Is Slavery Dead?

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 20, 1865

The war has closed so far as bullets and bayonets are concerned; but there is a period of political war and strife before this nation, such as it has not probably for a long time been witness of. The question of the reconstruction of the rebel States is now coming up. And in this question the status of the negro is involved. What rights shall be granted him? With what privileges shall he be clothed? Having helped to free the nation from a terrible rebellion, shall he now be accounted a citizen of that nation? Shall he have the right of suffrage? This question the President has already declared must be decided by the people, the whites, of the respective States concerned. Then to the negro-hating whites of the South, it is to be left to say what rights the negro shall have. That country to which the negroes have always been loyal, and which they have faithfully served, leaves it to its, and their, bitterest enemies, to say what their reward shall be! And will they grant them the right of suffrage, the right of citizenship, or any other privilege which is in their power to withhold from them? The answer is apparent. With their natural spirit of hate against the colored race, embittered by a defeat which that race have helped to bring upon them, a defeat which they would not have suffered had not the North been helped by those whom they thus despise, it is easy to see how many favors they will be ready to bestow upon them. As well might we expect that the Devil would all at once turn round and give immortality to a saint whom he has harassed and tormented all his life long, were it left to him to give, as to suppose that the white tormentors of the colored race at the South, filled with most diabolical hate against them, will show them any humanity or mercy of which it is in their power to deprive them. And then how does the question of slavery stand? Answer. Slavery will be dead only in name. It will still exist in fact. There will still be bondmen in this land, bound in fetters of disfranchisement, proscription and prejudice, more galling and oppressive than the iron manacles that have heretofore clanked upon their bleeding limbs.

In a late speech at the New England Convention, Boston, Wendell Phillips said:

"The condition of the black man at the South is at present in utter uncertainty. Can he hold a title to land? Nobody knows. Can he protect his wife? Nobody knows. Can he testify in a Court of justice? Nobody knows. None of his rights, natural or civil, are assured to him. The white men of each Southern State claim the right of settling all those matters. The Legislature of Tennessee has just passed a law concerning free colored people. Do they enact laws concerning free white people? All that concerns the colored people there, is to be regulated by the whites. What will those whites do when their States are reconstructed without the negro franchise? One of them has frankly told us, boasting to a Union man, that the slaveholders would yet have the substantial fruits of victory, though they had been defeated in the field. They would unite (he said) with the old Democratic party, when the last Congress of Johnson's Presidency should come, and then they would show the Union men who had really been whipped in this late hour of the war. The negro race would be kept, practically, in the condition of serfs, bound to the soil. The first admission of a seceded State without black suffrage would settle the whole question, and then Slavery would exist in reality, though not in name. If negro suffrage, (Mr. Phillips proceeded to say), shall be forbidden at the South, the North will have been practically conquered. Every drop of blood will have been spilled, and every dollar expended in vain. Threats have already been made that reconstruction will be put through next Winter on an anti-negro basis, in spite of all opposition. This will be the great question of the next Congressional session. This very Spring, Mr. Sumner said to Mr. Lincoln—'Louisiana must be reconstructed on the basis of the Declaration of Independence.' [Ap-plause.] Mr. Lincoln hesitated, and did not reply; and Mr. Sumner said—'Mr. President, if you reconstruct it on any other basis, count me as an opponent.' [Loud Applause.] That is the true position for every friend of a permanent Union and of permanent freedom to take, and to stand by firmly. Far better that Grant should surrender to Lee, than that the President should surrender to North Carolina or Louisiana, and nullify all the sacrifices, losses, and sufferings of this dreadful struggle."