"Kentucky has had her share of talking here, and, sir, she has had her share of suffering during the war. At one time she was invaded by three armies of the rebellion; all but seven or eight counties of the State, at one time, were occupied by its armies, and her whole territory devastated by guerrillas. We have suffered in this war. We have borne it as best we could. We feel it intensely that now, at the end of the war, we should be subjected to a military despotism, our houses liable to be entered at any time when our families are at rest, by military men who can arrest and send to prison without warrant, and we are obliged to go, and we are obliged to pay any fines they may impose. I do not believe that you will lose any thing if you pause before passing such legislation as this, and establishing these military despotisms, for we do not know where they are to end." Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, had proposed to strike out the last clause of the bill, which provided that "such part of the land and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia," as should be necessary, might be employed to prevent the violation, and enforce the due execution of this act. The Senator from Indiana opposed the bill on the ground that it employed the machinery of the Fugitive Slave Law, and that it was to be enforced by the military authority of the United States. He said: "This bill is a wasp; its sting is in its tail. Sir, what is this bill? It provides, in the first place, that the civil rights of all men, without regard to color, shall be equal; and, in the second place, that if any man shall violate that principle by his conduct, he shall be responsible to the court; that he may be prosecuted criminally and punished for the crime, or he may be sued in a civil action and damages recovered by the party wronged. Is not that broad enough? Do Senators want to go further than this? To recognize the civil rights of the colored people as equal to the civil rights of the white people, I understand to be as far as Senators desire to go; in the language of the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner], to place all men upon an equality before the law; and that is proposed in regard to their civil rights."