Enfranchisement, which is the corollary and complement of Emancipation, must be a National act also, proceeding from the National Government, and applicable to all the States.

If left to the States individually, the result, besides being tardy, will be uncertain and fragmentary.

It is by Act of Congress, adopted by a majority of two thirds, in spite of Presidential veto.

The time has passed when this power can be questioned.

Congress has already exercised it in the Rebel States.

It concerns the rights of citizenship, and this subject is as essentially national as the army or the navy.

Even without either of the recent Constitutional Amendments, I am at a loss to understand how a denial of the elective franchise simply on account of color can be otherwise than unconstitutional.

I cannot see how, under a National Constitution which does not contain the word “white” or “black,” there can be any exclusion on account of color.

Now the greatest victory of the war, to which all other victories, whether in Congress or on the bloody field, were only tributary, was the definition of a republican government according to the principles of the Declaration of…

A government which denies the elective franchise on account of color, or, in other words, sets up any “qualifications” of voters in their nature insurmountable, cannot be republican; for the first principle in a republican government is…

And this definition, I insist, is the crowning glory of the war which beat down Rebellion under its feet.

In proposing this large reduction of taxation at this time, with the hope of larger reductions in the near future, it was necessary to keep in view the possibility of increased expenditure or of decreased receipts.

There is, first, the Amendment abolishing Slavery, with its clause conferring on Congress the power to enforce it by appropriate legislation, in pursuance of which Congress has already passed the Civil Rights Act, which is applicable to…

To guard against such contingency we must keep strict watch over the expenditures, and, if possible, diminish the positive annual obligations of the nation.

Clearly, and most obviously beyond all question, if it can pass a Civil Rights Act, it can also pass a Political Rights Act; for each is appropriate to enforce the abolition of Slavery, and to complete this work.

How, in the face of these provisions, any person can doubt the power of Congress I cannot understand.

Since then I have never looked upon them, even at a distance, I have never thought of them, without feeling that they are monumental.

In those hours when undisciplined patriots were preparing for conflict with the trained soldiers of England, the careful eye of Washington, calmly surveying the whole horizon, selected your hills as the breastworks behind which he was to…

The hills still stand firm and everlasting as when he looked upon them, but smiling now with fertility and peace.

But you will allow me to remind you that the ideas of the Revolution and the solemn promises of the Declaration of Independence are still debated.

And should not this result be one of our first endeavors?

Should an evil hour arrive, when these ideas and promises are in peril, then let them find a breastwork, not in your hills, but in your hearts.

And may the rally extend until it embraces the whole country, and the Revolution begun by our fathers is completed by the establishment of all the rights of all!

To that extent it is unquestionably constitutional; but when the resolution imposes shackles upon the two Houses of Congress assembled by virtue of that resolution, then, I submit, it does what, under the National Constitution, it cannot…

Congress, when once assembled by virtue of that resolution, has all the powers of a Congress of the United States under the Constitution.