ormerly existed
will accept that constitutional provision in good faith. I myself
accept it in good faith. Believing that all the laws authorizing
slavery have fallen, I have advised the people of Kentucky, and I
would advise all the States, to put these Africans upon the same
footing that the whites are in relation to civil rights. They have all
the rights that were formerly accorded to the free colored population
in all the States just as fully this day as they will have after this
bill has passed, and they will continue to have them.

"Now, to the States belong the government of their own population, and
those within their borders, upon all subjects. We, in Kentucky,
prescribe punishment for those who violate the laws; we prescribe it
for the white population; we prescribe it for the free African
population, and we prescribe it for the slave population. All the laws
prescribing punishment for slaves fell with slavery, and they were
subject afterward only to the penalties which were inflicted upon the
free colored population, they then being free. Slaves, for many
offenses, were punished far less than the free colored people. No
slave was sent to the penitentiary and punished for stealing, or any
thing of that kind, whereas a free person was. But all these States
will now, of course, remodel their laws upon the subject of offenses.
I would advise that there should be but one code for all persons,
black as well as white; that there shall be one general rule for the
punishment of crime in the different States. But, sir, the States must
have time to act on the subject; and yet we are here preparing laws
and penalties, and proposing to carry them into execution by military
authority, before the States have had time to legislate, and even
before some of their Legislatures have had time to convene.

"Kentucky has had her share of talking here, and, sir, she has had her
share of suffering during the war. At one time she was invaded by
three armies of the rebellion; all but seven or eight counties of the
State, at one time, were occupied by its armies, and her whole
territory devastated by guerrillas. We have suffered in this war. We
have borne it as best we could. We feel it intensely that now, at the
end of the war, we should be subjected to a military despotism, our
houses liable to be entered at any time when our families are at rest,
by military men who can arrest and send to prison without warrant, and
we are obliged