Part 21 (1/2)
The war taxes have been abolished. The weight of the burden which has been in that way lifted from the shoulders of the people may perhaps be understood from the statement of a single fact. The Worcester District, which I represented, paid in the direct form of taxes to the National Treasury the enormous sum of $3,662,727 for the year ending June 30, 1866. For the year ending June 30, 1871, the taxes so paid amounted in all to $225,000, and for the year ending June 30, 1872, they amounted to about $100,000.
The policy of protection to American industry, which, like the question of honest elections, has been always in contest between the Republican Party and its Democratic antagonist has, unless during the two Administrations of President Cleveland, been successfully maintained. As a consequence of that policy our manufacturing independence has been achieved. The United States has become the foremost manufacturing nation in the world. We are penetrating foreign markets, and have built up a domestic commerce, the like of which has never been seen before, and whose extent surpa.s.ses the power of human imagination to conceive and almost of mathematics to calculate.
The temptation to extend our territory by unlawful exercise of power over Cuba and San Domingo was resisted by the American people. Cuba has been liberated and has taken her place among the free nations of the world.
For the great offence committed against us by Great Britain in the hour of our peril we have exacted apology and reparation.
There were not wanting counsellors enough to urge the American people that we should nurse this grievance and lie in wait until the hour for our revenge should come. But the magnanimous American people preferred peace and reconciliation to revenge.
I ought to except this from the list of achievements due to the Republican Party alone. In the matter of the British Treaty, the Democratic leaders contributed their full share to its successful accomplishment. Mr. Justice Nelson of the United States Supreme Court was a distinguished member of the Commission that made the Treaty.
Under General Grant's Administration treaties were negotiated with nearly all the great powers of the world by which they renounced the old doctrine of perpetual allegiance, and the American citizen of foreign birth is clothed with all the rights and privileges of a native-born citizen wherever on the face of the earth he may go.
The vast number of the National offices has ceased to be a menace to the safety of the Republic and has ceased to be a source of strength to the Administration in power, or to become the price or reward of political activity. The offices of trust and profit now exist to serve the people and not to bribe them.
The conflict between the Senate and the Executive which arose in the time of Andrew Johnson, when Congress undertook to hamper and restrict the President's Const.i.tutional power of removal from office, without which his Const.i.tutional duty of seeing that the laws are faithfully executed cannot be performed, has been settled by a return to the ancient principle established in Was.h.i.+ngton's first Administration.
The vast claims upon the Treasury growing out of the war have been dealt with upon wise and simple principles which have commanded general a.s.sent and in the main have resulted in doing full justice both to the Government and to the claimant.
A disputed t.i.tle to the Executive power which threatened to bring on another civil war, and which would not have been settled without bloodshed in any other country, has been peacefully and quietly disposed of by the simple mechanism devised for the occasion and by the enactment of a rule which will protect the country against a like danger in the future.
With all these matters I have had something to do.
As to some of them my part has been a very humble one. As to others I have had a part of considerable prominence. As to all I have had full and intimate knowledge at the time and have been in the intimate counsel of the men who were responsible for the result.
Beside all these things there has been during a large part of my public service, especially the part immediately following the Civil War, a battle to maintain the purity of elections and the purity of administration and government expenditure against corruption. The attempt to get possession of the forces of the Government for corrupt purposes a.s.sumed its most dangerous form and had its most unscrupulous and dangerous leader in Ma.s.sachusetts. It was my fortune to have a good deal to do with maintaining the ancient honor of the Commonwealth and defending and vindicating the purity of her political organization.
Upon all these matters I formed my opinions carefully in the beginning. I have adhered to those opinions, and acted on them throughout. I formed them in many cases when they were shared by a few persons only. But they have made their way, and prevail. They are the opinions upon which the majority of the American people have acted, and the reasons which have controlled that action, seem to me now, in looking backward, to have been good reasons. I have no regret, and no desire to blot out anything I have said or done, or to change any vote I have given.
The duties of a Representative and Senator demand a large correspondence. I have had always the aid of intelligent and competent secretaries. Disposing of the day's mail, even with such aid, is not infrequently a hard day's work, especially for a man past three score and ten.
Political campaigns in Ma.s.sachusetts with its small territory and compact population are easy as compared with most of the other States. But I have been expected every second year to make many political speeches, commonly from thirty to forty.
Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Fry, and Mr. Reed, and a great many others who could be named, were called on for a much larger number.
A man at all prominent in public affairs is also expected to give utterance to the voice of the people on all great occasions of joy or sorrow, at high festivals, or at colleges and schools, on great National anniversaries, when great men die and great historical events are celebrated. So it was a life of hard work upon which I entered when I took my seat in the House of Representatives on the 4th of March, 1869.
The thirty-four years that have followed have been for me years of incessant labor.
CHAPTER XVII RECONSTRUCTION
The reconstruction policy of the Republican Party has been bitterly denounced. Some men who supported it are in the habit now of calling it a failure. It never commanded in its fullest extent the cordial support of the whole party.
But it was very simple. So far as it applied to the Southern whites who had been in rebellion it consisted only of complete amnesty and full restoration to political rights. No man was ever punished for taking part in the rebellion after he laid down his arms. There is no other instance of such magnanimity in history. The War left behind it little bitterness in the hearts of the conquerors. All they demanded of the conquered was submission in good faith to the law of the land and the will of the people as it might be const.i.tutionally declared.
Their policy toward the colored people was simply the application to them of the principles applied to the whites, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in the Const.i.tution of nearly every State in the Union. There was to be no distinction in political rights by reason of color or race. The States were left to regulate such qualifications as residence, character, intelligence, education and property as they saw fit, only subject to the condition that they were to apply to all alike.
It was the purpose of the dominant party to leave the control of the election of national officers, as it had been left from the beginning, in the hands of the local or State authorities.
The power was claimed, indeed it is clearly given by the Const.i.tution, as was a.s.serted in the debates in the Convention that framed it, to conduct those elections under National authority, if it should be found by experience to be necessary. But in fact there was at no time any attempt to go further with National election laws than to provide for punishment of fraudulent or violent interference with elections or for a sufficient provision to ascertain that they were properly conducted, or to protect them against violence or fraud.
Beside this it was the desire of many Republican leaders, especially of Mr. Sumner and General Grant, that there should be a provision at the National charge for the education of all the citizens in the Southern States, black and white, so far as the States were unable or unwilling to afford it, such as had been provided for in the States of the North for all their citizens. It was never contemplated by them to give the right to vote to a large number of illiterate citizens, without ample provision for their education at the public charge. General Grant accompanied his official announcement to Congress of the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment with an earnest recommendation of such a provision. Earnest efforts were made to accomplish this result by liberal grants from the National treasury. Many liberal and patriotic Southern Democrats supported it. But it was defeated by the timidity, or mistaken notions of economy, of Northern statesmen. In my opinion this defeat accounts for the failure of the policy of reconstruction so far as it has failed. I do not believe that self-government with universal suffrage could be maintained long in any Northern State, or in any country in the world, without ample provision for public education.
It has been claimed with great sincerity and not without plausible reason that a great hards.h.i.+p and wrong was inflicted by the victorious North on their fellow citizens when the political power in their States was given over to their former slaves. This consideration had great force in the minds of many influential Republicans in the North. Governor Andrew of Ma.s.sachusetts, Governor Morton of Indiana, afterward Senator, men whose influence was probably unsurpa.s.sed by any other two men in the country, save Grant and Sumner alone, were of that way of thinking. They thought that our true policy was to let the men who had led their States into the Rebellion take the responsibility of restoring them to their old relations.
It is not unlikely that the strength of the Republican Party would have been seriously impaired, perhaps overthrown, by the division of sentiment on this subject. But the white Democrats in the South were blind to their own interest. President Johnson permitted them in several States to take into their hands again the power of government. They proceeded to pa.s.s laws which if carried out would have had the effect of reducing the negro once more to a condition of practical slavery. Men were to be sold for the crime of being out of work. Their old masters were to have the preference in the purchase. So the whole Republican Party of the North came to be united in the belief that there could be no security for the liberty of the freedman without the ballot.
It is said that this reconstruction policy has been a failure.
Undoubtedly it has not gained all that was hoped for it by its advocates. But looking back now I do not believe that any other policy would have done as well as that has done, although a large part of what was designed by the Republican leaders of the period of reconstruction never was accomplished.