The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-04-09
BY HON. HENRY WILSON. -

"
soilers and Republicans accepted as vital,
animating, and living faith, the creed Of
human equality. Accepting the doctrine
that emancipation was the duty of the
master and the right Of the slave, and that
it was the duty of the nation to prohibit
and abolish slavery wherever it had the
power, they petitioned Congress to perform
that work in the District Of Columbia and
in the territories.
They maintained, when assailed, the sa-
cred right of petition and the freedom of
speech.
They opposed the annexation of Texas.
by which it was sought to prevent the abo-
lltion of slavery there, and to strengthen it
at home.
They struggled to prohibit slavery in
free territory won from Mexico by war.
They resisted, with all their power, the
opening of the free territories Of Utah and
New Mexico to slavery, and the surrender
of thousands of square miles of free soil to
slave-holding Texas.
They opposed the enactment of the fugi-
tive slave bill and the unholy compromises
of 1850.
They sternly resisted the repeal of the
Missouri compromise, which had secured
hundreds of thousands of square miles to
free labor, and for free labor1ng men.
They denounced the border ruflian inyad-
ers OF kansas, their unholy legislation es-
tablishing slavery, and their inhuman slave
code.
They pronounced the Lecompton con-
stitution "the product of fraud and yo-
lence."
They denounced the bred Scott dacto.
by which it was proclaimed that "black
men had no rights white men were bound
to respect.O
They exposed the decisions of suuatter
sovereignty, and denied the right of slave
masters to take their slaves into national
territory and be protected by national au-
thority.
They steadily and sternly rejected, when
menaced by rebellion and civil war, the
Crittenden Compromise, by which the ma
lion, by irrepealable constitutional amend
ments, was to recognize slavery south of
the Missouri Compromise line, allow slave
masters to take their fettered bondmen into
and through the free states, deprive men of
African descent of citizenship and suffrage,
and deny to Congress the right to abolish
slavery in the capital of the nation.
When the Republican party came into
power in 1861 it inHexibly adhered, at the
risk Of civil war, to the principles it had
enunciated for impartial liberty, and
against the aggressive and dominating in
iluences of the slave masters.
1t made free slaves used by the rebels
for military purposes.
1t forbade officers to return to their mas
tiers fugtiyes coming within the lines of the
army to seek protection of the national
Tag.
1t abolished slavery in the District of
Columbia, and made the national capital
free.
1t annulled the inhuman, cruel. and de-
grading Black Code of the District, and
provided that colored men should be tried
and punished in the same manner the
white man was tried and punished.
1t gave its colored people the right to
testify in the courts of law, to ride in the
public conveyances, to educate their chill
dren, to vote, and to be voted for.
1t prohibited slavery in the vast terrific
ries of the United States, and saved them
from its chains and whips, its auction
blocks, and its bloodhounds.
1t made free, slaves captured by its arm
les, or who came within their advancing
lines.
1t repealed the cruel and humiliatng
Fugitive Slave Act, and brought to close
its lnhuman and dastardly slave hunts.
1t recognized the nationality of Hayti
and Liberia which had been SO long and so
wickedly withheld by the slave power.
1t enrolled black men, and weapoped
their hands to fight the battles of their
country.
1t gave freedom to the slaves who Joined
the armies the Union.
1t made free the wife and children of the
black soldier.
1t struck the word white from the mill
tary laws, and made black men portion
of the national militia.
1t prohibited the barbarous and barbar-
izing practice.of furnishing offenses by whip
ping i'll the reconstructed states.
1t abolished and forever prohibited the
system fpeonage in New Mexico.
1t entered into treaty stipulations with |
the British government for the final extir-
patton of the African slave trade.
1t made the coastwise slave traffic IL |
legal.
1t gave black men the right to testify in
the courts Of the United States.
1t gave suffrage to black men in all the
territories of the Republic.
1t sustained Abraham Lincoln's Procla-
nation of Emancipation that gave freedom
TO three and half millions of men, women
and children.
1t forever abolished slavery throughout
the land, by the adoption Of the thirteenth
amendment.
1t created the Freedmen's Bureau for
the protection and education of emancpat-
ed bondmen.
1t secured to black men the full and
equal benefit of all laws for the protection
of life and property by the civil rights act.
1t made colored men citizens of the Uni
ted States.
1t secured, by the adoption of the four
teenth amendment, equal protection to cit
liens in all the states.
1t steadily opposed and defeated the
policy" of President johnson, which
would have left colored men completely
helpless-a degraded caste of serfs-at the
mercy of their old masters.
1t removed unjust restrictions, and gave
to colored men a common right in the pub
lie domain, till then withheld.
1t gave suffrage to lhree-quarterS of
million of black men by its measures of re-
construction.
1t gave, by the adoption of the fifteenth |
amendment and the laws to enforce it,
suffrage to black men throughout the United |