SUFFRAGE AND SAFETY.

ORATION DELIVERED AT RAVENNA, OHIO.

JULY 4, 1865.

JULY 4, 1860, Mr. Garfield delivered an oration at Ravenna, Ohio, discussing such topics as generally drew the attention of cultivated men on such occasions before the war. Again, July 4, 1865, he delivered a second oration at the same place. He began the second oration with calling attention to the changes that had been wrought since the first one was delivered. He traced the progress of the sentiment of liberty from the opening of the war to the Emancipation Proclamation, and then to the coming of peace. The results of the war, he said, were these : — 1. A clear discernment upon the part of the Northern people of the wickedness of slavery.

2. A stronger nationality. Out of the ruins of slavery and treason had grown up a stronger and grander nationality than we had ever known before. An old American statesman said that the stability of the government would depend upon its power directly to enforce its laws. The power of our government had been amply demonstrated by the generous response to its calls for men and money for the war. We understand now that we do not owe allegiance to Washington by way of Columbus, but in an air line.

3. The government had been proved stronger than any of its dependencies. Cotton was declared King, but Cotton did not save the rebellion. The Republic was greater than any product, than any interest, than any State or man.

4. The character of the people had grown. "We have more faith in the American people than before the war. We have learned to know them and respect them. The boys who went from us come back to us solid men. They have been engaged in a righteous work. No man can be inspired with a great and noble purpose without being better for it. The destiny of the nation is safer and surer than ever before. We have learned how to appreciate its beneficence and its virtue, and

we shall never be likely to forget those who have come back to us from its battle-fields."

Before this point was reached, Mr. Garfield had divided the national drama into two acts, the military act and the civil or the restorative act. Now he addressed himself to the second of these acts, or more narrowly the suffrage question. This oration was not fully reported, but the following portion, relating to suffrage, was prepared in manuscript by the author, and was printed at the time from his notes.

ELLOW-CITIZENS, -We may now say that the past, with all its wealth of glorious associations, is secure. The air is filled with brightness; the horizon is aglow with hope. The future is full of magnificent possibilities. But God has committed to us a trust which we must not, we dare not overlook. By the dispensation of his Providence, the chains have been stricken from four millions of the inhabitants of this Republic, and he has shown us the truth of that early utterance of Abraham Lincoln's, "This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

In the great crisis of the war, God brought us face to face with the mighty truth, that we must lose our own freedom or grant it to the slave. In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us its glories and its blessings. The Omniscient Witness will appear in judgment against us if we do not fulfil that covenant. Have we done it? Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it mere negation? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained, — of not being bought and sold, branded and scourged? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned whether slavery were not better. But liberty is no negation. It is a substantial, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration, "that all men are created equal"; that the sanction of all just

government is "the consent of the governed." Can these be realized until each man has a right to be heard on all matters relating to himself? The plain truth is, that each man knows his own interest best. It has been said, "If he is compelled to pay, if he may be compelled to fight, if he be required implicitly to obey, he should be legally entitled to be told what for; to have his consent asked, and his opinion counted at what it is worth. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilized nation, no persons disqualified except through their own default." I would not insult your intelligence by discussing so plain a truth, had not the passion and prejudice of this generation called in question the very axioms of the Declaration.

But it will be asked, Is it safe to admit to the elective franchise the great mass of ignorant and degraded blacks, so lately slaves? Here indeed is the great practical question, to the solution of which should be brought all the wisdom and enlightenment of our people. I am fully persuaded that some degree of intelligence and culture should be required as a qualification for the right of suffrage. I have no doubt that it would be better if no man were allowed to vote who cannot read his ballot or the Constitution of the United States, and write his name or copy in a legible hand a sentence from the Declaration of Independence. Make any such wise restriction of suffrage, but let it apply to all alike. Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty. I admit that it is perilous to confer the franchise upon the ignorant and degraded; but if an educational test cannot be established, let suffrage be extended to all men of proper age, regardless of color. It may well be questioned whether the negro does not understand the nature of our institutions better than the equally ignorant foreigner. He was intelligent enough to understand from the beginning of the war that the destiny of his race was involved in it. He was intelligent enough to be true to that Union which his educated and traitorous master was endeavoring to destroy. He came to us in the hour of our sorest need, and by his aid, under God, the Republic was saved. Shall we now be guilty of the unutterable meanness, not only of thrusting him beyond the pale of its blessings, but of committing his destiny to the tender mercies of those pardoned rebels who have been so reluctantly compelled to take their feet from his

neck and their hands from his throat? But some one says it is dangerous at this time to make new experiments. I answer, it is always safe to do justice. However, to grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers. Let me refer you to a few facts in our history which have been but little studied by the people and politicians of this generation.

I. During the war of the Revolution, and in 1788, the date of the adoption of our national Constitution, there was but one State among the thirteen whose constitution refused the right of suffrage to the negro. That State was South Carolina. Some, it is true, established a property qualification; all made freedom a prerequisite; but none save South Carolina made color a condition of suffrage.

2. The Federal Constitution makes no such distinction, nor did the Articles of Confederation. In the Congress of the Confederation, on the 25th of June, 1778, the fourth article was under discussion. It provided that "the free inhabitants of each of these States-paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted-shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States." The delegates from South Carolina moved to insert between the words "free inhabitants" the word "white," thus denying the privileges and immunities of citizenship to the colored man. According to

the rules of the convention, each State had but one vote. Eleven States voted on the question. One was divided; two voted aye; and eight voted no.1 It was thus early, and almost unanimously, decided that freedom, not color, should be the test of citizenship.

3. No Federal legislation prior to 1812 placed any restriction on the right of suffrage in consequence of the color of the citiFrom 1789 to 1812 Congress passed ten separate laws establishing new Territories. In all these, freedom, and not color, was the basis of suffrage.

zen.

4. After nearly a quarter of a century of prosperity under the Constitution, the spirit of slavery so far triumphed over the early principles and practices of the government that, in 1812, South Carolina and her followers in Congress succeeded in inserting the word "white" in the suffrage clause of the act establishing

1 Elliot's Debates, Vol. I. p. 90.

a territorial government for Missouri. One by one the Slave States, and many of the free States, gave way before the crusade of slavery against negro citizenship. In 1817, Connecticut caught the infection, and in her constitution she excluded the negro from the ballot-box. In every other New England State his ancient right of suffrage has remained and still remains undisturbed. Free negroes voted in Maryland till 1833; in North Carolina, till 1835; in Pennsylvania, till 1838. It was the boast of Cave Johnson of Tennessee that he owed his election to Congress in 1828 to the free negroes who worked in his mills. They were denied the suffrage in 1834, under the new constitution of Tennessee, by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-three. As new States were formed, their constitutions for the most part excluded the negro from citizenship. Then followed the shameful catalogue of black laws-expatriation and ostracism in every form which have so deeply disgraced the record of legislation in many of the States.

I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of the Revolution gave birth.

But if we had no respect for the early practices and traditions of our fathers, we should still be compelled to meet the practical question which will very soon be forced upon us for solution. The necessity of putting down the rebellion by force of arms was no more imperative than is that of restoring law, order, and liberty in the States that rebelled. No duty can be more sacred than that of maintaining and perpetuating the freedom which the Proclamation of Emancipation gave to the loyal black men of the South. If they are to be disfranchised, if they are to have no voice in determining the conditions under which they are to live and labor, what hope have they for the future? It will rest with their late masters, whose treason they aided to thwart, to determine whether negroes shall be permitted to hold property, to enjoy the benefits of education, to enforce contracts, to have access to the courts of justice, in short, to enjoy any of those rights which give vitality and value to freedom. Who can fail to foresee the ruin and misery that await this race, to whom the vision of freedom has been presented only to be withdrawn, leaving them without even the aid which the master's selfish