the right of the negro is the true solution of our national
troubles. The stern logic of events, which goes directly to the
point, disdaining all concern for the color or features of men,
has determined the interests of the country as identical with
and inseparable from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro--now seen to
have been wise and proper by the dullest--was not certainly more
sternly demanded than is now the policy of enfranchisement.
If with the negro was success in war, and without him failure,
so in peace it will be found that the nation must fall or flourish
with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction
between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference
between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United States.
Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens,
whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none,
it is clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress
now to institute one. The mistake of the last session
was the attempt to do this very thing, by a renunciation
of its power to secure political rights to any class of citizens,
with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise,
if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder
must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro
supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States,
which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights
and immunities of citizens of the several States,--so that a legal voter
in any State shall be a legal voter in all the States.