"In all of the sanctimony about protecting the rights of minorities, let us understand fully that the bill is aimed at what has become the most despised and mistreated minority in the country—namely, the white people of the Southern States. The approach is more subtle and hypocritical in this bill, but its purposes are identical with those that prompted Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and Ben Wade in the reconstruction legislation of the 1860's. Mr. President, the people of the South are citizens of this Republic. They are entitled to some consideration. It seems to me that fair men should recognize that the people of the South, too, have some rights which should be respected. And though, Mr. President, we have failed in this fight to protect them from a burgeoning bureaucracy that is already planning and organizing invasion after invasion of the South, preceded by thousands of young people who have been recruited in the greatest crusade since the Children's Crusade of the Middle Ages, our failure cannot be ascribed to lack of effort. Our ranks were too thin, our resources too scanty, but we did our best. I say to my comrades in arms in this long fight that there will never come a time when it will be necessary for any one of us to apologize for his conduct or his courage."