138 



CONGKESS, UNITED STATES. 



the subject. I have to say, then, sir, here on 

 the floor of the American Senate, I stand for 

 universal suffrage, and as a matter of funda- 

 mental principle do not recognize the right of 

 society to limit it on any ground of race, color, 

 or sex. I will go further and say that I recog- 

 nize the right of franchise as being intrinsical- 

 ly a natural right ; and I do not believe that 

 society is authorized to impose any limitation 

 upon it that does not spring out of the neces- 

 sities of the social state itself." 



Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, followed, saying: 

 " But a systematic assault is being made upon 

 these fundamental principles of American auton- 

 omy and liberty, and the bill under considera- 

 tion is one of the attacks. It -proposes, by con- 

 ferring suffrage upon the negro population, to 

 introduce into the government of this District a 

 novel, incompetent, and noxious element of 

 power. In a representative government suf- 

 frage is the primary power, and when enlight- 

 ened, free, independent, and virtuous it domin- 

 ates, as it should, the government. The abstract 

 proposition, that no incompetent person should 

 be invested with the right of suffrage, cannot 

 reasonably be denied. If it were practicable 

 to establish a definite and unerring test of com- 

 petency, the general good would require that 

 all who do not come up to that measure should 

 be excluded. 



" Such a standard can never be obtained. 

 The population of the United States and of each 

 State consists of well-defined classes, and if the 

 great mass of any of those classes are essentially 

 and palpably incapable of self-government, both 

 individually and collectively incompetent, they 

 ought unquestionably to be excluded from 

 suffrage, because they could give no assistance 

 to proper and legitimate government, and if 

 their numbers were relatively large they might 

 aid materially to obstruct, confuse, and pervert 

 it. None will deny that idiots and lunatics are 

 classes of our population that come within the 

 reason of this objection, and that they ought as 

 classes to be excluded from suffrage. There 

 might be many cases of partial lunacy, where 

 the subject would be more capable of a rational 

 and proper exercise of suffrage than many men 

 of more limited but sounder minds ; the incon- 

 venience, difficulty, and impossibility of ascer- 

 taining, in each individual case, the extent of 

 mental infirmity that would make it proper for 

 the particular subject to be excluded, requires 

 the exclusion of the whole class. 



"But our entire population, like that of all 

 other countries, is divided into two great classes, 

 the male and the female. By the census of 

 1860 the white female population of the United 

 States exceeded thirteen millions, and the aggre- 

 gate negro population, of both sexes, was below 

 four and a half millions. That great white 

 population, and all its female predecessors, have 

 never had the right of suffrage, or, to use that 

 cant phrase of the day, have never been enfran- 

 chised ; and such has also been the condition of 

 the negro population. That about one negro 



in ten thousand in four or five States has been 

 allowed to vote, is too insignificant to be digni- 

 fied with any consideration as an exception. 

 But now a frenzied party is clamoring to have 

 suffrage given to the negro, while they not only 

 1-aise no voice for female suffrage, but frown 

 upon and repel every movement and utterance 

 in its favor. Who of the advocates of negro 

 suffrage, in Congress or out of it, dare to stand 

 forth and proclaim to the manhood of America, 

 that the free negroes are fitter and more com- 

 petent to exercise transcendent political power, 

 the right of suffrage, than their mothers, their 

 wives, their sisters, and their daughters? 



" The great God who created ah 1 the races, and 

 in every race gave to man woman, never intend- 

 ed that woman should take part in national gov- 

 ernment among any people, or that the negro, 

 the lowest, should ever have coordinate and 

 equal power with the highest, the white race, 

 in any government, national or domestic. To 

 woman in every race He gave correlative, and 

 as high, as necessary, and as essential, but differ- 

 ent faculties and attributes, intellectual and 

 moral, as He gave to man in the same race ; and 

 to both those adapted to the equally important 

 but different parts which they were to play in 

 the dramatic destinies of their people. The 

 instincts, the teachings of the distinct and differ- 

 ing but harmonious organism of each, led man 

 and woman in every race and people, and na- 

 tion and tribe, savage and civilized, in all coun- 

 tries and ages of the world, to choose their nat- 

 ural, appropriate, and peculiar field of labor and 

 effort. Man assumed the direction of govern- 

 ment and Avar, woman of the domestic und fam- 

 ily affairs and the care and training of the 

 child ; and each has always acquiesced in this 

 partition and choice. It has been so from the 

 beginning, throughout the whole history of man, 

 and it will continue to be so to the end, because 

 it is in conformity to Nature and its laws, and is 

 sustained and confirmed by the experience and 

 reason of six thousand years. 



"I therefore, Mr. President, am decidedly 

 and earnestly opposed to the amendment moved 

 by my friend from Pennsylvania." 



Mr. Buckalew, of Pennsylvania, said : " Now, 

 sir, I venture to say that those who resist the 

 extension of suffrage in this country will be un- 

 successful in their opposition ; they will be over- 

 borne, unless they assume grounds of a more 

 commanding character than those which they, 

 have here maintained. The subject of the ex- 

 tension of suffrage must be put upon practical 

 grounds and extricated from the sophisms of 

 theoretical reasoning. Gentlemen must get out 

 of the domain of theory. They must come 

 back again to those principles of action upon 

 which our fathers proceeded in framing our 

 constitutional system. They lodged suffrage in 

 this country simply in those whom they thought 

 most worthy and most fit to exercise it. They 

 did not proceed upon those humanitarian theo- 

 ries which have since obtained and which now 

 seem to have taken a considerable hold on the 



