Whitelaw Reid: “Misconduct of any kind will not help you, but patience and perseverance in well-doing will help you mightily.”

It is my firm conviction, that suffrage is not only the best security for freedom, but the most potent agent of amelioration and civilization.

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.

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

In this way they will surely overcome unjust hostility, and convince even the most prejudiced that the denial to them of any right which citizens may properly exercise is equally unwise and wrong.