Sometimes it is argued that it is not permissible to make certain requirements in the new constitutions, although, when the constitutions are presented to Congress for approval, we may object to them for the want of these very things. Thus it is said that we may not require educational provisions, but that we may object to the constitutions, when formed, if they fail to have this safeguard. This argument forgets the paramount power of Congress over the Rebel States, which you have already exercised in ordaining universal suffrage. Who can doubt, that, with equal reason, you may ordain universal education also? And permit me to say that one is the complement of the other. But I do not stop with assertion of the power. The argument that we are to wait until the constitution is submitted for approval is not frank. I wish to be plain and explicit. We have the power, assured by reason and precedent. Exercise it. Seize the present moment. Grasp the precious privilege. There are some who act on the principle of doing as little as possible. I would do as much as possible, believing that all we do in the nature of safeguard must redound to the good of all and to the national fame. It is in this spirit that I now move to require a system of free schools, open to all without distinction of caste. For this great safeguard I ask your votes. You have prescribed universal suffrage. Prescribe now universal education. The power of Congress is the same in one case as in the other. And you are under an equal necessity to employ it. Electors by the hundred thousand will exercise the franchise for the first time, without delay or preparation. They should be educated promptly. Without education your beneficent legislation may be a failure. The gift you bestow will be perilous. I was unwilling to make education the condition of suffrage; but I ask that it shall accompany and sustain suffrage. Mr. President, I plead now for Education. Nothing more beautiful or more precious. Education decorates life, while it increases all our powers. It is the charm of society, the solace of solitude, and the multiple of every faculty. It adds incalculably to the capacity of the individual and to the resources of the community. Careful inquiry establishes what reason declares, that labor is productive in proportion to its education. There is no art it does not advance. There is no form of enterprise it does not encourage and quicken. It brings victory, and is itself the greatest of victories. In a republic education is indispensable. A republic without education is like the creature of imagination, a human being without a soul, living and moving blindly, with no just sense of the present or the future. It is a monster. Such have been the Rebel States,--for years nothing less than political monsters. But such they must be no longer.