“But, Sir, it sometimes happens that malice and hatred will produce results which reason and good-will can never accomplish; and when we passed this bill giving the right of suffrage to the colored men in the South without the aid of the Senator from Massachusetts and sent it to the President [Mr. JOHNSON] he vetoed it, and on the question of passing it over his veto the Senator from Massachusetts voted with us. His affection for the President was not such as to allow him to coincide with him in anything. So we got his vote at last, but we had two-thirds without him. “This is the record, Mr. President.” Mr. Sumner answered:-- This assault to-day compels me to make a statement now which I never supposed I should be called to make. I make it now with hesitation, but rather to show the Senator’s course than my own. Sir, I am the author of the provision in that Act conferring suffrage; and when I brought it forward, the Senator from Illinois was one of my opponents,--then as now. Senators who were here at that time remember well that this whole subject was practically taken for the time from the jurisdiction of the Senate into a caucus of the Republican party, where a committee was created to whom all pending measures of Reconstruction were referred. I had the honor of being a member of that committee. So was the Senator from Illinois. So was my friend from Michigan [Mr. HOWARD]. The Senator from Ohio [Mr. SHERMAN] was our chairman. In that committee this Reconstruction Bill was debated and matured sentence by sentence, word for word; and then and there, in that committee, I moved that we should require the suffrage of all persons, without distinction of color, in the organization of new governments, and in all the constitutions to be made.