There was something so obviously unfair and unmanly in the proposition to impose negro suffrage on the Southern States by National power, and at the same time to leave the Northern States free to decide the question for themselves, that the Republicans became heartily ashamed of it long before the political canvass had closed.

When Congress assembled, immediately after the election of General Grant, there was found to be a common desire and a common purpose among Republicans to correct the unfortunate position in which the party had been placed by the National Convention; and to that end it was resolved that suffrage, as between the races, should by organic law be made impartial in all the States of the Union--North as well as South.
Various propositions were at once offered, both in the Senate and House, to amend the Constitution of the United States in order to attain impartial suffrage.

It was both significant and appropriate that the draught proposed by Mr.Henderson of Missouri was taken as the basis of the Amendment first reported to the Senate.

In the preceding Congress, when the Fourteenth Amendment was under consideration (in the spring of 1866), Mr.Henderson had proposed substantially the same provision, and had solemnly warned his Republican associates that though they might reject it then, it would be demanded of them in less than five years.

This declaration was all the more suggestive and creditable, coming from a senator who represented a former slave-holding State.