"What should be the test as to the right to exercise the elective franchise? I contend that the only question to be asked should be, 'Is he a man?' The test should be that of manhood, not that of color, or races, or class. Is he endowed with conscience and reason? Is he an immortal being? If these questions are answered in the affirmative, he has the same right to protection that we all enjoy. "I am in favor, Mr. Speaker, of making suffrage equal and universal. I believe that greater wisdom is concentrated in the decisions of the ballot-box when all citizens of a certain age vote than when only a part vote. If you apply a test founded on education or intelligence, where will you stop? One man will say that the voter should be able to read the Constitution and to write his name; another, that he should be acquainted with the history of the United States; another will demand a still higher degree of education and intelligence, until you will establish an aristocracy of wisdom, which is one of the worst kinds of aristocracy. Sir, the men who formed this Government, who believed in the rights of human nature, and designed the Government to protect them, believed, I think, as I do, that when suffrage is made universal, you concentrate in the ballot-box a larger amount of wisdom than when you exclude a portion of the citizens from the right of suffrage. "I grant, sir, that many of the colored men whom I would enfranchise are poor and ignorant, but we have made them so. We have oppressed them by our laws. We have stolen them from their cradles and consigned them to helpless slavery. The shackles are now knocked from their limbs, and they emerge from the house of bondage and stand forth as men. Let us now take the next grand step, a step which must commend itself to our judgment and consciences. Let us clothe these men with the rights of freemen, and give them the power to protect their rights.