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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 303

of the United States Senate. I never shall forget the ineffable scorn and indignation
with which Mr. Hendricks deplored the possibility of such an event.
In less, however, than a decade from that debate, Senators Revels and Bruce,
both colored men, had fulfilled the startling prophecy of the Indiana senator.
It was not, however, by the half-way measure, which he was opposing for its
radicalism, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, that these gentlemen
reached their honorable positions.

In defeating the option proposed to be given to the States, to extend or
deny suffrage to their colored population, much credit is due to the delegation
already named as visiting President Johnson. That delegation made it
their business to personally see and urge upon leading Republican statesmen
the wisdom and duty of impartial suffrage. Day after day, Mr. Downing and
myself saw and conversed with such members of the Senate, whose advocacy
of suffrage would be likely to insure its success.

The second marked step in effecting the enfranchisement of the negro,
was made at the "National Loyalists' Convention," held at Philadelphia in
September, 1866. This body was composed of delegates from the South,
North, and West. Its object was, to diffuse clear views of the situation of
alfairs at the South, and to indicate the principles deemed advisable by it to
he observed in the reconstruction of society in the Southern States.

This convention was, as its history shows, numerously attended by the
ablest and most influential men from all sections of the country, and its deliberations
participated in by them.

The policy foreshadowed by Andrew Johnson (who, by the grace of the
assassin's bullet, was then in Abraham Lincoln's seat) — a policy based upon
the idea that the rebel States were never out of the union, and hence had
forfeited no rights which his pardon could not restore — gave importance to
this convention, more than anything which was then occurring at the South;
for through the treachery of this bold, bad man, we seemed then about to lose
nearly all that had been gained by the war.

I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as a delegate
from that city to attend this convention. The honor was a surprise and a
gratification to me. It was unprecedented for a city of over sixty thousand
white citizens and only about two hundred colored residents, to elect a colored
man to represent them in a national political convention, and the
announcement of it gave a shock to the country of no inconsiderable violence.
Many Republicans, with every feeling of respect for me personally,
were unable to see the wisdom of such a course. They dreaded the clamor of
social equality and amalgamation which would be raised against the party,