Is it not to carry out your Reconstruction Bill, to smooth difficulties, to remove wrong, to establish justice?

And now, as we are about to dismiss this subject for the present session, I cannot forbear again expressing regret that the measure has not been made more complete,--in one word, more radical.

We ought never to have acted on more than one; and had the Senate been sufficiently radical, had it founded its bill on clear, definite principle, there would have been no occasion for more than one.

Just so far as we have failed to found ourselves on clear, definite principle, our bills have failed; and should there be failure under the present bill, it will be precisely on that account.

I shall never cease to lament that Congress did not at once assume jurisdiction of the whole region, and in the exercise of its plenary authority establish civil governments, supplying ample military support.

Such a Reconstruction would have been founded on principles to defy the criticism of history.

Even if you decline to establish civil governments, I think, that, under the Military Bill, you should go forward and brush away all the existing governments there.

Those governments, whether State or municipal, are just so many engines of Rebel influence.

One of these is a system of public education.

Who will open the public schools to all children?

We are of opinion that it will only be done by a colored mayor with colored members of the city council.

And yet, in the face of such intelligence from the Rebel States, we decline to require a system of public education as an essential element in these new governments.

Will you have the great right of suffrage depend upon Act of Congress in one half of the Union, and not upon Act of Congress in the other half?

I know the answer, that in the Rebel States the fact of rebellion gives a power we have not in the other States.

And now I submit that such an Act for the Loyal States is only the just complement to our action in the Rebel States.

How can you look the Rebel States in the face, when you have required colored suffrage of them and fail to require it in the other States?

Be just; require it in the Loyal States as you have required it in the Rebel States.

Without this bill your original measures are imperfect, ay, radically unjust.

But the great sources of power in the two cases are identical; they are one and the same.

Unlike the proposition of the Committee, it is not of cast-iron, but is so as to adapt itself to all the conditions of business in every part of the country.

There is the guaranty clause in the National Constitution, the sleeping giant of the Constitution, never until this recent war awakened, but now it comes forward with a giant’s power.

I say that this bill is essential to perfect the original Reconstruction measures.

You should not return to your homes without this additional Act by which Reconstruction is finished.

I challenge the expression of any reason against it, or of any doubt with regard to its constitutionality; and I ask Senators to look at it as a great measure of expediency as well as of justice.

Then, again, in the final provision, that for every bank-note issued a greenback shall be withdrawn, you find the great highway to specie payments.