Xiii.
In speaking of the duty of Congress to secure universal suffrage, both at the North, as well as at the South, for all its citizens, he had said:I submit that the doing it in the loyal States is only the just complement to your action in the Rebel States. How can you look the Rebel States in the face when you have required colored suffrage of them, and fail to require it in the other States? Be just; require it in the loyal States as you have now required it in the Rebel States. There is an unanswerable argument, and I submit it on the question of order. If we are now privileged to consider only matters that are in aid of the reconstruction measures, then I submit that this bill is in aid of those [501] measures, for it is to give them completeness and roundness. Unless you pass this bill your original measure is imperfect; ay, it is radically unjust. I know it is said you have one title to legislation over the Rebel States which you have not over the loyal States,—to wit, that they have been in rebellion; but the great cardinal sources of power over the Rebel States are identical with those over the loyal States. They are one and the same. There is the clause in the Constitution directing you to guarantee a republican form of government. It is a clause which is like a sleeping giant in the Constitution,—never until this recent war awakened—but now it comes forward with a giant's power. There is no clause in the Constitution like it. There is no clause which gives to Congress such a supreme power over the States, as that clause. There, as I have already said, you have the two other clauses. Your power under the Constitution is complete. It is not less beneficial than complete. * * Who then can hesitate? Look at it in any light which you please. Regard it as the completion of these reconstruction measures; regard it as a constitutional enactment; regard it as a measure of expediency in order to secure those results which we all desire at the approaching elections; and who can hesitate? You have had no bill before you for a long time, the passage of which would be of more practical advantage than this.
