Whitelaw Reid: “What we are doing is in the double line of preventing otherwise inevitable foreign seizure and putting a stop to…”

And it is both natural and right that colored Americans, entitled to the rights of citizens, should claim their exercise.

Let me repeat, that I think it best for all men—white men, black men, and brown men, if you make that distinction, that all men of proper age and unconvicted of crime, should have the right of suffrage.

In this way they will surely overcome unjust hostility, and convince even the most prejudiced that the denial to them of any right which citizens may properly exercise is equally unwise and wrong.

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