In our recent debates able Senators have denied everything. They will not concede the “means”; and they even ignore this great clause, which, as Cicero said of the ancient _Senatusconsultum_, has rested so long like a sword in its scabbard.[9] But there it is. Senators may ignore it; they may not see it; but there it is in the Constitution. In attempting to belittle this clause Senators only show how little they appreciate the lofty unity of the Republic. Other clauses are important in the machinery of government; but this guaranty makes the Republic one and indivisible, being One out of Many, and places the rights of all under the protecting power of the nation. Before the extinction of Slavery, State Rights were successful against this guaranty. To invoke this tyrannical pretension was enough. How often was it heard on this floor! How completely did it dominate the Constitution itself! But the habit still continues, and we are still compelled to hear this same pretension, under which States _played the turtle_, drawing head, legs, and tail all within an impenetrable shell. With the overthrow of the Rebellion on the bloody field this pretension should have been abandoned and forgotten. A State is not a turtle, which can shut itself within its shell, and enjoy its own separate animal existence; but it is a component part of this great Republic, with which it is interlaced and interlocked so as to share with every other State a common life, subject to one and the same prevailing law. To insist that a State can play the turtle now, as in the days when Slavery ruled, is to dishonor the Constitution, and to abandon the crowning victory over the Rebellion. Do you ask for the power in the Constitution to enter into a State and establish republican government? I give it to you in an immortal text. To question it is to show an ignorance of language which in this case is clear beyond criticism, and an ignorance also of the true genius of American institutions, where unity of rights is the Alpha and the Omega. The national motto, _E Pluribus Unum_, is another expression of that great unity by which the States are lost in the Nation. And this guaranty I now invoke for the protection of the good people of Georgia, and for the protection hereafter of Human Rights, when imperilled anywhere within the limits of the Republic. But there are other and exceptional reasons why Georgia is still within the control of Congress. The process of Reconstruction in this State is not yet completed; so that the government there is simply provisional, and nothing else. This is only according to the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, where it is provided,--