If the construction put by the Senator from Indiana upon the amendment be the true one, and we have merely taken from the master the power to control the slave and left him at the mercy of the state to be deprived of his civil rights, the trumpet of freedom that we have been blowing throughout the land has given an uncertain sound, and the promised freedom is a delusion. Such was not the intention of Congress, which proposed the Constitutional amendment itself. With the destruction of slavery necessarily follows the destruction of the incidents of slavery. When slavery was abolished slave codes in its support were abolished also. Those laws that prevented the colored man going from home, that did not allow him to buy or to sell, or to make contracts; that did not allow him to own property; that did not allow him to enforce rights; that did not allow him to be educated, were all badges of servitude made in the interest of slavery and as a part of slavery. They never would have been thought of or enacted anywhere but for slavery, and when slavery falls they fall also. The policy of the States where slavery has existed has been to legislate in its interest; and out of deference to slavery, which was tolerated by the Constitution of the United States, even some of the non-slaveholding states passed laws abridging the rights of the colored man which were restraints upon liberty. When slavery goes, all this system of legislation, devised in the interest of slavery and for the purpose of degrading the colored race, of keeping the negro in ignorance, of blotting out from his very soul the light of reason, if that were possible, that he might not think, but know only, like the ox, to labor, goes with it. Now, when slavery no longer exists, the policy of the Government is to legislate in the interest of freedom. Now, our laws are to be enacted with a view to educate, improve, enlighten, and Christianize the negro; to make him an independent man; to teach him to think and to reason; to improve that principle which the Great Author of all has implanted in every human breast, which is susceptible of the highest cultivation, and destined to go on enlarging and expanding through the endless ages of eternity. * * * * *