DEAR SIR:
I am in receipt of your kind note.
This is the explanation: Premising that I entirely agree with you as to the transcendant importance of the vote and the duty of every citizen to use it—to let no slight obstacle prevent his voting.
The few years after I came of age I was moving about and it happened, curiously enough, that I never lived in one town long enough to get the vote there and never could be, at the proper time, in the town where I had the right.
Then soon I became an abolitionist and conscientiously refused to vote or accept citizenship under a constitution which ordered the return of fugitive slaves.
The XVth. amendment was the first release from this bar, as I judged. Since that, I have never voted but once. Absence from the city &c prevented my doing so. I should have taken special care to be at home if living in a ward where my vote would have availed anything, or if candidates were such as I could trust.
Truly,
WENDELL PHILLIPS.