 (1/2)

It is true that at this time (1901) the operation of the Fifteenth Amendment has been defeated and consequently the governments of States and the Government of the United States have become usurpations, in that they have been in the hands of a minority of men. Nevertheless the influence of the amendment is felt by all, and the time is not distant when it will be accepted by all. Thus our Government will be made to rest upon the wisest and safest foundation yet devised by man: The Equality of Men in the States, and the Equality of States in the Union.

Mr. Sumner opposed the amendment and he declined to vote upon the pa.s.sage of the resolution. Wendell Phillips saved it in the Senate.

General Grant, more than anyone else secured its ratification by the people. I append a copy of my letter to Mr. Phillips:

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, _March_ 13, 1870.

MY DEAR SIR:--

This letter will recall to your mind the circ.u.mstance that when the Fifteenth Amendment was suspended between the two houses you published an editorial in the _Standard_ in favor of the House proposition. Can you send me that article? It may not be known to you that that article saved the amendment. A little of the secret history was thus. Various propositions were offered in the House--among them one of my own--and all were referred to the Judiciary Committee.

In the Judiciary Committee, upon my motion the various resolutions for amending the Const.i.tution in that particular were referred to a sub- committee consisting of myself, Churchill of New York and Eldridge of Wisconsin. Churchill and myself were living at the same house and conferred together several times. Eldridge took no interest in the matter and never joined us--perhaps he was not invited. After an examination of all the plans I wrote that proposed amendment which was pa.s.sed by the House and is in substance and almost in language the amendment as adopted.

With the concurrence of Mr. Churchill I reported it to the committee and without one word of criticism and as far as I could judge without any particular consideration I was directed to report it to the House.

In the House it encountered considerable opposition and Mr. Wilson, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, made a speech which was a great surprise to me, though directed chiefly to the bill which I had also reported by direction of the Judiciary Committee giving at once the right of suffrage to negroes in all national elections and for members of the Legislature. This I thought necessary to secure the pa.s.sage of the amendment through the State Legislatures. However, the resolution was finally pa.s.sed by the House. In the Senate it met with great opposition because it omitted to secure in terms the right to hold office. This point had been raised in the House where I had successfully met the proposition by the statement and an argument in support of the statement that the right to vote as a matter of fact and in law carries with it the right to hold office. In the Senate, Mr.

Sumner, supported by all the Southern Republicans and a part of the Northern Republicans succeeded in subst.i.tuting a new resolution securing in terms the right to hold office. Upon the return of the Resolution to the House I was obliged to take what appeared a conservative position and resist the proposition to concur with the Senate upon the ground that the change was unnecessary and that its adoption threatened the loss of the measure in doubtful States as Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and others. The House adhered to its position, yet with such weakness of purpose on the part of many who sustained me, as indicated that they would not withstand another a.s.sault. The struggle was then renewed in the Senate and with every indication that the Senate would insist upon its amendment. It was then that your article appeared. Its influence was immediate and potential. Men thought that if you the extremest radical could accept the House proposition they might safely do the same. Had the Senate adhered one of two things would have happened, either the House would have seceded or the amendment would have failed.

Had the House concurred I fear we should have failed to carry several States which have since ratified it.

Upon reflection I think as at the time I thought that your voice saved the Fifteenth Amendment.

I am very truly, GEO. S. BOUTWELL.

WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.

Boston.

P. S. This letter is not for the public use in so far as names are mentioned, and of course, not for publication.

G. S. B.

The article of Mr. Phillips became so important in its influence upon the final action of the Senate that I reproduce it in justice to Mr.

Phillips and as a further record of an historical event.

”We see the action of the Senate touching the Const.i.tutional Amendment with great anxiety. The House had pa.s.sed a simple measure, one covering all the ground that people are ready to occupy. It answered completely the lesson of the war. Its simplicity gave it all the chance that exists for any form of amendment being ratified.

”Why was it not left in that shape? Leaving out of sight the manifest risk of attempting too much, the very fact of the little time left before the session closes, was warning enough to clutch at anything satisfactory and to run no risk of possible disagreement between the Houses. We wait further knowledge before indulging any conjectures as to the motive for this strange course of the Senate; before even suspecting that it grew out of any concealed hate toward the whole measure and was indeed a trick to defeat it. Whoever, in either House, gratifies some personal whim to the extent of defeating or even postponing this measure will incur the gravest responsibility. We exhort every man who professes himself a friend of liberty to drop all undue attachment to any form of words and to co-operate, heartily, earnestly, with the great body of the members in carrying through as promptly as possible, any form which included the substance of a const.i.tutional protection to the votes and right to office of the colored race. That is the work of the hour. That is the lesson the war has burned in on the brain and conscience of the Nation.

”To include with this, 'Nationality, education, creed,' etc., is utter lack of common sense. Such a total forgetfulness of the commonest political prudence as makes it hard to credit the good intentions of the proposers.

”Our disappointment is the greater because we had reason to believe that the Senators who have this matter in charge, would be the last men to forget themselves at such a crisis. They have been timidly 'practical,' ludicrously tied up to precedents, when, in times past we have urged them to some act which seemed likely to jeopard party. Then Sir Oracle was never more sententious, more full of 'wise saws and modern instances,' than they. The inch they were willing to move ahead was hardly visible to the naked eye. How they lectured us on the 'too fast' and 'too far' policy! Now in an emergency which calls for the most delicate handling, they tear up not one admitted abuse, but include in the grasp half a dozen obstinate prejudices, which no logic of events has loosened. For the first time in our lives we beseech them to be a little more _politicians_--and a little less _reformers_-- as those functions are usually understood.”

Under the date of March 18, 1869, I received from Mr. Phillips a letter in acknowledgment of my letter of thanks and commendation, in these words:

”DEAR SIR:--

”Thank you for the intimation in your letter. I am glad if any words of mine helped get rid of the too prompt action at that time. I think it was of the greatest importance to act at once.”

The public mind seems to be misled in regard to the scope and legal value of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The amendments were in the nature of grants of power to the National Government, and in a corresponding degree they were limitations of the powers of the States, but the grants of power to the nation were also subject to limitations.

Until the ratification of the amendments the States had full power to extend the right of suffrage, or to restrict its enjoyment with the freedom that they possessed when the Treaty of Peace of 1783 had been signed, and when the Const.i.tution had not been framed and ratified.

All limitations of the right of suffrage by male inhabitants of twenty-one years of age, must fall under the control of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.