lly
guarded against the control of those who are corrupt in principle and
enemies of free institutions, for it can only become to our political
and social system a safe conductor of healthy popular sentiment when
kept free from demoralizing influences. Controlled through fraud and
usurpation by the designing, anarchy and despotism must inevitably
follow. In the hands of the patriotic and worthy our Government will be
preserved upon the principles of the Constitution inherited from our
fathers. It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot box
a new class of voters not qualified for the exercise of the elective
franchise we weaken our system of government instead of adding to its
strength and durability.

* * * * *

I yield to no one in attachment to that rule of general suffrage which
distinguishes our policy as a nation. But there is a limit, wisely
observed hitherto, which makes the ballot a privilege and a trust,
and which requires of some classes a time suitable for probation
and preparation. To give it indiscriminately to a new class, wholly
unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trust
which it demands, is to degrade it, and finally to destroy its power,
for it may be safely assumed that no political truth is better
established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension
of popular suffrage must end at last in its destruction.

I repeat the expression of my willingness to join in any plan within
the scope of our constitutional authority which promises to better the
condition of the negroes in the South, by encouraging them in industry,
enlightening their minds, improving their morals, and giving protection
to all their just rights as freedmen. But the transfer of our political
inheritance to them would, in my opinion, be an abandonment of a duty
which we owe alike to the memory of our fathers and the rights of our
children.

The plan of putting the Southern States wholly and the General
Government partially into the hands of negroes is proposed at a time
peculiarly unpropitious. The foundations of society have been broken
up by civil war. Industry must be reorganized, justice reestablished,
public credit maintained, and order brought out of confusion. To
accomplish these ends would require all the wisdom and virtue of the
great men who formed our institutions originally. I confidently beli