Looking back upon the day when that Act became a law by the signature of Abraham Lincoln, I feel how grandly it has been vindicated by the result. The sinister forebodings of your enemies are all falsified. We were told that you could not bear freedom,--that you would be lawless, idle, and thriftless. I knew the contrary; and is it not as I foretold? Who so mad as to wish back the old system of wrong? But the work is only _half done_. The freedman, despoiled of the elective franchise, is only _half a man_. He must be made _a whole man_; and this can be only by investing him with all the rights of an American citizen. Here, too, we encounter the same sinister forebodings that stood in the way of Emancipation. We are told that you cannot bear enfranchisement, and that you will not know how to vote. I know the contrary; and I am satisfied, further, that there can be no true repose in this country until all its people are admitted to that full equality before the law which is the essential principle of republican government. It were not enough to assure equality in what are called civil rights. This is only _semi-equality_. The equality must be complete. This I ask, not only for your sake, but also for the sake of my country, imperilled by such a denial of justice. Accept my best wishes, and believe me, dear Sir, faithfully yours, CHARLES SUMNER. DANIEL G. MUSE, ESQ. JUSTICE TO MECHANICS IN THE WAR. SPEECH IN THE SENATE, ON A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF CERTAIN CONTRACTORS, APRIL 17, 1866. The Senate having under consideration a bill for the relief of certain contractors for the construction of vessels of war and steam machinery, Mr. Sumner said:-- MR. PRESIDENT,--I am happy to agree with the Senator from Kentucky [Mr. GUTHRIE] in the fundamental principle he has laid down and developed so clearly. I agree with him, that by no legislation of ours can we recognize the principle that contractors with the Government may never lose. The Senator cannot state the proposition too strongly. But I part company with him, when he undertakes to apply it to the present case. We agree on the proposition; we disagree on the application. Had these contracts covered a period of peace, there would have been occasion for the rule of the Senator. But they were not in a period of peace; they were in a period of war. And the Senator himself has characterized the war as perhaps the greatest in history. If not made in a time of war, they were all the harder performed in those early days which were heralds of war. The practical question for us as legislators is, whether we can shut our eyes to that condition of things. The times were exceptional; and so must the remedy be also.