Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I am always lad to hear the honorable Senfrom onnecticut, [Mr. Foster, for he states his views with great clearness, precision, accuracy, and candor; but certainly I regret that he should have felt it his duty to advocate this amendment. I say to him frankly that while I am opposed to it, while I am opposed, in the present condition of the country at any rate, to making reading and writing a test, I believe that reading and writing do aid in qualifying men to discharge the duties that belong to citizens of the U.S. at the ballot box. In opposing this amendment I cannot consent to. put in that class of men who do not believe that reading and writin are qualifications for the duties of a citizen. the U.S. Let the Senator see the exact position in which the colored man in o this District will be if this amendment should prevail. If e is allowed the right of suffrage without this condition, the Gause of education will be advo cated by the negro himself, by this whole community, because it will fit him to exercise more intelligently the great duty imposed upon him. If you put this qualification upon him, the bitter hostility toi. education of the colored race that has distinguished this city and the government of this city; which has led the government of this city even to violate the express laws of Congress within the last two. years, will be intensified and increased. The enemies of the colored man may not do here what they are doing in Maryland, in Virginia, in all the rebel States, burn down the school houses for the freedmen; they may not be strong enough to do that here; but they will do nothing to erect school houses for the education of the freedman; they will do nothing to encourage his education. These 1000s that went to the ballot box last year and voted with so much unanimity against extending the right of suffrage to the colored people of this District, finding that we will only allow the colored men who can read and write to vote, will see to it that as few colored men shall be qualified as possible. They kept the colored man in ignorance to keep him in slavery; they will continue to keep him in ignorance to prevent his becoming a voter. I regard this amendment as a proposition against school houses for the education of the colored men of this District; if not to tear down the school houses for the education of the black man, it is to prevent the erection of the school house for the education of the black man. Who is to pass upon this qualification of reading and writing? The man who. has voted that the black man shall not vote at all? It is proposed here in Congress to allow the man o as voted that the black man shall not vote at all to say whether he can read and write well enough to vote. How many of them will be permitted to vote? Possibly there might be a few negroes fit to fill seats in Congress or to sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court who might be permitted to vote. but few, very few of them would be permitted to vote under this amendment. You put it in the power of the enemies of this race to keep them from the ballot box. By this provision we put the black men at the mercy of his avowed enemies. But, sir, allow them to vote without this qualification and they will demand education; they demand it; the school houses will rise; school teachers will be employed; these people will attend the schools, and the cause of education will be carried forward in this District with more rapidity than at any other period in its history. Apply this same principle in these rebel States. I hear this !.cry in the present condition of the country about impartial suffrage. Here are 4 million ‘. in the rebel States; here are 800,000 voters; perhaps ten%. of them may have the ability to read and a few 1000s to write; but not 1%. of those who could read and write would ever be permitted to vote under this reading and writing amendment by the men who are determined to keep them from the ballot box. You put the whole of the freedmen at the mercy of their enemies. All over this rebel country the midnight skies are lightened by the burning school houses erected by the humanity, the charity, and the Christianity of the country to instruct the darkened intellects of emancipated bond men. Adopt this provision that they shall be required to read and write, and their enemies who are now burning their school houses will see to it that the school houses they have spared are given to the flames. Strike off this ualification, let them vote at any rate, and these wicked people who are burning their school houses will cease to burn their school houses; they will then join in building school houses for their instruction. I have heard a great deal said, and it has been hinted at in the Senate, that we ought to address ourselves to restricting suffrage in this country instead of extending it. I hold that doctrine to be at war with the fundamental ideas upon which this Government rests. It is an aristocratic, undemocratic doctrine that ought to be scouted from the legislative halls of America. I have no sympathy with it. I say, and I am ready to maintain it anywhere, that the extension of the suffrage in this country has tended to extend education and liberal legislation, and to develop the moral, intellec tual, and physical resources of America. Yes, sir, the extension of suffrage to the poor, to the toiling men of the country, has lifted them up, inspired them with hope, and developed everything that builds up a Christrian, democratic Commonwealth. I thank the Senfrom NewJersey for maintaining this doctrine as he has done, so ably and so clearly. It is the doctrine of progressive Christian statesmanship. The Senfrom Connecticut has great deference to the opinion of his State, as he ought to have. I have a reasonable deference to the opinions of the people of my State, but I will say to my friendfrom Connecticut, that I think the constitutional provisions to which he refers were born about a dozen years ago in those States. The States of Massachusetts and connecticut were not harmed by the ignorance of the people; perhaps in no States were the mass of the voters better educated than in those States; we could have absorbed all the ignorance we had without any great harm to our institutions. That reading and writing was put into the constitution of my State by my political associates and friends by the men who sent me to the Senate, but i thought then, they were mistaken. They put another provision into the constitution, and that was that a man should be required to remain 2 years in the State.". was naturalized before he could vote. I openly opposed it. I received denunciations for it; but told them they would get it out of the constitution as soon as possible, and it came out of the constitution as soon as the standard of rebellion was raised and our people, foreign born as well as native born, thronged around the banner of the country. Sir, I believe in the right of suffrage for my country. I believe in it far more for the poor ignorant man. I believe that he is more of a man when he has it, and that he will use it in the future as he has in the past generally for the elevation and protection of the poor and lowly and dependent. No loyal man who has the right of suffrage shall ever have it taken away or abridged by me unless for crime. No poor laboring man shall ever accuse me before the bar of man or of God of voting against giving him the same right that I possess to go to the ballot box. The Senfrom Connecticut asked me if I would vote for a man to come into the Senate who could not read and write, or to go on to the bench of the Supreme Court. Certainly I would not. Then he asked this question: would you raise a tribunal composed of men who could not road and write, that should pass upon the acts of the Senate and of the judicial tribunals of the country? I hope the Senator does not mean to restrict the right of suffrage only to the few who are capable of passing intelligently upon the decisions of the Supreme Court and the action of the Senate. Ife certainly could not mean that. I would not vote for a man to come into this Senate who could not read and write, but I freely invite every man in this country, whether he can read and write or not, to pass judgment upon the acts of the Senate, upon the words of Senators, and I believe that the judgment of the masses of the country will be generally correct. It has been more than hinted that the people are growing more corrupt. Sir, I do not believe it. }.the history of the world can furnish no such example of fidelity to country, liberty, and justice as has been furnished by the great mass of the people of this country during the last 4 months. The whole power and patronage of this Government, its corrupt and corrupting influences, have been freely used, dishonorably used, all over the country, to purchase, seduce, corrupt the masses of the the people, and the people have emphatically spurned these bribes. They have shown to the world that they cannot be bought nor sold nor corrupted by such influences. There are a few corrupt men who may be bought or sold; but the masses of the people of this country are increasing in intelligence, are increasing in Virtue, and they vote more intelligently every year of their lives. The country today is safer in the hands of the masses of the people than it was in the beginning of the century, when we had restrictions, when we required men to hold property in order to vote. Sir, I believe that the men who made the Constitution of the U.S., who made the constitutions of the several States, so made the constitutions of the several States that a majority of the men who fought the battles of the Revolution could not vote and did not vote. I believe if you were to bring back the laws that existed in 1789 that a majority of the men who fought the bat. tles of their country in this rebellion could not vote. The States required property qualifications so large that I doubt whether i. majority of the soldiers who fought the battles of the rebellion would have property enough to vote under the earlier constitutions of the States. Sir, [Mr. ANTHoNY in the chair] in your State up to a very late period this property qualification existed. These restrictions upon suffrage have been brushed away by the people themselves, and the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, has been promoted by so doing. I believe, Mr. President, we can educate these freedmen better by giving them the right of suffrage than we can. keep them a lowly, degraded, and dependent class. We haye applied this principle to the men who have come into the country from abroad. Suppose we had refused the right of voting to the Englishman, the Irishman, the German, and other emigrants to this country, they would have been nothing but the hewers of wood and drawers of water to this people. Giving them the right of suffrage, although misused often and abused, has advanced their condition and the development of the country. I am ready to apply the principle and accept the consequence of manhood suffrage. Christian democracy bids us lift the lowly up, and we shall find it safe to be just. It has been hinted here by my friendfrom Connecticut that these enfranchised men may not always vote as we think they should vote. He reminds me that I have said they know their friends. Amid all the trials and darkness and outrage of the last 7 years they knew the old flag; they knew the boys in blue, they knew the men who were fightin country and liberty; they revered the name of Abraham Lincoln, their emancipator, next to the God that made them; they were always for their country; they prayed for it, they fought for it, and they will stand by it in the the future as in the past. The Senator says they may be kindly treated and may be won by kind words and deeds. Sir, I hope, they will be kindly treated. One of the chief reasons why I am for suffrage for them is that they may be kindly treated. What do we witness today? In the State of Texas for the it is said that nearly 2,000 freedmen have been murdered since the close of the rebellion. I am told by General Hamilton that he has knowledge of 100s of them. 70 9 are known to have been murdered in the State of Georgia, and double that number are believed to have been. Who has been convicted, who has been punished for these 100s of murders, and for these terrible cruelties and outrages that have been perpetrated upon them? Nobody. 2 men were sentenced to death in the State of Georgia a year ago last spring for murdering an old woman over 60 years of age, shooting her down and then beating her brains out with stones, and the POTUS pardoned them. Where are the others? Phil. Sheri. dan says it is folly to think of trying a white man for the murder of a freedman in his dept. What white man has been tried, convicted, and executed for these 100s, ay, 1000s of murders that have taken place in the old slave holding States? None. We want to change all this. I want the ballot in the hands of these men so that their lives, their homes, their school houses, their churches, their wives, and their children will be safe. if, when these men have got the power in their hands to protect themselves, the white men will give them their rights, build their school houses, instruct them, employ them, deal honestly with them, protect the brutal, ignor ant, cross road, bar room rowdies that infest portions of the country, I say if they will do justice, God will bless them for doing it. If the black man votes for the men who are just and humane, I shall not upbraid him. I do not believe the negro is to be any party's slave if you put the ballot in his hands. I want to call the attention of my Democratic friends especially to that point. Our Democratic friends in Massachusetts have been sneering at me for years for advo cating the emancipation of the negro and for his enfranchisement and elevation. What do we now witness? This autumn, in the cities of Boston and Charlestown, 2 black men were elected to the Legislature. One of them was an educated soldier, a lieutenant in the Army, whose leg had been shot off in a battle in SCarolina. He was elected in Boston. The other gentleman was a lawyer of good standing, a man of capacity and character in the city of Charlestown, residing right under the shadow of Bunker Hill. i. Monday there was an election for mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen in the city of Boston. In the 3rd ward the colored man thought they ought to have one of the councilors, and in the Republican nominating convention they did not get what they wanted. A colored man was taken up at once by the Democratic party and put upon their ticket. The black candidate on their ticket ran ahead of anyone of their other candidates. One of the Republicans ran behind. The lowest on the Republican ticket received 494 votes; the highest on the Democratic ticket, a black man, Mr. Brown, received 494 votes, so there was no choice. Another election was ordered, and on Wed nesday the spectacle was witnessed of the Democracy of the 3rd ward of Boston going up to the ballot boxes, their candidate a negro, and the Republicans going up to the ballot boxes, their candidate a white man, and we know today who won. [Laughter] Senators, give the negro the right of suffrage in this i and before a year passes round you will see Mayor Wallach and alder men and common councilmen attending their schools, making speeches to them at their meetings. You will see these men, who voted that they should not have the right to vote, running after them and inquiring after the health of their wives and children. These negroes will then be just as sweet as anybody else. [Laughter] I do not think the Senfrom o DAVIs] will be examining their pelvis or shins, or making speeches about the formation of their lips or the angle of their foreheads on the floor of the Senate. You will then see the Democracy, with the keen scent that always distinguishes that party, on the hunt after the votes of these black men, ter; } and if they treat them better than the Republicans do they will probably get their votes, and I hope they will. And it will be just so down in these rebel States. Give the negroes of Virginia the right to vote, and you will find Wise and Letcher and the whole tribe of the secessionists under taking to prove that from the landing at Jamestown in 1620 the 1st families of the Old Dominion have always been the champions and the special friends of the negroes of Old Virginia, and that there is a great deal of kindred between them, [laughter;] that they are relations, brethren; that the same red blood courses in the veins of many of them. They will establish all these things, perhaps by affi davits. [Laughter] And I say to you, sir, they will have a good opportunity to get a good many of their votes, for in these respects they have the advantage of us poor Republicans. You will find that the school houses will spring up. No Representative will come from Virginia and boast that he has not a newspaper in his district after that. The cause of education, the cause of liberty will be advanced everywhere by it. If these black men, whose rights I advocate here today, whose rights I have advocated for 30 years, and mean to advocate no matter how they vote, shall here after be better treated, their rights better secured by those who went into the rebellion to establish slavery forever, those who opposed their enfranchisement, I shall be content. The great thing in this world is not to run after votes. I am ready to do my part of that work, and I think I have done my full share of it. The thing is to establish just, humane, and equal laws, laws that shall recognize the rights. all classes and conditions of men, and give the poorest man that breathes God's air or walks His green earth the right to make of himself all that his Creator intended for him. When we have established these rights in law, when we have put them in execution, the great work will have been done; and these people, as they grow in education and intelligence, as their rights are permanently secured, I have not a doubt will divide like other men among political parties, and will follow their own inclinations, their own wishes and interests; and that is what all right minded men desire they should do.