Mr. JULIAN. I am obliged to the Gentfrom Pennsylvania [ML KELLEY] and the Gentfrom Michigan for the fact stated. would say to the Gentfrom NewYork [Mr. Diwis] that as to the right of savages to vote I am no more in favor of it than himself. Mr. Speaker, mere knowledge, education, in its ordinary sensc, will not fit any man to vote. It must depend, as Dr. Lieber says, upon how men use it. He declares it to be no guarantee for free institutions, and refers to Prussia, the best educated country in the world, where liberty is an outlaw. The reading and writing test, so strenuously urged on this floor, is a singularly insufficient measure of fitness. Reading and Writing are mechanical processes, and a man may be able to perform them without any worthiness of life or character. He may lack this qualitication, and yet be tolerably tit to have a voice in the Government. If enmanship must be made the avenue to the allot, I fear several honorable gentlemen on this floor will be disfranchised. A merely educational test would allow all the rebel leaders to vote, while the great body of the people of the South, white and colored, would be disfranchised. Sir, education of the heart is far more important than that of the brain.” The soul is greater than logic.” The hearts of the negroes have been unfalteringl with us all through the war. inspiring their judgment, vivifying their convictions, and insurin their universal loyalty. They, of all men in the South, have best vindicated their title to the ballot. Mr. Speaker, our American democracy has never required any standard of knowled e as a? condition of suffrage; and the educational est, invented by the KnowNothings some years ago, during their raid against the foreigners, would not now be thought of but for our proverbial hatred of the negro. According to our census tables, more than a half million men in our country annually go to the polls who can neither read the constitution nor write their names. The proposition to disfranchise this grand army of ignorant men would meet with very little favor in any quarter. No public man dreams of it, and any such purpose as to the ignorant white men of this District is expressly disavowed by the advocates of restricted suffrage in this House. Sir, the real trouble is that we hate the negro. It is not his ignorance that offends us, but his color; for those who are loudestin their opposition to universal suffrage would be quite as unwilling to give the ballot to Frederick Douglass as to the mosti orant freedman in the South. Of this fact entertain no doubt whatever, and I commend it to the attention of conservative gentlemen on this floor, who imagine that a vote for qualified negro suffrage will be less offensive to their negro fiiiting constituents than for the bill now under discussion. In further reply to the argument which would disfranchise the negroes on account of their ignorance, allow me to say that the ruling class have made them ignorant by generations of oppression, and no man should be allowed to take advantage of his own wrong. Sir, how can the negro emerge from his ignorance and barbarism if left under the heel of is old tyrant? I agree that in any scheme of universal suffrage univer sal knowledge, as far as possible, should be demanded; but universal suffrage is one of the surest means of securing a liigher level of intclligence for the whole people. I would not level the educated classes downward, but the ignorant masses upward, by giving them political power and the incentive to rise. Our rst duty is to take oti their chains, as the best means of preparing them for the ballot. By no means would I disparage education, and especially political training; but the ballot isitse far so 001 master. If you expect a man to use it well you must place it in his hands, and let him learn to cast it by trial. If you rush to teach a man to swim, you must 1st put him in the water. If i you wish to teach him how to handle the tools of the mechanic, you must 1st put them in his hands. If you wish to teach the ignorant man, black or white, how to vote, you must grant him the right to vote as the 1st step in his education. The negro, I am sure, wi 1generally be found voting on the side of his country, and dually learning his duties as a citizen. Sir gone rule be adopted for white and black, and let us, if possible, ispossess our minds, utterly, of the vile spirit of caste which has brought upon our country all its woes. Mr. Speaker, I reply still further, that my argument is not at all invalidated if I admit that the white people of this District are decidedly superlor to the negroes in education and General intelligence. This very superiority would give them an important advantage over the class not thus favore. It would become a powerful weapon in carrying out their peculiar purposes; apd these will certainly be antagonistic to the best good of those whom law and usage have so long injured and degraded. If any class will be peculiarly exposed, and need the strongest safeguards, it Will be the negroes, who have been made comparative children in knowledge and selfhelp. All class rule is vicious; but if one class must rule another, it will be found far better to allow the prerogative to the laboring many, whose usefulness and numbers best entitle them to it, than to confer it upon the aristoc racy, the “gentlemen, ” the idlers, who will of course maintain their privileges. The many who have been denied equal rights, and suffered from the privation, Wlll be quite asfit for political power as the few who have had no such exerienee. Mr. Speaker, I hope I need not reply to the argument often urged, that negro voting will load to the amalgamation of races, or social equality, which now seems to mean the same thing. On this subject there is nothing left to co ecture, and no ground for alarm. Ne prosu iage has been very extensivel tried in this country, and we are able to appea to facts. negroes had the right to vote in all the Colonies save one, under the Articles of Confederation. They voted, I believe, generally, on the question of adopting the constitution of the U.S. They have voted ever since in NewYork and the NewEngland States, save connecticut, in which the rectice was discontinued in 1813. The votedin NewJersey till theyear 1840; in Virginia and may land till 1838; in Pennsylvania till 1838; in elawaie till 1831; and in NCarolina and Tennessee till 1836. I have never understood that in all this expe rience of negro suffrage the amalgamation of the races was the result. I think these evils are not at all complained ofto this day in NewEngland and NewYork, where negro suffrage is still practiced and recognized by law. In deed, tie fact is notorious, that amalgamation is almost totally unknown, except in a state of slavery, which obliterates the ties of life, and subjects the negro woman to the unbridled power of the master race. Sir, give the colored man the ballot, so that he may maintain the liberty already nominally conferred, and the best possible step will have been taken to regulate and purify the relations heretofore existing between the races. Should the co perheads and rebels of this District feel in 1danger of matrimony with their African fellowcitizens in consequence of negro suffrage, I would have congress pass a law for their protection; butI You d not withhold the ballot from the colored people fora reason so contingent and so uncomplimentary to their character and taste. Nor do I deem it necessary, Mr. Speaker, to dwell on the argument that negro voting will lead to negro Officeholding, negro domination, and ultimately to a war of races. such an argument. current as it is in certain quarters, finds no shadow of suppport in any known facts. The experience to whichI have referred certainly can alarm no one, and the instances are rare if in fact any can be adduced, in which colored men have held office. though their numbers, as up Stateslike Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, were very large when black suffrage was allowed. Sir, no act is more notorious, and at the same time more discreditable, than the nearly universal prejudice of the white race in our country against the negro. That will not inss away swiftly, but graduparleljudice y and slowly. Like every other form of injustice, it will ultimately die; but the prospect of this is clearly not immediate. We are certainly not et so in love with the negro that we prefer imas our ruler; but when the fact shall be realized, it will not be negro domination, but negro rule of choice, by white as well as black suffrage, and cannot therefore lead to any war of races. This is quite evident; for though the negroes here are numerous, and in portions of the South constitute the majority the tide of emigration from the North and from Euro e must very soon place the white race large y in the ascendant everywhere. I present these considerations in order, ifpossible to calm the fears of my conservative friends; or as to myself, my faith in democratic principles depends not at all upon any temporary or local results of their application. Sir, a war of races in this country can only be the result of denying to the negro his rights, just as such wars have been caused elsewhere; and the late troubles inJamaica should teachus, ifany lesson can, the duty of dealing justly with our millions of freedmen. Like causes must produce like results. English law made the slaves of Jamaica free, but England failed to enact other laws making their freedom a blessin. The old spirit of domination never died in the slavemaster, but was only maddened by emancipation. For 30 years no measures were adopted tending to rotcct or educate the freedmen. At length, an quite recently, the colonial authorities passe a whiping act, then a law of eviction forpeople of color, thenalawimposingheavyim post duties, bearing most grievously upon them, and finally a law providing for the importation of coolics, thus taxing the freedmen for the very purpose of taking the bread out of the moutfih of their owa children! I believe it turns out, after all, that these outraged people even then did not rise up a uinst the local government; but the white rn ans of the island, goaded on by theirown unchecked rapacity, and availing themselves of the infernal pretext of a black insurrection, peretrated deeds of rapine and ven ounce that fin no parallel anywhere, save in the acts of their natural allies, the late slavebreeding rebels, against our flag. Sir, is there no warning here against the policy of leaving our freedmen to the tender mercies of their 0dmasters? Are the white rebels of this District any better than the Jamaica villains to whom I have referred? The late report of General Schurz ves evidence of some important facts which Will doubtless apply here. The mass of the white people in the South, he says, are totally destitute of any national feeling. The same bigoted sectionalism that swayed them prior to the war is almost universal or have they any feeling of the enormity of treason as a crime. To them it is not odious, as very natur ally it would not be, under the policy which fore goes the punishment of traitors, and gives so man of them the chief places of power in the Sout and their hatred of the negro today is as intense and scathin and as universal as before the war. I believe it to be even more so. The proposition to educate him and elevate his condition is everywhere met with contempt and scorn. They acknowledge that slavery, as it once existed, is overthrown; but the continued inferiority and subordination of the colored race, under some form of vassalage or serfdom, is regarded by them as certain. Sir, they have no thought of an thing else; and if the ballot shall be withheld from the freedmen after the withdrawal of military power the most revolting forms of oppression and outrage will be practiced, resulting, at last, in that very war of races which is foolishly apprehended as the effect of giving the negro his rights. Mr. Speaker, a, more plausible, if not a more formidable, objection to negro suffrage in this District remains to be noticed. Most of the northern States refuse the ballot to their colored citizens, and even deny them their testimony in suits in which white persons are parties. In Indiana. which has done so noble and glorious a part in the war, we have a constitutional provision, and laws made in pursuance of it, by which negroes from other sections of our country are forbidden to enter the State. It is made a penal offense for any negro or inulntto to come into herborders, or for anv white person to bring him in, or employ him affer he shall have come. Now, how can the Representativesof such States be expectgd to vote for negro suffrage in this District? f Congress, having the sole and exclusive power of legislation here, ought to give the ballot to the negro, why should not Indiana give the ballot to her negro pepulation? and how can western Representatives face their constituents and answer this question, after having supported this bill? and it is just here that its passage must encounter its greatest peril; for members of Congress, however patriotic, will be exceedingly glad to escape this dilemma, and to avoid the committal to the policy of negro suffrage generally, which would seem to be implied in the support of this measure. In seeking to meet this difficulty several considerations must be borne in mind. In the 1st place, the demand for negro suffrage in this district rests not alone upon the general ground of right, of democratic equality, but upon peculiar reasons superindnced by the late war, which make it an immediate practical issue, involving not merely the welfare of the colored man but the safetyof society itself. If civil government is to be revived at all in the South, it is perfectly selfevident that the loyal men there must vote; but the loyal men are the negroes and the disloyal are the whites. To put back the governing power into the hands of the very men who broug t on the war, and exclude those who have proved themselves the true friends of the country, would be utterly suicidal and atro ciously unjust. Negro suffrage in the districts lately in revolt is thus a present political necessity, dictated by the selfishness of the white loyalist as well as his sense of justice. But in Our western States, in which the negro population is relatively small, and the prevailing sentiment of their white people is loyal, no such emergency exists. Society will not be endan gered by the temporary postponement of the right of negro suffrage till public opinion shall render it practicable, and our western Representatives can thus vote for this bill without encountering any reasonable hostility from their. conservative constituents, and leaving the question of suffrage in the loyal States to be decided by them on its merits. If Indiana had gone out of her properlace in the Union, and her loyal population ha been found too weak to force her ack into it without negro bullets and bayonets, and if, after thus coercing her again into her constitutional orbit, her loyalists had been found unable to hold her there without negro ballots, the question of negro suffrage in Indiana would most obviously have been very different from the comparatively abstract one whichit now is. It won (I, it is true, have involved the question of justice to the negroes of Indiana, but the transcendently broader and more vital question of national salvation also. Letmeadd further, that should Congress pass this bill, and should the ballot be given to the negroes in the sunny South generally, those in our northern and western States, man of them at least, may return to their native and and its kindlier skies, and thus quiet the nerves of conservative gentlemen who dread too close a proximity to those whose skins, owing to some providential oversight, were somehow or other not stamped with the true orthodox luster. It should be further rememhered, Mr. Speaker, that the bill before us relates exclusively to this District, and those municipal and police powers which are to be exercised here under the laws of Congress. were it in fact dangerous and unwise to give the negro a voice in e general legislation of the country, I can see no objection whatever to the experiment of black suffrage in this District, in the purely local “ministriH 1866. 259tion of its affairs. For very excellent reasons, already given, I believe the negroes here are entitled to the inner, “and are it least as fit as multitudes iofvvliile men Who mmm nestinnably. toiinvott: “They buve done their share in saving the nations life. Mnny of them went intom“Xrmy as the subsfitutes of white ruffians and vagabonds who daily “damn the nigger, ” and whose unprofitable lives were saved y the black column which stood between them and the bullets of the rebels. Sir, let the emperiment be fairly made here, on this model litical farm of the nation. Should it fail, congress will abandon it; should it work Well, it may prove a most excellent forerunner of measures of larver justice to the colored race in our land. I o not mean to say that the colored soldiers of this District should alone have the ballot, because no such rule is proposed or thought of as to white voting. Iia the white rabble of this District who did not enter our Army, and who to a great extent were in sympathy with the public enemy, are to vote, as they undoubtedly Will, it would beave mean mock ery of justice to withhold the be] at from loyal negroes who, although they did not fight, furnished the Government with their full share of a Mr. Speaker, I ask conservative gentlemen on this floor to consider duly one other fact. If difficulties are to be encountered in voting for this bill, still greater difficulties are to be met in voting against it, and I know of no half way ground in ealing with fundamental principles. To vote against this measure is to vote I againgt the 1st truths of democratic liberty. It is t6 vote for the old spirit of caste and the old law of hate which have so terribly blasted our land. It is to vote down justice and install misrule and maladministrntion as king. It is to sanction 11. encourage, by the national example, the barbarous and worse than heathen laws of the northern and western States, already referred to, which so loudly call for our rebuke. It is to make a record which the roused spirit of liberty and progress, and the thick00min events of the future, will certainly disown an turn from with shame and while such a vote might tend to placate the conservative and the trimmer, it would offend those radical hosts now everywhere springing to their feet, and preparing for battle against every form of inequality and injustice, and in favor of “all rights for all.” Sir, justice is safe. The right thing is the expedient thing. Democracy is not a lie. God is not the devil, “nor was Chrisiantity itself established by prize essays, Bridgewater bequests, and a minimum of 4,500 a year.” Far better will itbe for a northern Representative and for the cause of republicanism itself to vote on the right side of this question, even should it cost him his seat on this floor, than to vote on the wrong side, and thus main1tain his place by the sacrifice of both his own manhoo and the public welfare intrusted to his hands. Sir, I agree that the passage of this bill would tend to Open the way to perfect equality before the law in all the States. I do notden that the publicwould so understand it, and decline none of the consequences of my vote. Mr. Jefferson, speaking oft ic negroes, declared that “ whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights, ” and he likewise declared that “among those who either pay or fight for their country no line can be drawn.” 1 at is my democrac. “The one idea, ” says Humboldt. “which iistory exhibits as ever more developing itself into greater distinctness, is the idea of humanity, the noble endeavor to throw dowa all barriers erected between men by prejudice and onesided views, and, by set ting aside the distinctions of religion, country, an color, to treat the whole human race as one brotherhood.” Sir, on this broad ground coincident with Christianity itself, I plant my feet; and no man can fail who will resolutely maintainit. Mr. Speaker, I must not conclude my argument without referringto one further consideration, by which the passage of this bill, in my judgment, is urgently demanded. I have argued that the ballot should be given to the negroes as a matter of justice to them. It should ikewise be done as a matter of retributive justice to the slaveholders and rebels; Accoring to the best information I can obtain, a very large majority of the white people of this district have been rebels in heart during the war, and are rebels in heart still. That contempt for the negro and swim of free industry which constitutedI the mainspring of the rebellion cropped out here during the war in ever form that was possible, under the immediate shadow of the central Government. Mcaner rebels than many in this District could scarcely have been found in the whole land. They have not been punished. The halter has been cheated out of their necks. I am very Berry to say that under what seems to be a false mercy, a misapplied humanity, the gniltiest rebels of the war have thus far been allowed to escape justice. I have no desire to censure the authoritiesof the Government for this fact. I hope they have some valid excuse for their action. This question of punishment, I know, is a difficult one. The work of punishment is so vast that it naturally palsies the will to enter upon it. It never can be thoroughly done on this side of the grave and were it practicable to punish adequately all the most active and guilty rebels, justice would still remain unsatisfied. Far iltier men than they are the rebel sympathizers of the 10al States, who coolly stood y and encourage their friends in the South in their work of national rapiue and murder, and while they were ever ready to go joyfully into the service of the devil, were too cowardly to wear his uniform and carry his weapons in open day. But Congress in this District has the power to punish by ballot, and there will be a beautiful, poetic justice in the exercise of this power. Sir, let it be aplied. The rebels here will recoil from it with orror. Some of the worst of them, sooner than submit to black suffrage, will doubtless leave the District, and thus render it an unspeakable service. To be voted dowa and governed by Yankee and negro bal lots will seem to them unintolerable grievance, and this is among the excellent reasons whyl am in favor of it. If neither hanging nor exi e can be extemporized for the entertainment of our domestic rebels, let as require them at least to make their bed on negro allots during the remainder of the ir unworthy lives. of course they will not relish it, but that will be their own peculiar concern. Their darling institution must be charged with all the consequences of the war. They sowed the wind, and if required must reap the whirlwind. Retribution follows wrong doing; and this law must work out its results. Rebels and their sympathizers, I am sure, Lwill fare as well under negrosutlru as they deserve, and I desire to leave them, as ar as practicable, in the“ hands of theircolored brct iren. Nor hall Istop to inquire Very criticaliy wliether the negroesucfiLfOm Meet} themselves alllxhita rebels, who deserve to be hung, they are eminently lit. Twould not have them more so. Will you. Mr. Speaker, will even my conservative and Democratic friends, be particularly nice or fastidious in the choice of a man to vote down a rebel? Shall we insist upon a perfectly finished gentleman and scholar to vote down the traitors and white trash of this District, who have recently signalized themselves by mobbing unoffending negroes? Sir, almost anybody, it seems to me, will answer the purpose. 1 do not pretend that the colored men here, should they get the ballot, will not sometimes abuse it. They will undoubtedly make mistakes. In some cases they may even vote on the side of their old masters. But I feel pretty safe in saying that even white men, perfectly free from all suspicion of negro blood, have sometimes voted on the wrong side. Sir, I appeal to gentlemen on this floor, and especially to my Democratic friends, to say whether they cannot call to mind instances in which white men have voted wrong? Indeed, it rather strikes me that white voting. v igno rant, depraved, partridden Democratic white voting, had a good cal to d9 in hatching into life the rebellion itself, and that rib results of negro voting are likely to be much worse. I respectfully commend this consideration to my friendfrom Iowa, [Mr. KassoxJand to conservative gentlemen here on both sides of this Hall. Sir, as I have argued elsewhere, all men are liable to make mistakes. The democracy I stand by, the fitness to govern which I believe in, is the aggregate wisdom and practical common sense of the whole people. This, and not the wisdom of our rulers, or of any select few, carried us safely through the rebellion, and this only can be trusted in time to come. There is no other reliance under God for us, as the champions and exemplars of Republicanism, and the sooner we bravely accept this truth the better it will be for all races an orders of men comosin our great bodypolitic. In demanding the ba lot in this District for the despised and defenseless, I simply demand the national recognition of Christianity, which is “the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of man.” I beseech gentlemen to remember this. As the lawgivers of a diseuthralled Republic, let us not write “infidel” on its banner, by tram ling humanity and justice under our feet in these high places of power. The question is ours to decide. The n ht, so earn estly prayed for, is ours to bestow. he assumption set up by the white voters here of the right to decide this question is as superlatively ridiculous as it is sublimcly impudent. They have no more right to vote themselves the exclusive deposi taries of power in this District than the inmates of its penitentiary have to vote themselves at liberty to go at large. Congress is the sovereign and sole judge; and what the colored men here ask at our hands, for their just protection, and as their sure refuge, is the ba lot: "A weapon firmer set, and better than the bayonet: A weapon that comesdown as still As snowflakesfull upon the sod: But executesa freemnnswill As lightning does the will of God.”