Whitelaw Reid: “Negro suffrage seemed to all the most revolting of possibilities.”

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

It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill.

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

Give them order and justice, and trust to these to win them in other regards to our ways.