How
was that illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the
suffrage to unprepared voters. It is not my purpose to go back into
the past and make any partisan or sectional appeal, but it is a fact
known to every intelligent man that in one single act the right of
suffrage was given without preparation to hundreds of thousands of
voters who to-day can scarcely read. That Senator proposes now to
double, and more than double, that illiteracy. He proposes to give the
negro women of the South this right of suffrage, utterly unprepared as
they are for it.
In a convention some two years and a half ago in the city of
Louisville an intelligent negro from the South said the negro men
could not vote the Democratic ticket because the women would not live
with them if they did. The negro men go out in the hotels and upon the
railroad cars. They go to the cities and by attrition they wear
away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and their
emotional natures aggregate and compound the race-prejudice, and when
suffrage is given them what must be the result?
Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the inconveniences,
for they are nothing more, of woman suffrage. I trust that as a
gentleman I respect the feelings of the ladies and their advocates. I
am not here to ridicule. My purpose only is to use legitimate argument
as to a movement which commands respectful consideration, if for no
other reason than because it comes from women.
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