t the black child
should not be put into the same school with the white child, but that
they should be educated in different schools to be provided for them;
but if the black man paid for educating the children of the District,
his child should be educated. There was at once an outcry, 'Why, this
is social equality of the two races; this is political equality;' and
they would not consent that the black child should be educated, even
with the money of the black father. That amendment was declared to be
carried in the Senate of the United States, and after declaring it was
carried, the Senate adjourned, and after the adjournment, the chairman
of that committee, Mr. Brown, appealed to me personally if I would not
withdraw it. I said to him, 'No, I would never withdraw it; if you tax
the black man, the black man should have a part of the money that you
raise from him to educate his child.'

"After some days, the bill came up again in the Senate of the United
States, and the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the
Committee on the District of Columbia, got up and in open Senate
appealed to me, 'Will the Senator from New Hampshire withdraw that
amendment?' 'Never, Mr. President.' 'Then,' said the Senator from
Mississippi, 'I will lay the bill aside, and will not ask the Senate
to pass it;' and so the whole scheme failed, because they would not
consent that the money of the black man should educate his own child,
and they could not vote it to educate a white child.

"Now I turn back to that time six years ago, and I mark the road that
we have come along. I mark where we struck the chains from the black
man in this same District, whose child you could not educate six years
ago; I mark, in this Senate, at this very session, that we have passed
a bill in aid of the Freedmen's Bureau to secure to him his rights in
this District; I mark that all through this nation we have stricken
off the chains of the slave and secured to the slave his rights
elsewhere in the Union; and we have now come to the height of the
hill, and are considering whether we will not enfranchise those very
black men through all the country."

In favor of granting political rights to the negro, Mr. Clark made the
following remarks: "Mr. President, the question of the negro has
troubled the nation long. His condition as a slave troubled you; and
his condition as a freedman troubles you. Are you sick, heart-sick of
this trouble? and do you inquire when wi