ight of the negro is
the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of events,
which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for the color
or features of men, has determined the interests of the country as
identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro--now seen to have been
wise and proper by the dullest--was not certainly more sternly demanded
than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was success
in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found that the
nation must fall or flourish with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction
between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any
difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United
States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens,
whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is clearly
no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute one. The
mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very thing, by
a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any class of
citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious States to
disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This
unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated
citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of
each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the
several States,--so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal
voter in all the States.

AN APPEAL TO CONGRESS FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE by Frederick Douglas

A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, and for
including the negro in the body politic, would require more space than
can be reasonably asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the
nature of man, and as numerous as the wants of society. Man is the only
government-making animal in the world. His right to a participation
in the production and operation of government is an inference from his
nature, as direct and self-evident as is his right to acquire property
or education. It is no less a crime against the manhood of a man, to
declare that he shall not share in the making and directing of the
government under which he lives, than to say that he shall not acqui