In five New-England States suffrage to the colored man was conceded, but in Connecticut only those negroes were allowed to vote who were admitted freedmen prior to 1818.

New York permitted a negro to vote after he had been three years a citizen of the State and had been for one year the owner of a freehold worth two hundred and fifty dollars, free of all incumbrances.

In every other Northern State none but "white men" were permitted to vote.

Even Kansas, which entered the Union under the shadow of the civil war, after a prolonged and terrible struggle with the spirit of slavery, at once restricted suffrage to the white man; while Nevada, whose admission to the Union was after the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, denied suffrage to "any negro, Chinaman or mulatto." A still more recent test was applied.

The question of admitting the negro to suffrage was submitted to popular vote in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the autumn of 1865, and at the same time in Colorado, when she was forming her constitution preparatory to seeking admission to the Union.
In all four, under the control of the Republican party at the time, the proposition was defeated.
With these indisputable evidences of the unpopularity of negro suffrage in the great majority of the Northern States, there was ample excuse for the reluctance of leading statesmen to adopt it as a condition of reconstruction, and force it upon the South by law before it had been adopted by the moral sense of the North.