Justice and jurisprudence: an inquiry concerning the constitutional limitations of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments

Preface

An inquiry concerning the constitutional provisions of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments seemed to the Brotherhood of Liberty the primal step to be taken by an Order instituted for the advancement of the African race in America.

Their Dedicatory Address and Epistles make a full rev^ealment of the objective points of this Christian, constitutional, sociological, and political treatise. The author has contributed a fitting introductory accompaniment to his work, in a cold and critical, but lucid, vigorous, and trenchant dissertation upon the peril of juristic innovation upon the Constitution.

As a generalization, this work may be said to consist of two parts. The first concerns the Positive Law of the Fourteenth Amendment, by which the whole power of the American state is pledged to maintain the equality of civil rights of every American citizen by Due Process ofLaw. The second discloses the transparent veils of legal fiction under cover of which the civil rights of all races are being slowly undermined. It shows bow judicial construction has so impaired the lex scrripta that, although the letter may remain, yet the heart has been eaten out.

Mature reflection and a close observation of the cours'e of events have led the Brotherhood to the conclusion that, if the complex constitutional questions, and the perplexing social problems involved in the much-mooted race-question could be examined, and their deep, broad, ethical and political significance demonstrated by an interesting discussion, free as possible from dry abstraction, sectionalism, and partisanship, public opinion might become disentangled from the many knotty disputes by which it is now obscured, chiefly through the chicanery of a narrow system of vicious politics.

They believe that no more important service can be per-

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formed than the publication of an accessible treatise which points out the unconstitutional drift of the courts and public sentiment away from the Fourteenth Amendment. They entertain no suspicion that, in the opinion of considerate, thoughtful men, the value of such a work could be diminished by the consideration that the evidence of this unconstitutional trend was discovered in the course of a patient investigation of civil rights.

Justice and Jurisprudexce opens with a colloquy of absorbing interest between the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a foreign jurist "void of the intellectual and social bias generated by slavery." The character of the foreign student's subsequent interview with an eminent representative of the American Press is an original conceit, executed with consummate skill, and the striking narrative which ensues is constructed with no apparent labor or art : it is interwoven with law and history — with philosophy and politics. There are no digressions, unnecessary descriptions, or long speeches; grace, incisive wit, sometimes bitter but never malignant sarcasm, distinguish the ifanciful allegories of the journalist, as well as the more sober reflections of the Chief Justice. The characters in this dialogue are shrewd, observant, dispassionate men of the world, philosophers with large faculties harmoniously balanced. They seem fully to com])rehend the elements of human nature and the laws of their combination, and display extensive knowledge of American politics.

The intercourse of the Chief Justice with the student is characterized by manly grace and dignity. In his presentation of the jurist to Mr. Blaine the Chief Justice is natural, graceful, and polite. His eulogy of Mr. Blaine, inwrapped in the encomium upon his work, is fraught with delicacy and elegance. There is a marvellous picturing power displayed in the imagery of the student's dream, a noble extravagance in the ^udden conjuring up_and representation of the spirits of Fame, Aiiibition, andJDestiny, so jvehxr^nd_vetJso majestjc_do^they appear a^_tlieyapproach ]Mr. BJainewith thougl its intent upon his doom,, The_aug;uTyj)fJiisJ^ by the ministers of the fates, isa^jnasterpiece^.

The work abounds with important definitions, lofty aspira-

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tions, political, religious, and plillosophic truths. Copiousness of quotation f'roui the great storehouses of literature is a novel feature of the book. These citations point with warmth and quickness to the subjects of discourse ; like heralds, they })roclainx the advent; as couriers, they precede the main body of themes. The preliminary Address and Letters are inlaid with an infinite variety of precious literary gems. Every chapter is crowned with a fitting diadem of thought, often reflecting the wisdom of by-gone ages; and their glittering light is no more dimmed by time than is that of the starry heavens. But this collection, gathered through unwearied industry, is not merely for the purpose of artificial ornamentation : all this multiform treasure of intellect, derived from separate ages, different hemis])heres, and every class of genius, demonstrates that among patriots of the noblest and most extended views, and statesmen of the most vigorous understanding, there is a wondrous harmony in regard to the truths with which the animated discussion abounds. The satiric reprehension, the tart irony of some of these selections may appear too bold and uncharitable, and others may exhibit human infirmities in a somewhat humorous light, but these weapons have been used only on the side of truth. The husbandman has scattered broadcast these seeds of knowledge, and it is humbly hoped that they may effectually contribute to the improvement of the rising generation, by affording the opportunity of becoming familiar with the axioms and sentiments of renowned Christians, patriots, statesmen, philosophers, historians, and poets. Justice and Jurisprudence is intended to be a history, a hand-book, a primer, to teach all races to uphold and perpetuate the reign of constitutional law. It is stored with sound principles, through whicii all classes may comprehend the true grounds of the authority of the Fourteenth Amendment, and of their obligation of obedience to its commandments. It teaches that the marvellous advancement of civilization over barbarism is owing to the conquest of the sottish prejudice, the ridiculous vanity, and the rude ignorance of mankind ; that by enlargement of their reason and enlightenment of their conscience men come at last to discover that their own customs, manners and opinions, are not always the standards of right or wrong, of true or false ;

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tliat it is training, di^ciplino, tlic efficacious art of instruction, which disinter the soul and fetch out its inherent beauties, reirardless of the body which envelops it; that the education of an American citizen, to be worthy of the time, ou2;ht to include, in its wide compass, some knowledge of the true foundations upon which rests constitutional liberty.

Public instruction touching the principle of equality of rights by Due Process of Law, the significance of which ever demands to be anew inquired into and anew made manifest, is the great subsidiary purpose of the Brotherhood. The work admonishes those statesmen and jurists whose bent of mind is dogmatic rather than philosophic, that, instead of cultivating the growth of noxious herbs, they must be uprooted ; that only when they begin to wither will nobler plants shoot up in their place. The author has ventured to suggest, that, unless the American tree of Jurisprudence be too matured to receive the scion engrafted by the Fourteenth Amendment, all its branches, if there be any affinity between the graft and the stock, will shortly bring forth noble fruit. He has also reminded their rulers that, as the American people stand upon the summit of a structure in the evolution of which centuries have been employed, they should be the possessors of the political wealth of all ages.

The foreign jurist, in the course of his inquiry concerning the limitations of the amendments, explores and exposes all the hidden recesses of the race-question. The intellectual acumen and the philosophic discrimination of the calm seeker after truth are nowhere displayed to so great advantage as in the following deductions and conclusions :

That every race owes something to the race beneath it ; that the principle of equality of right, so congenial to the atmosphere of the Constitution, opens an ample highway for universal progress ; that the educational advantages, since the readjustment of American society, which have wrought such a wondrous improvement in the colored man within twenty-five years, are the heralds of an incoming era in which the race-problem will be solved in a way not inconsistent with a republican form of government; that should fomenters of a war of races hereafter appear, and should they pour forth their blood to disenfranchise

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this race even more freely than did a half-million of their forefatiiers to emancipate it, the problem would still remain unsettled, and could be determined only by law; that the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and tiie placing of eight millions under the tutelage again of the general government, would destroy the material interests of the countryj the industrial education of these producers, impede the moral development of both races, and, leading inevitably to the nullification of the amendments, and perhaps to tlie disintegration of the Constitution itself, would prove as threatening to the unity and happiness of the American people, as did the revolt of the Southern States against the government. That in this age neither social abhorrence of the colored population, nor unintelligent, retrogressive, pro-slavery heresies, obsolete views of a day that is dead, nor myopic, pride-begotten prejudices, can be substituted for the widening character and the growing force of Atnerican thought, the sublime mission of which is to restore peace and order to human hearts and human society, by the establishment of the fundamental principle of the civic equality of all American citizens ; that, in the Atlantic States south of the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude, the relations of the races are interdependent ; that eight millions of Afro-Americans can neither be annihilated nor transported.

The Brotherhood respectfully submit, that if the polity of Catholicism and the spirit of Catholicity, with a governmental control extending over the peoples of every nation of the earth, has preserved the unity of its flock, in spite of the vicissitudes of almost twenty centuries, surely the chosen guardians of the American republic may hope for all time to perpetuate and combine in perfect unity its diverse popular elements, by preserving inviolate the sanctity of that principle which has been rigidly enforced for centuries by the Roman hierarchy, — the catholic doctrine of liberty regulated by law, which is the essence of the spirit of equality of right by due jjrocess of law, which the Fourteenth Amendment proclaims; that the freedom of the whole American people is now imperilled by judicial interpretation rendering this beneficent maxim inoperative as to the immunities of the colored race; that juristic impairment of this

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organic law, emboklens those kites of comnierce, whose des})otic aggressions are destructive alike of national and individual values, and wiio are themselves a standing menace to the American doctrine of equality of right in every dei)artment of commercial enterprise; that compassing the defeat of the national polity in favor of their people has invited, stimuhited, and {jopularized the lawlessness of race antagonism, which is not less systematized by the industrial element North and East, than it is legitimated by popular opinion Soutii and West.

The Brotherhood do not affect to suppress their anxiety lest their people shoukl remain stationary in the midst of a rapidly advancing nation.

They believe that for the African just emerging from conditions which the barbarities of two centuries of slavery had established, and not yet lifted above the vices incident to that system ; whose every step of progress has been antagonized and retarded ; who is forever exposed to the malign influence of the intrigue and imposture of spoil-hunting political adventurers, the heavenly light of education, which teaches him to become an upright, valuable member of society, happy in himself and useful to others, is a Christian instrumentality which will prove in the end the most effective policy to fit him for a radically changed order of things, and for the true functions of American citizenship.

The Brotherhood insist that all the sectional evils attendant upon the change of the status of this race are owing to its state of transition, and that tiiese drawbacks are but temporary and of far less magnitude than the sociological disabilities which slavery entailed upon the whole body politic. They invite attention to what such Southern authors as Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris have chronicled respecting the wonderful devotion and self-abnegation, the rare fidelity, the delicacy, the untaught chivalry, the noble virtues, of the old family servants who guarded the infancy and early youth of the Southron under the old regime; and they insist, that what the descendants of those trusty servants require to fit them for the new conditions of their high place as American citizens, is that which the greatest law-givers, statesmen, and political philosophers and the most

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illustrious champions of freedom have always preached, — the education of their people. They humbly crave leave to remind the American people that the State should take charge of the education of the people; that/tjie first admonition of Penn, addressed to the colony which he founded, was, " Educate the people;" the unceasing exhortation of Jefferson was, "Educate the people," and the dying legacy which Washington bequeathed to the nation he had saved was, " JEducate the people."

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The Brotherhood of Liberty.