thy innovation upon popular rights, in
the name of the toiling millions of the land; and I warn the House and
the country of the untold mischief and disaster which must come to
distract and divide the republic in the future, if we follow the
pernicious and destructive doctrines founded upon either the
prejudices of class, caste, wealth, or power. I protest in the name of
a constituency whose early history was a sublime and persistent
struggle against the prejudices of pampered and arrogant ruffianism at
home, and the worse than ruffian spirit of the Administrations of
Pierce and Buchanan, and the Democratic traitors who at that time
constituted a majority of this House, and were engaged in preparing
the nation for its harvest of blood. We must go back to the spirit and
purposes of the founders of our Government. We must accept the grand
logic of the mighty revolution from which we are now emerging. We must
repudiate, now and forever, these assaults upon the masses of the
people and upon the fundamental principles of popular rights. I accept
in their full force and effect the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, and by constitutional amendment and law of Congress I
would stamp them with irrevocable power upon the political escutcheon
of the new and regenerated republic. I would avoid the mistakes of the
past, and I would spurn that cringing timidity by which, through all
history, liberty has been sacrificed and humanity betrayed.

"Sir, I hesitate not to say that if we do not gather up, in the
process of national reconstruction, the enduring safeguards of future
peace, we shall be false to our history and unmindful of the grand
responsibilities now devolving upon us. The establishment of impartial
suffrage in this District will be a fitting commencement of the work.
It will be hailed by the friends of freedom every-where as a return to
a policy of national justice too long delayed. In behalf of the State
I have the honor to represent, and upon whose soil this contest for a
larger liberty and a nobler nationality was first submitted to the
arbitrament of arms, I hail this measure with feelings of satisfaction
and pride. It is the legitimate result of the courage and fidelity of
the hardy pioneers of Kansas in 1856, who dared to face the
blandishment of power and the arrogance and brutality of slavery when
compromisers trembled, and Northern sycophants of an oligarchic
despotism, then, as now, scowled and fretted