"I am afraid of degrading this Government; I am afraid of danger to constitutional liberty; I am alarmed at the stupendous strides which this Congress is trying to initiate; and I appeal in behalf of my country, in behalf of those that are to come after us, of generations yet unborn, as well as those now living, that conservative men on the other side should rally to the standard of sovereign and independent States, and blot out this idea which is inculcating itself here, that all the powers of the States must be taken away, and the power of the Czar of Russia or the Emperor of France must be lodged in the Federal Government. "I ask you to stand by the law of the country, and to regulate these Federal and State systems upon the grand principles upon which they were intended to be regulated, that we may hand down to those who are to come after us this bright jewel of civil liberty unimpaired; and I say that the Congress or the men who will strip the people of these rights will be handed down to perdition for allowing this bright and beautiful heritage of civil liberty embodied in the powers and sovereign jurisdiction of the States to pass away from us. "I am willing to trust brave men--men who have shown as much bravery as those who were engaged on battle-fields against the armed legions of the North; because I believe that even when they were fighting against the flag, of their country, the great mass of those people were moved by high and conscientious convictions of duty. And in the spirit of Christianity, in the spirit which Jesus Christ exercised when he gave up his own life as a propitiation for a fallen world, I would say to those Southern men, Come here in the Halls of Congress, and participate with us in passing laws which, if constitutionally carried into effect, will control the interests and destinies of four millions people, mostly living within the limits of your States." Mr. Cook, of Illinois, replied: "Mr. Speaker, in listening to the very eloquent remarks of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Rogers], I have been astonished to find that in his apprehension this bill is designed to deprive somebody, in some State of this Union, of some right which he has heretofore enjoyed. I am only sorry that he was not specific enough; that he did not inform us what rights are to be taken away. He has denounced this bill as dangerous to liberty, as calculated in its tendency at least to destroy the liberties of this country. I have examined this bill with some care, and, so far as I have been able to understand it, I have found nothing in any provision of it which tends in any way to take from any man, white or black, a single right he enjoys under the Constitution and laws of the United States.