I am not afraid of negro suffrage if you allow female suffrage to go hand in hand with it. I believe that if there is any one influence in the country which will break down this tribal antipathy, which will make the two races one in political harmony and political action, not in actuality as races by amalgamation, but which will induce that harmony and that co-operation which may bring about the highest state, perhaps, of social civilization and development, it is the fact that woman and not man must interfere in order to smooth the pathway for these two races to go along harmoniously together. And it is for that reason that I insist that when you do make this step, this step forward which once made can never be retrieved, you must do that other thing which assures its success after it is made. Let the negro male vote now, and you open the arena of strife and contention; let both sexes vote, and then you close that arena of strife, you bring in that element which subdues all strife, which has made America what she is, which has made the American political meeting, which has made the American political convention, not the scene of strife or angry contention, where armed men met together to settle political differences, as in the Polish Diet, but a convention where all were subjected to reason, influenced, as it might properly be, by eloquence and by that "feast of reason" which is "the flow of the soul" to those who enjoy it. And therefore, Mr. President, I beg to assure everybody, and especially my honorable friend from Rhode Island, who agrees with me, I know, upon this topic, that I am serious and in earnest in urging this amendment; in dead earnest, in good earnest, and why not? I am not so blind as to mistake the signs of the times.