Mr. YATES. I hope that I am not interjecting what I have to say in a wrong place in the Senators speech, but I wish to ask him a question. The constitutional amendment, which has recently been adopted, abolishes slavery in all the States; in other words, it secures freedom to the freedmen. It is not a latitudinarian construction to say that it secures full freedom to the freedman. Can full freedom be conferred upon the freedman without conferring upon himall his rights, natural, civil, and political? The 2nd clause of the coustitutional amendment says that Congress shall have power to enforce it; that is, to confer full freedom upon the freedmen, for to abolish slavery means to confer freedom. Another point. Congress, before the adoption of the amendment, could not make a citizen and a State could not make a “ citizen. We, the people of the U.S., " “do ordain and establish this Constitution.” The people made the Constitution, not the Constitution the people. But the Dred Scott decis ion declared that because a slave might be bought and sold when the Constitution was made, because at that time he was not recognized as a member of the society, because he had no rights which a white man was bound to respect, therefore he was not one of the people, not one of the sovereignty. By the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, the point. freedman becomes what? He becomes one of the sovereigns, he is emancipated into the people of the U.S.; and Congress having no power before to make a citizen, ev" if is naturalize a foreigner, and the States having no right whatever to make a citizen, althoug they may regulate and make the rules by which he may vote, the freedman, the moment the act of emancipation was iroclaimed, became one of the people of the U.S. “ We, the people of the U.S., ” “do ordain and estalish this Constitution.” Well, sir, the question which I wish to propound to the Senfrom Missouri, for whose opinions I have great respect, is, why there is any necessity for constitutional amendments when we have the power under the amendment to the Constitution already adopted now to secure not only in SCarolina or Georgia, but in every State of the American Union, freedom, full freedom, civil and political emancipation to every man who comes within that provision of the Constitution.