ing the attributes which
challenge the respect of others. The past is silent of any negro
people who possessed military and civil organization, who cultivated
the arts at home, or conducted a regular commerce with their
neighbors. No African general has marched south of the desert, from
the waters of the Nile to the Niger and Senegal, to unite by conquest
the scattered territories of barbarous tribes into one great and
homogeneous kingdom. No Moses, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred has left
them a code of wise and salutary laws. They have had no builder of
cities; they have no representatives in the arts, in science, or in
literature; they have been without even a monument, an alphabet, or a
hieroglyphic."

On the other hand, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, among the friends of the
measure, delivered a speech "on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill," in which
the topic discussed was "Restoration of the Rebel States." In the
course of his remarks Mr. Garfield said:

"Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When
God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he bound them
all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around
which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by
storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may
be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin,
but far away in the everlasting depths, the sovereign sun holds the
turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the
high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes
miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed
orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in
ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign
people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of
obedience and duty."

After having quoted Gibbon's narrative of the destruction of the
colossal statue of Serapis by Theophilus, Mr. Garfield said: "So
slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled the temple
of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. Lincoln, on the 1st
of January, 1863, struck it on the cheek, and the faithless and
unbelieving among us expected to see the fabric of our institutions
dissolve into chaos because their idol had fallen. He struck it again;
Congress and the States repeated the blow, and its unsightly carcass
lies rotting in our streets. The sun shines in the heaven