persons; the other as respects
the rights of married women, minors, and females; and I there and
then determined that whenever and wherever it should be in my
power to aid in relieving them of those inequalities and those
injustices, I would do so to the extent of my humble ability.
Since then I have labored zealously in those two reforms as far
and as fast as a public opinion could be created or elicited to
enforce them, and I can say from my own observation that each
step of advance taken has been fruitful of all good and
productive of no evil. Emancipation of the colored race in
Missouri has been achieved in a most thorough manner,
substantially achieved even before the war; and to-day the
community is ripe for the declaration that all are created equal,
and that there is no reason to exclude from any right, civil or
political, on the ground of race or color. I feel proud to say
likewise that Missouri has gone further, and wiped from her
statute-book large portions of that unjust and unfair and
illiberal legislation which had been leveled at the rights and
the property of the women of the State. Believing that that cause
which embraces and embodies the cause of civil liberty will go
forward still triumphing and to triumph, I will never, so help me
God, cast any vote that may be construed as throwing myself in
the face of that progress. Even though I recognize, therefore,
the impolicy of coupling these two measures in this manner and at
this time, I shall yet record my vote in the affirmative as an
earnest indication of my belief in the principle and my faith in
the future.

Mr. DAVIS: Mr. President, our entire population, like that of all
other countries, is divided into two great classes, the male and
the female. By the census of 1860 the white female population of
the United States exceeded thirteen millions, and the aggregate
negro population, of both sexes, was below four and a half
millions. That great white population, and all its female
predecessors, have never had the right of suffrage, or, to use
that cant phrase of the day, have never been enfranchised; and
such has also been the condition of the negro population. That
about one negro in ten thousand in four or five States have been
allowed to vote, is too insignificant to