gh to do whatsoever I think my duty requires, directly and not by
indirection."

Mr. Lane, with several other Western Senators, had been counted as
opposed to negro suffrage, hence his advocacy of the principle gave
much strength to those who desired to take a position in advance of
the proposition of the committee.

In reply to an oft-reiterated argument that a war of races would
result from allowing suffrage to the negro, Mr. Lane remarked: "If you
wish to avoid a war of races, how can that be accomplished? By doing
right; by fixing your plan of reconstruction upon the indestructible
basis of truth and justice. What lesson is taught by history? The
grand lesson is taught there that rebellions and insurrections have
grown out of real or supposed wrong and oppression. A war of races!
And you are told to look to the history of Ireland, and to the history
of Hungary. Why is it that revolution and insurrection are always
ready to break out in Hungary? Because, forsooth, the iron rule of
Austria has stricken down the natural rights of the masses. It is a
protest of humanity against tyranny, oppression, that produces
rebellion and revolution. So in the bloody history of the Irish
insurrections. Suppose the English Parliament had given equal rights
to the Irish, had enfranchised the Catholics in Ireland in the reign
of Henry VIII, long ere this peace and harmony would have prevailed
between England and Ireland. But the very fact that a vast portion of
a people are disfranchised sows the seeds of continual and
ever-recurring revolution and insurrection. It can not be otherwise.
These insurrections and revolutions, which are but the protest of our
common humanity against wrong, are one of the scourges in the hands of
Providence to compel men to do justice and to observe the right. It is
the law of Providence, written upon every page of history, that God's
vengeance follows man's wrong and oppression, and it will always be
so. If you wish to avoid a war of races, if you wish to produce
harmony and peace among these people, you must enfranchise them all."

On the following day, February 9th, Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, occupied
the time devoted by the Senate to a consideration of this question
with a speech against the proposed amendment of the Constitution. Mr.
Johnson said that when the Constitution was framed there was no such
objection to compromising as now existed in the minds of some
Senators. "The framers of the Constitu