"Shall we be told, sir, that if the Representatives of the people of twenty-five States are of the opinion that the laws and institutions which exist in the seat of Government of the United States ought to be changed, that they are not to be changed because a majority of the voters who reside here do not desire that change? Will any man say that the voices of these seven thousand voters are to outweigh the voices of all the constituencies of the United States in the capital of their country? I dismiss this objection, therefore, as totally destitute of reason or weight. It is based upon a fallacy so feeble that it is dissipated by the bare touch of the Constitution to it. "Whatever is the duty of the United States to do, that is for their interest to do. The two great facts written in history by the iron hand of the late war are, first, that the Union is indissoluble, and second, that human slavery is here forever abolished. From these two facts consequences corresponding in importance with the facts themselves must result: from the former, a more vigorous and powerful nationality; from the latter, the elevation and improvement of the race liberated by the war from bondage, as well as a higher and more advanced civilization in the region where the change has taken place. It is impossible to say that the African race occupies to-day the same position in American affairs and counts no more in weight than it did before the rebellion. You can not strike the fetters from the limbs of four million men and leave them such as you found them. As wide as is the interval between a freeman and a slave, so wide is the difference between the African race before the rebellion and after the rebellion. You can not keep to its ancient level a race which has been released from servitude any more than you can keep back the ocean with your hand after you have thrown down the sea-wall which restrained its impatient tides. Freedom is every-where in history the herald of progress. It is written in the annals of all nations. It is a law of the human race. Ignorance, idleness, brutality--these belong to slavery; they are her natural offspring and allies, and the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Chanler,] who consumed so much time in demonstrating the comparative inferiority of the black race, answered his own argument when he reminded us that the Constitution recognized the negro only as a slave, and gave us the strongest reason why we should now begin to recognize him as a freeman. Sir, I do not doubt that the negro race is inferior to our own. That is not the question. You do not advance an inch in the argument after you have proved that premise of your case. You must show that they are not only inferior, but that they are so ignorant and degraded that they can not be safely intrusted with the smallest conceivable part of political power and responsibility, and that this is the case not on the plantations of Alabama and Mississippi, but here in the District of Columbia.