If they are to be disfranchised, if they are to have no voice in determining the conditions under which they are to live and labor, what hope have they for the future? It will rest with their late masters, whose treason they aided to thwart, to determine whether negroes shall be permitted to hold property, to enjoy the benefits of education, to enforce contracts, to have access to the courts of justice--in short, to enjoy any of those rights which give vitality and value to freedom. Who can fail to foresee the ruin and misery that await this race to whom the vision of freedom has been presented only to be withdrawn, leaving them without even the aid which the master's selfish, commercial interest in their life and service formerly afforded them? Will these negroes, remembering the battle-fields on which nearly two hundred thousand of their number have so bravely fought, and many thousands have heroically died, submit to oppression as tamely and peaceably as in the days of slavery? Under such conditions there could be no peace, no security, no prosperity. The spirit of slavery is still among us; it must be utterly destroyed before we shall be safe. * * * * * Mr. Speaker, I know of nothing more dangerous to a Republic than to put into its very midst four million people, stripped of every attribute of citizenship, robbed of the right of representation, but bound to pay taxes to the government. If they can endure it, we can not. The murderer is to be pitied more than the murdered man; the robber more than the robbed. And we who defraud four million citizens of their rights are injuring ourselves vastly more than we are injuring the black man whom we rob. * * * * * Throughout the whole web of national existence we trace the golden thread of human progress toward a higher and better estate. * * * * * The life and light of a nation are inseparable. * * * * * We confront the dangers of suffrage by the blessings of universal education. * * * * * We should do nothing inconsistent with the spirit and genius of our institutions. We should do nothing for revenge, but everything for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and future. * * * * * There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation--the forces of Repression and Expression. The one acts from without; limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within; expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs, belong to the first. The free play of individual life, opinion, and action, belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.