not only control quarantine, but have the sanitary supervision
of internal commerce in times of epidemics, and hold an advisory
relation to the State and municipal health authorities, with power
to deal with whatever endangers the public health, and which the
municipal and State authorities are unable to regulate. The national
quarantine act approved April 29, 1878, which was passed too late in
the last session of Congress to provide the means for carrying it into
practical operation during the past season, is a step in the direction
here indicated. In view of the necessity for the most effective
measures, by quarantine and otherwise, for the protection of our
seaports and the country generally from this and other epidemics,
it is recommended that Congress give to the whole subject early and
careful consideration.

The permanent pacification of the country by the complete protection
of all citizens in every civil and political right continues to be of
paramount interest with the great body of our people. Every step
in this direction is welcomed with public approval, and every
interruption of steady and uniform progress to the desired
consummation awakens general uneasiness and widespread condemnation.
The recent Congressional elections have furnished a direct and
trustworthy test of the advance thus far made in the practical
establishment of the right of suffrage secured by the Constitution to
the liberated race in the Southern States. All disturbing influences,
real or imaginary, had been removed from all of these States.

The three constitutional amendments which conferred freedom and
equality of civil and political rights upon the colored people of the
South were adopted by the concurrent action of the great body of good
citizens who maintained the authority of the National Government and
the integrity and perpetuity of the Union at such a cost of treasure
and life, as a wise and necessary embodiment in the organic law of the
just results of the war. The people of the former slaveholding States
accepted these results, and gave in every practicable form assurances
that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, and laws
passed in pursuance thereof, should in good faith be enforced, rigidly
and impartially, in letter and spirit, to the end that the humblest
citizen, without distinction of race or color, should under them
receive full and equal protection in person and property and in
political rights and