history
of this great question which has entered so deeply into the
political and social life of the American people almost from
the beginning, it is hard to measure the influence of race
prejudice, of sectional feeling, and of that other powerful
motive, eagerness for party supremacy.

Suffrage was conferred upon the negro by the Southern States
themselves. Under the Constitution every State can prescribe
its own qualifications for suffrage, with the single exception
that no State can deny or abridge the right of a citizen of
the United States to vote on account of race, color or previous
condition of servitude.

But I am bound to say, indeed it is but to repeat what I have
said many times, that my long conflict with their leaders
has impressed me with an ever-increasing admiration of the
great and high qualities of our Southern people. I said at
Chicago in February, 1903, what I said, in substance, twenty
years before in Faneuil Hall, and at about the same time in
the Senate:

"Having said what I thought to say on this question, perhaps
I may be indulged in adding that although my life, politically
and personally, has been a life of almost constant strife
with the leaders of the Southern people, yet as I grow older
I have learned, not only to respect and esteem, but to love
the great qualities which belong to my fellow citizens of
the Southern States. They are a noble race. We may well
take pattern from them in some of the great virtues which
make up the strength, as they make the glory, of Free States.
Their love of home; their chivalrous respect for women; their
courage; their delicate sense of honor; their constancy, which
can abide by an opinion or a purpose or an interest of their
States through adversity and through prosperity, through the
years and through the generations, are things by which the
people of the more mercurial North may take a lesson. And
there is another thing--covetousness, corruption, the low
temptation of money has not yet found any place in our Southern
politics.

"Now, my friends, we cannot afford to live, we don't wish
to live, and we will not live, in a state of estrangement from
a people who possess these qualities. They are our kindred;
bone of our bone; flesh of our flesh; blood of our blood,
and whatever may be the temporary error of any Southern State
I, for one, if I have a right to speak for Massachusetts,
say to her, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return fro