arrived at the years of discretion,
who has committed no crime, into your community and ask him to
participate in setting up that Government; and if you shut him
out without any reason, you do him a wrong, one of the greatest
wrongs that you can inflict upon a man. If it is to be done to me
or to my posterity, I say to you take their lives, but do not
deprive them of the right of standing upon the same foothold,
upon the same platform in their political rights with any other
man in the community. I will compromise no such principles. I
contend before God and man ever, always, that they shall stand
upon the same platform in setting up their governments, and in
continuing them after they are set up, and I will brand it as a
wrong and an injustice in any man to deprive any portion of the
population, unless it be for crime or offence, from participating
in the Government to the same extent that he participates
himself. If they are ignorant, so much the greater necessity that
they have this weapon in their hands to guard themselves against
the strong. The weaker, the more ignorant, and the more liable
they are to be imposed upon, the greater the necessity of having
this great weapon of self-defence in their hands.

I know very well that great prejudices have existed against
colored people; but my word for it, the moment they are admitted
to the ballot-box, especially about the second Tuesday of October
in our State, you will find them as genteel a set of men as you
know anywhere; as much consideration will be awarded to them;
they will be men; they will be courted; their rights will be
awarded to them; they will be made to feel, and it will go abroad
that they are not the subjects of utter contempt that can be
treated as men see fit to treat them; but they will rise in the
scale of the community, and finally occupy a platform according
to their merits, which they never can obtain; and you will never
be able to make anything of any portion of the community black or
white, while you exclude them from the ballot-box.

These, sir, are the reasons why I introduce this bill, and to
vindicate them I have spoken. I know I am not able to set forth
anything new on this subject. Every American citizen has
reflected upon it until his mind is made up, and the