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THE PKACTICE OF JUSTICE OUR ONLY SECURITY FOR THE FUTURE. 
 
 ^■^\ 
 
 REMARKS 
 
 01- 
 
 HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY, 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 IN SUPPORT OF HIS PROPOSED AMENDMENT 
 TO THE BILL 
 
 " TO GUARANTY TO CERTAIN STATES WHOSE GOVERNMENTS HAVE 
 BEEN USURPED OR OVERTHROWN A REPUBLICAN t 
 FORM OF GOVERNMENT;" 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 16, 1865. 
 
 WASHINaTON: 
 1865. 
 

REMARKS. 
 
 The House having under consideration the bill "to guar- 
 
 mty to certain States uiiose governments liave l)ecn 
 tsurped or overthrown a republican form of government,'" 
 Wr. Kelley moved to amend tlie bill by inserting after the 
 vords " to enroll all llie white male citizens of the United 
 States" the words" and all other male citizens of the Uni- 
 ed States who may be able to read the constitution 
 hereof," and said : 
 
 Mr. Speaker: These are indeed terrible times 
 or timid people. Use nnd woni no lonojer .serve 
 IS. Tlie guns traitorously fired upon Fort Burn- 
 er threw us all out of the well-beaten ruts of 
 labit, and as the war progresses men find them- 
 ;eives less and less able to express their political 
 riews by naming a party or uttering its .sliibbo- 
 eth. It is no longer safe for any of us to wait till 
 he election comes and accept the platform and 
 ickets presented by a party. Wo may have 
 lerved in its ranks for a life-time and find at last — 
 ;ostly and painful experience being our guide — 
 liat to obtain the ends we had in view we should 
 lave acted independently of, and in opposition to 
 I and its leaders. In seasons liice this, an age on 
 ges telling, the feeblest man in whom there is faith 
 ir honesty is made to feel that he is not quite 
 lowerless, that duty is laid on him loo, and that 
 he force that is in him ought to be expressed in 
 ccordance with his own convictions and in a way 
 promote some end seen or hoped for. 
 
 The questions with which we have to deal, the 
 xave doubts thatconfound us, the dilTicultics that 
 nviron us, the results our action will produce, 
 raught with weal or woe to centuries and con- 
 tanily-increasing millions, are such as have rarely 
 leen confided to a generation. But happily we 
 re not witliout guidance. Our situation, though 
 lovel, does not necessarily cast us upon the field 
 f mere experiment. True, we have not specific 
 irecedents wiiich we may safely follow; but the 
 ounders of our Government gave us, in a few 
 irief sentences, laws by which we may extricate 
 lur generation and country from the horrors that 
 nvolve them, and secure peace broad as our coun- 
 ry, enduring as its history, and beneficent as 
 ight and justice and love. 
 
 The organized war power of the rebellion is on 
 
 the eve of overthrow. It belongs to us to govern 
 the territory we have conquered, and the question 
 of reconstruction presses itself upon our atten- 
 tion; and ourlegislation in this behalf will, though 
 it comprise no specific provisions on the subject, 
 determine whether guerrilla war shall harass 
 communities for long years, or be suppressed in 
 a brief time by punishments administered through 
 courts and law, to marauders for the crimes they 
 may cummit under the name of partisan warfare. 
 At the close of an international war, the wronged 
 but victorious party may justly make two claims: 
 indemnity for the past, and security for the fu- 
 ture; indemnity for the past in money or in ter- 
 ritory; security for the future by new treaties, the 
 establishment of new boundaries, or the cession 
 of military power and the territory upon which 
 it dwells. Indemnity for the past we cannot 
 hope to obtain. When we shall have punished 
 the conspirators who involved the country in this 
 sanguinary war, and pardoned the dupes and vic- 
 tims who have arrayed themselves or. been forced 
 to do battle under their flag, we shall but have re- 
 possessed our ancient territory, reestablished the 
 boundaries of our country, restored to our flag 
 and Constitution their supremacy over territory 
 which was ours, but which the insurgents meant 
 to dismember and possess. The otiier demand 
 we may and must succ(!Ssfully make. Security 
 for the future is accessible to us, and we must 
 demand it; and to obtain it with amplest guaran- 
 tees requires the adoption of no new idea, the 
 making of no experiment, the entering upon no 
 sea of political speculation. Ours would have 
 been an era of peace and prosperity, had we nnd 
 our fathers accepted in full faith the great princi- 
 ples that impelled their fathers to demand the in- 
 dependence of the United Colonies, gave them 
 strength in counsel, patience, courage, and long 
 endurance in the field, and guided them in estab- 
 lishing a Constitution which all ages will recog- 
 nize as the miracle of the era in which it was 
 framed and adopted, and the influence of which 
 shall modify and change, and bring into its own 
 similitude, the Governments of the world. Had 
 we, and the generation that preceded us, accepted 
 
4 
 
 and been guided by the self-evident truths to 
 which I alhule, the world would never have known 
 the martial power of the American people, or 
 realized the fact that a Government that siis so 
 lighilyas ours upon the people in peace is so in- 
 finitely strong in the terrible season of war. 
 
 The founders of our institutions labored con- 
 sciously and reverently in the sight of God. They 
 knew tlial they were the creatures of His power, 
 and that their work could only be well done by 
 being done in the recognition of Hia attributes, 
 and in harmony with the enduring laws of His 
 providence. Tl>ey knew that His ways were ways 
 of pleasantness, and Elis paths the paths of peace; 
 and they endeavored to embody His righteous- 
 ness and justice in| the Government they were 
 fashioning for unknown ages, and untold millions 
 of men. Their children, in the enjoyment of the 
 prosperity thus secured to them, lost their faith 
 in these great truths, treated them with utter dis- 
 regard, violated them, legislated in opposition to 
 them, and finally strove to govern the country in 
 active hostility to them. And for a little while 
 they seemed to succeed. But at len;!th we have 
 been made to feel and know that God's justice 
 does not sleep always; and amid the ruins of the 
 country and the desolation of our homes let us 
 resolve that we will return to the ancient ways, 
 look to Him for guidance, and follow humbly in 
 the footsteps of our wise and pious forefathers; 
 and that, as grateful children, we will erect to 
 their memory and to that of the brave men who 
 have died in defense of their work in this the 
 grandest of all wars, a monument broad as our 
 country, pure as was their wisdom, and enduring 
 as Christian civilization. So shall we by ourfirm- 
 iiess and equity exalt the humble, restrain the 
 rapacious and arrogant, and bind the people to 
 each other by the manifold cords of common sym- 
 pathies and interest, and to the Government by 
 the gratitude due to a just and generous guardian. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, I heargenllemen inquire how 
 this is to be done. The process is simple, easy, 
 and inviting: it is by accepting in child-like faith, 
 and executing with firm and steady purpose three 
 or four of the simple dogmas which the founders 
 of our Government proclaimed to the world, and 
 v/hich, alas! too often with hypocritical lip ser- 
 vice, are professed by all Americans, even those 
 who are now striving, through blood, and car- 
 nage, and devastation, to found a broad empire, 
 the corner-stone of which was to be human sla- 
 very. 
 
 In announcing the reasons which impelled the 
 colonies to aseparation from the mother country, 
 the American people declared that "a decent re- 
 spect to the opinions of mankind" required "a 
 declaration of the causes which impelled them to 
 the separation;" and in assigning those causes 
 announced a few general propositions, embody- 
 ing eternal and ever-operating principles, among 
 wliich were. 
 
 Fust, that " all men are created equal, are en- 
 dowed with certain inalienable rights," and that 
 "among these are life, liberty, and tiie pursuit of 
 hapfiincss;" 
 
 Second, that "to insure these riglits, Govern- 
 ments are instituted among men;" 
 
 Third, that "Governments derive their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed;" 
 
 Fourth, that " whenever any form of govern- 
 ment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the 
 right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to 
 institute a new Government, laying its foundations 
 on such principles and organizing its powers in 
 such form as to them shall seem most likely to 
 effect their safety and happiness." And in these 
 four projiositions we have an all-sufficient guide 
 to enduring peace and prosperity. If in the legis- 
 lation we propose we regard these selt'-evident 
 truths, our posterity shall not only enjoy peace, 
 but teach the world the way to universal freedom; 
 but if we fail to regard them, God alone in His infi- 
 nite wisdom knows what years of agitation, war, 
 and misery we may entail on posterity, and 
 whether the overthrow of our Government, the 
 division of our country, and all the ills thus en- 
 tailed on mankind may not be justly chargeable 
 to ua. 
 
 The tables of the census of 18G0 exhibiting the 
 population of the eleven insurgent States, show 
 that it numbered, and was divided as follows: 
 
 Alaliainn 
 
 ArU.iiisas 
 
 Florida 
 
 G'-niyia 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 iMi.ssis-jppi.. . . 
 Noilli (^larojina 
 Soutli Carolina, 
 
 'I'eiiiiessee 
 
 'J'e.xas 
 
 Virginia 
 
 VVIiitH 
 population. 
 
 I Colored pop- 
 I ulalion, slave 
 and free, inclu- 
 ding Indians, 
 
 526. 
 
 77. 
 
 59i: 
 
 337, 
 353 
 6-W 
 
 aoi 
 
 826 
 420 
 ,047 
 
 271 
 143 
 ,747 
 ,550 
 ,456 
 901 
 942 
 ,300 
 722 
 
 ,'8i5T 
 
 ,999 
 
 436.930 
 111,307 
 62,077 
 465,736 
 350,546 
 437,404 
 362.6a0 
 412,408 
 283,079 
 183,324 
 549,019 
 
 3,666,110 
 
 This table, as will be observed, embraces the 
 whole of Virginia as she was in 1860; and as I 
 have not the means of distinguishing the propor- 
 tion of her population that is embraced in the new 
 State of West Virginia, 1 permit it to stand as it 
 is. The new State is in tiie Union; her citizens 
 never assented to the ordinance of secession; they 
 have provided for the extinguishment of slavery 
 within her limits; and my remarks, save in the 
 general scope in which they may be applicable to 
 any or all of the States of the Union, will not be 
 understood as applying to her. It is of tlie ter- 
 ritory for which it is the duty of Congress to pro- 
 vide governments that I speak. I should also 
 call attention to the fact that the Superintendent 
 of the Census includes the few Indians that re- 
 mained in some of these States in the column of 
 while inhabitants. Their number Is not impor- 
 tant; but it certainly should not be so stated as to 
 create the impression that they enjoyed the rights 
 or performed the duties of citizens. How unfair 
 this classification is will appear from the fact that 
 the following section from the Code of Tennessee 
 of 1858, section 3,858, indicates very fairly the 
 position they held under the legislation of each 
 and all the above-named States: 
 
 "A negro, mulatto, Indian, or person of mixed blood, 
 
/ 
 
 descended from negro or Indian ancestors, to the third gen- 
 eraiinii int'liisive, tliougli one ancestor of each generation 
 may liavc Ix'cn a vvliite person, wlietlier bonil or free, is 
 incapalile of being a witness in any case, civil or criminal, 
 except for or against eacli other." 
 
 Correcting the error of the Superintondent of 
 tlie Census, I have enumerated the Indians with 
 the people to whose fate tlie legislation of those 
 States assigned them. It will be perceived that 
 when that census was taken the white population 
 numbered 5,447,222, and the colored population 
 3,660,110. 
 
 It thus appears that the colored people were 
 considerably more than two fifths of the whole 
 ])opulation of the insurgent States; and that while 
 we have professed to believe that their right to 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness wa.s in- 
 alienable — could not be alienated or relinquished 
 by them, nor taken away by others — we have ig- 
 nored their humanity, and denied them the en- 
 joyment of any single political right. 
 
 That, while we have professed to believe that 
 governments are instituted among men to secure 
 their rights, the history of our country for the 
 last fifty years proves that the whole power and 
 constant labor of our Government have been ex- 
 erted to prevent the possibility of two fifths of 
 the people of more than half our country ever 
 attaining tlie enjoyment of political, civil, or so- 
 cial rights. 
 
 That, while we have professed to believe that 
 all Governments derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed, we have punished 
 with ignominy and stripes and imprisonment and 
 death the men who had the temerity to assert that 
 it was wrong to deny to two fifths of the people 
 of a country, and, as in the case of South Caro- 
 linaand Mississippi, alarge majority ofthe people 
 of the State, the right even to petition for redress 
 of grievance. 
 
 And while we have been swift to assure, in 
 terms of warmest sympathy, and sometimes with 
 active aid, any oppressed and revolting people 
 beyond the seas that we believed it to be the right 
 and duty of such people, " whenever any fornri of 
 Government becomes destructive of the ends" 
 above indicated," to alter or abolish it, and to insti- 
 tute a new Government, laying its foundations on 
 such principles, and organizingits powers in such 
 form, as to them shall seem most likely to efTict 
 their safety and happiness," we have, even to the 
 boundaries of the lakes and to the far Pacific 
 shores, stood pledged and ready to lay down our 
 lives in the suppression of any attempt these 
 Americans might make to carry into effect this 
 cardinal doctrine of our professed political faith. 
 Is,it any wonder that God, seeing millions of His 
 people thus trampled on, oppressed, outraged, and 
 made voiceless by those whose fathers had placed 
 their feet in Ilis ways, and whose lips never 
 wearied in beseeching His guidance and cure, 
 should fill the oppressors with madness and open 
 ■ through their blood and agony a way for the 
 deliverance of their long-suOering victims.' 
 
 BiAt, Mr. Speaker, it is asked, who are these 
 people.'' They are the laboring masses of the 
 South — the field hand, the house servant, the me- 
 chanic, the artisan, the engineer of that region. 
 
 Their sinewy arms have felled the forest, opened 
 the farm and the plantation, made the road, the 
 canal, the railroad. It was by the sweat of tlieir 
 brow that the sunny South was made to bloom; 
 it is they whose labor has quickened the wheels) 
 of commerce and swelled the accumulating wealth 
 ofthe world. U|ion their brawny shoulders rested 
 thesocial fabric ofthe South, and an arroganiaris- 
 tocracy. that strove to dictate morals to the world, 
 boasted that one product of their toil was a king 
 to whom peoples and Governments must bow. 
 Most of them are ignorant and degraded ; but that 
 cannot be mentioned to their disgrace or dispar- 
 agement. Not they nor their ancestors enacted 
 the laws which made it a felony to enable them to 
 read the Constitution and the laws of their coun- 
 try, or the Book of Life through which their fairer 
 bretliren hope for salvation. Dumb and voiceless 
 most of them arc; but let not want of intellectual 
 power be ascribed to them as a race, in view of 
 the wit, humor, sarcasm, and pathos, of tlie learn- 
 ing, logical powxr, and scientific attainments, of 
 a Douglass, a Garnet, a Remond, a Brown, a 
 Sella Martin,aWi II iam Craft,and scores of others, 
 who, evading the bloodhound and his master in 
 the slave-hunt, have made their way to lands 
 where the teachings of Cliristare regarded and the 
 brotherhood of man is not wholly denied. Others 
 of them are and have been free, at least so far as to 
 be able to acquire property and send their chil- 
 dren to foreign lands for culture. Let some such 
 speak for themselves. In the petition ofthe col- 
 ored citizens of Louisiana to the President and 
 Congress of the United Stales, they respectfully 
 submit: 
 
 "That they are natives of Louisiana and citizens of tlie 
 Unitutl States; that they are loyal citizens, sincerely at- 
 tached to the conntry and the Constitution, mid ardently 
 desire the maintenance of the national nnity, for whicli 
 they are ready to sacrilicc tlieir fortunes and tlicir lives. 
 
 " 'J'liat a large portion of them are owners of real estate, 
 and all of tlieiri arc owners of personal property; tliatmany 
 of them are engaged in tlie pursuits of commerce and in- 
 dustry, while others are employed as artisans in various 
 trades; that they are all titled to enjoy the privileges and 
 immunities belonging to the condition of citizens of the 
 United States, and among them may be found many of , 
 the descendants of those men whom the illustrious Jack- 
 son styled his 'fellow-citizens' when iio called upon them 
 to take up arms to repel the enemies of the country. 
 
 " Y(mr petitioners further respectfully represent that over 
 and above the right which, in the language of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, they possess to liberty and the pur- 
 suit of happiness, they are supported by the opinion of just 
 and loyal men, especially by that of lion. Edward Bates, 
 Attorney General, in the claim to the right of enjoying the 
 privileges and immunities pertaining to the condition of 
 citizens of the United States ; and, to support the legiti- 
 macy of this claim, they believe it simply necessary to 
 submit to your Exceljency, and to the honorable Congress, 
 the following considerations, which they beg of you to 
 weigh in the balance of law and justice. Notwithstand- 
 ing their forefathers served in the Army of the United 
 States, in 1814-15, and aided in repelling irom the soil of 
 Louisiana a liauglity enemy, over-confident of success, yet 
 they and their deseetidaiits have ever since, and until the 
 era of the present rebellion, been estranged and even re- 
 pulsed, exeludi'd from all franchises, even the smallest, when 
 their brave forefathers offered their bosoms to the enemy 
 to preserve the territorial integrity ofthe Republic! Dur- 
 ing this period of I'orty nitie years tln^y have never ceased 
 to be peaceable citizens, paying their taxes on an assess- 
 ment of more than fillern million dollars ! 
 
 " Atthe call of General (Jutler they hastened to rally under 
 the banner of the Union and liberty ; they have spilled their 
 blood, and arc still pouring it out for the maintenance of 
 
6 
 
 tho Constitution of the United Statos; in :i word, they arc 
 soldiers of tlu^ Union, and tin-y will defond it so long as 
 tlieir hands have strenfitli to hold a iiiuslict. 
 
 " While General Banks was at tlio siege of Port Hudson 
 and the city tlireatened ny tlie enemy, his Excellency Gov- 
 ernor Shepley called for troops f.)r liic defense of the city, 
 aud they were foremost in responding to the call, having 
 raised tlie first regiment in the short space of forty-eight 
 hours. 
 
 '• In consideration of this fact, as true and as clear as the 
 sun wiiich lights this great continent, in consideration of 
 the services already performed and still to be rendered by 
 them to tlieircommon country, they liumbly beseech your 
 Excellency and Congress to cast your eyes upon a loyal 
 population, awaiting with confidence and dignity the 
 proclaniiUlon of those inalienable rights which belong to 
 the condition of citizens of the great American Repub- 
 lic. 
 
 " Theirs is but a feeble voice claiming .ittention in the 
 midst of the grave questions raised by this terrible con- 
 flict; yet, conlident of the justice which guides the action 
 of llie Government, they have no hesitation in speaking 
 what is prompted by their hearts : ' We are men ; treat us 
 iis such.' " 
 
 This petition, v;hich it is vi'itliiii my knowledge 
 was prepared by one of the proscribed race, asks 
 only for wliat the fathers of our country intended 
 they sliould enjoy. Tliey discovered in tiie Africo- 
 American the attributes and infirmities of tlieir 
 own nature, and in oro:anizing governments, local 
 or general, made no invidious distinction between 
 him and his fellow-men. Under the Articles of 
 Confederation, and at the time of the adoption 
 of the Constitution of the United States, and long 
 subsequent thereto, the free colored man was with 
 their consent a citizen and a voter. Our fathers 
 meant that he should be so. Their faitii in the 
 great cardinal maxims they enunciated vvas un- 
 doubting; and they einbodied it without mental 
 reservation when they gave form and action to 
 our Government. No one v/ho has studied the 
 history of that period doubts that they regarded 
 slavery as transitory and evanescent. Neither 
 the word "slave," nor any synonym for it, was 
 given place in liie Constitution. We know by 
 the oft-quoted rernark of Mr. Madison that it was 
 purposely excluded that the future people of the 
 country might never be reminded by that instru- 
 ment that so odious a condition had ever existed 
 among the people of the United States. Thatin- 
 strument nowhere contemplates any discrimina- 
 tion in reference to political or personal rights on 
 the ground of color. In defining the riglitsguar- 
 antied by the Constitution they are never iinoited 
 to the white population, but the word "people" 
 is used without qualification. Wlien in that iti- 
 strunient its framers alluded to those who filled 
 the anomalous, and, as they believed, temporary 
 position of slaves, they spoke of " persons held 
 to service," and in the three-fifths clause of" all 
 other persons." They confided all power to " the 
 people," and provided amply, as they believed, 
 for the jirotection of the whole people. Thus in 
 the second section of article one, they provided as 
 follows for the organization of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives: 
 
 "The House of Representatives shall be composed of 
 members chosen every second year by the people of the 
 8ev(nal States, and the electors in each State shall have 
 the f|ualifications requisite for electors of the most numer- 
 ous Luanch of the State L,egisluture." 
 
 And in the amendments of the Constitution we 
 
 see how careful they were at a later day to guara 
 the rights of the people: 
 
 "Art. 1. Con;,'ress shall make no law respecting an es- 
 tablishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
 thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; 
 or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to pe- 
 tition the GoveriMtient for a redress of grievances. 
 
 "Art. 2. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the 
 security of a free State, iIk; right oi the people to keep and 
 bear arms sliall not be infringed." 
 
 "Art. 4. The right of (/te;(cop/etobe secure in their per- 
 sons, bouses, papers, and efi'eets, against unreasonable 
 searches and seizures, shall not be violated." 
 
 "AiiT. 9. The enumeration in theCoiistitntion of certain 
 rights sliall not he construed to deny or disparage others re- 
 taitied by the jieoplc. 
 
 "Art. 10. The powersnot delegated to the United States 
 by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re- 
 served to the States respectively, or to the people." 
 
 it has, I know, been fashionable to deny that 
 the framers of the Constitution intended to em- 
 brace colored persons when they used tlie word 
 " peof)le;" and it is still asserted by some that 
 it was used with a mental reservation broad and 
 effective enough to exclude them; but tlic Jour- 
 nals of the Convention and the general history 
 of the times abound in contradictions of this false 
 and mischievous theory, the source of all our pres- 
 ent woes. A brief review of contemporaneous 
 events ought to put this question at rest forever. 
 
 The Congress of the Confederation was in ses- 
 sion on the 25th of June, 1778, the fourth of the 
 Articles of Confederation being under coiisidei'a- 
 lion. The terms of the article as proposed were 
 that " the free inhabitants of each of these Stales 
 (paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice 
 excepted) shall be entitled to all privilejres and 
 immunities of free citizen.s in the several States." 
 We learn by the Journal that " the delegates from 
 South Carolina, being called on, moved the fol- 
 lowing amendment in behalf of their State: iti 
 article four, between the words ' free inhabitants' 
 insert ' white.' " How was this proposition, 
 identical with that now made to us, received by 
 the sages there aud then assembled .' Eleven Slates 
 voted on thequestion. Two, South Carolina be- 
 ing one of them, sustained liie [)roposition; the 
 vote of one State was divided; atid eight, affirm- 
 ing the colored man's riicht to tho privileges of 
 citizenship, voted " no, "and the proposition was 
 thus negatived. South Carolina — then, as she has 
 ever been, persistent in mischief — further moved, 
 through her delegates, to amend by inserting after 
 the words " the several States" the words " ac- 
 cording to the law of such States respectively for 
 the government of their own free iclnte inhabit- 
 ants." This proposition was also negatived by 
 the same decisive vole, as appears by the Journal 
 of the Congress of the Confedei-ation, volume 
 four, pages 379, 380. What two States did not 
 vote upon the question the Journal does not in- 
 dicate; but when it is remembered that Pennsyl- 
 vania led her sisters in the great work of emanci- 
 pation, and that it v/as not till nearly two years 
 after that date that she abolislied slavery, it will 
 be seen that it was by a vote of slaveholders rep- 
 resenting slave States, that the proposition to deny 
 citizenship, its rights, privileges, and immunities, 
 to the colored people was so em]>hatically re- 
 jected. The delegates could not, with propriety, 
 have voted otherwise. To have done so, they 
 
/<? h 
 
 would have agreed that, in violation of all comity, 
 while they secured the rights of citizenship within 
 the limits of their State to citizens of others, those 
 other States might deny them to citizens of tlieir 
 own. They did not probably foresee that South 
 Carolina might cast the shipwrecked citizen of 
 another State who had been tluown upon her 
 shores into a jail, because of the decree of the 
 Almighty, who had given him a complexion not 
 agreeable to the eyes of her people, and in default 
 of the ability to pay jail fees thus unwillingly in- 
 curred, doom him and his posterity to the woes 
 of perpetual slavery; but they did see that such 
 n proposition opened the door to inequality, and 
 possibly to oppression, and they resisted it with 
 a firmness and forecast which their posterity have 
 failed to honor or emulate. 
 
 Again, they could not have consistently voted 
 for such a proposition; for, by the constitutions 
 of their own States, free colored men were voters, 
 and in the enjoyment of the rights of citizen- 
 ship. Not only then, but in 1789, at the time 
 of the adoption of the Constitution of the United 
 States, there was but one State whose constitution 
 distinguislied in this respect against the colored 
 man. This odious distinction, so fraught with 
 unforeseen but terrible consequences, marred the 
 constitution of South Carolina alone at the latter 
 dale. 
 The constitution of Massachusetts provided that 
 " Every male peismi (being tvveiity-OMe years of age, and 
 residPiit in any particular town in tliis Connnonwealtli for 
 tlie space of one year nnxt preceding) having a freehold 
 estate wilhin the same Iowa of the annual income of three 
 pounds, or any estan; of the value of sixty pounds, shall 
 have a right to vote in the choice of a representative or 
 representatives ibr the said town."' 
 
 Rhode Island had adopted no constitution, but 
 continued under colonial charter, which provided 
 for the election of members of the General As- 
 sembly by " the major part of the freemen of the 
 respective towns or places." 
 
 Connecticutalso continued undercolonial char- 
 ter, according to which the qualifications of an 
 elector were" maturity in years, quiet and peace- 
 able behavior, a civil conversation, and forty shil- 
 lings freehold, or forty pounds personal estate." 
 
 The constitution of New York provided that — 
 
 "Every male inhahiiant of full age, who siiall have 
 personally resided within one of the counties of tliis State 
 lor six months immediately preceding the day of election, 
 shall, at such elcctioii, be entitled to vote for representa 
 lives of the said county in the Assembly, if, during the time 
 aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder possessing a free- 
 hold of the value of twenty pounds wilhin the said county, 
 or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of 
 forty shillings, and have rated and actually paid ta.\cs to 
 this State." 
 
 The constitution of New Jersey contained this 
 provision: 
 
 " All inhabitants of tliis colony of full age, who are worth 
 fifty pounds proclamation money clear estate in the saine, 
 and have resided within the county in which they claim to 
 vote tor twelve months immediately preceding the electioii, 
 shall be entitled to vote for lepresentatives in Council and 
 Assembly, and also for all other public olticers that shall be 
 elected by the people of the county at large." 
 
 The constitution of Pennsylvania provided 
 that— 
 
 "Every freeman of the full age of twenty-one years, hav- 
 ing resided in this State for the space ol' one whole year 
 uext before the day of election for representatives, and paid 
 
 public taxes during that time, shall enjoy the right of an 
 elector; provided always that soiis of freeholders of the 
 age of twenty-one years shall bo entitled to vole although 
 they have lioi paid taxes." 
 
 The constitution of Delaware declared that — 
 
 "The right of sufTragc in the ('lection for members of 
 
 both houses shall ri;main as exercised by law at present." 
 
 The declaration of rights, prefixed to the con- 
 stitution, contained the following: 
 
 "Every freeman, having sufficient evidence of perma- 
 nent common interest with and attachment to thecomiuu- 
 nity, hath a right of sufi'rage." 
 
 The constitution of Maryland provides that — 
 " All freemen, above twenty-one years of age, having a 
 freehold of fifty acres of land in the county in which they 
 oiler to vote, and residing theiciii, and all freemen having 
 property in this State above the value of thirty pounds cur- 
 rent money, and having resided in the county in which they 
 ofi'er to vote one whole year next preceding the election, 
 shall have ii right of sufi'rage in the election of delegates for 
 such county." 
 
 The constitution of Virginia contained a pro- 
 vision that — 
 
 "The right of suffrage in the election of members for 
 both houses shall remain as exercised at present." 
 
 The declaration of rights, prefixed to the con- 
 stitution, contained the following: 
 
 " All men having suflicient evidence of permanent com- 
 mon iiiterest with and attachment to the community have 
 the right of sufi'rage." 
 
 The constitution of North Carolina provided 
 that— 
 
 "All freemen of the age of twenty-one years, who have 
 been inhabitants of any oiie county within the State twelve 
 months innnediately preceding the day of any election, and 
 shall have paid public taxes, shall be entitled to vote for 
 meuibers of the House of Commons for the county in whicU 
 they reside." 
 
 The constitution of Georgia declared that — 
 "The elcctois of the members of both branches of the 
 Geneial Assenihly shall be citizens and inhabitants of this 
 State, and shall have attained to the age of twenty-one 
 years, and have paid tax for the year pieceding the elec- 
 tion, ;uid shall have resided six months within tlie county." 
 The constitution of South Carolina provided 
 that — 
 
 "The qualifications of an elector shall br', every free 
 iddlc mail, aiid no other person, who acknowledges the be- 
 ing of a God, and believes in a future state of rewards and 
 punishments, and who has attained the age of one and 
 twenty yeais, and hath been an inliahitant and resident in 
 this State for the s|iace of one whole year before the day 
 appointed for the election he otTers to give his vote at, and 
 hath a freehold at least of fifty acres of land or a town lot, 
 and hath been legally seized and possessed of the same at 
 least six months previous to such election, or halli paid a 
 tax the preceding year, or was taxable the present year, at 
 least six months previous to the said election, in a sum 
 equal to the tax on fifty acres of land, to the support of this 
 government, shall be a person qualified to vote for, and shall 
 lie capableof electing, a representative or representatives." 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, to evade the force of this 
 overwhelming array of facts, the pro-slavery De- 
 mocracy and purblind conservatism of the coun- 
 try have suggested that the thought of the black 
 man was not present in the minds of those who 
 fashioned these constitutions and bills of rights; 
 that they could not have imagined that the freed 
 slave or his posterity would have the audacity to 
 ask that they should be recognized as freemen 
 and citizens of our country; and with unblushing 
 effrontery they have made the ignorant believe 
 that the Government was organized, not for man- 
 
8 
 
 kind, but for the white man alone. The falsity 
 of these suggestions is fully exposed by the fact 
 that South Carolina made tlie distinction, and in 
 the Congress of the Confederation pressed it on 
 the attention of the whole country, ijut will be 
 still more amply demonstrated by the facts I shall 
 hereafter cite. In every State but South Caro- 
 lina, and possibly Virginia and Delaware, in 
 which the right of sullVage was regulated by 
 statute, and not by constitutional provision, the 
 free colored man at that time was a voter. In no 
 State constitution except that of South Carolina, 
 v/hich was replete with aristocratic provisions, 
 was the right of suffrage limited by express terms 
 to the white man; consequently but few, if any, 
 of the members of the Convention that framed the 
 Constitution of the United Slates could have failed 
 to meet him as a voter at the polls. 1 remember 
 well to have seen negroes at the polls exercising 
 the right of suffrage in Pennsylvania, where they 
 enjoyed it l>om the foundation of the government 
 to the year 1838, when the growing influence of 
 the increasing slave power of the country, op- 
 erating on the political ambition of those whom 
 the pe'ople had charged with no such duty, de- 
 prived colored men of this right by following the 
 example of South Carolina and inserting the word 
 '* white" in the constitution of the State. Sirnilar 
 action restricted their right in New York, making 
 it dependent on a [iroperty qualification, and de- 
 prived them of it in New Jersey and other States 
 now free. To lier praise be it spoken, except in 
 Connecticut, which State, in 1817, in complaisance 
 to South Carolina, inserted the word " white" in 
 her constitution, they still enjoy the right through- 
 out New England, not as a concession from men 
 of modern days, but hereditarily, from the times 
 jn which tiie foundations of the Government were 
 laid. Gentlemen around me from the State of 
 Maryland doubtless well remember the days when 
 the free colored man voted in their State. It was 
 only in 1833 that lie was deprived of that inesti- 
 mable right by constitutional amendment within 
 her limits. That the negro enjoyed this right in 
 North Carolina until he was deprived of it in the 
 same way is proven by the followingextractfrom 
 the opinion of Judge Gaston, of that State, in the 
 State vs. Manuel, wiiich was decided in 1838, and 
 may be found in 4 Devereux and Battle's North 
 Carolina Reports, page 25: 
 
 " It lias been said that before our Revolution free per- 
 sons of color (lid not exercise the right of voting for mem- 
 bers of the colonial Legislature. How this may have been 
 it would be difficult at this time to ascertain, it is certain, 
 however, that very few, if any, could have claimed the 
 right of suffrage for a reason of a very difFerent character 
 from the one supposed. The principle of freehold suffrage 
 eeems to have been brought over from England with tlie 
 first colonists, and to have been preserved almost invaria- 
 bly in the colony ever afterward." * * * "The 
 very Congress which framed our constitution [the Statfi 
 constitution of 1776] was chosen by freeholders. That 
 constitution extended the elective franchise to every free- 
 man who had arrived at ihe age of twenty-one and paid a 
 public tax; and it is a matter of universal notoriety that 
 under it free persons, without regard to color, claimed and 
 exercised the franchise until it ivas taken from free men of 
 color a few years since by our amended constitution." 
 
 Tennessee was admitted to the Union in 1796. 
 Her constitution provided as follows; 
 " Every freeman of the age of twenty-one years and 
 
 upward, possessing a freehold in the county wherein he 
 may ♦ote, and being an inhabitant of this State, and every 
 /reemon being an inhabitant of any one county in the State 
 six months immediately preceding the day of election, shall 
 be entitled to vote for members of the General Assenibly for 
 the county in which he may reside." 
 
 This constitution, as will be seen, endured for 
 forty years, during which the free colored men 
 of the State enjoyed their political rights, and 
 exercised, as will appear, a powerful and salutary 
 influence upon public opinion and the course of 
 legislation. 
 
 In 1834, a convention to revise that constitu- 
 tion assembled at Nashville, and, accepting the 
 suggestion of South Carolina, by a vole of 33 to 23 
 limited the suffrage to free white men. During 
 those forty years free negroes had enjoyed a right 
 which made them a power; and no chapter in our 
 history better illustrates the value of this power 
 to both races, or how certainly great v/rongs of 
 this kind react and punish the wrong-doer. Cave 
 Johnson is a name well known throughout the 
 country and honored in Tennessee; and it was 
 his boast that the free men of color gave his ser- 
 vices to the country by electing him to Congress. 
 On page .1305 of the Congressional Globe for the 
 session of 1853-54, will be found the following 
 statement of Hon. John Pettit, of Indiana, made 
 in the United States Senate, May 25, 1854, while 
 discussing the suflVage clause of the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill: 
 
 " Many of the States have conferred this right [of suf- 
 frage] upon Indians, and many, both North and South, 
 have conferred it upon free negroes without property. Old 
 Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, an honored and respectable 
 gentleman, formerly Postmaster General, and for a long 
 lime a member of the other House, told me with his own 
 lips that the first time he was elected to Congress from 
 Tennessee (in 1828) it was by the votes of free negroes ; and 
 he told me liow. Free negroes in Tennessee were then 
 allowed by the constitution of the State to vote; and he 
 was an iron manufacturer, and had a large number of free 
 negroes as well as slaves in his employ. I well recollect 
 the number he stated. One hundred and forty-four free 
 negroes in his employ went to the ballot-box and elected 
 him to Congress the first time he was elected." 
 
 Few will now deny that slavery is a curse alike 
 to the masterand the servile race. None will deny 
 that slavery has been a curse to that State in view 
 of the vast mineral resources of Tennessee; her fine 
 natural sites for great cities; her capacity to feed, 
 house, clothe, educate, and profitably employ 
 free laborers; her recent history, the abundant 
 source of future song and story; tiie pious and 
 patriotic endurance of the brave and God-fearing 
 ]3eople of the eastern section of the State, and the 
 perfect abandon with which their more aristo- 
 cratic fellow-citizens of the western section of the 
 State espoused the cause of the rebellion; the 
 cruelties inflicted on the loyal people by the trai- 
 tors; the horrors and the heroism of the border 
 warfare that has desolated her fair fields, and the 
 rancorous feuds and intense hatreds, v/hich the 
 grave can only extinguish, that have been en- 
 gendered among her people by the war. And who, 
 if the apparently well-founded tradition be true, 
 that a proposition to incorporate in her constitu- 
 tion of 1796 a clause prohibiting slavery was lost 
 by a majority of one vote, will estimate the evil 
 done by the man who thus decided that moment- 
 ous question? 
 
9^ 
 
 /<^f 
 
 The history of slavery in Tennessee, and the 
 determined resistance so lon^ made aajainet ils 
 struggles for supremacy, will, I am sure, justify 
 a brief digression. Theie were in 1796, it is said, 
 considerably less llian five tliousand slaves witliin 
 lier limits, who had been brought thither by tlie 
 earlier settlers of what was then known as the 
 territory soutli of the Ohio. The influence of the 
 colored citizens is iracealile throughout her earlier 
 liistory. So early as 1801,ltefore she had existed 
 five years as a State, tlie Legislature conferred the 
 power of emancipation upon the county courts of 
 the State by an act, tiie preamble to winch sigiiifi- 
 cantly says: 
 
 " Whereas tlie number of petitioiia piesentpd to this 
 Leyislalure priyhi;; tlie einancipalion of slaves, not only 
 tends to involve liie Stale in great evils, but is also pro- 
 ductive of great expense." 
 
 In 1812, the introduction of slaves into the State 
 for sale was prohibited bylaw. Yetin the twenty 
 years between 1790 and 1810, by the power of 
 emigration from slave States and natural increase, 
 the number swelled from less than fourthousand 
 to upward of forty-four tliousand. Tliisrapid in- 
 crease of slave population alarmed the people, and 
 einancipalion societies were organized in diderent 
 parts of the Slate. Extracts from an address de- 
 livered on the 17th of August, 1816, by request 
 of one of these societies, and repeated with its ap- 
 proval on the 1st of January, 1817, and which, 
 having been printed, not anonymously, but by 
 Heiskell &, Brown, was largely distributed by the 
 society, are before me. it ]jroposes to show, 
 
 First, the object or design of the society. 
 
 Second, that the principles of slavery are in- 
 consistent with the laws of nature and revelation. 
 
 Third, some of its evils, both moral and polit- 
 ical. 
 
 Fourth, that no solid objections lie against grad- 
 ual emancipation. 
 
 To show the freedom with which the subject 
 was then discussed, I olTera brief extract or two. 
 In (hose days the people of America had not 
 learned, nor did ihey yet pretend to believe, that 
 the Constitution of the United Stales denied them 
 the right to think of the condition of any classof 
 sulfering |)eople, or made it a crime to utter their 
 convictions and their philanthropic emotions. 
 Thus this address to the people of Tennessee 
 says: 
 
 "Slavery, a3 it exists among us, gives a master a property 
 in tlie slaves and their descendants a« much as law can give 
 a property in land, cattle, goods, and chattels of any Itind, 
 lo he used at the discretion of the master, or to be sold to 
 whom, when, and where he pleases, with the descendants 
 forever. It is true, if the master lake away the life of the 
 slave under certain circumstances, our laws pronounce it 
 murder. But the laws leave it in the power of the master 
 TO destroy his life by a thousand acts of lingering cruelty. 
 He may starve him to death by degrees, or he may whip 
 him to death if he only take long eiioush lime, or he may 
 so unite the rigors of hard labor, stinted diet, and exposure 
 as to shorten life. The laws watch against sudden murder, 
 as if to leave the Ibrlorn wretches exposed to any slow 
 deaih I hat the cruelty and malignant passions of a savage 
 may dictate. Nor is there any restraint but a sense of pe- 
 cniilaiy loss, feeble liarrieragainsttlw;etlectsofthe nialevo- 
 liMil passions that are known to iesi<le in the liuinan heart. 
 The most inlmman wretch may own slaves, as well as the 
 humane and gentle. Should laws leave one human being 
 in the power of another lo such an extent.'' In many coun- 
 tries where slavery exists the lawa prescribe the manner 
 
 in which they shall he used, and that, too, in lands which 
 do nni boast eiilier of ilii' lijilit and science we enjoy or of 
 X\\(: libeiiv and ('(pialily winch raise us above and distin- 
 guish us Iromall the nalnms of the globe." 
 
 Nor did the movement, as appears at lenst from 
 this address, contemplate the abolition of slavery 
 in Tennes.see alone; tor, afteralluding to iliefjreal 
 doctrines promulgated in the Declaration of inde- 
 pendence, it says: 
 
 " On the certainty oi'the inichaucalilenessofthpse truths, 
 wejustlly (lursejiaralionfioin the Govern in ent of Groat Brit- 
 ain, t'ot I he defense and enjoy men I of these principles our 
 fathers willingly met death, and, surrendered their lives mar- 
 tyrs. Tliey heipieathed them lo us as the gr(^alesl of human 
 legacies. Vet slavery, as it exists in the United States, is 
 in direct opposition to these self evident maxims. Every 
 line of our iiistory. every battle in our struggle lor independ- 
 ence, every anniversary of our national birth condemns 
 the principles of slavery, and fixes on us the charge of glar- 
 ing inconsistency; and every law passed by Legislatures in 
 favor of slavery is in direct opposition to the principles of 
 our national existence. Let us willingly do that which 
 we justly blameGreat Britain for refusing lo do until forced, 
 itamebi, ackiiowleilge the lig/ii^ of men, and s.ii'e, in astiita- 
 hie way, more than one miilion and a half of people to enjoy 
 these sacred rights." 
 
 In 1834, when the convention to revise the con- 
 stituiion assembled, the slaves in the State num- 
 bered more than one hundred and fifty tliousand. 
 The jiower of the slave oligarchy had increased, 
 and opposition to the institution had perhaps be- 
 come less powerful. FjuI in the first week of the 
 convention, petitions on the subject of emancipa- 
 tion were presented from the citizens of Maury 
 county, and were soon followed by others from 
 Robertson, Lincoln, Bedford, Overton, Roane, 
 Rhea, Knox, Monroe, McMinn, Blount, Sevier, 
 Cocke, Jefferson, Greene, and Washing ton, many 
 of the signers being slaveholders, and all pray- 
 ing that all the slaves should be made free by the 
 year 186G. By an unforeseen process, the prayer 
 of those petitioners will be granted, though the 
 convention to which they addressed their prayer 
 gave an unfavorable response, and as if in derision 
 of the petitioners, attempted to fasten his shackles 
 more firnnly on the slave. God, whose 
 " Ways seem dark, but, soon or late, 
 They touch the shining hills of day," 
 
 in His infinite mercy and wisdom has in this re- 
 spect reversed the decrees of man . Well for Ten- 
 nessee and her bleeding people would it have 
 been had the members of that convention bowed 
 reverently to His will, as did the framers of the 
 Constitution of the United States, and so worded 
 the instrument they fashioned that it would not 
 have informed posterity that so odious an institu- 
 tion as slavery had ever been tolerated by the 
 Slate. 
 
 During the second week of the session, Mat- 
 thew Stephenson, a farmer of Washington county, 
 a native of Rockingham county, Virginia, moved 
 " that a committee of thirteen, one from each con- 
 gressional district, be appointed to take into con- 
 sideration the propriety of designating some pe- 
 riod from which slavery shall not be tolerated in 
 this State, and that all memorials on that subject 
 that have or may be presented to the convention 
 be referred to said committee to consider and re- 
 port thereon;" which resolution, by a vote of 38 
 to 20, was laid on the table on the 1st of January, 
 1835. 
 
10 
 
 This action of the convention was not readily 
 acquiesced in by the people; and to avert popular 
 indignation it was "resolved that a committee of 
 three, one from each division of the State, be ap- 
 pointed to draft the reasons that governed this con- 
 vention in declining to act upon the memorials on 
 the subject of slavery." The address prepared 
 by the committee appointed under this resolution 
 does not attempt to defend or apologize for sla- 
 very ; does not deny that it is a great wrong; speaks 
 of "the unenviable condition of the slave;" of 
 slavery as " unlovely in all its aspects," and de- 
 plores " the bitter draught the slave is doomed to 
 drink." It rests the defense of the convention on 
 other grounds than divine sanction of this mon- 
 strous wrong, this hideous outrage upon every 
 precept of Christianity, this violation of every 
 clause of the decalogue. It puts its defense on 
 the ground of policy, and asserts that a constitu- 
 tional provision looking to gradual emancipation 
 would deplete the State of its laborers; that men 
 would hurry their slaves into Alabama, Missis- 
 sippi, Louisiana, Missouri, or Arkansas, where 
 they would be less kindly treated than in Tennes- 
 see, and where the prospect of ultimate emancipa- 
 tion would be more remote. This address to the 
 people of Tennessee admonishes us of the peren- 
 nial fountain of evil they would inflict on the peo- 
 ple of the insurgent district, who would doom the 
 more than three million six hundred and sixty-six 
 thousand people of color, dwelling within its lim- 
 its, to that dubious measure of freedom enjoyed 
 by men to whom political rights are denied, by the 
 following pointed passage: 
 
 "The condition of a free man of color, surrounded by 
 persons of a diS'erent caste and complexion, is tlie most 
 forlorn and wretched that can be. imagined. He is a stranger 
 in the land of his nativity; he is an outcast in the place of 
 his residence ; he has scarcely a motive to prompt him to 
 virtuous action or to stimulate him to honorable esertions. 
 At every turn and corner of the walks of life he is beset 
 with temptations, strong, nay, almost irresistible, to the 
 force of which in most cases he may be expected to yield, 
 the consequence of which must be that he will be degraded, 
 despised, and trampled upon by the rest of the community. 
 When the free man of color is oppressed by the proud, or 
 circumvented by the cunning, or betrayed by those in 
 'whom he has reposed confidence, do the laws of the land 
 atford him more than a nominal protection .'' Denied his 
 oath in a court of justice, unable to call any of his own 
 color to be witnesses, if the injury he complains of has 
 been committed by a white man, how many of his wrongs 
 must remain unredressed ; how many of his rights be vio- 
 lated with impunity; how poor a boon does he receive 
 when he is receiving freedom, if what he receives can be 
 called by that name. Unenviable as is the condition of the 
 slave, unlovely as slavery is in all its aspects, bitter as the 
 draught may be that the slave is doomed to drink, never- 
 theless his condition is better than the condition of the free 
 man of color in the midst ofa community of white men with 
 whom he has no common interest, no fellow-feeling, no 
 equality." 
 
 And it speaks to such with more pertinency 
 than it did to those for whom it was written when 
 it says: 
 
 " What, then, would be the condition of the community, 
 with such a multitude of human beings turned loose in so- 
 ciety, with all the habits, morals, and manners of the slave, 
 it-ith only the name and nominal priciicgcs, but without any 
 of the real hlessitigs of liberty or the real privileges of the 
 freeman ? Would not two distinct classes of people in the 
 same conmiunity array themselves against each other in 
 perpetual hostility and mutual distrust.' Would not the 
 constant collision that would take place between tliem pro- 
 
 duce a feverish excitement, alike destructive to the happi- 
 ness of both parties.' Would not the condition of free 
 people of color, under the operation of the causes already 
 enumerated, be more wretciied than the condition of the 
 slaves.' IVould not the while portion of the commimily be 
 more insecure with sueh n multitude among tliein. xvho had, 
 710 common interest with, no bond of uiiion to, that part of 
 the communily with whom they were mixed, and yet from 
 whom they were forever separated by a mark of dislitiction 
 that time itself could not icear array 7 The people of color, 
 nmnerous as they would be, with no kindred fueling to 
 unite them to that part of the community, whom I hey would 
 both envy and liate, would nevertheless have at their com- 
 mand a portion of physical strength that might and proba- 
 bly would be wielded to the worst purposes. They would 
 look across the southern boundary of the State, and there 
 they would see in a state of servitude a people of their own 
 color and kindred, to whom they were bound by the strong 
 bonds of consanguinity, and with whom they could make 
 aconnnon cause, and would they not be strongly tempted to 
 concert plans with them to exterminate the white man and 
 take possession of the country.' They would then possess 
 the means of consulting together, ofeociperatin}; with each 
 other, and let it not be forgotten that they would be ani- 
 mated by every feeling of the human heart that impels to 
 action." 
 
 Our millions will not look across the boundary 
 and behold a people of their color and kindred in 
 bondage. In all the States of Central America, 
 as in Mexico, the colored man is not only free, 
 but a citizen in the full enjoyment of all the rights 
 accorded to any man under his Government. But 
 on this point 1 shall have a few words to say here- 
 after. 
 
 How blinded by the pride of caste were the au- 
 thors of the address from which I make these ex- 
 tracts ! How fatally did they ignore the fact that 
 God had made all nations of one blood ! It was 
 not necessary that Tennessee should expatriate 
 her laborers, or maintain slavery, or create in her 
 midst so dangerous a class. It was open to that 
 convention to avoid the great iniquity which, it 
 appears, a majority of its members had predeter- 
 mined, namely, the deprivation of the free colored 
 man of the political rights he had enjoyed for forty 
 years, and to have maintained the existing rights 
 of those whose labor was giving consideration to 
 the State and wealth to its people. But they had 
 already forgotten the maxims of the fathers; and 
 it will be well if we do not adopt their folly as our 
 wisdom. Let us profit by their sad experience, 
 and be warned by the voice of Jefferson, who ex- 
 claimed: 
 
 " With what execration should the statesman be loaded, 
 who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the 
 rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these 
 into enemies — destroys the morals of the one part, and the 
 amor patri<2 of the other!" 
 
 And let us remember, too, that a wiser than he 
 has said — 
 
 " Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decree.'!, and 
 write grievousness which they have prescribed ; to turn 
 aside the needy from judgment, and take away the right 
 from the poor." 
 
 But plausible as were the reasons set forth in 
 this address, its authors did not intimate to the 
 people that even they doubted that the great 
 wrong of slavery would soon disappear; and, as 
 appears by pages 92 and 93 of the journal, they 
 further said: 
 
 " But the friends of humanity need not despair; the me- 
 morialists need not dread that slavery will be perpetual in 
 ourhighly-favored country." * * * * "Under 
 the approving smile of Heaven, and the fostering care of 
 
//^/ 
 
 11 
 
 Providence, slavery will yet be extinguished in a way that 
 will work no evil to the white man, while it produces the 
 liappii^^tclTects upon the whole African race." * * 
 
 * » "Let it be rcnii'nil)ered that there is an ap- 
 
 propriate ihnc for every work heneuth Ike nun, and a pre- 
 mature attempt to do any work, particularly any great work, 
 seldom tails to prevent success. A premature attempt on 
 the part of a sick man to leave his bed and his chamber 
 would inevitably prolon;; his disease, or perhaps place it 
 beyond the power of medicine. A similar attempt on the 
 part 01' the poor man to place himself in a state of independ- 
 ence, by engagins^ in some |)lausible but imprudent specu- 
 lation, would probably involve him in embarrassment from 
 which he could not extricate himself throughout the whole 
 remaining portion of his life. So a premature attempt on 
 the part of the benevolent to get rid of the evils of slavery 
 would certainly have the eti'ect of postponing to a far dis- 
 tant da}' the accomplishment of an event devoutly and 
 ardently desired by the wise and the good in every part of 
 our beloved country." 
 
 The sophisms of this report were not permuted 
 to pass without notice. Stout old Matthew 
 Stephenson, (for he was then in the fifty-eiglitli 
 year of his age,) sustained by several of his asso- 
 ciates, caused their protest to be entered on the 
 journals. They said, among other things: 
 
 " We believe the principles assumed in the report, and 
 the arguments used in their support, are in their tendency 
 subversive of the true principles of republic^inism, and be- 
 fore we can consistently give them our unqualified assent 
 we must renounce llie doctrine that ' all men are created 
 equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
 unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, ami 
 the pursuit of happiness.' Above all, we believe the report 
 is at variance with the spirit of the gospel, which is the 
 glory of our land, the precepts and maxims of which are 
 found in the Bible. One of its excellent rules is, ' As ye 
 would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto 
 them.' Now, to apply this gulden rule to the ease of mas- 
 ter and the slave, we have just to place each in the otiier's 
 stead, then ask the question honestly, ' What would [ that 
 my servant, thus placed in power, should do unto me?'" 
 
 " But we arc told nature has placed on the man of color 
 a mark of distinction which neither time nor circum- 
 stances can obliterate. 
 
 " IVe admit l/ic faet, but areneverthelessunableto perceive 
 ill tkat a good reason for denying to tlietnthe common rights 
 of man. The words of eiernnl until are, that God has made 
 of one blood all nations that divell upon the earth, and the 
 undersigned, in the language of Cowjier, are unwilling to 
 ' find their fellow-creature guilty ofa skin not colored like 
 their own;' nor can we admit as just Ike rule that would 
 assign to men their ri«,hts according to the different shades of 
 color. In the opinion of the undersigned, all the evils so 
 strikingly and so eloquently portrayed in the report, re- 
 specting the free people of color while among us, app'y 
 with equal, nay, witii greater force to the same people 
 while in slavery, unless, indeed, slavery gives dignity to 
 man. And although the memorialists do not hint at retain- 
 ing the people of color among us when free, but ask that 
 some means be devised for their removal ; nor would the 
 uiukrsigiied be understood as advocating any system of 
 eniaiieipation uneonnected with or without a view to their 
 eoloiiizarion ; yet we believe they would be happier and 
 safer. -uhjeets of our Government as free men than as slaves. 
 Jls ice hold it raise jioUcij in every Government to make it the 
 intcrct of all Us subjects to support, defend, aiid perpetuate 
 its civil institutions, is it reasonable to suppose that any would 
 desire the permanent existence of that Government which 
 denied to them all the rights of freemeiil Solomon in his 
 wisdom has said, ' Oppression niaki;s a wise man mad.' " 
 
 Dr. Joseph Kincaid , of Bedford county , a native 
 of IMadison county, Kentucky, also prepared a 
 protest again.st tlie doctrines of the address, and 
 caused it to be entered on the Journals. From 
 that protest I make but the following extract: 
 
 '•Can the free man of color be torn from his wife and 
 family and driven in chains to a foreign land and there sold 
 in the market like a dumb liriile to hiin who will give the 
 gieatesi sum for hiui, tliough his heart bleeds and bosom 
 
 yearns with bowelsof compassion and paternal tenderness 
 for the wile and children of his bosom, who are hone ot bid 
 bone and flesh of bis llesh.' lie cannot. Or can the chil- 
 dren of the fond motlier be torn from her bosom while her 
 heart is wrung with distress, and sin; agonizes in despair 
 and mourns for tht'm.and will not be comforted, because 
 they are not.' This cannot be done. Then docs this not 
 swcctcji the 'draught' which the free man of color daily 
 drinks .' !Most indubitably it does. Are these blessings se- 
 cured to the slave.' We have seen iliey are not. VViiat in 
 it, then, which constitutes the situation of the slave better 
 than that of the J'ree man of color 1 iJoes the superior hap- 
 piness and comfort of the slave over that of the free maa 
 of color consist in the ainoiui' of bread and meat which he 
 receives at the hands of his master to subsist liini, which 
 he has not to trouble himself .-iboutthe procuring of.' The 
 report seems to predicate a good portion of the solid com- 
 fort of the slave upon the daily rations which he draws 
 from his master's stores. But this conclusion the under- 
 signed cannot subscribe to; as an Jimericaii citizen he 
 would put a higher estimate upon the liberty which is en- 
 joyed even by the free man of color. What ! will it be said 
 that his rights, privileges, tind happiness shall be balanced 
 in the scale against the allowance of coarse fare which is 
 given for daily subsistence to the slave, and the tattered 
 garments that are furnished him to defend his body against 
 the inclemency of the season, and the chains with which 
 be may be hound in order to send him to a foreign market.' 
 Monstrous doctrine ! Cannot the free man of color, with 
 the labor of his hands, one sixth part of his time, procure 
 as ample a supply of ibod and raiment as is furnished the 
 slave.' Yea, and can he not then sit down under his own 
 vine, in the bosom of his family, and enjoy it, and there 
 shall 'be none to disturb or make' him afraid." " 
 
 Nor did the controversy end here; for tlie com- 
 mittee made a supplementary report, and true- 
 hearted old Matthew Stephenson and his asso- 
 ciates entered their second protest on the journal 
 of the convention. * 
 
 In drawing the picture of the condition of the 
 free man of color, the committee representing the 
 majority of the convention evidently had in view 
 wliat they intended to make his future and not his 
 past condition in that State; for the convention, 
 instead of providing for the abolition of slavery, 
 threw around that institution an additional safe- 
 guard by providing that " the General Assembly 
 shall have no power to pass laws for the emanci- 
 pation of slaves without the consent of their owner 
 or owners;" and by a vote of 33 to 23 cht^nged 
 the language of the clause regulating the elective 
 franchise from "freemen," as it had stood from 
 the organization of the State, to "free white men," 
 since which time the negro has had no voice or 
 share in the management of the public affairs of 
 that State. Thus South Carolina triumphed over 
 freedom in Tennessee. 
 
 But to return to my line of argument, having 
 wandered too far in this interesting digression. 
 
 Ample as this is, we do not depend on the action 
 of the Congress of the Confederation, and of the 
 Convention for framing the Constitution of the 
 United States, and the provisions of the several 
 State constitutions for all the proof the men of 
 that period left that they recognized the right of 
 man, by reason of his manhood, to the enjoyment 
 of all the rights of citizenship. A long and uni- 
 form course of legislation relating to and regulat- 
 ing territory stretching from the lakes southward 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, confirms the ftict. Con- 
 gress, under the Articles of Confederation, twice 
 provid-ed (or the government of Territories, and 
 under our present Constitution' the Congress of 
 the United States much more frequently. The 
 distinguished men who occtipied seats in those 
 
12 
 
 bodies prior to 1812 had not been enlightened by 
 the sibylline nriysierius giver, to the world in the 
 celebrated letter of General Cass to Mr. Nicholson, 
 nor by the doctrine of " popular sovereignty" so 
 persistently reiterated by Douglas as his "great 
 doctrine;" nor by Calhoun's theory, which was 
 finally accepted as the cardinal, if not the sole 
 doctrine of Democratic faith, that tiie flag of the 
 United States, wherever it may be borne, on land 
 or sea, carries with it and protects iiuman slavery, 
 as announced by Toombs in his Boston address 
 of January 24, 1856. They knew that it was the 
 duty of Congress, alike under the Articles of Con- 
 federation and tlie Constitution of the United 
 States, to legislate for the Territories and provide 
 governments for their regulation. Tiie resolutions 
 of the Congress of the Confederation for the tem- 
 porary government of territory ceded by the in- 
 dividual States to the United States, adopted April 
 23, 1784, provided for the establishment of terri- 
 torial governments by the " free males of full age;" 
 and the famous Ordinance of July 13, 1787, for the 
 government of the territory northwest of the river 
 Ohio, which repeals the resolutions of 1784, and 
 the salient point of which was known first as the 
 " Jeflerson proviso, "and later, in connection with 
 the Oregon struggle, as the " VVilinot proviso," 
 vested the right of suffrage in the " free male in- 
 habitants of full age," with a certain freehold 
 qualification. This Ordinance was reenacted im- 
 mediately after the adoption of our present Con- 
 stitution, by the act of Congress ofAugust7, 1789; 
 and in this respect was the precedent for every 
 subsequent territorial act passed until 1812. The 
 several acts passed from the foundation of tlie 
 Government to that date, were as follows: 
 
 Under the Congress of the Confederation, those 
 to which I have referred, namely, that of April 
 23, 1784, " for the temporary government of ter- 
 ritory ceded or to be ceded by the individual States 
 to the United States;" and that of July 13, ]787, 
 " for the government of the territory of the United 
 States northwest of the river Ohio." 
 
 And by the Congress of the United States since 
 the adoption of the Constitution: 
 
 The act of August 7, 1789, already referred to 
 as reenacting the Ordinance of 1787; 
 
 The act of May 26, 1790, for the government 
 of the territory of the United States south of the 
 river Ohio, under which, as we have seen, the 
 State of Tennessee was organized; 
 
 The act of April 7, 1798, for the establishment 
 of a government in the Mississippi territory; 
 
 The act of May 7, 1800, establishing Indiana 
 Territory; 
 
 The act of March 26, 1804, for the government 
 of Louisiana, which provided for a legislative 
 council, to be appoitited by the President of the 
 United States, and not for an elective Legislature, 
 as did all the rest; 
 
 The act of January 11, 1805, for the govern- 
 ment of Michigan Territory; 
 
 The act of March 2, 1805, for the establish- 
 ment of the Territory of Orleans; and 
 
 The act of February 3, 1809, for the govern- 
 ment of Illinois Territory. 
 
 And in no one of tiiese ten acts was any re- 
 Blriction placed on the right of suflVage by rea- 
 
 son of the color of the citizen. In none of them 
 was the word "white" used to limit the right to 
 suffrage. 
 
 The next territorial act was that of June 4, 
 1812, providing for the government of Missouri 
 Territory. More than twenty-two years had then 
 passed since the adoption of the Constitution; 
 and the men who had achieved our independence 
 and fashioned our institutions in harmony with 
 the fundamental truths they had declared, and 
 who during this long period, mors than the aver- 
 age active life of a generation, had resisted the 
 aristocratic and strife-engendering demands of 
 South Carolina, were rapidly passing, indeed 
 most of them had passed, from participation in 
 public affairs. Meanwhile, slavery liad been 
 strengthened by the unhappy compromise of the 
 Constitution conceded to South Carolina and 
 Georgia, by which "the migration or importa- 
 tion of such persons as any of the States now ex- 
 isting shall think proper to admit" was permitted 
 for the period of twenty years. Meanwhile, too, 
 the people of the country, enjoying unmeasured 
 and unanticipated prosperity, forgot that " eternal 
 vigilance is tlie price of liberty," and that " power 
 is ever stealing from the many to the few;" and 
 proud of their own achievements began to look 
 with contempt upon the ignorant laborers they 
 owned or employed, and their kindred newly im- 
 ported from the coast of Africa; and began that 
 longand rapid series ofconcessions to the fell spirit 
 of slavery which made the present war inevitable, 
 if free laborand the doctrine of afair day's wages 
 for a fair day 's work were to be maintained in any 
 part of the country. In the adoption of the ter- 
 ritorial bill of 1812, South Carolina and slavery 
 triumphed over freedom and the more powerful 
 North, and the word "while," rejected in 177S 
 and thenceforth, was now inserted in the clause 
 regulating suffrage in the fundamental law of a 
 Territory. 
 
 Successful resistance to that innovation on well- 
 established precedent would have secured free- 
 dom to Missouri, and in all probability averted 
 the border wars of Kansas and the grander con- 
 troversy in which we are engaged, and of wliicli 
 the Kansas feuds were but the sure precursor. 
 
 Can any candid man, in the face of this mass 
 of concurrent evidence, assert that the fathers of 
 our Government found in the fact of color cause 
 fi>r the denial of citizenship and the exercise of 
 suffrage to any freeman.'' But more and if pos- 
 sible more pregnant proof on the point exists: not 
 only ckd they assert the right of negroes to suf- 
 frage by rejecting the proposition of South Caro- 
 lina in the Congress for fratning Aiticles of Con- . 
 federation, and protect it by the Constitution of \ 
 the United States, and confirm it by twelve terri- 
 torial laws; but, as 1 shall proceed to show, they, 
 by express treaty stipulaiion, first with Franco 
 and again with Spam, guarantied them " the 
 enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and im- 
 munities of citizens of the United States," and 
 the " free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and 
 the religion which they professed." To show 
 how unqualifiedly this was done under the admin- 
 istration of Mr. Jefferson, i beg leave to read a 
 brief extract from that most interesting and in- 
 
/// 
 
 13 
 
 structive pam[ililpt, "The Emancipated Slave 
 Face to Face witli his Old iVJaster," by J. Mc- 
 Kaye, special coinmissioiiei- from the War De- 
 parimeiit to the valley of the lower Mississippi, 
 and also a member of the Freedmen's Inquiry 
 Commission: 
 
 " Tlie valley oftlie lower Mississippi, from an early period 
 of its settlement, coiiiaiiieil a pioportionatf ly lariii^ free 
 colored population. In 1803, wiieii llie territory of vvliicli 
 the Slate of Louisiana (onus a part, was ceiled by ilie 
 French republic to the United States, these free colored 
 men were already quite numerous, and many of tliem were 
 possessed of considerable property. They were not only as 
 tree as any other portion of the p<ipulation, but in general 
 as wi^ll educated and intelligent. Many ofthem were the 
 children oftlie early white settlers, and had always enjoyed 
 a certain social as well as civil equality. As to the enjoy- 
 ment of political rights under the old Spanish and French 
 regimes, neither wliite nor black settlers ever liad much 
 experience; consequently there had never arisen among 
 them much question of these rights, or as to whom they be- 
 longed. The French republic, tounded on 'liberty, equal- 
 ity, fraternity,' liiid not yet quite tbrgotten the import of 
 these words, and lience caused to be inserted in the treaty 
 of cession a solemn stipulation in the words following, to 
 wit : 
 
 '"Art. 3. The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall 
 be incorporated into the Union of the United States, and 
 admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of 
 the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, 
 idvaiit:iges, and immunities ufcitizens ofthe United States ; 
 and iu the mean time they shall be maintained and protected 
 in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the re- 
 ligion vvliieli they profess.' " 
 
 The Floridas, though less populous than the 
 Louisiana territory, had quite as large a propor- 
 tionate |iart of negroes and mulattoes among their 
 population. By the treaty of February 22, 1819, 
 with Spain, she ceded to the United States "all 
 the territories which belong to her, situated to the 
 eastward ofthe Mississip|ii, known by the name 
 ofEasland West Floridas." The sixth article of 
 the treaty is as follows: 
 
 "Tlie inhabitants of the territories which his Catholic 
 Majesty cedes to the United Stales by treaty shall be incor- 
 piiraied in the Union of the United States as soon as may 
 be consistent with the principles of the Federal Constitu- 
 tion, and admitted to tlie enjoyment of all the privileges, 
 rights, and immunitiesof ihecitizens ofthe United States." 
 
 JMy proposition is that the Government ofthe 
 United States was instituted to secure the rights 
 of all the citizens ofthe country, and not for the 
 benefit of men of one race only, and I know not 
 where to look for evidence that would strengthen 
 the conclusiveness of the mass of proof 1 have 
 thus adduced, embracing as it does the action of 
 the framers of all the Slate constitutions but one, 
 of the Congress for framing Articles of Confed- 
 eration, ofthe Convention for framing the Consti- 
 tution of the United Stales, the acts of Congress 
 in unbroken series throughout the active life of a 
 generation, and the solemn obligations assumed by 
 the executive department of the national Govern- 
 ment in the exercise ofthe treaty-making power, 
 (f other source of proof there be it can only serve 
 to nnake assurance doubly sure. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is safe to assert that in every 
 itaie,save South Carolina, and possibly Virginia 
 md Delaware — in which two States the question 
 ifsuftVage was regulated by statute and not by 
 •.onstitiiiional provision — negroes participated in 
 •onsiitutmg the Convention which framed the 
 'jonstiiution of the United States, and voted for 
 ■nembers of the State conventions to which the 
 
 question of its ratification was Rubmitled ; and as 
 that Constitution contains no clause which ex- 
 pressly or l)y implication deprives them of the 
 [irotecting power and influence ofthe instrutnent 
 they participated in creating, I may well say that 
 to secure internal peace liy the establishment of 
 political homogeneity, and perpetuate it by the 
 abolition of political classes and castes whose 
 conflictino; rights and interests will provoki; inces- 
 sant agitation, and eve rand an on, as the oppressed 
 may be inspired by the fundamental principles 
 of our Government, or goaded by wrongs excite 
 armed insurrection, we need adopt no new theory, 
 but accept the princi|)les of our fathers, and ad- 
 minister in good faith to all men the institutions 
 they founded on them. 
 
 As a step to this, my amendment proposes, 
 not that the entire mass of people of African de- 
 scent, whom our laws and customs have desrraded 
 and brutalized, shall be immediately clotliefl with 
 all the rights of citizenship. It propose.s only to 
 grant the right of suffrage, inestimable to all men, 
 to those who may be sofarfitted by education for 
 its judicious exercise as to be able to read the Con- 
 stitution and laws of the country, in addition to 
 the brave men, who, in the name of law and lib- 
 erty, and in the hope of leaving their children heirs 
 to both, have welcomed the baptism of battle in the 
 naval and military service ofthe United Slates, and 
 who are embraced by the amendment reported by 
 the committee. This, 1 admit, will be an entering 
 wedge, by the aid of which, in a brief time, the 
 whole mass improved, enriched, and enlightened 
 by the fast-coming and beneficent providences of 
 God, will be qualified for and permitted to enjoy 
 those rights by which they may [irotect themselves* 
 and aid in giving to all others tliat near approach 
 to exact justice which we hope to attain froiifi the 
 intelligent exercise of universal suffrage and the 
 submission of all trials of law in which a citizen 
 may be interested to the decision of his peers as 
 jurors. 
 
 i am, Mr. Speaker, under but one specific 
 pledge to my constituents other than that which 
 promised to vote away the last dollar from each 
 man's coffer and the last able-bodied son from liis 
 hearlhside, if they should be needed for the etTecl- 
 ual suppression of the rebellion, and that is, that 
 I will in their behalf consent to no proposed sys- 
 tem of reconstruction which shall place the loyal 
 men ofthe insurrectionary district under the un- 
 bridled control of the wicked and heartless trai- 
 tors who have involved us in this war, and illus- 
 trated their barbarity by the fiendish cruellies they 
 have practiced on theirloyal neighbors, negro sol- 
 diers and unhappy prisoners of war; and to that 
 pledge, God helping me, I mean to prove faithful. 
 Thefuture peace and prosperity of the country 
 demand this much at our hands. The logic of 
 our instituliohs, the principles of the irien who 
 achieved our independence and who framed those 
 institutions, alike impel us to this course, as ne- 
 cessary as it will be wise and just. 
 
 Let us meet the question fairly. Do our institu- 
 tions rest on complexionnl differences? Can we 
 cement and perpetuate them by surrendering the 
 patriots ofthe insurgent district, shorn of all po- 
 litical power, into the hands of the traitors whom 
 
14 
 
 we propose to propitiate by such a sacrifice of 
 faith atid honor? Did God ordain our country 
 for a single race of men? Is there reason wliy 
 the intelligent, \renltiiy, loyal man of color shall 
 stand apart, abased, on election day, while his 
 ignorant, intemperate, vicious, and disloyal white 
 neighbor participate} in making laws for his 
 government? What is the logic that denies to a 
 J!Oii the right to vote with or against his father, 
 because it has pleased Heaven that he should par- 
 lake more largely of liis mother's than of that 
 father's complexion? And is it not known to all 
 of us that well-nigh forty per cent, of the colored 
 people of the South are children of white fathers, 
 who, after we subjugate them, will with profes- 
 sions of loyalty only lip deep, enjoy the right of 
 sullVage in the reconstructed States? Shall he, 
 though black as ebony be his skin, u^ho, by pa- 
 tient industry, obedience to the laws, and unvary- 
 ing good habits, has accumulated property on 
 which he cheerfully pays taxes, be denied the 
 right of a voice in the government of a State to 
 whose support and welfare he thus contributes, 
 while the idle, reckless, thriftless man of fairer 
 complexion shall vote away his earnings and 
 trifle with his life or interests as a juror? Shall 
 the brave man who has periled life, and mayhap 
 lost limb, who has endured the dangers of the 
 march, the camp, and the bivouac in defense of 
 our Constitution and laws, be denied their pro- 
 tection, while the traitors in the conquest of whom 
 lie assisted enjoy those rights, and use them as 
 instruments for his oppression and degradation? 
 Shall he who, in the language of my amendment, 
 may be able to read the Constitution of the Uni- 
 ted States, and who finds his pleasure in the study 
 of history and political philosophy, whose in- 
 tegrity is undoubted, whose means are ample, be 
 voiceless in the councils of the nation, and read 
 only to learn that the people of free and enlight- 
 ened America, among whom his lot has been 
 cast, sustain the only Government which punishes 
 a race because God in His providence gave it a 
 complexion which its unhappy members would 
 not have accepted had it been submitted to their 
 choice or volition ? And can he who will answer 
 these questions affirmatively believe that Govern- 
 ments are instituted among men to secure their 
 rights, that they derive their powers from the 
 consent of the governed, and that it is the duty 
 of a people, when any Government becomes de- 
 structive of their rights, to alter or abolish it, and 
 establish a nev/ Goveriuiient ? Sir, our hope for 
 peac(^, wiiile we attempt to govern two fifths of the 
 people of one half of our country in violation of 
 these fundamental principles, will be idle as the 
 breeze of summer or the dreams of the opium 
 eater. 
 
 In this connection let me call the attention of the 
 House to a fact to which I have already invited 
 that of many members and other distinguished 
 gentlemen. By the census of 1{?G0 it ajjpears 
 that South Carolina had but 291,300 white inhab- 
 itants, and 412,408 colored. Among the former 
 wc have no reason to know or believe that, since 
 the death of Pettigrew, there is a single loyal 
 man; while the latter, wc have no reason to doubt, 
 are all as loyal as Robert Small, the patriot pilot 
 
 of Charleston harbor. Are we to declare that one 
 white citizen of South Carolina is entitled to more 
 weight in the councils of the nation than two citi- 
 zens of a northern State; and are the 291,300 to be 
 vested with the absolute government of 703,708? 
 Is the entire loyalty of that State to be confided to 
 the tender mercies of the chagrined and humili- 
 ated, but unconverted and devilish traitors of the 
 State thatengendered and inaugurated this bloody 
 rebellion ? And shall they who have fought for our 
 flag, sheltered our soldiers when flying from loath- 
 some prisons, guided them through hidden paths 
 by niglit, saving them from starvation by sharing 
 with them their poor and scanty food, and whose 
 unceasing prayer to God has been for our triumph, 
 be handed over to the lash, the iron collar, and 
 tlie teeth of the blood-hound, to gratify our pride 
 of race and propitiate our malignant foes? 
 
 .\gain, the census shows that Mississippi, in 
 ISbO had but 350,901 white inhabitants, and 
 437,404 colored. Disloyalty was almost as prev- 
 alent among the white men of iVIississippi as 
 among those of South Carolina. But who has 
 heard from traveler, correspondent, returning sol- 
 dier, or other person, that he has found a colored 
 traitor within the limits of that State ? And shall 
 we, ignoring our theory that " Governments de- 
 rive their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed," say to the majority in these States, 
 " Stand back ! time and labor cannot qualify you 
 to take care of yourselves? We spurn you for 
 the service you have rendered our cause, and hand 
 you over to the degradation, the unrequited toil, 
 the slow but sure and cruel extermination which 
 your oppressors in their pride and madness will 
 provide for you?" 
 
 And mark you, Mr. Speaker, again, how nearly 
 the races are balanced in Louisiana, Georgia, and 
 Alabama. In Louisiana there are 357, 45fi whites 
 and 350,546 colored people. Of whites in Georgia 
 there are 591,550, and of colored people there are 
 465,736. In Alabama the whites number 526,271, 
 while there are of colored 437,930. And in Flor- 
 ida there is the same near approach to equality of 
 numbers, the white population being 77,747 and 
 the colored 62,677. Are these people by our de- 
 cree to remain dumb and voiceless in freedom? 
 They are no longer slaves. War and the high 
 prerogative of the President, called into exercise 
 by the war, have made them free. Will you in- 
 flict upon them all the miseries predicted for the 
 free colored people of Tennessee in the extract 
 which I have read to you? No, rather let us 
 bind them to our Government by enabling them 
 to protect their interests, share its power, and ap- 
 preciate its beneficence. This we can do, and 
 the alternative is to so degrade them that they will 
 prove an annoyance and an object of distrust to 
 their white neighbors, an element of weakness 
 to the Government, and a constant invitation to 
 diplomatic intrigue and war by the ambitious 
 man who dreams of a Latin empire in America, 
 and who, following the example of the States of 
 Central and South America, will accept the de- 
 scendant of Africa as a Basque anA a citizen of 
 his proposed empire. 
 
 And here it may not be amiss to pause for a 
 moment and contemplate some ulterior conse- 
 
15 
 
 // 
 
 quences of our action on this subject. Trained 
 in the school of Democracy, I am a believer in 
 the " manifest destiny " of my country. Having 
 regarded the acquisition by Mr. Jefferson of tlie 
 Louisiana territory as wise and beneficent, though 
 unwarranted by the Constitution, beholduig great 
 advantages in the acquisition of Florida, and hav- 
 ing believed that, without war, could we have 
 patiently waited, Texas would have come to us 
 naturally as a State or States of the Union, I am 
 used to dreaming of the just influence the United 
 States are to exercise, from end to end of the 
 American continent. Among the most ephemeral 
 products of our era will be the Franco-Austrian 
 empire in Mexico, if we be but true to our own 
 principles in this season of doubt and perplexity. 
 Our infidelity to principles alone can give it per- 
 petuity. Within its limits the question of color 
 IS not a political or asocial question; it is purely 
 on« of taste. There, as in Central and South 
 America, the colored man is a freeman. And 
 we are to determine whether the sympathies of 
 these millions of people within our own borders 
 are to be with the Government whose supremacy 
 they have aided in reestablishing or with the wily 
 and ambitious man who will pledge them citizen- 
 ship on condition that they aid him in carrying the 
 limits of his Latin empire to the northern bound- 
 ary of the Gulf States of America. To them the 
 United States or Mexico will be the exemplar na- 
 tion of the world. Before her ruder lawsall men 
 are equal. Let ours be not less broad and just. 
 
 The tropical and malarious regions of Central 
 America have, during the prevalence of slavery, 
 seemed to be the natural geographical boundary 
 of our influence in that direction. Tropical re- 
 gions are not the home of the white man. They 
 were not made for him. God did not adapt him 
 to them. They are prolific in wealth, invite to 
 commercial intercourse, yield many things neces- 
 sary to the success of our arts and industry, and 
 will one day aff'ord a market for immense masses 
 of our productions. But we cannot occupy them; 
 we cannot develop their resources. Nor can the 
 negro, in the ignorance and degradation to which 
 we have hitherto doomed him. We have at length 
 made him a soldier, and if need be he will carry 
 our arms and our flag triumphantly over that 
 to us pestilential region; and, if we make him a 
 citizen; open to his cliildren the school-house; 
 give him tlie privilege of the workshop, the studio, 
 the hall of science; admit him to the delights and 
 inspirations of literature, philosophy, poetry — in 
 brief, if we recognize him as a man and open to 
 him the broad fields of American enterprise and 
 culture, he will see that nature has given him the 
 monopoly of the wealth of that region, and will 
 bless the world by making himself the master of it. 
 By this means, and this alone, can we extend our 
 influence over that region, and prepare for the 
 ultimate Americanization of those drained by 
 the Orinoko, the Amazon, and the Parana. As 
 a citizen, nature will prompt the colored man 
 to achieve these grand results. But if we leave 
 the race a disfranchised and disaffected class in 
 our midst, numbering millions, and embracing 
 hundreds of thousands of men who in pursuit of 
 freedom have bared their breasts to the storm of 
 
 battle, and who are no longer debarred by stat- 
 ute from access to the sources of thought and 
 knowledge, they will, let me reiterate the fact, be 
 a ready and powerful ally to any power thatmay 
 be disposed to disturb our peace and that will 
 promise them the enjoyment of the rights of men 
 as accorded to every citizen by its Government. 
 
 But it may be said, "history vindicates your 
 theory; our fathers did mean that the black man 
 should be a citizen and a voter; to deny him his 
 rights is illogical as you have suggested; it would 
 be better to secure his loyalty to tlie Government 
 by its even-handed justice, but such an act would 
 exasperate the southern people, and we do not 
 think it wise to do that; his raci' is inferior; and, 
 in short, we will not do it." Who says his race 
 is inferior.' Upon what theater have you per- 
 mitted him to exhibitor develop his power.' Give 
 him an opportunity to exhibit his capacity, and 
 let those who follow you and have before them 
 the results he produces in freedom judge as to his 
 relative position in the scale of human powerand 
 worth. To whom and to what do you say the 
 American negro and mulatto are inferior.' Was 
 our Government fashioned for the Caucasian 
 alone? Will you, as Theodore Tilton well asked, 
 exchange the negro for the Esquimaux, for the 
 Pacific islander, for the South American tribes? 
 Will you exchange our negroes for so many Mon- 
 golians, Ethiopians, American Indians, or Ma- 
 lays? I apprehend that the universal answer to 
 these questions will be in the negative; because, 
 oppress them as we may, we rate the American 
 negroes as next to our own proud race in the 
 scale of humanity. And shall we erect around 
 our civilization, our privileges, and immunities, 
 a more than Chinese wall ? Shall America, proud 
 of her democracy, become the most exclusive of 
 all nations of the world? Or shall she carry her 
 faith into her life and become the home of man- 
 kind, the empire of freedom, and, by her example, 
 the reformer of the world ? 
 
 Let us frankly accept Jefferson's test as to the 
 right of suffrage, and give it practical effect. In 
 a letter dated July 12, 1816, in discussing a pro- 
 posed amendment to the constitution of Virginia, 
 Mr. Jefferson said: 
 
 " The true foundation of republican government is the 
 equal riglit of every citizen in iiis person and property, and 
 ill tlieir nianagenient. Try by this as a tally every provis- 
 ion of our constitution and see if it hangs directly on the 
 will of the people. Reduce your Legislauire to u conven- 
 ient number for full but orderly discussion. Let every man 
 wlio fis.ht'i or pays exercise his just and equal right in their 
 election.'^ — Jefferson's IVorks, vol. 7, page 11. 
 
 And again, in a letter written April 19, 1824, 
 he said: 
 
 " However nature may, by mental or physical disquali- 
 fications, have marked inlants and the weaker sex for the 
 protection rather than the dircetion of Governineiit, yet 
 amoii^ men who either pay or fl^ht for their country no Hue 
 of right can he rfjatyn." — PForks, vol. 7, page '345. 
 
 And again, as if to show how well considered 
 his opinion was, in the Notes on Virginia, speak- 
 ing of the then constitution of that State, he said : 
 
 " This constitution was formed when we were new and 
 inexperienced in the science ol governinent. It was the 
 (irst, too, that was formed in the whole United States. No 
 wonder, then, that time and trialliavediscovertd very cap- 
 ital defects in it : 
 
 " 1. The majority of the men in the State who pay and 
 
16 
 
 liiht /britssu/ijiort are unrepresented in the Legislature, the 
 ii)"ll 1)1 iVeeliDlders eiuilled to vote, not including generally 
 Jlie hall' ot' llie militia or oi' the tax-gatherers."— fKoWiS, 
 vol. 8, page 359. 
 
 By adopting tliis sound test, which, be it re- 
 iiieMibered, was the only one recognized by tlie 
 falliers, and adhering to it, oui- practice will liar- 
 inonize with our iheorie.s, and the repugnance be- 
 tween the laces will gradually disappear. Wealth 
 and power conceal many deformities, and will 
 make tlie black man less odiou.s to all than he now 
 seems. Tiius will consistent adherence to prin- 
 ciple give strength and peace to our country. 
 
 But if, on the otlier hand, we ignore the riglits 
 of these four million people and their posterity, 
 the demon of agitation will haunt us in tiie fu- 
 ture fearfully as it has inthe])ast. Tlie appeals of 
 these tnillions for justice will not go forlhin vain; 
 and the liberal, the conscientious, the i^hilanthrop- 
 ic, the religious, now that our Christian church 
 recognizes her long off-cast child philanthropy, 
 will be found in hostile array against what the com- 
 mercial and planting interests will regard as the 
 conservatism of the day; and though we find tiiat 
 we have buried the slavery quesiion, our peace 
 will be disturbed by the negro question constantly, 
 and fearfully as it has been by the struggle be- 
 tween slavery and free labor. To which party 
 ultimate victory would be vouchsafed in such a 
 controversy I need not ask, as tlie nation acknowl- 
 edges that God siill lives and is omnipotent. 
 
 Again, such action is necessary to prevent the 
 reestablishmentof our old tormentor, slavery. It 
 ia lioped that the proposed amendment to the 
 Constitution, forever prohibiting slavery, may be 
 adopted. But it has not yet passed this House; and 
 if it had, who can guaranty its adoption by tliree 
 fourths of the State Legislatures.' 1 iiope and 
 believe that that amendment will be adopted; but 
 it is within the range of possibility that it may be 
 defeated. And how, in that event, save by the 
 suffiage of the colored man, by !iis right to pro- 
 tect himself, liis poweratthe ballot-box, shall we 
 prevent his subjugation, or the bloody war that 
 such an attempt might provoke — the reeimctment 
 on the broader theater of our southern States of 
 the terrible tragedies that ensued upon iheattempt 
 lo again reduce to bondage the freed slaves of St. 
 Domingo.' 
 
 Let it be borne in mind that States within tlie 
 Union determine through their organism who 
 shall be citizens and under wliat condition the 
 people may enjoy their rights, and tliat, if the 
 proposed amendment to the Constitution fail by 
 ■want of the approval of a sufficient nuniberof the 
 State Legislatures, and South Carolina, when 
 readmitted should determine to reenslave herfreed 
 men, and iliey should resist by force, although 
 ihey constitute so largely the majority of her peo- 
 ple, it would be the duty of the Government to 
 bring the naval and military power of the United 
 States into action in support of the authority of 
 the State, us it did to suppress the Dorr rebellion 
 ill Rhode island and reiiel the invasion of Virginia 
 tjy John Brown and liistwenty-two undisciplined 
 Volunteers. 
 
 But genilemen may say that we need not fear 
 sucli an effort as this; that the humanity of the 
 
 age will prevent it. The humanity of the age has 
 not prevented similar outrages. Neitlier tlie 
 humanity of the age, nor the prudence of the 
 people ot the South, nor their sense of justice, nor 
 their love of country prevented a bloody war for 
 the purpose of overthrowing democratic institu- 
 tions and Ibuiiding an empire, the corner-stone of 
 which sliould be liuman slavery. Let us not, 
 therefore, while it is in our power to embody 
 justice in laws and constitutions, be content to 
 rely upon man 's abstract sense of justice or his 
 love for his fellow-man. Every gentleman knows 
 that it has been the usage of every slave State to 
 reduce free men, women, and children to bond- 
 age. Did not New Jersey, so late as I'tQl — as 
 appears from the State vs. Waggoner, 1 Hal- 
 stead's Reports — hold that American Indians 
 might be reduced to and held in slavery.'' Has 
 it not been lawful in Virginia, as appears by 
 her Revised Code and the Constitution of 1851, 
 to apprehend and sell, by the overseers of the 
 poor, " for the benefit of the Literary Fund," 
 any emancipated slave that might remain within 
 the State more than twelve months after his or 
 her right to freedom had accrued .' Has not South 
 Carolina sold free colored citizens of Massachu- 
 setts into bondage, because she had torn them 
 from the vessels on which they had entered her 
 |)orls, imprisoned thein and brought them, though 
 accused of no criminal olfense, under charges lor 
 jail fees which she had deprived them of the means 
 of paying? And has not North Carolina, under 
 her act of 1741, been in the habit of dooming to 
 slavery the unoffending offspring of any white 
 wortian-servant and a negro, muiaiio or Indian. 
 How horrible must have been the crime of the in- 
 fant born of u white mother and an Ind'ian fatlier 
 that itshould thus, Ijy special statutory provision, 
 be punished by life-long, unrequited servitude, 
 and be made the progenitor of a race of slaves. 
 How dark indeed must have been the African 
 blood of the child whose mother was a white 
 woman and whose father an American Indian ! 
 
 1 know not that the books, full as they are of such 
 instances, furnish any more absolute illustration 
 of the power of a State over its people than this. 
 And yet other and grander illustrations of that 
 power on this and cognate questions rush upon 
 my memory. But a few years since, it was 
 gravely proposed by the Legislature of JVlaryland 
 to expel from the limits of that State some eighty 
 thousand people, because they were of African de- 
 scent. The act passed both branches of the Legis- 
 lature and was referred to the people for popular 
 sanction. And the main argument by whicii the 
 proposition was defeated at the polls was the 
 selfish one that the land of the white citizen vi'oulJ 
 remain untitled if these laborers were driven from 
 their homes. Had it been determined otherwise, 
 the people or the Government of the United States 
 could not have prevented the execution of the in- 
 famous decree, but could have been called to en- 
 force it. A similar proposition, at a later date, 
 found favor in Tennessee; but the lingering spirit 
 of her earlier settlers rejected it upon the simple 
 and higher ground of humanity. Yet had such 
 a law been enacted, and liad the free people of 
 color resisted it with force, did not we and every 
 
17 
 
 / /O 
 
 man in the North stand pledged to sustain the 
 Government in the use of the naval and military 
 power ill carrying it into execution? Dorr's re- 
 bellion, and the manner in which the United Slates 
 Government suppressed it, have u place in the 
 history of our country, and ilkistratc the working 
 of our system of Government. 
 
 But why speak of unsuccessful propositions, 
 about which perverse ingenuity may raise ques- 
 tions? Surely we have not forgotten the act by 
 which the State of Arkansas summarily decreed 
 the banishment of free negroes and mulatloes who 
 had their homes in that State, and the enslave- 
 ment of all such as might not be able to malce their 
 escape within the brief time allowed for the pur- 
 pose. They numbered many liiouisands. Some 
 of them had been given freedom by their fathers, 
 whose lingering humanity would not permit them 
 to sell the children of their loins. Others had 
 earned their freedom by honest toil, by acts of 
 patriotism, or by deeds of generous philanthropy, 
 the requital of which had been the bestowal of the 
 poor measure of liberty that the free negro might 
 enjoy within the limits of that State. The act to 
 which I refer is No. 151 of the acts of the General 
 Assembly of the State of Arkansas for the session 
 of 1858-59, and may be found on page 175 of the 
 ))amphlet laws of that session. It was approved 
 February 12, 1859, and contains twelve sections. 
 Time will not permit me to cite the whole of this 
 iniquitous statute; but two sections I must give 
 entire. Section first is as follows: 
 
 " Be. it enacted bu the General ^Issemlly of the Slate of 
 ^irkansas, That no free negro or niulatto siiall t)(; |ierinitted 
 to reside wuliiii the limits of tliis State after the 1st dayof 
 January, A. I). 1860." 
 
 And the tenth section reads thus: 
 " Be it farther enacted, That it shall not be lawful for 
 any person hereafter to emancipate any slave in this State." 
 
 Could language or rhetoric give force and am- 
 plitude to these provisions? The intermediate 
 sections provide for the arrest and sale ofany free 
 negro or mulatto over the age of twenty-one years 
 who might be found within the limits of the State 
 after the date indicated in the first section, and 
 the disposition to be made of the funds arising 
 from their sale. As a bribe to the people of the 
 several counties of the State to see the law faith- 
 fully executed, the surplus of each sale, after de- 
 ducting the costs, was to be paid into the county 
 treasury. They provided also for the hiring of 
 those free colored persons who were not twenty- 
 one years of age, and for the sale of such of these 
 hirelings as might be found within the limits of 
 the State thirty days after the expiration of their 
 term of service. When it is remembered that, 
 by a reversal of the immemorial and universal pre- 
 sumption that man is free, it had been provided 
 in this and all other slave States that the pre- 
 sumption that he was a slave arose froin the fact 
 that any measure of African blood flowed in a 
 man's veins, and that it was the duty, not only 
 of police and other officers, but of every citizen 
 who found a person of African descent at large to 
 arrest him and demand the evidence of his free- 
 dom, and, in default of the production thereof, to 
 cast him into jail, and that for the jail fees thus 
 accruing he might be sold, it will be seen how 
 
 impossible it was for these poor and illiterate peo- 
 ple to make their exit from that State and through 
 those coterminous to it whose laws contained the 
 same barl)arous provisions. 
 
 The humanity of the act is embodied in llie 
 eleventh section, which provides for the support 
 of "children under the age of seven years who 
 have no mothers, and who cannot be put out for 
 their food and clothing," and for " the aged and 
 infirm negroes and mulattoes who may be as- 
 certained to be incapable of leaving the State, or 
 cannot be sold aCier being apprehended." Less 
 merciful than Hei-od, the citizens of Arkansas 
 did not slay all these innocent children, but with 
 wise regard to the future welfare of the treasury 
 of each county, having deprived them of the sup- 
 port their natural guardians and fond parents 
 could and would have )irovided them, and having 
 torn from the aged and infirm who were incapa- 
 ble of leaving the Stale, and " could not be sold," 
 the stout sons or gentle daughters whose years 
 would have been gladdened by toiling to sustain 
 those weary and aged ones in their declining 
 years, they made it the duty of the county courts 
 to make piovision out of the proceeds of the sale 
 of the able-bodied for the support of those who 
 they thus robbed of their natural support and 
 protection, leaving the aged and infirm to travel 
 rapidly toward paupers' graves, and the children 
 to be sold into slavery as cupidity might bring 
 purchasers to the almshouse. Let men no longer 
 speak of the laws of Draco, but say that an 
 American State has, in the infernal inhumanity 
 of her legislation, exceeded in cruelty the des[)Ots 
 of all nations and all ages. Had the colored peo- 
 ple of Arkansas had the right of suffrage their 
 parly influence would have saved us the shame 
 we feel as we conteniplate this page of American 
 history. 
 
 The possible repetition of such acts as these by 
 the aristocracy of the old States, when they shall 
 again be fairly in the Urnon, is notmatter of specu- 
 lation. The purpose is already avowed. I have 
 myself heard it said by men, now professedly 
 loyal, that the condition of the negro will be made 
 more horrible as freemen than it has ever been 
 in slavery; and they have said to me, " You know 
 that where the laborers are ignorant and power- 
 less, as these will be, the will of the employer is 
 their supreme law." 
 
 Among the witnesses examined by the freed- 
 mcn's inquiry commission was Colonel George 
 H. Hanks.^ of the fifteenth regiment Corps 
 d'Afrique, member of the Board of Enrollment, 
 and stiperintendent of negro labor in the depart- 
 ment of the Gulf. Colonel Hanks went to Louisi- 
 ana as a lieutenant in the twelfth Connecticut 
 volunteers, under General Butler, and was ap- 
 pointed superintendent of the contrabands under 
 General Sherman. His testimony illustrates the 
 fitness of the colored people for freedom, and' 
 proves the determination of their old masters that 
 they shall never, by their consent, enjoy it. Thus 
 he says: 
 
 "The negroes came in scarred, wounded, and some with 
 iron collars round tlieirneclts. 1 set them at work on aban- 
 doned plantations, and on the fortifications. Al one time 
 we had six thousand live hundred of them; there was not 
 the sliglitest ditficulty with them. They are more willing 
 
18 
 
 to work, aii;l iiiori' p:itinnt tli;ui any set of liniiiaii heiiigs I 
 ever Siivv. It ii Cruu tlii;rc is :i guiifral dbiliku to reinrji to 
 their old iiia^iters ; and lliO:Se who liavo rciiiaintd at hoiiii; 
 are suspicions of Ibiil play, and iVel it to br. necps-aiy to 
 run away to test ilioir Ircedoui. Tills year tlie dislike iias 
 verv Miucli lessened ; lliey begin to leel tlieuiselves uinrc 
 secure, ;ukI do not liesitate to return for wages, 'i'lie ne- 
 groes willingly accept the coniH'ion of labor for their oien 
 maiutennncc, 'and llie musUct for their freedom. 1 kn(!vv a 
 tauiily ot' live wlio were freed l)y tlie voMnitary enlisttnent 
 of one of the liuys. lie enlt'red the ranks (or the avowed 
 purpose of freeiny his I'aniily. His name was Moore ; he 
 was owned liy tlie ,'\Ii;ssrs. l^eeds, iron founders; tliey rc- 
 sidc^d within one of llie parishes excepted in the i)roela- 
 ination oi" eMianeipution. He was tiie lirst man to Call at 
 Pascagoula. Upon starling he said to l)is family 'I know 
 I shalffall, hut you will be free.' 
 
 " A negro soldier demanded his children at my hands. I 
 wanted to testhis afi'eelion. I said ' they had agood home.' 
 He said, ' Lieutenant, I wanttoscnd my ehildren to seliool ; 
 my wile is not allowed to see tliem ; I aui in your service ; 
 I wear military clolhes ; I have bfen in three baitles; I 
 was in the assault at Port Hudson ; I want my children ; 
 Uiey are my flesh and blood.' "' 
 
 Again: 
 
 "The colored people maiiifest the greatest anxiety to 
 educate their ehildren, and they thoroughly appreciate the 
 benefits of education. J have known a family to go with 
 two meals a day in order to save liliy cents a week to jjay 
 an inditTerent teacher for their children." 
 
 After liiiving spent nearly two years in daily 
 intercourse wiili tlie planters in tlie deparlmetil 
 of the Gulf, Colonel Hanks, in his sworn lesti- 
 luoiiy, says: 
 
 " Although Ihcy begin to see that slavery is dead, yet the 
 spirit of slavery still lives among them. Many of them arc 
 even more rampant to enslave the negro than ever before. 
 They make great endcsivors to recover what they call their 
 own negroes^ One planter oti'ered me $'5,000 to return liis 
 negroes. 'J'hey have even hired men to steal them from 
 my own camp. (Th<! old si)iri[ still prompting to the old 
 crime, which long ago was declared felony by the law of 
 nations, if |)erpeiia|e(l ill Airica.)" * * * * 
 
 '• They yield lo tin' iihanf lieedom only undercompulsion. 
 They submit to the terms ilictated by the Governmcnl be- 
 cause obliged so to do. Mr. V. 13. iMarmillon, one of the 
 richest and most extensive sugar planters in the whole val- 
 ley of the Mississippi, took the oath of allegiance, but re- 
 fused to work his own plantation unless he could have /us 
 oivn negroes returned to him. He had fourteen hundred and 
 fil'ty acres of cane uiiiier cultivation ; his whole family of 
 plantation hands left him and came to New Orleans, report- 
 ing themselves 10 me. Among them eonid be found every 
 species of mechanic and artisan, t called them up and in- 
 formed them that tin.' Government had taken possession of 
 old master's crop, and that they were needed to take it 'iff, 
 and would be paid for tlieir labor. All consented to return ; 
 but next morning when the time came for their depart\irc, 
 not one would go. One of them said, '1 will go anyvv'iieie 
 else to work, but you may shoot me before I will relurii to 
 the old plantation.' I afterwards ascertained that iMarmil- 
 lon, whom they called ' Old Cotton Beard,' had boasted in 
 the presence of two colored girls, house servants, how ho 
 would serve them when he once more had them in his 
 power. Tliese girls had walked more than thirty miles iu 
 llie night to bring this information to their friends." 
 
 Colonel Hanks adds: 
 
 "It is undoubtedly true that this year a change for the 
 better seems to be taking place. In some parishes the 
 letting of plantalions to norihern men has a powerful ef- 
 fect. 'I'he disposition of the planters, however, toward 
 their old slaves, when they consent to hire them, is by no 
 nieans friendly. I told a planter recently that it was the 
 express order of General Banks that the negroes should be 
 educated. He replied that ' no one should teach his ne- 
 groes.'" 
 
 And he further declares it as his deliberate judg- 
 ment (hat — 
 
 "If civil govornmonl be established here and military 
 rule withdrawn, there is the greatest danger that the negro 
 would become subject to some form of serfdom." 
 
 Mr. Commissioner McKaye, in his invaluable 
 pamphlet, to which I have already referred, con- 
 firms the general correctness of the views of 
 Colonel Hanks, and says they were concurred 
 in by many other intelligent persons farniliar 
 with ihe subject, and that liis own personal ob- 
 servation fully confirms them. He says: 
 
 " In a stretch of three hundred miles up and down the 
 Mississipfii, but one Creole planier was found (there may, 
 of eoursi^, have been olhers with wlioin I did not come in 
 contact) wlip lieartily and unreservedly adopted the idea 
 of free labor, and honestly carried it out upon his planta- 
 tion. And although he declared that, in itself, it was suc- 
 cessful much beyond his expectation, yet, he said, 'my life 
 and tiiat of niy i'amily are rendered very unhappy by the 
 opposition and contumely of my neighbors.' 
 
 " The simple truth is, that the viriis of slavery, the lust 
 of ownership, iu the hearts of these old masters, is as vir- 
 ulent and active to-day as it ever was. Many of them ad- 
 mit that the old form of slavery is for the present broken up. 
 They do not hesitate even to express the opinion that the 
 experiment of secession is a failure; but they scoff at the 
 idea of freedom for the negro, and repeat the old argument 
 of his incapacity to take care of himself, or to entertain any 
 higher motive for exertion than that of the whip. They 
 await with impatience Ihe withdrawal of the military au- 
 thorities, and the reesiablishmcnt of the civil power of the 
 State, to be controlled and used as hitherto for the main- 
 tenance of what to them doubtless appears the paramount 
 object ofall civil authority, of the State itself, some form of 
 the slave system. 
 
 " With slight modification, the language us(;d recently by 
 Judge Humphrey in a speech delivered at a Union meeting 
 at Hiinisville, Alabamti, seems most aptly to express the 
 hopes and purposes of a larse proportion of the old masters 
 in the valley of the Mississippi who have consented to 
 qualify Iheir loyalty to the Union by taking the oath pre- 
 scribed by the President's proclamation of amnesty. After 
 advising that Alabama should at once return to the Union 
 by simply rescinding the ordinance of secession, and after ex- 
 pressing the opinion that the old institution of slavery was 
 goti(;, Judge Humphrey says, ' I believe, in case of a return 
 to the Union, we would receive jioliticolcoi'peratioii, sons 
 to secure theinanagement of that labor by those who were 
 slaves. There is really jio difference, in my opinion, ichether 
 we hold them as absolute slaces or obtain their labor by some 
 other method. Of course we prefer the old method. But 
 that question is not now before us.' " 
 
 To the same effect was the te.stimony of the late 
 Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth, whose 
 official tour through the valley of the Mi.ssissippi 
 gave him anriple means of arriving at an intelli- 
 gent judgment: 
 
 "There is one thing that must betaken into account, 
 and that is, that there will exist a very strong disposition 
 among the masters to control these people and keep tliein 
 as a subordinate and subjected class. Undoubtedly they 
 intend to do that. I think the tendency to est.dilish a sys- 
 tem of serfdom is the great danger lo be guarded against. 
 I talked with a planter in the £a Fourciie district, near 
 Tibadouville ; he said he was not in favor of secession ; 
 he avowed his hope and expectation that slavery would be 
 restored there in s(mie form. I said, • If we went away 
 and left these people now do you suppose you could reduce 
 them again to slavery ." He laughed to scorn the idea that 
 they could not. ' What' .«aid I, ' these men who have had 
 arms in tlieir hands." ' Yes,' he said; ' we should take 
 the arms away from them, of cotuse.'" 
 
 While we confront these facts, let me, Mr. 
 Speaker, ask of you and the House whether we 
 shall best consult our country 's welfare by giving 
 to the laboring people of the South the ballot by 
 which they may protect them.selves, and inspiring 
 them with the hopes and disciplining them by 
 the duties of citizenship, or by predetermining that 
 ours shall be a military Government, and that the 
 first-born son of every nortliern houseliold shall be 
 liable to pass his life in the Army, maintained to 
 
19 
 
 //^ 
 
 protect the aristocratic South against the maddened 
 and degraded laborers whom she oppresses. It is 
 we who are to decide tiiis question; we who are 
 to determine v/ho shall select delegates to the con- 
 ventions that are to frame the future constitutions 
 of the insurgent Slates; we who are to say whether 
 the coiistitutions which they will submit to us 
 when asking rcadmission are republican inform, 
 as required by the terms of the Constitution of the 
 United States; and if we fail iiere, to our timid- 
 ity, arrogance, prejudice, or pride of color will 
 be justly attributable the conversion of our peace- 
 ful country into a military Power, and our democ- 
 racy into an aristocracy. " We cannot escape 
 history." 
 
 This is not mere idle fancy. Let us for a mo- 
 ment suppose, not what is alone within the range 
 of possibility, but what is within the scope of 
 probability; nay, v/hat is almost certain lo hap- 
 pen — that the two hundred and ninety-one thou- 
 sand pardoned rebels of South Carolina should 
 demand from their Legislature an act reducing to 
 apprenticeship, serfdom, or other form of slavery, 
 the four hundred and twelve thousand colored peo- 
 ple of the State, or that they deny them all polit- 
 ical rights, tax them without their consent, legis- 
 late, not for their welfare, but for their degradation 
 and oppression. Composing this unrepresented 
 mass would be those who have passed through 
 GeneralSaxton's schools and learned to read, those 
 who by toil have earned the means to purchase 
 at sales for taxes, or under the confiscation laws, 
 a home and land; and others scarred and v.'ar- 
 worn in the military or naval service of the coun- 
 try, who would hurry to and fro, rallying their 
 friends to resist the outrage, and maintain their 
 right to life, liberty, and property. Here would 
 be the beginning of civil war; war in which we 
 who believe in the doctrine of man's rights, that 
 Governmentsare instituted to protect those rights, 
 that they rest on the consent of the governed, and 
 should be overthrown when they infringe those 
 rights, would bid tlie insurgents God-speed. Ah ! 
 this we might do as men, as individuals; but as 
 citizens of the United States what would be our 
 duty and how must our power be exercised? The 
 minority, though vested with political power, 
 fearing the superior force of the majority, would, 
 in the name of the State, appeal to us; and, re- 
 pugnant as the duty might be, we would owe it 
 to the sacred compromises of the Constitution to 
 yield our jiride, our conscience, our fidelity to 
 God and man, and become again the protectors 
 of slavery or the pliant instruments for reducing 
 the majority of the people of the State into sub- 
 jection to the arrogant aristocracy of South Caro- 
 lina. In God's name let us, while we can, avert 
 such a possibility. Let us conquer our preju- 
 dices. Let us prove that we are worthy of the 
 heritage bequeathed us by our revolutionary sires- 
 Let us show the world that, inheriting the spirit 
 of our forefathers, we regard liberty as a right so 
 universal and a blessing so grand that, wliile we 
 are ready to surrender our all rather than yield 
 it, we will guaranty it at whatever cost to the 
 poorest child that breathes the air of ourcountry. 
 
 But we owe a provision of this kind to another 
 class of citizens than that of which I have been 
 
 speaking. There are other loyal men than these 
 in the Sf>uth. Andrew Johnson, Horace May- 
 iiard, William H. Wisener, sr., John W. Bowen, 
 W. G. Brownlow, though not alone iu iheir loy- 
 alty, represent but a minority of the while peo- 
 ple of Tennessee; and Thomas J. Duiant, and 
 Benjamin F. Flanders, and Rufus Waples, and 
 Alfred Jervis have had thousands of adherents 
 and coworkers among the whites of Louisiana; 
 but they, too, arc but a minority of the while peo- 
 ple of that State. And as our armies go on con- 
 quering, we may learn that even on some hillside 
 ill South Carolina there have been men whose loy- 
 ally to the Union has never yielded. How shall 
 these protect themselves in the reconstructed 
 State.' What millennial influence will induce the 
 envenomed spirit of the majority of the poo|)le by 
 whom they will be surrounded to treat them with 
 loving-kindness or human justice .' Who willgo 
 with them to the polls in their respective districts? 
 Where will they find an unpreju(lic(;d judge and 
 an impartial jury to vindicate their innoci;nce when 
 falsely accused or maintain their right to charac- 
 ter and property.'' We must remember that it is 
 the power and not the spirit of the rebellion we 
 are conquering. Time alone shall conquer this. 
 The grave, long years hence, will close over those 
 who to the last day of their life would, were it in 
 their power, overthrow the Government or re- 
 venge their supposed v/rongs upon those who 
 aided in sustaining it. The truly loyal white men 
 of the insurrectionary districts need the sympathy 
 and political support of all the loyal people among 
 whom they dwell, and unless we give it to them 
 we place them as abjectly at the feet of those who 
 are now in arirjs against us as we do the negro 
 whom their oppressors so despise. I cannot con- 
 ceive how the American Congress could write a 
 page of history that would so disgrace it in the 
 eyes of all posterity as by con sen ling to close this 
 war by surrendering to the unbridled lust and 
 power of the conquered traitors of the South, 
 those who, through blood, terror, and anguish, 
 have been our friends, true to our |ninciples and 
 our welfare. To purchase peace by such heart- 
 less meanness and so gigantic a baiter of princi- 
 [j|e would be unparalleled in baseness in the his- 
 tory of mankind. 
 
 This is felt in the South. The black man al- 
 ready rejoices in the fact that, if wc are guilty of 
 so great a crime as this, he will not be alone in 
 his suffering; it will not be his prayers or his 
 curses only that will penetrate the ear of an 
 avenging God against tiiose who had thus been 
 false to all His teachings and every principle they 
 professed. I find in the New Orleans Tribune of 
 December 15, 1864, which paper, I may remark, 
 is the organ of the proscribed race in Louisiana, 
 and is owned and edited and printed daily in the 
 French and English language by persons of that 
 race, an admirable article in response to the ques- 
 tion, " Is there any justice for the black ?" which 
 was drawn forth by the acquittal of one Michael 
 Gleason, who had been tried for murder. 
 
 The crime wasesiablislied beyond all peradven- 
 ture. It was abundantly proven that tlie victim, 
 Mittie Stephens, a colored boy, had been quietly 
 sitting on the guards of the boat, watciiing the 
 
20 
 
 rod with which he was fishing, that other boys 
 sat near him, when the defendant came behind 
 him, leanrd over, and deliberately pushed iiim 
 into the water, and foidins; his arms on his breast 
 stood and saw the boy rise thrice to the surface 
 and then smif forever; that a colored woman ex- 
 claimed, " That is not rijjht," and the defendant 
 answered, "I would do the same to you;" and 
 thuswieither rescuing the child nor permitting 
 others to do it, coolly and deliberately committed 
 murder. Tiiere was no dispute as to any of the 
 facts of the case. The New Orleans Era, noti- 
 cing the case, says that it establishes the theory 
 that " a man may, whenever he has no other way 
 of amusing himself, throw a negro boy overboard 
 from a steamboat, prevent any of his friends from 
 rescuing tlie drowning struggler, stand quietly 
 looking on while he goes to the bottom to rise no 
 more, and be considered ' not guilty' of murder 
 or any other crime;" and adds, having evidently 
 hoped for better things under freedom than it hud 
 been used to in the days of slavery, "This is 
 almost as enlightened a verdict as we were accus- 
 tomed to in the palmy days of thuggery." 
 
 The colored editor of the Tribune avails him- 
 self of the case to point a moral, and well says: 
 
 "The trial hy jury is coiisiiiered as the sale-guard of in- 
 nocence. It lias been found that a man indicted for a 
 criminal oiRnse cannot be iinpariially tried and convicted, 
 ^lde^;s hy lii^ own pijws. But an ex parte inry is llie worst 
 of all judicial institutions. 
 
 '■The security nfiorded hy the composition of a jury has 
 to be of a twofold character. The jurymen have to repre- 
 sent the community at large in all its classes and varieties 
 of composition. The duty of a jury is as well to vindicate 
 innocence and punisli crime as to protect the man unduly 
 arraigned before the Court. Justice lias to strike the cul- 
 prit and avenge the blood of the innocent, as well as to de- 
 fend ihe accused party against undue prejudices. Why 
 have we no rcprescntativi.'s in the jury.' Arc our lives, 
 honor, and liberties to be l<:ft in the liands of men wlio are 
 laboring under the most stubborn and narrow prejudice? 
 Is there any protection or justice for us at their hands.' It 
 is in vain that, in the present instance, the press have so 
 strongly supported the right. The wrong has been com- 
 mitted, and we an^ notified that there is no redress for us. 
 
 " But for cccrij Union man in the city the last verdict is a 
 warning. In the eccnt — as impossible as it may appear— thai 
 rebclriile should temporarily be established h're, we can fore- 
 see the fate of the friends of the Union. Then, there will be 
 no more justice, no more protection for them than for the 
 hated negro. It will be lawful to pursue them in the streeli, 
 drown than, kill them; and no jury will be found to convict 
 the murderers. Let the Union men iniderstand the case, 
 and look to a complete reform in our laws relating to the 
 formation of the jury." 
 
 The fate predicted to the real friends of the 
 Union v.'ill be meted to them by the pardoned 
 rebels, who will if we permit it rule them in the 
 future as assuredly as it would if their military 
 power should again jjossess the city. 
 
 Still comes the question, are these more than 
 two fiftlis of the people of the insurrectionary dis- 
 trict fit for citizenship.'' Let me reply by a ques- 
 tion or two. Is the question of fitness put to the 
 foreigner by the judge who adininisters the oath, 
 the taking of which invests him with all the power 
 of a native-born citizen and all its promises save 
 one, that of tlie Presidency.' Is the white native 
 of our soil who, at the close of a reckless youth, 
 the victim, perhaps, of early poverty and the deg- 
 radation of parents, is unable to read his native 
 tongue, when first he comes to the polls to deposit 
 hisballotinterrogated as to his fitness." Is it only 
 
 to the wise, the learned, the powerful that we 
 accord the right of suffrage.' Are there not wilhin 
 the knowledge of each one of us scoi'es of the chil- 
 dren of this jiroscribed race who, in the conduct 
 of their daily affairs, in the acquisition of prop- 
 erty, in the tenderness and good judgment with 
 which they rear their families, in the generosity 
 with which they contribute to ihcir church and 
 the fidelity with which they obey her I'.igh be- 
 hests, prove themselves infinitely better fitted 
 for citizenship than the denizens of the swamp, 
 Mackerelville, and other such reeking localities, 
 who swelled the majority in the city of New York 
 at the last election to thirty-seven thousand ? And 
 shall no culture, no patriotism, no wisdom, no tax- 
 paying power, secure to the native-born Ameri- 
 can that which at the end of five years we, with 
 so much advantage to our country, fling as a boon 
 to every foreigner who may escape from the pov- 
 erty and oppi-ession and v^rong of the Old World, 
 to find a happier home and a more promising 
 future in this.' The question is not whether each 
 man is fitted for the most judicious performance 
 of the functions of citizenship, but whether the 
 State is not safer when she binds all her children 
 to her by protecting the rights of ali and confid- 
 ing her affairs to the arbitrament of their common 
 judgment. 
 
 But colored people have shown themselves 
 abundantly capable of self-government. Under 
 oppressions exceeding in infinite degree those 
 suffered by the oppressed people of Ireland — ay, 
 by the subjects of the Czar of Russia — they have 
 shown themselves capable of caring for themselves 
 and others. Buying the poor privilege of [iro- 
 viding for tliemselves by paying to their owners 
 hundreds of dollars per annum, thousands of them 
 have maintained homes and kept their ftimilies 
 together, and reared their children to such an age 
 that the lordly master, wanting cash for current 
 purposes, has plucked the graceful daughter from 
 her home to sell her to a life of debauchery, or the 
 son, whose developing muscles promised sup- 
 port in age to his pai-ents, to sell him to a life of 
 unrequited toil. Snatched from these horrors a 
 few thousands, some ten or twelve, have been sent 
 during the last forty years to the western coast of 
 Africa. There, under the auspices of American 
 benevolence, they founded a republic, and with 
 ahnost American greed for land have extended 
 the jurisdiction of the little colony till the re- 
 |)ublic of Liberia, as I learn from the National 
 Almanac, now embraces twenty-three thousand 
 eight hundred and fifty-nine square miles. And 
 the people have assimilated froiii among the hea- 
 thens among whom they were settled men, women, 
 and children, until their flag protects and their 
 jurisdiction regulates four hundred and twenty- 
 two thousand, niostof whom, taught in the schools 
 of the colony, find their enduring hopes in the 
 old King James Bible, which they arc able to 
 read. But for our jealous contempt of the race, 
 the flag of that African republic, so extensive has 
 her commerce already become, would be familiar 
 in all our leading ports. Our arrogance has hith- 
 erto excluded it; and by reason of our arrogance 
 we pay tribute to our haughty commercial rival 
 and treacherous friend Great Britain, by purcJias- 
 
21 
 
 //c? 
 
 ing at second-linnd from her the tropical products 
 which the republicans of Liberia would gladly 
 exchange directly with us for those of our more 
 temperate region. 
 
 Fit by culture and experience they may not be; 
 but let us regard the characteristics of our civil- 
 ization and see whether the future should, by rea- 
 son of this fact, be made liable to such moment- 
 ous consequences as would be involved in error 
 on this point. The abundant proof is before us 
 of their eagerness and ability to acquire informa- 
 tion. We are equally able to provide them with 
 the means of culture; and happily, the good peo- 
 ple of the North, carrying the frame of tlie school- 
 iiouse and the church in the rear of each of our 
 advancing armies, have shown themselves prompt 
 to provide them with the means of instruction — 
 to give to each and every one of them the keys to 
 all knowledge in the mastery of the English lan- 
 guage, the arlof v/rititig,and the elementary rules 
 of arithmetic. 
 
 Though the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
 Rrooics] insists that history is but repeating it- 
 self, I tell him that our.s is a new age, and ask him 
 to be kind enough to let me know who invented 
 Hoe's " last fast printing-press" in the age in 
 which it first existed, and by whose steam-engine 
 it was propelled, and whether he edited the Ex- 
 press that fell in myriad thousands from its revolv- 
 ing forms? The limits of what former America 
 did the magnetic telegraph traverse, making man, 
 even the humblest, well-nigh omnipresent within 
 its limits.'' In what antique age and country, 
 broad as ours, was distance reduced as it is by the 
 locomotive engine in this.-' From among the hid- 
 den treasures of what buried city, or from the 
 printed pages of what lost nation, did John Erics- 
 son steal the subtle thoughts with which he has 
 blesseil the world and which we credit to him as 
 inventions? In what era, will the gentleman tell 
 me, did a nation convert by the stroke of a pen 
 and the act of occupancy its landless and desti- 
 tute people into independent farmers and pillars 
 of the Slate by a homestead law such as that by 
 which we oifer estates to the emigrant and the 
 freedman? If history be but repeating herself, 
 will the gentleman point me to the original of the 
 American iVlissionary Society, and show me from 
 experience what influence its labors are to have 
 upon those whom we have hitherto doomed to the 
 darki:ess of ignorance? Whence did the founders 
 of the American and other Tract Societies borrow 
 the idea of their great enterprise? From what 
 ao-e or what clime comes oui- common school sys- 
 tem? And what chapter of human history did 
 they reenact who founded the American Sunday 
 School Union? Will the gentleman draw from 
 his historic stores a sketch of the influence that 
 institution alone is to have in developing and 
 training the intellect and regulating the life of the 
 freedmen and the " poor v/hite trash," now that 
 rebellion has opened the way to the teacher, the 
 daily journal, and the printed volume to their fire- 
 sides? in what ample depository did its ancient 
 prototype conceal the .stereotype plates for more 
 than a thousand books that it so cheaply pub- 
 lished, imparting many of them in the simplest 
 sentences, and others in those of Bunyan, Milton, 
 
 Heber, Cowper — the poets, preachers, philoso- 
 phers, historians of all Christian countries — the 
 thought and knowlidgc time has garnered? 
 
 No, Mr. Sfieaker, history is not repeating it- 
 self. We are unfolding a new page in national 
 life. The past has gone forever. There ia no 
 abiding present; it flies while we name it; and, 
 as it flies, it is our duty to provide far the thick- 
 coming future; anil with such agencies as I have 
 thus rapitlly alluded to, we need not fear that even 
 the existing generation of freedmen will not prove 
 themselves abundantly able to take care of them- 
 selves and maintain the ))ower and dignity of the 
 States of which wc shall make them citizens. 
 
 We are to shape the future. We cannot escape 
 tlie duty. And "conciliation, compromise, and 
 concession" are not the methods we are to use. 
 These, alas! have been abundantly tried, and their 
 result has been agitation, strife, war, and desola- 
 tion. No man has the right to compromise jus- 
 tice; it is immutable; and He whose law it is 
 never fails to avenge its compromise or violation. 
 Ours is not the work of construction, it is that of 
 reconstruction; not that of creation , but of regen- 
 eration; and, as I have shown, the principle of the 
 life we are to shape glares on us, lighting our path- 
 way, from every page of history written by our 
 revolutionary fathers. Would we sec the issue 
 of "compromise, concession, and conciliation?" 
 Sir, we behold it in the blazing home, the charred 
 roof-tree, the desolate hearthside, the surjjing tide 
 of fratricidal war, and the green mounds beneath 
 which sleep half a million of the bravest and best 
 loved of our men. 
 
 South Carolina, represent ing slavery, demanded 
 the insertion of tlie word " white" in the funda- 
 mental articles c^our Government. Our fathers 
 resisted the demand; and, as I have suggested, 
 had their sons continued to do so, slavery had 
 long since been hemmed in as by a wall of fire; 
 its true character would have been known among 
 men, for then would the freedom of discussion 
 not have been assailed, and men been legally pun- 
 ished by fine and imprisonment, and lawlessly by 
 scourging and death, for speaking of its horrors. 
 And by resisting this demand, as I have shown, 
 man was accorded his right in the Territories till 
 1812. Then our fathers yielded, and without tra- 
 cino- the rapid retrograde career which ensued, 
 we find the results of conceding and compromis- 
 ing principle in the attempt to abandon Justice as 
 established by the fathers, and settle a Territory 
 under the conflicting theories of Cass and Doug- 
 las, and of Calhoun and Jefferson Davis — the two 
 former striving to establish slavery under phrases 
 full of professed devotion to freedom; the latter 
 proclaiming boldly, through the lips of Robert 
 Toombs, that " Congress has no power to limit, 
 restrain, or in any manner to impair slavery; 
 but, on the contrary, it is bound to protect and 
 maintain it in the States where it exists and 
 wherever its flag floats and its jurisdiction is para- 
 mount." (Boston Address, January, 1856.) 
 
 We can trace the influence of compromise and 
 concession again in its eff'ects upon the constitu- 
 tion ofStates. Behold the colored and white voters 
 mingling peaceably at the polls in North Carolina, 
 Maryland, Tennessec,and other slave States, and 
 
22 
 
 run tlm downward career until, at the dictation of 
 South Carolina and slavery, you find States which 
 have become fi-ee by constitutional amendment 
 and others which never tolerated slavery yieldino- 
 to their demand to insert the word " white" in 
 their constitutions, and so creatin;^ a proscribed 
 class in their midst; others even denying a dwell- 
 ing place upon His footstool within their limits to 
 the children of God whose skins were not colored 
 like their own; and finally Arkansas writing a 
 chapter of history which redeems Draco's name 
 from the bad preeminence it had so long borne. 
 Triumphant wrong is ever aggressive, has ever 
 been, will ever be. Look back also upon our 
 churches, practically ignoring for half a century 
 the existence of nearly four million people who 
 were held in contempt of every one of the beati- 
 tudes, and compelled to live in violation of every 
 clause of the decalogue, and whose existence 
 made the utterance of the Lord's prayer seem, to 
 foreigners who comprehended the wrongs of sla- 
 very, like a hideous mockery as it dropped from 
 American lips. 
 
 And these results, be it remembered, did but 
 express the influence which aristocratic and dic- 
 tatorial South Carolina, whose spirit now pos- 
 sessed the entire South, had, through compromise, 
 concession, and conciliation, produced upon the 
 mind and heart and conscience of the American 
 people. Let me illustrate this by one striking 
 example. While yet IMissouri was a Territory 
 — seven years, however, after the South had been 
 made imperious by her triumph in inserting the 
 word " white" in the territorial law for Missouri, 
 and while she v/as busy fashioning that great 
 State north of the Ohio line into the future home 
 for slavery — the abolition of the institution was 
 being agitated in Maryland as well as in Tennes- 
 see. Notwithstanding the recent triumphs of sla- 
 very it was still possible for a man to oppose the 
 spread of the institution, point out its atrocities, 
 and favor its abolition, and yet look for prefer- 
 ment and honor at the hands of his fellow-citi- 
 zens; and when Jacob Gruber, a Methodist cler- 
 gyman, was indicted by the Frederick county 
 court, of Maryland, on the charge of "attempt- 
 ing to excite insubordination and insurrection 
 among slaves," Roger B. Taney stepped forth to 
 defend him, and in the course of his argument 
 used the following language: 
 
 '• Mr. Grultsr (iui quote tlio language of our great act of 
 national iii(lupc/iKleiic«,aiiii insisted on tlie |Minci|iles con- 
 tained in tliat veneratrd instruiiKjnt. He did rcljuko lliose 
 masters u-lio, iji tlui exorcise of power, arc duaf to llic 
 calls of Imnianity ; ;uid lie warned tlieni of the evils tliey 
 iniglit Uriiif; tlieniselves. He did spealc witli aliUorreiice of 
 tliose reptile's who live l)y uading in liunian llesli, and ea- 
 ricli tlieniselves liy tearing the liushaiid from the wife, the 
 infant from the hosoin of tlie mother; and this I am in- 
 structed was the head and front of his ofTeniliug. Sliall I 
 content myself with saying lie had aright to say this.' that 
 there is no law to pnni.sli him .? So faiMs he from beingthc 
 object of piiiiishmcinl in any form of proceedings, that wc 
 are jircpnred to inalnlain the same privciplcs, am) to use, if 
 neccssaiii, llic same laii'^nage here in llic temple of jmlicc, 
 and in Ihe presenee of those who are the miiiislers of the 
 law. A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the 
 evils of slavery /'ui- rt /;,me. It was imposed upon lis hy 
 another nation wliih' we were yet in a state of colonial 
 vassalages It cannot he liasily or suddenly removed. Yi't 
 while it continues, !i is a /lioi on our national character , and 
 every real lover of freedom conlidciuly hopes that it will 
 
 he effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away, 
 and earnestly looks for the means hy which this necessary 
 oliject may iie attained. And until it shall be accom- 
 plished, until the time sliall come when we can point 
 without a hlu^ii to the language held in the Declaration of 
 Iiidepejnience, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten 
 the grilling chain of slavery, and hetter to the utmost of 
 his power tlie wreicln'd condition of the slave. Such was 
 l\lr. Griiher's object in that part of his serinou of wliicli 1 
 am iiowspealiiiig. 'I'liose who have complained of him 
 and reproached liim will not find it easy to answer him, 
 unless compliiints, reproaches, and persecution shall be 
 considered an answer." 
 
 But under the influence of the doctrine of" con- 
 ciliation, concession, and compromise," the au- 
 thor of this language soon learned that for an 
 ambitious man these brave and good words were 
 folly and tnadness. Pure in his personal life, 
 beautiful in the relations that characterized his 
 family and his social circle, his history will never 
 be forgotten; his tiamc will ever head the list of 
 "ermined knaves." Thirty-eight years after the 
 Gruber case, in the chief temple of justice of our 
 country, in the presence of her ministers, of whom 
 he was himself the chief, when speaking of the 
 free colored men of New England and those of 
 their race throughout the country, he declared, 
 in violation of all truth, that — 
 
 "The legislation and histories of Ihe times, and the lan- 
 guage used in the Deelaralioii of Independence, show that 
 neither tlie class of persons vvlio had been imported as 
 slaves nor their descendants, whi^thcr they had become 
 free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the peo- 
 ple, nor intended to he included in the general words used 
 in that ini^iiiorahle instrumeiit. 
 
 " It is dilriculr at this day to realize the state of public 
 opinion ill relaiion to that unfortunate race whicli pre- 
 vailed ill the civilized and eulighteneil portions of tlie world 
 at Ihe lime of the Deehuation of Indepeiideuee, and wlien 
 the Coiistiiution of ihe United Stales was framed and 
 adopted. But the public history of every European nation 
 displays it in a m:niner too plain to be mislakeji. 
 
 '• Tiiey had for more than a century before been regarded 
 as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to asso- 
 ciate witli the white race, either in social or political re- 
 lations ; and so lar interior, tliat they had no rights which the 
 white tnan was hound to respect." 
 
 Mr. Speaker, shall we in providing for the re- 
 construction of the Union, accept and proclaim as 
 our faith the hideous dogma that four millions of 
 our people have " no rights which the white man 
 is bound to respect," or, in the very houi; in which 
 our arms are breaking the power of the rebellion, 
 make any concession to the spirit that evoked it.-' 
 South Carolina may shake her gory locks and 
 bloody hands at us in impotent rage; but let us 
 not quail before her now as we have done for the 
 last half century. Through ihi; lips of northern 
 " Sons of Liberty" and members of the order of 
 "American Knights," she demands that, as a 
 graceful concession, we shall comply to-day with 
 the proposition our forefathers rejected on the 25th 
 of June, 1778, and insert the word " white" in the 
 fundamental law of the land; on the other hand, 
 the shades of our patriot fathers, huinanity, the 
 spirit of the age, the welfare of the nation, the 
 hopes of the countless inillions wlio will tlirong 
 our country through the long ages, implore us to 
 listen to the voice of justice and obey the injunc- 
 tions of the Master, who has assured us that " in- 
 asmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 
 of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 Let not, 1 pray you, the South achieve hergrand- 
 est triumph in the hour of her humiliation. Let 
 
//c 
 
 23 
 
 not the spirit of a prostrate foe practice on our 
 pride and prejudice, and exult thiousii ail time 
 over a lasiing victory. Peace is the oftsprinj^ and 
 handmaid of Justice, and let us in rrconstru'cling 
 the Union erect a temple in which she may abide 
 for ever. 
 
 iVlr. STILES. Mr. Speaker, I did not desire 
 to interrupt, my colleague [iVIr. KiiLLisv] in the 
 delivery of his carefully prepared .speech. It 
 would have marred its beauty and power. But 
 if I understand him correctly he stated that prior 
 to the adoption of the constitution of 1838, ne- 
 groes enji.yed the right of suffrage in the Slate of 
 Pennsylvania. My question is, whether the con- 
 stitution or laws of that State gave them such a 
 right; and further, whether they ever did exercise 
 such a right; whether he does not know that by 
 thedeci.sion of ihe highestcourtsof that State they 
 were not allowed to vote there. 
 
 Mr. KELLEY. Tiicy were allowed by the 
 constitution to vote, and they did vote; and it 
 required a constitutional amendment — the inser- 
 tion of the word " white" in the clause regulating 
 suffrage — to deprive them of that right. 
 
 Mr. STILES. I desire to ask my colleague 
 further, whtn ai\d in what portion of the State of 
 Pennsylvania they ever exercised that right. 
 
 Mr. IvELLEY. Why, I have seen them ex- 
 ercise it freqiienify at the polls in Philadelphia, 
 and that, too, whether the election officers be- 
 longed to one party or the other. 
 
 Mr. SriLES. That must have been confined 
 to my colleague's own precinct. It was never 
 known in the history of that State. 
 
 Mr. KELLEY. I beg leave to say that it was 
 done thrmigliout the State, and was in some in- 
 stances made the subject of litigation. 
 
 Mr. SriLES. It was never done except in one 
 county — the county of Bucks — so far as I know 
 and then only in one instance. 
 
 I desire further to ask my coIle£.2ii" in this con- 
 nection, because his speech has tendud toward 
 univcnsal equality, whether he is in favor of giv- 
 ing negroes universally the right of sullVag;.' now. 
 Mr. KELLEY. 1 am in favor of giving that 
 right, in the words of Jefferson, to "every man 
 who fights or pays." I stand by the doctrine of 
 Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Democratic 
 parly, in which I was trained. 
 
 Mr. STILES. In the event of the passage of 
 tlie amendment to the Consiitntion proposed, is 
 my colleague in favor of equuliiy between the 
 laces.' And will he regard negroes as equal to 
 the v/liite man ? 
 
 Mr. IvELLEY. I could not possibly regulate 
 the cqualiiy of men. I cannot make my colleague 
 so moral or intelligent as a man of darker com- 
 plexion who is more moral and more intelligent; 
 nor could I degrade my colleague to the level, in 
 morals and intelligence, of the culored man who 
 is less moral or less intelligent than he. My col- 
 league does not, according to his theory, vote by 
 reason of his intelligence, but simply by reason 
 of his color. I migiit be willing lo exclude from 
 the privilege of voting an immoral ora voluntarily 
 ignorant man; but I want no senseless rule that 
 allov/s a fo(jl or a scoundrel to vote if he b(^ white, 
 and excludes a wise and an honest man if he be 
 black. 
 
 Mr. STILES. Mr. Speaker, the remarkable 
 speech just delivered appeals to passion and not 
 to judgment, and is in favor of a principle that in 
 years hence will be regarded as the height of the 
 fanaticism of these days. The right of negroes 
 to become voters, jurors, and in ah respects equal 
 wiih the white man, is the favorite iheory of the 
 times and of the party in power. The day will 
 come when the men who avow such piin'ciplea 
 will be condemned by the popular voice every- 
 where. 
 
LB D 'G5 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS