Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)Sumner, Charles
History
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)
Sumner, Charles
Slavery -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., American
Mr. Dixon, of Connecticut, deprecated the adoption of the
resolutions. The bill recently passed “purported to be final.…
It provided certain terms, harsh and severe in the extreme,
upon which the States formerly in rebellion should be restored
to the Union.” He then remarked: “These resolutions come from
the right quarter. Whatever may be my opinion of his [Mr.
SUMNER’S] political views, I will say for that Senator, that
for the last two years he has been prophetic; what he has
announced, what he has declared, what he has said must be law,
has become law upon many subjects.… Let us know what is coming;
let us see the worst.… While I was very glad to find--if I
understood them correctly--that the Senator from Maine [Mr.
FESSENDEN] and some other Senators about me did not coincide
with the views of the Senator from Massachusetts, I could not
forget that two years ago I heard a Senator on this floor say
that upon another subject there was not a single Senator here
who agreed with the Senator from Massachusetts; and yet upon
that very subject I believe every Senator on the majority side
of the Senate now, if not at heart concurring with him, acts
and votes with him.”
Mr. Sherman, of Ohio, opposed the resolutions. It seemed to
him “not exactly fair or just or ingenuous to the Southern
people to add new terms, or require of them additional
guaranties, as conditions to the admission of representation.”
Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, voted for the recent bill
because he thought he saw in opinions of Mr. Sumner, “and a few
others who concur with him, that, if the measure then before
the Senate was not adopted, harsher, much harsher, measures
would in the end be exacted of the South.”
Mr. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, thought the resolutions
“unfair to Congress and unfair to the country.”
Mr. Sumner said in reply:--
The objects which I seek in Reconstruction are regarded in very
different lights by myself and by Senators who have spoken. The
Senator from New Jersey, the Senator from Maryland, and the Senator
from Ohio all regard these requirements as in the nature of burdens or
penalties. Education is a burden or penalty; a homestead is a burden
or penalty. It is a new burden or penalty which I am seeking--so these
distinguished Senators argue--to impose upon the South. Are they right,
or am I right? Education can never be burden or penalty. Justice in the
way of a homestead can never be burden or penalty. Each is a sacred
duty which the nation owes to those who rightfully look to us for
protection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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