gainst
blacks. The power is also conferred by Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause
15--"Congress shall have power to suppress insurrections"--a power to
protect, as well blacks against whites, as whites against blacks. If the
constitution gives power to protect _one_ class against the other, it
gives power to protect _either_ against the other. Suppose the blacks in
the District should seize the whites, drive them into the fields and
kitchens, force them to work without pay, flog them, imprison them, and
sell them at their pleasure, where would Congress find power to restrain
such acts? Answer; a _general_ power in the clause so often cited, and
an _express_ one in that cited above--"Congress shall have power to
suppress insurrections." So much for a supposed case. Here follows a
real one. The whites in the District are _perpetrating these identical
acts_ upon seven thousand blacks daily. That Congress has power to
restrain these acts in _one_ case, all assert, and in so doing they
assert the power "in _all_ cases whatsoever." For the grant of power to
suppress insurrections, is an _unconditional_ grant, not hampered by
provisos as to the color, shape, size, sex, language, creed, or
condition of the insurgents. Congress derives its power to suppress this
_actual_ insurrection, from the same source whence it derived its power
to suppress the _same_ acts in the case supposed. If one case is an
insurrection, the other is. The _acts_ in both are the same; the
_actors_ only are different. In the one case, ignorant and
degraded--goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and
driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to
come. In the other, enlightened into the nature of _rights_, the
principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked
by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these
acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for _whole
lives_ of unrequited service. On which side may palliation be pleaded,
and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement of the rigors of
law? If Congress has power to suppress such acts _at all_, it has power
to suppress them _in_ all.

It has been shown already that _allegiance_ is exacted of the slave. Is
the government of the United States unable to grant _protection_ where
it exacts _allegiance_? It is an axiom of the civilized world, and a
maxim even with savages, that allegiance and protection are recipro