justice of this age, and especially of this country, does not
consist in stripping whole States of their liberties and reducing all
their people, without distinction, to the condition of slavery. It deals
separately with each individual, confines itself to the forms of law,
and vindicates its own purity by an impartial examination of every case
before a competent judicial tribunal. If this does not satisfy all our
desires with regard to Southern rebels, let us console ourselves by
reflecting that a free Constitution, triumphant in war and unbroken in
peace, is worth far more to us and our children than the gratification
of any present feeling.

I am aware it is assumed that this system of government for the
Southern States is not to be perpetual. It is true this military
government is to be only provisional, but it is through this temporary
evil that a greater evil is to be made perpetual. If the guaranties
of the Constitution can be broken provisionally to serve a temporary
purpose, and in a part only of the country, we can destroy them
everywhere and for all time. Arbitrary measures often change, but they
generally change for the worse. It is the curse of despotism that it has
no halting place. The intermitted exercise of its power brings no sense
of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more they will
be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to plague them
again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power, unrestrained
by law, may seek its next victims. The States that are still free may be
enslaved at any moment; for if the Constitution does not protect all, it
protects none.

It is manifestly and avowedly the object of these laws to confer upon
negroes the privilege of voting and to disfranchise such a number of
white citizens as will give the former a clear majority at all elections
in the Southern States. This, to the minds of some persons, is so
important that a violation of the Constitution is justified as a means
of bringing it about. The morality is always false which excuses a wrong
because it proposes to accomplish a desirable end. We are not permitted
to do evil that good may come. But in this case the end itself is evil,
as well as the means. The subjugation of the States to negro domination
would be worse than the military despotism under which they are now
suffering. It was believed beforehand that the people would endure any
amount of military oppression for any