n it was only six months, and in
Colorado less than six months--the State Legislatures say that is
the end of it. I appeal to you, therefore, to adopt the course
that we suggest.

Gentlemen of the committee, if there is a question that you want
to ask me before I make my final appeal, I should like to have you
put it now; any question as to constitutional law or your right to
go forward. Of course you do not deny to us that this amendment
will be right in the line of all the amendments heretofore. The
eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth amendments
are all in line prohibiting the States from doing something which
they heretofore thought they had a right to do. Now we ask you to
prohibit the States from denying to women their rights.

I want to show you in closing that of the great acts of justice
done during the war and since the war the first one was a great
military necessity. We never got one inch of headway in putting
down the rebellion until the purpose of this great nation was
declared that slavery should he abolished. Then, as if by magic,
we went forward and put down the rebellion. At the close of the
rebellion the nation stood again at a perfect deadlock. The
Republican party was trembling in the balance, because it feared
that it could not hold its position, until it should have secured
by legislation to the Government what it had gained at the
point of the sword, and when the nation declared its purpose to
enfranchise the negro it was a political necessity. I do not want
to take too much vainglory out of the heads of Republicans, but
nevertheless it is a great national fact that neither of those
great acts of beneficence to the negro race was done because
of any high, overshadowing moral conviction on the part of any
considerable minority even of the people of this nation, but
simply because of a military necessity slavery was abolished,
and simply because of a political necessity black men were
enfranchised.

The blackest Republican State you had voted down negro suffrage,
and that was Kansas in 1867; Michigan voted it down in 1867; Ohio
voted it down in 1867. Iowa was the only State that ever voted
negro suffrage by a majority of the citizens to which the question
was submitted, and they had not more than seventy-five negroes
in the whole