_Republican_ said, March 3, that equal
suffrage is "the sole condition about which there is any approach to
unanimity among our people."

To understand this opinion we must look back a little. The belief in
universal male suffrage was part of the Democratic movement that swept
almost unchallenged from Jefferson's time till Lincoln's. The mass of
ignorant immigrants gave some alarm, but they seemed to be successfully
digested by the body politic. Beecher, we have seen, thought suffrage a
"natural right," and that was a common doctrine. Besides, it was assumed
at the North that the negroes were naturally the friends of the
national government and of the party that had given them freedom. There
were politicians in plenty who looked to the negro vote to keep the
Republicans in control of the national government. Many of these
doubtless valued the party organization mainly as a means of
self-advancement; while others like Sumner devoutly believed that in the
Republican party lay the sole hope of justice and freedom. To the North
generally, the convincing argument for negro suffrage was that the
ballot would give the black man the necessary weapon for
self-protection. On this ground Mr. Schurz favored it in his report of
1865, and in reviewing the situation in 1904 he holds the same opinion.
The assumption in this view was that the freedmen and the former master
class were, and were to remain, natural enemies. Looking back to
slavery, which really combined an element of oppression with an element
of protection, the North saw only the oppression. Viewing the present,
it was not merely the State laws, but the frequent personal abuse of the
negroes which confirmed the idea that they must have the ballot for
self-protection.

On broader grounds, the question was reasoned thus: "The logical, the
necessary ultimate step in the negro's elevation to full manhood is his
possession of the vote. By far the most desirable road to this
consummation would be a gradual and educational introduction of the body
of freedmen to the franchise. But toward such a course the South
shows no inclination. The alternative remains--in the brief period
during which the national authority can be applied to organic
reconstruction--of establishing universal manhood suffrage; with the
drawback of a present admixture of a large ignorant and unfit element;
with the great disadvantage, too, of further alienating the two races
for the present; but with the po