SEC. 4. That the District Courts of the United States shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all offences against this Act; and the district attorneys, marshals, and deputy marshals, the commissioners appointed by the Circuit and Territorial Courts of the United States, with powers of arresting, imprisoning, or bailing offenders, and every other officer specially empowered by the President of the United States, shall be, and they are hereby, required, at the expense of the United States, to institute proceedings against any person who violates this Act, and cause him to be arrested and imprisoned or bailed, as the case may be, for trial before such court as by this Act has cognizance of the offence. SEC. 5. That every citizen unlawfully deprived of any of the rights of citizenship secured by this Act, under any pretence of race or color, may maintain a suit against any person so depriving him, and recover damages in the District Court of the United States for the district in which such person may be found. On this he spoke as follows:-- MR. PRESIDENT,--In the construction of a machine the good mechanic seeks the simplest process, producing the desired result with the greatest economy of time and force. I know no better rule for Congress on the present occasion. We are mechanics, and the machine we are constructing has for its object the conservation of Equal Rights. Surely, if we are wise, we shall seek the simplest process, producing the desired result with the greatest economy of time and force. How widely Senators are departing from this rule will appear before I have done. * * * * * Rarely have I entered upon any debate in this Chamber with a sense of sadness so heavy as oppresses me at this moment. It was sad enough to meet the champions of Slavery, as in other days they openly vindicated the monstrous pretension and claimed for it the safeguard of the Constitution, insisting that Slavery was national and Freedom sectional. But this was not so sad as now, after a bloody war with Slavery, and its defeat on the battle-field, to meet the champions of a kindred pretension, for which they claim the safeguard of the Constitution, insisting also, as in the case of Slavery, upon State Rights. The familiar vindication of Slavery in those early debates was less sickening than the vindication now of the intolerable pretension, that a State, constituting part of the Nation, and calling itself “Republican,” is entitled to shut out any citizen from participation in government simply on account of race or color. To denominate such pretension as intolerable expresses very inadequately the extent of its absurdity, and the utterness of its repugnance to all good principles, whether of reason, morals, or government.