Page:Justice and Jurisprudence - 1889.pdf/219

168 march of these citizens. In an imposing array of words gleaming with the purple and gold of glittering generalities, the court made sudden haste to destroy every vestige which remained of the ancient landmarks of slave-power, and, wheeling about, pressed the advance-guards of Liberty into the very heart of the nation, never pausing until, with high-sounding, lofty manifestoes, the boundaries of civil rights had been extended throughout the mighty borders of the republic dedicated anew to the universality of freedom. Recognizing at a glance the sublime civic principle and purpose of these amendments,&mdash;that they breathed a new and more beautiful form of civil life into America, and that they had banished from the country the moral turpitude by which one man asserts dominion over the civil rights of another,&mdash;the Supreme Court spoke in the tones of fearless truth. To the nation, and to the great political party which had risen to almost imperial power, and grown fat upon the doctrine of the equality of man before the law,&mdash;throughout its exposition of these amendments, the Supreme Court substantially declared: At last we have recognized the African race before God and men as a member of the great human family, bound by a common interest, and by the indissoluble laws of equity and charity which these amendments seek to enforce; they were not artfully-contrived, splendid baubles of State, nor a brutum fulmen of the national will; but a solemnly-pronounced conviction of duty, and solemnly-pledged vindication of man's rights, recognizing no privileged order of white or black; and an indelible infamy attaches to the nation, and, it may with truth be said, to the Republican expounders of the Constitution, if they forsake this outpost of civil freedom. It declared to the color-caste constructionists, Here is an ignorant, weak young race; out of it we must make men of stature and force, men of moral and intellectual energy.

The recorded decisions of the Supreme Court again and again substantially proclaim, that the chief prerogative and glory of man is self-dominion, and that this directly tends to increase his dignity of character and loftiness of sentiment,&mdash;all that makes man a blessing to himself and civil society; that these amendments are imposing national structures, built by the