Whitelaw Reid: “Or should further guarantees be exacted, and reorganization delayed until they were furnished?”

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.

Ordinarily the simple performance of duty is so blessed of God, that men who live in the doing of it, are the best off, in all respects, even in this world.

It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social and political progress.

Our national experience has demonstrated that public order reposes most securely on the broad base of universal suffrage.