Whitelaw Reid: “Is it any one with the glorious history of this continental colonization bred in his bone and leaping in his blood?”

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

They should strive for distinction by economy, by industry, by sobriety, by patient perseverance in well-doing, by constant improvement of religious instruction, and by the constant practice of Christian virtues.

They should persist in this claim respectfully, but firmly, taking care to bring no discredit upon it by their own action.

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.