At the same time be careful that Rebel influence is not allowed to prevail in the new governments.

Colored persons may be chosen to office, and I cannot doubt that we shall soon welcome colored Senators and Representatives to the National Capitol.

Meanwhile the boards of registration must be kept as open as these Chambers; and no commanding general can be allowed to set up a rule adverse to the rights of a race.

A system of public schools without distinction of color should be required.

Its performance should be enforced as essential to republican government.

We have required suffrage for all; we should require also education for all.

If the remedy is not applied now, it is doubtful if the opportunity will not be lost forever.

In submitting a constitution to the people, it seems to me advisable that it should not be complicated by any election of officers, State or National, but that all elections should be postponed until after approval of the constitution by…

The pardon of the President must not be allowed to confer a title to vote; and since officials have shown such a disposition to impair the efficacy of an Act by interpretation, reducing it to a mere shadow, we ought to provide that it…

I would do now all that we can to make this measure of Reconstruction just and beneficent.

But what it does should be equal to the occasion; it should be large, and not petty,--far-reaching, and not restricted in its sphere.

Colored persons were precipitated into the streets, into the mud, under a pelting rain, and they could obtain no redress; and when I asked for redress, grave Senators said, “Let them apply to the courts”; and it was suggested that perhaps…

I cannot doubt, that, under the existing Reconstruction law, there can be no exclusion on account of color,--that nobody is for that reason disqualified from the exercise of any function.

What is there to prevent a colored person from being a Senator of the United States? and who can doubt that within a very few months it will be our business to welcome a colored Senator on this floor?

The present bill, I fear, has none of these qualities which we desire at this time.

The country must be relieved from its heavy burdens.

To that I reply, in the State of Virginia they have not been designated; and I wish now that Congress should declare that any exclusion on account of color is without the sanction of law.

Taxation must be made lighter,--also less complex and inquisitorial.

Adopt this proviso now, and I am sure it will be most efficacious with our generals even without any penalty.

Should they exclude fellow-citizens on account of color, it will be a violation of law and a failure of duty; there can be no votes of thanks for them,--“no hope of golden spurs to-day.

We know that in whole States colored persons are excluded from the boards, and this justifies our intervention.

They tell me that without some such provision the grossest injustice will be done.

Throughout the whole Rebellion the local tribunals were sitting to administer justice; yet it was not justice, but injustice, that they administered.

Under their decrees private rights were overthrown; and I doubt not that my friend from Illinois has recently read the account of an extensive injustice in Texas, where private property to an almost incalculable amount was taken away by…

I cannot doubt our constitutional power at this moment to set aside all those decrees, so far as they have not been voluntarily submitted to, or subject them, according to the provision of my amendment, to appeal in a higher tribunal after…