Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/526

492 but it is objected that the bill is uncalled for, on the ground that nothing has been done in the different States to show the necessity of any such legislation. Sir, is this true? Can this assertion be maintained even a single moment? For generations the practices of slavery have controlled the minds and moral views of the people of the Southern States. Popular prejudice, so long nourished by those practices, was naturally arrayed against the enfranchisement of the former slave, and the beneficent agency of time has by no means been sufficient yet to allay it, whatever improvement we may observe. Joined to the prejudice of race, the jealousy of political power conspires against a fair execution of the fifteenth amendment, and in view of these opposing forces, who will deny that this legislation to enforce it is necessary?

Nay, more than that. The very Senators on this floor who pretend that the passage of this bill is not called for by circumstances go so far as to throw doubt upon the validity of the fifteenth amendment, thus exciting the worst passions of the disturbing element in the South to do all within their power to defeat the purposes of this Constitutional provision. Is it not so? And while on the one hand themselves fanning the flame, they on the other hand deny the necessity of quenching it. Will it be unfair to assume under such circumstances that while denouncing this legislation as uncalled for they merely desire to defeat the purposes of the fifteenth amendment?

The Senator from Maryland urged another argument, which at first sight seems to have some plausibility. He says that the Constitutional amendment is one of the great prohibitory clauses, as we find them in several places and on several subjects in the Constitution of the United States, and that with regard to them enforcing legislation had never been thought necessary. Suppose