re upon you. As for me, I start not back appalled when
universal suffrage confronts me. When the bloody ghost of slavery
rises, I say, 'Shake your gory locks at me; I did it.' I accept the
situation. I fight not against the logic of events or the decrees of
Providence. I expected it, sir, and I meet it half way. I am for
universal suffrage. I bid it 'All hail!' 'All hail!'

"Four million people set free! What will protect them? The ballot.
What alone will give us a peaceful and harmonious South? The ballot to
all. What will quench the fires of discord, give us back all the
States, a restored Union, and make us one people? The ballot, and that
alone. Is there no other way? None other under the sun. There is no
other salvation.

"The ballot will lead the freedman over the Red Sea of our troubles.
It will be the brazen serpent, upon which he can look and live. It
will be his pillar of cloud by day, and his pillar of fire by night.
It will lead him to Pisgah's shining height, and across Jordan's
stormy waves, to Canaan's fair and happy land. Sir, the ballot is the
freedman's Moses. So far as man is concerned, I might say that Mr.
Lincoln was the Moses of the freedmen; but whoever shall be the truest
friend of human freedom, whoever shall write his name highest upon the
horizon of public vision as the friend of human liberty, that man--and
I hope it may be the present President of the United States--will be
the Joshua to lead the people into the land of deliverance."

Mr. Yates maintained that for the exercise of the right of suffrage
there should be no test of intelligence, wealth, rank or race. To
bring the people up to the proper standard, the ballot itself was "the
greatest educator." He said: "Let a man have an interest in the
Government, a voice as to the men and measures by which his taxes, his
property, his life, and his reputation shall be determined, and there
will be a stimulus to education for that man.

"As the elective franchise has been extended in this country, we have
seen education become more universal. Look throughout all our Northern
States at our schools and colleges, our academies of learning, our
associations, the pulpit, the press, and the numerous agencies for the
promotion of intelligence, all the inevitable offspring of our free
institutions. Here is the high training which inspires the eloquence
of the Senate, the wisdom of the cabinet, the address of the
diplomatist, and which has developed