"I would have been glad if he would have told us in what manner the white men of this country would have been placed in a worse condition than they are now, if this becomes the law. This general denunciation and general assault of the bill, without pointing out one single thing which is to deprive one single man of any right he enjoys under the Government, seems to me not entitled to much weight.
"When those rights which are enumerated in this bill are denied to any class of men, on account of race or color, when they are subject to a system of vagrant laws which sells them into slavery or involuntary servitude, which operates upon them as upon no other part of the community, they are not secured in the rights of freedom. If a man can be sold, the man is a slave. If he is nominally freed by the amendment to the Constitution, he has nothing in the world he can call his own; he has simply the labor of his hands on which he can depend. Any combination of men in his neighborhood can prevent him from having any chance to support himself by his labor. They can pass a law that a man not supporting himself by labor shall be deemed a vagrant, and that a vagrant shall be sold. If this is the freedom we gave the men who have been fighting for us and in defense of the Government, if this is all we have secured them, the President had far better never have issued the Proclamation of Emancipation, and the country had far better never have adopted the great ordinance of freedom.
"Does any man in this House believe that these people can be safely left in these States without the aid of Federal legislation or military power? Does any one believe that their freedom can be preserved without this aid? If any man does so believe, he is strangely blind to the history of the past year; strangely blind to the enactments passed by Legislatures touching these freedmen. And I shuddered as I heard the honorable gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Rogers] claiming that he was speaking and thinking in the spirit which animated the Savior of mankind when he made atonement for our race; that it was in that spirit he was acting when he was striving to have these people left utterly defenseless in the hands of men who were proving, day by day, month by month, that they desire to oppress them, for they had been made free against their consent. Every act of legislation, every expression of opinion on their part, proves that these people would be again enslaved if they were not protected by the military arm of the Federal Government; without that they would be slaves to-day. And I submit, with all deference, that it is any thing but the spirit which the gentleman claims to have exercised, which prompted the argument he has made.