202 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



rights to all men, no State, no man, no pow- 

 er, no potentate on earth, has a right to take 

 away or abate one jot or tittle of those rights. 

 Whether it was wise or not to have given these 

 equal rights is a question which no man can 

 answer to-day, because we are trying an en- 

 tirely new experiment in government. Eome 

 threw her laws all over the world, but kept 

 her citizenship in Latium. She held by force 

 her colonies and gave them her laws, but she 

 held on to the birthright of citizenship, and it 

 was sold only by corrupt emperors at a great 

 price. We are trying the other experiment of 

 a republic. Eome failed; we may fail; but 

 ours is the other and correlative experiment. 

 We take in nations or parts of nations; we 

 take in peoples or parts of peoples wholly di- 

 verse from us ; and instead of throwing our 

 laws over them and holding them by force, we 

 have always given to them equal rights of citi- 

 zenship with us and rights of self-government ; 

 and not only the right of governing themselves, 

 but of assisting in governing us. This great 

 experiment, for the first time tried in the his- 

 tory of the world, has not yet been concluded 

 so that any man can say with certainty that it 

 is the very summit of human wisdom. Certain 

 it is, however, that it is the best emanation of 

 human wisdom yet shown in government, with 

 the best results, and it is going forward as the 

 missionary idea of liberty and equality in the 

 world with the high hopes of every patriot 

 and every well-wisher of his country for its 

 success. It is incumbent upon us to do 

 every thing we may that that success shall be 

 achieved, that no prejudice against race or 

 color shall prevail for a moment in any quarter 

 of the country. When a man is a citizen he 

 springs up to the high plane of citizenship ; 

 and standing upon that plane he is the equal 

 of every other citizen, whatever may have 

 been his former condition of nationality, race, 

 or color, and he must have all his rights se- 

 cured to him inviolate. This is the ground on 

 which we present this bill to the House and 

 the country, and we insist that whatever there 

 may have been in State rights in olden times, 

 there is now no right in any State to baffle or 

 abate one jot or tittle any constitutional right 

 of equality in the civil and legal privileges of 

 the meanest citizen of the republic." 



Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, said : " Mr. Speaker, 

 I do not believe that any man on this side of 

 the House opposes this bill because he wants 

 the negro race oppressed, because he desires 

 to see them deprived of education or of any 

 other right guaranteed to them by the Consti- 

 tution and laws. But many of us do object, 

 and I for one, to the usurpation by Congress 

 of authority over matters that belong exclu- 

 sively to the States, prescribing severe penal- 

 ties to be enforced by the courts of the United 

 States ; to enforce laws which are violative, as" 

 I believe, of the rights of the States and the 

 people thereof. We are approaching consoli- 

 dation fast enough. We are drifting into cen- 



tralism step by step so rapidly and steadily 

 that it will not be many years before the States 

 will occupy the same relation to the Gener- 

 al Government that the counties bear to the 

 States. Ten years ago that suggestion met 

 with ridicule only from men of all parties. 



" I object further to this bill, because this 

 coercive legislation, which seeks to put the 

 colored population of the States of the South 

 into the common schools with the white chil- 

 dren, will not only be no advantage to them, 

 but will be a positive injury, and will only be 

 available when men who are seeking to drive 

 party politics at the point of the bayonet will 

 make disturbances there, and will seek to en- 

 force martial law because the behests of Con- 

 gress are not obeyed, and thus carry the elec- 

 tions at the point of the bayonet for the man 

 they want to elect against the popular will. 



" I object to this bill because the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States and all its amend- 

 ments are violated by its provisions. This 

 question has been carefully examined by the 

 Supreme Court of the United States ; and that 

 tribunal, as I read the decision, has decided in 

 the late case from New Orleans, that these 

 rights pertaining to the rights of corporations, 

 and inferentially to common schools, are not em- 

 braced in the powers confided to Congress by 

 the constitutional amendments. Under the au- 

 thority to enforce the amendments by appro- 

 priate legislation, these are not rights guaran- 

 teed by them, or rights about which Congress 

 has authority to legislate. 



" Massachusetts, to-day, does not allow a man 

 to vote in the State unless he can read the con- 

 stitution in the English language and write his 

 name. If the people of Kentucky, in the exer- 

 cise of their constitutional authority, should do 

 as Massachusetts has done should amend their 

 constitution by incorporating such a proposi- 

 tion not one negro in a hundred in the State 

 of Kentucky could go to the polls and vote. 

 We have not done so ; we have not thought of 

 doing it, because we have endeavored, in good 

 faith, to give those negroes, ignorant as they 

 are, the rights conferred upon them by the 

 fifteenth amendment. Under such a provi- 

 sion ninety-nine out of every hundred of the 

 negroes, who were slaves in my State seven 

 years ago, would be excluded from the polls. 

 We could, if we saw" fit, prescribe other quali- 

 fications for the exercise of suffrage or the 

 qualification for office. 



" The Supreme Court of the United States, 

 as I before remarked, very recently considered 

 these questions in the slaughter-house cases ; it 

 carefully examined the bearings of the consti- 

 tutional amendments on this subject. The four- 

 teenth amendment, as is well known, did not 

 allow to colored men the right to vote, and 

 that was controlled by State laws, notwith- 

 standing all the rights conferred by former 

 amendments, and therefore it was necessary 

 to pass the fifteenth amendment. The four- 

 teenth amendment provides as follows : 



