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when he wrote 'all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This North has no geographical boundaries. It embraces the friends of freedom in every quarter of this great republic. Many of its bravest champions hail from the geographical South. The North, that did not fear the slave power in its prime, in the day of its political strength and patronage, when it commanded alike the nation and the mob, and for the same cruel purpose, will not be intimidated by its expiring maledictions around this capital. The North must pass this bill to vindicate its sincerity and its courage. The slave power has already learned that the North is terrible in war, and forgiving and gentle in peace; let its crushed and mangled victims learn from the passage of this bill, that the justice of the North, unlimited by lines of latitude, unlimited by color or race, slumbereth not."

Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, followed: "In preparing to begin the work of reconstructing the grandest of human governments, shattered for a time by treason, and in endeavoring to ascertain what we should do, and how and when it should be done, I have consulted no popular impulse. Groping my way through the murky political atmosphere that has prevailed for more than thirty years, I have seated myself at the feet of the fathers of our country, that I might, as far as my suggestions would go, make them in accordance with the principles of those who constructed our Government. I can make no suggestion for the improvement of the primary principles or general structure of our Government, and I would heal its wounds so carefully that it should descend to posterity unstained and unmarred as it came, under the guidance of Providence, from the hands of those who fashioned it.

"For whom do we ask this legislation? In 1860, according to the census, there were fourteen thousand three hundred and sixteen colored people in this District, and we ask this legislation for the male adults of that number. Are they in rags and filth and degradation? The tax-books of the District will tell you that they pay taxes on $1,250,000 worth of real estate, held within the limits of this District. On one block, on which they pay taxes on fifty odd thousand dollars, there are but two colored freeholders who have not bought themselves out of slavery.

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One of them has bought as many as eight persons beside himself-a wife and seven children. Coming to freedom in manhood, mortgaged for a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars as his own price, he has earned and carried to the Southern robber thousands of dollars, the price extorted for his wife and children, and is now a freeholder in this District. They have twenty-one churches, which they own, and which they maintain at an annual cost of over twenty thousand dollars. Their communing members number over forty-three hundred. In their twentytwo Sunday-schools they gather on each Sabbath over three thousand American children of African descent. They maintain, sir, to the infamous disgrace of the American Congress and people, thirty-three day schools, eight of which are maintained exclusively by contributions from colored citizens of the District; the remainder by their contributions, eked out by contributions from the generous people of the North; and every dollar of their million and a quarter dollars of real estate and personal property is taxed for schools to educate the children of the white people of the District, the fathers of many of those children having been absent during the war fighting for the Confederacy and against our constitutional flag. Who shall reproach them with being poor and ignorant while Congress, which has exclusive jurisdiction over the District, has, till last year, robbed them day by day, and barred the door of the public school against them? Such reproach does not lie in the white man's mouth; at any rate, no member of the Democratic party ought to utter it."

The debate was continued on the day following. Mr. Rogers, of New Jersey, having obtained the floor, addressed the House for two hours. He said: "I hold that there never has been, in the legislation of the United States, a bill which involved so momentous consequences as that now under consideration, because nowhere in the history of this country, from the time that the first reins of party strife were drawn over the land, was any political party ever known to advocate the doctrine now advocated by a portion of the party on the other side of this House, except within the last year, and during the heat and strife of battle in the land. The wisdom of ages for more than five thousand years, and the most enlightened governments that ever existed upon the face of the earth, have handed down to us that grand principle that all governments of a civilized character have been and were

intended especially for the benefit of white men and white women, and not for those who belong to the negro, Indian, or mulatto race.

"It is the high prerogative which the political system of this country has given to the masses, rich and poor, to exercise the right of suffrage and declare, according to the honest convictions of their hearts, who shall be the officers to rule over them. There is no privilege so high, there is no right so grand. It lies at the very foundation of this Government; and when you introduce into the social system of this country the right of the African race to compete at the ballot-box with the intelligent white citizens of this country, you are disturbing and embittering the whole social system; you rend the bonds of a common political faith; you break up commercial intercourse and the free interchanges of trade, and you degrade the people of this country before the eyes of the envious monarchs of Europe, and fill our history with a record of degradation and shame.

"Why, then, should we attempt at this time to inflict the system of negro suffrage upon those who happen to be so unfortunate as to reside in the District of Columbia? This city bears the name of George Washington, the father of our country; and as it was founded by him, so I wish to hand it down to those who shall come after us, preserving that principle which declares that the sovereignty is in the white people of the country, for whose benefit this Government. was established. I am not ready to believe that those men who have laid down their lives in the battles of the late revolution, who came from their homes like the torrents that sweep over their native hills and mountains, those men who gathered round 'the sacred precincts of the tomb of Washington to uphold and perpetuate our proud heritage of liberty, intended to inflict upon the people of this District, or of this land, the monstrous doctrine of political equality of the negro race with the white at the ballot-box.

"No such dogma as this was ever announced by the Republican party in their platforms. When that party met at Chicago, in 1860, they took pains to enunciate the great principle of self-government which underlies the institutions of this country, that each State has the right to control its own domestic policy according to its own judgment exclusively. I ask the gentlemen on the other side of the house to allow the people of the District of Columbia to exercise the same great right of self-government, to

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