The House has today resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Government of the United States... [N]othing less than the total… - James A. Garfield

The late Baron Quetelet, of Belgium, a leading authority on this subject and on vital statistics, has shown that, if a pair of dice be thrown a million times, the lowest count being two and the highest twelve, the aggregate count will be almost exactly seven millions. The mathematical average will be realized in the practical result. In fact, the variation from that average will disappear long before the millionth throw. Nothing is more uncertain than the result of any one throw; few things more certain than the result of many throws. When applied to human life, the law of averages exhibits many striking results.

Strangulatus pro republica.

I can hardly believe that any person can be found who will not admit that every one of these provisions is just. They are all asserted, in some form or other, in our Declaration or organic law. But the Constitution limits only the action of Congress, and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment supplies that defect, and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all. Whatever law punishes a white man for a crime shall punish the black man precisely in the same way and to the same degree. Whatever law protects the white man shall afford equal protection to the black man. Whatever means of redress is afforded to one shall be afforded to all. Whatever law allows the white man to testify in court shall allow the man of color to do the same. These are great advantages over their present codes. Now different degrees of punishment are inflicted, not on account of the magnitude of the crime, but according to the color of the skin. Now color disqualifies a man from testifying in courts or being tried in the same way as white men.