tizens,
and soldiers of the right to vote.

Slaves were never voters. It was bad enough that our fathers, for
the sake of Union, were compelled to allow masters to reckon
three-fifths of their slaves for representation, without adding
slave suffrage to the other privileges of the slaveholder. But free
colored men were always voters in many of the Colonies, and in
several of the States, North and South, after independence was
achieved. They voted for members of the Congress which declared
independence, and for members of every Congress prior to the
adoption of the Federal Constitution; for the members of the
convention which framed the Constitution; for the members of many
of the State conventions which ratified it, and for every president
from Washington to Lincoln.

Our government has been called the white man's government. Not so.
It is not the government of any class, or sect, or nationality, or
race. It is a government founded on the consent of the governed,
and Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, therefore properly calls it "the
government of the governed." It is not the government of the native
born, or of the foreign born, of the rich man, or of the poor man,
of the white man, or of the colored man--it is the government of
the freeman. And when colored men were made citizens, soldiers, and
freemen, by our consent and votes, we were estopped from denying to
them the right of suffrage.

General Sherman was right when he said, in his Atlanta letter, of
1864: "If you admit the negro to this struggle for any purpose, he
has a right to stay in for all; and, when the fight is over, the
hand that drops the musket can not be denied the ballot."

Even our adversaries are compelled to admit the Jeffersonian rule,
that "the man who pays taxes and who fights for the country is
entitled to vote."

Mr. Pendleton, in his speech against the enlistment of colored
soldiers, gave up the whole controversy. He said: "Gentlemen tell
us that these colored men are ready, with their strong arms and
their brave hearts, to maintain the supremacy of the Constitution,
and to defend the integrity of the Union, which in our hands to-day
is in peril. What is that Constitution? It provides that every
child of the Republic, every citizen of the land is before the la