e 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.

"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 give