In China, p. 362.
1870s, Around the World with General Grant (1879)
Context: Looking back over the whole policy of reconstruction, it seems to me that the wisest thing would have been to have continued for some time the military rule. Sensible Southern men see now that there was no government so frugal, so just, and fair as what they had under our generals. That would have enabled the Southern people to pull themselves together and repair material losses. As to depriving them, even for a time, of suffrage, that was our right as a conqueror, and it was a mild penalty for the stupendous crime of treason. Military rule would have been just to all, to the negro who wanted freedom, the white man who wanted protection, the northern man who wanted Union. As state after state showed a willingness to come into the Union, not on their own terms but upon ours, I would have admitted them. This would have made universal suffrage unnecessary, and I think a mistake was made about suffrage. It was unjust to the negro to throw upon him the responsibilities of citizenship, and expect him to be on even terms with his white neighbor. It was unjust to the north. In giving the south negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction. It looks like a political triumph for the south, but it is not. The southern people have nothing to dread more than the political triumph of the men who led them into secession. That triumph was fatal to them in 1860. It would be no less now. The trouble about military rule in the south was that our people did not like it. It was not in accordance with our institutions. I am clear now that it would have been better for the north to have postponed suffrage, reconstruction, state governments, for ten years, and held the south in a territorial condition. It was due to the north that the men who had made war upon us should be powerless in a political sense forever. It would have avoided the scandals of the state governments, saved money, and enabled the northern merchants, farmers, and laboring men to reorganize society in the south. But we made our scheme, and must do what we can with it. Suffrage once given can never be taken away, and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it.
2010s, 2017, July, 2017 National Scout Jamboree (July 24, 2017)
“I rejoice heartily at the prospect of the negro vote.”
Source: Letter to British Ambassador to the United States Sir Frederick Bruce, 17 June 1863, quote in Paul Scherer, Lord John Russell, A Biography (1999), p287
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664, quoted in * 2019-03-19 The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President Bandy X. Lee Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin's Press) New York 1250212863
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Donald Trump / Quotes / Donald Trump on social media / Twitter
2010s, 2016, November
Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (June 1888).
1880s
1860s, Letter to Abraham Lincoln (1863)
Context: I have given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the negro, is the heavyest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel about it and profess to be very angry. But they were united in their action before and with the negro under subjection could spare their entire white population for the field. Now they complain that nothing can be got out of their negroes.
2010s, 2016, November, New York Times Interview (November 23, 2016)
1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Variant: The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and conducted in the interest of adventurers.
Source: 1900s, A History of the American People, Vol. 9 (1902), p. 58
[Dittmer, John, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920, 1980, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 978-0-252-00813-9, http://books.google.com/books?id=mW4gKvP1oZkC&lpg=PA121&dq=rebecca%20latimer%20felton%20see%20a%20negro%20man&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q=rebecca%20latimer%20felton%20see%20a%20negro%20man&f=false, 121].
