ad its poisonous
tentacles over the southern portion of the body politic. To arrest its
growth and save the nation we have passed through the harrowing
operation of intestine war, dreaded at all times, resorted to at the
last extremity, like the surgeon's knife, but absolutely necessary to
extirpate the disease which threatened with the life of the nation the
overthrow of civil and political liberty on this continent. In that dire
extremity the members of the race which I have the honor in part to
represent--the race which pleads for justice at your hands
to-day,--forgetful of their inhuman and brutalizing servitude at the
South, their degradation and ostracism at the North, flew willingly and
gallantly to the support of the national Government.

Their sufferings, assistance, privations, and trials in the swamps and
in the rice-fields, their valor on the land and on the sea, form a part
of the ever-glorious record which makes up the history of a nation
preserved, and might, should I urge the claim, incline you to respect
and guarantee their rights and privileges as citizens of our common
Republic. But I remember that valor, devotion, and loyalty are not
always rewarded according to their just deserts, and that after the
battle some who have borne the brunt of the fray may, through neglect
or contempt, be assigned to a subordinate place, while the enemies in
war may be preferred to the sufferers.

The results of the war, as seen in reconstruction, have settled forever
the political status of my race. The passage of this bill will determine
the civil status, not only of the Negro, but of any other class of
citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will form the
cap-stone of that temple of liberty, begun on this continent under
discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of the sneers of
monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends of freedom, until at
last it stands, in all its beautiful symmetry and proportions, a
building the grandest which the world has ever seen, realizing the most
sanguine expectations and the highest hopes of those who, in the name of
equal, impartial, and universal liberty, laid the foundation-stone.

The Holy Scriptures tell us of an humble handmaiden who long,
faithfully, and patiently gleaned in the rich fields of her wealthy
kinsman, and we are told further that at last, in spite of her humble
antecedents she found favor in his sight. For over two centuries our
race h