Is there anything which can change your responsibilities, or make you see your duty in a different light?

Why, Sir, at this moment the most important practical question before the country is, whether we shall allow the word “white” in the constitutions of the late Rebel States.

The second is, that this day, here in the national capital, is dedicated to the cause of human freedom and human rights,--the great cause of Emancipation.

The streets to-day are filled with a happy people, emancipated by Act of Congress, and now celebrating the anniversary of their rights.

It is, Sir, no proper day to recognize human inequality by receiving into the Union a community which chooses to appear here with a constitution setting at defiance the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence.

He will not say that a constitution which undertakes to exclude persons from equal rights on account of color is consistent with the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence; and that, Sir, is the very requirement of the…

I think the cause of human rights suffers every moment you give to this question.

If you choose to make a sacrifice of human rights, do it on some other day than this.

I insist that this subject, once closed by such a majority, and on such good grounds, shall not again be opened here.

We are, happily, at the close of a long, bloody, and most expensive war, throughout which there was one question dominating all others: it was the question of justice to the colored race.

And now, Sir, that the war is closed, and our soldiers are no longer in the tented field, that same question enters perpetually into your debates, challenging decision; it is before you at every stage of legislation.

Mark me, if you please,--I say at this moment, and under these circumstances; for, whatever might be done at another time and under other circumstances, I insist that this thing is impossible now, when by every obligation we are solemnly…

Oh, no! we cannot give the hand to such a community, so inferior in population and resources, with a constitution audaciously denying those rights.

I say it was a fall, when this community, which had solemnly enacted justice, after the lapse of three years reversed its own decree, and solemnly enacted injustice.

The Governor, in the same message, shows that these same colored men, while despoiled of the elective franchise, are nevertheless compelled by taxation to support the public schools, from which their children are excluded.

If I understand the argument, it is, that Congress, by a statute, pledged itself in advance to admit this community as a State into the Union; that we are bound by such statute, so that we cannot escape the obligation; that, in short, we…

And yet we are gravely told that this strange political hocus-pocus was by virtue of the Enabling Act,--as if in every respect it was not plainly inconsistent with the Act.

But the Enabling Act declares that “the constitution, when formed, shall be republican.” This is a fundamental condition.

I affirm with confidence, that a constitution which denies the first principle of human rights cannot be republican in form.

Then I reply: We are not called to sit in judgment on those constitutions; we have no power to revise them; we are not to vote upon them; but we are called to sit in judgment upon this constitution, to revise it, and to vote upon it.

You are now to declare by your votes whether this constitution which tramples upon the principle of human equality is republican in form.

Still further, this Enabling Act declares that “the constitution shall not be repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” Need I ask you, What is the first principle of the Declaration of Independence?

Is it not, in solemn words, that “all men are created equal,” and that all just government stands on “the consent of the governed”?

The statute enumerates first in the class of voters citizens of the United States; and my honorable friend himself is obliged to confess that in his opinion colored persons are citizens of the United States.

I do think, humbly speaking, that this opinion was one of the most remarkable and one of the grandest acts in the history of the late Administration.