freedom, cannot be construed as a trivial parol contract between citizens; it must be expounded broadly, understandingly, and conscientiously, as a grave national compact of freedom with seven millions of adopted citizens.
On the continent of Europe, the colored man of pure morals and refined manners, with a gentleman's toilet and cultivated intellect, has found paths in pleasant places, and that, too, in countries where caste prevails. Have we not the right to be regarded and treated as citizens in America, as beings who have a high destiny? Have we not a right to every opportunity for self-development and gratification which produces no harm to others, and ought we not to be spared every mortification which produces no other good than to gratify prejudices which the laws of the country denounce? No race has appeared in history more obstinately tenacious of their civil rights than the Anglo-American. Why should it continue to view with profound indifference the extraordinary powers expressly conferred upon the public servant, usurped by labor-guilds, and habitually exercised not only without caution, moderation, or impartiality, but with despotic arrogance? The nation gave the coveted boon of citizenship, in order that character, intelligence, refinement, objects of ambition, property, all the gifts which dignify human nature, should be the goals at which the enfranchised black man might arrive; and do its statesmen, publicists, jurists, laymen, or tradesmen suppose that the narrow and single file, the exclusive solitary slave-path, which this decision marks out, can keep our people from the industrial progress of the great family of mankind?
The Fourteenth Amendment removed the obstructions to the free exercise of human rights and powers which the public servant and labor-caste struggle to re-establish. It intended to impart dignity of character, loftiness of sentiment, and to afford the opportunity for all those qualities and attributes that pronounce man a blessing to himself and society. It declared the chief prerogative and glory of man to be self-dominion; it said the oppression of arbitrary, capricious rules is terrible to sensitive, generous souls; its whole purpose was to shield from civic ostracism and contemptuous attacks an inoffensive, useful citizen, who in
