For this reason he has always advocated lenity of measures towards them. He wants to get them into a state in which the moral influence of the North can act upon them beneficially, and to get such a state of things that there will be a party at the South to protect the negro.
Charles Sumner is looking simply at the abstract right of the thing. Henry looks at actual probabilities. We all know that the state of society at the South is such that laws are a very inadequate protection even to white men. Southern elections always have been scenes of mob violence when only white men voted.
Multitudes of lives have been lost at the polls in this way, and if against their will negro suffrage was forced upon them, I do not see how any one in their senses can expect anything less than an immediate war of races.
If negro suffrage were required as a condition of acquiring political position, there is no doubt the slave States would grant it; grant it nominally, because they would know that the grant never could or would become an actual realization. And what would then be gained for the negro?
