equal rights
to all--in order to produce the desired result--a harmonious
union and a homogeneous people. Luther Martin, Attorney-General
of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature of that State of
the convention that framed the United States Constitution, said:

Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter
up on the original principles of government; that the reason
why each individual man in forming a State government should
have an equal vote, is because each individual, before he
enters into government, is equally free and equally
independent.

James Madison said:

Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that
the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in
making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the
magistrates who are to administer them.

Also,

Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the
pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she
contended were the rights of human nature.

And these assertions of the framers of the United States
Constitution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to
a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by
the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire
history of our Government.

Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:

I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of
the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the
Declaration of Independence.

B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days' discussion in the
United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan's motion to strike
"male" from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:

Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American
Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of
fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society
to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther,
and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being
intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society
is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not
spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.

Charles Sumner,