a nation based on
universal suffrage.

In considering the question of suffrage, there are two starting
points: one, that this right is a gift of society, in which
certain men, having inherited this privilege from some abstract
body and abstract place, have now the right to secure it for
themselves and their privileged order to the end of time. This
principle leads logically to governing races, classes, families;
and, in direct antagonism to our idea of self-government, takes
us back to monarchies and despotisms, to an experiment that has
been tried over and over again, 6,000 years, and uniformly
failed.

Ignoring this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and
taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right--as
necessary to man under government, for the protection of person
and property, as are air and motion to life--we hold the talisman
by which to show the right of all classes to the ballot, to
remove every obstacle, to answer every objection, to point out
the tyranny of every qualification to the free exercise of this
sacred right. To discuss this question of suffrage for women and
negroes, as women and negroes, and not as citizens of a republic,
implies that there are some reasons for demanding this right for
these classes that do not apply to "white males."

The obstinate persistence with which fallacious and absurd
objections are pressed against their enfranchisement--as if they
were anomalous beings, outside all human laws and necessities--is
most humiliating and insulting to every black man and woman who
has one particle of healthy, high-toned self-respect. There are
no special claims to propose for women and negroes, no new
arguments to make in their behalf. The same already made to
extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John
Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for
the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to
make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less,
an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the
rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of
government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and
sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause
of the jealousi