ich embraces and embodies the judgment and the will of the
whole people. If the negroes of the South, four million strong, had
been endowed with the elective franchise, and had united with the
white people of that region in the work of rebellion, your armies would
have been powerless to subdue that rebellion, and you would to-day have
seen your territory limited by the Potomac and the Ohio.

* * * "We are to answer for our treatment of the colored people of this
country; and it will prove in the end impracticable to secure to men
of color civil rights, unless the persons who claim those rights are
fortified by the political right of voting. With the right of voting,
everything that a man ought to have or enjoy of civil rights comes to
him. Without the right to vote he is secure in nothing. I cannot
consent, after all the guards and safeguards which may be prepared for
the defence of the colored men in the enjoyment of their rights,--I
cannot consent that they shall be deprived of the right to protect
themselves. One hundred and eighty-six thousand of them have been in
the army of the United States. They have stood in the places of our
sons and brothers and friends. Many of them have fallen in the defence
of the country. They have earned the right to share in the government;
and, if you deny them the elective franchise, I know not how they are
to be protected. Otherwise you furnish the protection which is given
to the lamb when he is commended to the wolf.

"There is an ancient history that a sparrow pursued by a hawk took
refuge in the chief Assembly of Athens, in the bosom of a member of
that illustrious body, and that the senator in anger hurled it
violently from him. It fell to the ground dead; and such was the
horror and indignation of that ancient but not Christianized body,--
men living in the light of nature, of reason,--that they immediately
expelled the brutal Areopagite from his seat, and from the association
of humane legislators.

"What will be said of us, not by Christian, but by heathen nations
even, if, after accepting the blood and sacrifices of these men, we
hurl them from us, and allow them to become the victims of those who
have tyrannized over them for centuries? I know of no crime that
exceeds this; I know of none that is its parallel; and, if this country
is true to itself, it will rise in the majesty of its strength, and
maintain a policy, here and everywhere, by which the right of th