An Appeal To Congress For Impartial Suffrage

A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage,
and for including the negro in the body politic, would require
more space than can be reasonably asked here. It is supported by
reasons as broad as the nature of man, and as numerous as the
wants of society. Man is the only government-making animal in the
world. His right to a participation in the production and
operation of government is an inference from his nature, as direct
and self-evident as is his right to acquire property or education.
It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to declare
that he shall not share in the making and directing of the
government under which he lives, than to say that he shall not
acquire property and education. The fundamental and unanswerable
argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the negro is found in
the undisputed fact of his manhood. He is a man, and by every
fact and argument by which any man can sustain his right to vote,
the negro can sustain his right equally. It is plain that, if the
right belongs to any, it belongs to all. The doctrine that some
men have no rights that others are bound to respect, is a doctrine
which we must banish as we have banished slavery, from which it
emanated. If black men have no rights in the eyes of white men,
of course the whites can have none in the eyes of the blacks. The
result is a war of races, and the annihilation of all proper human
relations.

But suffrage for the negro, while easily sustained upon abstract
principles, demands consideration upon what are recognized as the
urgent necessities of the case. It is a measure of relief,--a
shield to break the force of a blow already descending with
violence, and render it harmless. The work of destruction has
already been set in motion all over the South. Peace to the
country has literally meant war to the loyal men of the South,
white and black; and negro suffrage is the measure to arrest and
put an end to that dreadful strife.

Something then, not by way of argument, (for that has been done by
Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith,
and other able men,) but rather of statement and appeal.

For better or for worse, (as in some of the old marriage
ceremonies,) the negroes are evidently a permanent part of the
American population. They are too numerous and useful to be
colonized, and too enduring and self-perpetuating to disappear by
natural causes. Here they are, four millions of them, and, for
weal or for woe, here they must remain. Their history is parallel
to that of the country; but while the history of the latter has
been cheerful and bright with blessings, theirs has been heavy and
dark with agonies and curses. What O'Connell said of the history