1868 AARON H. CRAGIN. All Rights to All Men! Equality of White Men! No "Negro Supremacy"

A very important address by New Hampshire Republican Senator, Aaron Harrison Cragin [1821-1898], specifically interacting with the Reconstruction Acts.   Cragin argues two important points [among others]. The first is that the Southern Democrats should not have the right to dictate the terms of reconstruction. They were traitors who betrayed the United States Constitution, formulated a new government with a new constitution, caused their politicians and people to swear an oath to it as opposed to that of the United States, and engaged in a bloody war, which itself was littered with the grossest forms of war criminality and cruelty. The Union alone, ideally Republicans alone [since Democrats were in league] should have that responsibility. The second observation is of the critical nature of giving freed slaves the right to vote. Southerners opined that this led to "black supremacy," an essential take over of the south by blacks through the ballot box. Cragin both defends black suffrage