Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2

G >> George S. Boutwell >> Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2

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Aside from the debates on the constitutional amendment there were
serious difficulties among Republicans in regard to the exercise of the
right of suffrage by the negroes.

Previous to the year 1868 there was a majority of Republicans who would
have imposed a qualification, some of service in the army or navy,
some of property and some of education. It was with great difficulty
that the scheme of limitation was resisted in regard to the District
of Columbia. As to the Democrats they could always be counted upon to
aid in any measure which tended to keep the negroes in a subordinate
condition. This of the majority--there was always a minority, usually
a small one, who were ready to aid in the elevation of the negro when
his emancipation had been accomplished. I do not recall the name of
one man who favored emancipation as a policy and adhered to the
Democratic Party. When a man reached the conclusion that the negroes
should be free, he could not do otherwise than join the Republican
Party. At the time of the admission of Tennessee, July, 1866, there
were only twelve men in the House of Representatives who insisted upon
securing to the negro the right to vote. A larger number favored the
scheme, but they yielded to the claim of that State to be admitted
without conditions. At that time the power of the President was not
impaired seriously, and his wishes were heeded by many. There was
also an understanding that the State would concede the right upon terms
not unreasonable.

Next to the restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery the
recognition of universal suffrage is the most important result of the
war. It has its evils but they are incidental, and their influence is
limited to times and places, while the advantages are universal and
enduring. Universal suffrage is security for universal education. It
is security against chronic hostility to the Government and security
against the manifestation of a revolutionary spirit among the people.
They realize that with frequent elections, the evils of administration
may be corrected speedily. By a similar though slower process the
fundamental law may be changed. Hence it is in this country until
recently there was no difference of opinion as to the wisdom of the
system of government under which we are living. The existing diversity
of opinion will soon disappear. If suffrage were limited there would
be a body of discontented people ready to seize upon any pretext that
promised a change. In the present condition of our system the only
danger is due to the forcible or fraudulent withholding of the right
from those who are entitled to enjoy it. This condition of things
must soon end. The safety of a state is yet further secured by
frequent elections. The project to extend the Presidential term is
full of danger. If the term were six or ten years the presence of an
offensive or dangerous man in the office would provoke a revolution, or
cause disturbances only less disastrous to business and to social and
domestic comfort. In the little republic of Hayti there have been not
less than seventeen revolutions in the hundred years of its existence
and they were due in a large degree to the fact that the Presidential
term is seven years.

The various propositions submitted to the House of Representatives for
securing the right to vote to all the male adult citizens of the United
States were referred to the Judiciary Committee of which I was a
member. Among them was one submitted by myself. In the committee they
were referred to a sub-committee consisting of myself, Mr. Churchill
of New York, and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin. Mr. Eldridge as a
Democrat was opposed to the measure, and he took no interest in
preparing the form of an amendment. Churchill and myself were fellow-
boarders and we prepared and agreed to an amendment in substance that
which was adopted finally and which in form was almost the same. When
I reported the amendment to the committee not one word was said either
in criticism or commendation, nor was there a call for a second
reading. After a moment's delay Mr. Wilson, the chairman, said:--"If
there is no objection Mr. Boutwell will report the amendment to the
House." There was no objection and at the earliest opportunity I made
the report--that is, I reported the resolution for amending the
Constitution. Mr. Wilson made a speech which I have not since read,
but which made an impression upon my mind that he was opposed to the
measure, or at least had doubts about the wisdom of urging the
amendment upon Congress and the country.

The resolution passed the House as it was reported by the committee.
When it was taken up in the Senate Mr. Sumner, who was opposed to the
resolution, assailed it with an amendment that would have been fatal if
his lead had been followed by the two Houses. He proposed to insert
after the words "to vote" the words "or hold office." At that time he
was a recognized leader upon all matters relating to the negro race,
and his standing with that race was such that the Republican senators
from the slave States were obedient to his wishes. His amendment was
adopted by the Senate. In presence of the fact that Mr. Sumner was
opposed to any amendment of the Constitution upon the subject and he
proposed to rely upon a statute, it is difficult to explain his conduct
upon any other theory than that he intended to defeat the measure
either in Congress or in the States. He had claimed when the
Fourteenth Amendment was pending that a joint resolution would furnish
an adequate remedy and protection. His proposition was in these
words: "There shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly
invested with peculiar privileges and powers and there shall be no
denial of rights, civil or political, on account of color or race
anywhere within the limits of the United States or the jurisdiction
thereof: but all persons therein shall be equal before the law, whether
in the court room or at the ballot-box. And this statute made in
pursuance of the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land,
anything in the constitution or laws of any State notwithstanding."
This resolution is a sad impeachment of Mr. Sumner's quality as a
lawyer and it is an equally sad impeachment of his sense or of his
integrity as a man that he was willing to risk the rights of five
million persons upon a statute whose language was rhetorical and
indefinite, a statute which might be repealed and which was quite
certain to be pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Upon the return of the resolution and amendment to the House, my own
position was an embarrassing one. I was counted as a radical and in
favor of securing to the negro race every right to which the white race
was entitled. My opposition to the Senate amendment seemed to place
me in a light inconsistent with my former professions. However, I met
the difficulty by an argument in which I maintained that the right
to vote carried with it the right to hold office. That in the United
States there were only a few exceptions, and those were exceptions
under the Constitution.

Finally, the House, by a reduced vote refused to concur with the
amendment of the Senate. It was at this crisis that Wendell Phillips
wrote an article in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ over his own name in
which he said in substance and in words, that the House proposition was
adequate and that it ought to be accepted by the Senate. His name and
opinion settled the controversy. The Southern Republicans deserted
Mr. Sumner feeling that the opinion of Phillips was a sufficient
shield. A slight change of phraseology was made and the proposition of
the House became the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

I wrote a letter of acknowledgment to Mr. Phillips in the opinion
that he had saved the amendment. At that time the prejudice against
negroes for office was very strong in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and in
varying degrees the prejudice extended over the whole North.

The enjoyment of the right to vote has not been fully secured to the
negro race, but no one has appeared to deny his right to hold office.
Indeed, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has
placed him in office, both by election and appointment. Thus has
experience shown the folly of Mr. Sumner's amendment.

That Mr. Sumner should have been willing to risk the rights of the
whole negro race upon a statute whose constitutionality would have
been questioned upon good ground, and which might have been repealed,
is a marvel which no one not acquainted with Mr. Sumner can
comprehend. First of all, though he was learned, he was not a lawyer.
He was impractical in the affairs of government to a degree that is
incomprehensible even to those who knew him. He was in the Senate
twenty-three years and the only mark that he left upon the statutes is
an amendment to the law relating to naturalization by which Mongolians
are excluded from citizenship. The object of his amendment was to
save negroes from the exclusive features of the statute which was
designed to apply only to the Chinese. His amendment made plain what
the committee had designed to secure. He was a great figure in the
war against slavery and as a great figure in that war he should ever
remain.

The Fourteenth Amendment saved the country from a series of calamities
that might have been more disastrous even than the Civil War. The
South might, under the Fourteenth Amendment, grant to the negroes the
right to vote but upon conditions wholly impracticable and thus have
secured their full representation in Congress at the same time that the
voting power was retained in the hands of the white race. Or they
might have denied to the negro race the right to vote and submitted to
a loss of representation. Such a policy would have given the whole
country over to contention and possibly in the end, to civil war. The
discontented and oppressed negroes, increasing in numbers and wealth,
would have demanded their rights ultimately, even by the threat of
force, or by the use of force they would have secured their rights. In
the North there would have been a large body of the people, only less
than the whole body, who would have sympathized with the negroes and
who, in an exigency would have rendered them material aid. The Dorr
War in Rhode Island and the struggles in Kansas, are instances of the
danger of attempting to found society or to maintain social order upon
an unjust or an unequal system for the distribution of political power.
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
passage 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:

WASHINGTON, _March_ 13, 1870.
MY DEAR SIR:--

This letter will recall to your mind the circumstance 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 Constitution 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
passed 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 passage of
the amendment through the State Legislatures. However, the resolution
was finally passed 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 substituting 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 assault. 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 Constitutional
Amendment with great anxiety. The House had passed 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
constitutional 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 Constitution 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.

If in any State the right to vote shall be "denied or abridged on
account of race, color or previous condition of servitude," the
statutes may be annulled by a decision of the Supreme Court. Neither
the people of the United States in their political sovereignty, nor
the political branch of the Government in its representative capacity
can exert any direct influence upon the decision of the questions that
may arise. The questions that may arise will be judicial questions,
and they will fall under the decision of the judicial tribunals. Hence
there has never been a time when it was the duty or when it was in the
power or within the scope of the duty of the executive branch of the
National Government to take official notice of the legislation in some
of the former slave States, which is designed manifestly to limit the
voting power of the negro population in those States.

If such legislation does not fall under the Fifteenth Amendment it will
be subject to the penalty imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment,--a
proportionate loss of representative power in the House of
Representatives and in the Electoral Colleges.

As one of the three remaining members of the Committee on the
Judiciary, and as one of the three remaining members of the Committee
on Reconstruction, I wish to say, without any reservation whatever,
that the amendments are accomplishing and are destined to accomplish
all that was expected by the committees that were charged with the
duty of providing for the protection of the rights of the freedmen.

They were relived from the disparaging distinctions that came into
existence with the system of slavery. They were placed upon an
equality with other citizens and in the forms of law all
discriminations affecting unfavorably the right of suffrage must
apply equally to all citizens. The injustice and unwisdom of the
restrictive legislation in which the Southern States are indulging,
are subject of concern for the whole country, but the negro populations
have no ground for the complaint that their rights have been neglected
by the General Government.

This, however, is true: The negro population, in common with all
others, has ground for just and continuing complaint against the
legislation of Congress by which a portion of the inhabitants of the
Hawaiian Islands have been denationalized on account of race or color,
or on account of a condition of mental or physical inferiority.

The process of reasoning by which the legislation of the States of the
South is condemned, by those who uphold the legislation in regard to
Hawaii involves a question in political ethics which for the moment I
am not able to answer in a manner satisfactory to myself.

XXXI
INVESTIGATIONS FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR

In the years 1865, '66 and '67 three important subjects of inquiry were
placed in the hands of committees of which I was a member.

The Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by
resolutions adopted respectively the 9th and 30th days of April, 1866,
was directed "to inquire into the nature of the evidence implicating
Jefferson Davis and others in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln."

James M. Ashley of Ohio introduced a resolution for the impeachment of
President Johnson, and on the 7th day of January, 1867, the House
authorized the Committee on the Judiciary "to inquire into the official
conduct of Andrew Johnson, Vice-President of the United States,
discharging the powers and duties of President of the United States,"
etc.

By a resolution of the two Houses of Congress passed the 12th and 13th
of December, 1865, a joint committee was created under instructions to
"inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called
Confederate States of America and report whether they or any of them
are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress."

William Pitt Fessenden was chairman on the part of the Senate and
Thaddeus Stevens was chairman of the part of the House. Upon the
death of Mr. Stevens I succeeded to his place. The testimony taken
in these cases fills three huge volumes. No inconsiderable part of the
testimony was taken by myself, and I was but seldom absent from the
meetings of the committees.

JOHN WILKES BOOTH

In no other situation in life is the character of a man more fully and
truthfully brought into view than when he is placed upon the witness-
stand and subjected to an examination by counsel or others who aim to
support opposite opinions and to reach adverse results. The committees
that conducted the investigations were composed of men who entertained
opposite views in regard to the reconstruction of the government and in
regard to the impeachment of President Johnson. There was also a
difference of opinion upon the question of the responsibility of the
Confederate authorities for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. As a
consequence of this diversity of opinion the witnesses were subjected
to the equivalent of a cross-examination in a court of justice. Some
of the impressions of men that I received in the many hearings, and
some of the opinions I formed, are recorded here.

In each branch of these comprehensive inquiries there may be found
something in the nature of evidence that may appear to have a bearing
upon the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. It is my purpose in these
paragraphs to bring in to view the testimony which relates directly to
John Wilkes Booth, the most conspicuous and without question the chief
criminal in the tragedy of the assassination of President Lincoln, and
the attempt upon the life of Mr. Seward.

The first step in the proceedings which culminated in the murder was
the deposit at Surrattsville (a place about five miles from Washington,
and owned by the Surratt family) of a carbine, two bottles of whiskey,
a small coil of rope, a field glass, a monkey wrench, and some other
articles.

The house was kept by a man named Lloyd, and neither the character of
the house nor that of the keeper could bear a rigid test in ethics.
The deposit was made about the first of March by John H. Surratt,
Atzerodt and David E. Herold, all of whom were afterwards implicated
in the crime. The articles were received and secreted by Lloyd, but
only after objections by him, as appears from his testimony. Lloyd
connected Mrs. Surratt with the crime by these facts as related by
him. She called upon Lloyd the Tuesday preceding the fatal Friday
and gave him this message: "She told me to have them ready (speaking
of the shooting-iron) that they would be called for or wanted soon,
I have forgotten which."

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