"We, _the people_ of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." * * * * * That Constitution, with its amendments, is the latest and the greatest utterance of American sovereignty. The hour is now at hand when that majestic sovereign, for the benignant purpose of securing still farther the 'blessings of liberty,' is about to put forth another oracle; is about to declare that universal freedom shall be the supreme law of the land. Show me the power that is authorized to forbid it.... They made the Constitution what it is. They could have made it otherwise then: they can make it otherwise now. * * * * * In the very crisis of our fate, God brought us face to face with the alarming truth, that we must lose our own freedom, or grant it to the slave. In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic, and amidst the very thunder of battle we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that when the nation was redeemed, he should be free, and share with us the glories and blessings of freedom. In the solemn words of the great proclamation of emancipation, we not only declared the slaves forever free, but we pledged the faith of the nation "to maintain their freedom"--mark the words, "_to maintain their freedom_." The Omniscient witness will appear in judgment against us if we do not fulfil that covenant. Have we done it? Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it a mere negation? the bare privilege of not being chained, bought, and sold, branded, and scourged? If this be all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion, and it may well be questioned whether slavery were not better. But liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration, "that all men are created equal," that the sanction of all just government is "the consent of the governed." Can these truths be realized until each man has a right to be heard on all matters relating to himself? Mr. Speaker, we did more than merely to break off the chains of the slaves. The abolition of slavery added four million citizens to the Republic. By the decision of the Supreme Court, by the decision of the attorney-general, by the decision of all the departments of our government, those men made free are, by the act of freedom, made citizens. * * * * *