rongs daily inflicted upon five million citizens demanding
redress, to commit this question to the diversity of legislation? In the
words of Hamilton--"Is it the interest of the Government to sacrifice
individual rights to the preservation of the rights of an artificial
being called the States? There can be no truer principle than this, that
every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the
protection of Government. Can this be a free Government if partial
distinctions are tolerated or maintained?"

The rights contended for in this bill are among "the sacred rights of
mankind, which are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty
records; they are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human
nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or
obscured by mortal power."

But the Slaughter-house cases!--The Slaughter-house cases!

The honorable gentleman from Kentucky, always swift to sustain the
failing and dishonored cause of proscription, rushes forward and flaunts
in our faces the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
the Slaughter-house cases, and in that act he has been willingly aided
by the gentleman from Georgia. Hitherto, in the contests which have
marked the progress of the cause of equal civil rights, our opponents
have appealed sometimes to custom, sometimes to prejudice, more often to
pride of race, but they have never sought to shield themselves behind
the Supreme Court. But now for the first time, we are told that we are
barred by a decision of that court, from which there is no appeal. If
this be true we must stay our hands. The cause of equal civil rights
must pause at the command of a power whose edicts must be obeyed till
the fundamental law of our country is changed.

Has the honorable gentleman from Kentucky considered well the claim he
now advances? If it were not disrespectful I would ask, has he ever read
the decision which he now tells us is an insuperable barrier to the
adoption of this great measure of justice?

In the consideration of this subject, has not the judgment of the
gentleman from Georgia been warped by the ghost of the dead doctrines of
States-rights? Has he been altogether free from prejudices engendered by
long training in that school of politics that well-nigh destroyed this
Government?

Mr. Speaker, I venture to say here in the presence of the gentleman from
Kentucky, and the gentleman from Georgia, a