The Country Has Not Heard the Last of P. B. S. Pinchback: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on March 13, 1876
THE COUNTRY HAS NOT HEARD THE LAST
OF P. B. S. PINCHBACK: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., ON 13 MARCH 1876
Washington National Republican, 14 March 1876. Other texts in Philadelphia Christian
Recorder, 23 March 1876; Speech File, reel 15, frames 20-23, FD Papers, DLC.
At 8:00 P.M. on 13 March 1876 Douglass and a “large number of colored
people” met at Clarke’s Hall in Washington, D.C., to honor Pinckney Benton
Stewart Pinchback, the black Louisiana Republican politician whose election
to the U.S. Senate had just been declared invalid by that body. The correspon-
dent for the Washington Evening Star noted that the resolutions submitted by
Professor A. M. Green, condemning the action of the Senate and praising the
steps taken by Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana to defend Pinchback, were
“unanimously adopted.” From Clarke’s Hall the crowd, which numbered
“four hundred or more,” marched behind a brass band to the Ebbitt House.
Once there the crowd was addressed by Morton. Douglass succeeded Morton
and was frequently, according to the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle,
“compelled to desist speaking in order to permit the crowd to cheer.” At the
conclusion of Douglass’s address, the crowd marched from Ebbitt House to
Douglass’s home on Capitol Hill, where Pinchback, Douglass’s guest during
his stay in Washington, thanked all present for their support and reaffirmed his
commitment to the Republican party. Washington Daily Morning Chronicle,
13, 14 March 1876; Washington Evening Star, 14 March 1876.
FELLOW-CITIZENS: I am not here to praise or to compassionate Governor
Pinchback.1Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) was born a free black in Macon, Georgia, the son of William Pinchback, a white Mississippi planter, and Eliza Stewart, a slave of mixed ancestry who had been manumitted before his birth. Upon the death of William, Eliza, threatened with re-enslavement by William’s heirs, left Mississippi with her son and settled in Cincinnati. After a few years in school, Pinchback found employment as a cabin boy on canal boats, rising to the level of steward. In 1862 Pinchback jumped ship at Yazoo City, Mississippi, and made his way to New Orleans, Which was in the hands of the Union army. Determined to play a role in a Union victory, he became a recruiting officer for black volunteers. Pinchback assumed an active role in Louisiana politics in 1867 When he became a member of the Republican state central committee. In 1868 he joined the state senate and three years later became president pro tempore of that body. Pinchback served as lieutenant governor and then acting governor during the impeachment proceedings of Henry Clay Warmoth. He campaigned for William P. Kellogg in the gubernatorial race of 1872 and for his loyalty was declared Congressman-at-large by the Kellogg administration. During Pinchback’s term as acting governor he was elected to the U.S. Senate; thus for a period he had the singular distinction of holding a seat in both houses of Congress. Realizing that a choice had to be made, Pinchback surrendered his seat in the House to his opponent in order to serve his six-year term in the Senate. There was considerable Opposition within the Senate to Pinchback's claim of membership, and after three years of debates and investigations, he lost the seat. James Haskins, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (New York, 1973), 196-222; DANB, 493-94. He needs no eulogy. He needs no compassion. His name and
his fame were never brighter than they are this day. In the hearts of his
people and in the hearts of the noble and generous people of the United
States he has a higher and warmer place than ever before.
True, he has been defeated: true, he has been defeated by votes of the
Republican party; true, these votes came mainly from New England, but
the hour of his defeat is the hour of his victory. He has proved to the whole
country the sincerity of his convictions. He believed he had a right to a seat
in the United States Senate, and from first to last has acted in accordance
with that conviction. From day to day, from week to week, from month to
month, and from year to year—through three long years—he has stood at
the door of the Senate and knocked for admission; enduring all the while a
storm of abuse more fierce and furious than ever beat upon the head of any
man in a similar position.
HE HAS MET THIS STORM
with the firmness of a hero, and the serenity of a martyr. He has shown in
defeat the quality of certain success.
Mr. Pinchback is denied his seat in the Senate, and has been subjected
to a rigid enforcement of rule denying the privilege of the floor, but I very
much mistake the logic of events if the country has heard the last of
Mr. Pinchback.
When the clergy of New England persecuted Theodore Parker they
paved the way for him to greatness. When Congress subjected John Quincy
Adams to trial for the right of petition, the old man eloquent went home to
his constituents and came back stronger and more glorious than ever. When
Congress again attempted to disgrace that fearless champion of freedom,
the late Joshua R. Giddings, the brave old Western Reserve sent him back
with an overwhelming majority; and when Brooks2Congressman Preston S. Brooks caned Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate in May 1856. with his bludgeon,
backed by the Democratic party, sought to drive Senator Sumner from the
Senate, the people of Massachusetts thought he was just the man to be sent
there for life. I commend Mr. Pinchback to Louisiana, to her love of justice
and fair-play, and I shall be much mistaken if she breaks the line of these
precedents.
DO YOU ASK WHAT I THINK OF THE COURSE
pursued by those honorable Republican Senators who voted against the
admission of Mr. Pinchback? Well, my friends, in dealing with the conduct
of my fellow-men, I find myself growing in charity as I grow in years; lam
more and more disposed to find good motives for bad deeds, and to make
allowance for education and circumstances. I nowadays have learned to
distinguish between conscious wrong-doing and unconscious wrong-
doing. These Senators may not have sinned consciously; they think that
they have done by Mr. Pinchback precisely as they would have done by any
white man who came to the door of the Senate with the same credentials. I
say they think so—yes, they think so. But I am free to say that I do not think
any such thing. I think that they have acted from first to last under the
influences of a mean and malignant prejudice of race. The very air of the
country is pervaded by this prejudice, and the marvel is not so much that
seven Senators were unable to rise above it as that twenty-nine Senators
were able to set it at defiance and vote to seat Mr. Pinchback.
Wonderfully tenacious is the taint of a great moral wrong. The evil that
men do lives after them.3 Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 2, line 83. Slavery is dead, but its long, black shadow, in the
form of prejudice, stretches broadly across our whole country, and will do
so for some time yet to come. The American people are accustomed to
seeing the black men at the back door, and are filled with doubts when they
see him at the front door.
There are some things hard to do. It is hard to convince a man against
his will. The thing has been often tried, but has seldom succeeded. Equally
true is it that where there is a will there is a way. If those gentlemen had
been in an absolutely impartial state of mind they would, in my judgment.
have voted, not with the Democratic party, but with their own party to seat
Mr. Pinchback. In proof of their freedom from prejudice they point us to
Senator Bruce,4Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-98) was born a slave near Farmville, Virginia. In early adulthood, Bruce escaped to the free state of Kansas and there established and taught in the first elementary school for blacks. In February 1869 Bruce, convinced that there were more and better opportunities in the South, moved to Mississippi where he was made supervisor of elections in Tallahatchie County. In 1870 Bruce moved to Jackson where he was elected sergeant-at-arms of the state senate and, later, having moved to Bolivar County, he was elected sheriff and tax assessor. In 1874 the state legislature elected Bruce to the U.S. Senate, making him the second black to represent Mississippi in that office. Bruce, very supportive of Pinchback's case, delivered his first speech to the Senate on Pinchback’s behalf. During his single Senate term, Bruce championed pensions for black war veterans, protection of Indian lands, and federal intervention to safeguard voting rights. The Senate chose him to head a committee to conclude the business of the bankrupt Freedman’s Bank, which succeeded in refunding 62 percent of the depositors' money. Remaining a power in the Mississippi Republican party, Bruce received federal appointments as register of the treasury (1881-85, 1897-98) and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1889-93). Douglass and Bruce frequently appeared together at political events in Washington, D.C., and consulted on political strategy. Blanche Kelso Bruce to Douglass, 20 August 1878, Douglass to Blanche Kelso Bruce, 25 August 1879, 28 August 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 262-65, 366-67, 770-72, FD Papers, DLC; Christopher, Black Americans in Congress, 15-24; DANB, 74-76. of Mississippi, and the fact is plausible. But one swallow
does not make a summer.5Douglass slightly misquotes a proverb recited in works by the Greeks Aristophanes and Aesop and first found in English in Heywood, Proverbs and Epigrams, Part II, chap. 5. Senator Bruce came to the door of the Senate
with an indisputable case. There was no room for individual inclination to
sway one way or the other.
THERE WAS NO QUESTION AS TO HIS RIGHT.
No Democrat discovered any flaw in his credentials. Had there been the
slightest technical imperfection, or room for a single doubt, there is reason
to believe that the same fate would have overtaken Senator Bruce which has
overtaken Mr. Pinchback. I have no disposition to be censorious. I know it
is hard for a Turk to do justice to a Christian; hard for a Christian to do
justice to a Jew; hard for an Englishman to do justice to an Irishman; hard
for an Irishman to do justice to an Englishman, and we all know that it is
hard for a white man to do justice to a black man. I am sorry that those
seven Senators found this achievement impossible to them.
After all, my friends, I am not surprised that seven men of the Re-
publican party were found in the needed hour to vote with the Democrats. I
have seen this thing before, and in time of greater excitement than at
present. There are always a few independent spirits in the Republican party
who will go over to the Democrats when any question affecting the rights of
colored men are concerned.
It was so in reconstruction times. It was so upon Mr. Sumner’s civil
rights bill.6Although thirteen Republican senators supported Charles Sumner’s civil rights bill in 1875. Republican senators Lyman Trumbull of Illinois and Orris S. Ferry of Connecticut were vocal in their opposition. They argued that the bill was unnecessary since blacks already enjoyed all the rights of citizenship under existing laws. During the debates and votes on the bill Senate Democrats arrayed themselves solidly against it, while Liberal Republicans either voted with the Democrats or were absent during the final vote. Donald, Sumner and the Rights of Man, 539-48. It was so in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson,7During Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial seven Republicans voted with the Democrats. The final vote was 35-19; the impeachment measure failed by one vote. Benedict, Compromise of Principles, 365-68. and it
has been so now. Whether it will ever be otherwise is a solemn question for
us to think upon and decide wisely. I have already heard that some colored
men have decided to imitate the example of the seven Senators and vote
with the Democratic party.
For one, I counsel no such course. The Republican party is still the
party of justice and freedom. It is, relatively, the black man’s party. Com-
pare them in this wise, the one is heaven and the other is hell. For one, I
shall stand by the party of Sumner and Lincoln. If justice and protection is
not obtained here I do not look for it elsewhere. The logic which would
make us quit a roof with seven small holes in it in exchange for the open
field and the pitiless storm is not the logic for me. Some talk about dividing
our votes between the two parties has come to my notice of late. It has not
made much impression upon me.
IF WE DO THIS WE MAY EXPECT TO FALL;
for between two stools—you know the rest.8This proverb dates back to the Middle Ages and first appears in English as “While betweene two stooles my taile goe to the ground." Heywood, Proverbs and Epigrams, Part I, chap. 2. It is argued that such a course
would deprive the Democratic party of all motive for keeping up its crusade
against us. Granting that such would be the case, it equally follows that it
would deprive the Republican party of all motive for a vigilant and deter-
mined effort to protect us in our rights. I make these remarks because the
Democratic press seems willing enough to seize every occasion to destroy
the colored man’s confidence in the Republican party, at the same time that
its own party is doing its utmost to reduce us again to something akin to the
hateful condition of bondage from which we have been so recently de-
livered.
I am not a very sensitive man, but I already feel here in Washington the
baneful effects of Democratic ascendancy in one branch of the National
Legislature,9During the Forty-fourth Congress, Democrats, for the first time in sixteen years, composed the majority in the House. The Democrats numbered 169 while the Republicans were at 109. Representation from minor parties numbered 14. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics, Part I, ser. Y204-10. and I ask colored men to consider what would be the state of
things if that party had all the branches of the Government in its hands. I am
not among those who think the American people are now going to put this
Government back into the hands of the party of rebellion and slavery: nor
do I despair of the ultimate peace and freedom of my race. But one thing I
know, and that is, there is no middle ground for us. We must either have all
the rights of American citizens or we must be exterminated, for we never
can again be slaves. Nor can we cease to trouble the American people while
any right enjoyed by others is denied or withheld from us.