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It initiates an untried experiment for a people
who have said, with one voice, that it is not for their good. This alone
should make us pause, but it is not all. The experiment has not been
tried, or so much as demanded, by the people of the several States for
themselves. In but few of the States has such an innovation been allowed
as giving the ballot to the colored population without any other
qualification than a residence of one year, and in most of them the
denial of the ballot to this race is absolute and by fundamental law
placed beyond the domain of ordinary legislation. In most of those
States the evil of such suffrage would be partial, but, small as it
would be, it is guarded by constitutional barriers. Here the innovation
assumes formidable proportions, which may easily grow to such an extent
as to make the white population a subordinate element in the body
politic.
After full deliberation upon this measure, I can not bring myself to
approve it, even upon local considerations, nor yet as the beginning of
an experiment on a larger scale.


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