nd equality, must be
determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress. The
last session really did nothing which can be considered final as to these
questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the
proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted
and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and
cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a
government by States to something like a despotic central government,
with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to
make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an
idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,--an
idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections
of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,--no general
assertion of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the
character of the government at this point is neither possible nor
desirable. All that is necessary to be done is to make the government
consistent with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible
with the sacred rights of human nature.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to
protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States.
They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go
unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon
the national statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths of
human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own
conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it
favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it
could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom,
manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South;
and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the
intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the
conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which it
is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it, unless the
Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State
authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This,
of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way
and the easiest way is to make our governmen