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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 410 Print image (100K) |
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TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE HISTORY AND LEGACY OF SLAVERY IN MARYLAND (Final Report) 1999/12/31 MdHR 991422 MdHR 991422, Image No: 410 Print image (100K) |
| Untitled 11/7/99 9:52 PM state of things in the late rebellious States,—where frightful rruzders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very presence of Federal soldiers This horrible business they require shall cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black and white, in their persons and proper such a one as will cause Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow into the South, and make a man from New England as much at hone in Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty, and this session of Congress is relied upon to accorplish this important work. The plain, camion-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the beginning, is sirrply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly ty loyal white men as ty loyal blacks, and is needed alike hy both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done. Man denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro. The policy that erencipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been wise and proper ty the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisonent. If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the nation rrust fall or flourish with the negro. Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens, whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The mistake of the last session was the attarpt to do this very tiling, ty a renunciation of its pcwer to secure political rights to any class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfrBnchise, http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/USA/Afro-Amer/dugl210.txt Page 16 of 17 |