determine by their votes at the ballot-box whether they desire to inaugurate a system of political equality with the colored people

of the District.

"Self-government was the great principle which impelled our fathers to protest against the powers of King George. That was the principle which led the brave army of George Washington across the ice of the river Delaware. It was the principle which struck a successful blow against despotism, and planted liberty upon this continent. It was the principle that our fathers claimed the Parliament of England had no right to invade, and drove the colonies into rebellion, because laws were passed without their consent by a Parliament in which they were unrepresented. "I am here to-day to plead for the white people of this District, upon the same grounds taken by our fathers to the English Parliament, in favor of self-government and the right of the people of the District to be heard upon this all-important question. Although we may have a legal yet we have no moral right, according to the immutable principles of justice, and according to the declaration of Holy Writ, that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us, to inflict upon the people of this District this fiendish doctrine of political equality with a race that God Almighty never intended should stand upon an equal footing with the white man and woman in social or civil life."

Mr. Farnsworth, of Illinois, replied: "He [Mr. Rogers] says this is a white man's Government. 'A white man's Government!' Why, sir, did not the Congress of the United States pass a law for enrolling into the service of the United States the black man as well as the white man? Did not we tax the black man as well as the white man? Does he not contribute his money as well as his blood for the protection and defense of the Government? O, yes; and now, when the black man comes hobbling home upon his crutches and his wooden limbs, maimed for life, bleeding, crushed, wounded, is he to be told by the people who called him into the service of the Government, This is a white man's Government; you have nothing to do with it?' Shame! I say, eternal shame upon such a doctrine, and upon the men who advocate it!

"What should be the test as to the right to exercise the elective franchise? I contend that the only question to be asked should be, 'Is he a man?' The test should be that of manhood. not that

of color, or races, or class. Is he endowed with conscience and reason? Is he an immortal being? If these questions are answered in the affirmative, he has the same right to protection that we all enjoy.

"I am in favor, Mr. Speaker, of making suffrage equal and universal. I believe that greater wisdom is concentrated in the decisions of the ballot-box when all citizens of a certain age vote than when only a part vote. If you apply a test founded on education or intelligence, where will you stop? One man will say that the voter should be able to read the Constitution and to write his name; another, that he should be acquainted with the history of the United States; another will demand a still higher degree of education and intelligence, until you will establish an aristocracy of wisdom, which is one of the worst kinds of aristocracy. Sir, the men who formed this Government, who believed in the rights of human nature, and designed the Government to protect them, believed, I think, as I do, that when suffrage is made universal, you concentrate in the ballot-box a larger amount of wisdom than when you exclude a portion of the citizens from the right of suffrage.

"I grant, sir, that many of the colored men whom I would enfranchise are poor and ignorant, but we have made them so. We have oppressed them by our laws. We have stolen them from their cradles and consigned them to helpless slavery. The shackles are now knocked from their limbs, and they emerge from the house of bondage and stand forth as men. Let us now take the next grand step, a step which must commend itself to our judgment and consciences. Let us clothe these men with the rights of freemen, and give them the power to protect their rights.

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"Sir, as I have already remarked, we have passed through a fiery ordeal. There are but few homes within our land that are not made desolate by the loss of a son or a father. The widow and the orphan meet us wherever we turn. The maimed and crippled soldiers of the republic are every-where seen. Many fair fields have become cemeteries, where molder the remains of the noble men who have laid down their lives in defense of our Government. We thought that we had attained the crisis of our troubles during the progress of the war. But it has been said that the ground-swell of the ocean after the storm is often more dangerous to the mariner than the tempest itself; and I am inclined to

think that this is true in reference to the present posture of our national affairs. The storm has apparently subsided; but, sir, if we fail to do our duty now as a nation-and that duty is so simple that a child can understand it ; no elaborate argument need enforce it, as no sophistry can conceal it; it is simply to give to one man the same rights that we give to another-if we fail now in this our plain duty as a nation, then the ship of state is in more peril from this ground-swell on which we are riding than it was during the fierce tempest of war. I trust that this Congress will have the firmness and wisdom to guide the old ship safely into the haven of peace and security. This we can do by fixing our eyes upon the guiding star of our fathers—the equal rights of all men.”

The discussion was resumed on the following day, January 12, by Mr. Davis, of New York: "Republican government can never rest safely, it can never rest peacefully, upon any foundation save that of the intelligence and virtue of its subjects. No government, republican in form, was ever prosperous where its people were ignorant and debased. And in this Government, where our fathers paid so much attention to intelligence, to the cultivation of virtue, and to all considerations which should surround and guard the foundations of the republic, I am sure that we would do dishonor to their memory by conferring the franchise upon men unfitted to receive it and unworthy to exercise it.

"I am perfectly aware that in many States we have given the elective franchise to the white man who is debased and ignorant. I regret it, because I think that intelligence ought always, either as to the black or the white man, to be made a test of suffrage. And I glory in the principles that have been established by Massachusetts, which prescribes, not that a man should have money in his purse, but that he should have in his head a cultivated brain, the ability to read the Constitution of his country, and intelligence to understand his rights as a citizen.

"I have never been one of those who believed that the black man had 'no rights that the white man was bound to respect.' I believe that the black man in this country is entitled to citizenship, and, by virtue of that citizenship, is entitled to protection, to the full power of this Government, wherever he may be found on the face of God's earth; that he has a right to demand that the shield of this Government shall be held over him, and that its powers shall be exerted on his behalf to the same extent as

if he were the proudest grandee of the land. But, sir, citizenship is one thing, and the right of suffrage is another and a different thing; and in circumstances such as exist around us, I am unwilling that general, universal, unrestricted suffrage should be granted to the black men of this District, as is proposed by the bill under consideration.

"This whole subject is within the power of Congress, and if we grant restricted privilege to-day, we can extend the exercise of that privilege to-morrow. . Public sentiment on this, as on a great many subjects, is a matter of slow growth and development. That is the history of the world. Development upon all great subjects is slow. The development of the globe itself has required countless ages before it was prepared for the introduction of man upon it. And take the progress of the human race through the historic age-kingdoms and empires, systems of social polity, systems of religion, systems of science, have been of no rapid growth, but long centuries intervened between their origin and their overthrow.

"The Creator placed man on earth, not for the perfection of the individual, but the race; and therefore he locked up the mysteries of his power in the bosom of the earth and in the depths of the heavens, rendering them invisible to mankind. He made man study those secrets, those mysteries, in order that his genius might be cultivated, his views enlarged, his intellect matured, so that he might gradually rise in the scale of being, and finally attain the full perfection for which his Creator designed him.

"Thus governments, political systems, and political rights have been the subjects of study and improvement; changes adapted to the advance of society are made; experiments are tried, based upon reason and upon judgment, and those are safest which in their gradual introduction avoid unnecessary violence and convulsion.

"I submit, sir, whether it be wise for us now so suddenly to alter so entirely the political status of so great a number of the citizens of this District, in conferring upon them indiscriminately the right of franchise.'

Mr. Chanler, of New York, then addressed the House:

"If, sir, it should ever be your good fortune to visit romantic old Spain, and to enter the fortress and palace of Alhambra, the

fairest monument of Moorish grandeur and skill, as this Capitol is the pride of American architecture, you may see cut in stone a hand holding a key, surmounting the horse-shoe arch of the main gateway. They are the three types of strength, speed, and secresy, the boast of a now fallen Saracen race, sons of that sea of sand, the desert, who carried the glory of Islam to furthest Gades. In an evil hour of civil strife and bitter hatred of faction, the Alhambra was betrayed to Spain, 'to feed fat an ancient grudge' between political chiefs. The stronghold of the race, with the palace, the sacred courts of justice, and all the rare works of art the gardens of unrivaled splendor-all that was their own of majesty, strength, and beauty, became the trophies of another.

"The legend of the Saracen exile tells the story of penitence and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, who crossed the ocean to establish the glory of civil and religious liberty, and secure freedom to themselves and their posterity. To-day we are assembled in the Alhambra of America; here is our citadel; here our courts of highest resort; around these halls cluster the proudest, associations of the American people; they seem almost sacred in their eyes. No hostile foot of foreign foe or domestic traitor has trodden them in triumph. Above it floats the flag, the emblem of our Union. That Union is the emblem of the triumphs of the white race. That race rules by the ballot. Shall we surrender the ballot, the emblem of our sovereignty; the flag, the emblem of our Union; the Union, the emblem of our national glory, that they may become the badges of our weakness and the trophies of another race? Never, sir! never,

never!

"Shall the white laborer bow his free, independent, and honored brow to the level of the negro just set free from slavery, and, by yielding the entrance to this great citadel of our nation, surrender the mastery of his race over the Representatives of the people, the Senate, and Supreme Court of this Union? Then, sir, the white workingman's sovereignty would begin to cease to be. "Then the most democratic majesty of American liberty would be humbled in the little dust which was lately raised by a brief campaign of two hundred thousand negro troops, and even they