Its prime object was to correct the wrongs which might be enacted in the South, and the correction proposed was direct and unmistakable; viz., that the Nation would exclude the negro from the basis of apportionment wherever the State should exclude him from the right of suffrage.
Blaine emphasizes the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the rights of African Americans in the South.
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Their success as civil magistrates, as legislators, as executives was not less marked and meritorious than their illustrious service in war.
Their convention did more to popularize the Fourteenth Amendment as a political issue than any other instrumentality of the year.
In turn, the course of the National Administration would certainly be influenced, and its fate in large degree determined, by the conduct of the Southern men, in whom the President was placing unbounded trust.
If you are not ready to be the Moses of an oppressed people, do not become their Pharaoh.
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