< Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu
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EFFORTS IN FAVOR OF FREE BALLOT.
sent that the Constitution as adopted by the fathers of the Republic in 1789, evidently contemplated the result which has now happened, to wit, the abolition of slavery. The men who framed it, and those who adopted it, framed and adopted it for the people, and the whole people—colored men being at that time legal voters in most of the States. In that instrument, as it now stands, there is not a sentence or a syllable conveying any shadow of right or authority by which any State may make color or race a disqualification for the exercise of the right of suffrage; and the undersigned will regard as a real calamity the introduction of any words, expressly or by implication, giving any State or States such power; and we respectfully submit that if the amendment now pending before your honorable body shall be adopted, it will enable any State to deprive any class of citizens of the elective franchise, notwithstanding it was obviously framed with a, view to affect the question of negro suffrage only.

" For these and other reasons the undersigned respectfully pray that the amendment to the Constitution, recently passed by the House and now before your body, be not adopted. And as in duty bound, etc."

It was the opinion of Senator Wm. Pitt Fessenden, Senator Henry Wilson, and many others, that the measure here memorialized against would, if incorporated into the Constitution, certainly bring about the enfranchisement of the whole colored population of the South. It was held by them to be an inducement to the States to make suffrage universal, since the basis of representation would be enlarged or contracted according as suffrage should be extended or limited; but the judgment of these leaders was not the judgment of Senator Sumner, Senators Wade, Yates, Howe and others, or of the colored people. Yet, weak as this measure was, it encountered the united opposition of democratic senators. On that side the Hon. Thomas H. Hendricks, of Indiana, took the lead in appealing to popular prejudice against the negro. He contended that among other objectionable and insufferable results that would flow from its adoption, would be, that a negro would ultimately be a member of the United States Senate. I never shall forget the ineffable scorn

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