at the progress of free
principles."

Mr. Johnson, of Pennsylvania, after having adduced a variety of
arguments against the bill, finally said: "Sir, we hear a tremendous
outcry in this House in favor of popular government and about the
guarantee of the Constitution of the United States to the several
States that they shall have republican governments. How are the poor
people of this District to have a republican form of government if
gentlemen who have come to this city, perhaps for the first time in
their lives, undertake to control them as absolutely and arbitrarily
as Louis Napoleon controls France or Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask,
What right have they to hold an election and express their sentiments?
What right have they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to
have the right to petition, for their rulers are generally arbitrary
enough.

"Mr. Speaker, it seems to me ridiculously inconsistent for gentlemen
upon this floor to prate so much about a republican form of
government, and rise here and offer resolution after resolution about
the Monroe doctrine and the downtrodden Mexicans, while they force
upon the people of this District a government not of their own choice,
because the voter in a popular government is a governor himself. But,
sir, this is only part of a grand plan. Gentlemen who dare not go
before their white constituents and urge that a negro shall have a
vote in their own States, come here and undertake to thrust negro
suffrage upon the people here. Gentlemen whose States have repudiated
the idea of giving the elective franchise to negroes, come here and
are willing to give the suffrage to negroes here, as if they intended
to make this little District of Columbia a sort of negro Eden; as if
they intended to say to the negroes of Virginia and Maryland and
Delaware, 'You have no right to vote in these States, but if you will
go to Washington you can vote there.' I imagine I can see them
swarming up from different sections of the country to this city and
inquiring where the polls are. Agents, men and women, such as there
are at work in this city, will no doubt be at work in these States,
telling them to pack their knapsacks and march to Washington, for on
such a day there is to be an election, and there they will have the
glorious privilege of the white man. Sir, all this doctrine is
destructive of the American system of government, which recognizes the
right of no man to participate in it un