Now, Mr. President, we should not talk one thing and mean another. We should not deceive ourselves. Let us make a Constitution that is fair, honest and just. Let us make a Constitution for all the people, one we will be proud of and our children will receive with delight. Don’t let us act like a gentleman said he talked. The other day a gentleman told me that a prominent lawyer, a member of this Convention, made a very bitter speech against the Negro while he was a candidate for election to this Convention. After the lawyer had concluded his speech of bitterness against the Negro and in favor of white supremacy, some colored men waited on him and asked him why he had made such a bitter speech against them, saying they had regarded the gentleman as their friend, as he had often acted as their lawyer. This gentleman replied to them: “Don’t mind my speech. I am a friend to the Negro, but I have got to make bitter speeches to fool the Crackers because I want their votes.” Gentlemen, I warn you that you can fool the Crackers when you talk to them, but if you pass this ordinance that has been proposed by the committee on suffrage you will fool nobody, for every person in the nation has been informed of your speeches on the stump and you will not be able to explain it away as that lawyer did his words of bitterness to the colored men who waited on him. Mr. President, strange things have happened and I have been shocked in my life, but the greatest surprise of my life was when the distinguished lawyer from Barnwell, Mr. Aldrich, introduced a Constitution in this Convention that was taken verbatim et literatim from the Constitution of ’65 and the black code of ’66, which deprived every Negro from holding an office in this State, notwithstanding that Constitution and black code were rejected by Congress. That Constitution caused the passage of the acts of reconstruction by Congress and made it necessary for the Constitutional Convention of 1868, which gave to you the best Constitution of any one of the Southern States. Let us make a Constitution, Mr. President, that will demand the respect of mankind everywhere, for we are not above public opinion. While in Washington a committee of capitalists came over from England hunting for timber land in which to invest. One of South Carolina’s Representative in Congress called upon those gentlemen and informed them that there were large tracts of land in Beaufort County, in the Township of Blufton, for sale. They inquired for the name of the State, and when they were informed that the timber lands were in South Carolina they answered: “You need not go any further, as our instructions were, before we left England, not to invest money in a State where life and property was not secure under the law.” In God’s name let us make a Constitution that will receive the approval of everybody--the outside world as well as those at home.