Now, Mr. President, in regard to this District and this city,
here is a fair proposition. It proposes to confer upon all
persons above the age of twenty-one years the right to
participate in the city government. Is any one afraid of it? Is
my honorable friend from Maine afraid of it? He says it shall be
confined to the males. He and my friend from Oregon have gone on
to tell you that the white males of this city are in a very bad
condition; indeed, some of them in such a terrible condition that
we are called upon to pass a bill of attainder, or a bill of
pains and penalties, and a little _ex post facto_ law in order to
reach their tergiversations and perverseness. If that be true,
why not incorporate some other element? I do not know much about
the female portion of the negroes of this District except what I
have seen, and I must confess that although there are a great
many respectable persons among the negroes, and many for whom I
have considerable regard, yet as a mass they have not impressed
me as being a very high style of human development.

When I look along the pavements and about the walks and see them
lounging, I am free to say that, without having been previously
enlightened on the subject by so much as we have heard upon it
recently, I should have had great doubts about conferring on them
the right of suffrage. And when I reflect that they have a
Freedmen's Bureau to make their contracts for them and to keep
them in order, and, it is said, to protect them against the
enmity of their white neighbors, even where they have a majority,
or nearly a majority, I am not strengthened in my partiality for
them by that. And when I reflect that just about this time last
year we had great hesitation about adjourning, for fear that the
people represented by these males who are now to be invested with
the franchise were in an actually starving condition in this
District, and that the chief authorities of the District, moved,
I have no doubt, by that humanity which ought to characterize
them everywhere, investigated the matter and reported to us, we
were obliged to appropriate $25,000 to relieve them in their
immediate wants; I do not think that speaks so well for the male
portion of the African population of this city.

I believe if it we