ittle longer in its glory
and grandeur; but now the scanty blood-splash on the map
describes it well. The United States, young among the nations,
the mother earth six thousand years old at their birth,
wet-nursed by forty centuries of history, and schooled by all the
experience of the ages, with almost half a globe for their
inheritance, with Christianity faith and Republicanism their
form of government, they survived a precocious childhood and then
fell a victim to their own vices and crimes. To-day they are in
the hands of many physicians, though of doubtful reputation, who
seem far less desirous to cure the patient than to divide and
share the estate.

My main point is this--we have had enough of the past in
government. It is time to change. Literally almost, more than
metaphorically, the "times are rotten ripe." We come to-day to
demand--first an extension of the right of suffrage to every
American citizen, of whatever race, complexion or sex. Manhood or
_male_-hood suffrage is not a remedy for evils such as we wish
removed. The Anti-Slavery Society demands that; and so, too, do
large numbers of both the political parties. Even Andrew Johnson
at first recommended it, in the reconstruction of the rebel
States, for three classes of colored men. The New York _Herald_,
in the exuberance of its religious zeal, demanded that "members
of Christian Churches" be added as a fourth estate to the three
designated by the President. The Woman's Rights Society
contemplated suffrage only for woman. But we, as an EQUAL RIGHTS
Association, recognize no distinctions based on sex, complexion
or race. The Ten Commandments know nothing of any such
distinctions. No more do we. The right of suffrage is as old, as
sacred and as universal as the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. It is indeed the complement and safeguard
of these and all civil and political rights to every citizen. The
right to life would be nothing without the right to acquire and
possess the means of its support. So it were mockery to talk of
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, until the ballot in the
hand of every citizen seals and secures it. The right of the
black man to a voice in the government was not earned at Olustee
or Port Hudson. It was his when life began, no