e South? Have they filled it with violence, outrage,
and murder? No, sir; they are remarkably gentle, patient, and
respectful. Have they despoiled its wealth or diminished its grandeur?
No, sir; their unpaid toil has made the material South. They removed
the forests, cleared the fields, built the dwellings, churches,
colleges, cities, highways, railroads, and canals. Why, then, does the
South hate and persecute these people? Because it has wronged them.
Injustice always hates its victim. They are forced to look to the
North for justice. And what is the North? Not the latitude of frosts;
not New England and the States that border on the lakes, the
Mississippi, and the Pacific. The geographical is lost in the
political meaning of the word. The North, in a political sense, means
justice, liberty, and union, and in the order in which I have named
them. Jefferson defined this 'North' 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 sugge