nd in the presence of the
whole country, that there is not a line or word, not a thought or dictum
even, in the decision of the Supreme Court in the great Slaughter-house
cases, which casts a shadow of doubt on the right of Congress to pass
the pending bill, or to adopt such other legislation as it may judge
proper and necessary to secure perfect equality before the law to every
citizen of the Republic. Sir, I protest against the dishonor now cast
upon our Supreme Court by both the gentleman from Kentucky and the
gentleman from Georgia. In other days, when the whole country was bowing
beneath the yoke of slavery, when press, pulpit, platform, Congress and
courts felt the fatal power of the slave oligarchy, I remember a
decision of that court which no American now reads without shame and
humiliation. But those days are past; the Supreme Court of to-day is a
tribunal as true to freedom as any department of this Government, and I
am honored with the opportunity of repelling a deep disgrace which the
gentleman from Kentucky, backed and sustained as he is by the gentleman
from Georgia, seeks to put upon it.

* * * * *

The amendments in the Slaughter-house cases one and all, are thus
declared to have as their all-pervading design and ends the security of
the recently enslaved race, not only their nominal freedom, but their
complete protection from those who had formerly exercised unlimited
dominion over them. It is in this broad light that all these amendments
must be read, the purpose to secure the perfect equality before the law
of all citizens of the United States. What you give to one class you
must give to all, what you deny to one class you shall deny to all,
unless in the exercise of the common and universal police power of the
State, you find it needful to confer exclusive privileges on certain
citizens, to be held and exercised still for the common good of all.

Such are the doctrines of the Slaughter-house cases--doctrines worthy of
the Republic, worthy of the age, worthy of the great tribunal which thus
loftily and impressively enunciates them. Do they--I put it to any man,
be he lawyer or not; I put it to the gentleman from Georgia--do they
give color even to the claim that this Congress may not now legislate
against a plain discrimination made by State laws or State customs
against that very race for whose complete freedom and protection these
great amendments were elaborated and adopted? Is it pretended, I as