let him up, restore to him his knife and revolver, and politely ask him about terms of peace? Gentlemen, I pray you not to forget the cost of this war. In considering the terms and conditions of peace, do not forget the rivers of blood and seas of fire through which so many of our brave legions waded to their death. Do not, I beseech you, so soon forget the widows and orphans made to mourn through stricken lives to their graves, and the green mounds under which sleep so much of the glory, and pride, and beauty of our Israel. And will you remember all this, and then turn to the rebels as "misguided fellow-citizens," "erring brethren," "wayward sisters," and ask them about the conditions of peace? Shall we tell them that our conquest over them, instead of stripping them of their rights, only restores those rights? — that we fought for a military victory, utterly barren of any other results, and that the States to-day in revolt are in the Union, with all their rights inhering, state and constitutional, and have never been out? Shall we deal with conquered traitors and public enemies as equal sovereigns with ourselves, and insult justice and mock God by pettifogging their cause? Gentlemen, I repeat it, the rebels are in our power, and if we foolishly surrender it we shall be the most recreant people on earth. The glorious fruits of our victory are within our grasp. We have only to reach forth our hands to possess them. Let me plead with you to do your duty. Breathe into the hearts of your rulers your own spirit of earnestness and resolution. Compass this administration about with that persistent pressure which at last gave the country a saving policy of the war under Mr. Lincoln. Do not shrink from the duty of frank and friendly criticism of the conduct of your public servants, when you see them in danger of going astray. Thunder it in the ears of your President and Congress that you demand the hanging, certainly the exile, of the great rebel leaders; the confiscation and distribution of their great landed estates; and that the governing power in the South shall be placed in the hands of the friends, and not the enemies of the nation. Do this, and the result will be a peace with the South as lasting as her hills, and our Republic will be in reality, for the first time in her history, the model Republic of the world.

SUFFRAGE IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 16, 1866.

[The bill extending the right of suffrage to the colored people of the District of Columbia was debated in the House with singular thoroughness and force; and its passage by the vote of yeas 116 to nays 54 showed the progress of public opinion, and evidently did much in opening the way for the enfranchisement of the negro in the insurrectionary districts.]

MR. SPEAKER,

Whatever doubts may arise as to the authority of Congress to regulate the right of suffrage in the districts lately in revolt, none can exist as to such authority within the District. of Columbia. By the express words of the Constitution, Congress here has "exclusive power of legislation;" and that power, of course, extends to all the legitimate subjects of legislation, of which the ballot is unquestionably one. Shall it be conferred, irrespective of color, or granted only to white men? Shall Congress recognize the equal rights of all men in the metropolis of the nation and the territory under its exclusive control, or must our national policy still be inspired by that contempt for the negro which caused slavery, and finally gave birth to the horrid war from which we have just emerged? Shall the nation, through its chosen servants, stand by the principle of taxation and representation, for which our fathers fought in the beginning, or reënact its guilty compact with aristocracy and caste? This is the question, variously stated, which confronts us in the bill before the House. It must now be dealt with upon its merits. To attempt to postpone or evade it is to trifle with the dangers and duties of the hour, and forget all the terrible lessons of the past.

Mr. Speaker, I demand the ballot for the colored men of this District on the broad ground of absolute right. I repudiate the political philosophy which treats the right of suffrage as merely conventional. The right of a man to a voice in the government which deals with his liberty, his property, and his life, is as natural, as inborn, as any one of those enumerated by our fathers. It is said, I know, that natural rights are only those universal ones which exist in a state of nature, in which every man takes his defense and protection into his own hands; but I answer that there

is no such state of nature, save in the dreams of speculative writers. The natural state of man is a state of society, which demands law, government, as the condition of its life. By the right of suffrage I mean the right to a share in the governing power; and while the peculiar manner and circumstances of its exercise may fairly be regarded as conventional, the right is natural. If not, then there are no natural rights, since none could be enjoyed except by the favor or grace of the government, which must decide for itself who shall be permitted to share in its exercise. You may, if you choose, call the right of suffrage a natural social right; but whatever adjectives you employ in your definition, the right, I insist, is natural. Most certainly it is so in its primary sense. My friend from Iowa [MR. WILSON] Substantially agrees with me, for he speaks of suffrage, not as a privilege, but as a right, equally sacred with those acknowledged to be natural, and which government cannot take away. Sir, without the ballot no man is really free, because if he enjoys freedom it is by the permission of those who govern, and not in virtue of his own recognized manhood. We talk about the natural right of all men to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness; but if one race of men can rightfully disfranchise another, and govern them at will, what becomes of their natural rights? The moment you admit such a principle the very idea of Democracy is renounced, and Absolutism must own you as its disciple. The fact that society, through government as its agent, regulates the right, and withholds it in certain instances, as in the case of infants and idiots, and makes the withdrawal of it a punishment for crime in others, does not at all contravene the ground I assume. Society, for its own protection, takes away all natural rights, or rather, it declares them forfeited on certain prescribed conditions. Christianity and civilization place their brand upon slavery as a violation of the natural rights of men. But that system of personal servitude from which we have finally been delivered is only one type of slavery. Serfdom is another. That unnatural ownership of labor by capital which grinds the toiling millions of the Old World, and renders life itself a curse, is not less at war with natural rights than negro slavery. The degrees of slavery may vary, but the real test of freedom is the right to a share in the governing power. Judge Humphrey, speaking of the freedmen, says, "There is really no difference, in my opinion, whether we hold them as absolute slaves, or obtain their labor by some other method." The old slaveholders understand this perfectly. An intelligent human being, absolutely subject to the government under

which he lives, answerable to it in his person and property for disobedience, and yet denied any political rights whatever, is a slave. He may not wear the collar of any single owner, but he will be what Carl Schurz aptly calls "the slave of society," which is often a less merciful tyrant. He will owe to the mere grace of the government the right to marry and rear a family; the right to sue for any grievance; the right to own a home in the wide world d; the right to the means of acquiring knowledge; the right of free locomotion and to pursue his own happiness; the right to a fair day's wages for a fair day's work; the right to life itself, save on conditions to be fixed without his consent, and which may render him an alien and an outcast among men. So abject and humiliating is such a condition, and so perfectly does the world understand the sacredness of the rights of the citizen, that in all free governments his disfranchisement is appropriately made a part of the punishment for high crimes. Sir, I repeat it, there is no freedom, no security against wrong and outrage, save in the ballot; and Governor Brownlow is therefore thoroughly right in principle, in contending that the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and giving Congress the power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce this abolition, authorizes us to secure the ballot to all men in the revolted districts, irrespective of color. It is not slavery in form, but in fact, and under whatever name, that the people of the United States intend to have abolished forever.

If I am right in this view, color has nothing whatever to do with the question of suffrage, as the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. KASSON] will see. The negro should not be disfranchised because he is black, nor the white man allowed to vote because he is white. Both should have the ballot because they are men and citizens, and require it for their protection. Are you willing to rest your right to the ballot on the purely contingent fact of your color? Your manhood tells you instantly that that is not the foundation. You are a man, endowed with all the rights of a man, and therefore you demand a voice in the government; but when you say this you assert the equal rights of the negro. Neither color, nor race, nor a certain amount of property, nor any other mere accident of humanity, can justify one portion of the people in stripping another portion of their equal rights before the law, the common master over all. Government, in fact, in its proper, American sense, is simply the agent and representative of the governed, in taking care of their interest and guarding their rights. It is not the concern of the few, nor of the many, but of all. The

negro, doubtless, would have been born white, if he could have been consulted; and to take from him his inherent rights as a man because of his complexion, is a political absurdity as monstrous as its injustice is mean and revolting. When you do it, you aim a deadly stab at the vital principle of all democracy. If you may disfranchise the negro to-day on account of his race, or color, you may disfranchise the Irishman to-morrow, and the German the next day; and then, perhaps, you will be prepared to strike down the laboring man, the "mudsill," adopting the Virginia philosophy, that" filthy operatives" and "greasy mechanics" are unfit for political power. No absurdity or wickedness can be too great for a people who could thus deliberately sin against the great primal truths of democracy; and the logical consequence of the first false step, of any departure whatever from the rule which makes manhood alone the test of right, must be to continually narrow the basis of popular power till the end shall be a remorseless aristocracy or an absolute despotism.

Mr. Speaker, this view of suffrage as a natural right greatly simplifies the whole subject. The sole question is, as already stated, whether our democratic theory of government shall be maintained in practically recognizing the inherent rights of all men as the source and basis of political power? To ask this question, in the United States, is to answer it. And public policy, also, answers the question in the interest of the broadest radicalism. Duty and advantage will be found hand in hand in any fairly tested experiment of equal suffrage. According to the census returns of 1860, the colored population of this District was then over fourteen thousand. It is now estimated at about twenty thousand. The value of real and personal property owned by them is at least $1,225,000. They own twenty-one churches, supported at a cost of over $20,000 per annum. The whole number of their communicants is 4,300, with an average attendance of 9,000, distributed among their own religious communities, and among the Catholic and Episcopal churches of their white fellowcitizens. They have twenty Sabbath-schools, with from three to four thousand scholars, and thirty-three day-schools, attended by over four thousand scholars in the month of last November. Four thousand of the colored people can read and write. They subscribe for 1,250 copies of the " National Republican," and about 3,000 copies of the Daily and Sunday "Chronicle." There are more than thirty benevolent, literary, and civic organizations among them, by which their needy, superannuated, and infirm are