Restoring the Union
held that it was not for such an end that the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued and the war fought to a triumphant finish. The abolition of slavery had been an act of the nation. The anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution was an act of the nation. It was therefore incumbent upon the nation, and was not to be left to the states, to protect the men who had been set free, to safeguard their civil rights and to give them a “square deal” and a fair chance to enjoy the privileges of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In pursuance of this wise and humane policy the Republicans in Congress enacted, despite Democratic opposition, a bill establishing a Freedmen's Bureau as a part of the national administration, thus giving national guardianship to the negroes as temporary wards of the nation. Following this came a Civil Rights law which recognized negroes as citizens of the United States—they had long been citizens of many of the states—safeguarded them in their rights of person and of property and forbade discrimination against them by any state laws. The purpose was to extend to the different races the same noble principle of democracy that the Republican party had adopted among individuals in society, of “equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” The purpose was to require the states of this Republic uniformly thus to treat their citizens, regardless of the color of their skins. The fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence was to be the fundamental principle of the nation of which that declaration was the primal charter. That was Republican statesmanship in dealing with the aftermath of human slavery.
In order to make this principle secure against any
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