Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1870 — A Free Nation. [ARTICLE]

A Free Nation.

Tub 30th of March will forever be memorable in the history of the American republic and the cause of freedom. For on that day in this glorious year 1870 the consummation of our freedom, so tat as making all men politically equal before the law is concerned, was brought about. The proclamation of Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, announcing the ratification by the requisite number of States of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Const! tution, is the cqpcludingscene, the happy, glorious denouement of a grand political epoch, by which was evolved one of the most important victories for liberty till now recorded in the history of the human race.

The President, in a special message to Congress on this subject, says “the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution Completed the greatest civil change, and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life." These are strong words, memorable for the truth they announce. Not the Declaration oflndcpendence itself, not the adoption of the original Constitution, not the emancipation of our four millions slaves, was so important os the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. By the first, a new nationality was led out of the wilderness to view, but not to enjoy, the promised land; by the second, that nationality was organized into a power commanding the world’s respect, but in the most important particulars of human right outraging the laws of justice and of Heaven; by the third, an act of national benificence was done, without which the republic might have gone down In ruins, suffering the penalty of national crimes; but by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment every .man in the country, guiltless of crime, 1s placed upon his feet, and, not only in theory, but by the acknowledgment of law, made to stand upon a perfect political equality with every other man. The last vestige of the legalized caste is wiped out of our nationality, and the American Republic, from the 30th day of March, 1870, is in law and fact a genuine democracy. We are henceforth a free nation.

Noone should fail to observe, in considering the importance of this great consummation, that the constitutional provision, now part of the fundamental law of the land, is of negative form. Such has been the form of every great charter of freedom wrested from tyranny and wrong. The law itself has been the great oppressor of the human race, and when oppression has been removed, it lias been by the ab rogation of unjust law. So this great enactment does not affirmatively say that men shall have such and such rights. It forbids government to take from men such and sudh rights, among which, in this instances is the right of most practical value to every constituent member of the State. Government is forbidden to practice political iniquity. The result—equality. The immediate effects of this extension of the sphere and power of freedom will not be great Did customs, old prejudices, old education in ill, ’will stand in the way. A nation is not regenerated in a day. But the effect of old customs, and prejudices, and education, will gradually pass away, and the time will come when the free peoples of the earth will, with one accord, acknowledge that the day of their deliverance from bondage was greatly accelerated by the freedom of the American Republic, as fully consummated by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.— Chicago Post. March 31.