Equal suffrage was still regarded however rather as an expedient of security against disloyalty than as a measure of National right, rather as an incident to the power of re-organizing rebellious communities than as a subject of National jurisdiction for all the States.
The Fourteenth Amendment was about to be proclaimed, and would place American citizenship under Constitutional protection.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ordaining equal political and civil rights, had not yet come.

In this period of transition the platform asserted that the guarantee of suffrage to the loyal men of the South must be maintained, but that the question of suffrage in the loyal States belonged to the States themselves.

This was an evasion of duty quite unworthy of the Republican party, with its record of consistent bravery through fourteen eventful years.

It was a mere stroke of expediency to escape the prejudices which negro suffrage would encounter in a majority of the loyal States, and especially in Indiana and California, where a close vote was anticipated.