Therefore, when asked to open suffrage to women, or when asked to establish an educational standard for our colored fellow-citizens, I cannot, on the present bill, simply because the controlling necessity under which we act will not allow…

By a singular Providence, we are constrained to this measure of Enfranchisement for the sake of peace, security, and reconciliation, so that loyal persons, white or black, may be protected, and that the Republic may live.

Here, in the national capital, we begin the real work of Reconstruction, by which the Union will be consolidated forever.

I think you will be astonished, when you learn that the evidence is complete, showing in a Territory of the United States the existence of slavery which a proclamation of the President has down to this day been powerless to root out.

I regretted infinitely that Congress was willing, even indirectly, to sanction any form of slavery.

It seems now that it is so extended, and I wish the Committee to consider whether the remedy can be applied by Act of Congress, or whether we must not go further and expurgate that phraseology from the text of the Constitution itself.

I have simply called attention to what was already notorious, but with a view to action.

I remember, that, many years ago, when I first came into this Chamber, the good people whom I represent were shocked at reading that four colored sailors of Massachusetts had been sold into slavery in the State of Texas.

Under the operation of the Constitutional Amendment I trust they are now emancipated; but I am not sure of that, since they are in Texas.

But when apprised of an evasion, I ask whether it is not expedient to counteract that evasion specifically and precisely, so that there shall be no possible excuse?

Secure first the general principle, as in the Constitutional Amendment,--then legislation as extensive or minute as the occasion requires.

Let it be “precept upon precept, line upon line,” so long as any such outrage can be shown.

I feel that we are painfully admonished, by incidents occurring under our very eyes, that we ought to do something to tighten that great Constitutional Amendment.

There should have been no recognition in the Constitutional Amendment of any possibility of Slavery.

The reply is, that the Amendment, if properly interpreted, does not recognize the possibility of Slavery being legal in any just sense.

But it is misinterpreted,--has been so in an adjoining State; and who can tell that it will not be so now in every one of the Southern States?

There has been outrage; slavery in some form exists there; and consequently my colleague was right, when he brought his Committee to the conclusion that they must meet it by specific enactment.

Where the abuse appears, we must root it out.

So long as a human being is held as a slave anywhere under this flag, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, there is occasion for your powerful intervention; and if there is ambiguity or failure in existing statutes, then you must supply…

The Senator is mistaken, if he supposes that the amendment would endanger the bill.

It would give it both strength and merit,--because it is a measure which grows out of the exigency of the hour.

It grows out of the present exigency, and this is its strength and its merit.

If ingrafted on the bill, it will be, like the original measure, to meet the demands of the moment.

It will be because without it we shall leave something undone which we ought to do.

Now, I ask Senators, is there any one who doubts that under the circumstances such a provision ought to pass?