al revolutions which ever
characterized the history of a free State; but it was a revolution
which, though initiated by the conflict of arms and rendered necessary
as a measure of war against the public enemy, was accomplished within
and under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. It
was a revolution for the relief of human nature, a revolution which
gave life, liberty, and hope to millions whose condition, until then,
appeared to be one of hopeless despair. It was a revolution of which
no freeman need be ashamed, of which every man who assisted in it
will, I am sure, in the future be proud, and which will illumine with
a great glory the history of this country.

"There is nothing in this bill in respect to the employment of
military force that is not already in the Constitution of the United
States. The power here conferred is expressly given by that
instrument, and has been exercised upon the most stupendous scale in
the suppression of the rebellion. What is this bill? I hope gentlemen,
even on the opposite side of the House, will not suffer their minds to
be influenced by any such vague, loose, and groundless denunciations
as these which have proceeded from the gentleman from New Jersey. The
bill, after extending these fundamental immunities of citizenship to
all classes of people in the United States, simply provides means for
the enforcement of these rights and immunities. How? Not by military
force, not through the instrumentality of military commanders, not
through any military machinery whatever, but through the quiet,
dignified, firm, and constitutional forms of judicial procedure. The
bill seeks to enforce these rights in the same manner and with the
same sanctions under and by which other laws of the United States are
enforced. It imposes duties upon the judicial tribunals of the country
which require the enforcement of these rights. It provides for the
administration of laws to protect these rights. It provides for the
execution of laws to enforce them. Is there any thing appalling in
that? Is that a military despotism? Sir, it is a strange abuse of
language to say that a military despotism is established by wholesome
and equal laws. Yet the gentleman declaimed by the hour, in vague and
idle terms, against this bill, which has not a single offensive,
oppressive, unjust, unusual, or tyrannical feature in it. These civil
rights and immunities which are to be secured, and which no man can
co