"a violation of the principles of equality to deny to any citizen of the country the right to bear arms"

   "But there was a glorious object connected with that; in cutting down the Army blows could be struck. In 1866 the Government of the United States, feeling that 4,000,000 of men who had been enfranchised by the events of the war were entitled to join with others in bearing arms in the defense of their rights; feeling that it was a violation of duty and a violation of the principles of equality to deny to any citizen of the country the right to bear arms, although they knew it was done in some countries--they knew that when that horde of godless robbers, the Turks, from the interior of Asia invaded the East Of Europe and conquered the Christian countries there as well as in the West of Asia, they denied to their Christian subjects the right to bear arms; but those who in 1866 sat in these Halls did not propose that this nation should be a body of Turks, and they created two colored regiments.
  
   "In 1869, believing that the proportion of colored men in the Army was not sufficient to give them their fair opportunity to learn the art of war, to be instructed in the means of personal defense, to bear arms in the cause of a country which we may presume they love as well as we, we created two more regiments. Therefore, when this House met in last December we had two regiments of infantry of colored men and two regiments of cavalry of colored men. And the work of this House has been to legislate these men out of the rights which we conferred upon them by the legislation of 1866 and 1869."

- SPEECH OF Hon. Martin I. Townsend, of New York IN THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JULY 12, [1876] Pg. 2.