Whitelaw Reid: “If any system of compulsory labor could make brutes out of intelligent men, would not this do it?”

It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social and political progress.

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

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

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.