"This measure is called for, because these reconstructed Legislatures, in defiance of the rights of the freedmen, and the will of the nation, embodied in the amendment to the Constitution, have enacted laws nearly as iniquitous as the old slave codes that darkened the legislation of other days. The needs of more than four million colored men imperatively call for its enactment. The Constitution authorizes and the national will demands it. By a series of legislative acts, by executive proclamations, by military orders, and by the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution by the people of the United States, the gigantic system of human slavery that darkened the land, controlled the policy, and swayed the destinies of the republic has forever perished. Step by step we have marched right on from one victory to another, with the music of broken fetters ringing in our ears. None of the series of acts in this beneficent legislation of Congress, none of the proclamations of the Executive, none of these military orders, protecting rights secured by law, will ever be revoked or amended by the voice of the American people. There is now "'No slave beneath that starry flag, The emblem of the free.' "By the will of the nation freedom and free institutions for all, chains and fetters for none, are forever incorporated in the fundamental law of regenerated and united America. Slave codes and auction blocks, chains and fetters and blood-hounds, are things of the past, and the chattel stands forth a man, with the rights and the powers of the freemen. For the better security of these new-born civil rights we are now about to pass the greatest and the grandest act in this series of acts that have emancipated a race and disinthralled a nation. It will pass, it will go upon the statute-book of the republic by the voice of the American people, and there it will remain. From the verdict of Congress in favor of this great measure, no appeal will ever be entertained by the people of the United States." Mr. Cowan spoke again, and denounced the section of the bill which provided for its enforcement by the military. He said: "There it is; words can not make it plainer; reason can not elucidate it; no language can strengthen it or weaken it, one way or the other. There is the question whether a military man, educated in a military school, accustomed to supreme command, unaccustomed to the administration of civil law among a free people, is to be intrusted with these appellate jurisdiction over the courts of the country; whether he can in any way, whether he ought in any way, to be intrusted with such a power. I, for my part, will never agree to it; and I should feel myself recreant to every duty that I owed to myself, to my country, to my country's history, and I may say to the race which has been for hundreds and thousands of years endeavoring to attain to something like constitutional liberty, if I did not resist this and all similar projects."