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![handle is hein.slavery/abscngeqs0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
THE ABOLITiON SCHEMES OF NEGRO EQUALITY EXPOSED.
SPEECH OF HON. W. A. RICHARDSON,
OF ILLINOIS,
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DIl 19, 1862.
Mr. RICHARDSON-Mr. Chairman, I desire this
morning to submit a few remarks for the consid-
eration of the House and the country. It is not
my purpose to discuss questions pertaining to the
army already in the field, which, if judiciously
officered and managed, is able to crush out the
rebellion. I shall direct my attention, therefore,
to the consideration of some of the many new
questions which are continually arising during
the progress of this terrible civil war.
NEGRO EQUALITY DETERMINED UPON.
Mr. Chairman, there is a manifest anxiety, an
overweening desire, a persistent purpose, upon
the part of prominent members of the dominant
party in this government, to place upon terms
of equality and make participants with us in the
rights of American citizenship an inferior race.
The negro race, which is incapable of either com-
prehending or maintaining any form of govern-
ment-by whom liberty is interpreted as licen-
tiousness-is sought to be exalted, even at the
cost of the degradation of our own flesh and
blood.
We all remember with what intense satisfaction
a recent order of the Secretary of State, Mr. Sew-
ard, one of the chief clerks of the President, was
received in certain quarters, because it declared
that no fugitive slave should be retained in cus-
tody longer than thirty days, unless by special
order of competent civil authority.
That I may do no injustice to the head of the
State Department, and his unwarranted assump-
tion of power, I quote the official paper itself:
DEPARTMENT 01F STATE,
WASHINGTON, January 25, 1862.
SIR-The President of the United States being
satisfied that the following instructions contra-
vene no law in force in this District, and that
they can be executed without waiting for legisla-
tion by Congress, I am directed by him to convey
them to you:
As Marshal of the District of Columbia you
will not receive into custody any persons claimed
to be held to service or labor within the District
or elsewhere, and not charged with any crime or
misdemeanor, unless upon arrest or commitment,
pursuant to law, as fugitives from such service or
labor; and you will not retain any such fugitives
in custody beyond a period of thirty days from
their arrest and commitment, unless by special
order of competent civil authority.
You will forthwith cause publication to be
made of this order, and at the expiration of ten
days therefrom you will apply the same to all per-
sons so claimed to be held to service or labor,
and now in your custody.
This order has no relation to any arrests
made by military authority.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
PRIVILEGES FOR THE NEGRO-OPPRESSION FOR
THE WHITE MAN.
While Mr. Seward was issuing this order for a
general jail delivery of the negroes, he was also
sending, under a usurpation of power, and in vi-
olation of the laws and the constitution, hundreds
of white men and women to fill the cells of the
prisons in this District and throughout the loyal
States. Against many of these white men and
white women thus incarcerated by this despotic
Secretary of State, no charge has ever been
made; they are imprisoned without the form or
authority of law; and thus the personal liberty of
the Caucasian is ruthlessly violated, while the
African is most tenderly and carefully guarded,
even to the nullification of State enactments and
the national statutes. Let a rumor become cur-
rent that a negro has been deprived of personal
liberty-either in this District or anywhere else-
and there are dozens of republican members
upon this floor striving to obtain the attention of
the House while they may offer resolutions in-
quiring by what law, by whom, when, and where,
these objects of their undivided affections may
have been arrested. But never yet has any of
those philanthropic gentlemen made Inquiry for
the law or the authority under which white
American citizens have been kidnapped by the
State Department, dragged from their homes, and
left to pine, and die perchance, in some of the
many Bastiles which this administration has
established.
It is well known, sir, that if any white citizen,
perhaps a father or brother, desires to visit a rel.
ative or acquaintance in the military service of
this government, that he is obliged to secure a
pass from some competent authority, and to ob-
tain this he is required upon his honor to declare
his loyalty and 4delity to the government. But
the negro goes and comes within the lines of our
army, whether his destination be towards or from
the enemy; the color of the black man is his
passport, and is received as equivalent to the
pledge of honor and of loyalty upon the part of a
white person.
RUNAWAY NEGROES RECEIVE EMPLOYMENT TO
THE EXCLUSION OF WHITE CITIZENS.
In this District you have abolished slavery. You
have abolished it by compensation, by adding
$1,000,000 to the national debt, and a tax of
$73,000 to be paid annually, as interest upon this
sum, by taxes imposed upon the laboring white
people of these States. Not satisfied with doing
this much for your especial favorite, you extend
the freedom of this city and the hospitality of the
government to all the runaway negroes in the
country who choose to visit the District of Colum-
bia. You issue rations to them day after day,
and week after week, rations which must be paid
for through the sweat and toil of tax-ridden white
men. You are thus supporting in indolence hun-
dreds upon hundreds of black men. How many
and at what cost I am unable to state, because
when a resolution, asking for this information,
was introduced by the honorable gentleman from
Ohio, [Kr Cox], it was immediately tabled by
the republican majority upon the other side of
Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/abscngeqs0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)