based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way
or the other by the present session of Congress. The last session
really did nothing which can be considered final as to these questions.
The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed
constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized
as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot,
unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a
government by States to something like a despotic central government,
with power to control even the municipal regulations of States,
and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains
such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,--
an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted in the minds of men of all sections
of the country than perhaps any one other political idea,--no general assertion
of human rights can be of any practical value. To change the character
of the government at this point is neither possible nor desirable.
All that is necessary to be done is to make the government consistent
with itself, and render the rights of the States compatible with the sacred
rights of human nature.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short
to protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States.
They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go unprotected,
spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon the national
statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths
of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own
conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around
it favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong
that it could exist, not only without law, but even against law.