The position carried with it an element of deception, because every intelligent man knew that it would be impossible to force negro suffrage on the Southern States by National authority, and leave the Northern States free to exclude it from their own domain.
Blaine highlights the hypocrisy of expecting Southern states to adopt policies that Northern states were unwilling to embrace.
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The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish.
Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea.
In Congressional districts where the colored race constituted one-half of the total population (and in many instances the proportion was even larger), the vote of one white man offset the vote of two in a Northern district where suffrage…
With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.
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