George Boutwell

They have earned the right to share in the government; and, if you deny them the elective franchise, I know not how they are to be protected.

I cannot consent, after all the guards and safeguards which may be prepared for the defence of the colored men in the enjoyment of their rights,--I cannot consent that they shall be deprived of the right to protect themselves.

Without the right to vote he is secure in nothing.

With the right of voting, everything that a man ought to have or enjoy of civil rights comes to him.

If the negroes of the South, four million strong, had been endowed with the elective franchise, and had united with the white people of that region in the work of rebellion, your armies would have been powerless to subdue that rebellion…

If, before the war, any man in this country was disposed to undervalue a government thus conducted, he should have learned by this time the wisdom and strength of a government which embraces and embodies the judgment and the will of the…

In accordance with that theory, we must accept the ballot upon the principle of equality.

We have attempted to set up and maintain a government upon the doctrine of the equality of men, the universal right of all men, to participate in the government.

Simply that by conventionalities, by arrangements of conventions, some persons have been deprived of the right of voting.

Why should the example of such a State be quoted to justify refusing suffrage to men who have been denied the privilege of education, and whom it has been a crime to teach?

For two centuries, we have had in Massachusetts a system of public instruction, open to the children of the whole people without money and without price.

Does anybody contemplate such a qualification to the elective franchise, in the case of black people or white?

I hope it is not necessary in this day and this hour of the Republic to argue anywhere that a property qualification is not only unjust in itself, but that it is odious to the people of the country to a degree which cannot be expressed.

And when it is remembered, that, for months and almost for years after the opening of the rebellion, we refused to accept the services of colored persons in the armies of the country, it is with ill grace that we now decline to allow the…

But I am more anxious to deal justly by them because they are men.

I shall have occasion to say, if I discuss, as I hope to discuss, the nature and origin of the right of voting, that there is not the least possible connection between service in the army and navy and the exercise of the elective…

But to say now, having given freedom to the blacks, that they shall not enjoy the essential rights and privileges of men, is to abandon the principle of the Proclamation of Emancipation, and tacitly to admit that the whole emancipation…

I am opposed to the instructions moved by the gentleman from New York, because I see in them no advantage to anybody, and I apprehend from their adoption much evil to the country.

The presidential office should never be in the control of the judicial branch of the Government.

It is a wise feature of our system that the courts have no voice in the political department of our Government.

My present conclusion is that upon a reasonable construction of the Constitution there is no occasion for legislation or for an amendment to the fundamental law.

When he had formed a purpose he looked only to the end.

Is there a man among them all, from whatsoever quarter of this city, renowned in history--is there a man of them all who will stand here and say he is for the cessation of hostilities?

You, people of the North, who have been victorious upon the whole through three years of war--you are to disgrace your ancestry--you are to render yourselves infamous in all future time, by furling your flag and submitting anew to rebel…

You must either drive them into exile or exterminate them.