"And, sir, this remedy at once effected the desired cure. The poor contraband is no longer the persecuted outlaw whom incurable rebels might kick and kill with impunity; but he at once became 'our colored fellow-citizen,' in whose well-being his former master takes the liveliest interest. Thus, by bringing the negro under the American system, we have completed his emancipation. He has ceased to be a pariah. From an outcast he has been transformed into a human being, invested with the great National attribute of self-protection, and the re-establishment of peace, and order, and security, the revival of business and trade, and the restoration of the Southern States on the basis of loyalty and equal justice to all, will be the happy results of this astonishing metamorphosis, provided the party which has inaugurated this policy remains in power to carry it out."
The Peace Democracy generally throughout the North oppose this measure. In Ohio they oppose it especially because it commits the people of the Nation in favor of manhood suffrage. They tell us that if it is wise and just to entrust the ballot to colored men in the District of Columbia, in the Territories, and in the rebel States, it is also just and wise that they should have it in Ohio and in the other States of the North.
Union men do not question this reasoning, but if it is urged as an objection to the plan of Congress, we reply: There are now within the limits of the United States about five millions of colored people. They are not aliens or strangers. They are here not by the choice of themselves or of their ancestors. They are here by the misfortune of their fathers and the crime of ours. Their labor, privations, and sufferings, unpaid and unrequited, have cleared and redeemed one-third of the inhabited territory of the Union. Their toil has added to the resources and wealth of the nation untold millions. Whether we prefer it or not, they are our countrymen, and will remain so forever.
They are more than countrymen--they are citizens. Free colored people were citizens of the colonies. The Constitution of the United States, formed by our fathers, created no disabilities on account of color. By the acts of our fathers and of ourselves, they bear equally the burdens and are required to discharge the highest duties of citizens. They are compelled to pay taxes and to bear arms. They fought side by side with their white countrymen in the great struggle for independence, and in the recent war for the Union. In the revolutionary contest, colored men bore an honorable part, from the Boston massacre, in 1770, to the surrender of Cornwallis, in 1781. Bancroft says: "Their names may be read on the pension rolls of the country side by side with those of other soldiers of the revolution." In the war of 1812 General Jackson issued an order complimenting the colored men of his army engaged in the defense of New Orleans. I need not speak of their number or of their services in the war of the rebellion. The Nation enrolled and accepted them among her defendants to the number of about two hundred thousand, and in the new regular army act, passed at the close of the rebellion, by the votes of Democrats and Union men alike, in the Senate and in the House, and by the assent of the president, regiments of colored men, cavalry and infantry, form part of the standing army of the Republic.