Then the negro had made one more advance step. From being a freedman he was now a citizen. But it was soon found that this was not enough. Very grave questions were raised as to whether a race who had been slaves and thus freed and made citizens were entitled to all the rights of the original citizens of this country; in other words, whether they had the right to vote and hold office; and Congress had to take one more step. That step was to propose the fifteenth constitutional amendment, which guarantied to the race the right to vote. Then the negro advanced one further step. From being a citizen without rights as to voting and holding office he was made a citizen free and independent, with all the rights of any other citizen of the United States. Of course, I mean legal rights. He was made the legal equal of any and every other citizen of this Union. Social rights must take care of themselves; neither the Congress nor any other governmental power can regulate them. But all his legal rights were guarantied. Then what was the status? Here are four million persons, formerly slaves, then freedmen, then citizens without all the rights of citizenship, then full-fledged citizens with every right of the citizen, turned loose among us, without education, incorporated into society as part of the citizens of the United States and of the States in which they lived.

A grave problem arises here for solution. They must be educated; but we are not able to educate them. Why not? We claimed to be a wealthy people before the war. So we were; but we lost, according to the best estimates, about $2,000,000,000 in the value of our slaves. It was that much gold value, our own under the Constitution of the United States, which we lost by the war, and it was gone forever. That impoverished us to that extent and it was a very heavy draught. Then we had to support the Confederate armies for four years without a dollar of help, out of our substance. True, we issued Confederate bonds and notes; they were paid out for our substance, but at the end of the war they were repudiated and they became as ashes in our hands. We lost, then, not only two billions in slaves, but we lost about two billions more in the support of our armies for four years. Then we lost immense amounts in the destruction of property by the armies outside of what was necessary to feed and clothe them.

But that was not all. At the end of the struggle we had to return to the Union and resume our position and take upon ourselves our just proportion, according to our means, of the war debt contracted by the Government in the suppression of what is known as the rebellion. Then, I say, with these draughts upon us we are not able to educate these four millions of people that were turned loose among us. As I have already stated, during the period of slavery it was not our policy to educate them; it was incompatible, as we thought, with the relation existing between the two races. Now that they are citizens we all agree that it is our policy to educate them. As they are citizens, let us make them the best citizens we can. I am glad to see that they show a strong disposition to do everything in their power for the education of their children.

Then I say the provision of the bill that gives for ten years at least the advantage to the States where there is most illiteracy is a just and a wise provision, and I thank the senators from New England and the other wealthier States for the sense of justice they exhibit in coming forward and showing a willingness to aid in the education of these people. We all agree that it is important that they be educated. You will agree with me that we in the Southern States are not now able to educate them, and our own children. They were set free as a necessity of the Union. You so regarded it. Then it is proper that the Union should come forward, and with its vast resources aid in their education, and I am glad to see a movement made that looks in that direction.

I confess I have better hopes for the race for the future than I had when emancipation took place. They have shown a capacity to receive education, and a disposition to elevate themselves that is exceedingly gratifying, not only to me, but to every right-thinking Southern man; and I wish you to understand that we harbor no hostility to the race in the South. There are many reasons why we should not, no good reasons why we should. They were raised with us; they played with us as children. Under the slavery system the relations were kind. When the war came on it was supposed by many that they would rise in insurrection and soon disband our armies. They at no time ever behaved with more loyalty to us, or with more propriety. Since the end of the war, when, as we thought, you very unwisely gave them the ballot, they have exercised the rights of freemen with a moderation that probably no other race would have done. Therefore I say it is our duty in the South especially, and I think yours in the North as well, to encourage them, and, as they are now citizens, to elevate them and make them the best citizens possible.

But, as I stated a while ago, I have given you a reason why there is such a vast preponderance of illiteracy now in our section. It is not only due to the fact that we did not have the common-school systems in the Southern States prior to emancipation, but that the four millions of freedmen were added to our population as citizens there, without education. Then we must appeal to you not only now but in future to be liberal toward the South in aiding in the education of these people. I know there have been complaints that they may have been cheated in some instances at the ballot-box. Ignorance may be cheated anywhere. Doubtless, Senators, you have seen the more ignorant class cheated in your own States. If you would guard against this effectually in the future, educate them; teach them to know their rights and, knowing them, they will maintain them.

It is necessary to educate them, furthermore, for the reason that they do not now understand, as ignorance does not anywhere understand, the theory and form and spirit of our Government. Education will enable them to understand it. We must give it to them. We must teach them what is the nature of the government, what are the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and now that we all agree that it is to be perpetual in future, we must teach them to love the Union and to be ready to stand by and defend it, and I believe the senators from New England will agree with me when I say we must teach them also that the Union is a union of States, and that we must not destroy the States. When the States are destroyed there is no longer the Union of our fathers. As the Union is to be indissoluble, the States which form the Union, and without which it cannot be maintained, must forever remain indestructible, and they must continue in the exercise of all the reserved rights which they now possess under the Constitution as it stands, with the amendments adopted by the States.

Therefore, it is necessary to teach all citizens, white and colored, and to teach their children, the importance of maintaining republican institutions in the purity in which they originally came from the hands of the framers of our Constitution, and to maintain the ballot-box in its purity also. I announced in my own State to the electors who were to vote on my case the next day, that I was for a free ballot and a fair count. I want to see the day come when that will be so everywhere, not only in Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia, but in New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana as well. Let it be so everywhere. Let us educate our people, white and colored, up to the point where they understand the proper use of the ballot; then let it be free to all, and let the ballots be fairly counted

when deposited. Having referred to the struggle that brought about the present state of things, I will add that whatever I may have thought of the terms you dictated to us, I have accepted them, and I have all the while advocated carrying them out in letter and in spirit in good faith, in practice as well as in theory. Whenever the whole mass of the people are educated there is no danger in doing this. Until they are educated there will be impositions practiced upon ignorance in every section of this country, and probably in every State in the Union.

The honorable senator from Vermont referred to the great good that was being done by the appropriation made in 1862 of portions of the public land to establish agricultural and mechanical colleges in the different States. I can bear testimony that in my own State that appropriation has been most beneficial. It was accepted by our State, the land scrip sold, and the money was delivered to the trustees of the State University, and they connected with our university a college of agriculture and the mechanic arts, which has been well conducted and resulted in great good; but there were certain sections of our State not well content with the centralization of it, as they termed it, in one locality, and it was asked that it be distributed more justly between the different sections of the State. The trustees of the university agreed that they would endow a branch college at Dahlonega in the building of the old United States mint that Congress donated for the purpose of a school, and they gave $2,000 a year of the interest derived from the fund toward its support. Since then it has been carried up to $3,500 per annum and we have established three other branches of the university -one at Milledgeville, one at Cuthbert, and one at Thomasville. Those branches are colleges of a lower grade than the university. They educate girls and boys-we have both sexes there educated-up to the point where they can enter college. For instance, a boy who graduates in one of them can enter the junior class of our State University, and we have at this time about eight hundred pupils in those four branch colleges. They are located in sections where they can be easily reached by our people generally. There is a cheap mode of board established there. Mess-halls are resorted to, and it is deemed altogether respectable for a young man to board himself as best he can and go into the schools. The amount of good they are doing is incalculable. At Dahlonega the trustees are authorized, on the proper examination of a young man or young lady in the college, to give a certificate authorizing him or her to teach in the public schools of the State, and at the last commencement there were about eighty licensed for teachers. They go out all over our country and teach three months' schools during the vacation. In this way they make some money to enable them to go forward again with their studies. And thus there is a very great amount of good done by that college, and I should very gladly see as large an addition as possible made to its endowment.

If we could have two or three other of these branches in different sections of our State we could add greatly to the present advantages. Doubtless the same may be true in the other States.

The only real regret I have about this matter is that the fund we shall be able to raise from the proceeds of the sales of the public lands and from the Patent Office fees will be too small to meet the demand; but I trust this is the entering-wedge, and that we may see our way clear in the future, if this works well, to do still more for the cause of education.

I know some objection has been raised on the constitutional question. It has been said that the States alone can take charge of this matter; that the Federal Government has nothing to do with the education of the people. Well, under the strictest rules of construction of the old State-rights school

prior to the war possibly that was so; but we do not live under the Constitution that we lived under then. The amendments made at the termination of the struggle have very greatly enlarged the powers of this government. Again, I think the constitutional objection cannot apply to this bill, for the reason that it is mainly a proposition to dispose of the proceeds of the public lands, and so far as those proceeds are concerned there never has been a time when the Government did not have the right to dispose of them. As far back as 1836 there was a law passed for the distribution of the surplus funds in the treasury, and in 1841 to distribute the net proceeds of public lands, the Congress recognizing the fact that they belonged to the States. Then in the organization of new States and Territories large amounts of the public domain have been set apart for the use of colleges and schools there, recognizing the power of Congress to use a portion of the land for this purpose.

Then, again, the act of 1862, of which I have been speaking, which appropriates a certain amount of the public lands in aid of agricultural colleges, is another use of the public domain for that purpose which has not been objected to. After all that has been done, why may we not now appropriate the future proceeds of the public lands and the Patent office to this sacred purpose?

But I believe there is another provision of the Constitution that may have some bearing here. "The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government" is the language of the Constitution. If I be right in the position I took in the commencement of this argument, that this government cannot be perpetuated as a republic without the education of the whole mass of the people, then to appropriate money for the education of the masses of the people would be a better mode of guarantying a republican form of government than to undertake to make a guaranty by the use of the army and the sword.

I do not think really there is any constitutional difficulty in the way of making this disposition of the public lands for this very important purpose, and it seems to me there is no other possible disposition that can be made of this fund in the future which can result in anything like the benefit to the Government and the people of the United States that must result from the appropriation of it to the purposes of education.

A large proportion of our public domain, which is the property of the people, has been appropriated by Congress to railroad corporations and other purposes, looking to the settlement and development of the Territories. And while I am not prepared to say that this may at the time have been an improper use of a portion of the public lands, it seems to me there can be no doubt that it is better to stop such appropriations in future and apply the proceeds of their sale to the sacred purpose of educating the people. We will in this way establish new guaranties for the perpetuation of the Union, the maintenance of the rights of the States, and the future peace and prosperity of the whole country. Let us give to the whole mass of our people, in all sections of the Union, the benefit of at least a common-school education; and let us provide, as in the Prussian system, for a higher development of the brightest intellects that may be found in the public schools by such legislation and appropriations as will enable them to prosecute their studies till they have made themselves masters of the particular art or calling for which nature seems to have fitted them.

It may be objected that it costs large sums of money to educate our whole people. I admit it; but it is an investment that pays back a heavy rate of interest. Who is most likely to make money, an educated enlightened people, or an ignorant, degraded people? Contrast the financial con

dition of New England with that of Mexico, and tell me which accumulates fastest, an educated, scientific people, or a people who do not enjoy the benefits of education or science. The surest way to make money is to invest large sums of money in the education of our people and the development of the whole intellect of the country.

Then let us lay the foundation of a system which shall be improved and built up, until the whole mass of the American people have the benefits that will soon result from it. This is the surest way to maintain and perpetuate our republican system of government, to develop the vast resources of our country, to encourage and protect the accumulation of wealth and to transmit the blessings of good government to remotest generations.

SPEECH OF HON. JOSEPH E. BROWN IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 24, 1881. ON LANDS IN SEVERALTY TO INDIANS, And the QUESTION, IS HE A CITIZEN UNDER THE FOURTEENTH CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT, DISCUSSED.

The Senate having under consideration the Bill (S. No. 1773) to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the States and Territories over the Indians, and for other purposes

Mr. Brown said:

Mr. President: If I understand the amendment offered by the senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Hoar] it is to confer all the rights of a citizen of the United States upon an Indian who has received his land on the reservation of his tribe in severalty under this Bill. I incline very strongly to think that the Indian who has settled himself upon a homestead is a citizen already, under the fourteenth constitutional amendment; but if he is not, I am prepared to vote to make him one whenever he takes his land in severalty, and to give him the rights of a citizen if he lacks anything. The history of our dealings with the Indians is a sad history. And I think we owe something to them. When the white men, few in number

Mr. Logan. If the senator will pardon me for a moment, I should like before he goes on with his remarks to ask permission to offer an amendment to the Bill to come in after the last section, so that the amendment may be printed. I thought perhaps the discussion would not continue so long as it has, but as the Bill will probably go over until to morrow I should like to have the amendment printed. It is in the direction of the senator's remarks, providing citizenship for the Indians. I ask that the amendment be printed. The presiding officer (Mr. Garland) in the chair. If there is no objection, the amendment will be received and ordered to be printed.

Mr. Brown. As I was stating when interrupted by the honorable senator from Illinois, when the white men appeared, few in number, upon the eastern shores of this continent the Indians possessed it. They were powerful; they were sovereign; they were the monarchs of this country; and it was by their toleration that we settled in their dominions. There was no dictating to them by the persons who first came here to settle on the eastern shores. The white men asked, may we purchase from you, the owners, a homestead here? The Indians met them with kindness and hospitality. When justice has been done to them I believe they have usually been proverbially kind. Negotiations were opened and certain tracts of land were conveyed, not by us to them, but by them to us.

They had the power then at any time to have exterminated the settlements upon the eastern shores of this continent; and it would have taken armies to