It is true, and was not denied, that the vast mass of the negroes thus admitted to suffrage were without property and without education, and that it might have been advantageous, if just treatment could have been assured them, that they should tarry for a season in a preparatory state.

While it was maintained as an abstract proposition that the right of the negro to vote was well grounded, many thought it desirable, as Mr.Lincoln suggested, that at first only those who were educated and those who had served in the Union Army should be enfranchised.

But the North believed, and believed wisely, that a poor man, an ignorant man, and a black man, who was thoroughly loyal, was a safer and a better voter than a rich man, an educated man, and a white man, who, in his heart, was disloyal to the Union.

This sentiment prevailed, not without hesitation, not without deep and anxious deliberation; but in the end it prevailed with the same courage and with the same determination with which the party had drawn the sword and fought through a long war in aid of the same cause, for which the negro was now admitted to suffrage.
During the civil war the negro had, so far as he was able, helped the Union cause--his race contributing nearly a quarter of a million troops to the National service.

If the Government had been influenced by a spirit of inhumanity, it could have made him terribly effective by encouraging insurrection and resistance on his part against his master.
But no such policy was ever entertained in counsels controlled in the Cabinet by Seward and Chase and Stanton, or in operations in the field directed by Grant and Sherman and Sheridan.