Whitelaw Reid: “The republican institutions I have been trained to believe in were institutions founded, like those of New England, on…”

They should persist in this claim respectfully, but firmly, taking care to bring no discredit upon it by their own action.

Let me repeat, that I think it best for all men—white men, black men, and brown men, if you make that distinction, that all men of proper age and unconvicted of crime, should have the right of suffrage.

They should strive for distinction by economy, by industry, by sobriety, by patient perseverance in well-doing, by constant improvement of religious instruction, and by the constant practice of Christian virtues.

And it is both natural and right that colored Americans, entitled to the rights of citizens, should claim their exercise.