Mr. KELLEY I find upon my notes that in the gentlemans speech there was a vindication of the patriotism of the people of this District, and an admission, not in this language, but in this spirit, that the negro man, like a rat when driven to a corner, had fought a little. Has the gentleman forgotten Port Hudson and Millieus Bend? Do the papers he reads belong to that class which excluded from their columns everything about colored soldiers and American victories? If they do, let him study the storm of Battery Wagner before he permits his speech to be printed, so that he may say one generous word or those who died that he and his might be blessed. For whom do we rose to legislate? My colleague says that the black man is not equal to the white man. I know some white men who are not equal to black men. [Laughter]. I would not intimate that my colleague was in that class, for I know his powers an his virtues; yet among his constituents he may possibly have associated at some time, even in his manhood, with men less cultivated and powerful than Fred. Douglass or Benjamin Bannakcr, the publicly recognized friend of Jefferson, and who honored the early annals of our native State and mode it known in France and ever the breadths of the when no other native mathematician a I turn, sir, to show the House for whom we ask e. Here is the likeness of Henry Highland. it is mighty black. [Laughter]. My colleague cannot say that his grand mot or had an injection of white blood in her veins. You see the likeness of a pure African there. But the face, black as it is, is radiant with intelligence, manliness, and piety. The pamphlet it embellishes contains a sermon he preached in this Hall on Sunday, February 12, 1865. With exquisite satire, he assumed, by his text to characterize the scribes and Pharisees of old, but sketched the members of the modern Democratic party. [Laughter] He took for his text Matthew xxiii, 4: f “ Wuthey bind heavy burdens and While we scorn unin the name of God the universal Father. we demand the right to live and labor and to enjoy the fruits of our toil.” Will gentlemen on the other side consider this extract from the discourse of that black likeness of our Almighty Father? The gentleman denies our power, our moral right.What right has he to the word moral upon his lips whon pleading such a cause as that to which he devoted his hour? Neither morals nor religion sanction the principles he uttered. Sir, we have the power, and that power helon s to us alone, for the constitution of the U.S. confides the legislation for this District in its very 1st article to the Congress of the U.S. But perhaps, Mr. Speaker, he means that we have not the power to confer citizenship upon a new class of 00 lo. I ask him to study the subject, and It in he will find that when the constitution of the U.S. was adopted the free colored man voted in our own Pennsylvania, and continued to do it until the Democratic party modified the constitution in 1838, and that they BDJO)C(I the franchise in all the States except SCarolina, and possibly Delaware and Virginia, in which 2 States suffrage was regulated by statutory and not by constitutional revision.