and brought to light that
intelligent and energetic mind which has elevated the character and
contributed to the prosperity of the country. It is the ballot which
is the stimulus to improvement, which fires the heart of youthful
ambition, which stimulates honorable aspiration, which penetrates the
thick shades of the forest, and takes the poor rail-splitter by the
hand and points him to the shining height of human achievement, or
which goes into the log hut of the tailor boy and opens to him the
avenue of the presidential mansion."

Mr. Yates then declared his confidence in the triumph of the principle
of universal suffrage: "It is my conscientious conviction that if
every Senator on this floor, and every Representative in the other
House, and the President of the United States, should, with united
voices, attempt to oppose this grand consummation of universal
equality, they will fail. It is too late for that. You may go to the
head-waters of the Mississippi and turn off the little rivulets, but
you can not go to the mouth, after it has collected its waters from a
thousand rivers, and with accumulated volume is pouring its foaming
waters into the Gulf, and say, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no
further.'

"It is too late to change the tide of human progress. The enlightened
convictions of the masses, wrought by the thorough discussions of
thirty years, and consecrated by the baptism of precious blood, can
not now be changed. The hand of a higher power than man's is in this
revolution, and it will not move backward. It is of no use to fight
against destiny. God, not man, created men equal. Deep laid in the
solid foundations of God's eternal throne, the principle of equality
is established, indestructible and immortal.

"Senators, sixty centuries of the past are looking down upon you. All
the centuries of the future are calling upon you. Liberty, struggling
amid the rise and wrecks of empires in the past, and yet to struggle
for life in all the nations of the world, conjures you to seize this
great opportunity which the providence of Almighty God has placed in
your hands to bless the world and make your names immortal, to carry
to full and triumphant consummation the great work begun by your
fathers, and thus lay permanently, solidly, and immovably, the
cap-stone upon the pyramid of human liberty."

On the 21st of February, the proposed amendment being again before the
Senate, Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, delivered an