"Negro equality does not exist in nature. The African is without a history. He has never shown himself capable of self-government by the creation of a single independent State possessing the attributes which challenge the respect of others. The past is silent of any negro people who possessed military and civil organization, who cultivated the arts at home, or conducted a regular commerce with their neighbors. No African general has marched south of the desert, from the waters of the Nile to the Niger and Senegal, to unite by conquest the scattered territories of barbarous tribes into one great and homogeneous kingdom. No Moses, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred has left them a code of wise and salutary laws. They have had no builder of cities; they have no representatives in the arts, in science, or in literature; they have been without even a monument, an alphabet, or a hieroglyphic." On the other hand, Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, among the friends of the measure, delivered a speech "on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill," in which the topic discussed was "Restoration of the Rebel States." In the course of his remarks Mr. Garfield said: "Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, he bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths, the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience and duty."