The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled
the question of chattel slavery[3] in this country. It forever choked
the life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to
rob another, by purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the
produce of his own labor. But this was the only question permanently
and irrevocably settled. Nor was this _the_ all-absorbing question
involved. The right of a State to secede from the so-called _Union_
remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort Sumter
aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. And the
measure of protection which the National government owes the
individual members of States, a right imposed upon it by the adoption
of the XIVth Amendment[4] to the Constitution, remains still to be
affirmed.

It was not sufficient that the Federal government should expend its
blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs of four millions of people.
There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel
slavery. It has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce
ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his intelligence would
simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance
the miserable existence of Æsop, the great black moralist. But this is
just what the manumission of the black people of this country has
accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the
Southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor;
they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than under the slave
régime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the
laws of the State or of the Federal government. When they appeal to
the Federal government they are told by the Supreme Court to go to the
State authorities--as if they would have appealed to the one had the