in passing laws which, if constitutionally
carried into effect, will control the interests and destinies of four
millions people, mostly living within the limits of your States."

Mr. Cook, of Illinois, replied: "Mr. Speaker, in listening to the very
eloquent remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Rogers], I have
been astonished to find that in his apprehension this bill is designed
to deprive somebody, in some State of this Union, of some right which
he has heretofore enjoyed. I am only sorry that he was not specific
enough; that he did not inform us what rights are to be taken away. He
has denounced this bill as dangerous to liberty, as calculated in its
tendency at least to destroy the liberties of this country. I have
examined this bill with some care, and, so far as I have been able to
understand it, I have found nothing in any provision of it which tends
in any way to take from any man, white or black, a single right he
enjoys under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

"I would have been glad if he would have told us in what manner the
white men of this country would have been placed in a worse condition
than they are now, if this becomes the law. This general denunciation
and general assault of the bill, without pointing out one single thing
which is to deprive one single man of any right he enjoys under the
Government, seems to me not entitled to much weight.

"When those rights which are enumerated in this bill are denied to any
class of men, on account of race or color, when they are subject to a
system of vagrant laws which sells them into slavery or involuntary
servitude, which operates upon them as upon no other part of the
community, they are not secured in the rights of freedom. If a man can
be sold, the man is a slave. If he is nominally freed by the amendment
to the Constitution, he has nothing in the world he can call his own;
he has simply the labor of his hands on which he can depend. Any
combination of men in his neighborhood can prevent him from having any
chance to support himself by his labor. They can pass a law that a man
not supporting himself by labor shall be deemed a vagrant, and that a
vagrant shall be sold. If this is the freedom we gave the men who have
been fighting for us and in defense of the Government, if this is all
we have secured them, the President had far better never have issued
the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the country had far better never
have a