“Allow me to add, that you must not be impatient. You have borne the heavier burdens of Slavery; and as these are now removed, believe the others surely will be also. This enfranchised Republic, setting an example to mankind, cannot continue to sanction an odious oligarchy whose single distinctive element is color. I have no doubt that you will be admitted to the privileges of citizens. “It is impossible to suppose that Congress will sanction governments in the Rebel States which are not founded on ‘the consent of the governed.’ This is the corner-stone of republican institutions. Of course, by the ‘governed’ is meant all the loyal citizens, without distinction of color. Anything else is mockery. “Never neglect your work; but, meanwhile, prepare yourselves for the privileges of citizens. They are yours of right, and I do not doubt that they will be yours soon in reality. The prejudice of Caste and a false interpretation of the Constitution cannot prevail against justice and common sense, both of which are on your side,--and I may add, the Constitution also, which, when properly interpreted, is clearly on your side. “Accept my best wishes, and believe me, fellow-citizens, faithfully yours, “CHARLES SUMNER.”[254] This was followed by an elaborate speech before the Republican State Convention at Worcester, September 14, 1865, entitled “The National Security and the National Faith: Guaranties for the National Freedman and the National Creditor,”--where I insisted that national peace and tranquillity could be had only from _impartial suffrage_; and I believe that it was on this occasion that this phrase, which has since become a formula of politics, was first publicly employed. My language was as follows:-- “As the national peace and tranquillity depend essentially upon the overthrow of monopoly and tyranny, here is another occasion for special guaranty against the whole pretension of color. _No Rebel State can be readmitted with this controversy still raging and ready to break forth._” Mark the words, if you please. “So long as it continues, the land will be barren, agriculture and business of all kinds will be uncertain, and the country will be handed over to a fearful struggle, with the terrors of San Domingo to darken the prospect. In shutting out the freedman from his equal rights at the ballot-box, you open the doors of discontent and insurrection. Cavaignac, the patriotic President of the French Republic, met the present case, when, speaking for France, he said: ‘I do not believe repose possible, either in the present or the future, except so far as you found your political condition on universal suffrage, loyally, sincerely, completely accepted and observed.’”[255]