He was felicitous with his pen beyond the rhetorical power of Mr.Sumner, though not so deeply read, nor so broad in scholarship and general culture.
He made an able argument for the pending amendment as the most effective method of bringing the South to do justice to the colored race.

He believed that if the Southern States should feel that they could derive larger political power in the Government of the United States by admitting colored men to the elective franchise, they would in time conclude to do so; and doing so they would be compelled in the mere process to realize their indebtment to that race, and thus from self-interest, if not from a sense of justice, would extend equal protection to the whole population.

Mr.Fessenden could not refrain from some good-natured ridicule of the declaratory resolutions which Mr.Sumner had offered.

"Sir," said he, "does the Constitution authorize oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly?
Not at all.

Are you not as safe under the Constitution as you are under an Act of Congress?
Why re-enact the Constitution merely to put it in a bill?
What do you accomplish by it?
What remedy does it afford?
It is merely as if it read this way: 'Whereas it is provided in the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State of the Union a republican form of government, therefore we declare that there shall be a republican form of government, and nothing else.' That is all there is of it.