In the one way, Reconstruction is easy; in the other way, it is in any just sense impossible.

It may seem for the moment to succeed; but it must fail in the end.

To my mind, the occasion is too solemn for personal controversy, and I shall not be drawn into it.

The proposition before you is the most important ever brought into Congress, unless, perhaps, we except the Amendment abolishing Slavery; and to my mind it is the most reprehensible.

The sentiment which inspired us to hail the abolition of Slavery with gratitude, as the triumph of justice, should make us reject with indignation a device to crystallize into organic law the disfranchisement of a race.

Seeing this proposition as I do, I must speak frankly, as on other occasions, in exposing the crime against Kansas, or the infamy of that enactment which turned the whole North into a hunting-ground where man was the game.

Such a measure, so obnoxious to every argument of reason, justice, and feeling, so perilous to the national peace, and so injurious to the good name of the Republic, must be encountered as a public enemy.

I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed,--to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country,--principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and un-christian.… I call upon your Lordships and the united powers of the…

Here is an act of wrong permanent in influence, colossal in proportions, operating in an extensive region, affecting millions of citizens, positively endangering the peace of the country, and covering its name with dishonor.

The wrong he arraigned was against eight hundred thousand persons in distant islands, to whom the people of Great Britain were bound by no peculiar ties, and who were to them only fellow-men.

The wrong I now arraign is against four million persons, constituting a considerable portion of the “people” of the United States, to whom we are bound by ties of gratitude, and who are to us fellow-citizens.

From the moment I heard this proposition first read at the desk I have not been able to think of it without pain.

The reflection that it may find place in the National Constitution, or even that it may be sanctioned by Congress, is intolerable.

For four years, Rebellion, of the greatest magnitude known to authentic history, raged among us, threatening to rend the Republic in twain.

Intermixed with the false men who warred on the Republic were nearly four million slaves, shut out from rights of all kinds, and compelled to do the bidding of masters.

And this pledge was taken up and adopted by the people of the United States, when, by Constitutional Amendment, they expressly empowered Congress to maintain this freedom by appropriate legislation.

Adopt it, and you put millions of fellow-citizens under the ban of excommunication, you hand them over to a new anathema maranatha, you declare that they have no political rights “which the white man is bound to respect,”--thus repeating…

Adopt it, and you stimulate anew the war of race upon race.

Slavery itself was a war of race upon race, and this is only a new form of the terrible war.

The proposition is as hardy as gigantic; for it takes no account of the moral sense of mankind, which is the same as if in rearing a monument we took no account of the law of gravitation.

It is the paragon and master-piece of ingratitude, showing more than any other act of history what is so often charged and we so fondly deny, that republics are ungrateful.

The freedmen ask for bread, and you send them a stone.

With piteous voice they ask for protection; you thrust them back defenceless into the cruel den of former masters.

Such an attempt, thus bad as bad can be, thus abortive for all good, thus perilous, thus pregnant with a war of race upon race, thus shocking to the moral sense, and thus treacherous to those whom we are bound to protect, cannot be…

You shall see it now in its guilty parts, each one of which is sufficient to arouse the conscience against it.