Capitol Men (70 page)

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A Second Fort Pillow": New York Times,
Apr. 16, 17, and 19, 1873.

8. Capstone of the Reconstructed Republic

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We cannot ... educate our children": Congressional Record,
43rd Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 5, 1874.

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Earlier in time, loftier, more majestic":
Pierce, vol. 4, p. 501.

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Pledge of universal human equality":
Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War,
p. 153.
A pragmatic, "earthly body": Congressional Record,
42nd Cong., 2nd sess., p. 825.
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The subject of subjects":
Sumner, quoted by William Lloyd Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison to Sumner, Aug. 3, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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One which the Almighty has seen fit to establish":
"Extracts from the Majority Report of the Caste School," in the
Liberator,
Aug. 21, 1846; quoted in Levy and Phillips, "The Roberts Case,"
American Historical Review.
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Condemned by Christianity":
Pierce, vol. 3, pp. 40–41; quoted in Murphy, "The Civil Rights Law of 1875,"
Journal of Negro History.
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The whites themselves are injured":
"Argument of Charles Sumner ... in the case of Sarah Roberts v. the City of Boston, Boston, 1849," quoted in Levy and Phillips, "The Roberts Case."
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Cannot fail to have a depressing effect": New National Era,
May 5, 1870.
Sumner's brief, however, was rejected:
Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War,
pp. 180–81.

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How is it possible for one who has never been denied":
Sarah H. Thompson to Charles Sumner, Feb. 5, 1872, printed in
New National Era,
Feb. 15, 1872.
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I think only those who have suffered deeply":
Charlotte Forten to Charles Sumner, Jan. 28, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers.
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For God's sake urge your Civil Rights Bill":
George W. Richardson to Charles Sumner, Jan. 27, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers.
The peripatetic Gilbert Haven was aghast: Independent,
Aug. 13, 1874.

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One of the most disturbing testimonials:
G. W. Mitchell to Charles Sumner, Jan. 27, 1872, with attached statement by J. William White, Charles Sumner Papers.
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In late 1872 the civil rights cause received a boost":
Coleman, "The Fight of a Man with a Railroad,"
Atlantic Monthly,
Dec. 1872; for comment, see
New National Era,
Nov. 28, 1872.

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Here am I, a member ofyour honorable body":
"Civil Rights Speech of Hon. John R Lynch, of Mississippi, in the House of Representatives, Feb. 3, 1875," GPO, Washington, 1875.
Joseph Rainey told a story: New National Era,
Dec. 7, 1871; Lamson, Peggy, pp. 120–21.

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The roasting of a poor negro lad with kerosene": Louisianian,
Mar. 21, 1872.

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He cannot appropriate the sidewalk": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 1st sess., p. 382.
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Why this fear of the negro":
Joseph Rainey, speaking in the House of Representatives, Feb. 3, 1872, quoted in
Louisianian,
Feb. 29, 1872.
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A practical demonstration": New National Era,
May 29, 1872.

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In practice, the Fugitive Slave Act:
Korngold,
Two Friends,
p. 210.
The law created a precedent for the idea:
Kaczorowski, "To Begin the Nation Anew,"
American Historical Review.
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I have sworn to support the Constitution": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 2nd sess., p. 3263 (italics added by author).

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I am not here to be dictated to":
Ibid., pp. 3262–63.
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If the Democrats are such staunch friends": New National Era,
Mar. 14, 1872.

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He [Morrill] finds no power for anything": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 728–30.
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If the Democrats are such staunch friends": New National Era,
Mar. 14, 1872.

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In regard to the rights that belong to the individual":
Ibid., p. 901.
'"Equal rights in what and for what?'": Independent,
May 2, 1872.
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'I ask the Senator'": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 2nd sess., p. 3264.

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Equality ... was a far more revolutionary aim than freedom":
Woodward,
Burden of Southern History,
p. 64.
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A hotel is a legal institution": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 1st sess., p. 280.

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We are like whalers who have been long on chase":
Korngold,
Two Friends,
p. 338.
Lincoln recognized the critical contribution the abolitionists had made, as suggested by a reminiscence of Daniel Chamberlain's: "It was my privilege once, and only once, to talk with Abraham Lincoln [in] Virginia, Apr. 6, 1865. I spoke to him of the country's gratitude for his great deliverance of the slaves. His sad face beamed for a moment with happiness as he answered...'I have been only an instrument. The logic and moral power of Garrison, and the anti-slavery people of the country and the army, have done all.'"
New York Tribune,
Nov. 4, 1883.
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While a colored gentleman is ... unable to obtain admission": National Standard,
May 1870. Like Charles Sumner, Douglass and others were convinced the battle for civil rights must be national in scope. That principle was underscored by the efforts of veteran Quaker abolitionist Aaron M. Powell, who in 1870 established the National Reform League to crusade for equal rights. While Powell's campaign had some success in New York, where the desegregation of restaurants and places of lodging led to a state public accommodations law in 1873, it soon became evident that localized efforts to end certain forms of segregation would be scattershot and ineffective.
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I only long for the hour":
Susan B. Anthony to Charles Sumner, Feb. 19, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers.
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As grandly for Equal Rights to
all women
as you have to
all men": Susan B. Anthony to Charles Sumner, Dec. 9, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers.
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Women are absolutely nothing in Republican minds":
Susan B. Anthony to Charles Sumner, Apr. 23, 1872, Charles Sumner Papers.

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One of the saddest divorces in American history":
McFeely,
Frederick Douglass,
p. 266. Women had been active in the movement to end slavery as early as the 1830s, when the sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Charleston-born daughters of an elite slaveholding family, rebelled against their surroundings and came north, publishing antislavery tracts and holding parlor meetings to abet the cause. As white women of a slaveholding family, their condemnation of "the peculiar institution" was imbued with unique legitimacy, and they did not stop at criticizing slavery's cruelty but described it as a system destructive to the South as a whole.
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Garrison and Sumner, Douglass and Phillips":
In 1848, Frederick Douglass attended the founding meeting of American feminism in Seneca Falls, New York, where a broad agenda of women's rights were discussed. At the time, women's claim to suffrage was considered a bold demand even among many of the women present—"Why, Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous," the Quaker Lucretia Mott famously told Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who put forward the idea—but Douglass concurred with Stanton's resolution.
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We have fairly boosted the Negro":
Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Martha Coffin Wright, Dec. 20, 1865, quoted in Goldsmith, p. 102.

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Douglass, flinching at her use of a racial slur: New York Tribune,
Nov. 21, 1866.
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I would rather cut off my right hand":
Stanton et al., p. 193.
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Incoming tide of ignorance":
Painter, p. 228.
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According to the historian Benjamin Quarles":
Quarles, "Frederick Douglass and the Women's Rights Movement,"
Journal of Negro History.
Two years later, Republicans there:
William Whipper's was perhaps South Carolina's most passionate black voice for the female vote. His wife, Frances Rollin, and her sisters—known collectively as "the Misses Rollin"—were noted characters in Reconstruction South Carolina. In 1867 Frances had been one of the first people of color to file a civil rights complaint in the state. Her case was handled by the Freedmen's Bureau agent Martin Delany, who encouraged her literary aspirations and eventually arranged for her to write his biography. The book was published in 1868 under the name Frank A. Rollin, as the publisher feared the public would not deem a female author credible. Returning to South Carolina, she began work as a secretary in Whipper's office in Columbia; Whipper's wife had died recently, and she and Whipper were married in 1868 over the objections of her father, who considered Whipper a rough-and-tumble "Negro politician" and not suitable for his aristocratic daughter. In Columbia "the Whippers"—husband and wife—were an acknowledged political team, he the legislator, she the knowing insider. See Gatewood, "The Remarkable Misses Rollin,"
South Carolina Historical Magazine;
see also
New York Sun,
Mar. 29, 1871.

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Establishing an aristocracy of sex":
Stanton et al., pp. 348–56, 382–83; quoted in Goldsmith, pp. 180–82; also in Lutz, pp. 162–65.
In May 1872 Charles Sumner adopted:
Not until 1896 would restrictions on all former Confederates be abolished.

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We have open and frank hearts":
Quoted in Russ, "The Negro and White Disenfranchisement During Radical Reconstruction,"
Journal of Negro History.

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'"I sound the cry!'": Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 3739–40.
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You must take care of the civil rights bill":
Pierce, vol. 4, p. 598; also see McPherson, "Abolitionists and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,"
Journal of American History.
To his old Senate colleague, who was now Vice President Henry Wilson, Sumner vowed, "If my Works were completed and my Civil Rights bill passed, no visitor could enter that door that would be more welcome than death." See Henry Wilson's letter read at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mar. 13, 1874.
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His skin is very black": Chicago Tribune,
quoted in
New National Era,
Jan. 22, 1874.

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Broad presumptions about race:
Some of the most half-baked theories of racial determinism emanated not from the lips of the coarse and uneducated, but from the lecture halls of Ivy League colleges (the Harvard professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was a leading offender) and the pens of prominent editorialists, such as
The Nations
E. L. Godkin. See Gossett.
Elliott's colleague Alonzo Ransier tangled: Congressional Record,
43rd Cong., 1st sess, Jan. 5, 1874.

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The prevailing ideas entertained":
For Stephens's "The Cornerstone Speech," see Cleveland, pp. 717–29.
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With a shrunken, consumptive chest":
Hendrick, p. 59.
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There is a vast difference": Congressional Record,
43rd Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 5, 1874.

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The Slaughterhouse Cases arose:
Ross, "Justice Miller's Reconstruction,"
Journal of Southern History.
Campbell, assistant secretary of war in the Confederate cabinet, was said to have been the first person to use the term
reconstruction
in reference to the war's aftermath during a peace conference with President Lincoln in winter 1865.

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A few extreme Democrats pretended": Chicago Tribune,
quoted in
New National Era,
Jan. 22, 1874.
Elliott began by calling attention: Congressional Record,
43rd Cong, 1st sess, Jan. 6, 1874.

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Elliott had replied "by calm, convincing arguments": New National Era,
Jan. 8, 1874; Lamson, Peggy, p. 182.
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No more dignified, skillful": National Republican,
quoted in
New National Era,
Jan. 8, 1874; Lamson, Peggy, p. 182.
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Mr. Elliott is of the blackest of his race": New York Times,
Jan. 7, 1874.
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The blade of sarcasm with which he annihilated": Louisianian,
May 2, 1874.
Elliott, of South Carolina, delivered a speech: Charleston News & Courier,
Jan. 7, 1874.

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In the recent debate on the civil rights bill": New National Era,
Mar. 19, 1874.

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The national recognition of Elliott:
Among other things, Robert Brown Elliott's bravura performance on January 6 hushed once and for all the rumors that Charles Sumner, Daniel Chamberlain, or some other white man wrote Elliott's speeches. The rumor had proven intractable, even though Elliott himself cited to his critics
the many times he had spoken effectively in impromptu, unscripted circumstances.
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The victory for the colored boy was complete": New York Times,
Feb. 5, 1874.

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In the ratio of their numbers":
Ibid., Jan. 25, 1874.

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As William Gillette points out:
The editor Henry Watterson, quoted in
National Republican,
Sept. 2, 1874; see also Gillette, p. 217, and
New York Herald Tribune,
Aug. 10, 1874.
A view seconded by journalist Charles Nordhoff:
Vaughn, p. 133.
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The measure pending here today is confronted": Congressional Record,
43rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1875, pp. 1004–5.

9. Divided Time

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I wanted to know the whys and wherefore":
William Sturges, letter to
New York Tribune,
Mar. 15, 1871, reproduced in
Congressional Globe,
42nd Cong., 1st sess., Mar. 28, 1871; for Meridian events, see also Harris, pp. 396–99, and Horn, pp. 156–62.