A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (34 page)

(October 31, 1867)

Though generally forgotten in the history and historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, the government's Indian policy nevertheless attracted considerable attention from contemporaries. When a Sioux rebellion erupted in Minnesota in August 1862, a military commission sentenced 303 warriors to death for “murders and outrages” against whites. President Lincoln later pardoned all but thirty-eight of the Indians. Lincoln, following conventional wisdom of his day, considered Indians a separate “race” and advocated reform of the nation's policy toward them. Native peoples should become wards of the state, abandon their nomadic ways, live on reservations, and grow crops. In other words, one historian quipped, “They should surrender most of their land and cease to be Indians.”
The Nation
's solution to the Indian problem was simple: offer them the same legal protection and hold them accountable to the same responsibilities as whites. “The truth is,” the editor concluded, “the Indians have always been more ready than we. Our work has been one of continual repression.”

It is plain that something must be done with the Indians, and that it must be something different from anything yet done. We must have peace by some means. The frontiers must rest in security and the highways to the Pacific must be unobstructed. But peace involves one of two things—either the extermination of the Indian or his subjection to law and habits of industry. Extermination is a word easily said; but to put it in execution will cost untold millions of money and a life for a life. Let it be remembered that the Indians number nearly 300,000, and it has cost $70,000 per head to kill those we have put out of the way. To many minds the work of their regeneration is an equally desperate and hopeless undertaking; but those who are more intimately acquainted with the question are able to prove the contrary. The civilization of the Indian is the easiest and cheapest as well as only honorable way of securing peace.

But if we expect to civilize the Indian, it must be attempted by more rational methods than we have heretofore used. Is it reasonable to expect recovery from disease, or a healthy growth, unless the causes of the disease are removed and the conditions of life supplied? Now, the prime conditions of true social order and personal well-being are wanting in Indian society. The first condition is
LAW
to protect person and property, to restrain crime, encourage industry, and favor such prosperity as will give the Indian more interest in peace than in war. No community can develop material prosperity, social order, or individual character without the protection of life and the fruits of labor. Indians are no exception to this rule, or they would be our superiors. It is a well-known fact that the Indians have no government worthy the name. What they have is not sufficient to secure justice between man and man, nor does it even attempt it. The tribes of the Indian Territory are a partial exception. Nor is this state of anarchy altogether the fault of the Indians; it has been perpetuated and made worse by the action of our own Government. In many respects the relations of our Government to them have made their advance in civilization harder instead of easier. What wonder that they have not made greater progress? Something has been done by private citizens for their advancement, and it has been successful enough to prove that better things may be expected under better conditions. But this is not a work for private citizens alone. The United States Government can only supply social order by law, and until this is done benevolent efforts are as water poured out on the sand.

What the Indians most need is the extension of our laws over them. We are responsible for not having done it before. And the law must be brought home to each individual. It must surround every man for his personal protection and restraint. It may seem needless to say this, but all our talk and action in the past has only regarded general justice and has amounted to nothing. We have gone no further than to try and control the international intercourse of Indians and whites, and this in a most general way. We have not thought of controlling, or allowing any control of, Indians among themselves. But there can be no prosperity where each man is not defended against his neighbor, nor can the law have any restraining power unless it at the same time creates an interest in itself by the protection it affords.

There is no great difficulty in carrying this plan into effect. We only need to treat Indians like men, treat them as we do ourselves, putting on them the same responsibilities, letting them sue and be sued, and taxing them as fast as they settle down and have anything to tax. The times are ripe for this movement. Experience has convinced us that the
theory
on which our Indian affairs have been administered is wrong. We have conceded a tribal sovereignty to them which has had no existence in fact, and which, had it originally existed, was of late years impossible, in view of the sovereignty of the United States. On this ground we have treaties with them as foreign nations. And much of our inconsistent and seemingly treacherous dealing with them has been more the necessary result of this vicious theory than of wilful wickedness. Not that the latter has been wanting, however. Again, our Government is itself purified of the false idea of State sovereignty, which has doubtless countenanced the same error in regard to the Indian tribal governments. There is now a consciousness of sovereignty in the nation which is ready to assert its power in behalf of the general welfare; and the progress of the nation in regard to the recognition of human rights, the exaltation of manhood for its own sake, irrespective of race, color, or position, opens the way to this work, while the methods and agencies developed by the necessities of the freedmen solve the question of ways and means.

But are the Indians ready for it? Will they submit to the government of our laws? Is it possible to get the wild Comanches or the terrible Sioux to come under the control of law, assume the habits and occupations of civilized life, and appeal for redress of injuries to a court of justice instead of to the war-club? We think it is. The Indians are now, in large numbers, ready and anxious for the protection and order which our laws would bring; and those who are now wildest and most intractable are not beyond reach. They will be ready as soon as we. In proof of this, look at the Sioux nation; it is the most numerous body of Indians on the Continent, and covers all lands, we may say, between the Pacific Railroad and the British line, and from the western border of Iowa and Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains. It has many different tribes, going under all sorts of names; some of them the fiercest and most dreaded Indians of the plains, and others as peaceable and tractable as the very best. What makes the difference? Simply this: some of these tribes or bands have for fifty or sixty years been planting, more or less, and have been greatly affected by their semi-agricultural life; the others are of the same stock, but their life is more roving and in consequence wilder. But this change has all been produced in little more than half a century, and the same cause has been working change of late years among the Indians of the plains, driven by scarcity of game to depend more on the fruits of the farm. Its results may as yet be imperceptible to the distant observer, but careful study of the facts proves that none of these Indians are unchangeable as to habits of life or even personal characteristics. The Comanches are often mentioned as the eminent types of incorrigible wildness; but it is a fact that previous to the war of the rebellion a large number of them had settled down on a reservation. When we look at the poor inducements they had to do so, we wonder they did it; but if they did it then, will they not do the same when protection, order, prosperity, and life shall be their inducement—in fact and not in words?

The truth is the Indians have always been more ready than we. Our work has been one of continual repression. When the State constitution of Minnesota was adopted in 1857, it was expected from its wording that educated Indians able to read and write their own language and having a knowledge of the constitution of the State would be admitted to citizenship and the ballot. At least they believed it, and the prospect gave a wonderful impulse to their labors in the schoolroom and in the field. They were preparing to live like men. But such a thing could not be thought of by their white brethren; and in the act of denying citizenship to the Indians in 1857–8 the State of Minnesota threw away the opportunity of preventing the terrible massacres of 1862. Had law been permitted to reign among the Sioux in 1858, when they were anxious for it, the massacres of 1862 would have been impossible. This very summer the Indians in North-eastern Nebraska and Dakota have been restrained by the United States agents by force from going forth into the harvest-fields around, where their labor was wanted and where they might have earned bread for their families. It takes the strong hand of government to push them back into barbarism. Who is it that is not ready for civilization?

(December 3, 1867)

In his December 1867 annual message, President Johnson reflected on a trying year. Congress had successfully taken the Reconstruction process away from him, limiting both his patronage and his powers as commander-in-chief. And in that month, an unsuccessful move surfaced in the House of Representatives to impeach him. With characteristic boldness, in his address Johnson admitted his major point of contention with the Radicals in Congress: his belief that the former Confederate states had never left the Union and thus could not be treated Constitutionally as “conquered territory.” Going on the offensive, Johnson branded many of the Republicans' actions unconstitutional usurpations of federal power, vindictive and politically motivated, and prone “to Africanize the half of our country.”

 

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

When a civil war has been brought to a close, it is manifestly the first interest and duty of the state to repair the injuries which the war has inflicted, and to secure the benefit of the lessons it teaches as fully and as speedily as possible. This duty was, upon the termination of the rebellion, promptly accepted, not only by the executive department, but by the insurrectionary States themselves, and restoration in the first moment of peace was believed to be as easy and certain as it was indispensable. The expectations, however, then so reasonably and confidently entertained were disappointed by legislation from which I felt constrained by my obligations to the Constitution to withhold my assent.

It is therefore a source of profound regret that in complying with the obligation imposed upon the President by the Constitution to give to Congress from time to time information of the state of the Union I am unable to communicate any definitive adjustment, satisfactory to the American people, of the questions which since the close of the rebellion have agitated the public mind. On the contrary, candor compels me to declare that at this time there is no Union as our fathers understood the term, and as they meant it to be understood by us. The Union which they established can exist only where all the States are represented in both Houses of Congress; where one State is as free as another to regulate its internal concerns according to its own will, and where the laws of the central Government, strictly confined to matters of national jurisdiction, apply with equal force to all the people of every section. That such is not the present “state of the Union” is a melancholy fact, and we must all acknowledge that the restoration of the States to their proper legal relations with the Federal Government and with one another, according to the terms of the original compact, would be the greatest temporal blessing which God, in His kindest providence, could bestow upon this nation. It becomes our imperative duty to consider whether or not it is impossible to effect this most desirable consummation.

The Union and the Constitution are inseparable. As long as one is obeyed by all parties, the other will be preserved; and if one is destroyed, both must perish together. The destruction of the Constitution will be followed by other and still greater calamities. It was ordained not only to form a more perfect union between the States, but to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Nothing but implicit obedience to its requirements in all parts of the country will accomplish these great ends. Without that obedience we can look forward only to continual outrages upon individual rights, incessant breaches of the public peace, national weakness, financial dishonor, the total loss of our prosperity, the general corruption of morals, and the final extinction of popular freedom. To save our country from evils so appalling as these, we should renew our efforts again and again.

To me the process of restoration seems perfectly plain and simple. It consists merely in a faithful application of the Constitution and laws. The execution of the laws is not now obstructed or opposed by physical force. There is no military or other necessity, real or pretended, which can prevent obedience to the Constitution, either North or South. All the rights and all the obligations of States and individuals can be protected and enforced by means perfectly consistent with the fundamental law. The courts may be everywhere open, and if open their process would be unimpeded. Crimes against the United States can be prevented or punished by the proper judicial authorities in a manner entirely practicable and legal. There is therefore no reason why the Constitution should not be obeyed, unless those who exercise its powers have determined that it shall be disregarded and violated. The mere naked will of this Government, or of some one or more of its branches, is the only obstacle that can exist to a perfect union of all the States.

On this momentous question and some of the measures growing out of it I have had the misfortune to differ from Congress, and have expressed my convictions without reserve, though with becoming deference to the opinion of the legislative department. Those convictions are not only unchanged, but strengthened by subsequent events and further reflection. The transcendent importance of the subject will be a sufficient excuse for calling your attention to some of the reasons which have so strongly influenced my own judgment. The hope that we may all finally concur in a mode of settlement consistent at once with our true interests and with our sworn duties to the Constitution is too natural and too just to be easily relinquished.

It is clear to my apprehension that the States lately in rebellion are still members of the National Union. When did they cease to be so? The “ordinances of secession” adopted by a portion (in most of them a very small portion) of their citizens were mere nullities. If we admit now that they were valid and effectual for the purpose intended by their authors, we sweep from under our feet the whole ground upon which we justified the war. Were those States afterwards expelled from the Union by the war? The direct contrary was averred by this Government to be its purpose, and was so understood by all those who gave their blood and treasure to aid in its prosecution. It can not be that a successful war, waged for the preservation of the Union, had the legal effect of dissolving it. The victory of the nation's arms was not the disgrace of her policy; the defeat of secession on the battlefield was not the triumph of its lawless principle. Nor could Congress, with or without the consent of the Executive, do anything which would have the effect, directly or indirectly, of separating the States from each other. To dissolve the Union is to repeal the Constitution which holds it together, and that is a power which does not belong to any department of this Government, or to all of them united. . . .

The acts of Congress in question are not only objectionable for their assumption of ungranted power, but many of their provisions are in conflict with the direct prohibitions of the Constitution. The Constitution commands that a republican form of government shall be guaranteed to all the States; that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, arrested without a judicial warrant, or punished without a fair trial before an impartial jury; that the privilege of habeas corpus shall not be denied in time of peace, and that no bill of attainder shall be passed even against a single individual. Yet the system of measures established by these acts of Congress does totally subvert and destroy the form as well as the substance of republican government in the ten States to which they apply. It binds them hand and foot in absolute slavery, and subjects them to a strange and hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to be abused than any other now known among civilized men. It tramples down all those rights in which the essence of liberty consists, and which a free government is always most careful to protect. It denies the habeas corpus and the trial by jury. Personal freedom, property, and life, if assailed by the passion, the prejudice, or the rapacity of the ruler, have no security whatever. It has the effect of a bill of attainder or bill of pains and penalties, not upon a few individuals, but upon whole masses, including the millions who inhabit the subject States, and even their unborn children. These wrongs, being expressly forbidden, can not be constitutionally inflicted upon any portion of our people, no matter how they may have come within our jurisdiction, and no matter whether they live in States, Territories, or districts.

I have no desire to save from the proper and just consequences of their great crime those who engaged in rebellion against the Government, but as a mode of punishment the measures under consideration are the most unreasonable that could be invented. Many of those people are perfectly innocent; many kept their fidelity to the Union untainted to the last; many were incapable of any legal offense; a large proportion even of the persons able to bear arms were forced into rebellion against their will, and of those who are guilty with their own consent the degrees of guilt are as various as the shades of their character and temper. But these acts of Congress confound them all together in one common doom. Indiscriminate vengeance upon classes, sects, and parties, or upon whole communities, for offenses committed by a portion of them against the governments to which they owed obedience was common in the barbarous ages of the world; but Christianity and civilization have made such progress that recourse to a punishment so cruel and unjust would meet with the condemnation of all unprejudiced and right-minded men. The punitive justice of this age, and especially of this country, does not consist in stripping whole States of their liberties and reducing all their people, without distinction, to the condition of slavery. It deals separately with each individual, confines itself to the forms of law, and vindicates its own purity by an impartial examination of every case before a competent judicial tribunal. If this does not satisfy all our desires with regard to Southern rebels, let us console ourselves by reflecting that a free Constitution, triumphant in war and unbroken in peace, is worth far more to us and our children than the gratification of any present feeling.

I am aware it is assumed that this system of government for the Southern States is not to be perpetual. It is true this military government is to be only provisional, but it is through this temporary evil that a greater evil is to be made perpetual. If the guaranties of the Constitution can be broken provisionally to serve a temporary purpose, and in a part only of the country, we can destroy them everywhere and for all time. Arbitrary measures often change, but they generally change for the worse. It is the curse of despotism that it has no halting place. The intermitted exercise of its power brings no sense of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more they will be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to plague them again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power, unrestrained by law, may seek its next victims. The States that are still free may be enslaved at any moment; for if the Constitution does not protect all, it protects none.

It is manifestly and avowedly the object of these laws to confer upon negroes the privilege of voting and to disfranchise such a number of white citizens as will give the former a clear majority at all elections in the Southern States. This, to the minds of some persons, is so important that a violation of the Constitution is justified as a means of bringing it about. The morality is always false which excuses a wrong because it proposes to accomplish a desirable end. We are not permitted to do evil that good may come. But in this case the end itself is evil, as well as the means. The subjugation of the States to negro domination would be worse than the military despotism under which they are now suffering. It was believed beforehand that the people would endure any amount of military oppression for any length of time rather than degrade themselves by subjection to the negro race. Therefore they have been left without a choice. Negro suffrage was established by act of Congress, and the military officers were commanded to superintend the process of clothing the negro race with the political privileges torn from white men.

The blacks in the South are entitled to be well and humanely governed, and to have the protection of just laws for all their rights of person and property. If it were practicable at this time to give them a Government exclusively their own, under which they might manage their own affairs in their own way, it would become a grave question whether we ought to do so, or whether common humanity would not require us to save them from themselves. But under the circumstances this is only a speculative point. It is not proposed merely that they shall govern themselves, but that they shall rule the white race, make and administer State laws, elect Presidents and members of Congress, and shape to a greater or less extent the future destiny of the whole country. Would such a trust and power be safe in such hands? . . .

I repeat the expression of my willingness to join in any plan within the scope of our constitutional authority which promises to better the condition of the negroes in the South, by encouraging them in industry, enlightening their minds, improving their morals, and giving protection to all their just rights as freedmen. But the transfer of our political inheritance to them would, in my opinion, be an abandonment of a duty which we owe alike to the memory of our fathers and the rights of our children.

The plan of putting the Southern States wholly and the General Government partially into the hands of negroes is proposed at a time peculiarly unpropitious. The foundations of society have been broken up by civil war. Industry must be reorganized, justice reestablished, public credit maintained, and order brought out of confusion. To accomplish these ends would require all the wisdom and virtue of the great men who formed our institutions originally. I confidently believe that their descendants will be equal to the arduous task before them, but it is worse than madness to expect that negroes will perform it for us. Certainly we ought not to ask their assistance till we despair of our own competency.