a trap as I know of is to claim it for women also. Bait your trap
with the white woman, and I think you will catch the black man.
(Laughter.) I would not, certainly, have it understood that we
are standing here to advocate this universal application of the
principle merely to secure the enfranchisement of the colored
citizen. We do it in good faith. I believe it is just as easy to
carry the enfranchisement of all as the enfranchisement of any
class, and easier to carry it than carry the enfranchisement of
class after class--class after class. (Applause.)

I make this demand because I have the deepest sense of what is
before us. We have entered upon an era such as never before has
come to any nation. We are at a point in the history of the world
where we need a prophet, and have none to describe to us those
events rising in the horizon thick and fast. Sometimes it seems
to me that that Latter Day glory which the prophets dimly saw,
and which saints have ever since, with faintness of heart, longed
for and prayed for with wavering faith, is just before us. I see
the fountains of the great deep broken up. I think we are to have
a nation born in a day among us, greater in power of thought,
greater in power of conscience, greater therefore in
self-government, greater still in the power of material
development. Such thrift, such skill, such enterprise, such power
of self-sustentation I think is about to be developed, to say
nothing of the advance already made before the nations, as will
surprise even the most sanguine and far-sighted. Nevertheless,
while so much is promised, there are all the attendant evils. It
is a serious thing to bring unwashed, uncombed, untutored men,
scarcely redeemed from savagery, to the ballot-box. It is a
dangerous thing to bring the foreigner, whose whole secular
education was under the throne of the tyrant, and put his hand
upon the helm of affairs in this free nation. It is a dangerous
thing to bring men without property, or the expectation of it,
into the legislative halls to legislate upon property. It is a
dangerous thing to bring woman, unaccustomed to and undrilled in
the art of government, suddenly into the field to vote. These are
dangerous things; I admit it. But I think God says to us, "By
that danger I