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- GLC#
- GLC00544
- Type
- Letters
- Date
- October 5, 1866
- Author/Creator
- Foster, Lafayette Sabine, 1806-1880
- Title
- to Mr. Wakeman
- Place Written
- Norwich, Connecticut
- Pagination
- 6 p. : Height: 23 cm, Width: 14.3 cm
- Language
- English
- Primary time period
- Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877
- Sub-Era
- Reconstruction
Foster, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, discusses his views on reconstruction with Wakeman, a lawyer. Foster says that he would restrict the right to vote to those with "capacity and virtue," but that it would be "arbitrary, unjust, and tyrannical to make any discriminations…on account of color…" He writes extensively about the rights, especially voting rights, of the "negro," and he states "There is no more sense in talking of a man's natural right to vote, than there is in talking of his natural right to be the Chief Justice, or the President of the United States…It is dangerous to commit so important a power to any who have not both capacity and virtue - I would restrict the right of suffrage to those who had both - to such I would give it, no matter about their color, the ignorant and vicious I would exclude…"
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