We stand today upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life-a century crowded with perils, but crowned with the triumphs of liberty and law. Before continuing the onward march, let us pause on this height, for a moment, to strengthen our faith and to renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.
It is now three days more than a hundred years since the adoption of the first written Constitution of the United States-the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The new republic was then beset with dangers on every hand. It had not conquered a place in the family of nations. The decisive battle of the war for independence, whose centennial anniversary will soon be gratefully celebrated at Yorktown, had not yet been fought. The colonists were struggling, not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves.
We cannot overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the saving common-sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of states was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a national Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, and endowed with full power of self-preservation and with ample authority for the accomplishment of its great objects.
Under this Constitution the boundaries of freedom have been enlarged, the foundations of order and peace have been strengthened, and the growth of our people in all the better elements of national life has vindicated the wisdom of the founders and given new hope to their descendants. Under this Constitution our people long ago made themselves safe against danger from without, and secured for their mariners and flag equality of rights on all the seas. Under this Constitution, twenty-five states have been added to the Union, with constitutions and laws, framed and enforced by their own citizens, to secure the manifold blessings of local self-government. The jurisdiction of this Constitution now covers an area fifty times greater than that of the original thirteen states, and a population twenty times greater than that of 1780.
The supreme trial of the Constitution came at last under the tremendous pressure of civil war. We ourselves are witnesses that the Union emerged from the blood and fire of that conflict purified and made stronger for all the beneficent purposes of good government.
And now, at the close of this first century of growth, with the inspirations of its history in their hearts, our people have lately reviewed the condition of the nation, passed judgment upon the conduct and opinions of political parties, and registered their will concerning the future administration of the government. To interpret and to execute that will, in accordance with the Constitution, is the paramount duty of the executive.
Even from this brief review it is manifest that the nation is resolutely facing to the front, resolved to employ its best energies in developing the great possibilities of the future. Sacredly preserving whatever has been gained to liberty and good government during the century, our people are determined to leave behind them all those bitter controversies concerning things which have been irrevocably settled, and the further discussion of which can only stir up strife and delay the onward march.
The supremacy of the nation and its laws should be no longer a subject of debate. That discussion which for half a century threatened the existence of the Union was closed at last in the high court of war by a decree from which there is no appeal, that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are, and shall continue to be, the supreme law of the land, binding alike upon the states and upon the people. This decree does not disturb the autonomy of the states, nor interfere with any of their necessary rights of local self-government, but it does fix and establish the permanent supremacy of the Union.
The will of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776, by proclaiming "liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof."
The elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effects upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master, as well as the slave, from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than five millions of people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races, by making labor more honorable to the one and more necessary to the other. The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with the coming years.
No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that, under our institutions, there was no middle ground for the Negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.
The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, they have "followed the light as God gave them to see the light." They are rapidly laying the material foundation of self-support, widening their circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority lawfully extends, they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws.
The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in question, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its solution. It is alleged that in many communities Negro citizens are practically denied the freedom of the ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated Negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctity of the suffrage is more than an evil-it is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high-treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice.
It has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. It should be said with the utmost emphasis, that this question of the suffrage will never give repose or safety to the state or to the nation will each within its own jurisdiction makes and keeps the ballot free and pure by the strong sanctions of the law.
But the danger which arises from ignorance in the voter cannot be denied. It covers a field far wider than that of Negro suffrage and the present condition of the race. It is a danger that lurks and hides in the sources and fountains of power in every state. We have no standard by which to measure the disaster that may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in the citizen, when joined to corruption and fraud in the suffrage.
The voters of the Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hang the destinies of our governments, can transmit their supreme authority to no successors save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power. If that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the republic will be certain and remediless. The census has already sounded the alarm in the appalling figures which mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has risen among our voters and their children. To the South this question is of supreme importance. But the responsibility for the existence of slavery did not rest upon the South alone. The nation itself is responsible for the extension of the suffrage, and is under special obligations to aid in removing the illiteracy which it has added to the voting population. For the North and South alike there is but one remedy. All the constitutional power of the nation and of the states, and all the volunteer forces of the people, should be summoned to meet this danger by the saving influence of universal education.
