It was our national forces that saved them from this sacrifice, securing to them country, and, if not all their property, much of it.

According to all analogies of jurisprudence, and the principles of justice itself, the claimant can look for nothing beyond such contribution as Congress in its bounty may appropriate.

It is a mistake to suppose, as has been most earnestly argued, that a claimant of approved loyalty in the Rebel States should have compensation precisely like a similar claimant in a Loyal State.

To my mind this assumption is founded on a misapprehension of the Constitution, the law, and the reason of the case,--three different misapprehensions.

By the Constitution property cannot be taken for public use without “just compensation”; but this rule was silent in the Rebel States.

And when we consider how much was saved to the loyal citizen in a Rebel State by the national arms, it will be found that this rule is only according to justice.

Let them be heard; but the hearing must be according to some system, so that Congress shall know the character and extent of these claims.

Unhappily, that barbarism which we call Slavery is not yet dead, and it was his fate to fall under its vindictive assault.

Pleading for the Equal Rights of All, he became a victim and martyr.

The void, when a young man dies, is measured less by what he has done than by the promises of the future.

It was the saying of Antiquity, that it is sweet to die for country.

Here was death not only for country, but for mankind.

There is a testimony in death often greater than in any life.

The cause for which a man dies lives anew in his death.

His own soul is blasted; the cause he sought to kill is elevated; and thus it is now.

Often it happens that death, which takes away life, confers what life alone cannot give.

History does not forget Lovejoy, who for devotion to the cause of the slave was murdered by a fanatical mob; and it has already enshrined Abraham Lincoln in holiest keeping.

Another is added to the roll,--less exalted than Lincoln, less early in immolation than Lovejoy, but, like these two, to be remembered always among those who passed out of life through the gate of sacrifice.

The rules of business are the same for the nation as for an individual; nor can a nation, when it becomes a borrower, hope to escape the scrutiny which is applied to an individual under similar circumstances.

With regard to this branch of the national debt there is an open confession of insolvency, and each day renews the confession.

That the right to vote, to be voted for, and to hold office shall not be denied or abridged anywhere in the United States, under any pretence of race or color; and all provisions in any State Constitutions, or in any laws, State…

That every citizen unlawfully deprived of any of the rights of citizenship secured by this Act, under any pretence of race or color, may maintain a suit against any person so depriving him, and recover damages in the District Court of the…

We are mechanics, and the machine we are constructing has for its object the conservation of Equal Rights.

Rarely have I entered upon any debate in this Chamber with a sense of sadness so heavy as oppresses me at this moment.

It was sad enough to meet the champions of Slavery, as in other days they openly vindicated the monstrous pretension and claimed for it the safeguard of the Constitution, insisting that Slavery was national and Freedom sectional.