Evidence 1: “Conscious of the difficulties that surround our position, we would ask for no rights or privileges but such as rest upon the strong basis of justice and expediency, in view of the best interests of our entire country. We ask first, that the strong arm of law and order be placed alike over the entire people of this State; that life and property be secured, and the laborer free to sell his labor as the merchant his goods.”—Document 14.1: Colored People’s Convention of South Carolina, Memorial to Congress

Evidence 2: “We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings, and as such, entitled to all human rights.”—Document 14.2: Lottie Rollin, Address on Universal Suffrage

Evidence 3: “Let us approach nearer and take a closer view. We will enter the House of Representatives. Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these, twenty-three are white men, representing the remains of the old civilization. . . . Deducting the twenty-three members referred to, who comprise the entire strength of the opposition, we find one hundred and one remaining. Of this one hundred and one, ninety-four are colored, and seven are their white allies. Thus the blacks outnumber the whole body of whites in the House more than three to one.”—Document 14.4: James Shepherd Pike, The Prostrate State

Evidence 4: “There has never been a desire on the part of the North to humiliate the South; nothing is claimed for one State that is not freely accorded to all the others, unless it may be the right to kill negroes and Republicans without fear of punishment and without loss of caste or reputation. This has seemed to be a privilege claimed by a few States.—Document 14.5: Ulysses S. Grant, Letter to South Carolina Governor D. H. Chamberlain

Evidence 1: “We, the colored people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, respectfully present for your attention some prominent facts in relation to our present condition, and make a modest yet earnest appeal to your considerate judgment. We, your memorialists, with profound gratitude to almighty God, recognize the great boon of freedom conferred upon us by the instrumentality of our late President, Abraham Lincoln, and the armies of the United States. . . . We also recognize with liveliest gratitude the vast services of the Freedmen’s Bureau together with the efforts of the good and wise throughout the land to raise up an oppressed and deeply injured people in the scale of civilized being, during the throbbings of a mighty revolution which must affect the future destiny of the world.”—Document 14.1: Colored People’s Convention of South Carolina, Memorial to Congress

Evidence 2: “While I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy that has been accorded to me by this House, it is a matter of regret to me that it is necessary at this day that I should rise in the presence of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue of my skin may lend a color to the imputation that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in my advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Sir, the motive that impels me is restricted by no such narrow boundary, but is as broad as your Constitution. I advocate it, sir, because it is right. The bill, however, not only appeals to your justice, but it demands a response from your gratitude.”—Document 14.3: Robert Brown Elliott, In Defense of the Civil Rights Bill

Evidence 3: “Here, then, is the outcome, the ripe, perfected fruit of the boasted civilization of the South, after two hundred years of experience. A white community, that had gradually risen from small beginnings, till it grew into wealth, culture, and refinement, and became accomplished in all the arts of civilization; that successfully asserted its resistance to a foreign tyranny by deeds of conspicuous valor, which achieved liberty and independence through the fire and tempest of civil war, and illustrated itself in the councils of the nation by orators and statesmen worthy of any age or nation.”—Document 14.4: James Shepherd Pike, The Prostrate State

Evidence 4: “I repeat again, that I fully agree with you as to the measure of your duties in the present emergency, and as to my duties. Go on, and let every Governor, where the same dangers threaten the peace of his State, go on in the conscientious discharge of his duties to the humblest as well as the proudest citizen, and I will give every aid for which I can find law or constitutional power.”—Document 14.5: Ulysses S. Grant, Letter to South Carolina Governor D. H. Chamberlain

Evidence 1: “We protest against any code of black laws the Legislature of this State may enact, and pray to be governed by the same laws that control other men. The right to assemble in peaceful convention, to discuss the political questions of the day; the right to enter upon all the avenues of agriculture, commerce, trade; to amass wealth by thrift and industry; the right to develop our whole being by all the appliances that belong to civilized society, cannot be questioned by any class of intelligent legislators.”—Document 14.1: Colored People’s Convention of South Carolina, Memorial to Congress

Evidence 2: “The results of the war, as seen in reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race. The passage of this bill will determine the civil status, not onlyof the Negro, but of any other class of citizens who may feel themselves discriminatedagainst. It will form the cap-stone of that temple of liberty, begun on thiscontinent under discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of the sneers of monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends of freedom, until at last it stands, in all its beautiful symmetry and proportions, a building the grandest which the world has ever seen, realizing the most sanguine expectations and the highest hopes of those who, in the name of equal, impartial, and universal liberty, laid the foundation-stone.”—Document 14.3: Robert Brown Elliott, In Defense of the Civil Rights Bill

Evidence 3: “In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of ignorance and corruption, through the inexorable machinery of a majority of numbers. It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless none the less completely and absolutely done.”—Document 14.4: James Shepherd Pike, The Prostrate State

Evidence 4: “The scene at Hamburg, as cruel, bloodthirsty, wanton, unprovoked, and as uncalled for as it was, is only a repetition of the course that has been pursued in other States within the last few years, notably in Mississippi and Louisiana. How long these things are to continue, or what is to be the final remedy, the Great Ruler of the Universe only knows; but I have an abiding faith that the remedy will come, and come speedily, and I earnestly hope that itwill come peacefully.”—Document 14.5: Ulysses S. Grant, Letter to South Carolina Governor D. H. Chamberlain