There was an unmistakable manifestation throughout the whole political canvass of 1866, by the more advanced section of the Republican party, in favor of demanding impartial suffrage as the basis of reconstruction in the South. It came from the people rather than from the political leaders. The latter class, with few exceptions, shunned the issue, preferring to wait until public sentiment should become more pronounced in favor of so radical a movement. But a large number of thinking people, who gave more heed to the absolute right of the question than to its political expediency, could not see how, with consistency, or even with good conscience and common sense, the Republican party could refrain from calling to its aid the only large mass of persons in the South whose loyalty could be implicitly trusted. To their apprehension it seemed little less than an absurdity, to proceed with a plan of reconstruction which would practically leave the State governments of the South under the control of the same men that brought on the civil war. They were embarrassed, however, in this step by the constantly recurring obstacle presented by the constitutions of a majority of the loyal States. In five New-England States suffrage to the colored man was conceded, but in Connecticut only those negroes were allowed to vote who were admitted freedmen prior to 1818. New York permitted a negro to vote after he had been three years a citizen of the State and had been for one year the owner of a freehold worth two hundred and fifty dollars, free of all incumbrances. In every other Northern State none but "white men" were permitted to vote. Even Kansas, which entered the Union under the shadow of the civil war, after a prolonged and terrible struggle with the spirit of slavery, at once restricted suffrage to the white man; while Nevada, whose admission to the Union was after the Thirteenth Amendment had been passed by Congress, denied suffrage to "any negro, Chinaman or mulatto." A still more recent test was applied. The question of admitting the negro to suffrage was submitted to popular vote in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Minnesota in the autumn of 1865, and at the same time in Colorado, when she was forming her constitution preparatory to seeking admission to the Union. In all four, under the control of the Republican party at the time, the proposition was defeated.