The exercise of this authority by Congress is in strict accordance with the distribution of the governmental powers, which is one of the distinguishing features of our American institutions. Whatever in civilized communities individual citizens can do better than any public authority is wisely left to individuals. Whatever local organizations, such as counties, towns and cities, can more efficiently accomplish than individuals, or the State, or national government, belongs to the local authorities. The extensive range of powers which State governments can most beneficially exercise should be confided to the States. The aim of the framers of the national Constitution, and of the people who have amended the original instrument, has been to confer on the national government those supreme powers which would enable it to secure to the people of the United States, “union,” “justice,” “tranquillity,” “the common defense,” “the general welfare,” and “the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.” The history of education in this country and in Europe abundantly proves that individuals and communities never have and never can provide universal education. Government alone is adequate to the task. In the free States, in many cases, after a long and doubtful struggle, it has been settled that the State can and ought to provide free instruction for all its people. In almost all of the late slave-holding States, however, especially in those States in which the number of colored people is large, the efforts made since their reconstruction have conclusively shown that to establish and support an efficient system of free education without aid from the national government, in the existing condition of the South, is simply impossible. The situation of the South is so manifestly exceptional that it is needless to dwell upon it. Slavery and free schools would not dwell together. Slavery did not, could not, tolerate universal education. I do not pause to debate the question, who was responsible for slavery. It is perhaps enough to say that the Union and the Constitution breathed into this Nation the breath of life, and gave to it that glorious history of which we are so proud. To the Union and to the Constitution we are indebted for our present prosperity, power and prestige, and the still more inspiring future which lies before us. The Union and the Constitution, to which we owe all that we are, and have been, and shall be, contained and recognized slavery. All who took part in forming the Union or in framing the Constitution, all who maintained them down to the war which brought emancipation, are in some degree and in some sense responsible for slavery. The only American citizens who are in no way responsible for slavery are the sons of Africa. “They are here by the crimes of our ancestors and the misfortunes of theirs.” And it is especially these colored people who now eagerly and with uplifted hands implore the Nation