On July 4, 1870 – 150 years ago this week – Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts urged the U.S. Senate to take a radical step: to strike out the word “white” from the nation’s naturalization laws. Since 1790, only “free white persons” who immigrated to the United States could become U.S. citizens. How could such a law stand, Sumner demanded, in light of the Declaration of Independence and its vow “that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights”?
The U.S. Senate spent the national holiday in bitter debate, lasting until nearly midnight, while other Americans celebrated the Fourth with fireworks, parades and public readings of the Declaration. The nation’s future was at stake: Would it remain for white men only? Or for all, as Sumner insisted, regardless of race and color?
The Senate’s debate did not begin over race and citizenship, but rather over election fraud and reform of the naturalization process. Republicans blamed their losses in recent elections on Irish and German immigrants who were churned out of “naturalization mills” just in time to vote for Democratic candidates. Depending on one’s political perspective, the Republican-backed Naturalization Bill either sought to “purify the ballot-box” or to make access to citizenship as complicated and expensive as possible, ultimately discouraging immigrants from even applying.
Sumner added fire to an already explosive debate with his amendment to do away with the “whites only” clause of the naturalization law. Congress had already amended the Constitution and passed civil rights acts to protect newly freed African Americans during Reconstruction. Sumner now pushed the Senate – an all-white male institution except for Hiram Revels of Mississippi, the nation’s first Black Senator -- to expand Reconstruction’s great promise.
Senators begged Sumner to withdraw his amendment and let them adjourn after a long and tiring day. “It has not been my habit to yield,” Sumner replied.
Sumner had refused to remain silent even after Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat him senseless with a gold-tipped cane on the Senate floor in 1856, after Sumner’s blistering abolitionist speech. And he was not about to remain silent after slavery had been abolished and equal rights seemed a real possibility. What better way to celebrate the Fourth than by making citizenship available to all?
The Senate see-sawed, caught between the nation’s competing demands for white supremacy and equality. First, it denied, then approved, and finally rejected Sumner’s proposal.