An old Mississippian was returning from New Orleans in a great rage: “Do you believe, sah, I even demeaned myself so much as to go to a d——d nigger, who called himself a labor agent, and offered him five dollars a head for all the hands he could get me.
Reid recounts a Mississippi planter's frustration over dealing with a labor agent for freedmen.
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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.
Ordinarily the simple performance of duty is so blessed of God, that men who live in the doing of it, are the best off, in all respects, even in this world.
It is my firm conviction, that suffrage is not only the best security for freedom, but the most potent agent of amelioration and civilization.