to the
enfranchisement of the colored man, unless the ballot should also
be accorded to woman at the same time.

Mrs. STANTON said: All history proves that despotisms, whether of
one man or millions, can not stand, and there is no use of
wasting centuries of men and means in trying that experiment
again. Hence I have no faith or interest in any reconstruction on
that old basis. To say that politicians always do one thing at a
time is no reason why philosophers should not enunciate the broad
principles that underlie that one thing and a dozen others. We do
not take the right step for this hour in demanding suffrage for
any class; as a matter of principle I claim it for all. But in a
narrow view of the question as a matter of feeling between
classes, when Mr. Downing puts the question to me, are you
willing to have the colored man enfranchised before the woman, I
say, no; I would not trust him with all my rights; degraded,
oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with the governing
power than even our Saxon rulers are. I desire that we go into
the kingdom together, for individual and national safety demand
that not another man be enfranchised without the woman by his
side.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER, basing the demand for the ballot upon the
natural right of the citizen, felt bound to aid in conferring it
upon any citizen deprived of it irrespective of its being granted
or denied to others. Even, therefore, if the enfranchisement of
the colored man would probably retard the enfranchisement of
woman, we had no right for that reason to deprive him of his
right. The right of each should be accorded at the earliest
possible moment, neither being denied for any supposed benefit to
the other.

CHARLES L. REMOND said that if he were to lose sight of
expediency, he must side with Mrs. Stanton, although to do so was
extremely trying; for he could not conceive of a more unhappy
position than that occupied by millions of American men bearing
the name of freedmen while the rights and privileges _free_ men
are still denied them.

Mrs. STANTON said: That is equaled only by the condition of the
women by their side. There is a depth of degradation known to the
slave women that man can never feel. To give the ballot to the
black man is no securi