found yourselves obliged to disarm, to a great extent, the social forces arrayed in hostility to the establishment of the new order of things, and to accomplish this a large number, and in some States all of those who had been connected with the rebellion, were excluded from all participation in the exercise of political power by disfranchisement. Thus disfranchisement was resorted to as a measure of safety, as a temporary expedient whose duration would be determined by circumstances. As a measure of punishment it would have been utterly impolitic. It was not severe enough to terrify; it was just severe enough to exasperate. As a measure of safety it was well calculated to relieve the establishment of the new order of things from untimely and dangerous interference. Its justification rested on the plea of necessity.
In this sense I supported the measures of restriction as long as that necessity lasted, and I went with my party in my State even so far as to acquiesce in disfranchisement until the rights of political citizenship had been conferred upon the race lately in slavery, so that no hostile influences should prevent that consummation. But when all the principles which had issued victorious from the civil war, and which formed the basis of the new order of things, had become firmly fortified in our institutions by Constitutional amendments, and the public mind had accepted that settlement so generally that a reactionary attempt might at worst create but a temporary disturbance, and could no longer lead to a total subversion of accomplished results, that necessity appeared to me to cease, and the revolutionary phase of our National affairs to be closed. If carried beyond that point, disfranchisement was calculated—nay, it was bound—to prove hurtful to the very objects for which it had been adopted.
It has always been my opinion that, although the new order of things had to be established under a pressure of
