A weapon that comes down as still
As snow-flakes fall upon the sod,
And executes a freeman’s will
As lightning does the will of God;
A weapon that no bolts nor locks
Can bar. It is the ballot-box.”
Even “The New-York Herald,” some time ago, went so far as to say,—
“We would give the suffrage at once to four classes of Southern negroes. First, and emphatically, to every negro who has borne arms in the cause of the United States; second, to every negro who owns real estate; third, to every negro who can read and write; and, fourth, to every negro that had belonged to any religious organization or church for five years before the war. These points would cover every one that ought to vote; and they would insure in every negro voter a spirit of manhood as well as discipline, some practical shrewdness, intellectual development, and moral consciousness and culture.”
Impartial suffrage is what we demand for the colored people of the Southern States. No matter whether the basis be a property or an educational qualification, let it be impartial: upon this depends the future happiness of all classes at the South. Test-oaths, or promises to support the laws, mean nothing with those who have come up through the school of slavery.
“As for oaths, the rebels, whose whole career has been a violation of the solemn obligations of which oaths are merely the sign, care no more for them than did the rattlesnake to which our soldiers in West Virginia once administered the oath of allegiance. Impartial suffrage affords the only sure and permanent means of combating the rebel element in the Southern States.”