Act, we entreat you, so that our country may have no fresh sorrow.

Do not hazard Emancipation, which is the day-star of our age, and the special jewel in the crown of your martyred predecessor, by any concession to its enemies.

Do not put in jeopardy all that we hold most dear, by untimely attempt to bring back into the national copartnership any of those ancient associates who have warred upon their country.

The patriot dead cry out against such surrender, and all their wounds bleed afresh.

Follow the Constitution also, which knows no distinction of color, and do not sacrifice a whole race by resuscitating an offensive Black Code, inconsistent with the National Security and the National Faith.

There also is the Declaration of Independence, which now shines like the sun in the heavens, rejoicing to penetrate every by-way and every cabin, if you will not stand in its light.

Let it shine, until the Republic has completely dispelled that disgusting pretension which is at once a stupendous monopoly and an impious caste.

Above all, do not take from the loyal black man and give to the disloyal white man; do not confiscate the political rights of the freedman, who has shed his blood for us, and lavish them upon his Rebel master.

And remember that justice to the colored race is the sheet-anchor of the national credit.

That region won to Union and Liberty by the victory you organized must not be allowed to lapse under its ancient masters, the perjured assertors of property in man.

It needs that all the resources of the country should be brought into activity,--that agriculture should be fostered, that commerce should be revived, that emigration should be encouraged; but this cannot be done without that security…

The loyal people who have contributed so much, and now hold your bonds, trust that this essential condition will not fail through any failure on your part, and that you will not consent to open a political volcano, spouting smoke and…

There is an order in all things; and any concession to the criminal enemies of our country, until after the confirmation of the National Security and the National Faith, is simply an illustration, on a gigantic scale, of the cart before…

Many may hesitate; many may turn away from those great truths which make the far-reaching brightness of the Republic; many may seek a temporary favor by untimely surrender: I shall not.

The last shall be first; and so, in this new order, Equality, long postponed, shall become the master principle of our system and the very frontispiece of our Constitution.

The Rebellion was to beat down this principle, by founding a government on the alleged inferiority of a race.

Pursuing our victory, I now insist that this assumption shall be trampled out.

A righteous government cannot be founded on any exclusion of race.

I battle still, as the bloody monster retreats to its last citadel; and, God willing, I mean to hold on, if it takes what remains to me of life.

Sumner from the beginning had regarded the votes of colored fellow-citizens necessary to a proper reconstruction,--first, as an act of justice to them, and, secondly, as a counterpoise to the disloyal.

Unless, said he, the black man is given the right to vote, his freedom is mockery.

Sumner declared he would not proceed a step, unless the black man had his rights.

He considered the black man’s right to vote the essence, the great essential.

Is it possible to devise any plan to arrest the Government in its mad career?

Can’t we enlist bold men enough to lay the foundation of a party to take the helm of this Government and keep it off the rocks?