and the
West and the South cannot vote without extending that privilege
to that class of ignorant colored people. I doubt whether any man
will say that it is safe for the republic now, when we are going
through the problem we are obliged to solve, to fling in this
additional mass of ignorance upon the suffrage of the country.
Why, sir, a rich corporation or a body of men of wealth could buy
them up for fifty cents apiece, and they would vote without
knowing what they were doing for the side that paid most. Yet we
are asked to confer suffrage upon them, and to have a committee
appointed as favorable to that view as possible, so as to get a
favorable report upon it!

I want the Committee on the Judiciary to tell the congress and
the country whether they think it is good policy now to confer
suffrage on all the colored women of the South, ignorant as they
are known to be, and thus add to the ignorance that we are now
struggling with, and whether the republic can be sustained upon
such a basis as that. For that reason, and because I want that
information from an unbiased committee, because I know that
suffrage has been degraded sufficiently already, and because it
would be degraded infinitely more if a report favorable to this
extension of suffrage should be adopted and passed through
congress, I am opposed to this movement. No matter if there are a
number of respectable ladies who are competent to vote and desire
it to be done, because of the very fact that they cannot be
allowed this privilege without giving all the mass of ignorant
colored women in the country the right to vote, thus bringing in
a mass of ignorance that would crush and degrade the suffrage of
this country almost beyond conception, I shall vote to refer the
subject to the Judiciary Committee, and I shall await their
report with a good deal of anxiety.

Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President--

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour has expired, and
the unfinished business is before the Senate.

DECEMBER 20, 1881.

Mr. HOAR: I now call up the resolution for appointing a special
committee on woman suffrage.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour having expired, the
senator from Massachusetts calls up the resolution