Mr. President, pardon me, I entreat you, if I am tenacious. At this moment there is one vast question in our country, on which all others pivot. It is justice to the colored race. Without this I see small chance of security, tranquillity, or even of peace. The war will still continue. Therefore, as a servant of truth and a lover of my country, I cannot allow this cause to be sacrificed or discredited by my vote. Others will do as they please; but, if I stand alone, I will hold this bridge.
The persistence of Mr. Sumner was encountered by Mr. Wade, who said:—
“I think it is the business of the statesman to overlook these little small technicalities which gentlemen argue about in this body. They make a great fuss about the word ‘white’ in a constitution of a State where there are no blacks,—where the question is a simple abstraction.”
Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, dealt with the question of Equality, but with pleasantry.
“My honorable friend, the Senator from Massachusetts, is six feet three inches in height, and weighs two hundred and twenty pounds; I am six feet three inches in height, and weigh one hundred and ninety pounds, if you please. That is not equality. My honorable friend from Maine here is five feet nine inches”——
Mr. Fessenden. And a half. [Laughter.]
Mr. Cowan. I beg the honorable Senator’s pardon. I would not diminish his stature an inch or half an inch, nor take a hair from his head; and he weighs one hundred and forty pounds, if you please. Is that equality? The honorable Senator from Massachusetts is largely learned; he has traversed the whole field of human learning; there is nothing, I think, that he does not know, that is worth knowing,—and this is no empty compliment that I desire to pay him now; and he is so much wiser than I am, that at the last elections he divined exactly how they would result, and I did not. [Laughter.] He rode triumphantly upon the popular wave; and I was overwhelmed, and came out with eyes and nose suffused, and hardly able to gasp.
Mr. Sumner. You ought to have followed my counsel.
Mr. Cowan. Why should I not? What was Providence doing in that? If Providence had made me equal to the honorable Senator, I should not have needed his counsel, and I should have ridden, too, on the topmost wave. [Laughter.]