Archibald Henry Grimké: “Emancipation and colored troops were the powder and ball which Providence had laid by the side of our guns.”

And politics is business, is the big business is it not, or ought it not to be the big business of all self governing peoples, who would maintain justice and freedom for themselves and transmit them unimpaired to their posterity?

There must be added to them this something else, this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the evil consequences of their race prejudice.

Not at all, for they are most important, but without the ballot they are impotent to give the relief so much needed in the South.

Colonel Roosevelt, as the leader of the new party, recognized at his full political value the Negro in states where his vote is counted, and perceived the very slight value, potential and actual, as a party asset of the Negro in states…