New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-04-11
What the Republican Party has
Done for the COlOred Race.
BY HON. HENRY WILSON.

Abolitionists and anti-slavery men, Free
soilers and Republicans, accepted as a vital,
animating, and living faith, the creed of hui
man 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 pc
tltioned Congress to perform that work in the
District of Columbia and in the Territories.
They maintained, when assailed, the sacred
right of petition and the freedom of speech.
They opposed the annexation of Texas, by
which 1t was sought to prevent the abolition
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 Mis-
souri, Compromise, which had secured hun
dreds of thousands of square miles to free
labor, and for free laboring men.
They denounced the border ruffian invaders
of Kansas, their unholy legislation establish
ing slavery, and their inhunan slave code.
They pronounced the Lecompton consti-
tuition the product of fraud and violence"
They denounced the bred Scott dicta, by
which it was proclaimed that "black men had
no rights white men were bound to respect"
They exposed the decisions of squatter
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 Crit
tenden Compromise, by which the nation, by
irrepealable constitutional amendments, 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 Con-
gress the right to abolish slavery in the
capital of the nation.
power in 1861 it infexibly adhered, at the
risk of civil war, to the principles it had enun-
ciated for impartial liberty, and against the
aggressive and dominating influences of the
slave masters.
1t made free slaves used by the rebels for
military purposes.
1t forbade officers to return to their masters
fugtives coming within the lines of the army
to seek the protection of the national flag.
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 pro-
vided 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 test
ify in the courts of law, to ride in the public
conveyanceS, to educate their children, to
vote, and to be voted for.
1t prohibited slavery in the vast territories
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 armies,
or who came within their advancing lines.
1t repealed the cruel and humilating Fugi-
tive Slave Act, and brought to close its in
human and dastardly slave hunts.
1t recognized the nationality of Hayt and
Liberia which had been so long and so wick
edly withheld by the slave power.
1t enrolled black men, and weaponed their
hands to fight the battles of their country.
1t gave freedom to the slaves who joined
the armies of the Union.
1t made free the wife and children of the
black soldier.
1t struck the word white from the military
laws, and made black men a portion of the
national militia.
1t prohibited the barbarous and barbarizing
practice of Furnishing offenses by whipping in
the reconstructed States.
1t abolished and forever prohibited the sys-
tenn of peOnage in New Mexico.
1t entered into treaty stipulations with the
British Government for the final eXtirpatiOn
of the African slave trade.
1t made the cOast-wise slave traffic Illegal.
1t gave black men the right to testify in the
courts of the United States.
1t gave suffrage to black men in all the Ter
ritories of the Republic.
1t sustained Abraham Lincoln's Proclama-
ton 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 amend
ment.
1t created the Freedmen's Bureau for the
protection and education of emancpated
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 United
States.
1t secured, by the adoption of the fourteenth
amendment, equal protection to citizens In all
the STATES.
1t steadily opposed and defeated the pol
icy" of President johnson, which would have
left colored men completely helpless-a de-
| graded caste of serfs-at the mercy of their
old masters.
| 1t removed unjust restrictions, and gave to
colored men a common right in the public do
main, till then withheld.
| 1t gave suffrage to three-quarters of mil
lion of black men by its measures OF recon
| struction.
1t gave, by the adoption of the fifteenth
amendment and the laws to enforce it, suffrage
to black men throughout the United States.
! 1t has given, by the law to enforce the four
teenth amendment and its execution, some
measure of protection to the colored race
against the lawless and murderous ku-kluS
Klans.
Each and all of these acts secure, or teno
to secure and .suard, the personal liberty, the
equal rights, and the equal privileges OF the
African race.
Bv this grand series of acts the Republican
party has given personal freedom and equality
to all the colored race, and is seeking to Sc
cure law, order, peace, education, and genera
| development. Can Republican forget this
record of brilliant deeds and of gloriou,
achievements, which have won the approya
of conscience and reason, and the admiration
of liberal, progressive, and generous men the
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