Mr. KELLEY. I attempted to get the floor before the Gentfrom Kentucky, [Mr. Hise, ] for the purpose of responding briefly to the remarks of the Gentfrom NewYork [Mr. HALE] and the Gentfrom Ohio, [Mr. DELANo, ] because it seemed to me that they were entirely mistaken in their facts. The Gentfrom Ohio asked whether we dare do certain things. Mr. Speaker, I dare do whatever I believe to be right; and I daredo right, though my action may not accord with what I have done in the past, either because I was not then sufficiently enlightened, or because to have struggled for the point would have been to struggle palpably against fate. the from Ohio says we voted to admit Tennessee with a constitution disfranchising her colored citizens. I say to him “Never shake thy gory locks at me; Thou canst not say I did it.” I am, sir, one of 12 who saw that the members of this House were by that act establishing a precedent that must embarrass and might control them for evil in the future. Few though we were, we tried to save the Gentfrom Ohio and those who yielded to his persuasive eloquence from the dilemma in which they were placing themselves, and Tennessee made no precedent for us. We have before us the establishment of governments for an empire grander in extent and national wealth than any on earth save Russia. In legislating for Tennessee we forgot the lawyer's maxim, that “good cases make bad precedents, ” and did what now comes back to plague us. But I implore gentlemen not to strengthen that precedent by adding the case of Nebraska to that of Tennessee and that of Colorado to Nebraska, so that the southern people when they come with constitutions excluding races from the rights of citizenship may well charge us with acting invidiously if we hold them to the standard we profess to have established. The Gentfrom NewYork.HALE] said that if the idea of the Gentfrom Massachusetts [Mr. BouTweli] of a RFG was correct, then there never had been outside of the NewEngland States, and there but one or 2 States, which had RFGs. Sir, he has not read the history of his country or he would not have made that assertion. When the Constitution of the U.S. was adopted, every State that entered the Union, except SCarolina, was republican in form and was republican in the respot considered by the Gentfrom Massachu. setts, o Boutwell.] SCarolina was the only State which by its primitive consul.tion jmen from their right of suffrage foon of race or color or previous co" it lon. And the Gentfrom Ohio [Mr. DEIANo] turned to me and asked whether, while Po”. sylvania denies the right to 40,000 of her citizens, I dare insist upon requiring no States to concede it to men as dark astho as I have said, I dare insist upon doing who ever seems to me to be right, but dare no lo that which is palpably wrong; more than to sir, I dare not pile wrong upon wrong.. cause I cannot persuade the people of my State to do right, or because we have boo. ourselves by constitutional limitations: ". changeable for a series of years, to main. oppression, I will not consent to o wrong in Nebraska. No, sir, I dare Hotplea a great wrong which I cannot repair of ". justification for perpetrating an injustic” I can avert. r Every ka free man in the Territory of Nebras has by act of Congress the right of suffrage o believe I am right in that. But it is sheer". said that there are only some 8, 900 colored men there. Sir, todaythose 8 or 900 colored men are free American citizens, enjoying the right of suffrage in common with their fellow citizens of the Territory. And I will not consent, I beg gentlemen on this side of the House to bear in mind the fact that they are asked by their vote today to do so, to degrade those 8 or 900 men and deprive them of the rights secured to them by ourselves by an act of last session. Let the chivalry of the South in their humiliation and madness strive to degrade free men if they will, but in God's name do not let the Republican majority of the 39th Congress put shackles upon the limbs and souls of 900 of the free citizens of Nebraska. Gentlemen ask of us, Have we the right to regulate the question of suffrage in Slates? Sir, I will not discuss the question now. I examined it elaborately last session. I will remind gentlemen that I do but request them to stem a downward tide. When the Constitution was adopted, as I have said, all save one State were republican in this respect. Slowly one after another their constitutions were modified as concessions to the slave power. Connecticut in 1817and 1818, Maryland at a later day, Tennessee not till 1835, Pennsylvania in 1837, struck down the free voters of African descent in their States. And I again implore the Republican members of this Congress not to follow those base examples, but to stand upon their own position and justify the just expectations of the people by saying that what was republican at the time of the adoption of the Constitution shall be our standard. Let us do right though we thereby keep the less than proper congressional constituency for the whole people of Nebraska number far less than your constituents, Mr. Speaker, or mine in a territorial condition, until they shall concede to every American citizen within the limits of their broad, rich, grand, though infant empire the rights which under the Constitution of the U.S., as understood by its framers, pertain to every citizen. Here the hammer fell]