The injustice of such a condition was apparent, and there were only two possible remedies.

One was to extend the franchise to the blacks.

I do not recall the name of one man who favored emancipation as a policy and adhered to the Democratic Party.

When a man reached the conclusion that the negroes should be free, he could not do otherwise than join the Republican Party.

Next to the restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery the recognition of universal suffrage is the most important result of the war.

It has its evils but they are incidental, and their influence is limited to times and places, while the advantages are universal and enduring.

It is security against chronic hostility to the Government and security against the manifestation of a revolutionary spirit among the people.

If suffrage were limited there would be a body of discontented people ready to seize upon any pretext that promised a change.

In the present condition of our system the only danger is due to the forcible or fraudulent withholding of the right from those who are entitled to enjoy it.

The project to extend the Presidential term is full of danger.

If the term were six or ten years the presence of an offensive or dangerous man in the office would provoke a revolution, or cause disturbances only less disastrous to business and to social and domestic comfort.

I was counted as a radical and in favor of securing to the negro race every right to which the white race was entitled.

However, I met the difficulty by an argument in which I maintained that the right to vote carried with it the right to hold office.

The enjoyment of the right to vote has not been fully secured to the negro race, but no one has appeared to deny his right to hold office.

Indeed, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party has placed him in office, both by election and appointment.

He was a great figure in the war against slavery and as a great figure in that war he should ever remain.

The Fourteenth Amendment saved the country from a series of calamities that might have been more disastrous even than the Civil War.

The South might, under the Fourteenth Amendment, grant to the negroes the right to vote but upon conditions wholly impracticable and thus have secured their full representation in Congress at the same time that the voting power was…

Such a policy would have given the whole country over to contention and possibly in the end, to civil war.

The discontented and oppressed negroes, increasing in numbers and wealth, would have demanded their rights ultimately, even by the threat of force, or by the use of force they would have secured their rights.

The Dorr War in Rhode Island and the struggles in Kansas, are instances of the danger of attempting to found society or to maintain social order upon an unjust or an unequal system for the distribution of political power.

It is true that at this time (1901) the operation of the Fifteenth Amendment has been defeated and consequently the governments of States and the Government of the United States have become usurpations, in that they have been in the hands…

Nevertheless the influence of the amendment is felt by all, and the time is not distant when it will be accepted by all.

Thus our Government will be made to rest upon the wisest and safest foundation yet devised by man: The Equality of Men in the States, and the Equality of States in the Union.

My active radicalism had alienated the conservative Republicans.