Believing, as I do, that the National Government owes protection to the freedmen, so that they shall not suffer in rights, I insist on its plenary power over this great question, and that it may do anything needful to assure these rights.

In this conviction I shall not hesitate at all times to invoke its intervention, whether to establish what are called civil rights, or that pivotal right of all, the right to elect the government which they support by taxes and by arms.

Plainly, he forgot that we had been in a war, because he fails to make any provision for that security which common sense and common prudence, the Law of Nations and every instinct of the human heart, require should be made.

If, like the Senator, I could forget this terrible war, with all the blood and treasure it has cost, I, too, could be indifferent to security for the future; but as that war is always in my mind, the Senator will pardon me, if I insist…

It is bound to take them into its own keeping, to surround them with its own protecting power, and invest them with all the rights and conditions which, in the exercise of its best judgment, seem necessary to that end.

One of his earliest declarations signalized his character: he would have this great work begin from above, anxious that it should not proceed from below.

Therefore he insisted that the imperial government should undertake it, and not leave the blessed change to the chance of insurrection and blood.

He went forward bravely, encountering opposition; and now that the decree of Emancipation has gone forth, he still goes forward to assure all those rights without which Emancipation, I fear, is little more than a name.

Our country does well, when it offers sincere homage to the illustrious liberator who has attempted so great a task, and at such hazard, making a landmark of civilization.

Yet the question remains behind, to which the Senator from Maine has directed attention,--whether this proposition is not something more than even a novelty,--whether it is not a departure from just principles.

It does invest the Government with large and perhaps unprecedented powers, in order to meet a peculiar case, where a stringent remedy must be applied.

It is a clause very much neglected, but to my mind one of the most potent in the whole Constitution,--full of beneficent power, which it would be well, if the Government, at this crisis of its history, were disposed to exercise.

Here are waters of healing for our distressed country.

Follow this text in its natural and obvious requirements, and you will have security, peace, and liberty under the safeguard of that great guaranty, the Equal Rights of All.

My friend smiles; but would he smile at the Constitution of his country?

I should like to know where the Constitution authorizes such a thing as that.

Is there any precedent in the history of the United States where that power has been exercised by the General Government?

Does the Senator mean to suggest that the same power that can reach the sea, and determine even the quantity of water in the hold for each passenger, cannot apply the minutest possible regulation when that same ship arrives in the harbor?

I maintain, that, when the passenger is landed, and comes within the limits and jurisdiction of the State, and within its police power, the commercial power of the Government ceases at that point, and the treatment of the passenger…

Strange, if the National Government, which is our guardian against foreign foes, may not protect us against this fearful enemy.

The National Constitution was not so absurd, nor have our courts been so absurd in its interpretation, as to recognize a power in the custom-house merely at the door of the granite structure, and to require that it shall stop there.

It remains that we should carry it one stage further, and, for the public weal, and to secure the public health, which is a large part of the public weal, insist that this same power shall be invoked as in the pursuit of goods.

You must annul the text, or at least limit it by construction and dwarf its fair proportions, or the power of Congress to provide against cholera is perfect.

From the nature of the case, if you have the power to shut out cholera from the ports, you must be intrusted with an associate power to follow this same enemy even into the interior, precisely as you follow goods escaping the exercise of…

But I do not stop there; for, associated with this clause, and constituting part of the provision, are the words, “and among the several States.” Congress has power to regulate commerce among the several States.