if it can protect one man and is bound to protect him, it can protect every man—­all men—­and is bound to do it.  All admit the power of Congress to protect the masters in the District against their slaves.  What part of the constitution gives the power?  The clause so often quoted,—­“power of legislation in all cases whatsoever,” equally in the “case” of defending the blacks against the whites, as in that of defending the whites against the blacks.  The power is given also by Art. 1, Sec. 8, clause 15—­“Congress shall have power to suppress insurrections”—­a power to protect, as well blacks against whites, as whites against blacks.  If the constitution gives power to protect one class against the other, it gives power to protect either against the other.  Suppose the blacks in the District should seize the whites, drive them into the fields and kitchens, force them to work without pay, flog them, imprison them, and sell them at their pleasure, where would Congress find power to restrain such acts?  Answer; a general power in the clause so often cited, and an express one in that cited above—­“Congress shall have power, to suppress insurrections.”  So much for a supposed case.  Here follows a real one.  The whites in the District are perpetrating these identical acts upon seven thousand blacks daily.  That Congress has power to restrain these acts in one case, all assert, and in so doing they assert the power “in all cases whatsoever.”  For the grant of power to suppress insurrections, is an unconditional grant, not hampered by provisos as to the color, shape, size, sex, language, creed, or condition of the insurgents.  Congress derives its power to suppress this actual insurrection, from the same source whence it derived its power to suppress the same acts in the case supposed.  If one case is an insurrection, the other is.  The acts in both are the same; the actors only are different.  In the one case, ignorant and degraded—­goaded by the memory of the past, stung by the present, and driven to desperation by the fearful looking for of wrongs for ever to come.  In the other, enlightened into the nature of rights, the principles of justice, and the dictates of the law of love, unprovoked by wrongs, with cool deliberation, and by system, they perpetrate these acts upon those to whom they owe unnumbered obligations for whole lives of unrequited service.  On which side may palliation be pleaded, and which party may most reasonably claim an abatement of the rigors of law?  If Congress has power to suppress such acts at all, it has power to suppress them in all.

It has been shown already that allegiance is exacted of the slave.  Is the government of the United States unable to grant protection where it exacts allegiance?  It is an axiom of the civilized world, and a maxim even with savages, that allegiance and protection are reciprocal and correlative.  Are principles powerless with us which exact homage of barbarians? Protection is the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT of every human being under the exclusive legislation of Congress who has not forfeited it by crime.