And this bare-faced tyranny of taxation without representation it is now proposed to recognize as not inconsistent with fundamental right and the guaranty of a republican government.

If you expect to induce the recent slave-master to confer suffrage without distinction of color, you will find the proposition a delusion and a snare.

Tricks and evasions are possible, and the cunning slave-master will drive his coach and six through your Amendment, stuffed with all his representatives.

Should he cheat you, it will only be a proper return for the endeavor on your part to circumvent him at the expense of fellow-citizens to whom you are bound by every obligation of public faith.

In the first place, it will be a present renunciation of all power under the Constitution to apply the remedy for a grievous wrong, when the remedy, even according to your own recent example, is actually in your hands.

You cannot evade this duty without becoming partakers in wrong.

PRESIDENT,--In opening this great question, I begin by expressing a heartfelt aspiration that the day may soon come, when the States lately in rebellion may be received again into the copartnership of political power and the full…

But I see too well that it is vain to expect this day, so much longed for, until we have obtained that security for the future which is found only in the Equal Rights of All, at the ballot-box as in the court-room.

This is the Great Guaranty without which all other guaranties will fail.

This is the only sufficient assurance of peace and reconciliation.

I propose, with the permission of the Senate, to show the necessity and duty of exercising the jurisdiction of Congress so as to secure that essential condition of a republican government, the Equal Rights of All.

That is a question of form, and not of substance,--of words only, and not of facts; for the substance is clear, and the facts are unanswerable.

The time has passed for phrases, which have been the chief resource in opposition to a just reconstruction.

It is not enough to say “a State cannot secede,” “a State cannot get out of the Union,” “Louisiana is a State in the Union.” These are mere words, having no positive meaning, and improper for this debate.

In point of law, no man can commit suicide; but in point of fact, men do.

The absurdity of denying that a man has committed suicide, because it is unlawful, is equalled by the kindred absurdity of saying that a State cannot do a certain thing, because it is unlawful.

Unhappily, in this world, the fact is not always in conformity with the law.

I found myself on existing facts, which are undeniable.

Whatever may have been the effect of the acts of Secession in point of law, it is plain that de facto the Rebel States have ceased to take any part in the National Government.

All loyal government in those States has been de facto subverted.

Such are unquestionable facts, all of which concentre in the great unquestionable fact, that for the time being there are no State Governments in these States which the National Government can recognize as such.

It is that the Rebel States have been de facto in war against the National Government.

Armies have been mustered, battles have been fought, and the whole country has been convulsed by this war.

An immense national debt, mourning families, widows and orphans, attest this terrible fact.

These States cannot subsist without legal governments in just correlation with the other States and with the Nation.