ng which Negroes served in Congress, the problem
of securing civil rights for the freedmen or of protecting them in the
exercise of such rights demanded, to a greater extent than any other,
the energy and efforts of the Negro Congressmen. Indeed, but few of
the men of this group failed during their careers in Congress to
register their opinions on this all-absorbing matter.

Remarking at length on the Georgia bill,[51] Senator Revels spoke out
fearlessly in the defense of his race. He defended the Negroes against
charges of antagonism and servile strife, lauded the conduct of Negro
soldiers in the Civil War and the part they played in saving the
Union. He called attention to the loyalty of the Negroes in protecting
the white women and their homes, with the knowledge that the masters
were engaged in the prosecution of a war the success of which would
have meant permanent bondage to the blacks. He asserted that the
Negroes bore toward their former masters no revengeful thoughts, no
hatreds, no animosities. He recounted the iniquities of the bill then
before the body, prayed the protection of those whose rights were
thereby threatened, and appealed to Congress to give to the
reconstructed State such direction and support as would best meet its
most imperative needs.

The discussion of the civil rights bill gave rise to one of Robert
Brown Elliott's greatest speeches.[52] Arising to defend the bill, he
proceeded to refute the proposition advanced by Beck of Kentucky and
supported by Stephens of Georgia, that Congress had no power to
legislate against a plain discrimination made by State laws or customs
against any person or class of persons within its limits. In reference
to the decision of the Slaughter House Cases of Louisiana, which the
gentlemen had advanced in support of their thesis, Elliott pointed out
the difference in principle between the issues there involved and
those at hand. In the former case the court held the act in question
to be "a legitimate and warrantable exercise of the police power of
the State in regulating the business of stock landing and slaughtering
in the city of New Orleans and the territory immediately contiguous."
In this case, however, the evils complained of comprehended "the
exclusion of certain classes of persons from public inns, from the
saloons and tables of the steamboat, from the sleeping-cars on
railways, and from the right of sepulchre in public burial-grounds."

The Supreme Co