Strike out this provision, and you will say to the children of this District: “There is a prejudice of color which we sanction; continue it; grow up with it in your souls.” And worse still, the prejudice which you sanction will extend from this centre over the whole country. This is a centre, and not a corner. What we do here will be an example in distant places. My friend says that this provision will hurt the schools. Pardon me; he is mistaken. It will help the schools. Everything that brings the schools into harmony with great principles and with divine truth must help them. Anything that makes them antagonistic to great principles and to divine truth hurts them. Strike out this provision, and you hurt them seriously, vitally,--you stab them here in the house of their friends. In a bill to promote education you deal it a fatal blow. Sir, as I cherish education, as I love freedom, as at all times I stand by human rights, so do I cherish, love, and stand by this safeguard. It is worth the whole bill. Strike it out, and the bill is too poor to be adopted. If it should be passed, thus shorn,--I say it, Sir, because I must say it,--it will bring disgrace upon Congress. To the colored people here we owe, certainly, equality; we owe to them the practical recognition of the promises of the Declaration of Independence; and still further, we must see that the common schools of this District are an example throughout the country. We cannot afford to do less. Everywhere throughout the region lately cursed by Slavery this dark prejudice still lingers and lowers. From our vantage-ground here we must strike it, and, according to our power, destroy it. But if the proposition of my friend prevails, you will encourage and foster it. Now, Sir, against the statement of my friend, the Chairman, I oppose the statement of experts,--I oppose a statement which, I venture to say here, cannot be answered. It is not my statement. I should not venture to say anything like that of anything that I said. I oppose a Report made by the Trustees of the Colored Schools in Washington, and I ask the attention of the Senate to what I read. It is a Report made to the Secretary of the Interior, December 31, 1870, and communicated to the Senate by the Secretary, January 18, 1871.[1] Under the head of “Need of Additional Legislation” the Trustees of the Colored Schools express themselves as follows:--