MR. PRESIDENT,--I would not fail in any courtesy to any Senator,
especially in any courtesy to the Senator from Vermont, for whom I have
all kindness and honor, but I think Senators will agree that nothing
passed yesterday between us by which I am in any way constrained, so
that I may not ask the Senate to proceed at once with this bill. If I
could see the question as my friend from Connecticut sees it, he may
be assured that I should not press the bill. I do not see it so; but
I do see that this bill is now on our table numbered _One_: it is the
first bill of the Calendar. I see also that at this time the Senate has
no business before it; and should I not fail in duty, if I did not ask
the Senate to proceed during this unoccupied time with a bill which I
regard as so important, and which is actually the first in order, being
foremost among all bills?
But my friend from Connecticut reminds me of a recent decision of
the Supreme Court. For that Court I have great respect. Personal and
professional familiarity with the Court, and study of its judgments
running now for much more than a generation, incline me always to
deference when its decisions are mentioned; but if I understood my
friend, he relies upon a newspaper report. Sir, I have read the
judgment of that Court, communicated to me by one of its members in
an official copy; and I have no hesitation in saying that the Senator
is entirely mistaken, if he supposes that by a hair’s breadth it
interferes with the constitutionality of the bill which I now move.
Sir, there is no such lion in our path. It exists only in the
imagination of my friend,--or in the desire, which he has so often
manifested, to interfere with the adoption of this measure. But
the Senator is mistaken if he supposes that I charge upon him any
indifference to Human Rights. Never, in any debate, has any word fallen
from me which that Senator can so misinterpret. I know too well his
heart, his excellent and abounding nature, his New-England home, to
attribute to him any such indifference. But I do know full well, for
the Senator has often declared it, that he acts under interpretations
of the Constitution which it seems to me belong to the period anterior
to the war rather than since the war. It seems to me--I may be
mistaken, but I cannot help saying it--that the Senator has not yet
recognized that greatest of all victories by which a new interpretation
is fixed upon the National Constitution, so that hereafter all its
sentences, all its phrases, all its words, shall be interpreted broadly
and emphatically for Human Rights. How often have I been obliged to say
this! But the Senator forgets that victory. There is his error. Most
sincerely, most ardently, do I trust that the Senate will never forget
it; I hope we shall duly act upon it, and celebrate it in our acts.
Sir, I have been betrayed into these remarks simply by way of answer
to what has been said by my friend. I had hoped that this bill might
be proceeded with without debate. I had trusted that this benign
measure was so clear and refulgent with justice that no Senator would
rise in his place to oppose it. I had indulged the longing that those
especially in favor of amnesty for all would adopt that other greater
and more comprehensive principle of justice for all. Strange, Sir,
that the sensibilities of so many are aroused in favor of amnesty,
and yet those same Senators are so dull when the rights of men are
presented! I, Sir, am anxious to see universal amnesty; but with it
must be asserted also universal justice. Our colored fellow-citizens
must be admitted to complete equality before the law. In other words,
everywhere, in everything regulated by law, they must be equal with
all their fellow-citizens. There is the simple principle on which
this bill stands. Who can impugn it? Who can throw upon it the shadow
of question? Sir, if the Constitution of the United States does
not sanction a bill like this, then forthwith should we proceed to
amend that Constitution, and make it more worthy of our regard. Much
as has been done, this bill must also be added to the trophies of
Congressional action; this bill must be enumerated among the great
results of our recent legislation. Terrible war will then have been a
beneficent parent.