We have
a Congress of splendid men,--men of stalwart principle and
determination. We have a President [Footnote: Andrew Johnson] honestly
seeking to do right; and if he fails in knowing just what right is, it
is because he is a man born and reared in a slave State, and acted on
by many influences which we cannot rightly estimate unless we were in
his place. My brother Henry has talked with him earnestly and
confidentially, and has faith in him as an earnest, good man seeking
to do right. Henry takes the ground that it is unwise and impolitic to
endeavor to force negro suffrage on the South at the point of the
bayonet. His policy would be, to hold over the negro the protection of
our Freedman's Bureau until the great laws of free labor shall begin
to draw the master and servant together; to endeavor to soothe and
conciliate, and win to act with us, a party composed of the really
good men at the South.
For this reason he has always advocated lenity of measures towards
them. He wants to get them into a state in which the moral influence
of the North can act upon them beneficially, and to get such a state
of things that there will be a party _at the South_ to protect
the negro.
Charles Sumner is looking simply at the abstract _right_ of the
thing. Henry looks at actual probabilities. We all know that the state
of society at the South is such that laws are a very inadequate
protection even to white men.
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